Come on over!

All righty. I can wemble about this until I hit level 80, or I can take the plunge.

So head on over and say hello at my new home:

wowblog.grimmlabs.com

I will not be updating this site any further.

Also: I forgot to mention that if you use a reader, as I do, that you might want the URL of the RSS feed. Here you go.

http://wowblog.grimmlabs.com/feed

Unleash the dogs of Q (and Q) (Again)

One clarification on my most recent post: as pointed out by krizzleybear, one would be more likely to use fire blast or ice lance for a killsteal rather than rank 1 frostbolt. Well. I did pull that out of my ... shard bag. As expected, it went awry.

(Note to self: next time, assume someone will actually read what you write, and do some of that "research" stuff they talk about in the Kirin Tor).

Now back to your irregularly scheduled rant.

---

Wow, no wonder the rest of the WoW community hates warlocks - if one could harness the energy put into the collective QQ of this class over gameplay changes, we could move Earth into a higher orbit and avoid that whole global warming ickyness.

I'm referring obliquely to what is more directly referred to here. Changes will be made to buff and debuff stacking (well, yes, they told us a few weeks ago). These changes make it so that specific effects cannot be excesively stacked.

Obviously ... affliction warlocks are the intended target of this hateful move by Blizzard omg omg o noez ....

Or ... another way of looking at this ... maybe affliction-leaning warlocks have been taking advantage of loopholes for a while now? Possible? Yes?

It's been a running joke that locks are OP; like most long running jokes, that has a basis in fact. Much like Rogue stun-locking (which will likely get nerfed, too, I bet you a soulstone), an affliction-based lock can keep you running all over the place and taking damage without actually having to get close to you. You might not ever land a blow before you died, and that's when you're evenly matched.

Maybe ... just maybe ... some of this will become counterbalanced by showing some love for the Affliction tree that makes it (a) a viable DPS slot-filler in raids, and (b) still survivable and PvP-able without being invincible.

It could happen.

I look forward to the changes; it will be fun trying to figure out how to squeeze the most from the new build again. Maybe it will suck - I'm sure Blizz will work something out eventually. Remember when Frost wasn't viable at all for mages?

---

True story.

Lady Sylvanis was leading her armies into battle when they came across a Warlock's home. She hailed the warlock and demanded he join with them.

He sneered, "Only if you can defeat me in battle, for surely I will not join with anyone inferior to myself."

"What nerve!" she exclaimed, and then motioned for a couple of large goons to go in and "convince" him to join.

There was a commotion, and then nothing. Then, the warlock poked his head out the window and said "Oh, you'll have to do much better than that."

Outraged, she sent in a whole battalion. After the dust settled, the warlock jeered at her, "Let me know when you're about to get serious!"

"That's it!" she snapped, and motioned her captains to send in over half the army. Again, an epic battle was fought, and in the end, one lone soldier came staggering out. He collapsed at his Queen's feet, and gasped out: "My lady, it's a trap! There are two warlocks in there!"

I wonder how high you can stack Syphon Life, anyway?

It's coming

Just a head's up; the blog will be moving within he next week or so. The new blog is not quite ready but it's ready enough that I think I will wish to do everything there very soon, and just keep adding the bits I want as I go along.

So watch this space.

I love the whole WoW

Apropos of a conversation in guild chat a few weeks back, and stolen from Anna:

---

I love the warlocks, they love to dot and kite,
I love the paladins, they always fight for right,
I love to play WoW, with all the epic fights,
Boom-dee-ada, boom-dee-ada,
Boom-dee-ada, boom-dee-ada.

I love the hunters, with all their pets and traps,
I love the sneaky rogues, who love to stealth and sap,
I love to play WoW, with all the crazy crap.
Boom-dee-ada, boom-dee-ada,
Boom-dee-ada, boom-dee-ada.

I love to gank n00bs, I love the battlegrounds,
I love to do quests, with all the running around,
I love to play WoW, with all its sights and sounds,
Boom-dee-ada, boom-dee-ada,
Boom-dee-ada, boom-dee-ada.

