Miss Medicina

Out of the Textbook, Into the Cataclysm

2010-12-14T11:24:00.002-05:00

About two weeks ago, I sat in my most boring class typing away on my laptop. I generally try not to do that, as I think in classes that aren't taught in a huge lecture hall this is unforgivably rude, but I don't understand a word that comes out of the professor's mouth anyway, so I just sit and type up all my notes. I also like to chat with Fuu, who alerted me to the fact that I had missed the entire pre-xpac event. I missed all the quests, all the Deathwingness, all the limited time boss encounters and such. I missed everything to such a degree, that I don't even know what all I missed because I've been so focused on school.

Sitting there in that classroom, surrounded by my classmates, I actually started to cry.

After class, in the grad student room, as I blew my nose and tried to stop crying, a few of my classmates asked me what was wrong, and I laughed. I told them it was the absolute stupidest thing to bring me to tears, when I think of all the other things on my plate... getting married, moving, exams, thesis, etc. I haven't shed a single tear about classwork this quarter, even after a week of 18 hour stints on campus. But I had so been looking forward to Cataclysm. My friends at school didn't make fun of me, as I expected them to do. One of them shrugged and said she was very much looking forward to a WWF wrestling match on TV, so how could she judge? That cheered me up quite a bit.

Cataclysm was released the day after my Stats final exam, and two days before my Remote Sensing exam (about which I wasn't too worried anyway). Cataclysm was the light at the end of a very long tunnel of all-nighters and papers and labs and grading and everything else that grad school entails. While I have not been posting here on my blog, I have been playing WoW over the past few months while in school... precisely 2 hours every week, on Monday nights, where we finally managed to take down the Lich King 2 weeks before Cataclysm was released.

And now it's the break between Fall quarter and Winter quarter at my university, and I have been glued to my computer in our new apartment, leveling my beloved priest. I do have other things I really ought to do over the break, but all quarter long I intended Cataclysm to be my reward for working my ass off in school for 11 weeks. I managed to pull off straight As (A- totally counts btw) and I refuse to feel any guilt for spending all day long, every day, playing WoW.

It's Tuesday, and for the first time in a very long time, I tried to log in, and I remembered this thing called "maintenance day", and the customary disappointment that goes with such a day. But I'm in a WoW frame of mind, so here I am, for any of you who still have Miss Medicina in your reader, and wonder where she is... I'm here! I'm alive! I'm still around, I promise! Though I haven't been posting, for quite a few very good reasons, I'm still buzzing around on Twitter, though I'm much quieter there than I used to be. I am officially "out of the loop".

It brings me great pain to say this folks but... I have no idea how to heal anymore. Imagine if you had essentially walked away from wow for 4 months, during which all the stats and classes had changed drastically, and tried to come back to it. The only thing I really understand at this juncture is that I have loads of health, but when it comes down to it, no mana. I throw heals on people and it is the perfect example of a drop in an ocean.

In terms of this blog, it is not going anywhere, though obviously its usefulness is much decreased. I'm keeping everything up, all the leveling and newbie healing guides, as an artifact of how our class used to be, because I've always found those things interesting. I am sad to say that until I finish classes this spring, it is highly unlikely I will be able to update any of my guides. They were very time-consuming when I wrote them the first time around, and I have to accept the fact that when I wrote them, I had quite a bit more spare time. If this past quarter is any indicator, I won't even have time to post my random thoughts, or even read my favorite blogs.

I'm so wrapped up in the world of an academic nerd right now that there is little room for the geek to get any satisfaction! So while I may not be blogging these days, I do hope to start again once my coursework is finished.

It is possible I will be changing the title of this blog, however, since I am no longer Miss Medicina... I am Madame Medicina, as of October 15th :)

I miss you all! <3

p.s. Best quest-line ever? Wildhammer Dwarves. Jessabelle wants a man with an arse like an anvil.

The Interpretive Spam Dance

2010-09-21T05:39:00.000-04:00

I hesitated for awhile about posting these pictures because I don't really want to say anything positive about gold farming advertising, or give any more publicity to it, but I just couldn't resist.

I imagine many of you have seen this going on in your faction capitals for a long time, but they keep getting more and more creative and crazy with their abilities to really manipulate the character abilities in game. Running around on my bank a few weeks ago, I caught this particular performance before all of the offending spammers were mass banned.

Then, in great emote spammage, every single toon fell asleep to spell out a website that if I discover anyone reading this actually went to due to me posting these pictures, I will be very upset.

This strange work of performance spam art continued for a few minutes, with an occasional toon being banned and leaving funny holes in the work of art before the whole lot were kicked.

I have to confess that I can't help but get a kick out of this. Yes, I know I shouldn't, and that I only encourage bad behavior and so on, and that this manipulation of character movement is also used to farm gold and is very naughty, but I can't deny I find this highly amusing.

The Future of Disc Tank Healing

2010-09-20T04:07:00.001-04:00

NB: If you are avoiding spoilers, you can still read - I put a warning before any possible Cataclysm spoilers.

In ICC right now, I am, for the most part, the tank healer. I've always enjoyed tank healing as a Disc Priest. In ten man, this is a great setup, and on the rare occasions that I do run in 25 mans anymore, I am usually a shield spammer - which bores me to no end. I'm also very bored during the first Phase of the Lich King fight for that very same reason (but honestly, when you've done Phase one 19 billion times, I think everyone is bored at that point!).

One of the things Disc Priests were promised for Cataclysm was an increase in our ability to be solid tank healers. Will we be able to compete with the Holy Pally? Perhaps - it is still far too early to determine that for sure, but to me, one of the biggest reasons Holy Pallies are often better choices as tank healers has to do with their Beacon of Light, and the way boss fights were designed in Wrath.

Tank Healing in Wrath

Instead of the Main Tank/Off Tank setup in which the off tank rounds up adds and handles them while the MT focuses on the boss, we've had "tank swap fights". Every so often the tanks will have to swap due to some debuff given by the boss to the current tank. Sometimes (such as in the Toravon fight) this causes one tank to continue taking damage until the debuff wears off. Pallies are great for fights like this, because there isn't a single target to heal - these are actually dual target healing assignments, with one target needing more dynamic healing focus, and the other being safe with large "splash" heals from Beacon of Light. (more like giant tsunamis than splashes, but whatever)

As far as pure healing output, that is more of a numbers and throughput issue, one that can possibly be addressed in talents. Can Disc priests rise to the occasion with talent changes?

While our Power Word: Shield is great for shield-spamming, I've always felt it was a bit lackluster for tank healing. In end-game raiding, even the most powerful shields will often be blown away after just a few hits on the tank, and we are limited in our mitigation abilities by Weakened Soul. The main benefit from bubbling the tank comes not in the few hits that our bubble can mitigate before we can bubble again, but from the bonus healing we can do on them while they have Weakened Soul. We put a bubble on the tank, the tank has Weakened Soul, our heals have an increased chance to crit, and we therefore have a better chance of getting Divine Aegis procs on them, in addition to the stacking throughput bonus of Grace. The real mitigation comes from Divine Aegis. (Like all the math I used to back that statement up?)

Tank Healing in Cataclysm (talent spoilers)

Power Word: Shield will become more powerful and more useful in Cataclysm tank healing, because we will be able to cast it on the tanks more often. Here's a look at how the talents will change tank healing.

Divine Aegis will be the same in and of itself - crits will proc more mitigation. The change comes from Renewed Hope.
Renewed Hope will still give us an increased change to crit on the bubbled target - but instead of a 4% increase, we will have a 10% increase. Therefore, we will be critting more, and proccing more Divine Aegis mitigation.
Strength of Soul - This is the talent that will allow us to bubble the tank more often. Depending on your haste, you will be able to bubble the tank, and cast Heal on them until Weakened Soul falls off, and then Bubble them again, and continue forth. This means that Heal becomes a solid tank healing spell, so what follows are the talents that will affect Heal. Obviously, this is the most simplistic way to do it, since you will want to cast more than just Heal, but it gets the point across.
Grace procs from Heal, steadily increasing the throughput of your Heal spell.
Divine Fury in the Holy tree decreases the casting time of your Heal.
Empowered Healing in the Holy tree increases the healing power of your... uhm, Heal. (wtb better spell name)
Improved Healing in the Holy tree decreases the mana cost of your Heal.
And of course, don't forget Inspiration.

I'm really enjoying the talent changes for Disc Priests for tank healing. What is particularly interesting about Strength of Soul is that it will give us a lot more power and flexibility in managing Weakened Soul. If you are specced into Improved Power Word: Shield, or have a lot of mastery rating (and therefore stronger bubbles), it is possible you can let that Weakened Soul sit there longer, as your bubbles will last longer. Instead of casting Heal, you can focus more on using your other healing abilities. Perhaps you can even start Smiting the boss and just getting some Atonement splashes on the tank and melee (the weeping of healers all over the internet is hurting my ears after that statement).

You can tailor your healing style even more to the encounter. For instance, in Phase 1 of the Lich King, he seems to be only tickling our tank, but once we get into Phase 2, he pulls out his mighty Soul Reaper. My tank healing rotation will change depending on the encounter, and indeed, even on the specific phase of the encounter where needed.

[Cataclysm] Evangelism, Archangel, Algebra and You (Redux)

2010-09-18T15:17:00.003-04:00

Alright, after clearing some of the numbers up, and talking with the delightful Zusterke on twitter, I'm reposting the numbers on Evangelism and Archangel, to give you an idea of mana pool sizes, and what you need to shoot for in order for Smites to not be a mana sink as a Disc priest.

Here is your hefty disclaimer, however: As I write this, a new beta build is being implemented, and since, of course, this is beta, the numbers are quite likely to change before anything goes live. These numbers are for informational purposes only, and I will likely revisit them once changes are live.

All that having been said, let's take another look. For the purposes of simplification, I am going to focus on the level 85 numbers, and then I will explain them.

I included the equation in this table so you could see how I determined how much mana you would need. As you can see, these numbers are much less alarming than I previously thought, and you do not really need to worry about if you will be able to get that much mana - I assure you, you will. At level 84, I've got over 50k mana from just quest rewards.

The "Total Mana Spent" column is a summation of the total amount of mana you've spent on Smites in order to get to that stack of Evangelism, with the mana reduction costs factored in. This table is meant to be read from left to right, and it may seem confusing, because it's a built process - You start with no stacks, you cast one smite that has no mana reduction, and you now have one stack of Evangelism. If you cast Archangel at that point, you will get 3% of your mana back, and then you will have no stacks of Evangelism, as you have "used them up".

Therefore, the first column is to be read as the number of stacks of Evangelism you have *before* you cast the Smite being calculated.

Please note that I rounded down for everything, and I did it at each step of the way, so the numbers are not exact. Zusterke ran a similar calculation, and there were small variations in our numbers for that reason. This is meant only to give you an idea of how to process works on your mana pool, so if you're a theorycrafter, don't take my numbers and try to do something clever with them. They are all clevered out, thanks.

PS: If you don't know who Zusterke is, get thee to the PlusHeal fora. Not only is he a mathematical whiz, he's also an incredibly nice guy, who is very helpful to those with questions.

Resurrecting the Downrank

2010-09-14T11:18:00.004-04:00

I removed my post on Archangel/Evangelism and put it back in the drafts section until I can iron out the numbers. I apologize to those of you who left comments that helped me out a lot, but I don't like spreading misinformation, so until I can get everything fixed, I don't want it to be a hot "Search" item, if you will.

I'm going to step away from Cataclysm today and talk about our favorite Lich. The King.

For the first time in a very long time, I'm having mana problems during this fight. I know exactly what's happening, of course. For the first time in a long time, I'm not the tank healer... I'm a shield spammer. It's incredibly boring, incredibly valuable, and when your bubbles are not completely consumed? Very mana starving.

As usual, whenever I have a question about something very important in my life (Why is my head exploding? Where did my leg go? Do I have cancer?), I went to twitter. And twitter responded with suggestions for mana starved Disc priests - mainly along the lines of using lower ranked bubbles.

I was very skeptical about this suggestion, and, I confess, I even refused to use it until the tail end of our Lich King struggles last night. We had finally started to make some progress into Phase 2, and it occurred to me that by the time we got to Phase 2, I was out of mana, with all my cooldowns blown, mana pot already used, and therefore, I was useless. Swapping a few trinkets might stretch my time out a little bit longer, but that was not going to get me to the end of this looong fight.

So I bit the bullet and dropped one of my precious Clique key bindings, and added a Rank 11 Power Word: Shield to try out next week. I always hated using downranking, but if I'm going to be shield spamming in this scenario, I'm going to need to.

If you aren't sure why, here's the reasoning. Power Word: Shield costs somewhere between 800-900 mana, no matter what rank you use at level 80. However, if the shield is not fully consumed by damage, you don't get the proc from Rapture. Therefore, if your shields are so large that they are not being fully consumed, you are expending a lot of mana, and not getting much back. If you use a smaller shield, even though it costs the same amount of mana, it is more likely to be completely absorbed and give you a Rapture proc.

[Cataclysm] The Pacifist or the Archangel

2010-09-10T00:06:00.003-04:00

Note regarding spoilers: Now that I am in the beta, I will make every effort to preface any spoiler posts with the customary [Cataclysm] tag in the title. If that tag is not in the title, there should be no spoilers - I may mention something about Cataclysm, but nothing specific that would be a spoiler (i.e. I may something like "I am enjoying playing a goblin" but no further details.)

There is a very annoying bug/glitch/intentional issue that renders me unable to copy my Priest over to the Beta. I have tried about ten times now, and I'm beyond frustrated. I've had no luck with creating a premade either, so no new testing on Disc Priests yet, per the many requests I got.

I have tested out a Worgen Warlock, a Goblin Priest, a Dwarf Shaman, and a Tauren Priest. The Warlock is now level 14, the Goblin is only 4 (due to a quest glitch that renders all the goblins unable to leave the starting zone), the Shaman is level 7, and the Priest about level 6. But I am devestated that I cannot currently play my 80 Dwarf Priest.

However, in preparation for that glorious day when I will be able to play a high level priest again, let's talk about talents, and you can help me figure out how to spec!

One of the major complaints I have about the direction in which talent points are being taken is the removal of creativity in spec choices. In raiding, there are generally optimal specs, with very little wiggle room, and that will still apply. However, for leveling, the new talent point system has effectively taken a lot of creativity out of the equation. My lolsmite leveling method will probably be nowhere near viable as a 1-40 leveling spec anymore, due to the changes in talents.

But Evangelism fascinates me.

At first sight, Evangelism strikes me as a leveling or PvP talent, and nothing more. It's not something I would want to choose for raiding. This talent turns Discipline into a viable solo-leveling spec. Currently, Disc is best for not taking damage while leveling, but not so much for dishing out damage, compared to Holy or Shadow (Holy is good up until level 40-45, IMO, where Shadow then becomes superior due to Shadowform).

But Evangelism puts the power back into damage dealing for Disc, which means it makes it easier to solo mobs while leveling.

