The wordpress iPhone app. Been posting, and all my posts since December disappeared. /sigh.

Holy paladins. I hit the 45-minute arena time limit due to one of them. My partner is a resto shaman. Pally never went below 60% mana. And, of course, no nerf incoming. /sigh.

Blizzard’s inconsistent PvP stance. “We want to slow down PvP.” OK, maybe try lowering damage? Burst is still bursty enough to kill people in less than ten seconds. Granted, I’m not killing anyone in one DF anymore, but if you say something, dammit Blizz, stand by it. /sigh.

Tol Barad. nuff said. /sigh

Honor costs and rates. 1.5k a piece (average) and 100 honor if lucky per bg? /sigh.

Warriors killing me. I am a frost mage. I should have a slight advantage. I haven’t beaten a skilled warrior 1v1 since 4.0. Then again, I am undergeared due to the honor crap, but still. /sigh.

My guild doesn’t have many PvPers. /sigh.

I need to update the PvP guides. /sigh.

Bloodlust and Time Warp unusable in arenas. /sigh.

Tol Barad. /sigh.

Oh yeah, and real life. /sigh.

A toast, to the hope of Blizz fixing holy paladins and Tol Barad.

It’s been a while since I last posted. I have been frantically working ahead in my three AP classes so I’ll have no homework when Cata drops and can play uninterrupted. So, between homework and the occasional breath of fresh air, I haven’t had much time for blogging. I have a few hundred unread posts in my feed-reader.

However, I do have some maybe entertaining stuff for you:

So Ciedd, my forever-noob IRL buddy, is making his last mad dash to 80. He’s been playing WoW since a good deal before Funwell, but has never had a level-capped character. This is partially because he has a below-average attention span, and partially because he’s lazy.

However, last weekend, he told me that if I carried him through all the WotLK instances on my tank he’d level faster because he wouldn’t get bored in the insta-queues. So, I opened Varanatutha’s talent pane, opened the wowhead 4.0 tanking thread, and started putting in points. And after one instance, I was hooked.

Death Knight tanking is the most fun I’ve had since Arena PvP on Flashkaboom. I have little to no clue what I’m doing rotation-wise (I just hit the buttons that light up!) but skills-wise, I’m unstoppable. Death gripping one mob headed for the healer while Dark Commanding the other happened quite often in the early instances before I was totally sure of how to generate threat.

Once I got the rotation figured out, I was golden. Pulling 3k AoE DPS and 2.5k single-target, while keeping threat and following fight mechanics.

And then, Ciedd and I hit a stopper. We were in queue and had been for a full two minutes, waiting for a healer. He offered to spec heals, and while I knew it was a bad idea, I was a good tank. I could just pop CDs if things got hairy, right?

Well, I was wrong. Ciedd was an excellent healer. Utgarde Keep? He prehotted and I pulled the first three/four (everyone pulls differently here, not sure how many it actually is) together and AoEd while he healed. IIRC, there’s about 12-13 mobs in that large of a pack. He didn’t run oom (In Feral gear! 5k mana!) and I only popped one cooldown (Icebound Fortitude, the chain-stuns were getting redonkulous). From then on, we steamrolled every available instance.

We grabbed guildies who were getting their alts to 80 for some guild runs. I made our raid leader late to the raid because I pulled Keristrasza in Nexus without making sure Ciedd knew the fight. The stacking debuff along with the breath attack killed him >.<

Here’s a picture of me pretending to be Kevin Bacon:

Dancing with murloc tadpoles on the quest Oh Noes, the Tadpoles!

Have you ever been in one of those bgs where a hunter decides to stalk you and only you? The only sign your face is about to be blown up is the red arrow that appears seconds before your death, and you’re left wondering WTF just happened.

I just had a personal stalker. The scene was IoC, and we both met at the hangar. It was animus at first sight. He attacked me and I quickly dispatched him (thank god for 4.0 making hunters trivial). From then on, no matter where I was, a red arrow would appear out of nowhere, my barrier would break, and I’d LoS his shots and kill him when he came around the corner.

