Xanthelei the Completist

So I gave in. For almost three years (woah, seriously? Three years of World of Warcraft come March? Holy Light!) I’ve used and abused Wowhead for information of various sorts, but I’d avoided signing up. Why bother, I thought, when I can see all this info without logging in? Well, they’ve added something I can’t ignore.

The Completion Tracker.

This sucker tracks everything – minipets, mounts, achievements, tabards, titles… /gasp … recipes (not just for cooking, mind), reputations and quests. Whew that’s a mouthful. Basically, it tracks everything I’ve been tracking on paper in the Wowhead database, with the exception of gear upgrades. I’ll be killing a lot less trees this way, let me tell you!

It did beg the question though. Who will require tracking? Well, certainly not the Dorf, since he’s just a banker now. Incidentally, someone remind me to get him a nice tux or something… some of my toons are just name holders or concepts not past the 10th level, so they’re out. In the end, I boiled it down to “I’ll track whoever is level cap.” And so Xanthelei and Erikka have joined the ranks of “mains” together, while Kyrem and all others are left as “alts”.

Just a word to the wise: Exlusions don’t save at the moment, so don’t waste a half hour going through mounts, pets, and the like just to find none of it mattered.

On a higher note, Erikka is now at about 3k gold, most of it from simply finishing quests. I will break her bank to get epic flying for her, as it’s the only thing I miss desperately when wandering around for ore.

EDIT: My friend donated 2k gold to the cause, so myself and some guildies ran right into CoS and snagged her a free drake. Gotta love when a plan comes together!

You Know This Scrub Made It

“Very well. I will help you, runemaiden.”

Lok’lira the Crone nodded at Erikka appreciatively. Whether it was because the paladin had agreed to her proposal or for the flattering title she had bestowed on the vrykul, Erikka did not know.

“You have your first kill in this Hyldsmeet,” the Crone reminded her, “but you must solidify your position. If you can best six more Hyldnir the Arbitor may look well on you. Go.”

Amanalar came at her call, the ebony gryphon nuzzling her affectionately. Lok’lira raised a brow. “You may well give yourself away if you ride that around. It’s too small for you – as a Hyldnir, of course.” Erikka grinned and jumped onto his back, dwarfing the gryphon in her illusion. Amanalar gave a squawk of surprise and eyed her, trying to understand how she’d grown without becoming heavier.

“Disguise him as well, or accept that he is very strong,” she retorted, and turned to fly off. Her grin grew as Amanalar suddenly became proportionate to her own disguise and gave out another surprised squawk. She patted the beast. “As the Warlock would say, just go with it, yes?” she said to comfort him.

—

Erikka the Protadin has reached level 78 and begun running dungeons. Very few, and somewhat infrequently, as it seems to take near exhaustion for me to think maybe I could tank something without someone dying. In truth, no one’s died due to my lack of tanking ability. (I claim no rights to them dying from pulling the whole damn room while the healer and I sit and drink.) On top of that, she’s done with most of the Thorim/Sons of Hodir line, and already into Revered. o.O I remember grinding those suckers for months on Xanth… but I guess I shouldn’t complain, so I won’t.

Speaking of Xanth, he’s one piece away from the lovely 4 piece T9 bonus. I’m not sure I need it though. I’m managing to hit about 5K dps on boss fights now, which just blows my mind. My guildies seem to enjoy the competition though, so I’ll keep it up. You know, for their sakes. /grin

It does make me wish I had the balls to look up my old guild master and tell him. See, after Wrath came out I was told in no uncertain terms that I couldn’t raid with them because my latency would gimp my dps too much. We may not have ToTC 10 on farm and be poking our toes into Icecrown, but I think we at TTH have done quite well for ourselves. And I’m willing to bet that I’m not that far behind where the other hunters of FS were at my gear/content level.

But maybe I’m just being possessive and protective of my guild.