The only reason, as far as I'm concerned, that Evangelism becomes a potential necessity for raiding is due to the followup talent: Archangel. Now, you can build a solid Disc spec in Cataclysm without taking Evangelism and Archangel, and then the issue of the Disc healer needing to damage in order to heal better no longer is relevant.

However, the question I intend to explore is which is superior for a solid healer: an Archangel spec, or a non-Archangel spec. What talents must be sacrificed in order to pick up Archangel, and is it worth it?

What do you guys think? What sort of talent builds would you like me to test? Head on over to the Wowhead Cataclysm talent calculator, and create some builds for me to try (once I actually have a priest that can use them on beta *weep*). Link the builds for me in the comments, and I will try to test some of the best ones and give you my thoughts.

Here is an example of a non-damaging spec that I've built.
Aaaand here is an example of an Archangel spec.

Think I should tweak those? Strength of Soul is one of those talents that I definitely need to test, because with that component of rotation building in addition to an Evangelism based rotation, I'm not sure how much time would be left for actually reacting to incoming damage.

Into the Cataclysm...

2010-09-07T08:42:00.002-04:00

Ahh, twitter.

Yesterday I entered a contest via twitter for a beta key... and Light Above and Below - I WON!

So, now I have a beta key, but I'm waiting for battle.net to update with the info so I can start the long and arduous process. But I'm already planning ahead.

Derevka from Tales of a Priest has been an awesome resource for beta news, and I'd like to provide good information as well! So I'm asking you, readers:

What do you want me to explore in Cataclysm?

What questions do you have? What is it you want to know? Do you want to hear about the new classes? Are you interested in how leveling will be in the Old World? Want to know what things have changed? Want to know how the mana and health pool changes will affect priest healing? There are lots of bloggers who are in the beta and testing things out - is there a specific issue or question that you've had that no one has answered or tested for you?

Your wish is my command. CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE, FOLKS.

Update to the Healing Blogroll

2010-09-01T08:52:00.002-04:00

I took an hour or two this morning to go through and update my healing blogroll. Even though I stopped doing the Friday posts with link roundups of healers (due to there being such a shortage of anything to even talk about at the moment), a lot of traffic goes through my blogroll list from wow.com, and I want to keep the list helpful.

I added a couple of blogs that I've found, cleaned up some that have closed shop, checked all the links, and also added notes if it has been awhile since someone has updated. I'm not going to remove people who haven't updated for awhile until Cataclysm for two reasons:

1. There still may be a lot of good, relevant information on their site
2. They may start blogging again once Cataclysm is close to release.

I realize I am slow on adding links to the page, and I have no doubt that due to distractions over the past couple of months, I may have missed a few. I'm double checking the comments on the post right now to make sure I've added the blogs that people have requested.

If you are on the list (and if you have a healing blog, I WANT YOU ON THE LIST), please check it here and let me know if any of the info I have is incorrect (i.e. title, url, where I have you listed). I know a lot of you blog about several different healing classes, but I'm trying to stick people under the class category where they post the most helpful information. I read so many blogs though that sometimes the details get hazy, especially right now when lots of people are focusing on leveling alts.

If you know of a blog I've missed, please, please PLEASE leave a comment here or shoot me an email: missmedicina at gmail dot com. It's not shameless self promotion... it's helping me out with more resources!

Strong Enough for a Member of Humanity

2010-08-28T04:57:00.003-04:00

I feel that in my rantiness of my original post, there were some things I didn't make particularly clear. I do appreciate the outcry of support that followed, mind you, but I wanted to clarify some of the things I said to make sure that it was understood and not misinterpreted.

A lot of times, those of us who point out sexism or talk about feminism don't always point out why feminism is important for more than just women. Often people will say it's important to men because of how it affects the women close to them whom they care about, but it's more than even just that. The term "feminism" is misleading in modern times. It leads many to believe that it's all about bringing power to women, and bringing men down. The thing is, it's really not, though I know that it can come off that way.

Feminism, as a movement, certainly did begin in an effort to bring more equality to women. But the movement was so huge that it expanded to look at all forms of inequality between peoples - not just for women. It was a new way of thinking about things - based on the apparently novel concept of actually thinking about things. About not accepting things simply because that's how it's always been done. Challenging the very primal beliefs that we have about ourselves and others; about superiority and power dynamics.

Even if you disagree with someone about what they consider sexist, even if you think people take it to the extreme, even if you don't see something as offensive that another might, even if you feel that deep down there are fundamental differences between genders, and even if you don't believe that - the point is that by joining in on the discussion, you were required to actually think about it in the first place. And even if you come to the conclusion that everything is okay, you have wedged your mind open just a little bit more to at least consider the notion that there is a reason to reconsider things we've always taken as truth. Part of why mentalshaman's deconstruction of sexism in WoW is so important is not because we're all chomping at the bit to say "Yeah, sexist bastards!" and poise for attack - it's to make us look at things and actually think about them. Maybe some of the details are unfair, and maybe some aren't. But it's definitely worth at least considering. It's not about angrily ripping the world we love apart, but more about looking at it more carefully so that we don't get lost in a fantasy within a fantasy world. If you never challenge your own assumptions about the world around you, you will always be in the mindset of a five year old who simply takes everything presented as undeniable fact.

What feminism has truly brought to us, whether you like it or not, is the ability to challenge those long-held beliefs. And it is continually evolving and expanding as we look at new things we never thought about. Before I began studying feminism, it never occurred to me how internalized these concepts are of what makes a man a man, and what makes a woman a woman. You don't have to have children to be a woman. And you don't have to be the breadwinner to be a man.

So you see, the reason it is important is not just because women should be treated equally. It goes beyond that - if women are treated equally to men, then by default at the very least, men should be treated equally to women. If a woman steps up and says that it doesn't make her less feminine to work in the coal mines, then that means a man can stand up and say he's always wanted to be a nurse, and that doesn't make him less masculine. What it's NOT about is saying "well men have to put up with it too, so it all evens out and everything is fine!" No. The fact that men have to deal with it too is what makes it LESS FINE. Not because they are men and therefore it should be more important, but because it means that even MORE people are being subjected to the discrimination and judgment that comes from the same source. And the more people who take the time to deconstruct these long-held beliefs, the more people who will treat others as human beings who have a right to live their lives how they choose without the very tenents of their identity being questioned or ridiculed. Everyone is affected by sexism to some degree, whether they are male or female: and therefore everyone has a justification for standing up in opposition to it.

I don't think it's fair that when I was a delivery driver my boss didn't want me to take deliveries to certain neighborhoods - and I sure as hell don't think it's fair that because of that, he made one of the cooks (who was about half my size, had half as much knowledge of the area, and was twice as terrified) go do it instead - just because he was male. It wasn't just an insult to me as a female - in fact I think it was even more hurtful to him as a male. I just got pissed off. He was put into a dangerous situation he was much less equipped to handle.

There are studies all over the place that suggest men are less likely to get medical treatment for physical or mental disorders, and therefore die earlier on average than women... because they are raised to believe that a "real man" will simply "power through it". You shouldn't feel like less of a man for taking care of your health. No one has a right to make you feel that way - not your wife, not your parents, but most of all, not the whole of society at large.

Perhaps you like the traditional chivalrous customs, such as holding the door open for your date, or buying her dinner. But you should have a choice to be that way - not feel as though you are forced into it by what society tells you you ought to do in order to be a proper man. I don't like assumptions, and when I was dating, I brought money to pay for dinner. I at least offered to pay and presented the man in question with the choice. That wasn't just for my benefit. If someone wants to buy me dinner, I want them to do it because of me as a person - not just because I'm a chick.

A few weeks ago in Wintergrasp, while farming for eternals, there was an argument going on in general chat. One individual was antagonizing another about their PvP gear. I was already getting riled up in my indignant and self-righteous anger, but then, the antagonizer in question called the subject of his harassment a dude - to which the "dude" replied that she was female.

Suddenly his entire tone changed. Immediately after she replied that she was female, he apologized, and started using proper grammar and spelling, and being very polite and friendly. She was obviously confused about his change in behavior, but I was utterly enraged. Maybe it was silly of me too, because I had just been about to give him hell for being a jerk... but now that he decided he was going to be all nicey nice because she was female, I was even ANGRIER.

"Why exactly are you apologizing?!"
"I'm sorry, I didn't realize she was female."
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"Well, I wouldn't have been so rude."
"Screw you! Go forth and be rude freely! She can take it just as well as if she were male. You weren't willing to stop being a dick for the sake of, you know, not being a dick, but now that you realize she's a girl, you're suddenly willing to be a decent human being?"
"lol"
"What? Do you think the corsets we're wearing make us more fragile and susceptible to your asshattery? Did she bat her eyelashes at you in such a way that you suddenly felt shame for your poor behavior? Oh sir, ahm just so sahrry for steppin' into your big manly brain, ah jes' can't keep up with your phallic wit and chahrms!"

At this point every female in the zone started chiming in.

I actually did feel kinda bad about that. In his defense, he was obviously very embarassed, but he took it like a champ, especially since he'd been such a dick before. Truth is, I don't think it occurred to him that a bunch of girls might not appreciate the fact that he was suddenly nicer just because of their gender. It was like he suddenly was embarassed for his behavior now that he realized his audience was made up of a bunch of people with whom he might at some point want to flirt.

You should be a courteous person to both men and women because it's the right thing to do as a human being. If you say you're going to be nicer to girls, then effectively you're saying you're going to be meaner to men. While I'd prefer you just be nicer, period, I'd at least like to know that you aren't treating the men any shittier than you're treating me. It may immediately benefit me more that you are being nicer to me, but I don't think it's right that you are meaner to someone else, just because they are male. Be nice to me because I deserve it, not because rumor has it there are breasts underneath my clothes.

See, I'm not an angry bitter female. I'm just a pissed off member of humanity.

The Summer of Sindragosa

2010-08-25T23:50:00.007-04:00

I'm a bit late to announce this, seeing as how we accomplished the feat on Monday night, but the Summer of Sindragosa has officially come to an end for my raiding team.

Summer is tough on all raid teams really, and we struggled as much as, if not moreso, than any other typical raiding team. As a reminder, we only raid one night a week, and only for two hours. Monday night the stars aligned so that all three of our healers were there, and everyone in the raid was now familiar with the fight. We normally two heal content, and only use our Third Healer to help us learn new fights, or when the mechanics of the fight specifically call for a third healer (i.e. Dreamwalker). Our successful strategy included our ever-flexible Shaman of Awesomeness in his healing spec, DPSing during the first phase, and healing during the second (with every innervate and Power Infusion reserved for him for his mana reserves).

The Summer and the Roster

To give you some context on how brutal summer issues can be to a raid, let's look at some numbers. When you only raid 2 hours a week, attendance issues are severely magnified, however, due to the fact that we only raid 2 hours a week, it is generally less common that we even have issues in the first place. But even we struggled with the summer blues.

June 7th: Our first attempt on Sindragosa.
Total number of attempts before first kill: 31
Total number of nights we attempted Sindragosa: 5 (total amount of time spent on her is probably around 8-9 hours)
7 Attempts at 20% buff.
8 Attempts at 25% buff.
16 Attempts at 30% buff.

I wanted to differentiate between levels of the buff, because other guilds might have needed 40 hours or 100 attempts to take down Sindy, but made all those attempts with a much smaller buff or none at all, and I feel it would be wrong of me not to recognize that difference.

Now, to look at roster changes. We had two nights of working on Sindy before we began having roster problems, and had a role switch, most specifically of one of our tanks. While this did not have a negative impact on the fight itself, as the new tank is incredibly good, it did cause a lot of slowdown, as we felt that our new tank, who was normally a DPS, had never tanked in ICC, should get a chance to tank through the entire raid up to and including Sindragosa, so we reset. And then we had two weeks of having to sub some people, and getting new people up to speed on the fight and everything that goes along with that.

The Power of the Versatile Third Healer

So let's talk about the healing makeup. Of the five separate nights we worked on Sindragosa, 2 of those nights were with only two healers (however, on one of those nights we had a shadow priest, and that helped). This was not intentional, and certainly not what we wanted, but our SuperShaman went away for a couple of weeks to do summer things and he is completely irreplacable as it turns out.

night 1 (7 attempts): 3 healers. Shaman, Druid, Priest.
night 2 (8 attempts): 2 healers. Druid & Priest. (Shaman on DPS)
night 3 (2 attempts): 2 healers. Druid & Priest. (Shaman out of town)
night 4 (7 attempts): 2 healers. Druid & Priest, but Shadow Priest present (Shaman out of town)
night 5 (7 attempts): alternating attempts with both 2 healers and 3, Druid, Priest, and Shaman. Our final kill had our shaman DPSing during the first phase, and healing during the second.

That means that out of 31 attempts, 19 were with only 2 healers, 8 were with 3 healers, and the 4 most successful (and finally leading to our kill) attempts had our third healer DPSing during the first phase, and healing during the second. You know what this calls for? PIE.

Okay well, I think I've gotten carried away with my entire meta-analysis of our Sindy attempts. There were a lot of factors contributing to our final kill that Fulguralis discussed in more detail. He's great at talking strats, and I'm much better at talking stats, if you will, so I tip my hat (which is the same one he wears) to his discussion of it.

I hate it when our Third Healer is gone, but I hope we are never guilty of taking his flexibility for granted. It's one thing to be willing to switch specs for different fights, but quite another thing to ask someone to switch roles so drastically during the fight itself. "Stay in your healing spec, but do damage that will be inefficient and kill your mana and is completely out of your comfort zone!" I mean, really, who asks for that kind of thing?

Me, actually. And it totally worked. Damn that kid is awesome.

I leave you with the required screenshot of a situation in which I hope to spend much less time indulging now that Sindy has died.

Masculinism Is Not A Word

2010-08-25T09:10:00.006-04:00

Well, I do realize I’ve been a bit flighty recently, but each time I go to put together a post I keep getting distracted by some stupid King demanding that I kiss his ring, and then 10 hours later, I realize I’ve just spent all that time playing Civilization IV: Revolution. Anyway.

Blah blah blah, there’ve been quite a few posts about feminism going around lately, as I’m sure you know. Since it’s actually something of one of my favorite topics, I’m surprised myself that I haven’t commented on it earlier, but I’ve had some pretty bad backlash from doing so before, so I decided discretion is the better part of valor. Also, since gender issues are sorta “my thing” if you will, then maybe it can be explained by my own admission that there is no way I can address the topic of sexism in WoW, and keep it focused on WoW, and not go on a full-fledged rant.

And then this morning Chas posted what I think is quite possibly his all-time best post at Righteous Orbs, and it really touched me. And then I decided “Valor” and “Discretion” can both go have a cup of tea with Stalin for all I care, because RANT INCOMING. Consider yourself warned.

I’ve mentioned previously that I was once in a PhD program at a nice school in the Eastern US and that certain events led to me withdrawing after one semester, and therefore giving up all my little hopes of being a professor, and all that jazz. Well, here’s one of the other major components of that story.

