Simception II

Fulguralis was surrounded. By Mages.  Over there was a short, pigtailed Gnome.  Here was a sinewy Night Elf.  Clustered to the left was a group of five seemingly identical dark-haired Humans.  Perhaps mirror images?  A female Draenei puffed out her chest to the right, joined by a giant, hulking Worgen.

The crowd wasn't limited to members of the Alliance either.  Fulguralis spotted a flamboyant Blood Elf, a husky Tauren, even a slimy Goblin.  He could have sworn he saw a Naga in there somewhere as well.  It was a forest of colorful staffs.  A sea of cloth.

Elementals dotted the room between the more or less intelligent denizens.  There was a low hum beneath the silence.  It was the sound of rocks moving, water flowing, fires burning, breezes... breezing?

The room itself seemed endless.  There were no discernible supports, yet a ceiling loomed high overhead.  Fulguralis could not glimpse any walls, but surely they were there.  White tile ran underfoot.  In the air, the Warlock smelled fear.  Fear and just the sweetest hint of Corruption.

Fulguralis was the lone Warlock in an endless desert of Magery.  A dark and shadowy oasis.  He smiled.

When he moved, all fel broke loose.  An army of elements charged at him, while their wielders waved their hands in the back.  Fulguralis danced and spun between them, his robes whipping around him.  Affliction radiated outward from him in waves.  The entire room seemed to dim until there were only glowing eyes in the darkness.

Flames marred the black tapestry, exploding when they hit the ground and providing the only illumination.  Shards of ice reflected the light, shining missiles streaking by.  The wind was a gust in the Warlock's ear; water pelted his face in fat drops.

And he danced the dance of Death.  Shadow flew from his fingers.  Those nearest were the first to fall.  Shrieking, they succumbed to the Corruption within them and keeled over, clawing at their faces.  Limbs detached themselves from torsos, rotten to the core.  Darkness swallowed them whole and tore them apart in a soundless explosion.  As they died, Fulguralis grew stronger.

Like a line of dominoes they toppled, one after the other.  The wetness spraying the Warlock's face turned from clear to red.  Fulguralis cracked open his soul and power rushed out in a torrent.  He rose above the carnage, an unstable whirl of agony and doom.  Demons dotted the landscape below.  The fires continued to burn.

It was a thing of beauty.  Arcane, Fire, and Frost, they could not touch him.  He was armored in the demonic, wreathed in shadow, with a fire burning inside of him.  He was invincible.

When his feet finally touched the ground, there was a wet squish.  Slowly, the light returned to reveal the reaper's toll.  The tile was no longer white, but a mottled red and black.  The air was burnt, and a hint of iron tickled the nostril.  Fulguralis stretched his wings and inhaled deeply.  With regret, he squelched the fire in his palms.

* * *

He woke up.  To his left, a ruined piece of equipment smoldered.  Bewildered Gnomes clustered around the slag, mouths agape, speechless for once.  They turned saucer eyes on him

Fulguralis raised himself up out of the chair and tossed the goggles at the attendant nearest him.  They clattered at the pink-pigtailed Gnome's feet.  No one moved.

"Thanks," he said, and then walked out.

* * *

He woke up.  To his left, Fuubaar lay sleeping.  Fulguralis snuggled up against her back.

"Hmmm?" she purred, still mostly asleep.

The Warlock smiled.  "Nothing honey.  Just had another simulation within a dream."

"That's nice," she answered.

"Yes, yes it was."

Why Rivs Is Wrong

I know, I'm probably feeding the Troll Mage here. Fact is, I generally like Rivs over at High Latency Life,* and I'm willing to excuse one terribly awful no-good very-bad post. After all, don't random gratuitous pictures of scantily clad women make up for a lack of journalistic research and integrity every time?** 

I swear, some people just love drama.  And oranges.

So this is me, pulling myself up from the bowels of the city, rising to the occasion to defend my honor. 

Honor?  Pssch.  You think Warlocks give a shit about honor?  Nah, this is just going to be plain fun.  And let me tell you something about the bowels.  The Light is well... light.  I like cool shades as much as the next guy, but I burn in the light.  And it's hot outside.  Nice and cool down here in the "bowels."

You say bowels.  I say super-awesome man cave.  We've got leather recliners made with REAL BABY SEAL.  Also, with your well-publicized fondness of skanky women, Rivs, I'm 666% sure you frequent the "bowels" as much as we do.  Who do you think organizes and dresses all those women?  It certainly ain't the Paladins on staff.

