My Journey

Oh yeah, I have a blog.

*crickets*

Right. I should put things in it…

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My Journey Into Alliance

So, classes have started and among other classes, I’m working on my Senior Recital and getting prepared to teach another Winter/Spring Indoor Percussion program. This means my focus points are on school, on work, and on my relationship.

World of Warcraft (at least raiding) has taken a backseat, and thankfully, we’ve picked up two perma-bench healers who are available on some days (but not all of them). So that means our roster basically can have at any time…

• 2 Restoration Shaman
• 2 Restoration Druid
• 2-3 Discipline Priest OR 1 Holy Priest
• 2 Holy Paladin

Of course, this doesn’t mean we aren’t looking to pick up another Paladin in order to bolster our blessings. We currently run with one Protection and one Holy paladin, and we could always use something other than Battle Shout to keep up an AP buff. In fact, it could almost be argued that having Commanding up all the time would be stronger in conjunction with Improved Blessing of Might.

I digress though; I’ve been working on a Draenei mage (Kun @ Exodar). I’ve actually filled up my gear rather nicely and quickly, with some hesitation on picking up any of the iLvl 245 Emblem of Triumph gear as I want to save badges to purchase heirlooms for a Worgen character in the future.

Yes, I will be looking to raid Alliance come Cataclysm possibly. Though the idea of raiding as my Blood Elf priest (may turn it into a troll because there aren’t enough PCs of them… NPCs, there are zones filled with Troll-y goodness) is a nice one, I need a change coming up. Playing Alliance not only gives me an opportunity to play with my boyfriend but so I can switch to a more casual status.

You see, I love raiding some of the time. I enjoy having a challenge in front of me. But nowadays, I’ve become too stressful at school and I cannot handle it all of the time. When I sit down with 24 other people, at least 4-5 of them will complain or play leader, which isn’t their position nor are we looking for people who behave like it.

It hurts to want to come back and play but yet be too depressed, too angry to want to return. Especially after all the time I’ve put into Lowered Expectations. I love the guild, and I love most of the people who raid in it. I suppose they say you can’t have everything; that when you have very skilled people, you may get those with some attitudes that just clash with your own. And it’s happened several times.

But I love my mage. I love DPS. I love knowing I can pull some pretty great numbers, and I think I could really get to the point where I can be out-performing even some folks in our current raids. On Exodar, I PUG as much as I can and try to be good at it. And it helps that my partner plays very well but has no patience for wiping (and who doesn’t, but he just doesn’t like wiping and that’s part of raiding and progression to learn).

But that’s about it for now!~

Winter Break, January Term, and ICC 25

My winter break was overall pretty okay. Got to rest, watch a lot of television and enjoy some of the snow that we got a week prior to Christmas. Enjoyed getting some money, which bought me some gas and some other fun things… including the new Dragon Age: Origin expansion I hope to purchase tomorrow!

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For January Term, I’ve been taking a class called “Fantasy, Myth, and Spirit” which is about the literature we read from the Inklings (this includes Tolkien and C.S. Lewis). It’s a fascinating course, but seeing as I’m used to having a break later, this doesn’t come very fun as we’re only 4 days in… and I’m already done!

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Icecrown Citadel 25 has proved to be relatively difficult, but we’ve been ahead of the curve so far. We’re 2nd on Ysera (1st on Horde), and that’s not a bad place to be.

My only regret is that when it came down to having the holidays, having some really solid recruits… we may have forgotten something to mention to an individual in our guild. The worst part is that everyone really does like him, and he’s a funny guy— but that he doesn’t perform to what we expect, and the last thing I actually hate telling people I like is that they just don’t get the numbers we’d need to succeed… even with gear, to perform low enough to worry about… you know, that’s the thing we kind of have to avoid in order to make DPS checks and whatnot.

I wish the game wasn’t so intensive on this. It’s not that I like the idea of general success in an imaginary setting, but to accomplish it with people I like and coordinate things with friends… that’s what I play for. If it was for the loot and the placement, then that’d be sort of crazy. But I wish I didn’t have to deal with it. Alas, I am an officer, and I do have to do my “duties”.

Oh well. Sleep.