My first semester, I focused most of my attention on Feminist Geography. Every time I tell people that, I get scoffed at by people who have no idea what that means, and as much as it irritates me that instead of asking what it entails, people merely laugh at it, it’s not particularly important for this story. Suffice to say I spent my time essentially in Women’s Studies, and exploring how gender issues are affected by where people live, work, etc. My professor and advisor, someone I’d admired for years, was a product of the old school bra-burner generation, and I had a lot of respect for her for that, mind you. So when I presented my research at the end of the semester, it was heartbreaking to me that she was absolutely NOT impressed.

Maybe it’s simply because I am a female, and I prefer to study things that are foreign or novel to me (which is why I get such a kick out of British TV), but I was much more interested in the way sexism negatively affects men. Because it does, and to say it doesn’t is to be just as blind as someone who says that all women who complain about sexism are making mountains out of molehills.

How many single dads do you know? When I went to try and get demographic information on this, imagine my surprise when the published numbers from the 2000 US Census I found only documented single mothers, and not single fathers. When a friend of mine who is a single dad was unemployed, I told him he should try operating a daycare out of his home because he’s so great with kids. He laughed, and informed me that no one would give him the business, and that he would likely get in trouble for it – men aren’t supposed to spend that much time with children, or they are pervs, didn’t you know? This was brought even more to light by a long-standing policy by British Airlines which was finally brought down this week: Before a recent lawsuit, lone male travellers were not allowed to be seated next to unaccompanied children.

It’s hard enough for women when they are victims of rape… but what about men? I used to live in a pretty shoddy area, and during the three years I lived there, I know of four men who reported being raped, and I really felt for them. Chas’s tale of the comedian in Edinburgh made me think of those 4 young men in my old neighborhood who were victims. Did they go to the University Women’s Center for support and empathy after their attacks? For the men who are victims of domestic violence (and you would be shocked by how common it is, because of how rarely it is reported), do they go to the special women’s shelter for abuse victims? I’m all for having these support groups around, mind you, and I fully recognize that I’m getting caught up in semantics, but when a gay man decides to join a GLBT support group after being bullied for being “girly”, maybe it would be a little more supportive if he didn’t have to visit the Women’s Center in order to employ it.

I’ve got a pretty good sense of humor, and most of the time I can roll with the punches. In general, terminology that people use does not really offend me. I’ve got a bit of the sailor in me, if you catch my meaning, but one thing I absolutely cannot stand is jokes about men getting raped. The jokes that suggest that a man can’t be raped, or “you can’t rape the willing”, or something to that effect enfuriate me. Jokes about raping a boss don’t bother me, nor do people using the dreaded “c” word… but jokes about men getting raped? I will throttle you. The reason it bothers me is because it reflects a societal belief that genuinely exists and is not subject to nearly enough discussion and debate… a vast majority really do believe that a man can’t really be raped, and it sickens me.

I didn’t want to study Feminist Geography, I wanted to study Geography of Gender… and at the time, that was simply unacceptable. There is this idea that the dreaded Patriarchy is some group of old white men sitting around a table trying to think of ways to keep the woman down, but it’s not like that. The concept of patriarchy is just that – a concept. It’s a vast structure of societal and cultural beliefs that affect both men and women. There is an underlying cultural belief that women can’t be truck drivers and coal miners and still be heterosexual, just as much as men can’t be flight attendants or nurses and still be heterosexual. The whole Patriarchy is the enemy of not just women, but men as well. Maybe a lot of men do benefit from it, but most are victims just as much as women are.

I am a Feminist because I believe women should be treated with equality. I am a Masculinist because I believe men should be treated with equality. The fact that my spellchecker just alerted me that the word “Masculinist” does not exist is very telling in and of itself.

Err, and to bring this rant back to WoW, enter the invisible and incredibly awkward segue...

I hate that the choices I have for toons in WoW are generally so disgusting to me physically. I love my female dwarf, and everytime I log in in Dalaran, or join a pugged raid or a battleground, there are comments about how rare female dwarves are. Female dwarves are so butch, after all! But they aren’t… they are quite possibly the most realistic body image for women, and I wanted my toon to be a reflection of me (even though I’m 5’10). The closest thing Chas can find to what he looks like is a Blood Elf male, who are considered the “girliest” of male toons, much like the femdwarf and the femorc are “butch” toons.

There have been a lot of comments that suggest women in wow need to step up and play more tanks! Play more DPS! Step away from the female-as-a-healer stereotype! (I’m exaggerating, by the way) Well, as a dedicated and permanent female healer myself, I absolutely fit the stereotype, but that’s okay with me. Just play whatever role, whatever toon, whatever class, you love most: And damn what other people think about it. If you feel like you ought to play something you don’t enjoy as much merely to make a point, then I think you might, in fact, be missing the point. The idea behind what others were saying, is that if you have even an inkling or a notion that you might enjoy tanking or DPSing, then go for it, and I and many others encourage you to do so, ladies.

But also… More men as healers, plz! (But, you know, only if you're into it)

GenCon 2010 - Pictures

2010-08-16T23:45:00.012-04:00

Blogger is truly awful for uploading a lot of pictures, I find . This is actually fairly nightmarish to post. Things will inevitably end up looking funky, and so I apologize, but I did want to share some pictures from GenCon, like I promised a week ago. I've been struggling to do so ever since >.<

So... let's get to the pictures!

Does this t-shirt look familiar? Remind you a bit of my classic solo-dungeoning style? My fellow raiders (since everyone in our raiding team was able to attend GenCon) thought so, so I had to pick it up.

One of the best things from GenCon was True Dungeon. There was a lot of room for improvement, but the experience was amazing.

If you haven't heard of True Dungeon, you go in to a built labrynth style room with a group of your friends, after having decided which D&D class you will play, and equipping yourself with the proper "gear" via tokens (you don't actually change your clothes).

In each room you are presented with different prop puzzles that you attempt to solve in order to "clear" the room, including combat sequences, locked chests, etc. Every class has a different kind of "skill check". For instance, I played a cleric, and everytime I wanted to heal someone, I had to pass a memory check, identifying the proper shape of prayer bead for a specific virtue. The rogueish class in our group had to delicately move a small bead through a lighted track in order to open a locked chest, and the melee classes had to slide large tokens across a drawing of a creature in order to strike properly. This is all in addition to using your collective brainpower to solve puzzles and do some problem solving.

A lot of people ask if it's like LARPing, and it's not - there's no acting roleplay involved necessarily, and we were cracking up a lot of the DMs and characters in each room with our goofy antics.

I also picked up a lot of WoW TCG cards. We all got starter class decks (my fiance and I each bought two) as well as some booster packs. A lot of our crew are old school Magic players, and the overall opinion was that while it can't hold a candle to Magic TCG (and I doubt anything ever will) it was still pretty good, and there were some aspects of game play that were better.

Last weekend a bunch of us got together and actually played a WoW TCG raid, and that was very interesting. Pretty fun, but there are some definite weaknesses. I'm playing around with different deck builds, and fighting against different classes before I pass a final judgment. If nothing else, I got some nice loot cards from some promotions at GenCon. Cryptozoic is really doing a lot to promote the decks even in spite of all the problems caused by the changeover from Upper Deck (a lot of the cards still refer back to Upper Deck websites and promotions that no longer exist).

I'd been hearing about the awesomeness that is The Ram (a local pub/brewery type place near the convention center) for years, so I was excited to finally get to check the place out. Now I can be a cool kid too and have a t-shirt like all of my friends.

In order to get a hotel for GenCon, you basically have to buy a badge and get into the housing pool in February, and get lucky by reserving your room then. My fiance bought his badge, but was in such a rush to make sure we got a room, he didn't order mine. Therefore, I had the lovely experience of waiting in line at 7am on Thursday morning to get my badge... fortunately, as punishment, I forced him to get up and wait in line with me :)

A long time ago, when I first started D&D, I mentioned the troubles I had in finding a good female dwarf mini. My main goal for GenCon was to acquire a mini that would work well for my female dwarf cleric, which is essentially my staple class, no matter what (yay dorfchicks!). The folks at the Reaper booth at GenCon were able to locate the exact one I wanted in seconds. I was on cloud 9.

Later, I tried to paint minis. Suffice to say, I will be begging and pleading with others amongst my friends to paint my mini for me, because I do not have the patience to paint tiny things. After an hour of it, I pretty much wanted to rip my own hair out, as well as the hair of everyone else nearby.

Probably one of the things people most recognize about GenCon are the amazing geeky costumes. I took lots of pictures of fantastic costumes, most of which are homemade, but in my eyes, these two costumes are the winners. The two folks pictured here had actually never met before... they were just two random people who had awesome costumes that looked fantastic together, and everyone wanted pictures of them.

Last but not least, I'm including a rather boring photo of the auction room at GenCon. I didn't spend as much time here as I would have liked, but there were some really superb things up for auction - of special importance were many personal effects of the illustrious late Gary Gygax, and the proceeds were donated to his wife I believe. Apparently, despite everything he'd done for the gamer culture, he wasn't able to leave much behind for his wife. I sure would have liked to bid on his beat up briefcase that he carried everywhere...

Okay, seriously. I'll try to stop gabbing about GenCon now. It's just that ever since the convention, my brain has been divided amongst multiple new games and things that I'm enjoying. My mind has expanded in pure delight! My pen & paper D&D group is going to try out OpenRPG so that we can game more frequently, since getting together has proven to be a bit difficult. If you have any experience or anecdotes from using OpenRPG, I'd love to hear them!

GenCon 2010 - The Experience!

2010-08-09T01:12:00.012-04:00

I am fresh from my first venture into the wonderful world of GenCon, my friends, and I feel revitalized.

This may have been my fiance's 11th GenCon trip, but it was my first, and it was a lot more fun than even I expected!

As you wander the halls of the Indiana Convention Center, surrounded by people talking about Star Wars and Star Trek and Magic and trolls and hobbits and demons and swordplay and any manner of geeky activity, this is the only place where it's okay to stop someone and ask if that device they are carrying is a new game (no, it's just a fancy thermos), or which version of Settlers of Catan they are playing, or where they got that fantastic bright pink wig with the matching corset, or find people who actually *get* the jokes on your t-shirt.

It felt... like home. *sniff* Surrounded by people who are even geekier than myself. Inundated by social awkwardness that melts away as people find a common passion. Tip-toeing carefully around board games and card trades and minis spread everywhere, knowing just how valuable those items are to their owners and friends. For once feeling like the coolest person in a room because you can spout off the fundamental differences between a WoW priest and a D&D cleric, and which stats are most important for each type, and finally locating the one vendor who understands why it is so important to you to have a delightful female dwarf mini.

So... what did Miss Medicina do?

Drank way too much beer at The Ram. (And bought a t-shirt!)
Spent far too many hours wandering the exhibit hall (And bought a t-shirt!)
Picked up a fancy gencon badge holder (And bought a t-shirt!)
Restocked on card sleeves for my new-found delight in the WoW TCG and for my D&D spells
Paid far too much for far too many TCG booster packs (And got a Blazing Hippogryph!)
Remembered the prayer bead for every skill check for my cleric in True Dungeon (And almost fell through a mirror!)
Relived my childhood at Video Games Live as an orchestra rang out the midi files of my youth from Nintendo's Zelda to Mario Brothers to Lament of the Highbourne.
Bought dice. So... many.... dice....
Discovered Kill Doctor Lucky, and almost managed to do exactly that.
Ran into someone else from my hometown academic program, where we could reveal our secret geekygamergirl obsession for the first time.

I walked away with a few new collection hobbies that may come back to bite me in the ass, but I had a ridiculous amount of fun. I also have a new appreciation for the City of Indianapolis, which I confess pleasantly surprised me. I did not meet a single person who showed any sort of resentment towards the mass influx of geeks upon their fair city - in fact, we were welcomed with open arms. At the local mall where we stopped to get some food, we sat next to two well-blonded and tanned high school age girls whom I expected to be weirded out by us. Instead, one of them brightened up and pointed out a costume of someone walking by in great excitement as she recognized the Sailor Moon fans.

Everyone has a little bit of a geek somewhere inside it seems. GenCon is one of the few events at which you can completely let loose, and it's cool to be "uncool". We don't think your full suit of homemade chainmail is the mark of a loser here - we are all very impressed. Go ahead and rock out in that steampunk corset, lady, it's welcome here. See that dude over there? He writes the best Harry Potter fanfic.

I've been to several academic conferences in my life, but I probably met a greater number of truly brilliant, creative, and enthusiastic people at one GenCon than at all of my academic conferences combined. I was blown away by how welcoming everyone was. Ever since I met my fiance and was introduced into the deep geek world of gaming (I had been a closet gamer previously), I always felt a bit like an outsider. But not at GenCon! There's so much content, so much new stuff to see and learn, that everyone is new at something, and everyone is getting exposed to new things. Everyone is both a pro and a noob depending on the scenario, and it felt excellent. So much knowledge exchange...

I will followup with a picture post. Blogger isn't particularly picture friendly, so I need to do some finagling.

Call to Arms

2010-08-01T02:20:00.002-04:00

Guys, I would have posted earlier but I've been very busy.

You see, I've discovered PvP.

I know, I know - please try to control your shock. I've always been a devout non-PvPer. Fear of the unknown had repressed me for years. (Actually, it wasn't the unknown - it was the inevitable LOLNOOB OMG U SUCK battleground chat and complete lack of any resilience)

So, here's how it all began. I was at a lowly 87 mounts after finally reaching exalted with the Netherwing Faction and acquiring my new shiny dragons. 87! That's 13 less than my goal of 100! Math is hard! Where am I supposed to get the final 13?!?!?

And then I saw that you could purchase mounts with honor.

So, with great trepidation and determination, I donned my few pieces of lolpvp gear that had been thrust upon me from VoA pugs, and nervously clicked the "Queue for Random Battleground" button. AND HOLY COW. PVP IS AWESOME.

I can't stop. I've done nothing but queue for battlegrounds since. I'm not eating, sleeping, or posting. I'm pwning hordies and jumping into Wintergrasp every chance I get.

I changed my shadow spec to a PvP friendly one suggested by shadowpriest.com. I rearranged my buttons. I have Silence! And Psychic Horror! And STONEFORM BITCHES.

So I would like to share with you some of the most important lessons I've learned in my recent Battleground Mania.

