Evidently, today has sparked a flurry of activity for me, considering this is my third post so far this morning. After joyfully reflecting on my new firefly, I started thinking about all the other pets that I would still like to own. There is surprisingly few of these actually, considering Wowhead has 86 listed at the moment, and I certainly don't own that many.
Many of them I can't own for a variety of reasons; I have little desire to go to BlizzCon so no Murky for me. I didn't purchase either the collectors edition of the original game or the expansion so no zerglings or netherwhelps for me. I don't play the TCG so I won't be getting any of those loots. I'm not an engineer, so I miss out of fun pets from there too.
But that's not to say that I don't have my fair share of pets after all. Besides in 2.4 alone they will be introducing the four new croclisk's from the new daily fishy quest, along with the baby Phoenix that drops off Kael in the Magister's Terrace. In the newly revamped summer flame festival there will be apparently a little fire elemental that drops off the Headless Horseman-like boss, along with hopefully the opportunity to pick up the Spirit of Summer that has eluded me for so long.
Most exciting of all is the possibility of bags made specifically for pet collectors with high capacities. This will be very welcome to myself as a hybrid class, because honestly, I'm not sure what I'm going to do about my bank. There is such a ridiculous amount of stuff that I need/want that I run out of room constantly. Hell, I'm on the verge of vendoring my tanking set to make more room for pets, since it's my least desirable druid spec.
The pets that I do still need shouldn't be too hard to get however, two are sold by the eminent Dealer Rashaad of the Stormspire, and two are made by your friendly neighborhood engineer.
Now let's see if my tanking set survives the new additions to the ultimate Druid army of cuteness!
2.25.2008
I <3 my friends
Yesterday, the most epic event capable of occurring in WoW took place. No, I didn't take out Illidan's knees with my healy mace. I didn't even lodge a randomly falling infernal somewhere in Prince Malchezaar where the proverbial sun don't shine. No, I got a
What makes this truly heartwarming, is that I didn't farm for this, but the coolest kid in all of the wide world of warcraft has been passively farming it for me for weeks, and finally got it to drop. I've been wanting this thing for ages, and now, I can proudly display it in the grand annals of non-combat pets to the left.
One of the fun things is the flavor text on the tooltip is a refernce to Joss Whedon's Firefly as pointed out by the commenter on Wowhead. That show/movie happens to be one of my favorites of all time, and it makes it just that much more extra-special.
Needless to say, should this god-like hero of the Earthen Ring server require anything from me, I will certainly be there to help.
What makes this truly heartwarming, is that I didn't farm for this, but the coolest kid in all of the wide world of warcraft has been passively farming it for me for weeks, and finally got it to drop. I've been wanting this thing for ages, and now, I can proudly display it in the grand annals of non-combat pets to the left.
One of the fun things is the flavor text on the tooltip is a refernce to Joss Whedon's Firefly as pointed out by the commenter on Wowhead. That show/movie happens to be one of my favorites of all time, and it makes it just that much more extra-special.
Needless to say, should this god-like hero of the Earthen Ring server require anything from me, I will certainly be there to help.
Just can't get away
So I haven't made a post in over a month, because due to my ever fickle manner, I didn't think I was going to be playing WoW much longer. Kind of hard to write about a game one isn't playing, eh? As it turns out, as usual, the soul-wrenching black hole of social lives has sucked me back in yet again. Not terribly surprising, since WoW is the only video game I really play, and also because this has happened at least once before when I managed to go about a month and a half before coming back. Otherwise my quitting usually amounts to me shouting and swearing at the top of my lungs while hunting down that elusive last ravager in the Netherwing Mines. I'm fairly convinced my neighbors think I have Tourette Syndrome because of such episodes which usually amount to "Oh my freaking god, just let me get ONE MORE RAVAGER without some FREAKING NELF HUNTER ganking it from me at the last DAMNED SECOND." Of course, I'm censoring it since nearly every word is in actuality a curse. Also, at this point I usually start trying to bargain with God.
In any case, as it turns out, WoW has sucked me back in. With the big old 2.4 patch just around the corner, and a newfound interest in my alliance rogue, it seems I have plenty to do in game to keep me busy. Besides, I don't have much to do gaming-wise until Conan or the 4th edition of D&D comes out, so I might as well be playing WoW since I'm paid up till April.
One of the changes that is coming that I personally find... interesting is the additions to jewelcrafting. From what MMO champion is reporting right now, it looks like all of the epic quality recipes found in Black Temple and Mount Hyjal are going to be available for purchase from the Shattered Sun Offensive Reputation Vendor. I don't believe the vendor has actually been found, but the screenshots of the recipes have been posted. Also, they are finally offering upgraded versions of the BoP JC only trinkets at epic quality, also available from the same rep vendor.