Rabble rabble rabble…

Lots of things to just rabble about, honestly.

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Instances Suck!

Especially when you get Gundrak about 3 times. Or when you get Oculus and people have never done it before. Honest to goodness, someone came into one of the Oculus runs that Valdarion (on his paladin alt) and me (on my hunter alt) were doing… and the guy ended up (with one other person) getting rocked by the exploding orbs on the last boss. Ended up having to 3 man it and just barely.

Then of course, there’s the extremely long and ridiculous Halls of Lightning and Halls of Stone. HoS has become a “just do Muradin and final boss”, and HoL is just… long. I’m not going to disagree; wanting to have to be in an instance longer than 30 minutes has been a pain in the ass for the most part, especially when you have people who aren’t the brightest at picking up mobs…

Nexus falls under this category, only people tend to be larger douchebags than what Muji (on his warlock alt) has experienced… a lot of level 80s, while he was leveling up, would queue up for the Nexus normal instance so they could just get the hat and book it. Needless to say, this hurts a lot of people in the 70-74 area who want to do these quests for the experience.

The ICC 5s have been pretty great though. Normal, it’s quite easy and things go smoothly. We had our first group (me, Muji, Valdarion) run with a PUG’d healer and DPS in heroic Pit of Sauron. We sort of wiped on the giant because he never threw a rock (note to self: 16 stacks of the debuff will DESTROY YOU). We also got killed on the final boss because I may or may not have jumped onto the paladin healer when I got the frozen debuff… oopsies.

One hilarious thing to note is that we’ve been able to 4 man the normal ToC with our feral druid tank, Tre.

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Raiding ICC 10 and 25:

Been doing this for a few weeks, and we’ve gotten pretty unlucky on tank and plate DPS drops.

I was lucky to get the first Frozen Bonespike. A warlock got the second!

We’ve really never had any problems… hopefully, we can continue progress into the next wing when it releases.

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Recruiting!

LE is searching for a strong holy paladin, possibly a shadow priest, and probably a retribution paladin. We raid 8:30 to midnight, Mon-Thurs.

Obviously we have very high expectations for our raiders.

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Merry Christmas, folks!

How to Win at Saurfang

High Overlord Saurfang was once dared by Thrall to punch a wall in Orgrimmar. The impact created Ragefire Chasm.

This small post will, if done correctly…

• Outline the usable strategy (note: do not use for Heroic mode in the future) that Lowered Expectations employs.
• Determine what healer roles are helpful here.

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Deathbringer Saurfang is the son of the Varok Saurfang (our friendliest friend that has the silliest Wowwiki post ever). He is described as the “most powerful Death Knight” ever.

I tend to disagree.

There are a few things, as a healer, that you must be quite aware of at all times. There are moments of immediate damage, and moments of slow damage.

Tanks will need to watch for a debuff that is placed on the highest threat’d person (hopefully a tank) called Rune of Blood. If the target is struck, Saurfang will leech 5-6k dmg and heal that amount for 5 times that amount (25-30k health).

Your immediate damage from the raid will come in the form of a Blood Nova. This attack will do roughly 10-11k physical damage to the targeted player PLUS all those around him in a 12 yard radius. While it doesn’t do much (say about 50% of your squishiest cloth-wearing friend), it does “hurt” you in the gimmick of the fight.

Slower damage will accumulate in the form of Boiling Blood, doing around 9-10k physical damage every 3 seconds every 24 seconds (8 ticks).

Every 35 seconds, count on some of Saurfang’s friends (Blood Beast) will pop out (4 in 25, 2 in 10). They will not hit terribly hard on any raider, but it will also impact you dramatically if they are stuck on melee or keep hitting on people (any people, mind you) in the raid. If you’re a raid leader, remind your melee to keep an eye on their raid mods so they do not AoE at the time of spawning. A Boomkin with Typhoon will helpful in pushing any mob back, as well Frost Traps dropped by Hunters will assist caster to target. Melee should not go after these. Your ranged will need to pull various aggros on each and try to kill them PRIOR to them touching anyone!

