Interview with The Light

1. What is your name, and where did it come from?
Fuubaar. I’m not quite sure where it actually originated from but I’ll tell you one thing, it says a lot about the way I do things.

2. How old are you, and what is your birthday?
My date of creation was May 5th at 6:30pm. I was born and raised in this beautiful place outside of Stormwind City. I absolutely love it there and often times I find myself wondering back to sit by the lake and think about the good ol’ days when life was much simpler.

3. Are you in love, and with whom?
I know that I am not the first Paladin to fall for the “wrong guy” but every time I see that warlock, I can’t help but think, “I wonder what he wears under those Robes?” *day dreams*

4. What is your favorite mount, and why?
I love my Charger very much. He has been with me through it all but I just can’t help myself when I’m flying on the back of my Gryphon. Her snowy white feathers make me feel like I’m floating on a cloud above Northrend without a worry or a care.

5. Do you prefer a certian type of Azerothonian meal, and where do you get it from? Take out, or dine in?
I love fishing for my dinner. I take great pride in what I eat and it better be top notch! My new favorite right now that makes me feel invincible is Dragonfin Filet. It is so mouthwatering that I won’t eat anything else.

6. You know those giant mushrooms in Zangarmarsh? What is your theory on how they came to be, and why they are so huge?
To be honest, I’m not quite sure where you came up with that question from but I guess if you must know my thoughts on such matters, I will share. The standard for the name "mushroom" is the cultivated white button mushroom, Agaricus bisporus, hence the word mushroom is most often applied to those fungi (Basidiomycota, Agaricomycetes) that have a stem (stipe), a cap (pileus), and gills (lamellae, sing. lamella) on the underside of the cap. The reasoning for their greatness in size is mainly due to their intensely moist surroundings and the lack of interaction with humanoids within the area. Mushrooms are rather fascinating aren’t they?

7. If you saw the Lich King walking towards you, what would you do?
I have seen him skulking around a few times when I have been out and about in Northrend as of late. I cannot wait until that perfect moment that I can put an end to his madness and make him feel that pain that he has brought upon our world. I would walk right up to him, with my chest held high… kick him in the shin & Run like hell! Hmmmm. That sounded rather cowardly didn’t it.

8. Be honest, how many times have you used the Grizzly Hills outhouse without any real reason?
Lady Paladins do not discuss such things. Next question.

9. Would you steal ice cream from a Human child?
What a horrible idea! Stealing Ice Cream… wait… what flavor? Maybe if the kid seemed full and it was mint. He would want me to take it from him because he wanted to go out and learn more about the Light. Yes, Yes, then I would take this said Mint Ice Cream from this said child.

10. If you could enslave anything in Azeroth, what would it be?
Enslavement is only for people who are unloved. I already have too many people clambering to fight by my side. What would I do with one more? Unless, I could enslave that cute Warlock so I could find out what is actually under those robes…hmmmm.

11. (Mine) what spell are you most jealous of that you wish you could have?
Maybe the ability to heal others? … no, I already have that. How about the ability to tank the biggest bosses in the world?…. Nope, already can do that. What if I could Raise someone from the dead… Wow! I can do that too. Everyone else sucks!

Ok Abi, it's your turn over at Fear.Win. Have Fun!

An Interview With A Warlock

So apparently I've been tagged yet again by the lovely Miss Syrana. Being that it's friday and we didn't take down any new bosses in Naxx last night (though we did clear all of the arachnid wing, Noth, and Patchwerk in sort of ADD boss style), I figured we can go random off topic today. Just for the record, I'm going to be semi-in-character (I'm not normally an RP author, but this should be fun and I do love me some creative writing).