Hmm. You know, maybe satellite internet is a blessing in disguise. If I didn’t have it, I’d probably be fighting with Ior and Sen for “most deaths per fight due to aggro pulls”.

/Feigns death

Call Stabled Pet Has A Bug

Just a heads up to anyone who reads this and has a hunter. Call Stabled Pet has a bug, where if you use it within an instance it will gain a cooldown of anywhere from 15 to 25 days. Yup – days. I have a 15 day cooldown on it myself, and so put in a ticket to get it fixed. Here’s the mail I got back:

TL;DR: If you get a huge cooldown on Call Stabled Pet, go Q for an arena match. Just a random one will do. When it’s up, join in, check the cooldown, and once it’s fixed you’re free to leave. Oh, and don’t use it inside an instance again, or you’ll be making a lot of trips to the arena master.

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

I am damn proud of my guild right now. After the Mimiron kill, we came back the next night to attempt General Vezax and, after 6 attempts, made him kiss the floor.

And yes, this is an afterthought picture. We all were running to go peek at Yoggy, and looting massive amounts of Saronite, and generally patting ourselves on the back.

The next night… my 4-day-old router got into a fight with my satellite modem, and it took me an hour and a half to get them to make up and start talking again. As such, I missed the Yogg-Saron attempts, was blamed for everything because of it (jokingly, of course), and we didn’t get a Yogg kill. Part of me is sad as that means no progression for the guild, and part of me is jumping for joy as it means I’m likely to get in on the fight where we DO kill him.

So last night we continued with the firsts and loaded up a 25 man Ulduar raid. Yes, we had to pug about 10 people, but hey, this way everyone on at the right time got to go! There’s a mage and a warrior I’m starting to wonder about as raiders, though, as they weren’t around even though they knew we’d be doing a 25. But eh, their loss.

After a small goof up with the towers that forced us to do one tower instead of two (Hodir + Mim = ouchies), we killed off FL. Enter loot QQ. Now, poor Babsy did forget to set down the loot rules, but this was a guild run and she had final say in who got what. Zalla, our Retadin-forced-to-Tankadin, rolled on a nice DPS ring as that’s her main spec, it’s what she wants to do, and she passed on everything tanky. Random Warrior 1 got pissy because “zomg she’s a tank and I’m dps and I should get it and she should get the tank ring that went to offspec.”

He went so far as to accuse Babs of giving Zalla the ring – that she won the roll for – because she’s a guildie, and actually got Zalla to /ragequit the raid. That takes a lot (if you aren’t Mid) to get Zalla to do, and frankly I don’t blame her. We got spoiled big time on guild runs where everyone knows she’s Ret and tanks so Babs can bring her rogue for gear, and we never have loot rage on guild runs. But then, everyone who’s ever grouped with RW1 agrees he’s an asshat to begin with, and Always Right. Just ask him.

The good news is, this little temper tantrum cleared out most of the idiots we’d managed to bring in (including a paladin dps in blues and greens who required getting that ring cause it would replace a green, and then /ragequit when I won the engineering roll on the corpse) and allowed us to snag some cooler people who actually got why we raid. This is important, understanding the why to what TTH members do. We don’t raid for lewts or achieves, though we never turn them down. We raid to have Fun. And loot QQ? Not fun.

Continue on to XT, who dies like the wimp he is. Don’t let that exercise routine fool you, he’s a push over. Distribute loot, cannabalize his rear, and on to Ignis!

…who then proceedes to two shot tanks at random intervals. o.O Not just any tank, either. No, this is the Thig Tank. A friend from my FS days, this guy is geared to the nines. We’re talking almost 50k health with buffs geared. And he’s a good tank on top of it, so when he’s getting ganked something’s going wrong. Oh well, we can has Razorscale kill at least!

Or not. Razor nommed our faces off too, though we were finally getting the adds down at the end. Interesting fact: dwarven spawns are apparently not the same in 25s as in 10s. Who’da thunk it?

