The Gaming Diaries

102 Post!

2010-04-07T11:26:00.000-04:00

It appears in the delight of talking about Fallen Earth, I failed to notice that I hit the 100 post milestone! While doubtful, we'll see if I can hit 200 posts by the end of the year. In order to get that, I need some fodder suggestions to talk about. What would you like me to focus on?

Board Games?
Fallen Earth?
World of Warcraft?
Dungeons & Dragons Online?
LARPing?
Nerdraging?

Milestones are overrated anyways.

Suck One, Marrowgar!

2010-04-07T09:16:00.001-04:00

Just a quick hit here. Last night we did a partially impromptu ICC-10, and did some very messy 1-shots until the abom twins. I blame myself for two of the wipes on Festergut (poorly timed Hymn of Hope on killed the tank and I got overwhelmed healing and let a ranged die, boo me).

I was impressed, because one of our good friends who hadn't stepped foot into ICC was tanking. He's great and all, just didn't know the fights.

I figured it would be a long night when he dropped on Marrowgar from fire...

But somehow the other tank solo'd Marrowgar - with only two healers! I kind of want to try disc, but I blew my Guardian Spirit every transition back to tanking. I don't know if Pain suppression would have been enough to get through it, but I might be wrong.

Anyways, grats Omnyknight, for solo tanking Marrowgar!

A New Frontier - Fallen Earth

2010-04-04T19:38:00.000-04:00

The website I've been writing for was looking for someone to do a review of Fallen Earth. One of the editors met with the creators of FE, and they are excited about a number of new features on the game. I signed up, and with my history in MMORPGs (and my promptness in replying), I received a 30 day trial of the game to review.

Fallen Earth has been in production since 2003, and finally was released in the fall of 2009. They stepped on the third rail of MMORPGs - futuristic simulation with guns. Tabula Rasa crashed and burned, despite (or perhaps because of) the big name behind the game.

I've played the game for about 15-20 hours so far, and I must say, I am impressed. The game is vast with essentially no fast travel. Combat is interesting and guns are well scaled with melee (in PvE). The crafting system is very deep and fairly complex, without limiting what the players can do. A few novel developments (crafting while off line, care and feeding of mounts) separate the game from other MMOs, but they keep all the concrete elements of MMOs.

Icarus Studios did a few things that other game studios should look to follow in the future.

First, they took a long time. It took six years to release this game - more than Mythic took to release WAR, more than Cryptic took to release Champions Online and Star Trek Online combined. They put in the hours to actually complete a finished game, without pressuring themselves to release early in order to get some income from the game.

Second, they didn't come into the game with a chip on their shoulder. They didn't flash any big names or special IP. They simply wanted to work hard to do something that hasn't been done before (or at least, done well before).

I expect a lot from this game. There's a number of free trials out there for the game, so if you're a fan of post-apocalyptic games, I suggest trying this one out. The learning curve is a little slow, and picking the wrong starting town can really put a damper on the game, but I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

The Freeing Feeling of Playing One Toon

2010-03-29T11:39:00.001-04:00

For those unaware, I have made my priest my one and only raiding character. I had been spending too much time gearing up multiple toons, so I focused on my priest. The only time I log on the other toons is for professions, usually for my priest. I spent the mage and warriors badges to get some saronite for crafted pants and boots.

I feel free.

I'm actually doing some PvP now. I forced myself to go Holy for raiding, but I sucked it up and did a Disc Smite build for PvP. It works pretty well, I tend to get a fair share of KBs, and I can burst heal like no body's business. This is great for BGs, where I can heal if there are only a couple of healers, but if we have too many healers, I can start throwing 4k smites.

There's a whiner in our guild about people using PvP gear in raids. He seems to forget the fact that a 31 ilvl difference is significant, even if you waste itemization on resilience. I was padding my GS to get in the raid with 4 PvP items (Relentless cloak, Wrathful bracers, Relentless belt, SP Battlemasters Trinket), and according to the Recount Effective Heals/GS, I was still performing extremely well.

I also tend to think that PuGs with PvP gear usually have better spacial awareness. But, since everyone can get PvP gear with Wintersgrasp, I guess at the very least it gives them more stamina, which gives them more time to get out of the fire.

Also, as a distraction, I downloaded DDO and plan on giving it a shot. And if I think the game is good enough, maybe I'll throw some money at Turbine.

One Profession to Rule Them All: Tailoring

2010-03-24T00:13:00.000-04:00

Ok, so 3.3.3 hit, and I'm excited. I recently made my priest my main, and this gave me a chance to spam make all the moonshroud I needed for crafted items, so my guild will let me raid (more on that later).

As I was standing in Shattrath making my moonshroud, I noticed something amazing. For those of you who weren't tailors, there was a seemingly pointless buff you used to get when you crafted specialty cloth. Here are the links.

Spellweave - Nexus Residue (20 Haste)
Ebonweave - Residue of Darkness (20 Crit)
Moonshroud - Moonshroud Residue (20 hp5/mp5)

Well, as I was making it in Shattrath, I noticed that I was still getting the buff, over and over again. It used to be a buff you got once every 4 days, in the middle of dragonblight. While it's not a huge buff, you can now do it anytime, anywhere, without a cooldown.

For example, you can do it when you're staring down the Lich King on heroic mode.

Tailoring used to be a competitive profession for casters, but now that you can stack all three of these residues for attempts on hardmode bosses it is a clear winner. And when you're done, you can just sell the cloth for the price of the mats and do it again.

So, if you're a caster class going for hardmodes, I suggest power-leveling tailoring to get the most out of your class. At least until Blizzard knocks it back in line with the other professions.

3.3.3 Can Eat One

2010-03-17T09:41:00.000-04:00

WTH Blizzard? You've had that background downloader on for the past week and you don't deliver my new patch? My priest just hit 80, and I was expecting to welfare out some serious Runed Orb/Crusader orb gear using the essentially free Moonshroud that comes when you lift the CDs off tailoring.

Now I'm in the strange situation where I can either shell out some gold to get one piece now, or not raid ICC 10 at full strength this week (read: not raid ICC 10 at all this week).

Way to get my hopes up, Jackholes.

Brought to you by Whiny Post Day.

It's Boring out Here (Link Love)

2010-03-16T09:39:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the lack of posts in the last week. We've been doing our normal, 6/13 ICC 10 man, with nothing new to report. I wanted to try to go back to my arcane spec, as I was somewhat sad about my damage, but I was cornered into ice, as I was the only source of replenishment.

I do have to report that my Priest is now 80, and I'm gearing him up for raiding as Holy. Our guild lacks good raid healers, so I figured it would be worth it.

My priest was my first 70 when I started playing the game in TBC. I rolled priest, fully intent on healing, as my previous experience in MMOs was playing a monk/mesmer healer in Guild Wars. I did everything I could, to make sure I was ready, including getting my tailoring up so I could craft Primal Mooncloth items, and at 69, my guild told me "GG, you're our shadow priest lol." As a good little soldier, I did everything to become the best mana battery possible, and I did a pretty decent job, if I say so myself.

By the time wrath rolled around, the changes to replenishment made me kind of sad, so I decided to take my warrior as my main, until I found out the guild needed a mage.

Sukutaklu, the Troll, is back in action and looking to finally get a real shot at healing. Despite my low gear score (sporting nothing higher than ilvl 200 epics), I was able to raid heal through all the bosses in VoA with no deaths (and yes, I was healer 2, not healer 3)!

And I wouldn't have been able to do it without the help from Bloggers like Miss Medicina at Miss Medicina, Amber at I Like Bubbles, and notTamarindlol (his ubersecret name change) and Chas (not actually sure what class he is) at Righteous Orbs (recently added to the reader).

So consider this a link love post from a long time stalker who's finally getting to use some of the stuff you all talk about.

What's the Size of Your R-Peen

2010-03-10T15:24:00.002-05:00

Recently, there's been an uprising that I've seen from people in various LARP and Video games. These people seem to have this idea that the way they're playing a game is right and the way someone else plays the game is wrong.

People make all kinds of justifications for why nerf and buffs should or should not happen. A lot of responses are "don't worry, it's not a problem if people don't Power Game," or "There's an RP way to deal with it." All of these arguments are intended to be a social way to bully people from playing the game they want to play.

What the hell do you care how the other side plays the game? They come to the game and keep playing because they enjoy playing the game they do. Are they keeping you from playing the game you like to play? Are they directly affecting your level of fun? If not, shut the fuck up.

People assume that just because it's a "Roleplaying" game, that focusing on effectiveness is all of a sudden forbidden. Everyone wants to be effective. The truth is that every player has their threshold where they trade RP flavor for effectiveness. This threshold is a reflection of their Roleplaying penis, or R-Peen.

Some people have a very small R-Peen (Power gamers), while others have bigger R-Peens (RP enthusiasts). But they all have a level at which they say, "I'm sorry, this is just too ineffective for me to use this, regardless of how it fits my back story for my character." Now, there are a few people who pretend to be blind, deaf, and worthless in these games. The people who do play those extremely disabled roles are really an elitist group that likes to compare themselves to others via R-Peen.

Let's get one thing straight. Social Pressure is not an excuse for bad mechanics. If something is broken, you, as a player are not justified in telling someone else that they shouldn't do it, or more accurately, that they're doing wrong. The only people who can actually limit what is allowed are the people who operate the game.

I think John Stuart Mill was talking about R-Peen when he gave this quote:

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

In Summary: Play your own game, and don't be a bitch about how others choose to play theirs. Attacking someone looking to fix the mechanics for any RP reason is not appropriate, as this is an informal fallacy.

LARP in Your Backyard

2010-03-05T10:23:00.000-05:00

One of the hardest things about finding a LARP group to join in the US is location. The United States is a big place, and you would often have to drive hours to get to a game.

Even though I am blessed to be in Ohio, which unbeknownst to me could the Mecca of LARPing (I checked and found about 35 groups in a 5 hour radius), sometimes you just want to play in your backyard.

Originally, your only option was to play your own spin-off or rule set to run, but then the game seemed like a played out D&D session, and it only ever meant something to you and your friends.

However, there is a new game out there that supports people playing in the backyard while simultaneously interacting with people around the globe.

I introduce you to - The Dreaming

Half Boffer LARP, Half Social Networking.

The jist of the game is that you exist in a world of "wakes", who think they're awake, even though they're part of the dream. You, however, play a denizen of the dreaming, anything from a Dead God to tricky Fae.

The game hasn't really started yet, but we're going to give it a go and see what happens. If you're interested in something like this, check out the web page and see if anyone around you is playing.

ICC-10 Fo' Mages: Festergut and Rotface

2010-03-03T11:13:00.000-05:00

A while back I did a piece about the first four bosses in ICC. My guild hasn't progressed much farther in it for various reasons, but I can give a bit of information on the bosses I have seen.

This set will be focused on Festergut and Rotface (more like Festernuts and Rottencrotch, Amirite?)

Festergut
Festergut is a simple fight for DPS. Tanks and healers have to deal with ridiculous damage swings but all we have to do is power through the boss to beat the 5 minute enrage timer.

The only mechanics you need to know about are the Vile Gas, Gaseous Blight, and Gas Spores.

Festergut will target a random ranged person with Vile Gas. It will do decent damage and disorient anyone within 10 yards for 6 seconds. He tends to target people at range, so be prepared for being a target, and spread out!

Gaseous Blight is an AoE where the entire room is filled with poison gas. As Festergut enhales the gas, raid damage will drop until there is no raid damage at all. Use defensive abilities during the high damage portion and save evocate for when there is no raid damage.

Throughout the fight, he will put Gas Spores on the raid. Two players will have a spore above their head, and all players must collapse on the players with the spore. When the spore explodes, it puts the Innoculated buff on nearby players, which reduces shadow damage by 25% per application. You will need all 3 applications in order to survive his massive raid attack, Pungent Blight.

Don't worry about fancy decursing or kiting in this fight, just DPS hard.

Rotface
This fight is a ton of fun when you know what you're doing, but horrible if you don't. There is kiting, and you may even end up being the kiting tank in this fight, as mages can do that well.

The main mechanic of this fight comes from Rotface's Mutated Infection. A random raid member will be be targeted and it will need to be cleansed off. When that happens, a small slime appears, that will follow that raid member. The goal is to combine two small slimes to make a huge slime. The huge slime does AoE damage, so it needs to be kited around the room away from the raid. The raid will continue merging slimes with this huge slime until it becomes unstable and explodes. Repeat this process until he's dead.

First things first - DO NOT USE MIRROR IMAGES. Small slimes follow their player through a threat mechanic, and skills that drop your threat make those slimes hard to control. Just let it go for this fight.

Rotface occasionally spits on a random raid member. If he turns to your direction, run around him. Easy enough.

Do the raid a favor and put a Cone of Cold or other snare on the first slime that anyone gets. Small slimes cannot be taunted, but they can be snared and this will reduce raid damage. Try not to do this with later infections, as the snare will slow players down from merging slimes.

Stay away from big slimes as their AoE will kill you. If you aren't kiting big slimes, stay in the middle of the room and if you have an infection, run it into the path of the huge slime. If you're kiting them, keep your distance and use blink when appropriate to stay ahead. Be aware that Rotface uses many abilities to put Green goo on the ground. This will slow you and do significant damage, so it's best to stay away from it. Help your raiders by using frost nova on their slime when it's in the path of the big slime.

When the big slime explodes, he'll send slime rockets at every member of the raid, but they don't follow the players. Everyone has to move when the slimes are in the air.

Rotface is one of those fights that seems simple, but execution is everything. Even when it's going right, it might seem like controlled chaos. That's probably why it's my favorite fight in ICC thusfar.

The Proper Use of Cold Snap

2010-03-01T09:14:00.000-05:00

I've been trying my best to make frost work lately. The biggest thing is that I want to be prepared for when the patch comes out. I did a ToC 25 and ended up at a solid 5th place as frost, despite no shaman and no crit chicken to give me buffs. Beat out the other mages as well, rocking between 5k and 6k DPS (save for gimmick fights where damage was higher).

The real trick to playing frost is maintaining the priority system and responding quickly. It's been a long time since I played fire, so I wasn't responding fast enough at first. Cold Snap is a tricky bitch that has caught me a number of times. Here's how you use it.

Icy Veins on CD? Check
Deep Freeze on CD? Check.
Fingers of Frost Up? Check.
Now use Cold Snap followed up with a Deep Freeze.

I don't know how many times I used Cold Snap after the Deep Freeze and then Fingers of Frost doesn't proc for 40 seconds. It's absolutely demoralizing.

In addition, there are some fights where you should use Ice Block before Cold Snap. Some examples are:

Toravon (to drop frost debuff)
Saurfang (for kiting blood beasts)
Onyxia (for breaking fears)
Anub'Arak (to drop nature damage debuff)
Marrowgar (reduce damage in whirlwind phase)

And there's probably more fights that I haven't seen yet. Good luck with Frost!

Fix My Glyph of Frostbolt!

2010-02-25T14:11:00.003-05:00

I've been doing my raiding as frost for the past few weeks. At first, I made a frost spec for kiting on Saurfang and I just lingered in it as long as possible until our RL realized the water elemental was out and made me change to arcane.

I've found that in Icecrown, I don't bother glyphing for Frostbolt. There are too many fights where being able to slow things with a frostbolt is valuable (Lady Deathwhisper, Saurfang, Valithria, and possibly Rotface/Putricide). I just can't justify a 3.5% increase to dps (about 175 DPS) to lose that versitility.

I would love to see Blizzard change the downside to the frost glyph and give me my snare back. I understand it's intended to keep the 5% increase in damage out of PvP, but I've got a different idea to fix that.

Make the Glyph of Frostbolt give 5% extra damage to Frostbolt when the Water Elemental is out.

Blizzard has created a glyph that is must have for frost PvE yet complete failure for PvE - Glyph of Eternal Water. This makes the Water Elemental permanent but eliminates its frost nova ability. This gives a large damage increase to PvE mages and reduces the burst control/damage in PvP. Blizzard made this glyph perfect.

So if we changed the glyph of Frostbolt, we would see an (almost) guaranteed 5% increase on Frostbolt damage for PvE. This could give a little bit of a boost to burst damage for the PvP mage, but the fact is that glyph spots are hard to fill and this could be countered by putting more emphasis on killing the water elemental.

Currently, there's no downside to the Glyph of Arcane Blast or the Glyph of Frostfire Bolt, and the downside on the Glyph of Fireball is so minor (lose 29 damage every 2 seconds) that no one cares about it. I would like to see a buff to the main weapon in the PvE Frost Mage's aresenal, and I think this is the proper way to do it.

What do you think?

Frozen Orb Blitz

2010-02-23T14:09:00.001-05:00

There's been a lot of talk about the new 3.3.3 patch coming out soon. On top of the buffs to frost mages and massive PvP overhaul, there will be a new vendor in the game. What's he want?

Frozen Orbs

Yes, the things that have been filling our bags giving us nothing to do will be the new hotness. You will be able to exchange them for a number of things.

4 Frozen Orbs for 1 Runed Orb
6 Frozen Orbs for 1 Crusader Orb
1 Frozen Orb for an Eternal Shadow, Life, Fire, Earth, Water, or Air.
1 Frozen Orb for 1 Frost Lotus
6 Frozen Orbs for a Frosty Flying Carpet Pattern

There's been a lot of doomsday about what is going to happen to the economy due to this change. Here are my predictions.

The Cost of Frozen Orbs: Up (20-30g).
Frozen orbs used to have a value close to the vendor price, because the supply greatly surpassed the demand. Now that Frozen Orbs can be traded for items with essentially limitless demand, it will have a cost in line with those items. Some servers with a higher price for Eternal Fire might see a higher price for Frozen Orbs.

The Cost of Runed and Crusader Orbs: Unchanged.
Why would you trade 10 emblems for a frozen orb to get a runed orb that costs 18 emblemes or a crusader orb that costs 15 emblems.

The Cost of Eternal Earth, Water, and Air: Unchanged.
These Eternals are insignificant, and will not be purchased with Frozen Orbs, except from some of the less educated players.

The Cost of Eternal Life and Shadow: UP (15-20g)
One of the other things 3.3.3 is doing is removing the CD for Tailoring Cloth. These eternals will be used for stacks of cloth and thus will go up in price.

The Cost of Eternal Fire: UP (25-30g)
Despite this being about Frozen Orbs, I believe this is the item to balance around. Eternal fire is used for the Titansteel CD daily as well as Spellweave (now off CD). It's always the most expensive Eternal, and it will be the deciding factor. Frozen Orbs will adjust to match this, not the other way around.

The Cost of Frost Lotus: DOWN (20-30g)
This is the big swing item on 3.3.3. Not surprising, Frost Lotus will be the same price as the Frozen Orb. Since the supply will be much larger, the price of these lotuses will drop to significantly.

Now for the Pull-Through changes.

Flasks: DOWN (15-20g)
Now that people can get cheap lotuses, you can buy cheap flasks. Alchemists will still be making decent money as the net profit per flask will be about the same, but people will be willing to buy more. You'll start seeing people with flasks for BGs and PuG raids more often.

Herbs: UP (20-40g stack)
With Frozen Orbs, there will be less incentive to farm for Lotuses, which was bringing down the price of other herbs. I don't think it'll be a major increase as farming for frozen orbs is difficult. But I think we'll see some people finally drop Herbalism for something with more raiding value.

Titansteel: DOWN
Taken off of CD, Titansteel will now be limited by the cost of the materials. In addition, its price will be normalized by the fact that a limited supply on the AH would mean a miner would simply go make more and sell it, rather than the possible shortages we see today.

Moonshroud, Ebonweave, and Spellweave: DOWN
Spellweave will still be the most expensive one, but now that there's no CD limiting these cloths, their value will be close to the cost of mats. No need to buy CDs anymore!

Infinite Dust: Unchanged
Despite the fact that more imbued frostweave will be needed, the cost of Infinite dust won't change. More people will be running random dungeons for the orb/emblems, and the increased drop of greens for DE will offset the cloth.

Leg Enhancements: UP
Well duh. Frozen Orbs go up in price and this market was already decent. Now you just up the price by 15g to reflect the increased cost in mats.

Glyphs: Unchanged
Despite the higher cost in herbs, I believe the glyph market will remain mostly unchanged through this economic shift. The thing that changes for scribes is below.

Snowfall Ink and Runescrolls: UP
Most of the cost of making glyphs was made up for by selling inks of the sea and the runescrolls made by them. This is where scribes will get their money back to continue offering glyphs at the same price.

That's all I got right now. The list can probably expand, but these are the big hitters.

Good Game, I Lose

2010-02-22T15:55:00.001-05:00

Last night, we were running ToC-25, and we didn't have enough people to do it as a guild. We pugged about 1/3 of the people and had little to no issues. Except for me - I got all pissy and left. Why?

My guild was bullying the PuGs.

We have a DKP system that we run by, and it gets very interesting with people not in the guild. Basically, everyone who wants main spec on an item rolls, and if a guild person wins, it goes to the guildie with the highest DKP. Normal stuff. The problem we run into is people rolling for items they're not going to need. This was most apparent on the Trophies.

At this point, trophies are a minor upgrade for the people in the guild. Many people would roll, the guild would win, and inevitbly on vent or in guild chat, the top DKP that rolled would say "Pass to the next highest DKP." I spoke up several times about how this was unfair, and people seemed to just ignore it. We then ran into a snag where one of the pugs won the roll on an amulet that was BoE. Some officers assumed he was going to sell it (since he got a neck piece earlier) and ninja'd it. Despite whatever defense they make (some make sense, some don't) it was ninja'd - a person broke the loot rules (main spec) and took the item.

The neck was an upgrade for the guy, BoE or not. The PuG was a warrior and the first neck was agility, this one was strength. But he didn't get it. I tried to throw my weight and told an officer and RL friend, Solovius, that I was going to leave the raid if he didn't get it. He wasn't going to get it, so I left.

I had expected they would bend and give him the neck, but it didn't go my way and I didn't want to appear as one who makes false threats. So, in between a rock and a hard place, I told the group that I had to go, hearthed out before Anub and dropped raid.

As a point, this wasn't really the officers fault. There were a few people who took it upon themselves to push loot into guild pockets and the neck issue was essentially an issue with one person (who happened to be an officer, different guy than above.)

In hindsight, I should have stuck around for Anub, because I only punished the people I was actually trying to protect. I failed. I knew that we had two people who were main spec tanks in the group, which made it easier, but they were probably still down one going into Anub.

My wife was afraid that I had made enemies with the officer in question over a game. I figured we were cool, but I told him to give me a call when he was done anyways. Ironically, his wife told him the same thing. They were in our wedding, so I'm definitely not going to war with them over some purple pixels.

I guess trying to throw my weight around was like a form of PvP. He called my bluff and I got beat fair and square, no hard feelings. Nice shot, Solo. Would I do it again, given the same situation? Probably not, but only because they know I mean business when it comes to treating PuGs with respect.

LARP, American Style

2010-02-18T13:48:00.000-05:00

LARPing is way more prominent and more socially acceptable in Europe. There could be a lot of different reasons, but I would most likely blame it on the culture shock in the US around LARPing.

I'm sure everyone's read the nerd heirachy in some form or another, and it almost always has LARP at the bottom of the barrel. I tend to disagree.

Yes, it's nerdy. However, it's not necessarily more nerdy than Dungeons and Dragons or World of Warcraft. There's just a connotation associated with LARPs that focuses on the most nerdy of the LARPers. On one hand, we have the Lightning Bolt video on Youtube, forever imprinting the minds of outsiders as to what LARP is. On the other hand, you have movies like Monster Camp that go further saying "Not only are these nerds bad in game, they're basically unable to function in society."