He managed to kill me once, but it doesn’t count because I was at 40% hp from killing a spriest, and Ice barrier was on cooldown.

And then, a couple hours later, I ran into him again. This time it was in AB, but the guy was annoying as ever. He seemed to know exactly where I was at all times.

Those two bgs were the closest I’ve ever been to Wrecking Ball. 18-1 and 19-4 respectively.

I’ve always viewed Wrecking Ball as a counterproductive achievement. Mind you, when I started in PvP I ran wsg in twink city with my self-sufficient hunter twink, and I didn’t give a damn about kbs. I wanted to win, dammit! But even now, the only bg I see mindless kb farming would be marginally useful in is AV.

Other stupid/counterproductive achievements: Overly defensive (3 flag defends in AB), didn’t stand a chance (kill 20 mounted players with a tower gun), the EotS one for capping the flag thrice without dying, all of the all-star achieves tbh, and the flag return achieve in wsg.

Anyways, I have never understood why Blizz puts these counterproductive achievements in game. Well, I still have a ton left. Maybe I should stop being such an achievement whore. I might catch an ATD.

Being a minor, I am still a school-kiddie. I have separate rants about age discrimination in WoW, but that’s for another day. Anyways, I knew the servers would be down today, and I was indifferent about my Thanksgiving break (I’m free!). A few of my IRL friends who play WoW asked if I was excited for the Shattering and I responded with a neutral “Sure.” They then said they couldn’t wait until they got home and they were going to do X Y and Z. I must have looked at them funny, because they asked what was wrong.

“Nothing.” I replied. “It’s just that the servers won’t be up for a while.”

And my friends didn’t believe me. So I have $10 on when the servers are coming up. (I figured in the wee hours of tomorrow morning.)

Which brings me to the bulk of today’s post. My friends were relatively new to WoW (they joined over the summer, 3.3.5 era) and had never experienced a major patch. I’ve played since the release of Funwell (never actually been there, but damned if that’s not when I joined), so I’ve experienced my fair share of “extended maintenance.”

My habit for patch days is going on WoWhead and reading the QQ in the Downtime forums to get a sense for what’s going on (after all I’m in school all day) and then I do homework, take a nap, play guitar, and generally experience Real Life.

Today’s downtime thread had a post I found interesting, and incredibly true.

“By Damianoxo 23 minutes ago (Patch 4.0.3)

QQ, QQ, QQ.

Ok now that that is out of the way…

Working in customer service for over 10 years, I have learned one major thing to make your customers happy. Underpromise and overdeliver. If I told the customers the work would be completed at 5:00pm and I called them early, they would be very happy. If I told them the work would be done at 1:00pm and it was not completed till 5:00 they would be upset.

If blizzard said the patch would take untill 8:00 server time, no one would QQ if the patch went live at 5:00pm. We would all be overjoyed!

Then again… If the patches were on time, I would never have time to post on the forums and read the new posts.”

And it got me thinking. Why does Blizzard play games with us about maintenance on patch days? Why don’t they just say “It’ll be up Wednesday morning.” Hell, they can give the GMs some time to catch up on the tickets before the new ones come flooding in if maintenance finishes early. After all, they can leave the servers off!

Of course, not everyone shares my point of view. Most people would prefer that Blizzard had their shit together on time. I’d prefer it too, but we all know it won’t happen. And I’d rather have a delayed servers-going-up-event than servers that crashed over and over again.

I don’t know what the techs do during maintenance. I also don’t know who announces when patches will be up, but whoever it is should be fired. We play this game every fucking patch, with 1hour extensions until everything’s fixed. We need a patch announcer who will give us a time and stick to it.

TL;DR Patch announcements always fail.

I logged into my priest the other day and was presented with two things: an empty talent pane and a guild message informing me that I was in charge until the GM’s computer got fixed.

I dealt with the Guild issues first. I sorted the guild bank (/proud!) and invited 6 or seven new prospective guildies.

And then, to the talent pane. I threw points in shadow stuff and went out PvPing. And I killed freaking EVERYTHING.