1. What is your name, and where did it come from?
Fulguralis. It's latin. Look it up. Apparently my creator enjoys naming things in Latin which is why the cute Death Knight's called Decedereful. Why Latin? Well, apparently he's Catholic too and Latin is kind of a thing with those types. *Shrugs*

2. How old are you, and what is your birthday?
What does age matter? Do people actually keep track of such things? I summoned my first Imp many seasons ago. 13 seasons to be precise. What a pain in the ass he turned out to be. The succubus was fun though... *Focus drifts*

3. Are you in love, and with whom?
Love is for the weak. I lust for firey passion, but my unfortunate Paladin companion usually thwarts my plans. I just haven't found a way to get her out of her armor yet... you know, so I can kill her. *Shifty eyes*

4. What is your favorite mount, and why?
My Dreadsteed. Is there a more impressive mount in all of Azeroth? I think not. *Crosses arms*

5. Do you prefer a certian type of Azerothonian meal, and where do you get it from? Take out, or dine in?
The Paladin cooks for me, and I don't complain. If it makes me stronger, I'll eat it. Lately its been a lot of roasted worg meat, which is fine since I prefer meat over any of that leafy crap any day. Don't even get me started on tasty cupcakes. I'd rather have a bad clam than any of that crap. *Grimaces*

6. You know those giant mushrooms in Zangarmarsh? What is your theory on how they came to be, and why they are so huge?
Who the hell cares? *Waves a hand* What we should be concerned about is all these sodding Death Knights. I can't tell whether to be attracted to them or repulsed. What? One can't help admire the way they spread their diseases around. All that plate armor though? Reminds me of the Paladin...

7. If you saw the Lich King walking towards you, what would you do?
*Eyes light up* I would attempt to corrupt him. If that should fail, I will siphon his life while I come up with another plan. My plans rarely fail, however. *Scratches Chin* Perhaps being so cold, he might be especially susceptible to a Shadowflame.

8. (Dav added this one) Be honest, how many times have you used the Grizzly Hills outhouse without any real reason?
Never. I have minions for entertainment. Ever see a constipated Imp? *Evil Cackle*

9. (Sideshow and Syrana’s) Would you steal ice cream from a Human child?
*Frowns in thought* Will the ice cream increase my haste or spellpower? If so, then without hesitation, for what does the child need of those things? Perhaps an ice cream would have mana regenerative properties, though, being more akin to a liquid. In that case, no, I'll just "borrow" from my minion... or cut myself. That'd be preferable to a sticky sweet ice cream.

10. (Mine) If you could enslave anything in Azeroth, what would it be?

Alexstrasza, for just a couple hours *Goofy grin*. I hope she didn't hear that just now. *Looks nervously to the sky*

Okay, that's that. Hope you enjoyed it. As part of my tagging, I'm totally taking a cop-out and tagging Fuubaar, because its funny to tag your own blog. Plus, I think she'll enjoy doing this and then she can pick some blogs to spotlight maybe.

Jumping on the Ranting Bandwagon

Now, I've ranted on here before, but usually it's of my own accord. Today, however, I've been worked up into a frenzy by the wonderfully written posts of two talented bloggers and the resulting comment clusterfest that ensued. So, for context reference, please read the linked posts from BBBB and Forever A Noob. You'll see this is about the recent announcement on the mechanic change for dual speccing. Namely, that they're just now deciding that instead of using a lexicon of power in a city or providing a cool crafting option for scribes, they're just gonna do away with that gem and make it switch on the fly. Read the comments... yes, we're a polarized community on this issue right now. Okay, ready?

/inspiredranton

/hellishscream

This is bullshit. Complete, utter bullshit. I'm with both the druid and the rogue on this. BULLSHIT.

Not the concept of dual speccing, mind you. /golfclap for dual speccing. It's a good idea. Yay helping hybrids not waste gold on respecs. Yay helping groups finding people. I'm going to marry a Paladin, I have to be supportive of dual speccing even though it does basically jack shit for me. I can see where it is helpful for her.

In fact, I was sort of looking forward to be able to mess around with specs. Visiting lexicons of power can be fun...