So is this perception the reason LARP has never gone mainstream? It's definitely a part of the cause, but I don't think it's the biggest impact.

The biggest problem is that there is very little support between games. We have people who are super protective of the game they play (Level up, fight monsters, save the princess) and immediately find fault or reasons not to play other games (where you level up, fight monsters, and save the princess).

In order for the US to embrace the LARP phenominon, we need to unite all Larpers under one banner. Higher numbers means more money, which means a more professional product, which brings more visibility, which brings higher numbers.

What is the one thing that (most) LARPs have in common? Boffer Combat. Rules regarding how one takes damage might vary, but any LARPer (who doesn't do WoD or something else political) will know how to use it.

There's got to be a way to unite under that banner.

Pete and Repeat

2010-02-16T13:31:00.000-05:00

Question: Pete and Repeat are on a boat. Pete falls off, who is left?

Answer: /ignore

This little gem, and others like it, have plagued the general chat in ICC on our server. It gets pretty ridiculous at times and I can't bring myself to leave the channel (I'm a glutton for punishment).

Do other servers have the same issue? What spam do you see in the general channels for ICC?

EVE Online: Guide for Newbies

2010-02-15T14:13:00.002-05:00

I am quickly closing in on the end of the free trial that I got with EVE Online. I must say that it was a lot of fun and I'm seriously considering paying for the full version of the game. It has a harsh learning curve, as others have noted, but once you have the basic mechanics down, it shouldn't be that hard. Hell, 14 days in and I've almost got my first Cruiser!

Here are some points that I think new players would find useful if they were starting EVE Online.

1. The Overview
Travel in this game is click based, not running like other MMORPGs. Your number one tool is using the overview and right-clicking on the thing you want to interact with. If you're traveling somewhere, select "Warp to within 0m." Other good commands are "Dock" for stations, "Jump" for gates, and "Orbit xm" for combat. You can also lock your targets with the right Click.

2. Skills take Time
You will not be able to do everything right out of the gate. The first night you play the game, expect to do a few missions, pick the skills you want and then either run trades or log out. I was *lucky* in that we were remodeling our kitchen when I started the trial, so I literally did nothing but queue skills for the first 4 days of the trial. I skilled up my frigate skill to 4 and almost all other skills to 3, and it was well worth it.

3. Learn How to Use the Market
It's not super difficult, but knowing how to use the market can mean the difference between having fun in EVE Online as opposed to going Office Space on your computer. The Key trades of importance early on are Trade Goods - specifically Consumer Goods and Industrial Goods, both of which you can trade between stations for some small profit.

4. Get a New Ship!
I got the hell out of my crappy ship (Ibis) and got a slightly better frigate (Bantam). Then I upgraded to a better frigate (Kestrel, pictured above) and now missions are easy. Just be sure you have the skills for your new ship! I hadn't done any missile work until I found out the Kestrel didn't have any turret hardpoints - only missile hardpoints. I had to go learn the missile skills and log off for the night (no biggie, they were ready in the morning).

5. New Skills and Learning Skills
Every skill book you could want is available at your University starting location. Along the way, you'll see an item that you want but don't have the skill for. When that happens, then just go purchase the book. You should be able to learn level 1 in any skill less than an hour (in the beginning).

Learning skills make training faster in the long run. While I wouldn't do these first, you should be able to do them in the first 10 days. Start by getting the skills that make you comfortable doing your thing first, then get Instant Recall, Analytical Mind, and Learning to level 4.

6. Important Ship Mods
Life was easier after I got a few specific modules. Shield Booster (or Armor Repair depending on ship) and Afterburners are a must. You will be very happy once you have them. Also, make sure you have at least two functioning weapons if you're running missions. If your ship only has two high slots, that means you'll have to take off your mining laser.

7. Acceleration Gates
I didn't understand how missions worked, so I quit a mission assuming it was bugged. Turns out, you need to select the acceleration gate and activate it to get to the deadspace area. Just a little tidbit that I wish I had known ahead of time!

8. Run Away!
Early on, you might have some issues completing missions. Don't be afraid to warp away when things get hairy. There were a few missions where I would fly in, kill one guy, warp out, repair, and repeat. Don't get discouraged, as some of those ships will have some nice loot!

9. Sell Orders
When you sell items you have to drop them in your hangar, right-click them and select "Sell this item." When that pops up, it will tell you how much you get but it will also tell you the amount above or below the market value. If the value is lower than -10% below market value, you will want to use a sell order. Click advanced, and set your own price. I would suggest checking the market for the lowest sell price in the market details on that item and drop it by about 10%, and it should sell pretty fast. If you just right click and sell every time (like I did), you will sometimes sell something for hundreds when it should be selling for more than ten-thousand (or more). You only have a limited amount of sell orders that can be open at any given time, so make sure you prioritize high value items before low value ones.

That should be enough to get you started. Good Luck!

Yo, We heard you like to blog about EVE...

2010-02-12T22:34:00.001-05:00

So we put a browser in yo' game so you can blog about EVE while you blog about EVE. Or something to that effect.

So I haven't had a whole lot of time in EVE Online yet, but I have found one feature that is amazing for the kind of gameplay this game uses.

In-Game Browser

Here I am, shuffling silicon between bases so I can get out of this rusted out piece of shit, and instead of being bored out of my mind, I can surf the internet and even make this post you're reading now!

Well, looks like the prices just went up, so I have to check for trade somewhere else.

More to come!

Valithria Dreamwalker for Mages

2010-02-11T22:41:00.001-05:00

Don't die, go frost, and two words for you.

Amplify Magic.

'Nuff Said.

Good Time to Game

2010-02-11T15:50:00.001-05:00

I'm completely baffled on what game to play next.

There was a time a few years ago, where the stars aligned and a bunch of great games came out around the same time. It's like Hale-Bopp or Haley's Comet, coming back every few years to greet you with some spectacular game choices.

Leading off, we've got Bioshock 2 and Mass Effect 2. I believe those were two of the games that came out the first time, but they're back and ready for action. Some other great titles coming out around the same time were Army of Two: The 40th Day, Bayonetta and Darksiders. If all I played was Xbox 360, I'd still have a hard time deciding what to play.

I started playing Eve, which is tough but fun. STO didn't turn out to be as big a mess as Champions, so that could be fun to try as well.

I may be suffering from withdrawal due to work on the kitchen, but at least I know I'll be able to fall off the wagon and overdose on some proper games when it's done.

Off The Grid

2010-02-10T16:55:00.001-05:00

I've been out of the loop for about a week. We've recently decided to redo our kitchen, and with all the minor problems along the way a four day job quickly turned into an eight day job. Well worth it though.

For all of those who partake in the great Lowe's v. Home Depot debate, I've recently changed sides due to the update of our kitchen. I used to be a diehard Lowe's supporter, but after receiving the absolute worst customer service ever, I've seen the light and I'm now a Home Depot guy.

Here's the quick version.

We bought all our kitchen stuff from Lowe's. Cabinets, counters, appliances, you name it. They should be treating us like kings with the amount we purchased from them. They came to our house, measured things, came up with designs, such and such. No big problem, right?

We got everything in fine, until it was time for the counter. We have a nice "L" shaped cabinet area, so we paid extra for a custom, single piece of counter to cover it. Extra money for it. The Lowe's guy said he cut a little extra off to make it fit. Turns out, it was too big. The Lowe's guy mis-measured our kitchen by half an inch. Whatever, that stuff happens.

The real problem is how they responded. We contacted them all like "WTF? Why doesn't our counter fit? We now have to fight with it for a few hours to get it in." Instead of saying "Sorry, our bad. We'll give you a credit," or something like that, they said "NO YOU'RE WRONG, IT'S RIGHT." So we told them to come over and see how wrong they were and they said they'd call back around 1:00.

3:00 rolls around and we call back. The guy we talked to before just left and didn't talk to anyone about it. I understand some people are scrubs and that doesn't reflect upon the company, so we'll talk to the next guy. Nothing comes of that. Later, we call back when we're having issues with the faucet (turns out it was a terrible model Moen made that about 65% don't work). My wife brings up that the counter still isn't issued, and the guy is giving attitude saying "What do you want us to do about it?" Here's the real kicker - look away if you don't like vulgar language.

He sets down the phone and says "I have no idea what this fucking bitch wants" loud enough for my wife to hear.

I work engineering support/customer service, so there are certain rules you have. Yes there are customers you can't stand, but you help them best that you can and keep a good attitude - you should not have to be taught that. This guy broke every damn rule in the book.

When a customer has an issue, it can look bad on the company. However, it gives you a unique opportunity to make a customer for life. If someone has a shitty situation and you make it as painless as possible for them, they know that the worst that can happen if they go with you is that you'll take care of them. Pride doesn't exist in customer service - your job is to fall on your sword for the customer. Instead, this guy decided to go the other way and get all indignant. Nice try.

We go to replace the faucet and my father-in-law talks to the store manager about the situation. He's absolutely shocked at how she was treated, but he immediately knew who did it. We didn't say we wanted the guy fired. We didn't have to. What he said was simply inexcusable.

Home Depot is closer, and most of the small things we needed for the project we got there. While there are a lot of dumb people there, there were a couple of great experts, on the whole people were helpful, and most of all, they were friendly. You could tell me that you're charging me 300% extra because you don't like the way I smell, but if you said it in a friendly way, I'd probably come back. That is how you maintain customers.

Maybe it wasn't so quick. But I'm a firm believer that if you get bad service, you should tell as many people as possible.

I'll be shopping at Home Depot for all my hardware needs now.

Ensidia Redux

2010-02-05T09:45:00.000-05:00

A supposed member of Ensidia gave an Anonymous post at mmo-champion.com, stating how Ensidia acted with respect to the bug how this player was sorry for what was done.

If the guy is a fraud, this post means nothing. If this guy truly is a member of Ensidia, it simply supports the argument that Ensidia should not have been banned - that a less harsh penalty should have been enforced.

I'm sticking with my guns here. I understand in the past, Ensidia should have wiped the encounter and reported the bug. No big deal - in the past.

Lich King is an encounter with limited attempts, Blizzard. You wanted this. You are now actually penalizing players for acting with a conscious, because wiping from a bug removes an attempt they could have possibly had on the encounter.

Is Ensidia being shady about what they did? Yes. But this is not like the analogies being made by people in the thread. The set up for the encounter and the limited attempts makes this event less like being pulled over for speeding. Blizzard caught Ensidia by entrapment.

The Ensidia Debate

2010-02-04T14:29:00.000-05:00

For those of you living under a rock, the mighty Ensidia downed Arthas in 25-man ICC, giving them the world first kill that counts the most in the history of World of Warcraft. They were then subsequently stripped of their title and banned for 3 days for exploiting the encounter.

Here was the issue.
In the fight with Arthas, one of the mechanics is that the floor slowly gives way, reducing the room available for the raid to stand, eventually killing the raid. There turned out to be a bug where saronite bombs would actually heal the floor, thus giving more time with floor present. I will point out that rogues competing at the top level of content are expected to use saronite bombs, as they are a DPS increase and are therefore part of their rotation.

I am not an Ensidia Fanboi, but I'm siding with them on this one. Why?

This is not Vanilla WoW. Blizzard arbitrarily decided with their new gating system that progression guilds won't be able to brute force fights, due to the 10 attempt lockout.

In short, Blizzard was asking for an exploit.

Every guild had 10 shots at downing Arthas in the first week in 10 man and in 25 man, assuming no deaths on the Blood Queen or Professor Putricide. With the attempt limit, guilds have to make the most out of every single attempt, including ones where it bugs out. And guess what Blizzard? With you giving an achievement for world firsts, these guilds are going to run into bugs/server issues, simply because it's the first night out.

All the people QQing state that If I were there, I would have stopped and issued a bug report. Bullshit. There are other guilds competeing with you right now, and even submitting the bug report could mean the difference between a win and a loss. Especially because another guild could be using that exact same bug while you report it.

What they would really do is submit the bug report after the 10 attempts, when they have free time to do so - which Ensidia never got to because they killed the boss. So fuck off.

It's also inappropriate that they ask Ensidia's rogues to stop throwing saronite bombs. It's part of their damn rotation. Blizzard should have tested every common rotation to make sure it didn't bug, but apparently they didn't.

I would be crazy pissed if I was doing content and realized that arcane missles was bugging the encounter. If it didn't reset the boss, I'd keep doing it, because I have to be doing max DPS to get through the hardest boss in the game.

Blizzard brought this mess upon themselves by not allowing guilds to brute force it. They asked for finesse and guess what, exploits are finesse. This was not an exploit like Exodus's Yogg-0 exploit. No one in their right mind would stay in the brain in phase three, let alone lifetap with a healer. However, using your normal rotation with the happenstance of an added benefit?

I'm not saying Ensidia didn't exploit. I'm saying what they did was what blizzard wanted - Finesse. GG Blizzard.

Persistent Worlds

2010-02-04T10:30:00.000-05:00

I had an interesting conversation at our weekly D&D session. One of my friends recetly got STO and was telling us about the game. I'm still not really sold. From what I heard, and what he described, I could see it getting old very fast - much like Champions Online. In fact, I liked the hero genre more than Star Trek, so I would probably quit STO faster than I did Champions.

As an aside, I thank Champions for the fact that it got me started in blogging, and even then I spent more time on my blog posts then I spent in the game.

Anyways, the conversation went like this (paraphrased, because I'm not a stenographer).

Me: After all the hype about STO, I went straight to my computer... and downloaded EVE Online.
Him: EVE isn't worth it. You do just as much playing the game as when you're not. You can't skill up faster.
Me: It's not about skills, it's about money [ISK]. It can be about money because the world is persistent.
Him: Yeah, good luck trying to pilot a Titan with money.

I understand his point - a lot of the cutting edge stuff in EVE requires ridiculous amounts of skills. If you're not familiar with EVE, you can (now) queue up skills to learn, and it takes a certain amount of time to learn them. Your skills train whether you're playing or not, assuming they're queued up. That translates to the fact that I will never ever have as many skillpoints as players who have been playing for 4 years. This ruins the game for some people - specifically completionists. More on them in another post.

The reason I decided to start playing EVE is not only that it's a genre I would like to play. It's that it is a persistent world. In EVE, between the politics and intrigue, the story is written by the players. This is a mechanic that doesn't exist in games like World of Warcraft, STO, or Warhammer Online.

I know, having an actual impact on the game is very difficult. But the opportunity exists. Find a niche for yourself and do it well, and your fame (or infamy) can grow.

I once played a game called Pardus with a limited player base (probably 500-1000 when I quit). Skills in this game were only really used for fighting and experience was what limited you from getting new ships. The game was small, but I was able to make a pretty significant name for myself. The big pirate in the game was ruthless and would attack anyone and kill them if he found them alone. My solution? I paid him off to give my entire alliance safety. Apparently no one had done that before.

I had the opportunity to make moves shaping the game world, and it felt great. Eventually I quit that game due to dev interaction (they actually cheated for some players to do things), but it was amazing while it lasted. The game design wasn't amazing, but the persistence made it fun.

Sure, EVE is a much larger game and therefore it's hard to make a name for yourself. But I'm definitely going to try.

If you play EVE, give me some pointers! And then stop by at S&S and give Syrana and give some pointers as well - even though she plays a dirty warlock.

What Do You Look for in a Main Tank?

2010-02-01T10:37:00.002-05:00

Sundays are 25 man VoA/Ony/ToC. Our guild is not skilled enough for ICC 25 quite yet, so we keep pounding content we know we can do in an hour or two. No big deal right?

We had a hell of a time raiding last night. We wiped on Jaraxxus twice, Anub twice, and ony once. It was three hours start to finish, and on top of that it just wasn't fun. Our MT/GL started by saying "I don't feel like tanking. I don't want to think so I'm going to DPS." There are so many things wrong with that statement.

You fought to be MT, even when Wrath came out and there were no longer MT roles. I got muscled out of tanking by a new recruit who wasn't better than me, which I was somewhat unhappy about at the time. If you want to be MT and you're kicking others out of tanking, you should want to tank.

I understand that sometimes you want to DPS - say that. One of the things you have as Guild Leader is that you should be upbeat about things. Say you want to try dpsing and give some of the other tanks a chance. That is the optimistic thing to say. Don't be Debbie Downer, alienating most of the raid while you're at it.

He also perpetuated the idea that DPS is thoughtless and easy. Sure, DPSing can be thoughtless to you, because you can always fall back on the "I'm not geared/used to doing damage." Next time, just say "I don't want to try" if you don't want to try. Don't demean my role (and the roles of 14 other people.)

It didn't help that we had 23 people for ToC and 22 people for Ony. We don't pick up extra PuGs, because our guild is afraid of giving away gear. Healers were stretched thin. We had three experienced healers, one still coming up to skill, and one who has gear but doesn't really try. Mad props to the healers for getting us through those messes.

People were fumbling all around, missing interrupts, standing together, doing things wrong. It happens, I know. But it wasn't fun while we were doing it. Compare it to last week when our GL didn't show up, we cleared content faster, we had fun (despite some strange wipes on Ony).

I started this post thinking about what you want out of a MT, but it seems to have devolved to something else. Let's just say I'm glad we have some officers who will play jock jams to pump up the raid when we wipe. Otherwise I'd only show up for progression.

In other news, I'm going to try some crazy stuff with my arcane spec once I get a few more pieces. Should be interesting.

So, seriously. What do you look for in a main tank?

Show Some Respect

2010-01-29T11:49:00.002-05:00

Blessing of Kings had a post about how Gevlon was right, that people tend not to play to their full potential. In addition, there is a social contract preventing us from telling people what they did wrong and how they should play the game.

Let's take the situation of a comment from Kring.

"You did not touch the question why they have to be better players. You don't play WoW to finish it, you play it to pass time, to have fun. If just casting frost bolts and not reading EJ is fun to you, what's wrong with that? Why do they have to be better? Why do you assume it's "helping them" if you send them to EJ (where they'll get an infraction)?"

They don't need to be better players, they just need to play to their potential. Playing to your potential shows your team respect. Someone helping you be better at what you like to do is showing you respect back.

Now that I've answered your questions, I'll raise you one.

Why does this imaginary "I have fun throwing frostbolts" mage want to take part in the team portion of this game, if they just have fun throwing frostbolts? There are training dummies in every city that they can throw frostbolts at forever.

When you step into any multiplayer aspect of the game (Arenas, BGs, 5-mans, raids), you have made a choice to be part of a team. Everyone on that team is expected to have a certain level of pride about their personal performance and respect for the other people who put their time in and are expected to perform.

Imagine you're in a pick-up basketball game. Normally you get to choose your team, but in order to make things more streamlined, some higher power (Blizzard) puts your team together. One of the guys in your party tells you "I came to have fun, so every time I get the ball I'm going to do a hook shot, because that's fun to me."

What would you tell this person? I don't even like basketball, but I am sure I would tell them to GTFO and go play basketball on their hoop in their driveway. They obviously don't have fun participating in a team sport (all he wants to do is hook shot), so why should I have to put up with him on my team?

When you step in any team, your job is to do your best without acting like an ass. You are expected to have respect for the others who have decided to spend their time with you in order to do something they can't on their own. People who don't try their best and don't listen shouldn't be playing a team game. Why would they even play with a group when they can do what they consider fun all by themselves?

This respect also goes the other way. If someone is putting out their all, despite not being good, you don't berate them and call them names. Sure, they're not as good as you. Help them and don't be a dick about it. Sure, if they tell you "Lol, I don't want any help, I'm good enough," getting frustrated or angry is appropriate. This person lacks respect for you, so you, in turn, no longer need to respect them.

And for the people who think Gevlon is a horrible person, check out this post. He understands that you don't need to be a pro to do DPS in heroics. Sure, he likes to whip out his ePeen about how he's only wearing blues, blah blah blah. But he doesn't get down on people doing over 1.5k DPS. Anyone can do 1.5k DPS if they're honestly trying their best.

But it's just a game you say? So are basketball, baseball, and football. Sure, it's not the same at the professional levels. However, when people play these sports on a local level, they don't normally fuck around and do stupid shit. Winning and playing well are both fun. Being an idiot and losing for no good reason is just a waste of time.

In summary, I say this to the mage that just wants to throw frostbolts:
Yes, it's your $15 a month and you're free to do with it as you wish. But if you're going to use that as a reason to disrespect me and the other three people who are relying on you, don't be surprised if we kick your stupid ass.

Oh, and if your reason for coming in to the dungeon is for loot, than getting loot is your source of fun, so you should be playing at your best to get loot faster and thus have more fun. And if you want the gear to make your frostbolts even more fun, then you are a hypocrite and a fucking liar. DIAF.

Show up to play or don't show up at all, kthxbai.

10 Factors that Make a Fun Mage Encounter

2010-01-28T08:00:00.000-05:00

Spinks at Welcome to Spinksville wrote an interesting post about 10 things that make a fun tanking encounter. As a tank, I can say that I wholeheartedly agree with every one of those points. Naxx was filled with a lot of great tanking encounters and most of them had at least one or two of the things he mentioned. I figured it would only be fair, now that my mage is my main, that I give a list of 10 things that make a fun mage encounter. Let's make this shit a meme!

1. Target Switching
Despite the angst that many DPS get from fights with target switching, I love it. It makes me think a lot more about what I'm doing. I like it when the switch is predictable in when it will happen, even if it's not as predictable where it happens.

Fights that do this well: Marrowgar (spikes), Cat Lady (Defender), Grobbulus (Slimes)

2. Multiple Targets
This is different than target switching. I like fights where there are multiple things that all need to go down, whether they have a shared health pool or not. It gives a larger sense of chaos to the fight, even if the mechanics are the same every time.

Fights that do this well: Four Horsemen, Iron Council, Blood Princes

3. Spellsteal
I am a mage, so I absoluetly love fights with spellsteal. I know, you think I just want those amazing buffs. I just having a major role. I would even spellsteal a supposed debuff if it ment the raid could take down a boss. Just give me a chance to play a part. I am not including Jaraxxus as a fight for spellsteal, because I can never be proud of my DPS in that fight. Others will simply say "Mages are overpowered ffs." Although I once did over 35000 DPS in a short burst in that fight.

Fights that do this well: Lady Deathwhisper (Deranged Fanatic), High King Maulgar (Krosh Firehand), Iron Council (Runemaster Molgeim)

4. Burn Phase
As a mage, our DPS can be increased by jacking up our mana consumption. On top of that, we have a number of cooldowns that can be used to increase our damage for a short amount of time. For those reasons, I love fights that actually have a time for a hard burn, whether it's a period of time with increased damage, a period of time where a certain amount of damage must be done, or even an enrage segment of a fight.

Fights that do this well: Twin Val'kyr (burn shields), Razorscale (landing phase), Prince (Phase 2 when tanks would get crushed)

5. Standing in Bad
I really don't mind fights that make me look around. They make things more interesting for me, so I can't complain. I just really wish that Blizzard would stop making some bad red and some good green. I'm red green colorblind, so sometimes I have trouble telling the difference between our friendly paladin's consecration and the face-burning flamestrike a mob just dropped on my head.

Fights that do this well: Really? Every damn fight in Wrath, save Patchwerk.

6. Positional Buffs
I've always been a fan of positive reinforcement rather than negative. Occasionally, Blizzard will design fights where instead of being punished for standing in bad, they give you buffs for standing in good. Yeah, you could just stick to your normal rotation wherever, but to get every last drop, you need to get to just the right spot.