To keep things more interesting, these Blood Beasts cannot be AoE’d down as they have a buff that prevents any of that sort of damage by 75%. Have a few of your ranged be target of targeted. What may help is having your Hunters also use Distracting Shot (take care they don’t do it to Saurfang… heart attacks happen). Your ranged will need to also make sure if they need to move to hit Blood Beasts, they don’t move into the range of a lot of folks… or Blood Nova will make that a very big problem when his BP shoots up by 20+.

Of course, if a Blood Beast DOES hit people… it will cause the gimmick of this fight to hurt you very, VERY much…

Blood Power!

This faux-resource that Saurfang generates as energy will gather slowly over time (him simply smacking your tank around will do it). However, there are a few abilities that will cause him to gather it more quickly.

When Saurfang hits multiple people with Blood Nova or his Blood Beasts smack around people for a prolonged amount of time, his BP will increase greatly.

When his BP hits 100, he will then drop a Mark of the Fallen Champion. This mark will do a few things, and none of them are good!

• It will cause all of his melee attacks to splash onto that target, causing anywhere from 5.5k to 7k damage. Remember, it’s physical damage. Cloth wearing members will hurt the most, due to a lack of hit points and armor.
• His damage dealt to this target will increase the BP accumulation rate, even if it’s not direct damage.
• If the target dies, Saurfang heals 5% of his health.
• You cannot Ice Block, Battle Rez, Divine Shield out of this Mark. It’ll last until the end of the fight.

So, really, this means that there will be an increased need of healing at this time.

Even worse is that by the time you get a mark, you may also have hit his “soft enrage” period at 30%. He will frenzy and his attack speed will increase by 30%. Things may become frantic as his Blood Beasts will pop out more often as well, and there will still be Blood Nova and Boiling Blood to worry about.

What can you do to minimize the chaos?

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Tanking Worries:

Just make sure AoE threat abilities aren’t used during the Blood Beast spawns, and taunt off the other tank if they get the Rune. If for some reason you really rely on AoE threat generators, then… stop it? We always have a paladin tank on board, and they generally do fine.

Melee DPS Worries:

Your AoE damage dealers, like Fan of Knives, will do less damage to the Blood Beasts spawning. You can, however, still aggro them. Watch your timers. In addition, anything you can do if you have the Mark to reduce damage will be helpful, especially if you’re a plate wearer and have the ability to mitigate anything.

Ranged DPS Worries:

You must help knock down the Blood Beasts and help slow them down if you can. Earthbind Totem can help as well, if you’re an elemental shaman. Blood Beasts are the biggest and most destructive element of this fight.

Healer Worries:

Our guild runs 2 Discipline priests (myself and another). We heal the tanks. The rest of our healing core (2 Restoration shaman and 1 Holy priest) take care of the raid. When the first Mark goes out, we check to see who it is— if they’re melee, a shaman will heal that target and heal the rest of the melee/tanks— even more important is when it’s a plate wearer, as they do take reduced damage. If one is placed on a cloth DPS… you may want to let them die.

5% damage is not a lot of damage to fight right back through in this fight. It is really a straightforward DPSer fight for the melee, and the ranged have to do a little bit of switching… but the healing can get strained, even with 6 folks in the raid. If for some reason your DPS is a little slow, assign healers to jump to targets— for example, the first mark is covered by (insert name here) and the second mark is (this guy) and the third mark is (McDerpity).

So, if you can count, notice we can take 5 healers— the healer not healing their tank (the one with the Rune) can help heal raiders and whatnot.

The fight, as a healer, can only become difficult if people don’t watch their distance from others. Every time a Mark goes out, it requires increased healing. Trying to heal even 3 marks becomes difficult. There’s just too much damage spread out.

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As a Horde player, this sort of lore after the fight’s end… well, it’s cool. Trust me. Enjoy it.

The WoW Community

So, here I am.

I recently checked the wow.com website to find there was an article pertaining to the recent “ninja hotfix” to the unholy death knight spec.

In short, I’m anything but surprised.

I’m actually angry.

There are people who, on a post on the Blizzard forums, just bitch incessantly 24/7.

Ghostcrawler is an intelligent person. Met the guy. Smart dude. He plays the game, he’s played other games, he likes the game he works on.