All in all, I’d consider last night a success despite the setbacks and missing 2 boss kills. It’s been a long time since we’ve had to pug anyone into our raids, and this was our first go at a 25-man anything. On top of that, Thig Tank decided to come hang with us in-guild. I don’t think anyone even cares if he tanks stuff for us, he’s just a fun guy to have around.

Make Me A Sammich, Bish!

While I thought my router dying and leaving me internet-less for 5 days would be the focus of my next blog post, I was wrong.

While tempted to say something witty, I will refrain and simply bask in the glory of a full-guild first kill. Congrats to TTH, and may the upcoming 25 mans be as sweet as this.

…Oh, and Yogg? I’ll take a BLT, no mayo. /snaps fingers

Open Letters

Dear Blizzard,

We at TTH would like to thank you for fixing the DPS bug – whatever it may have been – that was robbing us all of about 1 – 1.5k DPS the night of the patch. While we wish it had happened before we attempted Ignis and Razorscale, we recognize that you don’t hold to our raiding schedule, as we are all honorary kiwis instead of honorary west coasters.

We would also like to respectfully ask that you look into fixing the Rogue’s Combat tree, as our guild leader hates the Assassination tree about as much as I hate playing a DK.

PS: The new instances rock. WTB more like them.

—

Dear Fail PuG DK,

Learn to update Omen and Deadly Boss Mods. Learn not to turn on Autorun in areas without safety rails. Do these things, and people will hate you less when the new LFG system sticks you with them.

—

Dear Fail PuG Healer,

While  I understand that it’s ‘just’ a pugged heroic, this Space Goat does not like having to ask to be healed to full after the boss fight. You see, fighting trash stops the automatic health regeneration mechanic, and it’s just sad when I have to Gift of the Naruu myself to get a heal. When we’re out of combat. And you have a full mana bar.

—

Dear Fail PuG Tank,

Learn to tank shit. You’re a Paladin; you’re level 80; you’re geared. Yet my level 74 Paladin holds more aggro than you. Those spells on your bar? Those are for making the mob hate you more than the melee dps, ranged dps, and the healer. Auto attack alone will not create enough threat to keep the priest alive.

—

Dear Dragonblight Server,

We do not want your fail people! Thank you.

The Honeymoon Is Over

And the fighting has begun.

So I was right about the Misdirection nerf, and apparently they threw in “doesn’t go off if you have any amount of lag and have queued up a shot right after” for free. This annoys me greatly, but it isn’t the one thing that sparks my ire tonight.

Not in the least.

This is a screenshot of my DPS on XT in a guild Uld-10 run. Note that Alvar, my ghostsabre, is the pet named. With my cat, I was consistantly pulling down 4.5k DPS on boss fights. I was quite pleased with this, as reaching 3k had been a struggle for me a month before. With my wolf. (And yes, I realize my pet was over half my damage that fight. I’m not worried – I’m Beast Master for a reason.)

This is a screenshot I took tonight. Same guild, same instance, same gear… less pewpew. This screenshot was taken after our last attempt at Ignis for the night. I had pulled out my wolf, Maizee, for that fight. Made sure I had all buffs. Ensured I had my blue Mammoth Cutters equipped. Everything I could think of.

And I STILL lost 1.5k DPS.

And it wasn’t just me. The ‘lock? Usually gives our geared tanks a run for their money, but was doing little enough damage he had no problems staying (just) below our half-geared upcoming pally tank. The rogue? That’s poor Babsy, and she’s used to more DPS than I am. The only people that seem unaffected by the changes, whatever they are, is the mage and the other hunter.

While I agree that the amount of dps players do in general is insane – I remember when it was a goal to hit even 700 dps in BM – I disagree that the best way to address this was a stealth nerf. That’s what this feels like to everyone in my guild. It feels like they decreased scaling across the board. If anything, I should have seen a net DPS increase due to the changes in my pet’s talent tree. Culling the Herd is essentially a pet-based trinket after all, and it’s always up.