Always Always Always hit CTRL-S in the preparation area for Alterac Valley (and most battlegrounds actually). In a 40 main PvP group, there will always be rogues, and at least one of those rogues will always be an annoying flying-dagger spamming kid. Or a Path of Frost spamming DK.
You don't need to suck for everyone to know you're a noob when you go into a battleground. As soon as you get that achievement for An Honorable Kill! everyone will know.
I officially feel very bad for the Hordies on Lothar. They haven't had Wintergrasp since Wednesday. It's all because of me, I'm certain.
Arcane Torrent SUCKS. Jerks. As far as I'm concerned, the only Blood Elf I will ever like is Tamarind, and the rest of you emokids can keep your damn torrents to yourself!
Stoneform is a racial ability I alway found completely useless until battlegrounds. Now I use it just about every cooldown. Between that and Psychic Horror, I fear no rogues or warriors. LOLSTONED
Find something you're good at (or at least not terrified of), and just stick to it. If you're new to battlegrounds, just go stand at a tower and pretend you're defending it, when in reality you're looking at the map trying to figure out where the hell you are.
I still have not mastered the ability of picking up bombs.
I hate Warsong Gulch.
Even if you're a shadow priest... don't be afraid to heal. That's part of what I think makes shadow priests great in PvP. If I know I'm going to die, I just throw a Prayer of Mending on myself... at least it will still bounce after I'm dead.
When in doubt, just jump. A lot. It makes you look like you're actually good at this.

When I first decided to start jumping into PvP, I asked around: "How much resilience should I have before I start running battlegrounds?" The answer was usually a number around 1000. Since I only had about 100 resilience starting up, I felt incredibly timid joining in.

But thinking you need 1000 resilience to even start is ridiculous, as far as I'm concerned. In order to get enough PvP gear to have that kind of resilience, you're going to have to actually DO some PvP first. As long as you are prepared to die a lot, just jump in! Ignore people who are jerks in BG chat. I've found that lots of people are actually very encouraging, with compliments for successful defense tactics, gratitude for any healer around, and lots of cheers when there is a win.

And the game has come alive for me again. Though I've never really been gear or loot obsessed, there is a lot of fun involved in setting gear goals for yourself. And what's great about getting PvP gear is that you aren't directly competing with someone else for a specific item. There's no rolling against other priests, and the disappointment or arguments that come from someone losing the item. All the competition is focused on the battles themselves, really. Gearing yourself is a very independent endeavor - and I'm getting a kick out of it.

I bought two mounts in the beginning... and now I'm just buying more PvP gear with my honor. Oops.

Donner, Party of 11 Million

2010-07-24T04:00:00.000-04:00

Every now and then, something exciting (read: dramatic) occurs within the Blogosphere. I'm sure this happens in every topical blogging universe, but it gets especially heated in the WoW world in the summer.

Between slow downs in the game from the pre-expansion pack lull, and people going in and out due to summer plans, WoW can just get boring.

For instance, I could post all kinds of things about the upcoming Cataclysm Priest changes. It might actually even be notable that I haven't. The reasoning behind it is that I do not have a beta key - and therefore, since I cannot test things out and try them for myself, I'm hesitant to attempt explanations and criticisms or support for something I haven't actually seen.

I did not always have this policy, but over the past year or so of blogging, I've learned a lot of hard lessons. I thought RealID was great, and then thought it was awful, and then great again, and then there was the forum debacle, and I hated it again.

Had I waited one day more to post about Real ID when it was first released in game, so that I could experience it for myself, I think my take on it would have been very different. I rather like RealID in-game. I wouldn't like it if I didn't have a choice. Granted, it leads to a lot of awkward social circumstances, such as when someone wants to be my RealID friend, and I really don't want to, eek!

So - unless I get a beta key, it is unlikely I will talk much about specific priest changes until much closer to release.

I know I'm not alone in my wow-boredom. And when boredom strikes, people jump at the chance for something interesting. And no matter how much we might like to tell ourselves it's not true, heated disagreements amongst ourselves do spark interest. Especially when there's not a lot else going on.

We end up participating in cannibalistic activities. Dammit, Blizz, we're starving over here in the blogosphere! You're leaving us to devour one another in our hunger. If I don't get a beta key soon, I'm going to start chewing on Fuubaar's leg.

It's rather like being so bored with heroics that you go in pantsless in order to try and make it a bit more interesting.

On that note, please participate in the Very Important Survey on my sidebar. Yes, I'm asking you to click through if you are viewing this in a reader (and I never ask people to do that!)- because the future of our society depends very much on your selection of which type of elitist you are.

Random and Only Vaguely Topical

2010-07-23T04:53:00.003-04:00

I quit my job at the Census (it was only going to last another week anyway). I got sick of being reminded on a daily basis how easily replaceable I was, and constant threats that everyone would be fired. Bah - so replace me then. ::shrug::

Then I started obsessing over Ancestry.com. It has now become like a new game for me. I must fill out every box on that pedigree chart. It's like my professions... I must know EVERY RECIPE. I called my mom to get some information about relatives, and she wanted to tell me stories. I had to resist the insane urge to tell her that I don't give a damn about the stories! Just give me birth dates and death dates so that i can COMPLETE EVERY TICKIE BOX. There better be an achievement at the end. Wait... this is ancestry pedigree... there IS no end. My obsessive-compulsive completionist tendencies will be the death of me.

After my Real ID/Real Names post a week or so ago, I finally decided to come clean to my advisor. She's more than just my advisor, she's something of a mother figure. So I told her that I blog about WoW. There was utter silence for a moment, and then her response was something along the lines of "Well... at least you're writing and keeping your writing skills up... but don't you think you ought to direct some of that towards, you know, your thesis?"

Remember how the worst thing your mother could ever do to you was to sound disappointed? "I'm not angry, I'm disappointed." After that conversation I felt horribly guilty, and decided to start working on my thesis again.

My thesis is about sex offenders. The past few days I have been assembling all my data... which means mapping where sex offenders live, looking at all these pictures of sex offenders, reading about their crimes, state laws, etc. I'm sure all my friends on twitter think I'm insane, since it's pretty much all I've been talking about, and sex crimes aren't generally considered polite conversation, even for twitter.

The thing is, when you're writing something like your thesis or your dissertation, you have to completely dive in and focus and invest yourself. Normally that would be fine - but I confess that spending so much time thinking about and looking at and researching people who have committed such horrible crimes has really worn me down. I honestly thought it wouldn't be a problem for me - I don't have kids, for one. But man. You live and breathe your thesis. It's not particularly pleasant to live and breathe sex offenders.

So, I took a break from thesising to try a battleground. I'm notoriously horrible at BGs, but I figured everyone is happy to see a healer, right? You expect the healer to get killed off pretty quickly, so maybe no one would notice how horrible I was if they were getting their bubbles. So I put on my lolpvp gear (200 resilience baby! YEAH!) and dove in to a Warsong Gulch. And then, for some completely unknown reason, and purely on a panicked whim (I'm always panicked in BGs) I picked up the flag. I had no idea what the hell I was doing. In my complete panic, I mounted up. Dropped the flag. Picked it back up. Ran around in a circle for a minute. Saw 6 red hordies come running at me... so I freaked out and deserted the battleground, and logged off.

I would have been a truly horrible soldier.

Also, this week I was looking at wedding rings, and found this particular gem. It's ribbed for her comfort. It's the perfect wedding ring for those who want a reminder of that item they should have used in order to prevent the situation requiring their marriage in the first place.

Fence Sitting is Rather Uncomfortable

2010-07-21T19:26:00.005-04:00

There was a great hullabaloo about add-ons amongst the healing circle. As a big fan of both moarhps (Codi) and RighteousOrbs (Tam & Chas), I found the exchange particularly interesting, and instead of leaving the ginormous comment over at RighteousOrbs that I started, I figured I would turn it into a post.

The Problem With Add-Ons

I should preface this by stating that I use add-ons. I try to use as few as is necessary. Is it because I think it makes me a better player or person if I don’t use add-ons? Not at all. It is due almost entirely to the fact that add-ons have a tendency to go all wonky after a patch. And I get error messages. And thingies light up and go dingdingding and I get very bewildered. I’m not very good at customizing UIs, and I’m entirely too impatient to fix things that break on the technical end. I just click red x boxes in hopes that whatever the problem is will simply go away. I utilize this exact same methodology with my car, by the way.

I very much enjoyed Codi’s no add-on project for the very reason that she started it in the first place. Her computer broke, she had to use another computer on which she was not able to use add-ons, and she needed to heal a raid. Most of us have found ourselves in a similar situation many times. Codi’s writing on the topic helped me figure out how to fix things so that I could heal and raid well in the event that my add-ons went kablooey.

She also pointed out a lot of things that made me pay more attention – and in effect, made me a better healer, and an overall better player.

By making healing a simple matter of point and click, it removes the finesse of doing things like making macros or learning each of the unique debuffs so that you can spot them.

Now, I don’t think you have to stop using add-ons in order to learn the Great Art of Macro-Creation – Clique taught me how to use and create macros. I’m still not very good at it, and I’m certainly no expert, but through Clique I learned how to use different types of macros, and enabled myself to create macros outside of the add-on environment as well. Conceptually, I confess that I just could not grasp how to use and write macros before Clique.

In regards to the debuffs, I found her to be quite right. Before she pointed this out, I rarely bothered to actually read the name or effect of a debuff. I would just cleanse/dispel my way on through. The problem with that, is that you don’t really need to cleanse everything. In many cases, it is simply a waste of a global cooldown and mana to do so, especially when the tradeoff of a GCD and the effect of the debuff are too expensive. In addition to this, I have started noticing a lot more debuffs that need to be removed at a certain time (i.e. not immediately), and I have watched people cleanse them immediately and cause a lot of damage to the group.

Since Codi pointed out this particular issue, I started paying more attention to curses, debuffs, etc. Yes, I still use my add-ons. But I use them with more thought now – I pay more attention. And the game has become more interesting to me when I pay more attention to the specific details of debuffs.

Before Codi started her Zero Add-On Project, I was in the camp of someone who felt completely incapable of healing without my precious add-ons. But now, due to her efforts, I know what to do if I find myself raiding on my laptop (which can’t handle all my normal raiding add-ons) or on a patch day if everything explodes. I feel confident that I can still be a solid player.

I do not think that add-ons necessarily make the game easier. I find that they often add a layer of complexity that I absolutely hate – fiddling with a UI when I have about as much patience for such endeavors as I do for people who are rude and demanding. However, I find just as much, if not more, problems in trying to configure the default UI to work in a way that makes sense to me. Thankfully, Codi made the effort to explain to me how to do it properly.

As far as I’m concerned, this is a game, and therefore people should do what it takes to make the game as fun as possible for themselves, as long as it does not make the game less enjoyable for other players. Codi enjoys playing without add-ons, and she is a living testament against the people who insist that people who raid without add-ons should just be kicked from a raid by default. Along that same line, I’ve certainly never seen her championing a cause that stated that people who do like to use add-ons should also be kicked from a raid. Perhaps I was completely incorrect in my interpretation, but I read her words as championing the cause that people should learn how to heal without add-ons in order to better understand the game mechanics that add-ons may encourage people to gloss over, and to prepare oneself in the event that you are unable to use add-ons. I think it's a pretty good point.

Why should I learn to spell when I have a spellchecker built into every word-processing program? Because I might find myself in a situation where the word processor doesn’t work. Why should I learn my multiplication tables when I can just use a calculator? Because I lose things like calculators, and people get really irritated when you ask them, for the 19th time, what 6 times 7 is (screw you, multiplication tables). Why should I scrub the floor on my hands and knees instead of with a mop? Because with a mop, I don’t notice the clear sticky substance glued to the floor.

The Inherent Virtue of Suffering

I very much enjoyed reading all the relevant posts from all three authors (Codi, Tam, and Chas), but I think this section by Tam is quite possibly my favorite. As someone who does actually find some personal inherent value in suffering (I blame my mother), I felt very attached to Tam’s words on the topic. Specifically, this portion:

The thing is, I’m all for individual freedom. If you want to write, you can write, if you want to use the default UI you can use the default UI, if you want to eat your rice with a fork you can.

(well that’s good, actually, because I do eat rice with a fork, and I never understood why my mother thought that was strange – is it easier with a spoon? Maybe it is… /ponder)

But then I guess this section rather stung:

Unfortunately, the problem is that people who do choose to do things in a less-than-optimal manner can never seem to let it go. It’s not enough that we approach things differently: their way has to be the better way, the way that makes reflects their inherent inner virtues, like strength and determination and not expecting things to be easy all the time.

And it left me wondering… after my “I like it Hard” post, did my readers think I was insisting they ought to do things the hard way? I hope I did not alienate my readers and friends by leaving them with the thought that I considered myself superior simply because I found some personal value in increased and arguably unnecessary challenges. I absolutely do not. I also confess that I take some offense to the description of a less-traveled path as less-than-optimal. I recognize that my entire philosophy on life is annoyingly post-modern, but it does sting a bit to hear that the personal choices I make are, due to the very thing about them that makes them valuable to me, “less than optimal”. Mind you, I'm not suggesting Tam's words were directed at me. My favorite thing about Tam is his ability to take a potentially esoteric concept that applies to the real world and frame it in a gaming context, and vice versa.

So to each of you, I encourage you to find your own optimal path, and refrain from judging or casting condemnation down on others who choose a different path. Maybe that path will be the difficult, rocky, and less traveled path. Maybe it will be the cleaner, tidier, more established one. There are inherent virtues in both, depending on what you, as an individual, value most.

My path, though arguably more arduous and tedious and perhaps even filled with lots of giant pits and squiggly red lines, may not be the path for you. I only wished to share with you the joy I had experiencing it. I hope you got a kick out of it, and I am not offended if you tease me about it, as long as you don’t attempt to tell me my path is wrong, or that your path would be a superior choice for me.

Seriously, if having your night elf jump up and down naked on a mailbox all day brings you the most joy in this game, then go for it. It’s your money. What right does anyone else have to tell you that your way is not fun, and you’re “doing it wrong”? If, on the other hand, you like to spend your gametime attempting to solo every raid boss naked with the default UI on a holy priest with one hand tied behind your back… more power to you. It’s your money, and if that is fun for you, then that is what you ought to do.

Just because someone likes doing something in a way you perceive as more difficult does not mean they find it more difficult, nor does it make them (that ever-controversial adjective) elitist. My perception of an elitist is someone who insists their way is the only proper way, and then continues on to insist that anyone who does not do it their way is inferior. In contrast, just because someone chooses to do something in a way that seems far too simplistic to you does not mean they are lazy.

On a more personal note, I really do hope that none of the authors to whom I referred in this post are upset with me for writing this. I adore all of them, both as writers and as individuals. I hope that posting my thoughts on this whole subject does not lose me their friendships, because I have been blessed with the opportunity to get to know them on a personal level, and I'd really hate to lose that.

The Newest Sensation in Gaming: Real Life

2010-07-10T12:46:00.002-04:00

After Tobold's review of Real Life (tm), I decided I had to check out this game that is apparently so popular. A glowing review from Tobold is a pretty solid recommendation in my book, so I've been attempting to log a lot of hours in this massive multiplayer game.

First off, you should be warned that it's not always easy to get a response from the developers. The forums are fool of trolls, and it can be very difficult to find people there who are genuinely kind and helpful. In fact, I think sometimes that the developers like to post as just normal players, instead of with an obvious descriptor next to their name. It can make it really confusing to get an honest answer, and it's not always easy to know whom to trust. I've been trying to just have faith that the developers know what they are doing with this game, and in general, I'm sure their plan for the big picture is a good one, there just seems to be a lot of tricky and difficult tasks before you get to the end-game. What is particularly fascinating about the end-game, is that no one knows exactly what it entails - but most of us assume, or at least hope, that it's a damn good reward.