But let's get to the meat of the post.  The six points.  (Six because that's all you could grope for.)

6. You're penalizing us because you don't speak demonic?  Live a little.  Strike up a conversation with some of those bowel-women instead of just raining ice on their heads and calling 'em twenties.  Besides, what are you going to do when the Burning Legion shows up again and screws with things?  We'll be the ones out there taunting them appropriately.  IN THEIR OWN LANGUAGE.

5. The party is where we are.  (Did you see the green disco ball?)  Hence, summoning.  You get portals so that everyone can flee from your "awesomeness."  Also, Flasher Phonebooth >> Whatever-the-hell-nickname-ports-have.  Probably something Tyrion has called Cersei Lannister's mommy parts at some point.

4.  I don't know a self-respecting Warlock alive that uses conjured anything.  Heck, we don't use regular food/water.  That's right, we cut ourselves.  And then resupply ourselves from our enemies.  Your tears are our sustenance.  Have fun in your little magical kitchen, Top Chef.  We'll be out baking cookies from SOULS.

3.  I love how you reference Shaman here.  Like they're somehow related to Warlocks.  Then you flaunt Rocky Horror Picture like it gives you some sort of street cred.  Go back to 1973.  Did you know we have our own self-heroism?  It's called Demon Soul.  It doesn't help anyone else, doesn't stack with your shit, and we like it that way.  You can take your Time Warp and shove it.  We'll be just fine.  Not pretending we're in a musical, but killing... slowly.

2.  Did you forget we can still Soulstone?  Sure we could save it to use as a b-rez for others... but why would we?  We can fight 'till the death, die, then pop back up with health to spare.  Run away you little ice-blocking, Rogue-like cowards.  We've conquered Death.  That shit was so vanilla.  Go talk to Xenophilius Lovegood about the Deathly Hallows or something.  Get a glove, get in the game.

1. Wait, what's this?  You couldn't even come up with six?  Well, that's a shame.  Does anyone even use portals anymore?  Between hearthstones, guild shrouds, permanent ports in the main cities, the "leave instance" option in dungeons, and quest chains that take you exactly where you need to go... who ports?  Maybe you're trying to bring back the "glory days" when y'all used to be able to charge everyone because there was no other way to get around.  You opportunistic bastards.  No, we haven't forgiven you for that.

0. Oh, there's more?  You betcha.  I could go all day.  Let's look at pets.  The devs had to give you one just so you could attempt to keep up with us.  While you're over there trying to coax an itty-bitty elemental from the planes next-door like a Shaman (oops, I did it too), we're ripping our minion forcefully from across the felling Nether.  THE TWISTED DAMNED NETHER.  (No association with the blogcast of the same name.) 

-1.  Gettin' deeper into the bowels now.  Let's take a look at famous Mages.  I've done this one before so it's sort of cheating.  Here's a recap:  Enjoy Kel'Thuzad and Jaina Proudmoore.  Stellar cast you've got there.

-2. Pop quiz: Which are better, councils or covens?  If you chose councils, go debate about it for 6 months and get back to me with a debt-reduction plan.

-3. You make cuddly sheep.  We skip the shape-changing sparkly crap and just make mobs too scared to move.  It's so OP that Blizz still makes it pull aggro, just to even things out.

-4.We turn into a frickin' Demon.  You turn into a block of ice.  Handy, if we're all sitting around drinking Coke.

-5. You have normal orange fire.  We have that, plus green fire, plus purple fire that shoots from a demon head of awesome.  (You know, the one you've seen in every guild pic ever with a Warlock.)

-6. To finish with a strike home where we believe your heart may reside: Warlock women will do things that Mage women think are gross.  'Nuff said.

I went to negative six.  Pretty deep in the bowels.  Also, that gives me a grand total of 13... which is a little more than double and a pretty lucky number.

Gnomer, you'd better come back and help out your boy, Rivs.  He needs some sort of 10-step program, I think.

THE END

* I do.  Seriously.  You should be reading over there if you're not.  He's a great guy/writer/picture-chooser.

Also, unrelated: Twitterati - Yes, I'm a dude, too.  Though I got some of my writing analyzed over at Gender Genie, and it thought I was a girl too.  Raised by wolves, say I.