I am at least excited because while these changes are not ideal, they are at least changes and that is something JC has been waiting on for a terribly long time. Instead of simply provided "buffed" versions of the BoP trinkets, it would have been nice if they had actually changed the allocation of stats on these. I still use almost all of the trinkets actually, but that's because I walk around in a wide mix of lvl 70 blues, BoJ gear, Kara loot and Heroic loot. I'm not a hard core raider, and don't have that kind of gear, so the trinkets are still an asset to me. I use the when healing because I'm a mana whore and love the extra Int. I use the and when I'm trying to push AP instead of my usual Crit build in kitty form. (I also must admit, I love summoning the Boar. It's fun fighting next to a summoned pet that is almost bigger than me as a cat.) I use the to get my defense high enough in Bearform and I use the on mana-intensive boss fights. They work for me, and I like them even more because I made them. However, I feel for all the people out there that look at these as what they are and laugh; since these are made with materials that come out of BT, thus they should be BT quality right? Well from what everyone has said on the forums, it certainly seems like people aren't that pleased with them. If what they are saying about the transmuting of blue quality gems into epic quality gems is true, I'll certainly be making them, but I feel for the T6 JCers out there who are saying, "really? that's it?"
Also, now all that work in BT to get the epic JC patterns is for naught since everyone, from the lowliest 70 in outland in quest greens to someone in full Thunderheart can get all the epic JC patterns given a bit of tme and dedication in 2.4. Not to mention the pile of gold I've spent on blue quality patterns that is going to become pretty useless. Why make a blue quality gem, when you can make an epic quality? So that's about 15,000 gold or more down the drain :-\
My hope is that Blizzard will learn from what they've done with Jewelcrafting in the Burning Crusade and really analyze how the pattern progression could be done a whole lot better come Wrath of the Lich King.
Which I'll probably end up buying because I'm a stupid sucker.
In any case, as it turns out, WoW has sucked me back in. With the big old 2.4 patch just around the corner, and a newfound interest in my alliance rogue, it seems I have plenty to do in game to keep me busy. Besides, I don't have much to do gaming-wise until Conan or the 4th edition of D&D comes out, so I might as well be playing WoW since I'm paid up till April.
One of the changes that is coming that I personally find... interesting is the additions to jewelcrafting. From what MMO champion is reporting right now, it looks like all of the epic quality recipes found in Black Temple and Mount Hyjal are going to be available for purchase from the Shattered Sun Offensive Reputation Vendor. I don't believe the vendor has actually been found, but the screenshots of the recipes have been posted. Also, they are finally offering upgraded versions of the BoP JC only trinkets at epic quality, also available from the same rep vendor.
I am at least excited because while these changes are not ideal, they are at least changes and that is something JC has been waiting on for a terribly long time. Instead of simply provided "buffed" versions of the BoP trinkets, it would have been nice if they had actually changed the allocation of stats on these. I still use almost all of the trinkets actually, but that's because I walk around in a wide mix of lvl 70 blues, BoJ gear, Kara loot and Heroic loot. I'm not a hard core raider, and don't have that kind of gear, so the trinkets are still an asset to me. I use the when healing because I'm a mana whore and love the extra Int. I use the and when I'm trying to push AP instead of my usual Crit build in kitty form. (I also must admit, I love summoning the Boar. It's fun fighting next to a summoned pet that is almost bigger than me as a cat.) I use the to get my defense high enough in Bearform and I use the on mana-intensive boss fights. They work for me, and I like them even more because I made them. However, I feel for all the people out there that look at these as what they are and laugh; since these are made with materials that come out of BT, thus they should be BT quality right? Well from what everyone has said on the forums, it certainly seems like people aren't that pleased with them. If what they are saying about the transmuting of blue quality gems into epic quality gems is true, I'll certainly be making them, but I feel for the T6 JCers out there who are saying, "really? that's it?"
Also, now all that work in BT to get the epic JC patterns is for naught since everyone, from the lowliest 70 in outland in quest greens to someone in full Thunderheart can get all the epic JC patterns given a bit of tme and dedication in 2.4. Not to mention the pile of gold I've spent on blue quality patterns that is going to become pretty useless. Why make a blue quality gem, when you can make an epic quality? So that's about 15,000 gold or more down the drain :-\
My hope is that Blizzard will learn from what they've done with Jewelcrafting in the Burning Crusade and really analyze how the pattern progression could be done a whole lot better come Wrath of the Lich King.
