Brown/Green Death

I’ve been complaining about this ever since the Wrath of the Lich King beta: the gear is SO UGLY!

As I puruse the Auction House here, I am simply horrifying.  I’m sorry to all the patrons who lost their vision this morning, and to all the readers who are experiencing a burning feeling right now.  But seriously, Blizzard, what were you thinking when you made this gear?  I know you wanted to be all artic and nortic when you were creating the gear for Northrend, but did you really have to go this far?

A few examples:

First: Everything looks the same.  Take a look at the drop lists for Naxx.  Now look at every plate helm that drops.  See a pattern?  IT’S THE SAME MODEL HELM FOR EVERY PIECE OF GEAR!  Okay…maybe Blizzard was just feeling lazy and called in sick on the plate helm making day…thats okay, lets look at the mail helms, I’m sure there all differen……THEY’RE ALL THE SAME LOOKING TOO!!!….. Wow, well, maybe the make plate helms and mail helms on the same day, you know, to cut costs or something…surely the leather helms wont be the sam….ALL THE LEATHER HELMS LOOK THE SAME!

Now, I’ve heard some people say how Blizzard is working so hard and that they have actually exausted their creative staff to the point that they can’t think of anything unique….I’ve also heard the notion that it’s not the look of gear that matters but the stats.  I will now attempt to react to both of these schools of thought:

Are you really trying to tell me, that in only 3 game sets (vanilla, Burning Crusade, and WotLK), Blizzard, a huge juggernaught of a gaming company, would completely run out of ideas, having to stoop to reusing the few unique ideas they had?  Whats going to happen on the next expansion?  It probably won’t be set someplace cold and norticy, so are they just going to reuse norticy gear and call it something different?

And of course the look of gear matters: We’re not playing a text-only RPG, or a pen and paper RPG.  Since there are graphics involved in the first place, obviously visual attractiveness is part of the gaming package.  Otherwise, there would just be stat modifying items that dropped and allowed you to tweak your stats, while staying visually the same.  It would be a lot less work on the already creatively strained workers over there at Blizzard HQ.

I am very vocal about this, as you maybe can tell.  I recently replaced some crappy green shoulders with a nice pair of blue shoulders that dropped out of heroic Utguarde Keep.  They had the same exact model.  I was pissed.  And now, our guild on Burning Blade (MAN THE HARPOONS) is starting to run naxx…and even though there are no hunters, I fear that I’m going to look like every other hunter and shaman (regardless of their spec, no less) once I step out of the instance.  That is something I’m really not looking forward….perhaps I’ll keep wearing cloth, just to set me apart.

~Nick

My first Naxx run on mage

**Edit: since this post seems to get a lot of hits, here is a guide I wrote to frostfire mage.**

Today was my first run in Naxx with my mage and the first time that our guild (MAN THE HARPOONS) went into Naxx.  Most of the people have very little or no experience raiding, so it’s very impressive that we were able to down the first two bosses in the spider wing relatively painlessly and got the third to 8% (couldn’t get through the damage spike of the enrage).  We’re running it again tomorrow and I think that with some tweaking we can up the dps just a little to get the third boss down and have a shot at the fourth.  I had tons of fun and everyone was super chill!

I got lucky and from the second boss (Grand Widow Faerlina) the Grieving Spellblade dropped for me (I rolled 100 on it!).  I’ve been running tons of heroics, so I already have the badge offhand (Ward of the Violet Citadel) for casters.  This was a huge upgrade over the blue-quality blade I had from Kirin-tor revered reputation.

I also respecced Eau from deep frost to the cookie cutter frostfire spec  – 0/53/18.  The spec is fun and also raised my dps from around 1500 to around 2500 with ony some minor gear upgrades/tweaks (whoa!).  Being a fire-heavy frostfire specced mage means that my play style is very different now from how it was before.  For one, this spec is heavily crit dependent and when things proc, my damage goes nuts.  For once I’m finding myself in that stereotypical mage ‘place’ of not being able to control my own aggro when everything starts criting.  When I run heroics, I usually keep one finger on ice block!  Haha!  I don’t quite like this spec as much as frost for soloing purposes, but it’s not as bad as pure fire since the frostfire bolt has a slowing effect like frostbolt.  For those of you who want to try it out, the rotation that I find works best for bosses is stack improved scorch (only needs two casts with the improved scorch glyph) –> apply living bomb –> between 3 and 5 frostfire bolts depending on the fight and how much haste I have (I try to get it so that the last bolt is going off when my living bomb just finished) –> use pyroblast if hot streak procs, reapply one scorch if needed –> rinse, repeat.  I’m still messing around with a good roation for trash, but what I’ve been doing is just stacking one hit of scorch (which again is actually 3 stacks because of the glyph) and frostfire bolting.  I don’t think this is the best rotation, and this is reflected in my dps – while I can pull 2.5k dps on bosses, I’m usually hovering around 1.7-1.8k for the overall instance.  Anyone have any suggestions?  I feel like the length of the frostfire bolt is kind of a hinderance…  In melee-heavy groups, it’s hard to get more than one or two out before the mob dies.

Enough about mage though!  I will leave you now with this gem:

I’m still completely baffled about how this guy guessed that I (1) am a real girl, (2) am in college…  Especially since so many dudes play female blood elves!