A lot of people like to solo through this game, but I've found that the support of a good solid guild really makes everything a lot more pleasant, and certainly a hell of a lot more manageable, especially for raiding. The best strategy involves creating multiplayer networks for different tasks. For instance, I find that having one partner around can be helpful in managing day to day tasks and personal achievements. I utilize my guild for other, larger, tasks and achievements, and you need to have a full raid for some of the longer, bigger, tasks.

The quests have a lot of variation. Some are these epic chains that seem to never end, with lots of different quest givers along the way. Many of these chains differ based on the stats, abilities, and gear your character starts with from the beginning, but one thing I particularly like is that you can usually mold the chains to whatever rewards you prefer if you are willing to put in enough time and energy. Some chains reward more gold, others more personal achievments. Personally, I prefer the quests for achievements, but to be fair, I was pretty lucky with the random roll with which my toon started.

In addition to these quest chains, there is this really interesting feature based on the amount of gear you have. The more gear you have, the more daily quests you seem to accrue in order to keep that gear. However, unlike in WoW, these are not the same quest every day. In fact, if you skip one particular daily for multiple days, then when you finally get back to doing it, you have to do a lot more to complete the quest and get the same rewards as you would in one normal daily. This is particularly noticeable in quests that are related to player housing. Also, don't expect your guildmates to help you much with your dailies. Even if you team up with one player to go through the mid to end level content, you might find that somehow you get stuck doing their dailies as well as your own.

Your character functions on a limited resource capacity. The more resources you consume, the more you seem to steadily need. Over time, these resources that affect your stats (such as spirit, stamina, and strength in particular) really seem to wane, and you have to recharge. Intellect actually builds over time, unless you participate in some optional quest chains that provide short term buffs, and then give you a massive debuff that lowers all your stats for a significant amount of time. Agility, however, seems to steadily decrease throughout the game span.

Since I know how so many of you really adore raiding, I'll give you some of my perspective on this aspect of the game. I'm currently working on a short duration, but taxing raid. The end-game boss is a very strange internet dragon, who actually looks, strangely enough, like a short bald man who never smiles. We haven't yet managed to take down this boss, and I think it's because I've been in some pretty messy pugs. However, I also have this suspicion that this dragon isn't really the ultimate boss, and that there are others pulling the strings behind him. It's actually a pretty clever design, if you think about it. We keep throwing all our abilites at this boss, wearing ourselves thin, but he seems immune to damage. I'm beginning to wonder if he is simply Mind Controlled, and is being used as some kind of shield for other, weaker but nastier bosses behind him.

Anyway, I think I'd better get back to the game, as I have another raid attempt here shortly. I'll keep you guys posted when I finally defeat this boss, as I'm sure it will happen sometime in the next week or two. In the meantime, you should really check out this game. It has the potential to be especially rewarding, even though you may experience a lot of down time where you don't seem to be getting anywhere. There's a lot of serendipity in this game, and random things that other players do in the gaming universe can create lots of new questing and achievement opportunities for you, so even if you want to take a break from it sometimes, you really should check back in every day to see if any new opportunities arise.

Catch you in-game!

afk

2010-07-10T00:17:00.002-04:00

From my uber-boss:

"FYI: Whichever crew leader district turns in the least amount of work this week will be fired. Every last employee in that district. Have a nice weekend!"

/afk for nervous breakdown

ZERG

Faith Restored

2010-07-09T19:11:00.003-04:00

In the past couple of days, I kept trying to write a post, but couldn't bring myself to do it.

I had a case of the Blizzard Blues. I think Larisa was feeling similarly.

It came from a feeling of complete and utter betrayal and disenchantment. I felt stupid and ashamed for feeling so let down by a corporation. I've never been a fan of big businesses; how could I have been such a fool? How could I have let a corporate entity emotionally affect me to such a degree? How pathetic. Don't worry, I recognized it; And I felt the bigger fool due to it.

Now, don't get me wrong, I recognize that Blizzard is a business and that they not only need to keep making money, but that they have to continually try and find ways to make MORE money. That's capitalism baby.

But Real ID on the forums was one step too far. Over the past week the community came out in droves to protect themselves and maintain the fantasy in their fantasy game. And there were, I should note, a lot of people who thought Real ID on the forums was either a good idea, or at least okay and nothing to worry about. I don't begrudge you your opinion on the matter. I think the majority of the WoW community recognizes that something needs to be done about the forums.

However, the vast and most vocal of the community stepped up to the plate and told Blizz how they felt. From the forums themselves, to the blogger community, the the gaming community at large, all the way up to the Washington Post and major news channels, we made our opinion loud and clear.

And Blizzard listened.

Every time there's a nerf; Everytime people demand some change in the game, it is unlikely that Blizz will make the changes demanded just because the customers insist they should. But there's a big difference between the developers trying to make a game that will function well, and the corporate structure trying to push big changes that the customer does not want. Don't confuse the two.

Blizz is always listening, due mostly to the efforts of their Community Managers, who go out and stand, like a fly on the wall, and take note of what we are saying - of what we want, of what we hate. They do a hell of a lot more than click that lock button in the forums, and I think they should get credit for that. They don't just monitor the forums; they read the blogs, they are the lifeline to the community. If you bloggers check your stats often enough, you will catch them from time to time, stopping by to see what you have to say.

And they communicated our message loud and clear to the powers that be at Blizzard. And despite how much the original decision to implement Real ID on the forums sickened me, despite how much faith I lost in this company, and despite the fact that they may still try to do something similar in the future, I will always know that when it really counted, they were willing to listen to the community and reverse a massive business model decision. I'm sure there are lots of financial and PR reasons why the choice was made; But I don't care. By the time the announcement got to us, they had undoubtedly already invested a lot of time and resources into implementing it.

I'm proud of Blizzard. It's not always easy to admit when you're wrong. But I actually have a hell of a lot more respect for a company that is willing to reverse a mistake than a company that never even makes one.

(Also, to Nethaera... I hope you were pretty excited you got to be the one to post this letter!)

Hello everyone,

I'd like to take some time to speak with all of you regarding our desire to make the Blizzard forums a better place for players to discuss our games. We've been constantly monitoring the feedback you've given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we've decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.

It's important to note that we still remain committed to improving our forums. Our efforts are driven 100% by the desire to find ways to make our community areas more welcoming for players and encourage more constructive conversations about our games. We will still move forward with new forum features such as the ability to rate posts up or down, post highlighting based on rating, improved search functionality, and more. However, when we launch the new StarCraft II forums that include these new features, you will be posting by your StarCraft II Battle.net character name + character code, not your real name. The upgraded World of Warcraft forums with these new features will launch close to the release of Cataclysm, and also will not require your real name.

I want to make sure it's clear that our plans for the forums are completely separate from our plans for the optional in-game Real ID system now live with World of Warcraft and launching soon with StarCraft II. We believe that the powerful communications functionality enabled by Real ID, such as cross-game and cross-realm chat, make Battle.net a great place for players to stay connected to real-life friends and family while playing Blizzard games. And of course, you'll still be able to keep your relationships at the anonymous, character level if you so choose when you communicate with other players in game. Over time, we will continue to evolve Real ID on Battle.net to add new and exciting functionality within our games for players who decide to use the feature.

In closing, I want to point out that our connection with our community has always been and will always be extremely important to us. We strongly believe that Every Voice Matters, ( http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/mission.html ) and we feel fortunate to have a community that cares so passionately about our games. We will always appreciate the feedback and support of our players, which has been a key to Blizzard's success from the beginning.

Mike Morhaime
CEO & Cofounder
Blizzard Entertainment

And I Didn't Even Catch Her Name...

2010-07-06T19:58:00.003-04:00

When I was younger, and much more naive about teh interwebz and my career, I made a massive mistake.

It was my first week in a very difficult PhD program. I had moved across the country. I was surrounded by big fish who all had their Masters' degrees - and there I was, a girl with a Texan accent, the first in my family to graduate college, having come to this prestigious east coast university PhD program with nothing but a Bachelor's degree to my name.

For my first seminar, my professor was my hero. This particular professor was the reason I came to this university and he/she was known all over in my field for their work. There were stars in my eyes, I swear.

And then I spent my first week trying to understand who the fuck this Foucault dude was, and what the hell he was saying. The night before my second meeting of that particular seminar class, all alone in my tiny shoebox apartment, I drank myself into a complete stupor out of pure frustration and fear that I had made a huge mistake, and was in over my head. I was supposed to have read this entire Foucault book, and though I had tried, I had no idea what this crazy French guy was talking about. I mean c'mon. Have you READ Foucault?

The next day in class, I was very hungover and sick. It took everything in me not to burst into tears. I thought I was smart; I'd been top of my class in my little podunk program at home. But these people were brilliant, and I had no idea what they were talking about.

Back in those days, I was a big fan of Livejournal. And I went to some random Livejournal community for new graduate students, and tried to make light of my situation by venting. I joked that I had shown up drunk for my very first seminar class of my PhD program (which, as I mentioned previously, wasn't actually true). It made me laugh to think I could be that careless, and when I want to share a funny story, I always use artistic license and exagerrate a bit, if you hadn't noticed. Making a joke out of the whole thing made Foucault look a little less terrifying to me. It helped me to downplay the severity of the situation in which I found myself by making it all into a big joke. And since I knew absolutely no one, and had no friends, I turned to this internet forum.

And for some stupid reason that I will never understand, I posted with my real name.

Within two hours, a 7th year PhD student had contacted me and asked who my professor was, and the specifics on the class. She recognized my name because she knew who the new students in the program were that year. This person did not find my story funny, and of course did not realize how much I exagerrated the situation, or that I was really quite frightened and lost. This student cared about the reputation of her program, and I had just made a complete fool out of myself in a community for graduate students on the internet. For some reason I will never know (maybe a divine blessing of luck and pity from the PhD gods), I do not think she personally contacted my professor (who, by the way, was supposed to be my advisor) and tell him/her about my alleged irresponsible behavior.

I promptly went back and deleted my post, set all my internet profiles to private, and tried to erase any scrap of my name. One semester later, I withdrew from this PhD program (not just because of this incident mind you), but I learned a very valuable lesson.

One day, if all the stars align properly, maybe I will have the opportunity to publish my thesis. Maybe I will get the chance to research with some of my role models. I learned to veil the Texan accent at conferences. I learned how to read Foucault. I learned how to behave properly in an Academic environment.

Here, at my blog, I don't have to worry about that - because I don't release my name. I'm sure someone could find it if they chose to do so. However, I do not want to make it easy for others to find out who I am, and associate the name under which I hope to publish really smart stuff with a blog in which I talked ad nauseam about bubbles and Devout Mantles. Being a WoW gamer is not exactly a mark of prestige in my field. It would not be a hobby that worked in my favor, but in fact, more than likely the opposite. Yes, it might be stupid that this perception exists, but it is what it is, and I have accepted that.

The people who work at Blizzard don't have to worry about their future employers knowing how much time they spent on the WoW forums. So while it may be a nice thought that Nethaera (whom I adore) and Bashiok and Zarhym and all the others are also willing to post their Real Names, my future career is not likely going to be in the gaming industry.

I really did want to be a Priestly version of Lissanna, who is very well known on the Druid forums for her contributions to the Druid community at large. I wanted to post guides and stickies and suggestions for Priests on our forum. For awhile there, I was doing just that, and just hadn't done it for awhile.

But, I'm sorry, I cannot risk my future career on a hobby. It is, after all, supposed to be a Role Playing Game. I'm sorry that I will not be able to contribute to the official WoW community on the forums come Cataclysm. If Blizz wants to add more accountability to forum posters, then I would be perfectly happy to pick an alias under which every single forum post I made could be associated. I would be happy to have it be an alias under which people could contact me in-game. If I'm rude, you can confront me in game. But I will not let a game potentially ruin my real life.

The Completionist's Ramble

2010-07-06T08:04:00.006-04:00

You know that enfuriating feeling when you are grinding away at a boss, crossing your fingers for that one drop that you want? Over and over and over... and still that damn item for which you've been farming this same stupid boss just Will Not Drop.

What item do I crave? Is it the Spark of Hope perhaps? Maybe the Mag'hari Chieftain's Staff? Not at all, I have both of those, and I've given up farming for Solace of the Defeated or Solace of the Fallen.

But there are two items I want that elude me. They just don't drop in ICC.

Why must you taunt me, Devout skirt? I have killed Baron Rivendare repeatedly over the last two weeks, and still no Devout Skirt. I am missing two items from my Devout set, and it's the skirt and the mantle. This has put a significant hold on all my completionist plans. I have no intention of starting the quest line An Earnest Proposition until I have the full Devout set so that I can capture the moment of the full set effect with a screenshot before turning it in, piece by piece, to acquire my Vestments of the Virtuous set. I know that's not really the process most people followed when originally doing the questline, but this is the way I'm doing it.

I'm 50 quests away from my Loremaster title. The questline that involves turning in the pieces for the Devout set and receiving the Virtuous set is approximately 25 quests. It runs you through just about every last damn dungeon in the Old World. I'm very much looking forward to this questline, as I'm sure it will be the icing on the "Goodbye Pre-Cataclysm Old World" cake.

All that stands in my way is Devout Mantle and Devout Skirt. CURSE YOU.

LOOK AT THOSE NAKED SHOULDERS.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I had been suffering some pretty severe burnout earlier this summer, as I've mentioned before. Upon reflection, I began to realize that I wasn't necessarily burning out on the game - just raiding.

I know there are a lot of people who only really enjoy raiding. I can sympathize. Truth be told, raiding and dungeons are some of my least favorite aspects of this game. WoW was my first MMO, and I'm still very much an independent player. I prefer to solo my way around the world most of the time. I don't know why I enjoy playing a healer so much if I prefer soloing, but oh well.

So, I'm enjoying the pursuit of achievements. And, it's not just achievements. I am collecting old sets. I have 2/5 of The Postmaster, and 2/5 of the Necropile Raiment as well. I'm going through and collecting every PvE tier set, step by step.

I don't mind soloing dungeons. The vast majority of the old world dungeons are places in which I never set foot while leveling. I hated them. I hated spending hours with a group of people working on these areas. I'm making up for lost time now, and getting a lot of use out of my shadow spec.

In Vanilla WoW, most players never got to see much, if any, raiding. To compensate for that, Blizz developed these vast dungeons, rich with lore and quests, and items that would be used for reputation and crafting. Dungeons like Dire Maul and Blackrock Depths were not just big instanced areas - they were separate cities with their own factions that required large groups to access and enjoy. These were 5 man raids.

Halls of Reflection may be hard for the new 80, and it might even be a fun instance. But Halls of Reflection can't hold a candle to Blackrock Depths. As a Dwarf, Jessabelle sympathizes with Moira, and feels connected to the Dark Iron stronghold.