[Reference]

Downranking and you: get over it

/sigh

I know that Grimm promised no WotLK talk, but you may have noticed that I made no such promises [1]. I'm not really into the whole beta discussion thing, but one thing that has caught my eye is the massive QQing over the elimination of downranking for spells.

Background

For those not aware of it, here's how it works: as a caster, you are given a certain number of spells to use. Some of these have multiple levels of usage, each granted at higher level than before, and more powerful than its lesser siblings. For example, you start in the teens with a spell to drain soul shards that just happens to also afflict damage. Later, you get the same spell, only now it generates more damage - but the soul shard is the same either way.

Since the amount of damage isn't really that big in either case, all we care about is the soul shard. And that will be the same no matter what level of the spell you use. So, given that any other effects are not important, how much mana would you prefer to spend in order to drain a soul? [2]

1. 10
2. 50
3. 100
4. 200
5. 400

The choice is obvious - 10 beats 400 any day.

That is, in effect, what downranking is all about. Spending less mana to achieve similar results.

Enter teh Blizzard

For the next expansion, Blizzard is, well, not removing downranking, but it is removing most advantages that it presents.

Instead of a fixed amount of mana, a spell will cost a percentage of your base mana (not adjusted mana). Essentially, each spell rank is set up so no matter which rank you use, you will always use the same amount of mana. The base percent may be 5%, so if you have a mana pool of 100, you spend 5 mana, for 1000, 50 mana, and so forth.

So goodbye, downranking.

Why it is a bad thing.

There are - very - limited reasons to expect downranking to be legitimate. A mage might wish to use a smaller frost bolt, for example, to carry out a small task. It makes sense that any caster should be allowed to apply a throttle, and that the logical extension of this is that throttled spells would cost less to cast. Within the logic of any role playing game, this is sensible, in much the same way as using a smaller laser in a sci-fi movie would drain the power cells more slowly.

Why it is a good thing

Downranking was not used in such a way as to make sense in the fantasy world. It was used for purely technical and exploitative reasons. People didn't downrank frost bolt to appear more realistic, they downranked it so they could killsteal without working for it, and so forth.

So now, rank 1 frost bolt costs the same as rank 7, but still (maybe?) casts faster than rank 7 [3]. Now you get to make a choice: is the killsteal worth the expenditure of assets? It's still a lowlife thing to do, but at least now it's a lowlife thing to do that has an actual cost to it.

With very few exceptions, downranking has been a way to game the system. It goes counter to the spirit of the game, in my opinion. Sure, I'll miss making a soul shard for almost nothing. But overall I think it is a positive thing.

The Big Picture

As with the attempted nerf to Life Tap that caused all the crybabies to come out of the woodwork [4], this change to the game system is simply a puzzle to be sussed out [6].

Before, certain options were available for working the system. Now they are gone; you have the choice to be pwned on the damage meters and in PvP, or you can raise your head, wipe off those make-up smears off your cheeks, and start developing a new strategy. Adapt and overcome.

A lot of stuff is changing in-game. You're going to have to come up with a strategy to deal with pet Devisaurs and Rhinos in PvP, too. I'm amazed that clothies worldwide haven't turned on the QQ pumps over that.

Make you sick, make you ill,
makes you cheat, slipping change from the till.
Had it up to the gills, makes you cry while the milk still spills.
Ain't it just a bitch? What a pain, well it's all a crying shame.
What left to do ... but complain?
Better find someone to blame!

---

[1] - But I do promise not to make a habit of it. I have a life.

[2] - These numbers are complete fabrications. See your tooltips for real numbers.

[3] - No, I honestly don't know if Frost Bolt Rank 1 casts faster than Rank 7. I don't care. This is a tool to illustrate the concept, not the user's manual. Truly sorry if I had to explain that to you.

[4] - We actually had someone leave the guild because the sympathy wasn't flowing over that issue [5]. True story.