**Edit: since this post seems to get a lot of hits, here is a guide I wrote to frostfire mage.**

Server Transfer

I transfered my mage (Eau) from the Eonar server to the Burning Blade server because of a combination of wanting to play with people I know in real life and feeling like I don’t fit in with people in my guild on Eonar anymore.  Initially, Nick and I were going to just level the rogues we made (the picture in the previous post) to save the money of transfering…  But when I decided to transfer my mage, he also transfered his shaman, and, as of yesterday, we’re both 80.

I’ve actually been 80 for a few days since I had a leg up in leveling – Eau was already 75 when I transfered her, but Nick’s shaman was only 70.  I’ve been running a lot of pugged heroics and it’s interesting to see the different dynamics that occur on each server.  On Eonar, people always pass then roll on BoP loot (or DE if there is an enchanter), whereas on Burning Blade everyone just greeds everything (I think this is because shards are pretty cheap on the server and people generally believe that they’ll get more gold if they just vendor the item).  There are also way more good pugs on Burning Blade, which could just be because there are so many more horde on this server than there were on Eonar.

Since reaching 80 (and with lots of help from Nick), I was able to buy my epic flying skill in Eau – my third character to have it.  I also made myself a Magnificent Flying Carpet!  Man, that thing is cool!

I think we are going to start a 10-man Naxx group this weekend and I’m really looking forward to it because a lot of the people in MAN THE HARPOONS (our guild on Burning Blade) don’t have much experience raiding and are really nice and funny.  It should be a nice change from what our guild on Eonar has become, at least for me…  I still have my hunter and other characters in the guild and I still check their forums sometimes, and it seems like they’re all having fun, but I just don’t fit in there anymore.  I like seeing content, but my idea of fun is not being so hardcore that people are yelling at you from fight to fight based on their damage meters (and I’m not even going to go into the accuracy issues surrounding those damage meters).  I guess they all just became a lot more intense and raiding-focused than I realized and I don’t really like it.  I’m pretty sure my mage is my new main.

Wrath of the Lich King, Naxx, Raiding, etc.

Sorry I have not been updating this blog very often!

My hunter (Arco) is now level 80 and still beast mastery.  She can sustain about 2000-2200dps on heroic bosses.  Thank you Blizzard for making heroics easier to run and more worthwhile; I hated having to farm instances in TBC for heroic keys and having the heroics be too difficult without at least some kara gear.  I think this is a good change.  A lot of little things are fun, like all the random achievements for bosses in instances.  I don’t really keep up with achievements, so it’s always funny when we down something and I randomly see that I got some points for it!

As of last night, my guild officially full cleared 10-man Naxx.  I haven’t been in there yet, though I have been signing up for the raids ever since they have been put on our php raider site.  There has been some drama in the guild about raid signups.  Apparently, all the people in my guild who liked to heal decided they liked something else better in the expansion (mostly death knights).  So, though we have a lot of DPS and quite a few tanks, we don’t have enough healers for a second Naxx group every week.  I think this will work out eventually as people level up their healer alts/ex-mains (I have my pally, Acalarra, for instance, who is still 70).  There does seem to be some elitism and some people are always getting approved while others are being passed by.  To be honest, this is not really seeming like it’s based on DPS output either; it seems like the core group of people who dinged 80 in the first week or two of the expansion have some sort of priority over others (even though dinging 80 in the first week or two is probably more of a reflection on your free time than ability in the game or in a raid).  It also appears to be easier for officers to get into runs than anyone else.  Who knows…  I would worry about and start bothering people, but I know nothing will come of it and this will all seem stupid when we have Naxx on farm a couple months from now.  Hell, it’ll seem even sillier when Wrath of the Lich King is a year or two old and we’re all so sick of raiding that we’re pulling our hair out (haha, like a month or two ago at the end of TBC).

Personally, I don’t feel like I need to argue with people and I don’t care if I’m there for the guild “firsts”.  Ideally, I would like to be a part of it all, but the last thing I want is to be taken into a raid because I bitched.  Also, if I go in for the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, etc clear, more people will be geared, it’ll be easier, and probably more fun.  Not that I don’t want to be challenged and not that I wasn’t there for every guild first other than Kara in TBC, but why would I complain and piss off all of these high-strung officers just to get no love and a potentially huge repair bill?

Speaking of high strung officers, I don’t get what is going on with the ones in our guild.  Everyone seems so pissed off all the time.  It’s a game, and it’s there to be fun!  My guild isn’t ‘hardcore’, so why are we trying to rush through content?  It seems like everything these days is about downing stuff and max/min-ing everyone to see who is best.  Screw that!  Run with people who are fun!  And if we don’t have enough healers to run stuff, then we just need to sit tight.  It bothers me that the guild is already attempting the next tier of raids after Naxx when we haven’t even gotten people out of greens and blues yet!  What sucks the most is that I feel like people who used to be my friends in my guild are now too into raiding and have lost sight of just being friendly and messing around.  Don’t get me wrong, I am definitely a PVEr and I like to raid as much as the next person, but why treat people like shit over raids?

I’ve been thinking of pulling out one of my characters from guild and joining something else, just to see if a different dynamic is for me.  I have spoken to other people who have multiple characters and have done this before and they say that there is a great potential for animosity…  Who knows.  I guess I’ll just wait it out and see what happens.

On a more personal note, I am currently applying to 11 graduate programs (PhD in psychology, to be more specific), and haven’t had too much time to play wow and really explore the expansion.  I have to say, I don’t love any of the zones except for Zul’drak (hey!  I have a soft spot for trolls!).  The questing is alright and you get some pretty good gear from relatively easy and interesting quests that often can be soloed.  Overall, I liked TBC more than Wrath, but maybe I could still change my mind!