The Cataclysm is coming, and I don't really care about ICC. Loremaster has been a fantastic pursuit for me, and I can't think of a better way for me to say farewell to the Old World. I am so glad I'm doing this!

Independence Day!

2010-07-04T17:49:00.002-04:00

I am going to say this very quietly, because I don't want my fiance to read it and hold it over my head, and I also don't like getting super political.

I'm something of a libertarian.

So, I consider Independence Day pretty important for us statesiders. It's not because we got away from the Brits, because I love British culture and Britishisms, and I am probably somewhat unhealthily fascinated by British everything (except the food... sorry). It's about revolutions and constitutions and all those things that I think are pretty precious.

I also celebrate Bastille Day for similar reasons.

My dad's birthday is July 4th, and this is the first year I haven't been with him on his birthday, by my own choice. But you know who else has a birthday on July 4th? My best friend, and pocket tank, Fuubaar over at Killing Em Slowly.

She's 42 today, and doesn't look a day over 24. Go wish her a happy birthday!

Trinkets for the Packrats

2010-06-30T08:16:00.002-04:00

In the comments section a couple of days ago, Xeppe asked me about the trinkets I use, since I noted that I tend to swap them out depending on fight. I've been wanting to make a gigantic trinkets post since the beginning of this blog and I just never got around to it. This is me still not getting around to it.

I will, however, list out the trinkets I carry with me everywhere, and talk about them a bit.

I absolutely love trinkets. I know that most people tend to stick two trinkets in their character screen that have the best ranking on the Ultimate Trinket List and forget about them, but not me. So many trinkets are unique and whimsical in their usage that I prefer to mix them up and try them out in different scenarios.

Once upon a time, I hated using trinkets with a "use" effect, because I am truly terrible at remembering to actually use them enough to make them worth it. Then Paolo walked into my life and taught me to bind my trinkets to my most commonly used heals, and I felt the warmth of a whole new world opening up to me.

Having multiple trinkets allows me to customize my gear for a specific fight, or a specific strategy. Nowadays, since we've been running ICC with the buff, I haven't been playing around with my trinkets nearly as much, simply because everyone's health pool is larger and my heals are so much more powerful that it's pretty much a moot point. But back when the fights were fresh and new and challenging and there was actually the chance I would run out of mana or not heal fast or big enough, my trinkets got a lot more use.

Case in point: When we were learning the Blood Prince Council fight, we tried a lot of crazy strategies. At one point we even tried using three tanks just to try and get some of the mechanics down. With three tanks, not only did the fight go on for a very long time, but we also lost our source of replenishment since our ret pally switched to his tanking spec. I guarantee you I got a lot of use out of my trinkets during those attempts, because it was the first time in a long time where I used every mana return ability I had and still my blue bar went empty.

So, here's a list of the trinkets I keep on me at all times for healing:

Ephemeral Snowflake - This trinket is summarily hated by theorycrafting priests all over the internetz. If you run the numbers, that 11 mana per heal is not very impressive. Maybe it's great for druids with their constantly ticking HoTs, but for a Disc priest who runs with a Druid and therefore never even bothers with Renew, it's pretty lackluster. However, I like the 20 second haste buff on fights where I will be spam healing the tank (i.e. Festergut). Truthfully, this is also one of my higher iLvl trinkets, so when I want to log out with my highest score possible on WoW-heroes (so that I can preen proudly at my toon), I equip this. Mostly just to give Paolo a heart attack though.
Talisman of Resurgence - I carry this trinket around mostly for my shadow set actually. But for disc, the Intellect on it is very nice, especially for fights where I will be bubbling a lot and I want a higher return of mana due to Rapture. The spellpower proc also means that my bubbles will be bigger when the trinket is used, however, see below for why I rarely use this trinket on my Disc set out of pure annoyance. To be totally honest, I don't find much use for this when healing.
Je'Tze's Bell - Of course I carry this with me all the time. I had to have this trinket, and saved up a long time to buy it on the AH. Hello, my name is Jessabelle. Now, all that aside, this is a good default trinket if you have nothing similar that does a better job. It has a solid full-time spellpower boost (so no problems with overlapping bubbles), and the mana regen occurs often enough in the background to give me around 30 mp5. I don't use this trinket very often anymore due to the fact that I have better ones, but I refuse to DE it, and I carry it around because IT'S MY DAMN BELL.
Ancient Pickled Egg - This is actually the same thing as The Egg of Mortal Essence which you can get with badges (this is something I picked up from Coren Direbrew). It cannot be DEd either, so it sits in my bags making everything smelly for the most part. I like the solid spellpower boost which is always a good option when there is no need for anything particularly special for certain fights. I will occasionally use this trinket when I have absolutely no mana concerns in a fight. Because there is no "use" ability, it's pretty much equip and forget. The haste proc is nice, but since it is a proc, and not a use effect, and therefore I cannot bind it to a spell I cast when I need the haste and therefore direct its use, I don't equip this trinket for any fights that would give me a particular challenge.
Majestic Dragon Figurine - This is one of my favorite trinkets, though I haven't used it at all in ICC, since I'm running Disc. I love this trinket for Holy, and even use it on occasion when I'm running around in Shadow. When I use this trinket as Holy, I always keep an eye on how many stacks of the buff I have, and I always try to maintain my 10 stack. It gives me a nice little 25 spellpower boost (around 30 with kings) as well as some good solid mana regen. And I find it fun, and a nice little challenge to keep it fully stacked. I like fun trinkets.
Spark of Hope - I was really lucky to get this trinket, and it is a very good one, especially for Holy Priests. Love that spirit, always! It's still good, even for a Disc Priest, even though we don't get nearly as much use out of Spirit. Fights that have wonky mana debuffs are perfect for this trinket. The best example I can think of is Vezax, but if you ever run into a fight where there is some form of mana burn, this is great for that fight too (such as those nasty mana burn spots on the ground in Valithria). When no amount of mana regen is regenning fast enough, the absolute reduction of mana cost for your abilities is always a great thing.
Sliver of Pure Ice - That spellpower is delicious. There are two ways to use this trinket. You could use it as a second mana pot - put it right next to your mana pot button, or make some kind of macro that will attempt to use this first, and if it is on cooldown, use a mana pot (I'm terrible with macros, so if someone knows specifically how to write that up, I'd appreciate it). Or, you can do what I do, and simply bind it to a spell you use quite often (I use it with Prayer of Mending). Use it when you come back from a battle rez. Use it when you oopsed into the mana burn spot in Dreamwalker. Or, if you prefer to get maximum usage out of it, even if not always at the best time (and therefore consider it more of a background mana regen device), bind it to a spell.
Purified Lunar Dust - This is essentially an upgrade to Je'Tze's Bell. For maximum standard spellpower and regen increase, I will on occasion equip them both. Unlike my bell, however, you can purchase this one with 60 frost badges.

A lot of these trinkets share certain aspects in common, and depending on your Priest spec, they may be more annoying than useful.

Use effect that increases spellpower: I'm sure lots of people love this, and for Disc priests, spellpower is king. However, I personally hate spellpower procs, due to the bubble breakdown I've mentioned before. There is nothing more annoying to me than trying to put a fresh bubble on someone, and being told that I can't because a "more powerful spell" is in effect - even though usually that is blatantly untrue. Theorycrafting wise, these are probably still best, but personally, if the fight is a stressful one, this can set me off into a very undisciplined rage, if you catch my drift. Therefore, if you're disc, you probably don't want to bind the use ability to a spell you use a lot if you will get as frustrated as I do. Bind it to a spell you use when you need a burst of throughput, such as Pain Suppression, or Power Infusion. For Holy, anything goes, and I'd recommend binding it to an often used spell to maximize its usage. Otherwise, you could throw it in with something like Guardian Spirit, though that might be overkill for most normal encounters.
Use effect that increases haste: As a tank healer, I really like these kinds of procs. When my trinket goes off, I shield the tank and cast a greater heal. However, unless it is a fight where I really need to be spamming a single player, the proc will usually go to waste. The best way to use this kind of trinket is to bind it to something that you use when you really need to cast fast. For instance, if you ever use Greater Heal, particularly for tank healing, that is likely the best heal to bind it to. Other options might be Power Infusion, if you use that on yourself. Power Infusion + haste trinket might be more speed than necessary. Similarly for Holy, you could bind it to Guardian Spirit, but again, this may be overkill. You might try binding it to Prayer of Healing instead. I'd recommend trying it with a few different spells, and see which ones give you the most benefit.
Chance on spellcast or heal to increase mana regen for xx seconds or return mana: This basically works as a background mana regen feature. The shorter your general casting time, the more likely you will get a solid benefit from this. You can run the numbers for yourself, but trinkets like this are really great for long fights that will require... well, longevity. Using a trinket like this also means that you can swap out some of your other gear for better throughput stats. This is always a good default for healers, as far as I'm concerned.
Reduction of mana cost vs Return of mana every cast: There are a few trinkets that have one of these abilities (see Spark of Hope and Ephemeral Snowflake). Reduction of mana cost is superior if it applies to all your heals. It is always better for your mana to spend less of it in the first place than to get some back after you've spent it.

If you make good use of your trinkets, they can really help you in "edge" encounters - this could mean heroic fights, or fights where you feel your gear is not really up to par, or where you are missing essential buffs (i.e. Replenishment). Trinkets give you the ability to tailor yourself to a fight or to a group makeup - use them wisely and with lots of thought.

When it comes to bindings (Clique is fantastic for this by the way), here are some tips to help you better organize trinket swapping:

When you write your macro for using a trinket at the same time as casting a certain spell, instead of writing "/use Sliver of Pure Ice" into your macro, type "/use 13" for the upper trinket, and "/use 14" for the lower. (I think that's right - please correct me if I'm wrong)
If you set your macros this way, try to always equip a similar trinket in the same slot. For example, you might choose to have your upper trinket slot saved for throughput pop trinkets. Then, whether you use a trinket that increases your haste or spellpower depending on the encounter, you are less likely to need to change the macro, since you would probably bind it to the same spell anyway.

For instance, let's say on one fight, I am going to equip my Ephemeral Snowflake to give me some added tank healing burst on Festergut. I want the haste instead of the spellpower, because I'd rather have faster smaller heals than larger slower ones. In another fight, I might want to use a trinket that has a spellpower pop effect instead. When I swap the trinkets, I just make sure they are both in the upper slot, and the same macro will work - I don't have to make any annoying macro changes.

Perhaps I'd keep my lower slot for mana trinkets, such as Sliver of Pure Ice which has a use effect, or in another fight Purified Lunar Dust, which does NOT have a use effect. I bind the use of that trinket slot to Prayer of Mending, and then throw in a suppression to my macro so that I don't constantly have to hear about how that item isn't ready yet when Sliver of Pure Ice is on cooldown. Or, for that matter, due to the fact that there is no use effect for Purified Lunar Dust.

Copied and Pasted directly from Wowwiki article on macros:

No Error Text or Sound (Improved Again)

This is just like the one above but with an added tooltip that matches the original skill, and doesn't disable sound for the skill's error messages. Sound and error messages for the trinket use are still suppressed though. If you set the name of the macro to a blank space, you can't even tell it's a macro. This one is designed more for trinket use than anything else, but it's here for when you only want to silence one of the two skills this macro uses.
#showtooltip ExampleSpell1
/run sfx=GetCVar("Sound_EnableSFX");
/console Sound_EnableSFX 0
/use ExampleTrinket2
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/run SetCVar("Sound_EnableSFX",sfx);
/cast ExampleSpell1
If you're running low on characters and you're using this for a trinket, you can replace the use command with "use 13" (for upper trinket) or "use 14" (for lower trinket).

Credit: Vandalite of Feathermoon, and Xaeros of Shadowmoon for the macro this was based on.
Use: Replace "ExampleTrinket2" and "ExampleSpell1" With your cooldowns and abilities, then drag to your bar like a normal macro.
Works in 3.3.2

I should note that I am pretty much useless at macros, so I may be incorrect on some of my assumptions here. I know there are lots of folks who are much better at Macroing than myself, so if you see any errors, please correct me in the comments, and I will change this. Some of the things I've recommended are things I've been thinking about doing myself but haven't yet done, so if you have problems with it, again, please let me know so I can make the relevant changes. People who help me correct my stupid mistakes in comments are my heroes.

For the Love of Community

2010-06-29T03:19:00.003-04:00

As a big advocate of the WoW community, and a (hopefully) somewhat active member in it, you can bet your sissy robes I'm pretty much a dorfish cheerleader for WoW Community.

I'm not just talking about the blogging or podcasting community. I'm not just talking about the world-first raiders. I'm talking about the wow-playing community - which includes all those random people you meet in pugs.

Now, I ask again: How do YOU feel about the WoW community?

The following thread made me start thinking about this question a lot - and when I spotted it on the WoW forums, and read Nethaera's response, I just had to share it. Every now and then Nethaera chimes in on a thread, and just adds a lot of life and warmth to it - she has this amazing ability to give someone a very gentle smackdown. You know, the kind where you're laying on the floor wondering what the hell just happened, but your face doesn't hurt one bit. This girl's got skills, man.

In the forum thread, the OP tells the story of a random heroic run in which the tank was pretty much an outright jerk. The details aren't really that important, since it's pretty much the same story you hear all over about random PuGs and a specific category of self-righteous tanks. The OP feels pretty desolate about the state of the WoW community due to the asinine antics of the tank and the sexism and vitriol spewed forth from one of the DPS.

These kind of ppl disgust me, depresses me since it shows that not even in a game where the goal is to relax and have fun, people are just as cruel and heartless as in the real world.... I know this behavior has been around in vanilla and in BC but honestly it seems to be more virulent and frequent. I will forever never understand how people can and will act like this to other humans. Perhaps i should consider quitting despite enjoying the game and maybe the expansion coming up.

I sympathize with the OP, I really do. I don't think he is a whiny player, or pathetic for being sad about the state of people with whom he is playing this game. Running into a PuG with one jerk and three average, quiet people will generally be scalded into your brain as "that shitty pug with the jerk". But the truth is, out of five people, that's one bad apple. Maybe the other three aren't particularly stellar examples of warmth and comraderie, but often times in LFD pugs, people just decide not to talk in order to avoid potential conflict with random jerks.

It reminds me of my dating days. Back in my youth (ha), when I lived in the dorms, I didn't really care much for college guys. So I fell back on what I felt most comfortable with: teh internetz. I dated people I met through online personals, and I was never really ashamed or embarassed by it. Truth is, the folks I met online are still some of the best people I've ever met - because I was able to relate to them through conversation instead of just both being in the right place at the right time. Hell, I met the guy to whom I'm engaged through an online personals site.

My mother, however, was not very fond of this concept (once she met my fiance though, she decided internet matching was a fantastic idea and promotes it to any singleton that will hear her). She was always worried about me meeting "creepy internet people". I think it never occurred to her that by her definition, I was a creepy internet person. One day I explained to her that the percentage of creepy people in the general internet population is the same as in the "real world" of folks hanging out at a bar - but if you talk to them over the internet, you have a safer way to weed out the creepies before actually meeting them face to face and putting yourself at risk.