[5] - OK, because I was making fun of the QQ. Almost the same thing.

[6] - Had the Life Tap changes remained, it would have forced an adjustment, but that's all. Good players adjust. That's why they're good players.

The pretties no one notices

Like any good rogue, I know when to lie low, but this is ridiculous. How long's it been, anyway? Weeks, at least. But the clan "elders" are trying to come up with ways to get us all out to play. At issue is our Autumn festival gathering in Southshore. Right now, Fai and Yar are probably going to need escorts to get there. Way to kill a party, gals.

Enough of that.

I did get to come out and play a bit yesterday because my bank was getting entirely too full of things which included lockboxes. I really needed to crack a few open just to get them out of the bank, and get whatever was in them, into circulation. I needed to get my lock picking from 142 to 175 somehow.

Off the coast of Desolace is a place that has a lot of waterlogged chests on the ocean floor. Illume tossed me some water breathing potions in exchange for ... well, other services ... and I was off.

While I was there, I noticed this (click for large image).

Now, it's a natural thing; methane forms under the mud and then bubbles out of the silt. But how many people have seen this? I have to wonder. Relatively few, I imagine. And yet, we have this detail off the coast near Ethel Rethor.

Pretty spiffy.

See you when I see you.

You stay classy, guys!

I logged in to Grymmtooth today with the intent of deleting him. Imagine my surprise when I found that he had been removed from his guild without any comment from the GM or any of the officers at all.

Doesn't help that one of the officers is a friend and it was only at her request that I rolled Grymm in the first place.

So you're thinking: "Why does it matter since you were going to delete him anyway?"

Well, see if you can spot the difference:

• Me: As I left the guild, I would have sold all my things (other than the three or four blues that I had in the bank) and deposited that money and my blues into the guild bank, then sent a quick note to the GM and my friend saying, "sorry, didn't work out, I left you all my stuff".
• Them: /kick to the curb.

It's a question of class.

All things considered, I should not have been surprised. But I am a bit disappointed in a certain direction, as you can well imagine.

Well, I console myself in the fact that the newb I gave 28 gold to is very happy, and that the three blue pieces I put on the neutral AH were sold to some Alliance hunter before I even had a chance to log out (I sold them for 1 cp apiece). (Yes, that is evil. Why yes, I have a Warlock. Get it?)

There will be no further Grymmtooth posts. That chapter is closed, permenantly.

Well, as long as you had fun

By all that is Light and all that is in Shadow, last night was an unusual Kara run and that's no lie.

Following last week's 5:30 clear of Kara, we set out to repeat the feat. There were a few hurdles.

Missing Peeps - One of our core players was gone on family business, and guild attendance was thin at the appointed time. So we started out 9-manning the front half and later picked up a mage that we have run with before.

Spec Spankings - I respecced Affliction (43/0/18) following some research into someone else's spec in which she was pulling ~1000 DPS in close to the same gear as myself. Conclusion: I suck as a raiding Affliction lock. Either that or I didn't give it enough time, but it was pretty frightening. So I withdrew and let Grimm fill in on the front half while I ran back to Stormwind and respecced. My overall DPS was down 200-300 tics from where it should be, and yet my AoE spells were pulling off the tanks like they didn't even exist. I died three times before we got to Moroes. Two undergeared hunters were handing my ass to me in a cookie jar. And have I mentioned how humiliating it is to be out-DPS-ed by an MM hunter?¹

Game Faces: Missing. We were having a terrible time getting our game on, collectively. Bad pulls, Leeroy Jenkenses, and inexplicably angry warlock pets² all let to many wipes.

Regardless, we managed to clear all but 1 boss (Nightbane, who killed us at least 6 times), but it took us 7 hours - Seven! Highlights:

• Nightbane³ was three-putted.
  
• Curator went down possibly the fastest we've ever seen - two evocates and then we burned him down.
• It was messy⁴, but Illhoof was one-shotted.
• Aran was 3-putted after the FAIL hound incidents.
• Shade mocks us.
• Price was 3-putted, same reason: bad infernal drops.
  