Fights that do this well: Hodir (Everything), Loatheb (Spores), Iron Council (Runes)

7. Agro Free Phase
Sometimes you just want to unleash, or you would prefer not to have everything tanked. I like phases where the boss either has no agro table or is completely random. That way you can burn till your heart's content without worring about a tank being on the mob.

Fights that do this well: Onyxia (Air Phase), Faction Champions

8. Kiting
Just like when I tank, I could stand to do a fight once in a while where I have to do some kiting. It mixes it up, as the skills I use in my max DPS rotation are no where to be found in my kite rotation. For a class having tons of utility, it's refreshing to get to press more than 4 buttons every once in a while.

Fights that do this well: Deathbringer Saurfang (Blood Beasts), Gluth (Zombie Chow)

9. Click on Shit
Sometimes, doing stuff outside of the normal skill rotation can be tons of fun too. I like fights that think outside the box with clicking on items and such. Generally speaking, if I mouse over something and it has the little gear on it, that is a sign of a great fight.

Fights that do this well: High Warlord Naj'entus (Spines), Twin Val'kyr (Portals)

10. Tanking
Yes, I know I started my mage after Wrath came out. I was absolutely heartbroken when Blizzard told us "We are not making fights class specific anymore," because I desperately wanted another HKM fight, where I got to tank. I like thinking outside the box, and tanking as a mage is excatly that. Blizzard has done a few fights since then with ranged tanks, so there is hope.

Fights that do this well: High King Maulgar (Krosh Firehand), Mimiron (Phase 3), Four Horsemen (two dudes in back)

I will note that one of the most dynamic and interesting fights thus far is not on the list anywhere, but I thought it would be appropriate to give props. Anub'arak is sick as hell. There are times where you DPS adds, there are times where you DPS the boss hard, there are adds without a real agro table, kiting, killing orbs, etc. That is what I look for in a fun encounter.

What makes an encounter fun for you?

Captain Procrastination

2010-01-27T13:23:00.001-05:00

Things have been hectic lately. Between travel for work, work around the house, general laziness, and Army of Two: 40th day I haven't posted in a week! Promise it won't happen again (for at least a few more weeks!)

Last night was ICC-10 man with our secondary group. We're still having some issues with coordination on Festergut but we one shot all of the first wing, save a freak healer death on Marrowgar causing a wipe. I did get a chance to mix the monotony or raiding up a bit.

I played frost from just before Marrowgar until just before Festergut. Our only source of replenishment was from our swing healer so I thought I'd help the team a bit and decided to stay frost for Deathwhisper and the boat. My DPS was decent (around 5000 in 10-man with most synergies), but I still did about 1000-1500 less than my arcane spec. My spec is currently a chop-shop version of frost I put together for Saurfang, so my talents and glyphs are a little wonky (to avoid poorly timed frostbite procs on blood beasts). Water elemental was about 14% of my damage (thanks to a fancy macro splattered around teh interwebz) and Deep Freeze was between 8 and 12% of my damage (depending on ease of using deep freeze).

Here are a few notes for Arcane Mages trying out frost.

Deep Freeze has its ups and downs.
Got a fight where you're continuously casting, but not necessarily on the boss? Set a focus macro so you can keep popping your Deep Freeze on the boss when you proc FoF on adds or such. This worked great when dealing with adds on Deathwhisper and Saurfang. Unfortunately, Deep Freeze sucks in fights where you can't cast continuously, as Fingers of Frost doesn't proc nearly enough to make it reliably available.

The Water Elemental Hates Boats
He freaked out a few times in transistions on the Airship battles and I had to resummon him. Most of the time he hung out in limbo between the two ships. I tend to keep my water elemental on passive, so he doesn't do much unless I'm casting frostbolts (macro'd to /use Waterbolt). I do like the permananet water elemental over all, as he doesn't die or run out of mana.

WTF is Coldsnap?
I am sure I could increase my DPS if I would remember to use Coldsnap during lusts to double up my icy veins (and Deep Freeze). Make sure you put this on your bar, as it's a very powerful skill and a big DPS boost.

Icy Barrier is your Friend
Fights that are rough on healers can be mitigated by using Icy Barrier. I know, it's not as awesome as popping wards when you're in IA arcane spec. It prevents blood on Saurfang, it helps healers on Festergut when there's 0-1 inhales, and it mitigates shadowbolts and frostbolt volley's on Deathwhisper. Remember to use it when you're running!

Glyph of Frostbolt
I hate this glyph so much. There are so many occasions where the snare effect is amazing, yet we can't snare and have the 5% damage bonus. I suggest getting a stack of these and Glyph of Frost Barrier so you can trade out on important fights. This is much easier if you're a scribe (which my warrior is).

I had a lot of fun with it, and I was honestly sad when the RL told me to change back to arcane, because we needed the damage on Festergut. As much as people call it a frostbolt spam, it was very refreshing and I would suggest everyone try it, at least on farm content.

Other highlights from the run include:

- Getting the Frost Needle off Marrowgar, making me the last friggin Lock/Mage in the guild to get it.
- Getting enough Emblems of Frost in order to buy my gloves for the 2pT10 bonus. As sick as the bonus is (and it is sick), I lost a lot of haste, so I might sell back and wait till I have enough for the legs or helm.

But the biggest highlight was something that the other mage said in vent, just before the Airship fight.

"Ogrim's Hammer is my penis"

Simply amazing.

Dungeon Finder Revisited

2010-01-18T15:17:00.002-05:00

So I've been a bit bored as of late. Our guild has some issues with getting through ICC, and I must say, I'm not surprised. We never actually got past Yogg in 10 man Uld and didn't get any further than downing Cat-Lady once in 25. We're hung up on Festerface and Rottcrotch in 10s and we've successfully downed Marrowgar's trash in 25s.

I don't have the time to be a serious raider, and I just haven't been having much fun. I had done some leveling on my shaman in LFG and it's been fun, but there's just so many times I can do SM:Graveyard before punch my monitor in its stupid face.

Then I read this post at Righteous Defense. I was looking for a low level tanking class to play through dungeons, and thanks to his post I made a paladin.

I'm packing the Venerable Mass of McGowen, Valor Shoulders and Chest, and two copies of the spellpower trinket. I started him on Friday and as soon as I hit 15 I started doing dungeons. He's already 23 and I would be higher if I wasn't waiting for a guildie to run with (he's got a shaman and is going resto).

It is ridiculous fun.

Here are a few notes on low level paladin tanking.

Before you get righteous fury, tanking sucks hard. At least all you'll have to tank is RFC, which is easy anyways.
Hand of Reckoning is amazing. Catch the mob before he sees you? 100+ holy damage. Is a mob running away from you? 100+ holy damage coup de grace.
I tend to use Blessing of Wisdom more than the other blessings, because I overgear the content and it's easier for keeping mana up.
Consecrate is easy mode tanking. I've got an 80 warrior and I thought I held my own. I seriously don't even have to try with consecrate. That being said, before you get it at 20, tanking is a little more challenging.
Getting Seal of Command does wonders for AoE threat. With the glyph, it does amazing things for mana as well.
I fully intended to live in LFG, so I took Enchanting for one profession. I also took mining for the stamina, and have been purchasing ore and reselling smelt bars to level it up.
Wailing Caverns doesn't that hard if you don't care about the escort. Blizzard should really think about speeding up that disciple.
As a blood elf, remember to use your Arcane Torrent for interrupts. I've got it and Hammer of Justice bound to my scroll up and down. I tend to always put interrupts/stuns on the scroll wheel, as it's the button I'm fastest with and it doesn't screw up my rotation.
Judge early, judge often, especially after getting Seal of Command. It's the way you get mana back.

If you're getting bored, I suggest you start a new character and get in some random dungeons! Anyone else start fresh to play through all the instances?

We are not DPS

2010-01-13T10:20:00.003-05:00

Alright, here comes a serious rant. It started when Gevlon was posting about a new business strategy of tanks charging for LFG. I don't think that's a bad idea at all - I would pay to get in a dungeon faster on my mage. My problem is that he assumes that more than half of all DPS, nay half of all players are fail DPS.

Screw that. Don't link those failures to us. Those people are bad, regardless of what they do. If you had no information on the game whatsoever and all your skills said "do x damage," you would assume your job is to do damage.

Analogy Time: You give a completely unskilled person a pot and some ingredients. Naturally, they interpret that thinking they want me to cook, even though they could also clean the pans or eat the food. Those are things that come along with cooking, but aren't obvious based on what they're given. The unskilled person makes some horrible food, and now the whole world is saying that more than half of the cooks are terrible. Sounds ridiculous, right?

-Begin Rant-

I am tired of the damage specs being treated like second class citizens. Everyone thinks their role is special and they're a special snowflake. Doing damage well is not easy. People use comments like "lol, faceroll DPS" to belittle what we do. That's because we hang it all out to be judged. Think of us like politicians - every little thing we do is monitored and any mistake we make affects our dps. Everyone that posts a horror story about a DK doing 800 dps means they were looking at our DPS. I wasn't looking at your threat, I wasn't looking at your effective healing.

Tanks and healers are black and white. You can often tell how they're doing based off of success of the fight. Did anyone die? Tanks and healers did their jobs. Even when a healer is found underperforming, if others could cover for them leaders often choose to overlook it. It might hurt their feelings and then they'll have one less healer. This is special treatment.

Trust me, I respect good players of all specs and roles. But we, the damage roles, are ridiculed for being vain, selfish players. Even the name for our role, DPS, means Damage-Per-Second. That's because it's what you want us to be. We spam recount because we crave people to say "I appreciate what you do." We don't receive praise based on our placement in the meters - only punishment for being in the bottom. That's what we like to call negative reinforcement. So while the other classes are getting positive reinforcement or at least given the ability to slide by if successful, we are pitted against each other to stay away from the bottom of the meters.

Our role can always improve and we can always make things easier for everyone by doing more damage. Good damage roles will keep on the top of their game, no matter what. I keep hearing people say "A good tank and a good healer can carry trash DPS." First, that's true in heroics. But heroics are a joke. If you are creating a worldview based off heroics, you are doing it wrong. Strong DPS can carry undergeared healers and tanks with less survivability. We can make it easier for everyone. Can tanks and healers reduce the length of a fight? Unless they're throwing smites, I don't think so. This is why we theorycraft to get every last ounce of damage we can out of what we have.

I'm not saying this role is better than the other roles, that's ridiculous. I'm saying we're different. Our job is more intuitive, but doing it well is not. We are judged by harsh standards and even then we are normally not praised for our work and improvement. I have only once received a real attaboy when playing my mage, when I've been praised for my tanking many times. The last thing I need is someone telling me that playing my damage role makes me less skilled, less important, and that most of the people in my role are incompetent.

We're not a dime-a-dozen.
We're not failures.
We're not easier to play or any less important.
We're not even DPS.

We are the fucking OFFENSE, and you will address us as such.

Marks - Not Just for Tanks Anymore

2010-01-12T11:17:00.003-05:00

I realize that not everyone has a tank. I used to do a lot of tanking back in BC (when it was hard) and I followed TankingTips.com religiously, as I wasn't hardcore enough for Tankspot.com (and it was blocked at work).

Due to this post Vene made a long time ago, I have always had my raid targets bound. Our raid leader caught on and always made me assist so I could quickly as well as marking on-the-fly. For about a year and a half, my number pad has been bound to marks.

And now, I can use them in every LFG I'm in. One of the most overlooked buffs (I consider it a buff) on the last patch is that in a five man group, everyone can mark. Let that set in for a little bit.

Got a tank who doesn't target the right adds first? Mark for him. Got DPS that go wild and can't assist? Mark skull and they should follow. You can even use it to mark yourself as a healer to let the tank know where you are at all times.

If you're having issues, take hold of the situation and run the marks. If you've bound them, you should be able to do it quickly without stalling the group. Mark before the pull, and people might actually attack the same targets!

In summary, don't complain about your LFG unless you've done absolutely everything in your power to fix the problems - and that includes marking regardless of your role.

Tanks, Healers, and DPS - An Analogy

2010-01-11T10:54:00.000-05:00

This post is a response to the Matticus post as well as the FORBEARANCE post on the subject of whether Tanks and Healers should get more gear than DPS.

First off, I will say this. Tanks have always received more gear from raid content, at least up until Wrath. Getting the MT geared up fast was always the strategy, and when tier pieces dropped, they had first dibs on it. In new content, this would even happen when using DKP. I'm bringing this up before hand, as it fits my analogy.

Raiding is a Manufacturing Business.

Tanks/Management
You don't get anywhere unless you have at least one. People look up to them, and while their job is normally not that hard, sometimes they have to pull something out of their ass to be successful. You will reach a critical mass of managers quickly, and additional managers after that add very little to the group. Each manager's output is very difficult to measure, bar visible errors.

Healers/Sales
Sure, you have a good product and decent management, but you don't get anywhere without sales to move your product. There are more sales people than managers, but not as many sales as laborers. If sales can sell every item you produce, the value of additional sales is minimal. If your sales is so good, you may need to trade one of them for a laborer to make more product. Each sales person's output is measurable, but if every unit is sold, it's not as important as to who sold what, as sales can no longer improve.

DPS/Laborers
These are the people that make the items you sell, thus you can't live without them. The skill of the laborers directly impacts the number of units you can make and then sell. As long as you can sell all the units, increasing the number or skill of your laborers increases your sales. Each laborer's output is measurable and can always be improved.

So who should be paid more? Well, we all know that the CEO (MT) gets paid a ton, as their the face of the company and have direct control on how far they can get. Sales who do their job well can cover the failings of other sales people and save the management if they end up making a wrong decision. Laborers are a dime a dozen, but if you can find a really good laborer, he will need to be paid well in order to maintain him as an employee.

All three (Management, Sales, and Laborers) are generally unaware of the amount of skill required for the other two to do their jobs well. They may even have a false sense of importance associated with their group, since each is required for success.

Ultimately, if you have three raises to hand out in a year, you give it to the people who employed the greatest skill compared to their current pay. This is what Loot council represents. Others could argue that it's based on how long people have been with the company. This is what DKP represents. Apparently, a few people argue that the sales and management deserve more than the laborers. Laborers will look for greener pastures (or attempt to become sales or management, despite high skill in laboring) and you will be stuck with unskilled laborers. Sales will go down, the company may not be able to make their shipments and may go bankrupt.

End result: The best way to encourage everyone to do their best is to dole out benefits based on performance or dedication, not how important they perceive themselves to be. It's not about how much each individual is paid. It's that they're provided with the ability to improve their current station by performing well. If they feel like they can no longer advance, they will either jump ship for another business or try their hand at one of the two other roles.

Dominion - Best Game Ever

2010-01-10T22:43:00.001-05:00

I know it's been a while since I last posted. The first reason is that I started posting articles for Alltern8.com, a multi-discipline gaming website. They've got areas on MMOs, Console, Table-Top, and LARP games. So far, I wrote an expanded review of Borderlands as well as a few LARP plot tips. If you're interested, check them out here.

The other reason is that I've been away from raiding for the most part. The reason for that?

Holy shit this game is good. Let me start at the beginning.

Have you ever played Magic the CCG? I mean really played it? The truth is that there's just as much strategy in the Metagame as there is in the game (the only exception was Affinity decks back in the days of Artifact Land). Sure, your deck could be amazing, given the right circumstances. Too bad half the tournament is playing a deck that counters yours.

I've strayed far away from topic. In a nutshell, Dominion is Magic the Gathering with two caveats.

1) Everyone uses the same cards
2) You build your deck as you go along

When it was first explained to me on building the deck, I thought the nerd at the gaming store was just trying to sell me the latest piece of shit by comparing it to magic. Here's the summary.

You start with a deck with 7 copper cards and 3 estate cards. Estates are worth victory points at the end, while coppers let you buy cards to add to your deck. You can buy cards that give you extra gold, extra cards, extra money, etc. You can even buy some that affect other players by giving them negative victory points or reducing their hand. After you've played your actions and bought a card, you discard the rest of your hand and draw a new 5 cards. If you run out of cards in the deck, you reshuffle your discard pile.

There's 26 different "Kingdom" cards in the basic game - these are various cards you can buy apart from the standard money and victory point. However, you only ever use 10 of those 26, and you determine which cards you'll be playing with using a deck with a single copy of each kingdom card. This means no two games will be exactly the same (probability wise).

On the meta, this game is sick. When do you start buying victory cards instead of function cards? Is it better to have a large, average power deck or a small condensed power deck? Do you buy cards to ramp your deck or cards to attack your opponents? It changes every game.

The only small complaint is that there are a few unbalanced cards (Smuggler, Saboteur) and the boxes take up a lot of space for the cards it holds. A lot of people online have made custom boxes for the game, and I'll probably take a stab at something like that in the next couple of weeks.

Dominion is designed to be played with 2-4 players, but you could probably make it work up to 6 players. There are currently two expansions out for the game. Dominion: Intrigue is completely standalone and Dominion: Seaside requires either the basic game or Intrigue. You'll probably be able to find these games for $40-$50 at any major gaming store.

There is a reason Donald X. Vaccarino and Rio Grande Games's Dominion won a ton of awards, including the Golden Geek "Card Game of the Year" and "Game of the Year." I've said it before - Germans make ridiculous board games.

Idea for an Addon: Gearwhore

2010-01-05T13:43:00.001-05:00

Everyone's using gearscore to determine how viable a character is for various raids. I've even seen people looking for gearscore for heroics. While Gearscore is a completely acceptable, accurate, and infallible tool for determining competence, I've decided to make an addon that measures what really counts: how toons look.

I bring you... GEARWHORE

- Evaluates weapons on how they look, especially the enchant. Big points from beastslaying due to the delicious red glow.
- Male characters wearing dresses lose points. Female characters wearing dresses gain points. Kilts are dresses and blood elves always count as female characters.
- Color coordination implemented for druids. Score is based on how cool your feral skins look. Tree druids always get zero, as trees are not cool nor have they ever been cool.
- Characters that jump a lot get more points. Jumping is srs bsns.
- Two weapons is always cooler than one. Shields are only cool if they can be thrown Captain America-style.
- Color coordinating your hair with your gear adds a synergy bonus. That means you did your homework and found the coolest hairstyle for your tier of gear.
- Wielding an arena weapon gives massive points, regardless of the content you're working on.
- Characters get bonus points for linking macros of various vehicles with a form of the word "fail" into trade chat.
- Disables the inspect option, as it won't be necessary now that you have this addon.

Wouldn't that be great?

No Internet, No iPod

2010-01-02T01:32:00.003-05:00

Happy New Years!

I failed hard and forgot to bring my computer and my iPod Touch with me to my parents house. This has made it very difficult for me to get a post in the last few days. I wish there was more for me to write about, but at least I got to play a few board games.

Illuminati

This is a game that I own. I don't play it much, as it's really best played with four or more players. The basics of the game are that you are one of the Illuminati (Gnomes of Zurich, UFOs, Assassin's Guild, etc). Throughout the game, you use your power and money to control various groups, from republicans to Goldfish enthusiasts.

The other reason I don't play this game much is that uses mechanics that make people kamakazi on each other, much like the Munchkin games. Once someone comes close to winning, everyone sabotages that person until one lucky person goes to win and everyone else is out of money.

If you like any of the Steve Jackson games, you'll like Illuminati. However, it doesn't really appear as a strategic or even political game, so if you want to win a game without the gift of luck, this probably isn't for you.

King Oil

King Oil is a game where everyone is drilling for oil. You use this fun little oil derrick to see how deep you have to drill to strike oil. Three plastic disks randomize where the oil can be found from game to game.

This game is no longer made and is hard to get ahold of. The one we played was so old the disks were warped and derrick was broken, so we juryrigged it with a toothpick which wasn't quite calibrated correctly.

The game was certainly novel. Hoping that you strike oil, knowing that you'll go bankrupt if it's not shallow got me going the first time. However, the game is very monotonous and like Illuminati it's very luck based. Unlike Illuminati, there's basically little-to-no strategy in this game, so playing it once or twice was certainly enough for me.

The rest of the weekend was spent playing more Pandemic and some other card games. But for those of you out there who are fans of random games, I figured these two titles would be a decent addition to your game library.

End of the Year Wrap-Up

2009-12-30T17:00:00.003-05:00

We're just a few days away from New Years, a time for binging and then making the resolution to not binge anymore. That resolution will stick until the next binge holiday like St. Patricks day, President's Day, or even Tues-Day.

I thought I'd do a few resolutions, both about this blog and about WoW. Something to aim for (and miss completely).

1. Do some serious arenas ffs.
Me and a few guys were talking about it, and we were going to try it for season 8. We haven't actually stepped in yet, and as far as PvP goes I am just average. It will be painful, but my goal is to get to 1800 in any bracket.

2. More LARP Talk.
It doesn't help with the timing of starting this blog. Most of the LARP events run in the March - August season around here, so I just haven't had a lot to talk about. It would be nice to get a following so that I can answer some questions people might have about LARPs.

3. Do some book reviews.
I'm a Science Fiction fan, and while I've read a few books, I haven't really done any reviews yet. I got a decent haul for Christmas, so it's not that I'm without ammunition.

4. Write more.
Every writer, from the lowly blogger up to Stephen King should endeavor to write more. Okay, maybe not Stephen King - he writes too damn much.

5. Start a podcast.
It would be really nice to get a few people to do a podcast with. I don't care if it's about LARP, WoW, Boardgame, or Eric Estrada. I just want to create audio content. I used to work as a DJ at our College FM station, and I'd like to get back to doing something like that.

What resolutions do you have?

Emblem of Frost Pick Order for Mages

2009-12-30T13:05:00.000-05:00

Vene at Tankingtips always puts together a pick order for warrior tanks. I thought I would give the mages out there a pick order we can use for our Emblems of Frost. This is the one I'll be using and I'm in a guild that does primarily 10 man ICC. If your guild does 25s and you get some items from there, then you might have a slightly different list.

1/2. Bloodmage Shoulderpads/Bloodmage Gloves
Blizzard finally got a Mage Tier set right. Every single piece has mage-friendly SP, Crit, and Haste or Hit. In addition, the 2pT10 and 4pT10 are both amazing. Both of these pieces are 60 emblems, so the first pick is based on what's a better upgrade and if you need hit or not.

3. Belt of Omission
This belt is sick. It rocks 3 sockets and nice stats. The downfall is that it has no haste and if you're hit capped, this might be a good one to pass on for the next two.

4/5. Bloodmage Leggings/Bloodmage Hood
Now we're revisiting the T10 pieces to get the 4 piece bonus. These items have decent stats and again you're picking based on the upgrade and hit requirement. I didn't include the robe on this one for two reasons - you probably have Merlin's Robe and you will be getting the next item.

6. Meteor Chaser's Raiment
Wow. This chest has everything you need. It has significantly better stats than the T10 piece, so you can grab this one instead. Even compared to the T10.1 robe, this has one more socket making it superior.

7. Maghia's Misguided Quill
There is nothing special about this trinket, other than the loads of hit. Since you've been doing heroics this is only a marginal upgrade to the shard of the Crystal Heart and should not be high on your priorities list.

8. Volde's Cloak of the Night Sky
This is a decent cloak, especially with the socket, but I just don't see that much of an upgrade against either of the Sapphiron Drapes that trade spirit for haste.

9. Bloodmage Robe
I didn't include the primordial saronite items, as you can just buy those or get them from emblems on your alts. Both the Deathfrost Boots and the Leggings of Woven Death are very good. If you're over the hit cap you might want to trade the Meteor Chaser's Raiment with the Leggings as the off piece for T10, as it will trade the extra hit for haste.