The sad truth is, it's not that the WoW community sucks. In general, people are just more likely to be jerks to strangers - internet or no internet. The internet just allows you to meet a hell of a lot more strangers. You get jerks on every forum, and the WoW forums are certainly no exception.

In fact, the WoW community is actually pretty stellar. It's huge, and all encompassing. I think in order to get a feel for how great the community is, you actually have to step outside of the game. You even need to step away from the forums. Check out some blogs, some podcasts, twitter, conventions... truthfully, you could probably just ask around your workplace or school and you'd find someone else who plays WoW.

The thread in question got very big, very quickly. It's probably because Nethaera stepped down and got a little stern with the community-downers (as a side note, I really don't understand jumping on a community forum to ... bash the very community hosting that forum).

My input? The community is amazing. I love it. That said, bad impressions often last longer than good ones. There are always people looking to stir up things or cause some trouble, but I would strongly advise you not to let these types of experiences swallow up all the other good ones you've had or could have in the future.

And later in the thread...

I'd say it's an understatement myself. I've seen a lot of things and met a lot of people over the years. Yes, it is an amazing community of people. Take a look at the 5 and 15 year anniversary photos. Take a look at all the fan art. Look at the fansites or listen to the podcasts. Check out some of the WoW Stories, the comics, the craft projects people make, the cakes and cookies they've baked, the machinima that has been made. Check out all of the guilds that exist and the challenges they've taken on. And then there are all the things you don't see, because people don't generally go around saying, "I did x, y, z nice things for people today."

I've gotten hugs at BlizzCon from these people and watched the joy that has been shown as they met up with friends they've never met before, or reunited with ones they hadn't seen in awhile and much much more.

I get tired of seeing the community as a whole get a bad rap because of a few inconsiderate people who haven't learned how to play nice with others. It happens, but those people are not the entirety of the community and even those people can be amazing at times when they choose to be.

She chimes in multiple times later in the thread, and I encourage you to go through and at least read what she has to say. Her eternal positive attitude is personally inspiring, and it's not just because of the game.

Three cheers to the WoW community - and if you're reading this, you're an integral part of it. You, reader, are the WoW community, and I think you're great. It's people like you that make this game much bigger and better than the pixels from which it is constructed.

Azuregos Gives Me the Chills

2010-06-28T00:37:00.007-04:00

Over the past week or so, I've been focusing my in-game energy on achievements. Loremaster, in particular, has been my goal, with a few straggling achievements I hadn't captured before on the way.

As someone who is a bit of a completionist, and also faintly bored with activities in Northrend at the moment, I rather adore achievements. In addition, one of my major goals before the release of Cataclysm was to finish off my Loremaster achievement, since I expect some of these quests will disappear, and this is a good way to make sure I get to see much of the lore and many of the zones before any incoming changes.

On the way, I'm finding new things I want to collect, in addition to experiencing content in a new way. I always hated old world dungeons, mostly because I always wound up lost. Now, however, having run Scholomance 18 bajillion times and Stratholme 16 million, I'm finally getting the hang of them. I even have a rough idea of how to get around Dire Maul. I'm getting lots of great blogging fodder, let me tell you.

For instance: Have you met Azuregos?

Now, I don't really mean to be a jerk, but when I spotted the member of the blue dragonflight wandering around Azshara (with his spirit form following closely behind), I thought to myself that he must be pretty bored and out of shape. And then I thought of the hateful Oculus and Malygos-Mc-Jerkface, both wretched relics of the blue dragonflight, and I decided right then and there that I was gonna pwn this noob.

Well. Let's just say that the noob was pwned, but the pwned noob was not a member of any dragonflight. Hmph.

After the walk of shame back to my corpse and my following resurrection, I noticed a strange debuff. Something along the lines of Mark of Frost. "Whatever," thought I, "I learned my lesson."

Apparently i didn't, though, because not long after returning to my body, I heard the sounds of another battle with Azuregos from a party of strangers. Wanting to lend my aid in any way possible, I ventured forth towards the dragon.... and immediately froze in place.

Hilarious consequences ensued.

Yeah. That's me in the middle. Frozen solid in the middle of the air.

He's not really very conversational once battle begins, for the record. (And before anyone asks, yes, this is my raiding UI - I was too lazy to set it up properly for non-raiding stuffs)

The party beating the crap out of Azuregos did not really find my situation all that sympathetic. In fact, they were kinda jerks. Oh, also, they thought I was male which really irritated me. Also, please note my waning health. Also, please ignore my annoying guildmate who keeps beating me to the awesome achievements.

The party of strangers defeated Azuregos after a few minutes, and seconds later my debuff faded, releasing me from my icy prison. As it turns out, the group was not in a party, as the individual who first struck the dragon taunted them by the fact that he got to take all the EPIC LOOTZ. I congratulated him on his many new level 60 epics, assuring him they would be very useful at level 80. The best part was when he starting jumping up and down in glee, insisting that Shadowmourne had dropped, apparently assuming that since no one else could see the loot, we would all be devastated and jealous of his treasure. I found that particularly hilarious, and after quickly dispatching a wandering elite giant nearby (so that I could feel better about myself), I left the remains to the dragon-killing strangers who were bickering about hunter loot.

When I joked about how fundamentally useless most of the loot was to a level 80, the warrior who had won all the loot asked angrily "Well then why the hell were you bothering to try and kill him, hunh?"

And this struck me as pretty sad. We talk a lot about loot, and gearscore, and I give lots of advice, and get just as excited as the next person when I great upgrade drops... but it's never really been about loot for me. Sometimes it's fun to collect things (I'm currently expanding my dwarf's wardrobe with fun old world sets), but if the only joy you get out of killing a dragon is from the treasure that remains after his death, you are entirely missing the point of why people spend so much time playing this game.

The Newest Dragon's Hoard

2010-06-24T05:53:00.000-04:00

Well, I know it's not particularly useful, seeing as how you're all pretty handy, but I like having this kind of stuff on my blog and in the history anyway, so it is now time for the non-priesties to step outside and have some kool-aid while we holy and disc types have a little chat about Ruby Sanctum loot.

Giggity.

SO. According to WoWhead, there are only 9 epics that drop in 10 man Ruby Sanctum. And the only item a healing priest would really want is Abduction's Cover. And to be quite honest, I'm pretty meh about it. I'm currently rocking Volde's Cloak of the Night Sky, which can be purchased for 50 frost badges. For many of you, that might be pretty steep, and the Ruby Sanctum drop is an okay alternative. Personally, I hate mp5, and I would rather have the spirit (and for you Holy types, the Spirit is definitely better). However, Abduction's Cover has a red socket instead of a yellow, which means more spellpower, and that's always a solid choice.

All in all, pretty dull for us Priesties. So... let's take a gander at 25 man Ruby Sanctum.

WoWhead lists 16 different drops. Of those 16, there are 4 healy priest options.

Bracers of Fiery Night - Yummy. Crit + Haste is always my ideal, since mana isn't really an issue for me right now. True, you'll be competing with every other caster for it, but you could try to just let them die and maybe then they won't notice... Remember, as a healer, you hold the power! I'm currently using Bracers of Dark Blessings, of which I'm not too terribly fond (blue sockets and spirit socket bonuses make me cringe). You can bet I'll be pugging RS25 for these suckers.
Cloak of Burning Dusk - Vastly superior to Abduction's Cover from 10 man, and not just because of the difference in ilevel. The itemization of crit and haste in one item makes me shiver with delight. Nom.
Ring of Phased Regeneration - Not really much to say here, although again, that red socket is nice. I could use this as a standard upgrade from my Signet of Putrefaction, as long as I don't mind giving up the haste (and I don't) for the benefit of the crit.
Glowing Twilight Scale - Now this is what makes me particularly interested. I love trinkets, and I collect them and never ever throw them away. I like to mix up my trinkets based on the fight, based on my healing assignment, based on whatever my gear is currently emphasizing. What I love about this trinket is the solid spellpower bonus. As for the proc, I'll wait and see what the theory-crafters tell me. Someone go run the numbers, quickly! The shield spamming Disc priests want to know if it will proc off of the shield-heal-glyph! For me, as a tank healer, I'd love to try this out on Festergut.

Really, at this stage in the game, the only loot that interests me that much is new trinkets. TRINKETSHHHHHH. I love adding to my collection. But, for those of you who are aching to know what the potentials are for loot from Ruby Sanctum, now you have it. I can't wait to see what the heroic opportunities are!

Any word on the exact day we'll actually get a chance to infiltrate this rosy garden of dragonry?

That's What She Said

2010-06-23T05:20:00.000-04:00

Yeah. I like it hard. You heard me.

>.>

I make things difficult. And no, I'm not just talking about the fact that I may or may not be *slightly* neurotic and therefore complicate the life of any poor sucker within a 10 mile radius, but sincerely and truly, I seem to be on some lifelong goal to make every task I endeavor to perform 10 times more difficult than it needs to be.

And I'm proud of it.

When I was in college, I had a roommate for my last couple of years. My roommate's parents were professors at the university we attended, so she had the benefit of free tuition. She worked a job for money, yes, but her parents also gave her a generous (well, it seemed generous to me anyway) stipend every month to pay her rent, groceries, etc.

I, however, busted my butt in college. I grew up in Texas, but went to college in Ohio, and I paid a fortune in out of state fees my first two years***. And with the exception of my first year (it took me five years to finish up my Bachelor's), I paid for it all myself, mostly through loans and scholarships. I know a lot of people had their parents support them while they were in college - but I refused it. My parents would send me checks and I would rip them up and send them back. I didn't want anyone's help - I wanted to do it the hard way. Not because I had to, but because I had to prove that I could.

And I judged my roommate. I felt like I was superior to her, because she struggled to make ends meet, even though she didn't have to pay tuition, even though her parents gave her a monthly stipend. I judged everyone I came into contact with. I looked down on everyone who didn't work as hard as I did, and take the hard way, like I did. This meant that I was a pretty crappy friend and girlfriend to everyone during college.

It was wrong of me. I'll give myself the benefit of the doubt, and say that I was young, and proud, and coming into my own, and determined to follow a very specific path. Years later the path suddenly became much less clear, and I got a taste of my own medicine. So now, even though I'm still the kind of person that insists on doing things the hard way, I learned a very important lesson - stop judging others who are more rational than proud.

I leveled my priest holy, and it was hard. I also leveled solo through most of BC, and it was hard. I refused to run dungeons with anyone more than a level or two above me. I wouldn't accept gifts of great gear from people that would make it easier. I felt bad looking up things on wowhead, because it made things easier.

Do you get where I'm going here?

So is it really a shock that I hate the ICC buff? Or rather, that I would prefer to not use it? The main difference is that it doesn't just affect me, but nine other people. So I caved because I understood it was what others wanted. And I don't think less of them for wanting to do that, and I sure as hell don't think less of the other million WoW players that use it. Never confuse the expectations and desires I have for myself as something I think others should try to live up to.

I actually think the buff for ICC was a fantastic idea on Blizzard's part. It was a great way to add a granularity to the difficulty level of the major battle raid in WotLK. I fully support their choice and creativity in offering this buff up - and I love the fact that players have a choice whether or not to use it. I felt that it was implemented a bit soon, but aside from that, I think it is for the benefit of all players to have that option available.

I also refuse to use a dishwasher, and wash everything by hand, mmmk? I don't use a mop, I get down on my hands and knees and scrub the floor like a Cinderella wannabe. I have very good logical reasons for all these things I do that are far more difficult than the norm, but I'm not really a role model of rational behavior over here. Don't take one blogger's thoughts and opinions as canon.

*** For the Non-Statesiders among you, what this means is that my public university education (tuition and fees alone) cost about 30,000 US dollars a year. When you go to a public university that is in-state, it is much cheaper.

Patch 3.3.5 LOLnotes

2010-06-22T09:40:00.004-04:00

So, looks like I came back just in time for some patch goodness.

I am very pumped about Ruby Sanctum. No one ever wants to run OS anymore, and I really enjoyed OS. I like the shorter raids that are mainly built around one monstrous baddie to fight. Of course, from what I understand, though the Ruby Sanctum infrastructure will be implemented in this patch, we won't actually get to see the new raid for another week or so. I'll try to be patient:

Please note due to the way this patch is being applied in all regions, this dungeon will not immediately be available in North America. Stay tuned to our General Discussion forum for an official announcement on the opening of the Ruby Sanctum.

Then there's this Real ID thing. I know there have been a lot of concerns over this implementation, and as someone who values their privacy, I can understand. I deleted my facebook account for that very reason. Well, some variation on that reason. So, in order to keep this Real ID from violating my privacy, here are my major concerns.

Real ID needs to be on an individual basis. In other words, I create some kind of Real ID connection with Fulguralis, which he accepts. Then, when I'm on my SAN toon, he can send me a tell and let me know that something exciting is going down on my home server. We already know each other's real names (his real name is Alfonzo Illustriatza Calcaterra, btw, google that shit), so I have no concerns. This is a direct one to one connection that no one else can see. I am okay with this. From what I understand, this is how Real ID will work.
Now, here's what I'm really hoping will be implemented. One day Alfonzo tells me my ass looks fat in that sissy robe, and I tell him he casts like a mage, and we decide that we no longer want to be connected. I am hoping that Blizz will allow us to sever that connection, so that AlfonzoFulguralis will no longer pester me with Jenny Craig propaganda while I'm goofing off with my SAN friends.
I would love love love it if we could make Real ID connections with friends on European servers, but I seriously doubt that will be possible. If we can, you can all get in line behind me as I try to pester Tam into accepting my Real ID connection invitation. I will assault him with annoying Americanisms and pictures of George Bush and Rhett Butler until he accepts**.
I'm assuming we will be allowed to have cross-faction conversation connections.
ETA: Whoa. I just caught this - thanks to Lissanna and Wow.com. DO NOT WANT.

IF YOU OPT-IN TO THE REAL LIFE FRIENDS FEATURE, THOSE PEOPLE YOU DESIGNATE AS "REAL LIFE FRIENDS" WILL BE ABLE TO SEE THE NAMES OF YOUR OTHER "REAL LIFE FRIENDS," AND YOUR NAME WILL BE VISIBLE BY THOSE PEOPLE THAT YOUR "REAL LIFE FRIENDS'" HAVE DESIGNATED USING THE SAME FEATURE.

So, to continue in that line of thought, there will be massive changes incoming to the chat UI. These are the sorts of things that sail miles over my Dwarven head, so I'm just going to copy and paste some of the details, because until I see them in action, it means nothing to me.