On Prince: the 2nd round was pretty good, actually, with the whole team lasting well into phase 3 with bad drops all around. We adapted and overcame one bad drop after another, but in the end it was too difficult for the healers to both find a place to be safe and keep the tank alive.

When we downed him, every body died as he did, as an infernal dropped right on top of him as as he hit 1%. In the end I was useless because of the spell pushback from the infernals.

Fortunately, nobody really lost thier perpective during all this; we kept a sense of humor and they were very forgiving of my little faux pas with my spec.

It was nice to be back on Destro; those 5K crits do me good. On the back half of the instance, I was pulling around 800 dps, as opposed to the anemic 525 I got on Afflic. Yay me.

Oh, like the new icon? I'll probably redo it when I finish my FSW robe, but this is part of the new site's tech that bled back to this site for the time being.

---

1 - When Grimm came in to replace my anemic butt, he showed 'em how it's done. Held up our end, as it were.
2 - Apparently both myself and our other lock were in PvP previously, so when we summoned our Felhunters to kill off for the mana bucket - they charged Aran. Twice, before we figured out what was going on. This is the origin of the term FAIL Hound, in case historians become curious later on.
3 - Why can't people follow simple instructions> We said "form up on the moon." So of course our pug mage flat refuses to do so.
4 - Once again, I forgot to bind Seed of Corruption to a hotkey, so I had to mouse-click it for the duration.

[Illume] About that fight ...

In all the excitement I kind of glossed over the Karazhan fights that we did do, and they were pretty interesting.Attumen wasn't a big deal, though he did take longer to down than we are used to.

Moroes was interesting ... our pally tank caught 3 of the mobs in his aura and they wouldn't let go. So our priest kept his target shackled and we just burned down all 3 of the pally's targets instead. That was some impressive tanking, and also, that was some impressive shackling by our green priest. We have veterans that have done worse.

Maiden was ... Maiden. I died on both attempts. I am definitely not as well geared as Flora, and Maiden lets me know all about it.

Also: this is a test of Zoundry Raven, an offline blogging client. So far I like it.

Update: OK, I don't like it as much now.

[Illume] Take the first step.

What I saw on this journey -
I saw history go down.
I cannot pretend
That the heartache falls away.
It's just like a river;
It's never ending.

-- "Illume", Fleetwood Mac, Say You Will[1]

We've all been a bit bruised since Sunday; events left a bad taste in our collective mouths. We love raiding. So it says something that we wanted the night off for K2 if at all possible. However, we do not play blackmail games; we made it clear that, if needed, we would come.

There weren't enough bodies for it to happen without one of the clan, though, so the GL asked me to come.

Me? I'm not even keyed!

Just for the first boss or so, she said. Well, OK .... Grimmtooth is parked in Darkshire just in case. I really expected we'd need him.

I was pleasantly surprised at how it went. Oh, it was obvious we were short on DPS; things took much longer to go down. But the healing was good, and the tankage was good, for the most part, so with a few miscues we were able to take Attumen, Moroes, and Maiden down. It was decided that doing the Retribution Dance was probably not going to work for the priest, and I found out quickly that, no, I am not Flora or Grimm and can't really take that kind of abuse without dedicated healz.

Stats-wise, I was averaging a bit over 500 dps, 2nd ahead of a warlock that was just behind me[1]. Of course, the gap between me and our GM was 250 or so DPS - an 11th raider's worth, so there's not much in the way of e-peen to be had there.

No phat mage lewt dropped - well, Moroes dropped the belt, but our priest needed it more than me[2] - that's his main, I'm 3rd string.

The biggest thing about this evening, though, was that I think we're back into a raiding frame of mind. I feel much better. As always, I owe my GM for that.

/thank

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[1] To satisfy some curiosity out there, the source of my name.

[2] He was geared pretty well, so not sure what's up with that. He should be slamming like Flora.

[3] Well, OK, he also rolled a natural 100, but that's beside the point!