Which I'll probably end up buying because I'm a stupid sucker.
1.22.2008
Action Packed Weekend
This weekend saw a gauntlet of different nerdy activities including Lord of the Rings Online, Magic the Gathering, World of Warcraft and Dungeons and Dragons. Add in a liberal dosage of alcohol, and it's the recipe for the perfect weekend!
Friday night was watching my buddies raid in LotRO. I wanted to see how another game raided, so I picked up some beer and settled in to watch how they operated things. The one thing that really struck me was their loremaster class. They act as healers for mana bars essentially; having the ability to do a channeled mana tap, and then shooting said mana off to other players. Along with some good AoE damage and off healing capabilities, they make for an interesting class. By the by though, watching them raid didn't look terribly different than WoW. It was pretty sweet though.
Saturday morning was the Magic pre-release event for the sidekick to Lorwyn; Morningtide. Myself and my friend Bill both played in a 32 person flight and the new Open Play format. The flight was a lot of fun and my first endeavor into organized play ever, and I got POUNDED. There are 5 rounds in the flight, and by the end so many people had dropped out that I didn't even have a partner in the last round. Because I was dead last in the standings. However, Bill placed 7th overall in the flight. Grats to Bill :-) The sweet thing was I ended up with 3 copies of the below card.
WoW on Sunday was a somewhat painful experience for me at first. Mainly because someone who shall remain nameless (KEV) decided to call me at noon after I had been up till 5am (not to mention being forced to do a shot of Petron that night, which quite honestly made me gag. Sometimes I think whoever invented Tequila needs to be shot.) I did however decide to drag myself out of bed and logged in for the Karazahn raid that was evidently forming up. I even ended up leading it which was kind of fun. I was quite proud of the fact that we managed to down Huntsman, Moroes, Maiden, Opera and Curator. Not a bad endeavor for a group working together as a raid for the first time in a while.
Finally, Monday was D&D. The ironic part of this story is the nature of the "boss" we are going after: a druid. I feel somewhat bad about having to slaughter one of my brothers in arms (brothers in trees?) despite the fact that it's not the same game. Of course on the other hand, he made it a great big pain in the tuckus to kill his minions, so instead of commiserating with him, I taunted him about landing the killing blow on his animal companion. "I killed your bear I killed your bear I killed your bear I killed your bear..." Sadly we couldn't finish the combat, so instead we will polish it off next weekend, on Saturday.
Friday night was watching my buddies raid in LotRO. I wanted to see how another game raided, so I picked up some beer and settled in to watch how they operated things. The one thing that really struck me was their loremaster class. They act as healers for mana bars essentially; having the ability to do a channeled mana tap, and then shooting said mana off to other players. Along with some good AoE damage and off healing capabilities, they make for an interesting class. By the by though, watching them raid didn't look terribly different than WoW. It was pretty sweet though.
Saturday morning was the Magic pre-release event for the sidekick to Lorwyn; Morningtide. Myself and my friend Bill both played in a 32 person flight and the new Open Play format. The flight was a lot of fun and my first endeavor into organized play ever, and I got POUNDED. There are 5 rounds in the flight, and by the end so many people had dropped out that I didn't even have a partner in the last round. Because I was dead last in the standings. However, Bill placed 7th overall in the flight. Grats to Bill :-) The sweet thing was I ended up with 3 copies of the below card.
WoW on Sunday was a somewhat painful experience for me at first. Mainly because someone who shall remain nameless (KEV) decided to call me at noon after I had been up till 5am (not to mention being forced to do a shot of Petron that night, which quite honestly made me gag. Sometimes I think whoever invented Tequila needs to be shot.) I did however decide to drag myself out of bed and logged in for the Karazahn raid that was evidently forming up. I even ended up leading it which was kind of fun. I was quite proud of the fact that we managed to down Huntsman, Moroes, Maiden, Opera and Curator. Not a bad endeavor for a group working together as a raid for the first time in a while.
Finally, Monday was D&D. The ironic part of this story is the nature of the "boss" we are going after: a druid. I feel somewhat bad about having to slaughter one of my brothers in arms (brothers in trees?) despite the fact that it's not the same game. Of course on the other hand, he made it a great big pain in the tuckus to kill his minions, so instead of commiserating with him, I taunted him about landing the killing blow on his animal companion. "I killed your bear I killed your bear I killed your bear I killed your bear..." Sadly we couldn't finish the combat, so instead we will polish it off next weekend, on Saturday.
1.18.2008
Badges Galore!