**(Like we're all doing responsible journalism here...)

Raiding Status Update

This may be boring, and I try not to do simply "this is what I'm up to" posts, but I feel like some of you out there may be interested to know where our raid group stands.  Mostly, I think it due to our unique schedule.  Perhaps I'm giving us too much importance, but I feel like we represent the very bottom end of casual raiding (in terms of time spent).  Recap for those that may not know: we only raid for two hours each week.  That's it.  And it works for us.

Case in point: we just downed Nef and Cho'gall last night, leaving only Al'Akir left from the old content.  This, considering we've had to cancel (or 8-man FL trash runs) as often as we've raided over the summer.  Summer is always a rough patch, so I feel like we took it in stride and got a couple new, solid subs hanging around now as a result.

We've pulled each other through dailies and crafted new items for folks.  Thus, we'll likely spend one more week on Al'Akir and then hit the ground running in FL.  We already know the trash.  If we continue with the average amount of time we spend learning a boss, we should be through all the current raid content by Christmas if not sooner.  It may be an optimistic goal, but it's achievable from where I'm sitting.

We're very slightly off the "main" progression path.  That is, our aim is to try to be on current content and finish it just before the next patch.  To me, this is the perfect playstyle.  We're stringing stuff out so that there is always something to do.  We rarely get bored with raiding because there is no farming or downtime.  We also enjoy a lot of other areas in the game.

I'm not saying this as an advertisement for us, but more to broadcast that there are "other" ways than the typical schedules.  We do one night for a scant two hours.  And it works.  We play the game our way, and have a blast doing it.  If you're not raiding right now and want to, don't be afraid to think outside the box.  Chances are you'll find others in the same boat.

Also, sometimes it's interesting to see where you stand with respect to other groups.  I'm sure a lot of people are beyond us, but I'd bet there are just as many that didn't finish off the old content before jumping into FL.  For us, it's a point of pride.  It doesn't matter that the encounters have been nerfed; we just want to say we've "been there."  And we're one boss away from focusing solely on Firelands.  Ragnaros better watch out.

Stupid Harbinger

It's been a busy one around the Manor this last week.  This Warlock has basically been working two jobs to make 13 hour days, leaving me only time enough for small tasks in WoW before I collapse.  I can't whine too much, though, because the second job is a volunteer position.  It isn't like someone forced me into it.  (For those who might not know, I coach HS football in the fall.  It's two-a-day time right now.  This is also why I didn't get to an IC Friday post last week.  Apologies.)

Fortunately, I'm to the point on my main toon that I don't need to do dailies anymore.  Everything is unlocked.  All I have left is to finish up the achievements because I'd like the Flamecaller title.  Most of them have been pretty easy.  Things you can knock out one day at a time.  I'd been tracking three achievements on my screen at a time, knocking them out as I go.  I saved the hardest (and longest) for last.  Those happened to be Ready for Raiding II and Death from Above.

I wouldn't say these are the hardest skill-wise, but they do rely on random daily spawns and just getting the appropriate quest in the first place.  Thus, you're not always in control of your destiny when it comes to completing these.  Still, I wanted to share a few tricks I picked up from various places that may help if you're looking to finish these up too.

• If you need to wave at folks, remember that you can use "/tar name" to find them.  It doesn't even have to be the full name.  For about a week, I was flying around the roost typing "/tar man" every time I logged in.  Mankrik was my unicorn for that one.
• If you're having trouble with Ludicrous Speed, after you turn in the quest (but before you kill the mini-boss for the next part and thus lose the ability to become a flying something-or-other) you can keep trying.  You also have no specific bird limits at this point, which is nice.  You can nab hawks for a 15 stacks each (instead of stupid owls at 5 or songbirds at a paltry 1).  Rule the skies!
• For Ready for Raiding II, you do NOT need to pick up the quest to get the achievement.  I unlocked the ancients last (and thus the kill quest), but I was working on these guys long before that.  As long as someone else comes along to start the event, you can get in on it.
• For that same one, most of them are pretty easy.  Just avoid the bad.  If you screw it up the first time, wait for the next round.  Or be lazy and tag it and run away (works for most).  For the Harbinger, I had a really hard time.  I pulled out all the tricks.  I waited for the last 10% to tag.  I sandbagged it.  I tried to burn.  We had a warrior interrupting.  I think on that day, it was simply bugged for me.  The next day I logged to find the Harbinger still up (wewt) and got it first try.  You have to avoid the flames, and I think jumping makes sure the meteor doesn't hit you.  I just ran around and jumped a lot.  I guess the tip here is that if you've tried and you think you are avoiding the bad yet don't get it... maybe come back a different day?  This one drove me nuts.
• When all you have left is the bombing run achievement (if this is not your last one, you've either planned very well or gotten very lucky.  The odds are totally against you.  You have to get the quest, which isn't always up, and then get the spawns you need, one per day.  Ugh), you can simplify the process by not turning in the quest.  Thus, it should remain active for you.  Obviously, you're sacrificing marks, but if you're done, who cares?  The downside here is that you'll need to log out near the quest giver because the fire comes back every day (or do some clever corpse running to get there).  If you don't, then you can still get there by completing the pre-requisite dailies, but that's sort of a pain.
• Apparently the bombing run guy switches twice per day.  I've not really checked this, but it may be worth your time to pop in both the morning and the evening.  (I think they swap at like 1pm and 4am or something, server time.)