WTF were they thinking in changing that?! Seriously? Bring the player not the class... more like bring the hybrid not the nerfed to shit pure DPS classes. Why on Azeroth would one want a pure DPS class now? Name one reason? Utility? Pscch... nothing you can't get elsewhere. It certainly isn't for our ability to out DPS a hybrid, or for our usefulness with tanking and healing, or anything.

I don't even give a shit about the rest of the "goodness" of dual speccing. This one change completely breaks the game for pure DPS. Go back to the old way, Blizz, before its too late, please. You're still only in PTR, there IS time to see the light (don't look at the Paladin!).

Keep dual speccing, yes, certainly. Allow people to be ported to Dalaran, talk to a book for free, and be summoned back. Allow scribes to even bring a few crafted books with them to use like a repair bot, for those times you absolutely cannot port and such. Just don't let people do it ON THE FLY. That is where I draw the line of complete unfairness.

As a warlock, I've put up with some shit too. I've watched you basically make our pets worthless. BBB was talking about how we're analogous to hunters with pets that help us. Obviously he hasn't played a warlock recently, so he doesn't know how pitiful our pet DPS actually is. Its nice to have a pet, don't get me wrong, it's just... NOT a hunter pet. There is sort of a large DPS disparity between what Mr. BRK's pets do and what any warlock (even demo specced) can do.

I've watched you completely screw up fear, our "CC" ability (banish is great, but highly situational). Now, its practically useless in PvP and pretty much everything in PvE is immune to it. Even when the mobs aren't immune to it, they'll run into seven other groups and wipe the raid. When was the last time that fear was actually viable as a form of CC? Seriously?

I've watched our DPS completely tank as we refused to scale well at the level cap until hitting Naxx gear. I've seen numerous recent class changes that have negatively affected my ability to do my ONLY job (kill shit) and just been told "you're not broken, l2p". And I know even more changes are coming down the pipeline... so get out the lube!

Newsflash, warlocks don't offer a whole lot in the way of raid buffs, utility, or even raid food. We could do our job and be kicked right away: summon everyone, give out cookies, then replace with hybrid. What do we really have to offer? Most of my buffs get overwritten anyways (hence why they had to CHANGE the imp stam buff to health so it would be of some use).

And now, NOW you're just gonna finish the job and neuter me. Chop off my DPShood cleanly as if I were a complete dunce for just wanting to kill stuff in the first place. Man, I shoulda rolled a hybrid, right? Then I could do it ALL. No reliance on other classes to help me form a five man... lets just hybrid the hell out of it. Why do those other classes even exist again?

F that and F this change. I hope it doesn't go live like this.

I'd troll their boards, but it's just not me. I'll take it and keep trying to play the class I love. Luckily, the raid leader = me, so I probably won't be left out. And you know what, as a raid leader, I'm going to completely boycott this system. Sure, if you would like to change, I'll let you... but if you wanna stay in your tank spec and whack away at lower DPS, that's fine too. We're doing things "old school". You know, back when you needed to think ahead and make choices.

I'm going to take the people I take because they're good people and good players, not based on utility. Though I'm sure it may make some fights tough, because... hey, we should left our friends on the bench in favor of MOAR HYBRIDS. Whatever.

F-this rant, its not even good writing. I can't think straight about this issue.

/lessthaninspiredrantoff

I didn't want to write a very lengthy rant on the subject, but that's what came out. I hope someone out there feels my pain. The bear and the noob say it better, mostly. This is just where I stand on the issue. Polarize away. I'm sure I'll answer snarkily.

(Edit: Okay, I left the following comment over at /hug's counterpoint post (which is well written and worth a read if you feel so inclined), and I liked how I phrased it so I wanted to paste it on this to further clarify my point on the matter...

*Kal commented that he thinks there is a disconnect because he doesn't quite see where BBB is coming from*

Kal, I agree with there being a disconnect. I think we have tons of people arguing (always in a nice friendly manner of course) about a bunch of different things.