I did something yesterday that I haven't gotten a chance to do in well over a year at this point: stealth runs. The last time I got a chance was when one or two rogues and myself were stealthing BRD. I believe it was my first time in the place, which gives some idea of how long ago it was. For the life of me I couldn't figure out how people managed to find their way out of that dizzyingly labyrinthine place.
Anyways, yesterday was evidently somewhat of a scouting mission to figure out exactly where the best places to down heroic bosses are. It was myself, Grumblebelly (feral druid), Malicemaker (rogue) and I must admit to forgetting the other rogues name. Considering that we were four-manning everything, I'd say we did pretty fantastic. Evidently the first target was to be Mechanar, and they had already downed the first two mini bosses, and we were moving on to Nethermancer Sepethrea; otherwise known as the most heinous biznatch of heroics. We managed to two-shot her with only 4 people which I personally consider a feat worth bragging about :-D After that came Panthaleon and his spawning mobs, which of course we were really cheap about and ran down the elvator. Then we waited to see if the pat at the bottom we didn't kill, was gonna wipe us, or alternatively the elevator would rise for us to see a bunch of mobs just waiting to punchify our faces. However we prevailed! Huzzah!
After that we tried to kill the first boss in Botanica and actually fought her and discovered that it's possible to fight her in the back of her area (near the window looking over Warp Splinter) without agroing any other mobs. Sadly we died, and it wasn't terribly easy to stealth into that area in the first place. After I died 2-3 more times we decided to call it for the day. Now, which other instances would be good for stealth runs?
Perhaps more on that later.
Anyways, yesterday was evidently somewhat of a scouting mission to figure out exactly where the best places to down heroic bosses are. It was myself, Grumblebelly (feral druid), Malicemaker (rogue) and I must admit to forgetting the other rogues name. Considering that we were four-manning everything, I'd say we did pretty fantastic. Evidently the first target was to be Mechanar, and they had already downed the first two mini bosses, and we were moving on to Nethermancer Sepethrea; otherwise known as the most heinous biznatch of heroics. We managed to two-shot her with only 4 people which I personally consider a feat worth bragging about :-D After that came Panthaleon and his spawning mobs, which of course we were really cheap about and ran down the elvator. Then we waited to see if the pat at the bottom we didn't kill, was gonna wipe us, or alternatively the elevator would rise for us to see a bunch of mobs just waiting to punchify our faces. However we prevailed! Huzzah!
After that we tried to kill the first boss in Botanica and actually fought her and discovered that it's possible to fight her in the back of her area (near the window looking over Warp Splinter) without agroing any other mobs. Sadly we died, and it wasn't terribly easy to stealth into that area in the first place. After I died 2-3 more times we decided to call it for the day. Now, which other instances would be good for stealth runs?
Perhaps more on that later.
1.15.2008
As if Druids didn't have enough HoTs...
For whatever reason it looks like the Wowhead item links screwed up the formatting of my last post, so this time around I'm just gonna stick a picture of the item in.
Stupid formatting ::grumble grumble grumble::
So, the third amulet that might actually be more useful than at first glance is the Living Ruby Pendant. This one even more so than the previous two amulets discussed because it's plain old constant stats are well balanced for an item of it's level. At the moment I'm using the Necklace of Eternal Hope, and the Living Ruby Pendant is pretty much the same item, just with lower stats, so at least for me, switching between the two wouldn't be a huge sacrifice.
Now, to figure out exactly how much healing you are gettin
g out of the pendant. 6 health/second for 30 minutes = 10,800 healing/party member, 54,000 total healing overall. It sounds pretty significant, but obviously one isn't going to be taking damage for the entire half-hour. In terms of a fairly average tier 4ish boss fight (what I'm familiar with), the fight is probably going to last 5-8 minutes on average (that's my semi-educated guess anyway). On the low end you'll get a total of 1,800 and on the high end 2,880. For whatever reason, I'm really inclined to want to use this, even though by the numbers it seems like a horrible idea. Probably just because I want to give some validation in choosing my profession, but whatever. Since one cast of Rejuv by me, will probably heal a similar amount in 12 seconds as opposed to 5 minutes, I'll feel silly trying this out, but I think I'm going to just the same.
At least the mats are pretty trivial.
Stupid formatting ::grumble grumble grumble::
So, the third amulet that might actually be more useful than at first glance is the Living Ruby Pendant. This one even more so than the previous two amulets discussed because it's plain old constant stats are well balanced for an item of it's level. At the moment I'm using the Necklace of Eternal Hope, and the Living Ruby Pendant is pretty much the same item, just with lower stats, so at least for me, switching between the two wouldn't be a huge sacrifice.
