Casual Raid Leader

I must admit its been an extremely thrilling, yet frustrating 13 days.  From one perspective its been extremely thrilling.  Wrath is finally here and its living up to be everything I ever hoped for.  Everything isn’t all sunshine and roses, but compared to my experiences with the launch of Burning Crusade, there really isn’t anything to complain about.  Ok I lie… there is stuff to complain about.  My limited schedule….  Insert a business trip plus being out of town again for another 4 days starting today and you get a very grumpy Starman. (more…)

I was going to sit down, go through the entire list of items for every boss in every dungeon and all of their heroic counterparts.  Then I realized today while reading one of my favorite information sites…. that they beat me to it.  In fact they just published it today.  Well I’m not about to recreate the wheel.  So if you are interested, please check out the following:

MMO Champion Armor and Weapon Lists

This is a great way to start planning your dungeon excursions.  Plus if you see that there aren’t pants you want, its time to start looking up crafted recipes.  These are nice lists.  They include all blue and purple items that come from quests, drops and Naxx.  Its a great starting place to plan for gearing up for Naxx.

I’ve caught a decent amount of flack off and on about what I’m doing and where I want to go in the world of raiding. Some people have accused me of being ahead of myself. That’s fine. Everyone has their opinion, but I thought it was time… with the dawning of this new era that I put together my vision of raiding in WotLK.

So here in this very public forum, I’m going to bear my soul on a vision of raiding and why. My word is not law in my guild. I am the raid organizer, but I have no illusions of my position having any grander status than anyone else. My job is to organize and coordinate raids and raid leaders. My job is to ensure we have some state of consistency on how things like, loot, invites, and raider expectations are. My job is also to ensure people are adequately prepped to move forward. My job is to sign off on people being ready to progress to the next tier. (more…)

The rumors of my demise have been greatly overstated!!!

For the last 5 days, I was on what has to be the worst timed business trip in history.  I scheduled the trip about 5 days before Blizzard announced the release date.  I just about cried right after they did.  So for those who are curious… I got to play the expansion an entire 2 whole days before I was whisked away on business.  So major suckage on that, but some interesting things come of it.

1.  I still am employed and that’s a good thing.
2.  I learned a lot that’s applicable to my job.  Score one for being able to do my job better and more efficiently.
3.  I learned a bit thats applicable to the game. (more…)

There was a time not long ago, where in a new generation was born.  A generation who never played the game when shaman didn’t exist.  A generation who had no concept of what a rep grind really meant back in the day.  A generation who would have scant chance to ever step foot in Blackwing Lair, Molten Core, Upper Blackrock Spire, or Diremaul.  This generation lived to level to 58 and then take their first undergeared steps into Outland.  A land rich in gold and gear.  A land where undergeared easy to kill toons became monstrous killing machines. 

A world…. that has come to an end. 

A world, that has become a shadow of its former self. 

Like the Age of Azeroth…. The BC Babies era is at an end. 

Their scars have been earned. 

Their noobdom shed in favor of the ideology of the grizzled veteran. (more…)

Its catchy.  We talked about creating a guild at one point, with a name like that, but the reality is that it was time to look at clearing out some bags.  We all do it.  We’ve been collecting bags and bags of gear saving them for special fights etc, but at the end of the day, its time to move on.  Those hard earned purples are on the verge of being replaced with easily earned greens. 

An era has ended and a new one born again.  But how long should you hold onto those epics?  Should you look at greens sooner than later?  I tend to think so, but for different reason than you think. (more…)

Its a fact of life for most mages, warlocks, boomkin etc.  If you’ve got an AOE spell and you’re AOEing a large (such as say… the mana wyrms in Magister’s Terrace???) group, you see a reduction in how hard you hit.  Interestingly enough we were playing around in Magister’s Terrace last night.  I’d always wanted to tank that room with the Wyrms and see how high a feral tank’s DPS gets on that.  Well the good news is I found out I do 3700 DPS pulling the first half of the room and swiping away.  The bad news is I looked up my hunter’s DPS and she did 9800 DPS.  Yes… you read that right.  9800 DPS.  Hmmmm could be a bug, but typically AOE’s suffer from a decrease in effectiveness against huge groups like that.  9800 tells me that it saw zero reduction in strike damage for that massive group of wyrms.  Wow… that’s pretty damned powerful.

On an administrative note, sorry for the silence this weekend, something about the stomach flu just doesn’t encourage one to sit at a computer and compose deep and insightful blog posts. 

Updates though on how things have been flowing. I’ve finally gotten my druid up to 68.  In addition I’ve got him set up with Inscription up to 350.  Beyond researching his daily minor inscriptions he’s all set and ready to trip the starlight fantastic in the expansion.  Is it so wrong to have two druids as your main characters???? 

Now its just a hard burn on helping my wife achieve her goals.  She’s got two characters within striking distance of 68.  She has a hunter hanging out at 65 and a mage who just dinged 60 last night.  I’m really trying to make sure she can participate with everyone else in the expansion.  Its coming at the expense of my working on the Argent Dawn stuff, but still, I’d much rather she be able to play and enjoy being up with everyone else in the expansion rather than struggling to play catch up.  Plus having two characters gives her a lot of choice.  When I started in BC, I had one who was level 60 or even close to 60.  Having two means if she’s loving her mage, she can play her mage… if she’s loving her hunter that day, its time to kick some teeth in using a bow or a gun!!!