LARP Plot Tips: Incapacitate Mechanics

2009-12-29T10:52:00.003-05:00

A group of highly skilled characters are investigating a slavery ring. The slavers tend to use many traps and poisons to keep enemies out of their camp and to control slaves. Time is of the essence, as the daughter of the mayor of the town has been kidnapped and if she's not recovered tonight, she'll be gone forever.

This module is designed to be the major battle for the night. All the high level characters and big political players are involved, and are expecting a knock down drag out fight. However, a mere five minutes into the fight, and every single PC is incapacitated and the NPCs don't know how to handle the situation. Why did this happen?

Some staff member thought it would be funny to send farting goblins into town, and because of the sheer number of goblins, the town ran out of counters for the poison. Sounds crazy, I know. But this very thing has happened before.

Mechanics are very important, especially when it comes to abilities that can incapacitate. In this Larp, (NERO Intl.) there are three major forms of incapacitation that people need to counter - Death Effects (Life counters), Blood Effects (Purify Blood counters), and charm effects (Awaken counters). Players as a group have a max amount of each counter that in a given day.

Let's say that the town has 30 of each counter and the event is scaled to reflect that. The kidnapping module mentioned above is intended to use about 20 of the Purify effects in order to be successful. The plot team should be aware of this and careful not to force the players to use more than 10 purify effects the rest of the day. The staff and plot members should be using more charm and death effects during the rest of the game day in order to preserve the purify spells for later.

Communicating and controlling these incapacitate mechanics is important for a few reasons.

1. You won't have to pull punches.
In the module mentioned above, the plot now needs to find a way to react to what has happened. Either they kill everyone or have them escape somehow. If everyone dies, the players will figure they had no chance and this leaves a bad taste in their mouths. If you let them escape, this mod that you had beautifully scaled to get their hearts racing now appears to have had a safety net and the players yawn at the fact that they can't die.

2. Players will continue to take counter effects.
If you make sure you use 90% of each counter, they will see value and continue to take the counter effects. If all you ever use is blood effects for 3 events straight and charm effects are never used, players will stop taking the counters to charm. If that happens, you may find that the next charm encounter you run will have no counters and scaling will be difficult.

3. Incapacitated players are not having fun.
Incapacitate effects are scaling tools. They slow combat down and make battles more difficult on the higher levels. They give reasons for players to use a plan and to stick together. The effects themselves are not fun, and when used frivolously, players will get discouraged. Use them when it fits and when the players have counters. If you're just trying to make something dangerous, don't use incapacitate effects as a crutch.

If you want your event to feel more dangerous, use means that the players can try and battle with skill and cunning. If your danger factor is that every necromancer is throwing 10 death spells, then players will consider the plot team cheap and will be less likely to come back or bring others to your game.

Good luck!

LFG - The Best Thing To Happen to Bloggers since... Blogging?

2009-12-24T10:00:00.002-05:00

I have seen a huge influx in posts about LFG. While I haven't had a super terrible time with it, I figured I'd send this out to all the bloggers, Megs-Style.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

// Drink up, healer now
// Combat, are you in or are you out?
// Just leave your loots behind,
// 'Cause the tank's going off without you
// "Excuse me, I'm too busy blogging this tragedy
// To Heal you. I'm bubble hearthin'"
// 'Cause They've no idea how to play

// So queue up, just queue up, jump in
// Oh well, whatcha waiting for
// It's alright,
// 'Cause there's fodder in the failure
// So queue up, QQ up, just get in
// Oh it's so amazing here
// It's alright,
// 'Cause there's fodder in LFG

// More posts the more it sucks
// and Webhits rising with the fail
// So bust out that mole remote
// Can't you see that rogue's now in BRD
// Such boundless pressure
// DK tank's rocking spellpower
// You can't wait for the buff to expire
// 20 seconds to survive!

// So queue up, just queue up, jump in
// Oh well, whatcha waiting for
// It's alright,
// 'Cause there's fodder in the failure
// So queue up, QQ up, just get in
// Oh it's so amazing here
// It's alright,
// 'Cause there's fodder in LFG

// So queue up, jump in
// Oh well, whatcha waiting for
// It's alright,
// 'Cause there's fodder in the failure
// So queue up, QQ up, just get in
// Oh it's so amazing here
// It's alright,
// 'Cause there's fodder in LFG

Board Game Review: Pandemic

2009-12-23T13:55:00.000-05:00

I haven't had a chance to review a really good board game recently, but since we celebrated Christmas early, I'll probably have a few to review in the next couple of weeks. My D&D crew is pretty hip to board games out there.

Name: Pandemic
Creator: Matt Leacock
Publisher: Z-man Games
Players: 2-4
Game Setup: 5-10 minutes
Game Play: 30-60 minutes

Synopsis:
Pandemic is a cooperative game where the players play against the board, much like Shadows over Camelot or Arkham Horror. The goal of the game is to find cures for 4 major diseases while controlling outbreaks around the world. Characters take different roles that have special abilities and have to play to their strengths in order to succeed. Some very thoughtful mechanics make the game very interesting and each game different.

Wikipedia does a good job explaining the rules, however I do have the complaint that the writer of the article complains how complex the setup is. If you have ever played games like Axis and Allies or Arkham Horror, then the setup of this game is a walk in the park.

Gameplay: 5/5
Matt Leacock did an amazing job with this game. On the surface, it looks like a complicated game. Below that, it actually is very easy to understand and play. Even below that, you see that Matt made some very intriguing design concepts that make the game difficult yet able to win.

Semi-scheduled Epidemic events shuffle the infection discard pile and put it on top of the infection deck. This mechanic ensures that the same cities keep getting infections throughout the game, with occasional new cities popping up. Unlike brutal games like Shadow over Camelot, the game has different difficult settings based on how many epidemic cards are in the player deck (4-6, 7 in the expansion). It's fun, everyone's useful, and the situation can shift quickly from everything's fine to game over.

This is by far one of the best games I have ever played, as far as mechanics go. It's not clunky and while you can get unlucky, you don't normally get screwed by random elements - you simply prepare for them or lose.

Balance - 5/5
Some games, especially cooperative games, are poorly scaled. Some are very easy to win (Arkham Horror sans expansions) and some are almost impossible to win (Doom, Shadows over Camelot). Pandemic's difficulty is scaled based on how many epidemic cards you use in the deck (4 for easy, 6 for hard). In the easy mode, you can make mistakes and still come out with a win, while in hard mode you will probably need next to perfect play with some luck to beat the game.

Fun - 4/5
This game can have you on the edge of your seat. We had one game where we went from looking good, having three of the four cures (you win when you have all four) to dead when we had a 5 chain outbreak. Even though you'll be working together, different people each have their objectives to keep the board in control based on their role. Each role is really well balanced, so you won't be sad playing an underpowered role.

Overall - 14/15
This game is a ton of fun. It takes very little time to learn and I can see it taking a long time to master. It doesn't take a long time to set up, it's not tedious, and you work together so people won't be walking away during other player's turns. Setup isn't overwhelming and playing multiple games in one sitting is common.

If you like cooperative board games, pick up Pandemic. If you like Pandemic and want more of it, pick up the expansion, "On the Brink."

5 Things Your PuG Mage Wants You to Know

2009-12-22T14:35:00.004-05:00

Thanks to Amber at I Like Bubbles for the healer version and Altadin for the tanking version. This one could also be titled "How can you tell if I'm a scrub mage."

1. You are permitted to 1 mage table per run.
Sometimes I forget to drop it, and if I haven't dropped it after the first pull, you are free to remind me. Don't ask right away, as I'm probably already doing it, and you don't need mana right now. I will not drop a second, but I will conjure food for people coming in late after someone drops.

If you have a mage that refuses to summon a table at the very beginning, he's probably a scrub.

2. If I die, I am well aware that it is probably my fault.
Unless it's a fight where there's raid damage, I probably overagro'd or stood in bad - it happens. I will not begrudge the healer for me dying, and I won't blame the tank for agro (unless it's a consistant issue even when I scale back from zerg mode).

I will NOT IB it on to the healer, I will NOT pull a pack, I will NOT ask for a rez (unless the next pack is pulled, but that's for the tank as he probably didn't notice my stain on the ground), and I will NOT ask for heals. If your mage does any of those things, he's probably a scrub.

3. I perform better with a mark.
If you want to control me, put up marks. Anyone can mark in 5-mans, and if threat becomes an issue, I will start marking before pulls (if possible). Skull dies first, X dies second and anything after that should be fair game. In all seriousness, you could mark a critter and I'd probably AB spam that bitch. You could even tell me that you marked the training dummy in Silvermoon, and before you're done I've started casting Teleport (with Icy Veins, since the faster you get there, the better the DPS).

If your mage cries about targeting marks or doesn't attack skull (when it's put up before the pull), he's probably a scrub.

4. My support abilities are at your disposal, but I will only use them when asked.
The only exception to that is counterspell. If we have a healer capable of removing curses, I won't do it unless they ask. I won't sheep unless asked.

If you have a mage that refuses to use these skills when asked, he's probably a scrub.

5. Knockback is for Scrubs.
I will not use my knockback (if spec'd) on groups of mobs, don't use yours. If I'm blizzarding and a Typhoon or Thunderstorm sends them flying, you're an ass.

If you have a mage that uses blastwave consistantly on groups of mobs (unglyphed), he's probably a scrub.

I Think I'm in Love...

2009-12-21T11:18:00.002-05:00

I know there's a lot of hate posts about LFG and people being idiots - whatever. It's no different from spamming trade chat, except that you can't get away from the idiots afterward without ignore.

I could care less about doing LFG 80 dungeons. I've been having a much more interesting time on my shaman - who was level 19 when I started LFG. It all started on a whim.

I had the BoA staff on my priest, so I sent it and the other priestly BoA items to my shaman and spec'd him elemental. While I was running around, I figured I'd join LFG as DPS or Healer, because I knew where my healing touch button was. The queue, despite being late at night, popped almost immediately. Really?

We got SFK, the tank knew what he was doing and it was relatively painless. I think I let one person die when I was low on mana. It was low-stress fun doing instances I never really got to do without getting boosted. So I queued up for the next one.

Deadmines!

That's right. I can do Deadmines without running there for an hour, without fear of getting ganked in STV. We had a warrior tank who was doing particularly well (I remember when we couldn't Thunderclap in defensive stance). Tons of fun again. Then when it finished, I noticed I had got something for killing VC. And for finishing SFK as well.

My first two items were very accurate for my spec - a cloak and a belt, both casting focused. They were miles ahead of what was available at my level, so I gladly used them and continued to do LFG.

At this point, I've done SFK, Deadmines, BFD, Stocks, and RFK. I didn't get a chance to do WC and I'm now out of the level bracket, but I think I'm going to rock dungeons pretty much all the way to 80. There will be exceptions, of course, but I think it's a good way to go.

Good job on LFG Blizz!

ICC-10 Strategy Fo' Mages

2009-12-18T10:36:00.001-05:00

I haven't seen a lot of guides floating around the mage blogs on how to do ICC. I thought I'd throw up my little bit of information based on our experience in 10-man. I will be giving it from the perspective of the Arcane mage, with some frost (I did frost for two fights due to replenishment issues).

Lord Marrowgar

If you went in and tried Marrowgar the first week and got disappointed, don't worry - he was bugged. Turns out, Marrowgar was doing more damage in 10-man than in 25-man. Wicked!

Mages, you will be on spike duty. This fight is not a race, so burst DPS on the spikes is way more important than DPS. The best strategy is to ramp up to a 4 stack of AB, and then hang there maintaining it with the occasional AB (don't spam or you'll be out of mana). As soon as he casts Bone Spike, hit the nearest one with an AB and then either MBAM or ABarr. If the other ranged is the one who got spiked, fire off a second AB before the finisher.

When he spins all over the place (phase 2), just stay out of the fire and near the raid - you don't want to LOS your healers. Also, stay away from the tanks, because if he comes out of it and you're on a tank, you'll eat a 30k saber lash. Finally, the transition from phase 2 to phase 1 is a threat wipe. Let the tanks get agro, because he's untauntable and he'll beat the hell out of you (and the closest person).

Lady Deathwhisper

Some people leave DPS on the shield in phase 1, but we didn't. We would kill our appropriate adds (for mages, it's fanatics). DPS the adds, then the boss, then the adds, then the boss. Remember to decurse, as the Curse of Torpor will lock the target out of any skill they use for 15 seconds. You will also need to dodge the death and decay (large green circles on the floor). Deformed fanatics will beat the hell out of the tank, but you can spellsteal their buff for +25% damage and healing yourself 300% of damage done.

In phase 2, DPS your heart out while avoiding the death and decay and keeping frost ward up (she casts frostbolt volley like KT). If a vengeful shade starts following you, kite it out of the raid.

I went frost on this fight, because our replenishment source was a hunter. It is very valuable to let the hunter go marksmanship, as half of the survival damage is worthless against the adherents. However, if you're getting replenishment from an SPriest, Ret Pally, or Lock, stay arcane.

Gunship Battle

Easy fight when you figure out what's going on. Just don't let your raid leader talk the group into letting the tank for the other ship in the turret, as the people in the turret need to get in them immediately as the mage goes down. If you're assigned to the turret, jump back just before the mage is dead. Fire ward will help mitigate damage from rockets.

Also, you lose the rocket packs after you win, so get your fun and games in before doing the boss. Me and our other mage played horse for about 10 minutes before we started. We both had 'H.'

Deathbringer Saurfang

This fight is all about preventing DBS from getting blood points. He gets this from successfully landing hits, blood beasts hitting people, hitting the tank with Rune of Blood, and Blood Boils.

This fight is somewhat weird. We wiped a lot on it around 20%, until we figured out the strategy. Drumroll please...

LET THE FIRST MARK DIE

This can be problematic if it's a tank or healer (when you're 2 healing), but if a DPS catches the mark, let them die as fast as possible. DBS gets a ton of blood points from the mark and immunity spells (bubble, Ice Block) won't prevent him from getting points. We were getting him to 10-20% when we got a third mark and would wipe before we tried letting someone die. When we let the first mark die immediatly, he didn't even get a second mark off. The 5% health he'll get back is a paltry sum compared to the fact that he will mark again in less than half the time to get the first mark.

As to the strategy of the fight, DPS the boss until the adds show up. He'll spawn 2 blood beasts, and it's very important that they don't get into melee range with anyone, as they'll give DBS more blood points. Focus ranged DPS on one beast while CCing the other (snares and roots work, hard CC doesn't). If one chases you, kite as much as possible and IB if he gets into range.

Also, all damage in this fight is physical, so feel free to load the entire raid up with Amplify Magic.

And that's ICC-10 for mages!

Don't Cleave Me, Bro!

2009-12-08T11:20:00.005-05:00

Arenas are not really hard, per se. They're just very, very intimidating. There is not a lot of love for people who come in unprepared. If your comp isn't good, you don't use binds, and you don't use voice communication you'll probably get dominated and never want to play again.

So people go looking for help. If you've done your best to make yourself as good as possible internally, sometimes you need help elsewhere. That's what forums are for.

Arena Junkies is sick. They've got some good information, despite the high amount of rage that exists towards stupid people. Some of it is difficult to parse through, but over time you start to see the bigger picture of what arenas are really about: the metagame. As a warrior, any idiot can tell you to gem ArP. They can tell you to Brostorm for sick damage. But, as Sun Tsu said, if you know yourself AND know your enemy, you will win 110% of the time. Turns out, he was a great strategist, but his math was a little off.

----------

I love forums that flame idiots. A lot of people might think that this is unnecessary and that people are just being mean, but all the best content comes from sources that control who can post. You don't want idiots increasing the amount of noise. You want condensed, valuable content. Let's look at some examples.

Elitist Jerks is probably the most uptight, controlled forum out there in gaming. Don't spellcheck your post? Infraction. Reply with no real value? Infraction. Ask for help? Infraction. Talk back to moderators? Banhammer. On top of that, you'll look like an ass to everyone when they post your infraction publicly. But everyone who raids (and actually does research) goes to EJ, because they're the best. Very low noise, no redundant posts, highly valued information. It's theorycrafting Mecca.

Arena Junkies is a little lighter. They don't hesitate to remove posts (whether it's from keyloggers or idiots, I'm not sure). They'll flame you for stupid questions, but they generally give you a reasonable answer. Finding information there is harder, as there are a lot of repeat topics, but the information is worthwhile, if you learn how to filter it.

Now, on the other end of the spectrum, look at the WoW official forums. Anyone can post whatever they want because it's free press. This causes a large amount of noise to a small amount of useful content. People will post talents and builds that are, for the most part, terrible. That's because all the daddy pants theorycrafters know these forums are absolutely worthless. You'll find a gem every now and then, but for the most part you'll feel stupider/dirtier having read them.

On the same note, have you ever seen the Champions Online forums? Again, anyone can post anything, so it's basically useless. When I stopped playing, every damn post was "I don't want a nerf, but x is so overpowered I cry myself to sleep." People actually witheld information because they didn't want to get nerfed. Game was out for all of a month and there were 260 pages of posts on talents. So much noise, but because it was the only game in town, it had the theorycrafters and the mouth-breathers alike.

----------

So back to Arena Junkies. They have good information, but sometimes it's hard to notice how much you've actually learned from them. So here's a test.

This is the most epic thread ever. Take some time to flip through it and try not to bust a gut laughing. But honestly, ask yourself this question. Do I know why this is funny? If you can answer that for more than 70% of the pictures, there's a good chance that your grasp of the meta is pretty decent, and with the right group you'll be ready to play at 1800+.

If you don't get any of them... maybe arenas aren't your thing.

iPwnd

2009-12-07T21:40:00.001-05:00

No, it's not an iPhone. But it's close.

My wife got me an iPod Touch as an early birthday present. And that's how I'm posting this from our bedroom while we watch the second season of Torchwood.

I've already downloaded the Wow Armory app, and I'm off to find some more free swag. If you've got a favorite app or game, let me know!

- Posted via iPod Touch Bishes

Winners...

2009-12-05T02:35:00.003-05:00

My new found love for my warrior is nice and all, but since I need to gear him up and the guild needs my mage for 25 man dps, that means I'm stuck in PuG hell. Normally, I don't really mind. I don't mind wiping over and over again, especially if people are learning. So this group I got in for VoA-25 actually had some ok DPS. For once, the problem was the healers and the other tank. The worthless raid leader didn't help either.

As a note, I cleaned up most of the tells. His used much less grammar and a lot more "u lols" Also, as you will see later, he's got one of the non-standard characters in his name, which gives him a 95% chance of being a douchebag (and he was no outlier, I assure you).

It started out with the tank asking a normal question "Do you want me to OT or what?" I thought nothing of it at the time, but now that I think of it, that's a big warning right there. Dude does not want to main tank. The proper question would be "Who's MT", not "Who's OT". He had better gear than I did and he was from a decent guild (mistake assuming good guild meant good player). I'm used to OT, so I said I'd do it. Big mistake.

Trash is a joke, we get to Koralon and pull. I told him I'd stick right by him. Turns out, he doesn't like standing still during meteor fists, UNLESS HE'S IN THE FIRE. Creative use of CDs kept me alive until 10 stacks, when he almost killed the raid. The healers basically let dps die and since no one was assigned to any specific healing job, it wasn't anyone's fault. But before we killed him (with 4 people still alive), the RL said "Lol do we need new tanks for this?" Protip: 10 stacks + meteor fist = someone dies. I am not the best geared tank (around 4500 for the gearscore kiddies out there), but I can do this boss. Just kill him faster.

No point in arguing as he's dead, and after about 10 minutes loot is distributed. We move on to Emalon and the paladin wants me to tank the adds. I don't have a problem with this despite what some people think. Tanking the adds as a warrior can be easier than a paladin, because we're less likely to kill them. I told him I was putting Vigilance on him for taunt refreshes, so he should watch his threat. He responded with something totally unrelated which made me think he didn't know what it did. No big deal, we're ready and we pull.

Two overcharges later, still going strong, I stop getting heals. Granted, it happened faster than I expected and didn't pop my CDs, but since no healer was assigned to me I guess I was just getting raid heals. Reassign the healers and move on. Wipes happen and I don't take them personally. Until I get these tells from the other tank.

How exactly does one respond to this? It reminds me of one of Jong's recent posts, and I just told myself it's not worth it, he's beyond help.

Raid decides we're not good enough for Emalon after several leave (I don't blame them), but they want to finish the last boss. No problem. At least I can get some practice for harder fights in the future, and I finessed my way through the fight without needing a taunt. See, it can't be all bad!

The moral of the story: Winners don't use drugs, kids.

50 Eggs

2009-12-03T09:55:00.002-05:00

What we've got here is a failure to communicate.

I've been raiding on both my mage and my warrior. I've been out of town with the family and forgot my laptop. I've been busy at work and haven't had a chance to do it when I get home. Blogging is hard work!

Since I was not successful in NaBloPoMo, I thought it would be appropriate to go over the lessons learned.

1. Posting every day creates burnout
2. Said burnout is partly due to lack of content to post about
3. When I push myself to post everyday, I put out lower quality work.

Back when I started this blog for Champions online, I posted every weekday, but I had a lot to post about. I literally spent more time posting about the game than playing it. In hinesight, posting about it was more fun than playing it.

I ran out of content to write about, so I expanded the blog. I still wanted 5 posts a week, and quickly ran through a lot of content. It was hard work. Then I tried to push more content out and quality suffered. And I am sorry for that.

I'd like to write about LARP more. I'd like to do more reviews of games and books. Maybe I'll talk about some board games like I wanted to in the past. Hell, it's my blog, I'll do what I want.

I think I'm going to aim for 3 posts a week. Why three posts?

It seemed a nice round number.

What Have I Been Up To?

2009-11-25T18:54:00.002-05:00

Not a whole lot, other than failing at NaBloPoMo. Recently, I've been spending a lot of time on my warrior, getting back into my groove.

My original character (in TBC) was a priest. I wanted a class that could heal at 80, because those are always in demand. Around level 68, the Guild told me "You are our shadow priest." WTF. I actually wanted to heal, while some other people in the guild either whined about/sucked at healing. So, despite my Primal Mooncloth Robe (which still sits in my bank as a grim reminder), I rolled shadow and became an expert at it (getting up to about 900 DPS as shadow in TBC was hard).

We had some issues with tanking, so I power leveled a warrior in order to tank. Meatgazer, my Tauren Warrior, was my pride and joy.
I caught up with the guild, tanked Gruul and Mag (which was hard since we only had ten people and I had to PuG) and even tested some gimmicky tanking builds that worked really well. Revenge prot let me solo tank VR despite threat drops (post nerf).

When Wrath came out, I got him to 80 quickly in revenge/prot spec, but was passed up as one of the guild tanks. I sucked it up, rolled mage cause that's what we needed, and basically stopped playing my warrior (except to make money with inscription).

When I started doing prot PvP, I was having a blast. I soon realized to meet my full potential, I need to have some powerful PvE items as well, and started tanking content on my warrior. H UP turned into normal ToC. Normal ToC turned into H ToC. H ToC turned into ToC-10. And I was hooked. I've got the tanking bug again.

Don't get me wrong. I still love my mage a ton, and I still drop the mad deeps when needed. But I'm thinking about changing my main back to my warrior if the guild will let me.

Have you ever just wanted to go back to an old character and make that your main? Besides, we'll all need two mains for ICC when it comes out, so what's the worst that could happen.