Now, to figure out exactly how much healing you are gettin
g out of the pendant. 6 health/second for 30 minutes = 10,800 healing/party member, 54,000 total healing overall. It sounds pretty significant, but obviously one isn't going to be taking damage for the entire half-hour. In terms of a fairly average tier 4ish boss fight (what I'm familiar with), the fight is probably going to last 5-8 minutes on average (that's my semi-educated guess anyway). On the low end you'll get a total of 1,800 and on the high end 2,880. For whatever reason, I'm really inclined to want to use this, even though by the numbers it seems like a horrible idea. Probably just because I want to give some validation in choosing my profession, but whatever. Since one cast of Rejuv by me, will probably heal a similar amount in 12 seconds as opposed to 5 minutes, I'll feel silly trying this out, but I think I'm going to just the same.At least the mats are pretty trivial.
More Critzorz for Everyone!
When Burning Crusade launched I was one of the many that dropped their old professions and picked up Jewelcrafting. The second day of launch when the servers had stabilized a bit, I parked myself in Silvermoon City, and spent the entire day going from 1 to 300. I sifted through dozens of stacks of ore that I had farmed leading up to the release of BC while I was power-leveling mining, and was amused to find that there is actually a limit to how much mail one's inbox could hold (as I had emptied all of the ore that three separate mule alts had accumulated into the mail at the same time, whoopsies!) Now, I feel frustrated more often than not by how little there is for the jewelcrafters alone at high level, there being no Primal Nether items, and the BoP epic gems such as:
just aren't quite enough for me. Now, the whole point of this post isn't to whine and complain about Jewelcrafters getting looked over, there is more than enough posts on the official forums for that. What I would like to look into is the possibility of using some of the over looked items in the JC repository that could perhaps increase the effectiveness of the party as a whole, at the cost of losing some stats for the wearer. Less roundabout-ly, the 10 charge, "on use" necklaces.
Since I play a druid and have never seriously played an alt, I tend to look at things through my feline/ursine eyes, and am thinking about Leader of the Pack. Is it worth it to equip the:
in a raid situation as a feral druid? To really get the advantage out of it, you'd probably want to be in a 25 man situation so that you could more easily ensure that only rogues, DPS warriors, enhancement shaman and hunters are in the party, so that no amount of crit is wasted. To really try and push this, I'm not sure it should be even considered unless the:
is equipped, because if you are shooting for promoting group crit, you might as well push it as far as possible. At level 70, leader of the pack with the above two items will push one's crit up a total of 6.674%, most of that coming from LotP. Playing a resto druid mainly, I'm not terribly familiar with theorycrafting physical combat. But it seems that increasing 4 additional party members crit value by 1.674% could be considered significant enough to make this amulet an option. If I'm totally overrating the how important that boost is, I would certainly welcome the input.
EDIT: It occurred to me that the exact same scenario would apply to Boomkin and using:
It's actually even better in this case since it's a total increase for the party of 7.41%. I would be very curious to know what was going through the designers head when he placed defense on that amulet however, and why he/she thought it was a good or even reasonable idea. Perhaps someone was hitting the sauce that day.
just aren't quite enough for me. Now, the whole point of this post isn't to whine and complain about Jewelcrafters getting looked over, there is more than enough posts on the official forums for that. What I would like to look into is the possibility of using some of the over looked items in the JC repository that could perhaps increase the effectiveness of the party as a whole, at the cost of losing some stats for the wearer. Less roundabout-ly, the 10 charge, "on use" necklaces.
Since I play a druid and have never seriously played an alt, I tend to look at things through my feline/ursine eyes, and am thinking about Leader of the Pack. Is it worth it to equip the:
in a raid situation as a feral druid? To really get the advantage out of it, you'd probably want to be in a 25 man situation so that you could more easily ensure that only rogues, DPS warriors, enhancement shaman and hunters are in the party, so that no amount of crit is wasted. To really try and push this, I'm not sure it should be even considered unless the:
is equipped, because if you are shooting for promoting group crit, you might as well push it as far as possible. At level 70, leader of the pack with the above two items will push one's crit up a total of 6.674%, most of that coming from LotP. Playing a resto druid mainly, I'm not terribly familiar with theorycrafting physical combat. But it seems that increasing 4 additional party members crit value by 1.674% could be considered significant enough to make this amulet an option. If I'm totally overrating the how important that boost is, I would certainly welcome the input.
EDIT: It occurred to me that the exact same scenario would apply to Boomkin and using:
It's actually even better in this case since it's a total increase for the party of 7.41%. I would be very curious to know what was going through the designers head when he placed defense on that amulet however, and why he/she thought it was a good or even reasonable idea. Perhaps someone was hitting the sauce that day.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