I’m not talking popping CDs everywhere (just dispersion and shadowfiend whenever mana ran low) and getting an inflated epeen. I’m talking three win buttons. Apply dots, tab, rinse, repeat. Hell, if you’re on the go, just throw up SW:P and DP, and a SW:D on anything that looks low. Did the low mana pop up in your face? Dispersion.

Of course, PvP in the 70-79 bracket has no significance.

Whose bright idea was it to merge two Horde-dominated battlegroups?

If you’ve visited this site recently you may have noticed a Mage PvP Center page. I *am* working on it and expect to have a basic skeleton done before December.

Haven’t played my rogue for a bit, but I have been crazy bout Flashkaboom. Finally picked up my first wrathful set piece (legs) and have been cranking out IoC after IoC. The battlegroup merger really screwed me over. I’m worse off than before. Personally I’m doing better in bgs but I think its just the extra gear. And I’m not doing enough individually to make a difference towards winning, (how can I in IoC? half the time I ninja a node I get zerged by 10ish Horde!) so its kind of meh.

However, I’m on the hunt for good PvP blogs. Not just written by magi, I’d love to see other classes’ perspectives on PvP, so I can more efficiently kill them >:)

Anyways, I’ve been reading a few new blogs lately…

• …of the Horde: A nice DK PvP blog. he’s a cool cat.
• Oombulance: I should have found this a loooooong time ago.
• The Warsong Priest: Awesome priest pvp resource. kinda sporadic on updates but hey, so am I.

And as I mentioned I’m looking for more PvP blogs to read. I read Cynwise of course, but that’s it for PvP blogs. Do PvPers just generally not like blogging or something?

So I specced Subtlety. And holy moly, Shadowstep. I’m level 16, and one-shotting lv19 paladins.

On the leveling side of this business, it’s slightly less cool because of populated areas. I have to sap, then shs, then kill, then deal with the one I didn’t see before, then go to the sapped one and where is all my energy? Ok, fine, arcane torrent whoa where’d he come from evasion sinister strike sinister strike eviscerate lifeblood wipe sweat off brow ??? Profit.

A little stressful, no? But it’s ok, because I’ve raked in over 1k gold and if I wanted to could twink myself.

On the frosty side of things, Flashkaboom is doing well. 15th in the guild for achievement points iirc, and I got Loremaster Kalimdor, so I’m a happy camper.

KTF out.

Well, I just learned that one of my RL friends plays WoW, and he wanted to level with me. So I rolled a rogue on his server. Why a rogue? I am sick and tired of getting roflstomped by rogues, and the best way to learn a class’ weaknesses is to play that class. So Shemhazaí the female blood elf rogue was born. And yes, she is named after the god from the Final Fantasy series. Sue me.

So far I am LOVING the roguery. I understand why people play them. Literally, mobs equal to or lower than my level die after the ambush. Plus, I brought in 250g before I hit level 10 (I’d forgotten how awesome double gathering profs is ).

I hopped into a WSG at level 10, but failed to see how the rogue class uses any form of strategy. Whatever. It *is* the 10-19 bracket, notorious for being stupidly imba.

I think I’m going to spec assassination or subtlety. Combat seems a little underpowered for pvp.

Yes, that’s right. Level 16 and not even specced. Sue me.

How to play a frost mage, 4.0.1 edition:

1. Open your spell book and find Frostbolt, Deep Freeze, Cone of Cold, Ice Lance and Frostfire Bolt.
2. Bind these to comfortable keybindings. Give priority to DF, CoC, and IL, as you won’t need FrB or FFB very often.
3. Spec to this.
4. Reforge all the crit on your gear to mastery.
5. Get into a battleground to test out your abilities!
6. When faced with combat, first Cone of Cold, then Deep Freeze, and then hit Ice Lance once or twice.
7. If the enemy hasn’t died, you aren’t geared enough and you need to blink away and then FrB spam at them. Use cooldowns if necessary, although you honestly shouldn’t need them.

Before I saw a video on this I was entirely lost and kept getting focused by enemies. Now I know why!