The main argument seems to center around dual specs, but the smaller arguments are about implmentations, limiting, cost, etc. Its very hard to separate out the issues. I think BBB’s argument was more that dual specs the concept = good, but that the implmentation, as it stands now, may create problems. In that, I agree.

There has to be some happy medium between just flip flopping on the fly or having barriers that are completely annoying. Personally, I thought being able to port out to a lexicon to swap for free and then being summoned back presented a tolerable, fair implementation. Plus, it gave the scribes something to do and that profession is in some need of some excitement.

My personal ire is directed towards the switch of the implementation to basically being “push of a button” anywhere you want it with no consequence. We can do better than that can’t we? To me, that completely breaks the point of speccing in trees and such. Why not just let everyone do everything in their tree then? Why spec at all? I mean, then we wouldn’t even have to deal with any of this right?

At some point, a line has to be drawn for it to continue being a challenging game and not just “god mode”. I think the disconnect exists where individuals draw that line and then we argue about different lines without realizing it. At least, that’s my long winded two cents.)

Work Workarounds

Sometimes work gets in the way of doing more important things. Things like looking at pictures of the new T8 gear that is headed our way. As an engineer, I'm a problem solved by both nature and trade. Thus, I've come up with a way around that pesky work filter. I can haz Fuubaar! Then, I'll post them up here for the rest of ya's that face the same conundrum. So here ya go (all pics via Fuubaar via MMO Champion).

First, the Warlocky Gear, followed by Paladin, and then DK:

The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw.

Brought to you by the Belly Dancers Assoc. of America (BDAA) and Bic Lighters.

Saving time by allowing you to insert food directly into your stomach.

Quoth the Fuubaar:

I will NEVER show the helm... kinda reminds me of Darthvader

I wanna punch the person who made that design up and punch his group for allowing him to put it in the game.


Thank you, you may now return to your regularly schedule procrastinations.

Patch 3.1 Warlock Thoughts

First, here is a list of the important (IMO) changes I've been able to round up from blogs at work. Most of this is from Yet Another Warlock Nerf, who is sadly closing his doors along with Phaelia over at Resto4Life. Check out my links on the right to see their latest posts and wish them well. The blogosphere will miss them both.

Patch 3.1 Warlock changes:

• Curse of the Elements (Rank 5) - Increased to 13% spell damage, up from 10%.
• Curse of Recklessness has been removed.
• Curse of Weakness - Now also reduces the armor of the target by 5%.
• Ritual of Summoning: The summoning of the initial portal is now instant cast, down from 5 seconds.

Affliction Specific Changes

• Eradication re-designed: Eradication: When you deal damage with Corruption, you have a 2/4/6% chance to gain the Eradication effect. The Eradication effect increases the critical strike chance of your Shadow Bolt spell by 30%. Each critical strike reduces the critical strike bonus by 10%. Lasts 30 sec.
• Haunt: Now only increases your shadow damage-over-time on the target. (No longer includes non-Shadow damage over time spells.)
• Malediction: No longer increases the effect of Curse of the Elements.
• Pandemic: This talent has been reduced to a 1-point talent, now grants your Corruption and Unstable Affliction the capability to critically hit.
• Shadow Embrace: Now only increases the damage done by your shadow damage periodic spells.
• Siphon Life: The Siphon Life spell has been removed. Siphon Life now causes your Corruption spell to instantly heal you for 40% of the damage done.
• Suppression: Now increases spell hit for all of your spells.

Destruction Specific Change

• Improved Shadow Bolt: Now increases the damage done by your Shadow Bolt spell by 1/2/3/4/5%, and causes your target to be vulnerable to spell damage, increasing spell critical strike chance against that target by 1/2/3/4/5%. Effect lasts 30 sec.

Okay, so looking at this, I'm kind of pissed. I must remind myself, this is only PTR, most likely this will not all go live as-is.