Slap-fight

2009-11-24T18:24:00.004-05:00

Who doesn't love a good old fashioned slap-fight. The Blogosphere has been in turmoil about the whole Greedy Goblin V. JMTC (Just Might Try Crying) incident. This has been going on for a few weeks and a few of the bloggers I follow have commented on this very feud. Here's a quick summary for everyone.

Markco: Hey Gevlon, sell my shit!
Gevlon: Um, no.
Markco: I respect that. However, here's a bunch of other reasons why you should sell it and you fail if you don't.
Gevlon: NO MEANS NO! I'M TELLING DAD!
Markco: I'm not going to fight back because YOU'RE A BIG STUPID HEAD AND I'M RIGHT. WHHHAAAAAHHHHMBULENCE!

Srsly?

I've got Gevlon on my blog reader because he makes me laugh. He also hates stupid people - a trait I admire in others. JTMC never really did it for me. The tricks for making money aren't that great because, honestly, any decent tips would be reserved for the guide that you have to pay for. I want you to burn that last sentence into your brain as there will be a test later.

Gevlon lashed out pretty hard giving out Markco's email address and said some pretty nasty things. He did copy and paste (assumed) the email that he got, and backed up everything he said. He then removed all links to JTMC from his blog.

Let's get one thing straight - Gevlon is an Asshole. No questions about that. His morons of the week posts are interesting, but for the most part he talks about the economic crisis and how it is created by/affects stupid people. That just doesn't keep my interest. I did love his apprenticeship series, but as for making gold there isn't a lot of information there. Half of his posts are lashing out at ignorant/stupid/random commenters.

But Markco made a post that is just about the biggest nerdrage "you're a doody head" logic attack at Gevlon. Here are some highlights.

"I am going to be the better man and not attack Gevlon. While I'm not attacking him, here are some points on why he's irrational.
1. Gevlon deleted comments from his site and therefore his personal blog is not the free press.
2. Tobold backed him up, but he once had a comment that was TOTALLY IRRELEVENT TO ANYTHING and made me look bad.
3. Gevlon posted my email. Uncool, since I used a personal email for trying to bully people into advertising for me.
4. Despite Gevlon actually posting the email, I am going to say that I asked for something else. And no, I won't copy what I actually said, I'll just paraphrase it how I want.
5. He said I lied, but I only lied about numbers by inflating them. He said there's a scheme, but I just wanted him to have money with no benefit to myself out of the goodness of my heart. He said marketing tricks, but he doesn't have a marketing degree so GTFO.
6. He didn't post immediately, so he's a bullshitter.

In summary, neither of us won. Except for the readers who won by emailing me how much they love me. Did I say the readers won? I really meant my E-Peen."

I have seriously never read such a stupid post on any blog anywhere. Really? You might as well have added in "Gevlon smells" or "Gevlon has cooties." None of that had anything to do with what he said at all! He didn't even really refute it!

Markco is a Douche. And Douches are always in it for themselves. They will never admit that they are wrong and will go down with the ship, even if it's a dinky little scooner that they crashed into the shore.

Moral of the story? Here are a few life Protips.

Protip 1: Assholes > Douches.
Assholes tend to be hard on everyone, but the fact of the matter is they have some redeeming qualities. Douches are never ever productive and tend to stand in peoples way. They don't use logic but they yell louder so others will listen. Markco could have stopped after the first email to Gevlon or after Gevlon's post, but he didn't. He NEEDED to have the last word and be right.

Ultimately, if what you're fighting for or trying to accomplish is worthwhile, assholes will help you in their own asshole way. Douches with not.

Protip 2: If two people are fighting and one of them is trying to sell something, that person is wrong.

I see a lot of people in the blogosphere sitting on the fence saying "I don't know who's wrong, but I'll read both blogs." Markco is trying to sell something using real world resources (money), therefore he is wrong. Gevlon doesn't have an ulterior motive to gain readers, as they don't provide him any cash. Markco stood to gain money on the deal and pushed Gevlon when he said no. Gevlon had a history of lashing out at idiots and you pushed him? Good game.

Edit: This Just In! Markco also lied about the emails to his E-Peen. On Tobold's post on the subject, Markco said he was being flooded with threatening letters, yet in his post he said he had two that weren't "I love you and I want you're eBabies." I am actually somewhat worried that this person works for the company he works for.

Altcrown Citadel

2009-11-19T22:15:00.004-05:00

Have you heard the news? Blizzard came out with some information on the patch 3.3 Icecrown Citadel raid. And everyone nods their head in agreement. They all say:

"Waitwut?"

Icecrown citadel is the raid that keeps you from raiding when you want to raid. It cockblocks you by keeping you from doing more than 4 new bosses a week (or two weeks), and no attempts at heroic mode until you beat Arthas in normal, who won't be ready for 2 months. That's 9 weeks. That means by the time Arthas is available, everyone in your 10 man raid has gear from the first 4 bosses. That means they don't need gear from the first bosses anymore. On top of that, you only get a limited amount of attempts at the last bosses of each wing. At first, it will be 5, but later on it will be 20 or whatever Blizz arbitrarily decides.

So who benefits most from this? Is it casuals? Is it the truly hardcore?

Or is it the people with Alts?

Blizzard has made it very clear that they want you to play alts. Heirloom items, faster leveling, and now smaller instances that can be run over and over again.

Say I'm in a hardcore 10 man raiding guild, going for world firsts on bosses. Assuming ICC is as difficult as they claim it is, people are going to need to get the most out of their attempts. A small, well-oiled team can go ahead and run their alts through the content the first night to learn the fights, then follow it up the next night with mains to clear the content. So in order to get the most attempts in, you need to field multiple teams.

If I were in charge of a major raiding guild, I would tell people I want a second 80 immediately. If I wanted to be really hard about it, I'd make you reroll your character.

I bet that's what Ensidia does...

Game, Blouses.

Prot Warrior PvP

2009-11-16T20:45:00.002-05:00

Even though my main is my mage, my first 80 was actually my warrior. I started tanking in the last 6 months of TBC and got as far as tanking Gruul and Magtheradon's adds. I had planned on tanking at 80, but the tanking spot was filled and I didn't want to DPS on my warrior. We needed a mage at the time so Fricassee was born and powerleveled, and I found a new love for mages (I hadn't even wanted to play one before then).

Point being, I still love to tank with my warrior. Recently, I had the chance to OT a 10-Man ToC for the guild, when they thought I wouldn't be able to. The only wipe was when the healer in charge of healing me afk'd out with 2 impales. My love for tanking is renewed!

The problem is that I don't like PuGs and our Guild has enough tanks. However, one of our Guild mates showed me some videos by Swifty, a well known warrior in PvP. Specifically, some of the videos on prot PvP peaked my interest.

And I'm having a ball with it. My PvP gear is weak, so I just wear my tanking gear. However, I'll be upgrading it and posting on some of the tricks I'm learning along the way. In the meantime, check Swifty out!

It's Like Ellis Island

2009-11-14T16:34:00.003-05:00

Game Review: Dragon Age Origins

2009-11-14T10:00:00.004-05:00

Note: This review is for Dragon Age: Origins on the Xbox 360. The gameplay may be different on the PC version, but I would not know. However, most of my gripes are with the gameplay, so if it is different, please let me know!

Dragon Age Origins is a story about your character fighting Demons for the Gray Wardens (at least, as far as I've played it). I can summarize this review in one sentence.

Dragon Age: Origins? More like Dragon Age: BOREigins, amirite?

Basics:
The game is a classic fantasy RPG version of KOTOR. Throughout the game, you're leveling up various characters with various backgrounds, which actually makes for a pretty decent story.

You can start out as one of three races (Dwarf, Elf, Human), one of three classes (Warrior, Rogue, Mage), and one of 6 backgrounds (which determine the first part of the game). Not every class/race/background combination is available. As you get experience and level up, you can increase your character's stats, skills, and combat talents.

The fighting is in real time and you can control any of the people on your team. In addition, you can set up the tactics for the AI, using a complex system of If/Then commands, which is actually pretty cool.

Graphics: 4/5
The graphics on this game are just what I would expect a BioWare game to look like: very nice with little flavor. The graphics are well polished, but there's nothing that stands out as interesting or edgy.

Gameplay: 3/5
This is a sore point I have. None of the new combat talents stick out and scream "I want that!" Each class seems to be well balanced, but at the cost of being less powerful. It definitely gives a grittier feel, but it also turns into somewhat monotonous and boring combat. Almost as boring as the dialog!

Speaking of boring dialog, I wonder how many hours of the more than 100 hours of play time are dialog. Gimme subtitles, so I can skip through the people who talk like they've been hit in the head one too many times.

I also wish they had a tutorial on using the tactic system. It's fun working through it to find combinations, but there are literally hundreds of tactics you can set up, and it's frustrating trying to find the one that makes the mage enchant your weapons with frost power all the time.

Story: 4/5
Good, strong story as always. It's a classic fantasy and hasn't blown my mind yet, but they actually put a lot of thought into it. Once again, the appropriate term is polished. The story is very polished.

Overall: 11/15
This is a solid game that is worth playing through. I just expect a little bit more from BioWare. Maybe fantasy just isn't my genre anymore...
Better than: A sharp stick in the eye (or any stick, for that matter)
Worse than: Mass Effect
Words of Wisdom: Buy backpacks from vendors when you get the chance, so you don't run out of space. Also bring crossword puzzles or sudoku to do while they talk. That way, you can hear the important parts but be a little more productive with your time.

Friday Top Five: Mage Raiding

2009-11-13T11:20:00.003-05:00

Today's Top Five Countdown is for new to raiding mages. These are five things I wish I had been told when I started. For a twist, these will be delivered via puns, the lowest form of humor.

I must warn you though. Puns have been known to drive even the most sane person into incredible fits of rage. In fact, that German kid who raged out on his computer was fueled by his hatred for puns. Had he not read my post, that keyboard would still be alive today. You have been warned.

5. A WARD of Advice
Fire Ward and Frost Ward are huge, especially for Incanter's Absorption Arcane mages. The extra shielding can help keep you alive (especially with your new to raiding stamina), and give you a serious boost in damage. Also, if you do stand in a fire it may save you and you can claim you were doing it on purpose for spell damage. I've used that one.

4. In the BLINK of an Eye
Blink is possibly your number one tool as a mage. Movement is crucial in many fights and blink gets you where you need to be faster. In addition, if you're snared or stunned, blink can often get you out of it. Hotkey this ability and use it often.

3. VITAL to Success
Even though you'll be blinking often, movement speed is still the most important bonus you can have. The Tuskarr's Vitality enchant will give you more time on target which will give you more damage than Icewalker. EJ did a test and if you move for at least 4 seconds out of a minute, Tuskarr's is a DPS increase.

2. /POWA to the People
Addons can make a decent player a good player as well as making a good player a better player. Power Auras Classic is probably the number one tool for increasing DPS for mages. I throughly suggest learning and using that addon for all your buff tracking needs. There are other addons out there but this is my blog and that's what I use, so its what I'm talking about.

1. Mana MANAGEMent
Especially when raiding arcane, mana management can be the difference between good and great dps. You can't spell management without Mana Gem! A lot of times I forget to recast mana gems after attempts, and it really borks my normal burn, relax, burn, relax playstyle. Make sure your gem is on a bar and in your face so you can actually refresh and use it for more AB spam.

God, I hate puns...

Raiding is Srs Bsns

2009-11-12T13:37:00.001-05:00

Recently, my guild has decided that we need to be more dedicated to raiding. They published a nice long post after a nice long officer's meeting about what was going to happen with the guild. But I can't help but think that there could have been a little more input. Here's the story:

We've got something like 40 people in the guild with max level characters. A lot of those people have multiple 80's, so we usually don't have that hard of a time filling the roles needed. However, it's very difficult for us to actually have 25 people on at once to do a 25 man instance.

We took our time through Naxx, and we've probably done KT as a guild about 3 times in 25s. Some time into Uld, we stopped doing 25s since we got stuck at Cat Lady. We've been doing 10s, but not enough to actually clear the content. As a guild, we've downed General-10 once (I wasn't there), Mimiron-10 twice (I wasn't there), and never actually got Yogg-10 down.

I would contribute our biggest problem to people not knowing the fights. A lot of our players are newer to the raiding game. Only a few of us raided before Wrath, and some people still haven't seen T7 content. We also have a lot of players that refuse to buy flasks for raiding, even though it's such a small cost to perform at your best. So, in general, we have issues with execution more than anything else.

So what's the new plan? We're dropping Uld off the raid schedule and focusing on Ony, VoA, and ToC. Raiding is now four days a week, as opposed to the two days we were doing before. We will be recruiting, and underperformers will be notified and dropped from the raid if they don't get better. Here are the problems I have with this.

Dropping Ulduar
They've got this mentality that the newest content is the hardest and it will get gear for our guys. Let's face it - ToC is kind of a joke. Faction Champions is the only fight that you can't really autopilot through. So will all this gear prepare us for Icecrown? Methinks not. As mentioned before, we have problems with execution.
Ulduar is the best training for Icecrown. Fights are dynamic, mechanics are different from fight to fight, and the volume of bosses tests players to remember the strategies for many bosses without giving everyone a 15 minute rundown before each fight.
Raiding 4 Nights a Week
Four nights of raiding is extreme. This is not casual raiding anymore. Mon/Tues/Thurs is for 10 man content and Sunday is for 25s. If we're going to raid 10s three nights a week, I think we should be doing more content than Ony, ToC, and VoA. Those can be done in a single night. Instead, we're doing 3 10-man groups for that content using alts.

Once again, if execution is the issue, we need to get players experienced with their classes. People with only a single level 80 will be raiding one night, and those are the people who often need the experience. If experienced people are spending time in ToC on alts, they won't be able to guide the rest of the guild through other content, like say Ulduar.

Performance Monitoring
They also say that performance will be monitored and low performers will be replaced. I just don't see that happening. Most everyone knows each other in real life, and in the past when people have been performing under par, they don't work with the person. They work around the person. I just can't see the guild leadership telling people "you can't raid anymore until you get your shit together."

But what is the appropriate action for a guild in this situation? How do you get people you know in real life to actually put the time in instead of wasting the time of 9 or 24 other people? Anyone have any ideas? Anyone been in this situation before?

It's times like this where I'm glad I'm not an officer. We'll see how it works out.

Cleveland Playhouse: Mamma Mia!

2009-11-11T23:20:00.003-05:00

So Mamma Mia was at the Cleveland Playhouse for this week only and Jenn got tickets on discount from her school. I was going to write a review about the play, but instead I'm going to write about something else.

Tunnel Vision

The parking lot at the Cleveland playhouse is a jumbled mess to get out of. The last time we were there, we had to wait for an hour to get out of the parking lot, and we were on level 3 of 5. Needless to say, once the play was over, our goal was to get out of there as fast as possible.

You know those people who stand in fire? The people who forget to switch adds or move around because they're too focused on one thing? Turns out, those people will exhibit those same qualities in real life. Apparently, some of the people attending the play have a difficult time handling concepts like "slower people on the right" and "GTFO of my way dude standing in our row."

This is why car accidents are more common amongst elderly drivers. Elderly drivers are the people in your raid that stand in fire no matter what you do. They fumble over their rotations and wipe the raid, crashing into a hotdog stand or school. I hate directing this at older people because anyone can have tunnel vision and in turn, suck at driving.

Here's a rule of thumb: If you don't have the wherewithal to make room for people moving through a group of people, maybe talking to some random person isn't your best option. Just like driving, if your reactions aren't as highly tuned, you should focus on driving rather than tweeting to your friends that you just crapped your pants.

Just have some decency for others around you.

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In other news, Kittra Wynn Coomer stole the show as Rosie. Absolutely hilarious. All and all it was a great musical, but I wouldn't pay $60 to see it a second time. For those who haven't seen it, I would say it's worth seeing once.

Holding Down The Fort

2009-11-10T18:00:00.001-05:00

With all the bloggers out there that are digging into NaNoWriMo, we're losing a serious source of content (read: distraction). For that reason, I'm going to endeavor to meet a different goal in the month of November

NaBloPoMo

That sounds really awful, but it stands for National Blog Post Month. The goal of NaBloPoMo is for bloggers to post every day for the month. Since I obviously missed a few days, we're going for a total of at least 30 posts. I'll hold down the fort while people more focused and disciplined write their novels!

So to all you bloggers doing NaNoWriMo, give a shout out and give us an update! You're almost half way, and it would give a little more fuel for my monthly goal.

L2Typeset Blogger

2009-11-10T10:00:00.001-05:00

Growing up, I was a math and science guy. In fact, my writing was absolutely abysmal until I hit the 7th grade. My English teacher was a complete grammar snob above all else. He taught us the proper rules for commas (the bane of the English language), how to avoid dangling participles, and most importantly, how to follow instructions in writing. Since this was in the dawning of the computer age, we wrote a lot of papers and essays on the computer, and he made sure we followed all the rules to the T.

He was all kinds of old school so all papers had to be written in the English Typeset convention. That meant you didn't put spaces around punctuation but you put two spaces after periods, colons, and semicolons.

The reason I mention this is that Blogger apparently doesn't care for that convention, and when I put two spaces after periods it tends to put one space on the other line. As nitpicky as I might be, I'm not going back to remove spaces when it messes up format.

As much as I care for my readers to be graced with left align, it would be unethical for me to change my writing style when I'm in the right. I will simply wait for Blogger to stop raging against my typeset.

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He also taught us that it was proper to put a comma before the last option in multiple option sentence. For example, I would write the following sentence as:

That DK in the VoA pug was a clicker, a keyboard turner, and a face-roller.

Most writers won't put a comma after keyboard turner, but I want people to make sure that keyboard turning and face rolling are two separate ideas.

Steam Can Eat A Big One

2009-11-10T00:08:00.001-05:00

Know what I love more than video games? Video games I can download on demand. In this age of the internet where you can access any information that humanity has discovered or single click your way into bankruptcy, we need instant gratification. Steam was designed with that in mind. No link love? You'll see why later.

I'm a sucker for RTS strategy game, so it should come at no surprise that I totally dig the old X-Com series. They were a complex blend of leveling up characters, resource and base management, technology research, and good ol' fashioned alien combat. I highly suggest finding it for yourself and playing it.

Turns out, Steam offers the entire X-Com series (with embedded emulators) for download for a modest price of $15 (the price of a Pandaren Monk and half of Lil' KT). I jumped in and bought it. It's a nice quick game to play while waiting for guildies to log on for a raid.

You can bet how upset I was when I was in the midst of a great start on an X-Com Apocalypse game, and the game popped up an interesting and frustrating message.

"Please insert the CD to continue"

WTFBBQ? I have no CD. The game is locked up and I go back to the last save (a while back, because I feel cheap saving every turn). What am I supposed to do?

I sent an email into Steam to figure out what to do, but until then I won't buy any games from that. It's a shame, because I was really thinking of grabbing Dragon Age Origins and they missed out on a $60 impulse buy.

Take that, internet! I may even go read a book.

The Truth About Quartz

2009-11-08T10:00:00.003-05:00

Mortigan the Lock had a post about increasing DPS without gear/stat upgrades where he advocated hitting the next cast button early. He was summarily trolled to death about the quartz addon, and how it makes the job easy for you. I figured I'd lay out some information on how it actually works, and some things even long-time users may not know about this addon.

It all goes back to a long time ago when spell casters couldn't be hit capped and the mechanics of the blizzard server were more harsh. Back then, the only way you could start your spell was if the other one was finished. However, because of the lag between client and server, the normal player would have anywhere between 100-200 ms of lag time, thus injecting an extra 100-200 ms of no casting. Ultimately, this reduced the effectiveness of casting classes for dps and even if you mashed the buttons, channeled spells could get messed up (I played an SPriest in BC, so I know all about clipping mind flays).

So Quartz was the addon you would use, and it would show you the lag between the server and your computer via a nice red bar, seen below. This was an amazing tool to minimize the dead zone between casts, since you'd simply hit your spell at red zone. Therefore, this was a required mod for most raiding groups.

Come patch 3.0.3 (pre-Wrath patch), Blizzard implemented spell queuing. Spell queuing works by allowing a player to cast a spell slightly before it casts (my guess is about 250 ms) and it would immediately start that spell upon finishing the current cast. This was great, because it helped alleviate the gap between low and high ping casters, as they all could theoretically chain casts without any dead zone (assuming low ping variability). Hooray!

However, a lot of Quartz users have not adjusted their play to utilize spell queuing. Since you can now cast your spells early, here's a protip, free of cost.

Quartz users should be hitting the next spell BEFORE the red zone on non-channeled spells.
If you're still waiting for red, you're not going to be casting back-to-back spells.

In summary, Quartz is still an amazing addon that increases DPS, but the way you use the addon has changed since BC. Nibb High Football Rules!

New Arcane Rotation Redux

2009-11-06T23:28:00.000-05:00

A few days ago I talked about a mage that dominated the charts and how I thought he had a different rotation. I ended up swallowing my pride and talking to him, and it turns out he uses the same rotation. Seemed like everything I was doing was right, and the biggest thing seemed to be discipline. This goes to show that arcane is more than just ABx4MBAM. It takes practice. This guy was an arcane mage before it was cool to be an arcane mage.

I went ahead and went back to gemming hard for spellpower. I'm going to play around with my discipline on managing my CDs and my mana sources, and we'll see if I can perform better than I did before (which was still awesome, just not as awesome).

Friday Top Five: Raiding Music

2009-11-06T10:00:00.003-05:00

I don't often listen to music when I raid. When I started raiding, I was playing WoW on my laptop and running iTunes/Media Player/Winamp in the background tended to increase lag, so it had to go. Now that I have a bomb computer, I could burn DVDs and run extended MATLAB calculations without adding any effect to my computer. I still don't listen to music normally (unless I have pandora open on light raids), but when we need to buckle down and get things done, I still have my pump up music that I listen to in order to increase my DPS by 10%.

Without Further Ado, my Top Five Raiding Songs

#5: Vanessa Mae - Destiny
This was the song on the first boss fight video I ever saw - Netherspite in Kara. This video was way professional and turned a fight with crazy portal laser mechanics into a cake walk. This song was in the video, and I actually listened to this song while doing the fight the first time, so I could track the phases (despite the pauses in the video). While I don't listen to the song for raiding anymore, it makes the list for nostalga.

#4: Taylor Swift - You Belong With Me
Damn you, Megs. One of your last posts on OOM before going to Forbearance, you posted this song. However, from the sound of it, it's what brought her back to blogging, so it can't be all bad. I still use this song when raging out on Mimiron, but I hate myself for it.

#3: The Misfits - Where Eagles Dare
This song was on a video the first time I played WoW (and got to level 28 and quit about 3 years ago). Someone died IRL from what I can tell, so they hosted a funeral on a PvP server in Winterspring, a contested area. Of course a group of people raided it and posted it on teh interwebs. Because of that video, this song makes me strive to ruin my enemies, especially in PvP. If only it was longer...

#2: Dragonforce - Fury of the Storm
I actually saw Dragonforce in concert before I liked Dragonforce. In concert it was hard to see the amazing fretwork and strum speed of the guitarists. However, when we were on prince, there was a video on how to two man prince that was the funniest thing I've ever seen. This song (and video) got us through Prince, which was a bitch of a fight for a guild starting to raid in TBC. We got him before they trivialized content, which I was happy with. Now Dragonforce, which can only be appropriately defined as Triumph Metal, is a staple of hate-fuled DPS in our guild.

This last song goes out to all the women in the world (of warcraft).