Meh. We’ll learn, and adjust, and spam heroics for T9. Perhaps what I’m most annoyed at is the feeling that we will be forced to kit out in full T9 before we can even think of getting back to Mimiron. We haven’t wiped on Ignis for at least a month, and we certainly haven’t missed killing Kologarn before the end of raid for three. Now it’s like coming into Uld in Naxx and OS gear all over again.

But mark my words: Mim will die before Cataclysm.

Well, It IS Pretty

I finally got off my lazy arse and finished paying for Aion, the coolest looking game of the year. Well, ok, the coolest looking MMO. According to me. *cough*

Anyway! I got home, got it installed… and downloaded a patch. No worries, set it up and go nap for an hour. Once that was done updating, I got to spend the next 20 minutes trying to remember wtf my account info for NCSoft was. /fail

The game itself is gorgeous and fun to play. Everything is flashy and fancy and total eye candy, and my computer can actually handle it! The UI isn’t that bad either – very little changed in my mind from my default WoW UI when I started playing, and the keybinds are easily remapped to my playstyle. The only issue I even ran into is the lag.

I can play through regular lag. The kind of lag where stuff doesn’t go off right away, maybe you aren’t considered in range on the server when your client says you’re right next to the target. That doesn’t bother me at all anymore.

Rubber Band Lag sucks.

Almost immediately I found myself teleporting back 10 yards to where I had just run from. I can’t remember ever seeing lag like that client-side, although its how one observes someone else’s lag on WoW. The sheer annoyance of having the screen change completely every 5 seconds (or less) evens out the graphics for me. Sometimes it’s horrible, and I can’t get anywhere for a good minute or two; sometimes I have no lag and begin to think, “Hey, I bet I could jump that for a shortcut…” just in time to be drug backwards again.

Aside from wondering what sick, twisted mind invented Rubber Band Lag (known henceforth as RBL), I wonder why I’m not the only one with it. Both the official and unofficial forums are flooded with posts about the lag, and how it’s not their computer/ISP/non-existant firewall/etc. That tells me it must be a server or router issue on NCSoft’s side.

To be fair, I did roll onto the unofficial RP server, and that just so happens to be on the east coast. So I was willing to entertain the notion that – perhaps – a west coast server wouldn’t be so bad. For the most part I was right. I still see RBL, but not nearly on the same scale as the east coast server, and I have yet to die from it. Actually have yet to die, period.

Overall I’d say Aion will be worth playing if, and for most people only if, they fix the lag issues. I know I have high latency, but this feels more like it’s server-side.

I Still Say Rogues Got It Good

Now, it’s not often that I pay any real attention to the patch notes. Maybe it’s a side effect of playing over satellite, but I figure I can’t stop any of it from happening anyway, and even ‘nerfs’ are barely noticable to me these days. Beastial Wrath nerf? Psh, what nerf? My DPS hasn’t suffered, so it’s not worth worrying about.

Once in a while though… Sometimes Blizzard manages to find a way to nerf me and players like myself. Those of us playing over a laggy connection, be it from connection type or sheer distance from the server. Take the new Misdirection:  instead of having 30 seconds to produce 3 attacks and transfer the threat from those three attacks to your MD target, you will have 4 seconds to dump as much aggro/damage as you can with all threat being transferred. It’s probably a boost to the efficiency of the skill for the majority of players, since you can pop cooldowns, tap MD and go to town without fear for 4 seconds. But for those of us with lag, the amount of threat we can give out just got halved at the least.

I’ve talked about how lag works over satellite before, so I won’t go into that now. When I hit Misdirection, it takes at least a second to ‘cast’, and another second before my first shot goes off. I have a forced GCD of 1.5 seconds thanks to my connection, so I can hypothetically get off 2 shots in those 4 seconds, which will likely be Arcane and Multi, plus whatever autoshots go off. If it’s an Ony pull, that’ll likely be none, since I use MD as I run in.