 I still have three guys left to hit on the bombing run, but that is all.  Then, I'll have acheesed my way to another title.  I've grown fond of the quest achievements, and so far have gotten all of the Cataclysm ones.  For people who enjoy questing, I think they're balanced well.  That is, they're not super-impossible as a ranged clothy and solo-able by a Pally.  Not that has ever happened before.  Oh no.

Anyway, are there any other title chasers out there?  (Titles, Mr. Connery.  Famous Titles.)  Got any tips I missed?

QotD: Has Anyone Tried Real ID Grouping?

Saga has a good post over at Spellbound in which she talks about feeling Torn. She is referring to the general feeling I think many of us can sympathize with where we have friends or relatives on other servers that we'd love to play with, but we can't ditch our "home," so to speak.  I've been relatively fortunate over the years to be involved enough in my guilds that people have come to me to join up. 

Still, I do have a cousin on another server that helps run a guild as well, and we are always sharing raiding stories at family gatherings.  We've rolled toons on each other's server, but rarely get over there.  We have active guilds and generally not a lot of "free" gaming time; we're always working toward some goal or another. 

Also, I can't count on two hands the number of bloggers I would like to play with from time to time.  There have been several blogger guilds that have sprung up over the last half-decade, and we've generally tried to at least pop in.  They've always been a blast, but short-lived.  I think a lot of that is because people have a hard time being away from "home" for any sort of extended period, no matter how fun the company.

Alleviating this is, I believe, a big reason for the whole Real ID invite option.  I've read some about it, but I've not had an opportunity to try it yet.  It appears to be installed, I think.  When chatting with my cousin once, I was able to right-click her Real ID name and shoot her an invite.  She was busy with a group in a rated BG at the moment, so she couldn't accept.  Thus, we really didn't get to try, but it seemed to be there and functional.

Is there anyone out there that uses this function on a regular basis?  Have you discovered any caveats?  It works with raids, dungeons, and BGs, right?  I've only had a passing curiosity about it, but am looking for some practical experience.  I can't help but think that if the function is smooth and effective, it should do quite a bit to alleviate feeling Torn.  You should be able to have your cake and eat it too.  Unless the cake is a lie because I'm missing something here.  Let me know.

So, I'm Dumb.

This is a follow-up on yesterday's post and the ensuing discussion in comments.  Thankfully, sharp readers caught my idiocy, and gently steered me in the right direction.  (Have I mentioned how much I appreciate my readers/commenters around here?  I am continually impressed by the thoughtfulness and consideration that goes into comments around here.  It really does seem to break the troll statistics.  Not all Internet communication is flawed!)

First of all, the most helpful thing to most Warlocks is probably recognition that, unless you get a fortunate drop or go AH'ing, the bracer slot seems to be one of the worst for epic'ing out.  Generally, we're all saving our VP for that, because there just really isn't much out there.  I hear that shoulders come in a close second.

My goof comes when talking about Mr. Robot and hit cap.  I'll try to make a long story short.


There is, apparently, ranged hit.  I'm not sure what ranged hit is or where it came from.  It just showed up one day (likely with Cataclysm, and I've been oblivious of it).  Now, when the stat changes first swept through, I certainly had a small bit of trouble with confusing Melee and Spell hit.  Unless you're cognizant of the little heating in the stat column, it can be an easy mix up.

Lately, I've apparently been looking at this Ranged hit.  I made sure I wasn't doing Melee, but I guess it never dawned on me that ranged hit does not equal spell hit.  After all, it seemed to me that the ranged hit cap was 14%, which was the number to hit back when we got 3% from talents.  We no longer get any hit from talents.  Or racials.  Thus, you need a straight 17%.