#1: Freak Nasty - Da Dip
I PUT MY HAND UP ON YOUR HIP,
WHEN YOU DIP I DIP WE DIP

Isn't that the most inspired philosophical raid music ever? It's basically saying, "We're a team, we move together in order to succeed."

I tried. Anyways, somehow this became the raid song for our guild. People would macro lyrics into attacks, people would spout full verses of lyrics in guild chats in off time, and I went through an entire Naxx-25 with this song on repeat. It's a terrible song, and the video is even worse, but it was our song. When Ulduar came out, we had to get a new song but nothing ever stuck. Despite how hard I tried to make it Jermaine Stewart's "We Don't Have to Take our Clothes Off," Da Dip was engraved into our raiding psyche and whenever tensions got high, it always cooled everyone off with a laugh. That's why it's the number one song for raiding.

What are your top 5 raiding songs?

Game Review: Borderlands

2009-11-05T14:16:00.001-05:00

I know this might be a little late, but better late than never. Borderlands is a new game available on PC, XBox 360, and PS3. The game is what could be considered an FPSRPG - First Person Shooter Roleplaying Game. It's very unique, tons of fun, and could possibly be the way to go for the next big MMORPG.

Basics
Borderlands is your standard post apocalyptic setting on the planet of Pandora. The premise is that there are a number of fortune hunters seeking the legendary vault, which is rumored to contain tons of loot that would easily make you a king.

There are four characters that represent four classes. There's a soldier who drops turrets, there's a hunter that has a pet that attacks enemies, there's a bruiser that can go berserk and deal heavy melee damage, and a chick who can stealth and deal heavy elemental damage. Each class has specializations where they can spend points to make them different from each other.

The game is basically about leveling up, killing badguys and collecting cash and guns. There's 7 different gun types that can be used by any and all characters, but some get talents to increase the effectiveness of certain types of weapons.

Graphics: 4.5/5
This game has wonderful graphics. The cell-shading is done very well and the drawings of individual bosses and new characters are superb. The only sore points are the fact that there are few models for enemies (that they use over by leveling up enemies), and the consistant desert scenery gets kind of old.

Gameplay: 4/5
The gameplay is somewhat reminiscent of a mix between Halo and Diablo. The skill system is pretty neat, but it seems like there aren't a lot of choices and many skills are not balanced well. While the combat is a little mindless, there have beeen times when we've had long drawn-out battles with bad guys that make it very fun. This brings another major point - Borderlands is a multiplayer game, and it does multi-player very well. All in all, the original delivery of FPS with leveling, the game is exceptionally well polished.

Story: 2.5/5
I'm not normally a big story guy, but there's almost no story in this game. You do some mindless quests in order to move towards the vault, but this story has been played out time and time and time before. However, with the audience this game is aimed towards, I don't think story was their top priority.

Overall: 11/15
This game is very well made and I'd love to see more like it. My wife and I love to play co-op games, but most of them don't really hold her interest.
Better than: Oblivion (Elder Scrolls IV)
Worse than: Bioshock
Words of Wisdom: Play with a friend or play online for the most out of the game. I would suggest playing as either Roland (Soldier) or Brick (Bruiser).

New Arcane Rotation?

2009-11-04T15:27:00.000-05:00

Last night, me and a few Guildies joined a PuG for ToC 25. While the pug was a failure on Jaraxxus, due to all of the melee standing in someone's legion flames, I wasn't really focused on the failing of the pug. I was focused on the fact that one of the mages, who was less geared than me and another mage from my guild was destroying us on the meters. Even in best case scenario, he was more than 500 dps higher than me. I may ask him later what he did, but I endeavor to figure it out on my own!

I armoried him, and found that not only was his gear lower than mine, but he had less in almost every stat (he had 20 more sp than I did, since I gem haste.) 200 more haste than him, 3% higher crit than him, more mana, more int, more spirit. I checked his talents, and it looked like he was rocking a standard 57/3/11 w/o Incanter's Absorption. I do my best to only fire shield/frost shield when moving, but that in itself couldn't cause the difference in damage. In addition, he only had one profession, and it was engineering! Surely the DPS I get from Jewelcrafting/Tailoring should overcome that!

I was really interested to see what was going on. So I checked his recount, and I saw something interesting. 108 Arcane Blasts, 103 Arcane Missiles. Normally, I run much closer to a 4/5 ratio (with a few more blasts for times when MB doesn't proc.) He had a 5/5 ratio (with a few more blasts), which makes me think he might be doing a ABx5MBAM. In my current setup, I doubt I could support that, but maybe if I dropped some haste for spellpower it could work. And if worse comes to worse, I could always use mage armor instead of molten armor for mana regen.

Let's look at the AB portion of the AB spam rotation. If we assume the average AB damage is 6000, here are some numbers to work from.

ABx4 would give us a total of:
6000 + 7080 + 8160 + 9240 = 30480
Average Damage per Cast: 7620
Average Mana per Cast: 658

ABx5 would give us a total of:
6000 + 7080 + 8160 + 9240 + 10320 = 40800
Average Damage per Cast: 8200 (7.5% increase)
Average Mana per Cast: 803 (22% increase)

It also decreases our chance of not having a missile barrage proc from 13% to 7.7%. This is something I'm going to have to look into. More info later!

Who Says Gamers Don't Give

2009-11-03T20:01:00.004-05:00

In the past week, I've seen two wonderful causes that have been funded by WoW activities. I think both of them are very worthwhile and I'll be donating my time/money, and I hope you all do too.

First is Azeroth United's "Hearts, Hands and Voices," a donation to the Child's Play organization that gets gaming equipment into children's hospitals. As small as that may seem, toys and games for children going through therapy in hospitals helps keep their moral up so they can keep on fighting. If you have a chance, and you're a WoW person, think about donating to this wonderful cause.

The second cause is a more personal cause brought to us by Big Bear Butt and The World of Warcraft "Raid for the Cure." Julie, one of the members of the Sidhe Devils on Kael'thas US server was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. To show their support, The Sidhe Devils are having people from all around, both Alliance and Horde, show up and march to the barrens wearing pink shirts. While it's great for Julie to see all the people rooting for her, they're also raffling off some prizes for people who donate to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation via this site. Just send the receipt from your donation to the email address at BBB's post, and you're entered!

I'm just super pumped to see the gamer community giving back to the community in such a wonderful way.

Non-Meme Healing Questionnaire... Meme

2009-11-02T20:21:00.004-05:00

Edit: This survey was actually from Miss Medicina, so give credit where credit's due. Another blog to read!

Gnomeaggedon decided to fill out a non-meme healing questionnaire and to challenge people who read his blog to fill it out. So I have decided to take this non-meme and non-fill it out.

My first level 70 toon was a priest, and I figured this is something I can talk about, despite him not being level 80 yet. He's 74 now, but I'm working him up to 80 for *gasp* PvP.

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?
Sukutaklu, Priest, Shadow (lol). I was primarily a shadow priest in TBC back when being a mana battery actually meant something. However, I originally intended to heal and this is proven by my Primal Mooncloth robe sitting in my bank, despite being Shadoweave spec'd for all of TBC.

What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)
He was originally a 5-man healer, since I was shadow in raids. I spent a pretty penny respecing, before they had dual spec.

What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?
Renew. I hate HoTs, and renew tricks you into thinking it gets the job done. While I could renew dps, I tended to tank heal and renew just doesn't cut it. And it eats all your mana and tended to waste ticks if you refresh it too soon.

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?
Preventative healing. Shields and such let you prepare for picked hits. Also, since I have a mage main, I have a special place in my heart for disc priests who shield arcane mages.

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you?
Tank healing, although I have seen some disc priests make a good raid healer with hefty use of shields.

What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?
Actually, not priests. I prefer to heal on my wife's shaman. However, disc priest is tons of fun, and I used to level smite spec, the BEST healing spec.

What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?
Paladin. Never played it, but I would hate to spam just FoL/HL.

What is your worst habit as a healer?
Not healing myself, 'nuff said.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?
Tanks that don't pull fast enough. I don't need all my mana back, unless where about to fight a boss or very difficult raid trash. I'll let you know if I need to drink.

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?
As far as healing meters go, no. As far as effectiveness, yes. Meters are for losers and mages anyways.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?
A win, but more specifically my targets staying alive.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?
Haste is not as great a stat as it's made out to be. You hit the haste cap very quickly, so SP and crit are generally better (unless you're spamming flash heal).

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?
A lot of priests are first time characters or first time healing characters. Probably the hardest things are healing yourself in raids and moving out of fire.

If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)?
Low healing, high estimated shields.

Haste or Crit and why?
Crit. Disc priests hit the haste softcap quickly with the Borrowed Time talent (25% haste after shields).

What healing class do you feel you understand least?
Druids. Every spell sounds the same and don't seem very intuitive. Greater heal is better than Flash Heal. Healing wave is bigger than Lesser Healing Wave. Flash of Light is faster than Holy Light. WTF is the difference between Nourish, Rejuvenation, and Regrowth?

What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing?
I use X-Perl for my unit frames, and I tend to macro the "Oh-Sh#$" insta-cast skill with a heavy heal.

Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
I try to go hard on spellpower and hit the haste level. After that, crit is icing on the cake. I do like to stack mana regen stats so I don't have to stop casting though. So I guess that means balance. I will say since my tanking days, I tend to keep multiple sets of gear.

And that ends the questionnaire. I don't really have any followers, so I can't meme anyone, but it was fun and gave me something to post about!

It's Halloween, Jackholes

2009-10-31T17:31:00.000-04:00

Today we'll be giving out candy to little beggars that come to our door. We only give out little candy bars so that next year we won't be swamped. On halloween, usually all the kids get equal candy treats, but I've always wondered what would happen if you didn't give everyone the same thing. What if you made them earn it.

I envision the idea of the man on the bridge in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail". Ask each kid three questions. If they get any of them wrong, they get a small candy bar. Get them all right, and you give them a full sized candy. You could make up your own questions, but these are the ones I'm throwing around in my mind.

- What are you dressed as?
- What's the proper treatment for someone who has been bitten by a zombie?
- How do you kill a vampire?
- Does Wolfman have nards?
- How can you tell if someone is a witch?
- Do you like movies about gladiators?
- What is the proper arcane rotation when performing full burn on XT's Heart?
- Who is your daddy, and what does he do? (Delivered with a proper Arnold voice)
- Did Greedo shoot first?

Come up with some questions of your own!

Things You Shouldn't Do

2009-10-28T18:51:00.000-04:00

And with the good comes the bad. Last post, I was singing praises about the guild, people doing better, and generally happy thoughts, but last night the guild did a big no-no. Our GM had a computer issue, and so while he was working through it he had our officers set up the run. It was planned to have a ToC10 run on Tuesday and Thursday, and our raiding starts at 7:00 (ends up being 7:30 because we have no sign-ups).

Last night, we had half the raid together, and we were waiting on the other half, for about half an hour. What was the hold up? They were doing HH runs.

I would understand if there were some new people who could use the gear, but these were solely for achievements, going for the pet and the mount. Do it on your own damn time people. This holiday shit is getting out of hand. I would tell Blizzard to stop, but if this ridiculous mindless activity gets people to spend more time in the game, then the holiday is working in their eyes.

The worst part was that two officers were in that HH group. When I commented on getting started, they basically told me to quit whining. Forty-five minutes later, I had to go and they still hadn't started. Now I can't be on Thursday due to a work conflict, so looks like I'm going without ToC this week (unless I PuG).

I had to rant, I had to let off some steam. Get your heads out of your asses guys.

As a side note, I'm traveling tomorrow so I'll try and schedule a post. If not, I'll be back on Friday.

I Love Improvement - A PSA

2009-10-27T20:32:00.003-04:00

As blunt as I might be, I really do want to see others improve. That's probably why I'm so blunt when people do things incorrectly. It's not hate. I'm not being a dick for the sake of being a dick. I just really want people to click on things and I love to see them do better. This is a PSA about helping your fellow raider and fellow mage.

There was this mage in our guild. We'll call him Blinky for the time being. He was leveling up when I rerolled mage for the guild, so I wasn't 80 too much sooner than he was (although I already had an 80 warrior). Once he started raiding Naxx-25, he was struggling to pull 2000 dps and he was rolling/spending DKP on MP5 items. I tried dropping hints like "That's a healing piece," "That's a great item for priests," "I wish there was a mage drop," but it didn't click. His gear became a ton of spirit/MP5 (before the molten armor change) and it was kind of disheartening.

The Guildmaster also has a mage, and he wanted to do something about it but didn't want to be upfront. He had me post all this crazy theorycrafting about mages on the guild message boards in hopes that he would actually read it and take heart, but weeks went on and nothing happened. Eventually, he had me talk to him about his spec. When I asked him if he wanted help, he said "I don't really care about it that much" and my heart sunk. I really wanted him to want it, because people who don't care bring the rest of the raid down. At that point, I thought it was a lost cause and did my own thing.

A few weeks later, on a Uld-25 run (we never did get far in 25, only killed Cat Lady once), I saw his DPS jumped to about 3000. I checked out his spec and saw 57/3/11 and fireworks went off. Somewhere along the way, Blinky went to a site that had specs on it, because I never poster the Arcane spec! Sure enough, he was using the appropriate spec, using the proper rotation, and was gemming for spellpower like he should.

Now, Blinky is a rockstar and all the bitches in Dalaran want his Mana Strudel. The only fires he stands in are the ones he lights in the ladies hearts. He's top 3 DPS, even though he's not rocking Incanter's Absorption (I might be wrong, he may have shifted because he's smart and dynamic now). I'll gladly throw him my focus magic, and if I lose a roll to him on some mage gear, I think to myself "I'm glad the raid is getting an upgrade." And if I can't go, I know that the raid has a strong mage there to carry the important mage duties.

Keep trying to help your fellow raiders, and eventually it'll click. There's nothing more fulfilling than a when a new raider finally clicks and gets the game.

Gearscore, Gearscore, Gearscore

2009-10-26T18:00:00.006-04:00

This gearscore thing is crazy. Many people have posted on this phenomenon, so telling you about it won't give you any more information. What I am telling you is don't let it stop you from applying to the group. Give them your best info (achievements) and reasons (alt, off-spec, etc) but don't sound pushy or pitiful. If they're a decent player, they can get past it. If they can't get past it, you probably wouldn't want to be part of the group anyways.

When I proposed to my now-wife (spoiler: she says yes), I took her on a scenic hike. She thought she was dragging me along, but I tricked her into that. At the peak of the hill where the view is amazing, I dropped to one knee, pulled the ring out, and asked her to marry me. Her first response was "You're kidding, right?" After a few seconds, she realized it was the real deal and said yes. I like to think she was instead checking my RL Armory. She wanted to be sure I was gemming for +16 Hygene and not +16 Douchebag. She checked that I picked up core talents like [Math] and [Science] instead of PvP only talents like [Alcoholism] and [Domestic Violence]. She also checked some key achievements.

After checking all that, she was prepared to group with me (at least, until she reads this and rethinks the whole deal). She analyzed me as a person, instead of just looking at my gearscore (loldiamond). I'm not saying my gearscore was bad, mind you, I'm just saying she was a savvy person.

On the other hand, there are ladies out there that will only marry you if you give them a ring worth at least X dollars or has at least a Y sized diamond. Are those the people you want to be with? Hell no. Those ladies will spend all your money and then ragequit after they ninja your purples. Bitches.

The gearscore phenomenon is about being lazy. If you want a shot at the title, tell the person in a reasonable fashion why you should be able to go despite your gearscore. Don't be smarmy about it, use proper grammar and full words instead of "lol u need deeps?" If they still don't want you, maybe they're just a bunch of golddiggers after your purps.

Epic Fail

2009-10-24T14:44:00.001-04:00

Have you ever had one of those days, where you had absolutely everything planned out but due to a small typographical oversight, everything is completely FUBAR? Yeah, today was one of those days.

We decided to visit my Wife's parents this weekend, because we had a wedding to go to in Vienna, OH and they live pretty close to there. We were all hanging out, doing our thing, about to get ready, when my Wife re-read the invitation.

V-E-N-E-T-I-A, not V-I-E-N-N-A.

Turns out, Venetia PA is quite far from here. In order to visit that spot, we should have spent the weekend at my parents house instead of the in-laws.

Now we have to backpedal and explain why we weren't there. We were not happy with those who RSVP'd for our wedding but didn't show. Sure, some of them had a very legitimate excuse (can you say H1N1?) but those who didn't definitely go on the stink-eye list.

To Pat and Sarah, congratulations! Despite our best efforts, we went to the wrong V-town.

Onyxia is a Mage's House

2009-10-24T10:00:00.002-04:00

A while back, Jong at Forbearance wrote about how Kologarn is a ret paladin's fight. Even once I had living bomb for multiple targets, I still couldn't match our melee on that fight. However, I'm glad to say that Onyxia is unequivocally a mage fight. When Zombies and the Fat Kid walked into do Ony 25 with 22 people, the three arcane mages dominated the fight. Here's why we rock so hard.

Incanter's Absorption gives us spellpower buffs. The fight is absolutely filled with fire damage. What's even more important is that Frost Warding with Fire Ward can save you from a nasty blast nova or breath that would otherwise kill you outright.

Blizzard is still king of sustained AoE DPS. While we don't have win in trash anymore, because things die fast, Blizzard owns this fight. Popping Icy Veins and dropping blizzard on whelps can be amazing, assuming ou don't die. In our Ony 25, the RL wants all the mages on Ony in phase 2, but you can bet we peel off for blizzard damage, just so we can look good.

Mages do well in movement heavy fights. I'm not talking about fights where you need to move every 28 seconds. This fight has times where you need to go from one side of the room to the other. As mages, we can blink, arcane barrage, fire ward, and then start dpsing, so we don't waste as much time as some other ranged classes.

Self-survivability. When whelps are on you, you can frost nova or cone of cold to kite as well as invisibility and ice block when necessary. Ony is one of those fights that gets hectic and we mages do well in those fights.

When all was said an done, we got ony down and the mages owned the fight. Top 3 were two IA Arcane mages and one other Arcane mage. In fact, the 4th DPS was a Ret Paladin named Redmage. Coincidence? I think not!

Happy Mole Day Bishes

2009-10-23T18:49:00.000-04:00

Being a complete and utter nerd and engineer, I think it's only appropriate that I wish every a wonderful Mole Day.

A mole is a quantity of 6.022x10^23 often used in chemisty to determine the number of atoms of concentration in a substance or object. This is called Avogadro's number, and is celebrated every October 23rd, since children can't be expected to respect science for the sick awesome power that it is. So instead of taking a belt to them they gave them cake.

Either way, here's a fun little video you can watch to celebrate mole day. Then you should get drunk and vandalize something, so you don't feel like such a nerd.

LARP Plot Tips: Failure != Death

2009-10-23T10:00:00.004-04:00

A common misconception in writing LARP modules is that the only way the characters lose is if they die. This makes me feel like I'm playing Dynasty Warriors, where the victory objectives get very monotonous. Mix it up a little bit, and make other failure mechanics.

Say character A has a contact that they tend to use a lot. Put a crisis on that contact, forcing character A to do some sort of quest in order to save them or recover the contact's trust. You don't even need to make the contact die, so if the character fails they can continue to try and gain their contact's trust back from over several events.

This also gives plot a means to make a difficult situation without overscaling a module. Make modules that the PCs can lose without massive consequences (everyone dies). That way people will actually go into modules wondering if they can be successful instead of the normal faceroll-or-decimated results that come from standard module design. With less on the line, you can put strict time limits on fights and actually create multiple levels of success. Add in some excellent roleplay elements, and you can have people talking for years about the module they lost, but still had a great time.

And don't make it so the PCs can't win. That's not what I'm endorsing. Just don't be afraid to challenge them to perform at their best, and if they don't take it seriously (since they may know it's not life or death), then they might not be successful.

Cleveland Playhouse: Young Frankenstein

2009-10-22T10:15:00.002-04:00

Last night, my wife and I got to see the first show of our season pass at the Cleveland Playhouse. I know, you're thinking the theater is for old people and primadonnas. Well, you're right, and I got to meet all of those wonderful people in the complete CF that was getting out of the parking garage.

However, I must say, Young Frankenstein was possibly the most entertaining thing I've ever seen. And I've seen Alice Cooper in concert. Alice Cooper was great, but the experience lacked because he followed this horrible Canadian band that had the word "Electric" in damn near every song title.

On to the review.

The play grabs you almost immediately with a bunch of entertaining songs. For the dudes out there that don't want to seem effeminate by going to a play, I'll give you a spoiler - in the first 10 minutes a guy gets double-punched in the crotch and the entire bridge of a song is dedicated to a female body part using a vernacular that is not radio-legal. A real man's man's show this is.

The entire first act was amazing. Every character plays their roles flawlessly, the music is catchy, and the story progresses quickly. My favorite songs were the one about the brain (which was scientifically acurate yet obscure, which is most amazing when pulled off) and the Transylvania Mania.

The second act, while still good, got a little bit slow around the hermit scene, but picked back up at the end. And, of course, they did the "Puttin' on the Ritz" scene flawlessly.

The show is not outwardly crude, but has a lot of innuendo as Mel Brooks intended. The language is clean for the most part, which is part of the reason it's so funny when they do swear. The banter between Frederick and Igor is spectacular. At one point, I think the two actually cracked each other up, but somehow they went on with the scene. Roger Bart, who played Frederick Frankenstein in the original Broadway premier does an amazing job (I can see why he was the original Frankenstein). His delivery is a true blend between Gene Wilder and Kevin Pollock, going from patient and quiet to a frantic screaming pattern that reminded me of George Kastanza.

If you would enjoy a night of crude humor, I would throughly suggest Young Frankenstein, the play. If you are single, take a girl with you. She'll think you're classy, even though it may only be a bunch of dick jokes.

Arcane Haste

2009-10-21T10:00:00.003-04:00

I've finally broken 800 haste unbuffed on my mage. With talents, that puts me a little over 30% haste. I've followed the thought process that Euripedes at Critical QQ brought up and started gemming hard for haste.

I'm talking about using Quick King's Amber for yellow, Reckless Ametrine for red, and Intricate Eye of Zul for blue (when bonuses are appropriate).

Here is what I've seen so far with ridiculous haste.

It's much easier to use my AB stack appropriately. Movement doesn't mess up my stack, even if I get hit mid cast, I have time to blink, adjust, and recast my arcane blast without passing 6 seconds. That by itself makes haste well worth it.

The mana game is back. Excessive haste means I have to manage my Arcane Torrent, Mana Gem and Evocation cooldowns with an occasional mana potion. I'm back to finding good times to evocate, like after a bellowing roar on Ony.

Cooldown pops are more fun now. When I get a full Incanter's Absorption, trinket procs, praxis, and bloodlust, I can do some serious damage. When we're talking about popping XT's Heart or hitting Icehowl when he's stunned, my burst is amazing.

Disc Priests are my best friend. How I got my full Incanter's Absorption? Probably a shield (could be fire or frost ward, but to get a full one I usually need a lucky proc on something that would kill me.) Protip: When they cast power infusion on you, go full AB spam and evocate at the end, followed by MBAM. If your haste is high enough, you'll still have your AB stack when your evocate is done.

Oh yeah, damage is absurd. I was doing a 10 man VoA, raid was not stacked in my favor, and I pulled a consistant 5400 damage on bosses, and on some trash pulls I got up to 7100 dps. Sure I blew cooldowns for those trash pulls, but people turn heads.