“Ok, so you lose one shot. So what?”

Think of it this way. When the tank is positioning Ony, MD allows me to start minor DPS while we run in. Tank picks her up, I MD, toss up a Serpent Sting (which doesn’t use up a charge), use Arcane, pause for Multi and allow the autoshot to eat up the last charge. Now Serpent Sting will not be able to be put up while I run (dropping my DPS), and I run every chance of Multi and/or the autoshot missing the 4 second window, especially if I hit a lag spike. All I am assured of is my Arcane Shot.

Does this affect other players? Not really, even in my guild – we have an awesome main tank for Ony, and I can’t remember the last time I could catch him at the beginning of the fight. Does it affect me? Heck yes. I will be less willing to start DPS before in position for fear of surpassing the tank’s threat, even with another Hunter using MD. Our Rogue can’t use Tricks from a distance after all. My overall DPS is likely to drop a bit for the fight.

What I’d really love to see is Misdirection turning into a ranged Tricks of the Trade. I still boggle that Rogues got an improved Misdirection while Blizzard still struggles to make MD matter again.

There is one other interesting change in 3.3 that’s managed to grab my attention. Cower is being totally redesigned so that instead of reducing threat it reduces damage taken by the pet. While on, your pet’s movement speed is halved. With 1 point into Improved Cower, it moves at 75% speed, and with 2 points the speed reduction is erased. This intrigues me… Instead of taking 2/2 Bloodthirsty I’d be more interested in Alvar having 2/2 Improved Cower and 1/2 Bloodthirsty. If I really wanted to, I could even drop Bloodthirsty altogether and take full Spiked Collar and simply return to feeding him fish. Which he’d probably prefer, being a cat.

What I’d really like to see, however, is Improved Cower in the Tenacity tree. With Cower no longer reducing threat, you can keep it on with Growl and still have your pet tank – probably be a better tank at that – but the movement speed reduction will be a problem if you aren’t careful about pulling adds. A permanently slowed pet is rarely able to reach you and Thunderstomp before you take some damage. And when you’re playing through lag, every second it takes for your pet to reach you counts.

Ghosts of the Past, Part 2

“Finally, that is the last of them.” The young paladin scooped up her helm and tucked it under an arm before turning to the newest arrival. His fighting skill had managed to turn the tide in their favor, and the group held out until an aerial strike force had arrived to finish the job. “Thank you, hunter, for jumping in when-” The much abused helm thudded into the snow once again as she leapt at the older Draenei with a squeal of glee.

“XANTHY!”

Xanthelei laughed and returned the hug one-handed. After a moment he pulled the girl back and planted a kiss on her forehead. “Hello, little sister. I suppose you’re well, if as crazy as ever.” She scowled at him and stuck out her tongue, making him laugh again. “Erikka, why are you in the north? I was told you were on patrol in Winterspring when last I was home.” She grinned impishly.

“I was, brother, but they finally let me onto a ship to Valiance Keep two months ago. And you!” She shoved him gently to emphasize her words. “I was told you were lost in that expedition into Ulduar!  And yet here you are, prowling about the wastelands of Dragonblight as if nothing happened. Not even a letter home to tell us you were safe!”

She paused in her tirade as Xanthelei looked away, instinctively to the north, and drew his sister closer. His face was darker than she’d ever seen it before, even during the war against the orcs on Draenor. “Ulduar was… far worse than any of us, even Brann, had expected. We delved deeper than we should have, Erikka. Whatever the Titans locked away down there, it’s awake, and free.” He shivered in the cold even as his cat Alvar pressed close. “I don’t think we can kill it. Rhonin thinks it’s an old god, and if it is…”

“And you, Xanthy? How did you escape?”

Xanthelei sighs and leans heavily against the rocky face of the ridge behind them. “Barely. And alone. Please, sister,” he adds, waving away her questions, “leave it at that. For me.”