The generic changes are all fine, nothing earth shattering there, just nice to know. Not having a cast time for summoning the flasher stone is good.

The affliction changes, however, look more like a nerf to me. To be honest, I sort of like the haste bonus of Eradication. Probably not for the points, but its nice in boss fights to let you "catch up" sometimes if you've gotten behind on your DoT upkeep. Switching Haunt and Shadow Embrace to only affecting Shadow spells probably makes sense but it looks like a nerf to me. Basically, I'm going to be removing Immolate from my rotation yet again, since it will now not benefit from anything and be just a waste of cast time.

I feel I must interject here that if you look at the destro tree, immolate is getting some love there. I'm not sure if this is going to give us a choice to spec a bunch of points into destro to preserve the DoT's damage as opposed to just taking it out. Don't expect me to waste too much time trying to puzzle that one out though. I'm an angry warlock, remember? It seems to me like the point they're trying to make is Affliction can NOT haz fire. Point taken.

From the look of the new Eradicate, the Improved Shadow Bolt I included which is still low in the destro tree, and the change in suppression to cover all spells, it almost seems as is Blizz is pushing us to use MORE shadowbolts. With the expansion, we saw our s-bolt dependence cut in half, and now its almost as if they're saying "we wanted to do that, just not THAT much." Expect to spam more s-bolts in the very near future. Yet another reason to lose Immolate, in order to squeeze in that extra s-bolt.

The Pandemic change is probably a buff, so okay, that's cool. The siphon life change however is another straight nerf. I know their goal was to simplify the rotation by tacking that onto Corruption, however, we've lost yet another DoT due to these changes. Notice they are not preserving the damage component of the spell, only tacking on the healing to another spell. What happens to the glyph too?

Overall, what I'm seeing here is we're effectively getting two DoTs removed from our standard rotation, losing their damage without a buff elsewhere (I guess we'll have to see how the extra crit of UA and Corr helps that out), and having our dependence on shadow bolt spam increased.

Will the simpler rotation outweigh the overall DPS loss? Will the s-bolts pick up the slack along with some extra critting? I can't say I know. I have to admit it is possible that our damage stays the same across the board or even increases, it just looks like a nerf to me. I don't know why, when we all felt like crap, these are the changes we get. Perhaps my numbers on Patchwerk the other day were just a little *too* good. Who knows?

I guess we'll just have to wait and see what goes live, and hope it balances out overall.

Oh, and if you're looking for the DK changes, head on over to Dk.info. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the warlocky ones, so I didn't feel the urge to write about them.

Bringing Your "A" Game

If you're familiar at all with sports, you may have heard an athlete referred to as being "in the zone". If you've ever participated in sports, you may have experienced this penomenon yourself. For those of you who are unfamiliar with what I'm talking about, the phrase refers to what happens when an athlete is so completely focused on the task at hand that it seems they can do no wrong. For instance, as a basketball player, you may feel that the size of the hoop has expanded to that of a bathtub, making shooting from anywhere infinitely easier. Now, visually, it is still the same size, you are just more aware, more in focus. You're "in the zone". Players expereincing this often preform at unsually high levels, going beyond previous bests to set new records.

I think the term can be carried over into the world of gaming as well. There are times when you are just "on". When you are hitting the right buttons at the right time and it everything just seems to flow. Last night, on our alliance's first time one-shot kill of Patchwerk, I was most definitely in the zone. How deep in the zone you may ask...

Deep

Yes, I broke 3k last night. Now, mind you, for most boss fights I was happy to have just recently broken the 2k mark. I have only one Naxx upgrade (The Gloves of Dark Gestures... which I find to be a rather silly name and makes me want to /rude a lot), the rest of my gear consists of heroic pieces (mostly of the blue variety), a crafted cape, a PvP hood, and that is it. I've gemmed them appropriately (using hit and SP whenever I can), but I've really only used green gems. I still haven't gotten my T7.10 chest upgrade (which will be huge for me I think).