I have to say, he has balls to keep doing what he does, because the amount of stupidity that must pound on his brain is incredible.

One poster in that 20+ page, 20000+ post forum topic puts it the best:

New players never comment on how Blues post when they bring up this issue. Really, they haven’t read that many nor to they care.

They ALWAYS bring up how players post. They see the trolling, the flaming, the whining, the complaining. They think this is how the WoW Community is and don’t want to be part of it! It’s PLAYERS that scare away new players, not Blues.

You know, that’s the biggest issue, I’d think. It’s really the people in the community that make the game bad. It’s the people who don’t want to try to understand why something was changed, but the people who berate and get pissy about things instead of using their brains.

I don’t understand. I know so many people who love playing the game. The majority of players I’ve met are people who love the game.

I don’t know where this hatred, this general ignorance comes from, but if any of it was near me… I’d dislike it immediately.

That’s all.

3.3: The Fun Begins!

Well, we’re back to that whole raiding thing.

Unfortunately, I don’t know how long this will last on my end. I’ve already looked at my schedule for next semester and it is, more or less, a kick in the balls.

For example, two of my nights will be pre-occupied with musical events— Wednesday has me playing Baritone T.C. for about 1.5 hours, then percussion for another 1.5 hours after a small break for lunch/dinner/boredom.  Thursday, I will most likely be running indoor percussion ensemble for the mallet players, and I’m definitely looking to run some new exercises… including some rolling etudes, some four mallet chorales, and whatnot.

But that’s in January, let’s look at today.

Patch 3.3 releases today on World of Warcraft, which includes some interesting raids and instances… this all culminates to the possible destruction of the Lich King. On the way, we’re expected to fight many other people, including our unfortunate friend Saurfang Jr, who got rocked in Dragonblight.

The fights are varied: in one fight, healers are expected to bring a green dragon back to full health. Another involves multiple game mechanics, from running away from blue doomfires (oh lordy lordy) to breaking down pieces of bone that hurt and keep a player stunned. Combine that with our good friend saber lash (from ZA)… and we get a lot of kicks!

This level of performance in raids will be heightened: I see this as a huge layer of fights that use different game mechanics all together. What we may be a little disturbed by is how the game developers actually “teach” these fights through previous encounters, depending on your experiences in prior raids. We can put a boss mechanic in each of these other mechanics and say, “this is just like the first boss in Black Temple” or so on and so forth. It’s a cunning way to educate.

Likewise, I see Lowered Expectations having some struggles in some of the fights, but let’s face it— this shit is new. We’ll have something to work on OTHER than freaking ToGC/ToC. It’ll be nice.

Now, let’s just hope that we can see our server up before… Wednesday? And maybe our instances will be up then too?

I hate you, college.

… insert angry words about classes.

I’ve picked up WoW again as a temporary fix to our raid healing issues… primarily the part where we have only 4 healers online fo a raid. So I’ve been doing the Discipline thing in order to balance that shit out so people can actually raid. I owe them that much, I owe Brian and Andrew (both are DKs and officers in LE) that much, and I like some of the people enough.

I stopped caring for progression; I just want success, no matter how “false” it is. Knowing that I can have an impact does imply a purpose, even if it’s one for a vidja game. It makes me feel happy to know I can help others, regardless.

Of course, then there’s that whole “take another ensemble” course issue…

In my sophomore year of college, fall semester… I taught at two high schools for mallet percussion. It meant I had no evenings off. So, I didn’t take an ensemble (usually it’s college band, which meets at 7:00 PM on Wednesday nights and goes to 9:30 PM).

Oopsies.

That means I have to make that shit up, yo!

Also, apparently the ToGC 25-man Faction Champions rogue… is killing a lot of things.

After Thanksgiving…

… “Hell” week and Finals week are coming.

That means I die a little on the inside, because I’m never fully prepared for my finals. I don’t think many people are 100% secure in theirs, but I know I certainly am not!

To recap… I have an African Music and the Diaspora class, followed by British Literature of the 20th Century, followed by Introduction of Sociology. On top of that, 1 hour of piano lessons, 1 hour of music composition lessons, Bowling, and a hour of Independent Study on Theory Pedagogy and college teaching.