All in all, I think Euripedes was right and stacking haste is the way to go. There are a lot of spellpower buffs, but other than the 5% haste buff, you have to rely on yourself. Go grab yourself some haste gems and see how it works for you.

The 4 A.M. Breakthrough : Parataxis

2009-10-20T10:06:00.001-04:00

My wife got me a present - The 4 A.M Breakthrough - for our 3 year dating anniversary. This book is a bunch of exercises in making you a better writer, and it would be a waste for me to just keep all the exercises I do to myself. The point of writing is to practice, have people read it, criticize it, and move forward. Here is one of the exercises.

Write a narrative in paratactic style concerning a 19-year old man leaving messages for the woman who broke his heart - 500 words. Enjoy!

You have -8- new messages. First message:

Alice, I miss you, I need you. Please pick up... Call me when you get this.

I wasn't sure you got my last message. We need to talk. I'm heading to work, I've got my phone, just call me when you get a chance.

Please stop avoiding me. We're absolutely great together, we love the same things, enjoy the same foods, laugh at the same people, and everyone says we're made for each other. Please don't throw that away over what I said.

My mom called me and asked how you're doing. How am I supposed to answer that without you talking to me? You know, she told me you were the one. She's getting older and I don't know if she could take it being over. I'll be able to find a way to explain it to her, but not yet. Just call me and let me know how you're doing so I don't have to lie to my mother.

You know, there were a lot of things you said that I didn't make a big deal about. When we lost the IM Ultimate Frisbee championship you said "Don't worry about it, frisbee isn't your game." That hurt. I think I'm great at frisbee and hold the team together. That's a lot worse than what I said, since you were actually talking about me. I wasn't talking about you. I don't know why you got so offended, but I'm sorry. Please call me.

Alice, I can't sleep, I can't eat, I can't think. I'm broken without you. I've got a midterm in Biology tomorrow and I don't know if I can show up, let alone pass it unless you talk to me. Do you want that on your conscious, knowing that you single-handedly kept me from med school because you couldn't get over what I said about her. If I had known you'd be so sensitive, I would have never said it. I should have kept my mouth shut. I love you, I need you to call me, I can't think of spending another minute without hearing you.

I made it through the test, barely. I couldn't focus. All I could think about were your eyes, the way you smiled at me, the way you laugh, the way you support me despite anything I do, except of course for what I said. I really need to see you, I think you owe me that much. The way it ended before was so abrupt that we didn't get a chance to evaluate the entire relationship. Besides, I have your Battle Royale DVD and I can't afford to mail it to you. That movie is rare and you'll have a hard time finding it again, so you should just come and see me one more time. I'll be at the student union in about an hour and a half, so meet me there.

Alice, I see now that you're not coming back. You're throwing it all away because I pointed out your mom's mustache. You may not love me anymore, but it shouldn't be all for nothing. At least tell her to shave it or wax it or something. Have a nice life.

End of Messages

LARP Plot Tips: Change the Basics

2009-10-19T17:30:00.004-04:00

Anyone who's ever run plot at an event knows that it's much harder than it looks. When running games like D&D, spur of the moment and larger than life plot maneuvers that don't require physical setup, props, and player's physical limitation. Here's a tip for writing a LARP module, stolen from the guys at Exiles (give credit where credit's due) for their end of the year event.

Changing the Basics
Every player has their role. They know their skills and they know what they can or can't do. But what happens when you give them a completely different set of skills?

The original plotline had to do with what you can do as a spirit in the spirit world, but the same thing can be done in any different existence (eg. dream plane, sleep state, parallel dimension).

Give players cards with abilities that reflect their true nature. In Exiles, there are some characters playing supernatural classes that make it easy to show their true nature, but you could simply base it on the character's attitudes and actions as opposed to their actual skills. Characters that are helpful can be given healing abilities, characters that tend to lead can be given voice radius buffs, and characters that tend to protect others can be made into golems - whatever it takes.

Beyond that, you can change the normal way you fight. In this particular mod, everyone was given a vitriol pool (magic points, only few supernatural characters get these normally). You could do offensive abilities by spending them, but the only way you truly died was if you ran out of these. People had to balance spending their points for offense and holding onto them for survival, since some monsters would deal vitriol damage.

Building a plotline like this has the benefit of giving you the ability to make everyone important despite their level. It also makes scaling very easy, since you control the power that's coming into the mod. The tough part about designing that kind of module is that you need to know the players well. If you give a player who only likes to fight healing skills, they may not enjoy the encounter. Likewise, if you make a character less powerful than they normally are, they may be turned off to the module. This was effective in Exiles, because the game is very small, so plot was prepared for anyone who could show up. Characters were spread out so that some took little physical or vitriol damage, some could heal, some could buff and restore vitriol, and so forth.

A plotline like this can really turn heads, especially with established players who feel like they've seen it all.

Practice your Elevator Raid Pitch

2009-10-17T10:00:00.035-04:00

One of the worst things that can happen to a raid that has a lot of momentum is a long explanation of the next fight. People who already know the fight lose concentration. People who don’t know the fight get overwhelmed. Either way, it makes it very hard for each member to keep their steam from the last boss. This can be an issue with low end guilds on progression content, where it’s very possible to clear several bosses for the first time in one night. Because of that fact, the RL needs to be prepared to give the explanation of the new boss. This is where the elevator pitch comes in.

In business, the Elevator Pitch is a 30-60 second synopsis that covers the major issues of your product/idea so that you could deliver it to a super important person in an elevator, as that’s probably the most time you’ll be captive with a bigwig at any given point in your life. However, it’s a tool that people use to give a quick idea to consumers as well. It’s streamlined presentation makes it much easier for the audience to follow than rambling on about this or that or repeating yourself. Use this tool to explain new boss fights, and practice it! I know it sounds extreme (I am not going to practice a speech, it’s a game), but if you’re reading this blog, you either have the spare time to practice your speech or you care enough to put a little extra effort into your game.

Here’s my Elevator pitch for the Twins fight in ToC.
There are two portals, light and dark. Each portal gives you an aura that absorbs it’s own color and takes damage from the opposite color. DPS the twin opposite the color you’re using. Throughout the fight, orbs will appear and orbs of your color give you a buff and orbs of the opposite color hurt – pick these up for a nice damage boost. The twins have two abilities – vortex and twins pact. If a twin starts casting a vortex, everyone in the raid must change to that twin’s color – if light casts it, everyone get light. If dark casts it, everyone get dark. The other ability is twins pact. When this is cast, everyone needs to focus fire on the twin with the shield until the shield drops, then pop interrupts. Raid damage is constant, so healers on the ball. The twins share health, so it doesn’t matter which you attack, as long as it’s either opposite color or casting twins pact.

Sure, it doesn’t explain every nuiance of the fight and some of the concepts are not covered fully. But the general idea is still there – DPS opposite twin, focus on twins pact, heal the raid, change to the vortex color. Give it a shot and if you fail, no biggie, you can give a more detailed explanation while people buff up and such. But this gives you a chance to keep your momentum. A quick wipe is actually faster than a 5 minute explanation.

And who knows, maybe you’ll actually become better at public speaking by practicing an elevator pitch. Without it, a long explanation might end with someone in the whelp cave.

The Exiles

2009-10-16T10:52:00.004-04:00

This weekend, I will be attending a LARP called "The Exiles." The game is based somewhat on Deadlands, inasmuch as it is a wester/steampunk/horror type setting. This game is a rush. It's finishing it's 4th year now, and while it's a small game, it proves to push the boundaries of what can be done in a LARP.

First off, most LARPs are high fantasy, so Exiles is a nice change in pace to the typical LOTR, D&D, Conan, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser type game. Common class roles are Gunslinger, Trapper, Doctor, and Gentleman, just like any good western. And just from the names, you can probably guess what each class can do with the right training.

Another amazing point of the game is how lethal it is. In a lot of LARPs, there are "resurrections" with chances at permanent death. In exiles, when you're dead, you're dead. But not all is lost when you die, and I'll explain that further down. It gives a gritty feel to the game, where people will actually think before leaping, because every action can be your last.

The Guns we use are rubber band guns. Right now, you're thinking "Rubber Band guns are lame. You should use nerf guns or something else." We all thought the same thing before we played the game. Fact of the matter is, melee combat using boffer weapons is a part of the game as well, and using rubber band guns with poor range and reliability actually makes a knife fighter a viable part of the game. But if you get inside the accurate zone of a pistol (about 8 feet), someone will hit you, so a decent balance exists between the two.

Finally, there's the hidden information in the game. Everyone has a learnin' bank that represents all the experience they've earned on all their characters. That bank learnin' can be used to buy hidden skills or play hidden classes when you've amassed enough. That way, you could play a different character each event and after a year you could play a hidden class, so not all is lost. Many of the hidden classes are known, but the extent of their powers are only really revealed to the people who played them.

Exiles is a ton of fun. If you're in the Ohio/Northern Kentucky/Western PA/Northern West Virginia area, you should come out and give it a shot. Costume is easy, attendence is inexpensive ($35 for the weekend) and food is included. Check out the website or just show up for a good time. Just bring boots, jeans, a button down shirt, vest, hat, and a sleeping bag, and you're all set.

And I'll leave you with a clip taken from the game (actual events, not staged). I love this game.

Robe or Reverse Robe?

2009-10-14T21:41:00.001-04:00

I had stepped away from WoW for about a month, but the release of patch 3.2.2 with the massive changes in how Arcane played brought me back in. The problem is, a month off can seem like an eternity in game. I have to catch back up with my guild as far as gear goes. The way I plan to catch up is to snag myself these two crafted gems: Merlin's Robe and Bejeweled Wizard's Bracers.

Vene always made quick insightful posts about gearing up, even when it came to bags. Looking at both of these items, you will definitely get your money's worth working up to get them. As an Arcane mage, these items are amazing. Lots of Haste, low on hit. Just what you need. You can probably find the recipes on the AH (or find a tailor in trade) and then it's just a matter of amassing the materials needed.

And if you don't like the way it looks, you can always wear Merlin's Robe backwards to get this.

State of the Blog

2009-10-13T17:56:00.005-04:00

In case anyone hasn't noticed, the blog has been very quiet over the last week and a half. There are three reasons for this.

1. I got married. Call me a sucker, but something about a beautiful woman in white controlling everything I now say or do (like she didn't before) makes me happy. Mucho time was dedicated to keeping her from hyperventilating pre-wedding and thus was the biggest reason for my absence.

2. WoW patch 3.2.2 put the crack back in World of Warcrack. My Mage's DPS is higher than ever as arcane spec and we've been raiding a lot more consistently which makes me a happy (and if I ever get rid of this tunic, well dressed) blood elf. With working 8 to 5:30 and raiding at 7, not much time for blogging.

3. Content gaps in Champions are dreadful. I hit said content gaps on both of my main toons, and I would be able to grind through it, were it not for points 1 and 2.

For these three reasons, I have decided to revamp the content for the blog. I've had a lot I've wanted to write about that was not necessarily Champions related, so I could get more content if I made it a general gaming/writing blog. I will still be writing about champions online, but I'll also have posts associated with other computer games, LARP, writing or fiction. I hope everyone enjoys what is in store in the new blog, The Gaming Diaries.

The Basics of Tanking in CO

2009-10-02T21:01:00.002-04:00

Tanking in Champions Online is very different from tanking in World of Warcraft. Most of this has to do with the way the designers made Champions less like the holy trinity (Tank, Healer, DPS), and made everyone random. However, a lot of it has to do with the unavailability of information on how threat works in this game.

The trick is not to compare it to World of Warcraft now, but to Vanilla World of Warcraft. Here are a few tips to keep you in charge of threat in this game.

Step 1: Heal Yourself
The threat caused by healing right now is through the roof. The best way to exploit that is to grab yourself a powerful heal and use it. I'm not saying you should always heal yourself, but start off the fight with some strong agro from a self heal like Bionic Shielding, Resurgence, or Psychic Healing. Don't rely on Mindful Reinforcement because it's heal doesn't generate threat (and it's getting fixed anyways).

Step 2: Use the Protector Role
I know it doesn't appear to do much, but the protector role can save your life. Besides, the biggest benefit is the phat energy you get from blocking. The threat boost is unknown, but it couldn't hurt, right?

Step 3: Use a Proper Defensive Slotted Power
Don't use Regeneration or Personal Force Field if you're tanking. Regen doesn't respond well to big hits and PFF folds in less than three seconds flat. Invulnerability, Lightning Reflexes, and even Defiance are suitable for tanking.

Step 4: Use your Challenging Strikes Power Liberally
Challenging Strikes is a 1 point advantage you can pick up for many AoE powers. It adds a flat amount of threat (determined by level, not by Presence as I once thought) to that attack every 5 seconds. This should be a power with decent damage, so you can keep using it even if the threat bonus is recharging.

Step 5: Use Crippling Challenge Sparingly
Crippling Challenge is a taunt ability with a 10 second recharge time. Use it if a big mob is pounding one of your guys, rather than leading with it. If you are on the last guy, you can weave it in for the damage mitigation, but saving another player is more important than making it easy on yourself.

Step 6: Become a Blocking Guru
Get a block power and rank it up. You will be spending probably half your time using this block, and the difference between no block and a rank 3 block is huge. Block specials, block when you're getting low on health/energy, and learn the hand movements of bosses for holds that don't show an icon over their head (I'm looking at you Poe).

Step 7: Be a Leader
This is the biggest part of tanking. Remind everyone that they need to wait for you to get threat, 10 seconds should work pretty well. Keep the pace of the instance. Heal yourself as much as possible to hold threat, but don't be afraid to heal others. Remind everyone that they have a block button, and should they pull threat they should hold it until the bad guy stops beating on them.

Things aren't going to be perfect, but if you do everything you can to survive and have your team waiting for two sunders (lol), you should do fine.

Devs Pls Respond! - 7 Helpful Tips for Getting a Positive Forum Response

2009-10-01T22:15:00.002-04:00

Since Champions Online is still a new game, there are very few resources out there to get information. I've made it very clear that I tend to read the forums. When I do, I stick with the Combat and Powers forum, because it has a lot of great information in the game and helps people think about things that haven't been done before.

But it is just as much win as it is whine. And the problem is that it becomes very difficult to discern the good from the bad, even for a Developer/Community Leader standpoint. It's got to the point that Goryus posted a thread about the uselessness of the forum, since Dev's don't respond.

Daeke got involved and put a stop to that and started doing a (not quite) automated response saying "I got it, stop yelling." So we know they're out there. Here are a few tricks in order to get Daeke (and the other CLs) to extract your posts from the noise floor.

1. Do a Search for your Topic
Someone may have already hit the nail on the head in another post that got buried 3 pages back. By responding to that post you not only bring it back to the front, but you add ammunition as another witness to what's happening.

2. Be Clear and Concise
If you have a true concern, write the statement clearly and be to the point. Talk about how a power is not working or overworked. Don't tell us how many games of BASH you won with that one skill, don't tell us how many people use it in duals, don't tell us how you are going to quit the game if we don't deal with it. If it's just the facts, it's easier for people to respond intelligently rather than them flaming you and telling you "Pics or it didn't happen."

3. If you Have a Suggested Fix, Wait to Post It.
This may seem counter intuitive, but this way others can see your bug and test it and report. If they don't see the same thing, maybe your travel power was on, maybe something was unequipped, etc. Better yet, if someone comes up with the same fix, then it's two independent people who came up with it. Much more power (even though you won't have credit should they use the fix). You want a better game, not a bigger f-peen (the F is for forum, you animals).

4. Avoid Immediate Bumping
Stuff gets lost when the forum updates faster than people TP out of holds in PvP. If it's been 10 minutes and no one has responded, give it a second. Wait at least an hour and say something intelligent like "I didn't see any other posts on this and it may have been lost in the noise. Has anyone seen this?" instead of "I GUESS I'M THE ONLY ONE THAT WANTS THIS SKILL FIXT LOL." Once people get used to searching, this should be less of a problem.

5. Avoid Ad Hominim Attacks
Trolls live under bridges, but there's nothing to do down there. They will inevitably rise up and visit your thread. Don't get smarmy, don't get angry, just ignore them. They are complete attention whores, so ignoring them is the best thing you can do. And if your original post was kind of smarmy, it's kind of justified for them to come back at you. Remember, it's the internet and odds are good the other guy lives in his parent's basement.

6. Compare Situations Intelligently
In this game, you need to use 'like' powers to give credence to scaling. Do not say Circle of Primal Dominion is fine because the rest of the set is trash, because everyone can cherry pick. Don't say Ego Blade Breach is better than Reaper's Caress because they're not in the same tier. Don't say Gauntlet Chainsaw is all around better than Beatdown because Gauntlet Chainsaw costs way more energy. Just keep everything in perspective.

7. Be Thankful
If your thread becomes a positive environment for people to post input on a power/power set, thank everyone for reading and contributing. It keeps trolls away and makes everyone involved feel better. You can bet that Daeke will be more likely to read your next post if he actually feels invigorated by your last thread that had 50+ responses, rather than wanting to turn the computer off and go outside to keep him from slamming his head into the keyboard.

If you stick with these 7 tips, you may see some positive actions taken to improve CO, and you'll avoid being one of those people who post "OMG I'M QUITTING EVERYONE CRY NOW."

Ode to the Forum 2

2009-09-30T19:02:00.005-04:00

Megan at Out of Mana use to do a segment called "New Rules" that was adapted from Real Time with Bill Maher. While I think the latter is a complete hack, the former was one of the most influential bloggers/writers until she quit blogging.

After venting on the last post "Ode to the Forum", I've decided I'm going to make it a regular installment in this blog, to talk about all the redunkulous things that people should be shot over.

Without further ado, Ode To The Forum!

1. No One Cares if you're Quitting
I understand if you don't find the game fun or worthwhile. It's your money, so it's your prerogative. But you don't have to get the most from your money by finishing your subscription by posting in forums for 10 days. Try doing something constructive like reading a book, going outside, or even brushing your teeth. Hygiene will be important in the next grindstorm MMO you play.

2. You can't Hide From the Whambulance.
If you post 1000 dissertation on how badly you got beat by X power in BASH or how Y used with Z causes your brain to bleed and you to lose bladder control, but end your tirade with "I don't want them to nerf the power, I just want other powers to be buffed" you sir, are a complete liar. The same goes for the people who say that we should focus on making themed builds better by [insert statement which gives great power to the poster]. I've said it before, your theme is no more justified than the guy who's trying to make Grimace a Champion.

3. USE THE SEARCH FUNCTION
If I see another "Definitive" Munitions guide, a question about gadgeteer "On Next Hit" powers, or one more person post that Int is better than End because of some mystical magical secret, I'm going to burn out my retina. If you can't spend the two damn seconds it takes to search for your answer, how can I expect you to have the patience and brainpower to handle what I have to say.

I hate stupid people.

Maintains and TGMP

2009-09-29T19:53:00.004-04:00

Protip: Toggles are abilities that you hit once and automatically run. As a default setting, your energy builder is set to be a toggle that resets when you target a new enemy. You may have noticed at times that certain chain abilities

In other news, The Two-Gun Mojo Project is moving along nicely. I'm through early Canada and had no problems soloing any content with only Two-Gun Mojo as my only real damage power. Here's how he sits at level 13.

Super Stats: Dex, Ego
Talents: +8 Dex, +5 Dex/+5 Ego, +8 Ego

Level 1: Gunslinger, Two-Gun Mojo
Level 5: Killer Instinct, Acrobatics (Versatility)
Level 8: Regeneration (Rank 2)
Level 11: Retaliation

The Two-Gun Mojo Project

2009-09-28T19:13:00.001-04:00

Every time Cryptic nerfs some overpower skill, people are outraged. In fact, a whole bunch of them are so angry that they post long tirades about how they're quitting the game and everyone should be sad that they're doing it. People flame them and inevitably it turns into a thread about Aion. (SEE YOU IN AION. ZOMG NO YOU WON'T LOL)

Let's get one thing straight. Skills like the pre-nerf Mini Mines are cheating, plain and simple.
When you can go through the whole game with little to no fear of death, even in the face of overwhelming odds, you're cheating. Many people said their characters were unplayable afterward, but those people just don't know how to play. They tend to cling to statements like "I ONLY USED THEM OCCASIONALLY" or "I COULDN'T KILL A WHOLE GROUP WITH THEM LOL." Some of them actually mean it. Of course, these were the people who used god mode in Doom and still fell in a pit and couldn't beat the level.

Ultimately, this game is totally easy without those powers, and I'm going to prove it. I'm going to make a character that gets through the game without a single AoE or OP attack power. I'm going to call it the Two-Gun Mojo Project, and here are the rules.

1. Do not use any AoE powers. If you pick up a single power with an advantage to make it AoE, do not get the advantage.

2. Stick with the theme. I will be playing a character based off of Trigun, so he's going to stick with pistols for attacks. I can pick up skills outside the power set, as long as they don't visibly affect the character (Retaliation, Regeneration, Etc).

3. All multi-player quests, with the exception of 5 man instances, will be solo'd. The only grouping will be done on camped quest targets, so I'm not a complete jerk.

4. I will be using Acrobatics as a travel power, because it's way more interesting.

I will keep everyone up-to-date with the current status of the Project, so if you're looking to see how it's going, simply look for the label "TGMP."

Telepathy 101

2009-09-25T21:49:00.007-04:00

The 101 series is a short information segment providing some in-game information on some of the starter tier skills for various power sets. This will give a little insight into use early character building so people don't get stuck rerolling due to high retcon prices.

Suggested Role
The Telepathy tree has a lot of healing and party abilities, that makes it a perfect tree for a support character. Don't be fooled though, as many of the skills have the ability to do amazing damage.

Suggested Super Stats
Due to the high amount of healing in the tree, Presence is a definite super stat. The second superstat you choose depends on how you want to play your character. If you want to tank, pick Constitution. If you want to DPS, pick endurance. If you want to support, pick recovery. Key secondary stats are Recovery and Endurance with a touch of Constitution.

Primary Stats: Presence and Recovery, Endurance, or Constitution
Secondary Stats: Recovery, Endurance, and Constitution

Powers
Psi Lash - Energy Builder
This is a mediocre energy builder, but if you plan on taking a lot telepathic attacks, the Psychic Reverberations Advantage gives a 15% chance to reduce their Ego resistance significantly.
Pros: Ranged, decent speed
Cons: Low damage, doesn't buff out-of-set damage
Result: 4/5 Excellent energy builder for a Telepath, but I wouldn't grab it out of set.

Ego Blast - Basic Ranged Attack
Ego Blast is a standard charge attack that does decent damage and applies a weak hold to the target.
Pros: Long Range, Additional Hold
Con: Weak Hold (0.75), 2.5 seconds for full charge.
Result: 3/5 This is a very solid power, which makes it one of the best "No Requirement" powers in the game.
Note: Mind Opener advantage is somewhat useless since each rank increases damage by 20% continuously instead of 30% while Telepathic Reverberation is up.

Ego Sprites - Tier 1 Close Area Attack
Ego Sprites puts a DoT on the 5 closest enemies within a 25 ft. sphere. Good damage with the possibility of minor healing with the Slave Mentality Advantage.
Pro: Low Energy PBAoE, works well with Telepathic Reverberation, Fire-and-Forget
Con: Short range, max of 5 targets, DoT damage prevents spamming
Result: 3/5 This skill used to be broken so the healing it would do was massive. Now the heal is kind of small, but the damage is still pretty decent.
Note: You only get health from Slave Mentality if the enemy isn't dead after 10 seconds. Might be more worthwhile to get Rank 3, since this power set has other powers for healing.