My confusion, then, was that I was still showing 14% in the hit column, and mousing over confirmed that my chance to miss a raid boss was 0.  The scaling of ranged hit is such that while in reality, I had around 16.5% hit, ranged hit is around 14%.  Thus, following the advice of Mr. Robot, I was in the correct ballpark.  Enough away to think that something was screwy, but close enough that I didn't realize how screwy.  I figured it was just some minor glitch from something I was doing just a bit differently.  Such things have been known to happen in Azeroth from time to time.

Finally, I decided to write about the odd occurrence.  What better way to puzzle something out than throw yourself on the mercy of the interwebs (also, it just so happens that I have a WoW blog).  I would have liked to troll EJ, the Den, and the Mr. Robot forums, but I'd just not had time at non-blocked-internet-home to be able to do it.  Hence a cry for help.

The first suggestion was that I was looking at Melee hit.  Nay, said I.  Falleth for that farce again, I did not.  What ho?  Ranged hit, you say?  (The saying being done by my armory iPhone app.)  What sort of devilry is this?

Once I'd sorted out my confusion, it became obvious: I needed to expand one more drop down on my stat screen.  I did as much last night during my daily run.  Sure enough, I was just below hit cap... to the tune of about, oh, say the one piece I'd neglected to reforge because I believed I was already capped.  Ugh.

Fortunately, I finished the Firelands dailies last night, unlocking the ancients as the last of my three.  There's a ring there that's a minor upgrade.  So, I picked it up and reforged the night away.  Now I sit safely at 16.99% hit (Mr. Robot hath been vindicated in my mind, and I'm sorry for every doubting), and my haste doth overfloweth.

All is well that ends well.

(Thanks again for the comments that helped me along the way)

If I Could Only Get Rid of Those Blue Bracers...

I finally achieved friendly with the new Firelands faction the other day.  Thus, I was able to pick up the epic cloak from the vendor, which is currently listed as best-in-slot for me (not including T12 Heroics).  Cape in tow, I ventured off to my local reforgery.  I also took the opportunity to pop in my Moonwell Chalice.

(Side note: it took me a while to figure out that the small, lightwell-like thingy that popped up next to me was my newly equipped trinket "on use."  Fuu kept asking about it and I kept saying "must be a quest or something."  It was the trinket... duh.  Pretty neat effect, if not very warlocky.)

I consulted Mr. Robot and made the necessary adjustments.  I feel compelled to note that I'm still having a bit of a "hit issue" with Mr. Robot right now.  Basically, he is having me over-stack hit by almost exactly one piece.  I haven't had the time to really puzzle out why this is.  My solution for now has been to simply ignore the reforge on my helm.  I'm still showing above cap on my character sheet (14% and hovering over confirms that I have 0% chance of missing a raid boss), and I'm not wasting the extra hit form that reforge.  I'm not entirely sure why Mr. Robot is having me do this, since wasting his seems sub-optimal.  I'm sitting at like 14.1% and the helm would put me at around 14.5%.  That's ~40 points of waste.

Now, perhaps there's a good reason for this.  Maybe there's a legit bug that people have been talking about on the forums.  Were I a good Warlock with extra time, I would go over and start up a conversation with Mr. Robot himself.  He has been great about addressing concerns in the past.  I just haven't had the time to give it proper attention.  And I'm pretty sure that, minus the one oddity, the reforging is correct.  I did have to double-check though.  You should probably do the same, or let me know what I'm missing here.

With cloak and chalice, I ran a FL trash clear and definitely saw some improvement.  It wasn't massive, as the cloak upgrade ends up being minor (what with the epic quest reward), and the chalice isn't head-and-shoulders above the Soul Casket that I replaced... but I'd say maybe a couple hundred more DPS on average.  I'm running Affliction, so I'm simply popping the mastery bonus up front.  Demo folks may want to bind the trinket to meta somehow, as I guess it rolls through.

In other news, you should check out Cynwise's new other blog.  As opposed to the Battlefield Manual, these are his Field Notes.  It's still Cynwise, only shorter (sometimes) and more personal (IHMO).  He's been writing more often over there as a result, and that is a "win" in my book.  If you haven't checked it out, I suggested you give it a look.  Being (personally) less PvP and Wall-of-Text inclined... I'm quite enjoying it.  In fact, I think I may have to go tour Lakeshire sometime soon.