I'm not sure how I put that number up there. I was unconscious. Dots flowed into Dots and became Super Dots. It was like playing connect four on steroids. "FOUR? /scoff. HOW ABOUT I CONNECT THEM ALL! /evilcackle" (okay that was bad). I was playing well, I guess is the point I'm trying to get across here.

So what? You might ask. Go pin a rose on your nose, right? Well, the reason I point this out is because I have been known in the pass to QQ about the state of warlocks. Recently though, I conjectured that perhaps we just didn't scale well until later, with longer living bosses. If the devs were using Patchwerk as a DPS benchmark, you may see why they keep saying that warlocks are "just fine". +1k DPS fine. I'm gonna dry my tears, take of my dress, and end this tea party. No more QQ here. I agree, get relatively geared and head to Patchwerk and you should feel echoes of your old badass self.

(Disclaimer: I don't normally like to pull a BRK and post damage meters, because they're really only a personal growth tool at best, but my jaw dropped at the number I put up... I had to. Obviously, my overall damage done was also very good on the fight, and that's usually what I look at, because you can do mad DPS, but if you're not consistently laying it down, you're not killing stuff very well. Topping charts is all well and good, but make sure you take gear and mechanics into account. Patchwerk is merely a good benchmark because the lack of anything else to do except DPS.)

So the good news is that as time progresses, we keep finding out that we're not as broken as we all originally thought. Also, it'll be nice if we do realize some of the changes that Blizz has mentioned might be in the werks (ha ha) for us.

I'll finish by including the group kill shot from our awesome team last night. We went on to two-shot Grobbulus too, which is great since it was almost everyone's first time in the wing. All in all, a good raid night, though we're still having problems with the stupid dance. Judging by how well we did with the complex Grobbulus fart cloud mechanics, I'm starting to think that our "dancing problem" is not two left feet, but too much lag. /hmmm.

Might As Well Jump

I've Been Memed

Not maimed, but memed. Similar concepts, just one is more of a virtual compulsion to write on a topic and the other is, well, not similar at all.

In any case, if you haven't come across this one yet, you probably don't read blogs, so why are you here? If you're wondering, see Syrana's post here, wherein she tags yours truly. She also explains the rules, but as any good warlock would do, I'm breaking them all.

First of all, I have no subfolders, so I just went for the straight up sixth screenshot in my folder. It wasn't very cool so I went to number 7:

Disco Inferno

If you've read me for a while, you may recall my very first profile picture had a Shattrath background. Because I find it difficult to stand still for any extended period of time, I had to get a dancing shot as well.

Going the extra mile (because you can never stop at just one), I decided to go from the other end of my folder and look for number 6 there. It, too, was boring, so I decided to use a golf term and played the back nine. So here is the ninth from the end:

Look at the nice spring fall colors.

For this one, we were trying to get a cute V-day picture on our RP toons to use on here. I didn't end up liking any of them, but this one was all right I thought. I really need to get my guy a "pimp" hat to go along with the purple suit. It fits him well.

And finally, since by now I've completely broken the meme, I wanted to include the picture of success from my raid group's first clearing of the arachnid wing last night. I referenced it the other day, but forgot to send it to work for use on here. In case you're wondering, Generations currently raids as part of an alliance called the EGA (ega.dkpsystem.com). If you're on Lothar and would like to join a fun, laid back group of folks who just want to see all the raid content, look us up. We're currently working on setting up a second Naxx team that I will be leading (with much help from others). Eventually we want to do 25 man content, so that everyone can save 10-man content for their guild. The cool thing about this is that it allows you to stay in a small guild of friends, but also have a large resource pool of helpful people. It really has been full of win.

Did Somebody Call For An Exterminator?

(Yes, that last caption is a Starcraft shoutout.)

And since pretty much everyone I know has been tagged, I think I'll just break that rule too. If you see this and want me to tag you to give you an excuse to look throw old photos... well, I'm sure we can work something out.