Empathic Healing - Tier 1 Healing
Empathic Healing allows you to maintain a high amount of healing for a reasonable amount of energy. However, damage interrupts this skill.
Pro: Good healing, low energy
Con: Easily Interrupted
Result: 3/5 This skill is too easily interrupted to use consistantly at low level. If you have a tank friend who's great at holding threat, you'll see more out of this skill. Pass on this now and pick it up later for a heavy healing build.

Telepathic Reverberation - Tier 1 Self Buff
This power used to be broken. Now it is amazing and is a required power for tanking/DPSing with a Telepathy Build. It provides energy whenever you hold or attack a held enemy.
Pro: Great source of energy, works on DoT ticks on held targets
Con: Takes a second for the animation to deliver energy.
Result: 5/5 If you're playing primarily Telepathy, this skill is a must. Get it once you have consistant holds, like Ego Storm.

Ego Sleep - Tier 1 Crowd Control
This skill will hold the target when tapped, and hold the target and nearby enemies when maintained. While the hold is powerful, it's also broken on damage, so this is not so useful for PvE. In PvP, however, it could find a niche.
Pro: Strong Hold (2.2), Low Energy Cost
Con: Breaks on Damage
Rating: 2/5 Since it breaks on damage, it's practically useless for PvE.
Note: With the Advantage that causes fear, this could be a nice tap hold to enable summoning or locking down healers. I would rate it higher if I did PvP.

Ego Placate - Tier 1 Crowd Control
This attack "Placates" the enemy (it won't attack you) until it's damaged. It also reduces the amount of damage the enemy does and can reduce the enemy's resistance with the Svengali's Guile Advantage.
Pro: Low energy cost, decent debuff with Advantage
Con: Breaks on damage.
Result: 2/5 If content was harder, this would be a good utility like Walock Curse of Elements in WoW. However, it's just a poor hold that only works in PvE.
Note: If raiding became like WoW, at least 1 person in each raid would be required to have this ability to reduce tank damage and debuff resistance. Don't hold your breath (or this skill) waiting for that to happen.

Summary
The Telepathy set can easily fit into any of the roles, but since it has the most heals available out of all classes, it probably acts best as a support role. The early tier powers may seem somewhat underwhelming, but the higher tier powers like Ego Storm and Collective Will make the early levels worth getting though.

Level 1: Psi Lash, Ego Blast
Level 5: Ego Sprites
Level 8: Summon Nightmare
Level 11: Regeneration or Psionic Healing
Level 14: Psionic Healing or Ego Storm

My Milkshake Brings All the Villians to the Yard

2009-09-24T20:25:00.001-04:00

So I'm a dude. In MMORPGs, for the most part, I play dude characters. As much as I'd rather be looking at the backside of a sleek, sexy femme fetale rather than a huge man-mountain like Hulk, I would just rather avoid situations like these (thanks for the laugh Jong and Syrana).

I decided to delve into the world of transgender heroism and make a female tanking character that ended up looking like Mila Jovavich from Resident evil (so much that I might have to take Two Gun Mojo). In order to do that, I went to make a custom body, and WHAM, my jaw dropped to the floor.

The Breast slider was at full. WTF? I just made a custom character, and Cryptic decided female superheroes have huge jugs. I like boobs as much as the next guy (apparently not). I just want my ladies to look tasteful.

Checked some of the custom sliders and found out that 3 of the 8 typical builds (Vixen, Stretchy, and Slim) all fill out the breast slider completely. In the rest of the builds, the slider doesn't go below half way. Great for ladies' self image, eh. Here's news for you Cryptic: your female audience, while not the majority, probably doesn't pack a tiny waist and triple D's. Way to make them feel inadequate.

I understand the need to limit the size (which might be why it's maxed out), but at least make the template characters a little more well rounded. If someone only used the template builds, they may end up thinking the goal of the game is to boob badguys to death.

Do Unto Others

2009-09-23T19:13:00.000-04:00

At it's very heart, Champions Online is a game designed to be PvE (Player vs. Environment). However, it's becoming increasingly clear that many of the balancing issues in the game seem to be coming from the PvP side of the show. Why would Cryptic use less than 2% of the intended gameplay (Hero Games) in order to pick which skills are too powerful and which aren't powerful enough, if PvE is the focus?

To put it bluntly, the environment doesn't QQ.

It's been made clear in other posts that the development team is rather small for the game, thus it's very difficult to them to keep their eyes in the game. There's almost no forum moderation, contact with an actual GM is less frequent than Haley's Comet, and certain skills demolish content. The goal is to identify the most overpowered skills without using a lot of labor.

So Cryptic let's everyone else do the work for them. The best theorycrafters/PvP players make the broken builds and the "I play to fit my theme" characters whine and whine on the forum. I don't blame them. It's their role in the great cosmic play that is "Game Balancing."

I used to play a ton of street hockey growing up. When we did, there was this one kid who always used to cherry pick the net in shoes while the rest of us played normal hockey on roller blades. Of course, the solution was for someone else to take off their skates and do the exact same thing back to him, and turned into his own superhero, Indignant Man!

Everyone knows someone who at one point or another turned into Indignant Man. Nobody likes this superhero. Does Superman get all whinny whenever someone pulls some cryptonite shit on him? Hell no, he finds a way to beat their ass normal style, and when the Cryptonite is gone, he beats them Super Style.

Next time some balancing happens to your skill, even if you don't PvP, think back and say "How would I feel if someone used the skill on me?" As the old adage goes, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Whining that someone is dominating you at PvP is important - it let's the devs know what is really broken. But if they just nerfed your skill and you're saying your class is unplayable, check your shirt. You might be Indignant Man.

Ode to the Forum

2009-09-22T19:47:00.004-04:00

In ancient Rome, the Forum was a public space used as tool for citizens to gather socially. They would host debates, festivals, meetings and discussions of all shapes and colors. In modern times, we do a great service to the idea of the forum, via the internet. In these forums people can post quickly with nigh anonymity, giving slightly less credence to the concept.

In true fashion of the freedom of ideas and freedom of speech that the Roman Forums provided (as long as you don't hate on the emperor or promote Christianity), I give you this Ode to the Champions Online Forum.

I don't care about your Munitions/Darkness/Telepathy build. You haven't tried any of the skills and you want my input?

I don't care that you think TP is too powerful and the nerf to Mini Mines was too strong, just because you use one and don't use the other. You still keyboard turn in PvP.

I don't care if you build a teddy bear character and get angry that you "have" to pick up a defensive power. You'll still fail because you'll take PFF or LR without Dex.

I don't care that your character is "unplayable" because they nerfed one of your powers. Good thing you have 14 to choose from at 40.

PvP did not ruin your PvE. PvP may have brought to light that you were OP against AI characters. Guess what, henchmen can't post on the PTR forum.

You can't have a FOTM build when the game has not been out for one month. Just because your "theme" character sucks doesn't make me a power gamer. Maybe you should make a character who's theme is "doesn't suck" next time.

If you have to ask which passive to pick up, get regeneration. If you have to ask which block to pick up, grab Force Shield. If you have to ask "Which is the best power", go die in a fire.

When a power holds an enemy indefinitely, it's overpowered. If you need that hold to win, try playing with both hands.

If you think your character is useless now, and you haven't changed your powers around, it's probably not your character. It's the player.

Cryptic ruined your theme character? That's probably true, assuming you were playing "Pyreman" or "Mini Mine-atron". Also, ironically enough, your themed character "The Pacifist" can't do any quests because he refuses to fight people. Buff Pacifism!

That is all.

Kick, Punch, Block

2009-09-21T21:43:00.006-04:00

Seriously, I had to be the only person I knew growing up that could play Parappa the Rappa for hours on the old Playstation. That was before games sold out for bigger and better things, like the full three dimensions.

I remember the very first level was in a dojo with Chop Chop Master Onion. Way too intense for the first level. He had a friggin' onion for a head (you could tell because of the stink lines).
He wanted to teach Parappa how to rap, which inevitably involved various martial arts moves that had nothing to do with rapping at all. In fact, none of the levels had anything to do with rapping.

I feel like we could all use a lesson from Chop Chop Master Onion.

Watch the video yet? He blocks about as often as you should in Champions. I'm not talking about tanking, I'm talking about Soloing, doing instances, fighting cosmics as DPS or support, or PvP. Blocking is a huge skill in this game, but because it's a new concept to an MMORPG, people often breeze over the second quest in the game where it teaches you to block. Even more than blocking, everyone should pick up a block enhancer power.

Here are some numbers from the blue laser on a fully Retconned character with no gear. That means all stats are 0.

No Block - 868
Normal Block - 289 (66% blocked)
Rank 1 Force Shield - 248 (71% blocked)
Rank 2 Force Shield - 217 (75% blocked)
Rank 3 Force Shield - 189 (78% blocked)

I know, it might not seem like a big improvement going from normal block to Rank 3 Force Shield, but let's look in terms of damage taken instead of damage blocked.

189/289 = 0.654

That's right, you'll take almost 33% less damage with Rank 3 Force Shield than with a normal block. So do yourself a favor, pick up a block enhancer, rank it up, and block with pride!

And do yourself a bigger favor, and go play some Parappa the Rappa!

The Powerhouse and You

2009-09-18T23:32:00.014-04:00

As you may already know, the powerhouse is the first spot you hit whenever you get a new level. This is the place where you purchase all of your talents, powers, and advantages. But did you know about all the neat things you can do there?

Currently, a lot of powers and advantages don't... exactly work. However, the powerhouse gives you a chance to test out most of your powers so you can tell if something is working the way it's supposed to. Remember, just because the tooltip says what something does, doesn't mean it actually works!

This is the main room, which you are probably familiar with. If not, these are the trainers that teach you your new skills. But once you buy something, don't be quick to rush off back to fighting villians. Make sure you take some time to test your new skills. Retcons of new skills are free until you leave the powerhouse.

Now there are four different rooms you can peruse in the powerhouse. Straight ahead is the travel room, where you can test your new travel powers. The room to the left is the stationary/grouped dummy test room. The room to the right is the mobile dummy test room, and if you go further down that hall, you can test your resistances in the laser room.

This is the travel room. As you can see, it's quite tall. The idea is that you can become

comfortable with your travel powers to make sure you made the right decision. The platforms and such are for testing powers like acrobatics and Super Jump, but in all hone

sty it won't prepare you for what those skills are really like.

While it's intended for travel powers, it has the benefit of almost no interaction with others. Here you can test stationary skill, pets, etc against crates without other people messing up your

attacks.

This is the stationary and grouped dummy room. Here is where you're going to run into the most people and you may need to transfer to a different server if there's too many people there.

The dummies give you a chance to generate energy and to use high power attacks, as well as see how certain powers work on "living" beings in groups. If you plan on doing any kind of combo

with powers, test it here. Even if it seems like it works or works with like powers, it may not work. A perfect example is that si

ngle blade bleeds don't work with Devour Essence, even though supernatural ones work. Just test it to be sure.

This is the laser room. This is the place where you test new defenses that you may have obtained, and see what kind of damage you can take. There are 4 different lasers that do consistent damage before resistance.

Red Beam - 108 Damage

Yellow Beam - 217 Damage

Green Beam - 434 Damage

Blue Beam - 868 Damage

The problem with testing healing skills here is that you're not in combat. Because of that, you're going to have to use your combat log. Protip: Right Click on "Combat Log" and deselect "Combat (Other)" in order to only show you and your team's combat information.

The final room is the mobile dummy room. There's not much to this room for PvE, but for PvP it can help test holds/stunlocks. The other nice thing about this room is that it has a lot less people than the stationary/group room.

Next time you're in the Powerhouse, try out some of the rooms you haven't used before. That might help you see if a power will end up a lemon before you actually have to pay to retcon it!

The Math Behind the Numbers: Part 2

2009-09-17T21:36:00.011-04:00

I've decided to do a summary of the Math Behind the Numbers thread, because going through over 140 posts about stats can be somewhat... tedious. Here's a follow up to Part 1 with the benefits as have been solved so far, as well as some additional information.

Modifiers in Bold are not level dependent
Modifiers in Italics are not solved yet

Strength:
Knockback Power = Strength
Knockback Resistance = Strength
Tangible Hold Break Strength (Level Dependent)

Dexterity:
Crit Rate (Level Dependent)*
Agression Stealth Chance (Level Dependent)

Constitution:
10 Health Points = 1 Constitution (assuming it is actually 1.0 Constitution)

Intelligence:
Power Recharge Rate Bonus = Intelligence / 667
Power Cost Reduction (Level Dependent)*
Stealth Sight (Level Dependent)

Ego:
Crit Severity = 20*(Ego/Level)
Intangible Breakhold Strength (Level Dependent)

Presence:
Threat Bonus (Defensive) = Presence / 10
Threat Reduction (Other) = Presence / 5

Recovery:
Equilibrium = 33 + 5*(Recovery/7)
Energy Strength (Level Dependent)

Endurance:
Max Energy = 100+Endurance

*Both Crit Rating and Power Cost Reduction have a threshold to break before you see any returns.

So what does all this mean?
Well, it shows us that some stats require very little investment to see a large return, regardless of level (Health Points from Constitution and Energy Points from Endurance). Some stats require a certain amount of investment to see returns, but you'll have to keep boosting those stats to have the same returns at a higher level. And in order to get either Crit Rate or Power Cost Reduction, you need a very large investment, making these stats prime choices for super stats. I will update these equations periodically when new solutions are given.

The Math Behind the Numbers: Part 1

2009-09-16T18:57:00.011-04:00

I live for the numbers in games. Have you ever played the board game Shadows Over Camelot? That game is practically impossible to win, but there is a way that we found out. You have to use 4 specific characters and they all have to do very specific things, but that actually gives you a fighting chance. Whenever I played WoW, I became a big time theory crafter and strived to understand every stat and how it applied to every class. It's just how I operate, I'm a engineer.

It's a lot harder to get the same information for Champions due to it's free flowing character generation, but the biggest hit is the lack of a community running the numbers. WoW took a while to get that community, but now they have tons of excellent sources like http://www.elitistjerks.com/, http://www.tankspot.com/, http://www.magecraft.com/, and a handful of bloggers, giving insights to players interested in all levels of understanding for everyone, from layman to physisist. Champions, as a young game, doesn't have the same benefit of 5 years and 11 million players, so good luck digging up what you need.

And I believe that's why Agathorn, started this thread on the Champions Online forum. It's a place for people to give their current level, stats, and tooltips for the stats showing how they benefit the player. It's giving a lot of insight into what stat effects scale with level, which ones have a threshold to break, and helps us choose what super stats would affect our play the most. It also gave the insight for my post about how items have non-integer stat values.

Props to Agathorn and everyone else striving for this data. And if you haven't visited yet, take some time to give them your stats so we can nail down some of these equations!

I Wouldn’t Worry About That Little Guy.

2009-09-15T12:24:00.015-04:00

Unlike some MMORPGs out there, Champions Online works with very little RNG. Damage dealt often doesn’t stray far from the average, damage received is pretty stable (before resistances), an martial arts will always suck. However, there are still some strange occurrences (read: bugs) that pop up from time to time when adding all our stats together. What's going on?

Let's take a look at our 8th president.

Little known fact: Martin Van Buren's chops once roundhouse kicked Chuck Norris in the face

Notice something weird? Even though each point of Constitution adds 10 hitpoints, his constitution after gear provides him with 3 health points less than expected.
Turns out, Champions Online hates RNG so much, they do all their calculations out to like 4 decimal places. When I say all, I mean all. They even use decimals when generating stats on gear. We only see it when looking at Con, but it’s done for all stats. That’s why 1+1 sometimes equals 3 on the character portrait.
So if you want to min-max and get every little bit of a stat as you can and two pieces have the same benefits, pick the one with the higher level. That little guy after the decimal point might be higher.

Munitions 101

2009-09-14T23:33:00.009-04:00

Suggested Role

Munitions does very excellent DPS, but requires high crit in order for some of the skills to function. For that reason, they're usually picking Dexterity and Ego as their two super stats, which makes tanking or healing very difficult.

Suggested Super Stats

As mentioned before, Dexterity and Ego are important for damage dealing using the munitions powerset. Killer Instinct and Holdout Shout function very well with critical strikes, so focusing on that is going to give you the biggest bang for your buck. After that, Constitution will help you stay alive and presence will help keep you from pulling threat. This power set doesn't have a defensive skill, so if you pick regeneration, you may also want to get a decent amount of recovery.

Primary Stats: Dexterity, Ego

Secondary Stats: Constitution and Presence

Powers

Gunslinger - Energy Builder

This power is pretty subpar as far as energy builders go. It's relatively slow and doesn't generate more energy to compensate. However, Munitions has a lot of power replacers, so you can see some benefit from that.

Pro - Affected by power replacers.

Con - Low damage, slow speed, low energy.

Rating - 2/5 If possible, use a different energy builder. The saving grace is that you won't need it too often.

Two Gun Mojo - Basic Ranged Attack

This power is a run of the mill, channeled attack. The damage is pretty decent, and it provides a stack of enrage if fully maintained.

Pro - Low Energy Cost, Enrage

Con - Single Target, Advantage doesn't work

Result - 3/5 This power isn't too bad, and if you're playing a pistol-themed character, this is a must have.

Assault Rifle - Tier 1 Ranged Attack

While it may seem like the damage on this ability is good, it has a very high energy cost and doesn't often get maintained to see max damage.

Pro - Good damage

Con - High Energy cost, 6 second Cooldown, must be fully maintained for best results

Result - 3/5 Honestly, I don't care for this power. I prefer shotgun and submachine gun (I like bleeds). But it does very solid damage.

Submachinegun Burst - Tier 1 Ranged Area Attack

This skill provides a cone attack, but damage is reduces as number of targets increases. Low cost and decent damage make this good for single or group fights.

Pro - Low Energy Cost, AoE Damage

Con - Less effective in large groups

Result - 3/5 This is a decent power, especially if you want more bleed attacks

Note - The Advantage "Aggression" adds a 15% chance of bleed, which makes it the only AoE bleed.

Shotgun Blast - Tier 1 Ranged Area Attack

This is probably the best Tier 1 skill and the reason you should take Gunslinger. You can compliment 2GM with an AoE attack with knockback.

Pro - Low Energy Cost, AoE attack, Knockback

Con - Very small cone angle (30 degrees)

Result - 4/5 This is a must have skill for almost any build in PvP, and you get it inside your framework. Pick this up.

Holdout Shot - Tier 1 Ranged Attack

This skill is a classic in the pulp genre, but as a last ditch effort, it's pretty lackluster. Most effective when you have low energy, which shouldn't happen enough.

Pro - Good Damage (below 5% energy), Low Energy Cost, Looks great

Con - Long Cooldown, Poor damage (above 5% energy)

Rating - 2/5 Even with the "Stim-Pack" Advantage heal, this skill is lackluster. Pick it up for the theme.

Killer Instinct - Tier 1 Passive Energy Regen

This skill returns energy whenever any Munitions power crits. If you picked Dexterity/Ego, the crits will be often and the energy will be higher.

Pro - Excellent Energy Return, doesn't require a slot.

Con - Only works with Munitions powers, only procs every 4 seconds.

Result - 4/5 If you're staying in the framework, this is a great power. It compensates for the low Endurance/Recovery you will have with a Dexterity/Ego Build.

Summary

The Munitions power set provides a lot of good AoE damage, and at higher Tiers provides strong single target damage. It plays very well with the Dexterity/Ego combo (arguably the highest dps super stat combo), which makes it one of the strongest damage sets, pound for pound.

Suggested Powers:

Level 1: Gunslinger, Two Gun Mojo

Level 5: Shotgun Blast

Level 8: Killer Instinct

Level 11: Mini-Mines, Regeneration, Gatling Gun

Using the Market

2009-09-11T13:55:00.005-04:00

Most MMORPGs have some form of public trading facility (a place where people can post goods and purchase items from other people). Champions online has this, but it operates differently than many other MMOs. Here are some tips to using the Market in Champions.

- Auctions never "Expire." If you post something, it'll remain there until it's bought or the auction is cancelled. Is your bank full? Use the Market instead! This of course only works for bound items.

- You can't look further than 100 items. This means you may need to narrow your search a little bit more to find good deals. Set the level range from x to x and pick each individual slot to see the most results.

- Due to the other two points, competition is going to be fierce. If you post an item, people may not even see it unless they search for it by name. If you need money soon, sell it to a vendor instead.

- Materials are available. Do you need to make some items? Check out the materials section. Since people skill up by researching items, you can often buy a lot of mats cheap because power leveling a craft may leave people with excess mats.

There are some serious issues with the AH, and eventually there will be too many posts and nothing will sell. By then, Cryptic will hopefully found a way to implement a little more control over the Market.

Edit 10/16/09: There are still some series issues with the market, but at least you can now view more than the first 100 items, so at least you can dig for items, but it will take a long time to get through all of them, because they still don't time out.

Picking Your Super Stats

2009-09-10T16:25:00.006-04:00

There's some confusion on how super stats work, so here's a little clarity.

No matter what super stats you pick, stack them as high as possible.

Almost all of your damage comes from your super stats simply because they are your super stat. Sure, some of the stats give a little benefit, but the flavor of the game is that you could have a high intelligence/high presence might character and you'll still do ok.

That being said, here are the basic benefits of each stat.

Strength - Melee damage (up to +20%), knockback resistance, physical hold recovery. Helps Invulnerability and Enrage
Dexterity - Critical strike chance and stealth detection. Helps Lightning Reflexes
Constitution - Increases maximum health. Helps Invulnerability and Defiance
Endurance - Increases maximum energy and energy gain from your builder. Helps Personal Force Field.
Ego - Increases critical strike bonus damage and intangible hold recovery. Helps Personal Force Field
Intelligence - Reduces cooldown times, reduces energy cost and increases pet damage.
Recovery - Increases equilibrium energy level and energy gain from your builder. Helps Regeneration.
Presence - Increases threat in defensive role, decreases threat in support and offensive roles, increases healing effectiveness and increases pet health.

Strength, Constitution, Presence, and even Ego are good for Tanking types.
Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Ego, and Intelligence are good for DPS types.
Endurance, Intelligence, Recovery, and Presence are good for Support types.

But most of all, have fun with it. Pick a stat that fits your theme more than what may provide you the biggest boost. Unlike picking powers, it's hard to gimp yourself by picking the "wrong" superstat.

If You Don't Stop Touching It, You'll Go Blind

2009-09-09T17:56:00.006-04:00

I've got a dirty little secret. I use mini-mines... a lot. My main is a gadgeteer and the only two powers I have outside the set are PFF (to fit the character concept) and Mini Mines. Originally, I picked the Mini Mines because the futuristic look of them fit my character (let's call him Tiberius, he wears a yellow shirt, you get the picture).

I simply cannot stop using them.

**Spoiler Alert**

Using Mini Mines will ruin your gameplay experience.

I thought about picking them up on a few martial arts characters, to bring them up to curve. But on my Gadgeteer, who was doing fine up until he got them at 17, I use them too much.

It got to the point where a fellow member of my supergroup asked for some help, and I didn't use them that fight. Not because I didn't need the, but because I didn't want him to know I used them.

I'm really looking forward for them bringing them back in, whether it becomes a charged ability, the CD is increased, or the damage is brought down. Then I can use them without feeling so dirty.

Edit: They patched Mini Mines to do 30% less damage when using the "Wall of Fire" advantage. While it's a step in the right direction and I can feel better about using it, I still think it's going to be the highest damage skill I have.