Then again, I do want to graduate with a degree in music…

On top of that, I do have a guild to cooperate with temporarily; I plan on helping out my buddies at Lowered Expectations for a week or two until they have concrete raiding evenings. I owe them that much, if anything.

I’ve recently beaten Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and was pleasantly surprised by some of the game mechanics and visuals. I was not a big fan of the “if there’s an enemy, he will have 100% accuracy on Normal mode, and you will be dead very quick”, and the “everything is moving too much and everything is too loud”— I know that this is supposed to be war, but there is such thing as too much sensory overload too much of the time. It was a fun Single Player, but seeing as their Multiplayer is pretty much a cockblock, none for me.

Also, Call of Duty: World at War was fun. I played through it on the 360 with Brian on co-op, so it was neat to play it from a computer PoV… and I had much more fun with it than on the console. I hate First-Person Shooters on the consoles as there is a limited amount of sensitivity you can have in order to actually win.

Batman: Arkham Asylum was probably the most fun I’ve had so far on a game (and I still want to replay through Bioshock), and I plan on going through it again just for kicks. The “predator” aspect of the game fits very well, and the game is very punishing on trying to just charge gun-wielding baddies as you get knocked back and lose health rapidly with only one guy firing at you. The Scarecrow moments were the best parts, and even I got fooled by the “fake game crashing”— I thought I fried my PC for a moment.

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For my piano juries, just in case anyone really cares to know, I am performing…

• Polonaise in C Minor by Chopin— my longest piece, probably will play with music.  Technically the hardest piece I have because it’s a very delicate and romantic piece and requires a bit of finesse that I don’t have sometimes depending on my wrist.
• Piano Concert in D Major by Haydn— only doing the first movement, but it’s definitely a long movement in and of itself, as the double exposition makes it super stupid long.  Can do this one by memory for sure.
• Piano Sonata III by Bartok— a contemporary and rhythmic piece that I have the best under my hands.

I’m also working on the Pathetique, which is the Beethoven sonata that is very, VERY familiar for its middle section and last section for most theory courses.

My Senior Recital will involve a Chopin block (Nocturne, Polonaise, and Waltz), a Haydn block (the entire concerto), and the Bartok block (I, III, and IV… possibly II if I can get it in)… a break, then some of my compositions (so far, two mallet ensemble pieces, but I plan on having a piano piece, a solo marimba piece, and a woodwind quintet piece).  I’ll use these compositions for graduate school applications.

Stupid music career is getting in the way of my vidja games!  >:O

(Not rly.)

Priest Tier 10 Review and Analysis

It’s Thanksgiving break officially. It’s time to do something I’ve been doing, and honestly, I do like this kind of number crunching and analysis for the 10 gear. Whether this affects me in the future, as a priest or paladin or druid or magical flying sandwich spaghetti monster, who knows? Time will tell all…

Let’s pull up the Tier 9 numbers first. The three values correspond to the level of the gear (10 man, 25 man, heroic).

Tier 9: Zabra’s Raiment (iLvl 232/245/258)

• 412/463/520 Stamina.
• 412/463/520 Intellect.
• 328/372/426 Spirit.
• 188/215/248 Critical Strike rating.
• 132/149/170 Haste rating.
• 549/629/719 Spell power.
• 1 meta, 2 red, 2 yellow, 3 blue sockets.

Tier 10: Crimson Acolyte Gear (iLvl 251/264/277)

• 489/553/623 Stamina.
• 489/553/623 Intellect.
• 406/460/522 Spirit.
• 239/272/310 Critical Strike rating.
• 143/164/188 Haste rating.
• 670/768/876 Spell power.
• 1 meta, 1 red, 3 yellow, 3 blue sockets.

Differences between Tier 9 and tier 10:

• +77/+90/+103 Stamina.
• +77/+90/+103 Intellect.
• +78/+88/+96 Spirit.
• +51/+57/+62 Critical Strike rating.
• +11/+15/+18 Haste rating.
• +121/+139/+157 Spell power.
• -1 red, +1 yellow socket.

Tier Bonuses Back to Back:

• Item – Priest T9 Healing 2P Bonus (Prayer of Mending) – Increases the healing done by your Prayer of Mending spell by 20%.
• Item – Priest T9 Healing 4P Bonus (Divine Aegis and Empowered Renew) – Increases the shield from your Divine Aegis and the instant healing from your Empowered Renew by 10%.

• Item – Priest T10 Healing 2P Bonus (Flash Heal) – Your Flash Heal has a 33% chance to cause the target to heal for 33% of the healed amount over 9 sec.
• Item – Priest T10 Healing 4P Bonus (Circle of Healing and Penance) – Your Circle of Healing and Penance spells have a 20% chance to cause your next Flash Heal cast within 6 sec to reset the cooldown on your Circle of Healing and Penance spells.

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Analysis:

First off, it is blatantly obvious that Tier 10 will be better than Tier 9. This should be more obvious when you consider the 25-man Tier 9 is worse than the 10-man Tier 10.

The stats are generally the same when viewing Tier 8 to Tier 9 (which I happened to do on this previous post on my previous blog), as there are general increases across the board. Haste actually increases, though marginally, meaning some things will not change too heavily for those favoring haste as a state. Even more so, all of our socket bonuses on Tier 10 all lead to bonuses to spell power, meaning if you wish to gem for haste or crit or spirit, you have an opportunity to not lose too much spell power. However, we can still assume the weighting models are the same in the future, meaning our precious spell power will still be top banana.

The Tier 10 set bonuses seem pretty good compared to Tier 9. However, the 2 piece relies more on crit than anything else in order to gain more bang for your buck, though both flavors of healing priests will benefit on it. The 4 piece, to me, also seems relatively balanced… you can normally find a great time to use either CoH or Penance if you got that cooldown reduction. Though, for tank healing, the Penance one is even more imba considering Flash Heal as a filler spell. Though, when comparing the two 2 piece bonuses (PoM vs. FH), they are both quite nice and we can consider using both of them at the same time to be pretty great!

We do trade a yellow socket for a red socket. This isn’t terrible if you’re not gemming for bonuses, but you can’t hurt from taking a Luminous gem here… intellect is still a primary stat for us Discipline priests. More mana means more heals, though having enough output for our shields is important. What we also need to look at is two somewhat popular meta gems… Ember Skyflare (25 SP, 2% Int) versus Insightful Earthsiege (21 Int, chance for mana per spellcast).  These gems are both pretty helpful, but remember depending on your healing needs that your meta gems need to reflect them.  Ember requires 3 red, and Insightful requires 1 of each… and to me, 3 red is easier than wanting to throw a Purified gem in there (and the +10 to all stats is relatively useless for us, no gains of SP here).

In the end, Tier 10 is a good thing for us priests in generally, and we aren’t losing anything majorly important, though we need to remember that the accessories key to making you work!

Creativity is Hard

I find that, with a lot of my video game background, when I write… I tend to lean into those very linear progressions of thought and storyline.  I fear that.  I don’t like that, and I want to write in a more broader sense.

It is very difficult, given a lot of your fantasy background is from lore already established.

The only original concept that I really have when it comes to actual myth and legend, is the Japanese “kitsune” legend… the spirits that control various elements, that feed off of those elements, and do have possession-like capabilities.

Possession, in and of itself, is the base of control— and in that spectrum, is the “forced romance” possibilities too.  For example, the vampire mythology is pretty much this kind of allegory towards sharing life and being in a relationship without any control.  Scary.

Then again, I’m not on Team Jacob or Team Edward or any of those bullshit Twilight teams… those Burger King commercials are a sin against my love of delicious 1 dollar cheap foods.

But back to my conundrum.

I do like writing, it’s a part of my creative repertoire that I’ve employed before.  The only thing I can’t really do, sans the beauty of stick figure creation, is draw.  I can write a character up, I can write prose and some non-rhyming poems… the classical forms of writing, like sonnets and whatnot, I have no business in though.

What is depressing is the amount of cliche you have to run through in order to make something happen, even if it’s a touch original.  There’s so many overdone, overbearing plots and weaves and romances that it makes me rather want to eat a bowl of shredded wheat, no frost, no milk… no tasty moistness, just dehydration.

Oh well.