Players can now right-click on any chat type (Whisper, Trade, General, Party, Raid, etc.) and choose to move conversation types into separate windows. This will move that chat type to a separate tab in the Chat frame which can be undocked and moved anywhere on the screen.
- Using the Move to Whisper Window option on a Whisper will place the conversation with that player in a separate tab.
- Any time a conversation with another player is put into its own tab, the tab will glow when a new message is received.
Hovering over the Chat Frame and using the mouse wheel will allow players to scroll through chat text.
Players can select Classic Mode under Interface Options to keep the Chat Frame functionality closer to what it was prior to patch 3.3.5.
The Simple Chat User Interface option has been removed.

Now, this next part is pretty freaking cool. Apparently Blizz is implementing a system that will essentially learn from the behavior you portray on your toon. I suspect this is something they have been able to do for a very long time, and because of the controversial nature of it, have shied away from it. This is one of the first implementations of it we have seen - but I suspect we might see more of it in the future. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but from the perspective of Blizzard, it certainly ought to reduce the amount of in game tickets they have to resolve.

The functionality of the Vote Kick feature in the Dungeon Finder will now behave differently according to a player's history with the system. Players using the Dungeon Finder who rarely vote to kick players from a group, or rarely abandon groups before a dungeon is complete, will find that the Vote Kick option will have no cooldown. For players who frequently abandon groups or vote to kick other players, the Vote Kick option will be kept on a cooldown. This functionality will adjust itself as a player's behavior while using the Dungeon Finder changes.

One final thing regarding the Real ID. I know it will be tempting to release your ID information forth into the blogosphere because it's a great idea to connect to all your blogging friends. I think that's great, and I think that's wonderful - however, I will not be doing that. For once, I really do value the privacy of my name, but it's also because I'm a horrible multi tasker when it comes to conversations. I get incredibly overwhelmed when multiple people are talking to me at once, and I'm useless at whatever I'm attempting to get done. So, please don't take it personally or as an insult. When I'm feeling chatty, I jump on SAN or open up Twitter. What I like about these options is that when I'm DONE feeling chatty... I can log out.

So, the big question is... Whatever happened to 3.3.4?

** I would never actually do this, and if anyone does this to me I will find out where you live with my super mapping abilities and plant 8000 pink Ashlee Simpson barbie dolls in your yard.

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Moldy

2010-06-22T07:59:00.000-04:00

I am a perpetual burnout. It's a side effect of being overly focused. When I was in college, I minored in Classical Civilization, and I read all the prose about philosophies revolving around the concept of moderation, and I have a great amount of respect for moderate lifestyles. Unfortunately, I'm completely incapable of following such rules.

You know that annoying person who finds a song he or she likes, and then plays it, on repeat, for six weeks straight? That's me. Or the chick who falls in love with a certain drink, and will drink nothing but that, and copious amounts of it, for possibly years on end. Me. Or the gamer who gets wrapped up in a game, and can't pay attention to anything else for hours, days, a week or more. Me again!

One of the (many) problems with having an overly focused brain is that I get so wrapped up in something, that one day I just snap and lose any and all interest in it. The past couple of months have been that way for me in WoW. I hated going downstairs on Monday nights to raid for two hours, and that was the only time every week I would play. I dreaded Monday nights.

The burnout started building pretty slowly. When we started our ICC raiding team, I was completely focused, and very excited. I was blogging every day, and spending hours putting together my posts. I was running our raids and doing research and write ups for our strategies. I was building SAN with Tam. I was reading hundreds of blogs and getting very connected to everyone in the community.

Then little things started to grow into big things. Small arguments within our ten man raid grew into bigger ones. Some were petty, some weren't. But, as the person who put the team together, and as someone who is generally fairly approachable, all complaints came to me. It got to the point where it felt like everyone just came to me to complain about everyone else, and there was nothing I could do about it. There was drama in the blogosphere as well, and administrative problems in SAN. I spent entire days fielding complaints and strategy conversations on google chat and even the pleasant twitter chatter started to become overwhelming for me. I'd try to make light hearted wow-conversation with guildies in gchat, and it would get twisted under the assumption that I must have some agenda for our raiding team.

This sort of thing happens to me all the time. It's not because I'm "such a nice person" and therefore always a victim, woe is me. It's because I am a control freak, and try to take on too much at the same time. I'm a perpetual diplomat, trying to make peace between multiple opposing parties. I accept full responsibility for it. At the same time, I don't want people to be mad at me. I'm a wimp at heart, and therefore it makes it very difficult to be a raid leader when you can't just tell everyone to shut up, grow up, and either have fun or GTFO. But since everyone on my raiding team is someone I have seen face to face, and someone I intend to have in my life for the next 20 years, long after WoW has faded away, I fear burning bridges.

So, I gave my fiance the reins of the raiding group. It's a lot messier now. We used to have a sign up every week, and everything was carefully planned to maximize raid buffs and efficiency. But that is simply not how my fiance rolls. But despite the fact that everything is not planned out on one of my famous spreadsheets... the raid goes on, and it's working just fine.

I very rarely speak in vent these days, and to be completely honest, once we started using the buff full-time, I no longer had any interest in running ICC anymore - it just felt pointless to me***. However, I was unable to find someone to replace my priest, so I grudgingly remained. Whenever someone tries to talk to me about raid strategies, or complain about someone in the group, I completely shut down. Nope. Sorry. I don't want to hear it or talk about it anymore.

I guess you could call it unfortunate that I burned out so badly. The truth is, it's not the first time. I burned out from 25 man raiding for nearly identical reasons. I get too involved, too invested, and then I crash. After I crash, I play the avoidance game... I avoid people who I know will want to talk about the subject. I avoid emails related to the topic. I even avoid my dearly beloved twitterati. And I should add to that last statement that twitter is pure frivolous fun. For all my friends on twitter, I'm sorry I just sort of disappeared for awhile - I really needed a break.

So that's the story of Miss Medicina's nearly 2 month absence. In addition to all my tumultuous feelings about WoW related business, I also had the job on which I was completely focused. All the energy I had put into WoW I redirected into my job, no matter how temporary I knew it to be. And I think it was really good for me, I do.

As I'm slowly starting to ease my way back into the wowniverse, I'm going to try and be a little more careful about it this time. If someone starts raising a ruckus about something in the game, I'm just going to walk away, instead of getting so emotionally invested that I burn myself out again.

It comes down to that same old phrase that we all love and hate: It's just a game. And yes, it is just a game, but yes, the people within it are real. However, I'm not going to ruin relationships with real people over a fantasy game. I'm not going to get into fights and arguments with people that will do nothing but upset me over a giant mass of pixels. I have to keep things in perspective or I will simply go insane. In the past, I've had very good real life friends who have used the game to hurt me - and that is a direct result of us putting too much emphasis on the game, and not enough emphasis on the people who are playing it.

We are all victims of the desensitizing that can happen when you are interacting with people in an abstract space instead of face to face. We do things to one another's avatars that we would never do in real life (Trust me, I've never licked anyone at a dinner party). We all simply have to keep enough perspective to remember where to draw the line.

***I've given my thoughts on the buff before, and I've had my fair share of criticism about my perceived elitist attitude about it, so let me clear it up now and just say that I have nothing against people using the buff. I don't look down on people who do. It's just not something I enjoy. It's a very prominent aspect of my personality that has surfaced in many other ways in this game and outside of it. Maybe I'll get around to explaining it in better detail one day, but for now, just know that if you are in favor of the buff, I have no problem with that. It just sucks a lot of the fun out of it for me, specifically. Trust me, I'm well aware of how annoying it is that I always want to take the hard way!

The Path Less Traveled

2010-06-21T07:20:00.004-04:00

Oh, so I lied. It wasn't Upper Blackrock Spire that is included in today's Map 'O Misery. It's Lower Blackrock Spire. Psh. Which apparently I knew when I created this map several days ago, but forgot when I mentioned this in my post over the weekend.

What's fantastic about this map is that the base map I used actually included a handy dandy streamlined path that tells you the optimal way to travel through LBRS. As you can see, I completely ignored that. This map also includes a lovely new symbol for every place I fell down a pit and OUT OF THE INSTANCE. Grr. At least I didn't die. Basically, every place you could fall, I fell. Sometimes multiple times.

I think I spent an hour on one level running around aimlessly. At some point I found these spiders, and I killed some, and then thought that was it, and turned around and ran around some more. After finally getting frustrated enough to dig up a map through google, I realized I was supposed to continue past those damn spiders. So that's my tip for you folks working on your achievements: Go forth to the spiders, slaughter them, and then continue going past them dammit.

There you have it, isn't it lovely? I would love an addon that worked a bit like a GPS tracking waypoints and paths so that you could see exactly the path I took. I mean, I did my best to try and recreate the effect, but it would be even better if you saw the real thing, with little waypoints that marked everytime I fell down a pit or died.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Last night I went through Upper Blackrock Spire with my fiance, and I think I drove him nuts.

"You don't have to kill that... WHERE ARE YOU GOING? ... Where the hell ARE you?!!?!"
"IDK IN THE ROOM WITH THE THINGIES"
"...."
Jessabelle has earned the Achievement Leeeeeeeeeroy!
"Wheeeeeeeee!"
"Okay, Jessica, hold on a second, we have to channel this thing."
"Loots!"
"Wait until this guy is dead, so that... where did you go?"
"Hey honey can you come help me? There are all these guys up here, and they keep knocking me back and stuff."
"What are you... "
Jessabelle has died.
"ARE YOU IN THE OTHER ROOM???! Dammit, why are you dead?"
Boingo has died.
"..."
"At least I have chicken."

1000 Words is 999 Too Many

2010-06-19T22:35:00.004-04:00

I do believe I've mentioned on numerous occasions that I am very fond of maps. Maps are like graphs or charts in the fact that they display very useful information, but they are also more "user-friendly". There's that old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, if you throw a bunch of data into a map, it says both a thousand words and a thousand numbers in one easy to understand package. Maps display information in a way that just makes a lot more sense. You can look at a chart of data and it might mean nothing to you until you put it on a map - the spatial environment being pictured gives you a lot of context.

For instance: Let's say I told you that I decided to go back and try to clean up some achievements I'm missing, such as the old world dungeons. And then let's say (hypothetically of course) that I told you "I got a little lost". I count only five words there. Let's see if a map really does give it a bit more context, and if it's really worth a 995 more, shall we?

In my line of work, we also always include a section in our research called "Exclusions & Limitations" (which for those of you not in Academia, that's the section where you add all the shit that makes everything you just did completely moot and pointless), so here I shall tell you that does not include the 20 minutes I spent lost trying to find the damn graveyard because I went AFK and something 40 levels below me meleed me to death.

Next time on Miss Medicina... I venture into Upper Blackrock Spire!! As a little spoiler, remember how I told you I have a problem falling off of ledges in Oculus? UBRS has giant holes...

OT: On the Importance of Laundry Detergent

2010-06-18T04:29:00.001-04:00

This has absolutely nothing to do with WoW. Now that my Census job has slowed down considerably, I am very slowly starting to play WoW more... when I'm not glued to Civ IV. Sorry. I've been a Civ kid since... well, since I was a kid playing the original Civ, so, it was inevitable.

This is about how unpleasant it is to be a ridiculously clumsy and absent minded person. I don't know why I don't think before I rush headlong into something. I am just not a patient person. This has been demonstrated countless times via my cooking experiences (setting fire to the kitchen (don't put out a grease fire with water folks!), exploding eggs, nearly gassing myself to death with ammonia + bleach (okay that last one was not actually a cooking exercise per se, but it falls under the realm of household adventure, so whatever)), but I also just have a tendency to not look where I'm going.

I swear that when I was younger I had a much better sense of humor about the whole thing. But now I'm older, and my knees hurt and I'm somewhat unstable on my feet sometimes. I used to laugh every time I faceplanted. Nowadays I don't laugh until much much later.

For instance. A couple of days ago there was a massive BP-esque spill in the laundry room. Apparently the washer was having such a bouncy good time, it knocked the liquid detergent and the laundry basket to the floor, where the detergent proceeded to coat the entire concrete surface. Upon seeing this, instead of analyzing my surroundings carefully, I jumped right in to pick up the laundry basket in a fit of rage (obviously the whole thing was somehow my fiance's fault. Don't ask me how. Significant Others are there to be blamed) and then went sliding across the floor and fell on my ass.

And then immediately checked to make sure that my engagement ring wasn't damaged. Broken legs, concussions, and bruises be damned, HE BOUGHT THIS SHIT AT JARED'S.

"Whoa. You okay?" my ever chivalrous heroic fiance asked from the safety of the other side of the laundry room.
"GO. TO. HELL." I growled. And then I stripped out of my detergent coated jeans, whilst simultaneously doing the electric slide all over the floor.

Clumsy + Enraged + Slippery Surface = Very Funny Two Days Later.

Then I went to try and take a shower. Still covered in liquid detergent, this proved more difficult than I anticipated, as I found the combination of Liquid Tide and, well, Liquid Water provides a very dangerous scenario in an environment that is built of mostly rounded surfaces. The shower turned into a bath, and I pretty much seethed my way through the next 30 minutes of scrubbing.

And then I totally bawled like a baby, and ran straight to the liquor cabinet in my towel.

So, you see, it's not really that much of a role-playing leap that my priest falls off of every ledge in Oculus. I'll bet when she lands into ghost form, the first thing she does is to check and make sure her Ashen Verdict ring is safe.

Dungeon > Chores

2010-06-02T06:29:00.000-04:00

So, although I'm "officially" still on hiatus and completely uninformed on current WoW happenings, I feel the need to celebrate the unofficially sanctioned Celebrate Geeky Women month. Happy June second!

Why Geek Girls Are Better

"Honey, I need you to take out all the trash."
"Okay, I will in a few minutes, I'm in a dungeon."
"Oh! Which one? That's fine, I know how long it takes to queue up for that! Take out the trash after the abyss crystals."

The GeekGirl/GamerGirl will understand that asking you to abandon a dungeon immediately means trashing possibly an hour of your time, as well as screwing over 4 other real human beings. She gets that it's not just a computer game that you can pause, and that it would be very rude to just bail on other people to do your chores. (Hopefully you get right to it after your dungeon though!)

Girls Gone Geek

2010-06-01T16:12:00.000-04:00

I heard the most depressing news today. My dear friend known ‘round the blogosphere as Fuubaar confessed to me that she had never been to a Rennaisance Festival. After I finished bemoaning this great tragedy in caps, I started to think more and more about this travesty.

This year we and several friends are going to GenCon. For me and Fuu it is our first time, as well as for another of our female friends. Last year was the first time for another of my female friends, though the guys have gone every year for nearly a decade. In the past year, I started playing Dungeons and Dragons for the first time, and I love it! I’m going to bring a very excited Fuu to her first RenFest this year.

I’m sure if you ask Fuu, she’ll tell you all the details about why she has only recently begun to experience these fun things, but I can relate to a lot of it. We’re geeks. We’ve always been geeks. But we repressed it when we were younger – it’s just not sexy to be a geek, didn’t you know?

Well screw that. I think geeky IS sexy. Gamer girls unite! I’m starting a new club, and it’s called Girls Gone Geek. And I declare the month of June Celebrate Geeky Women month.

So if you’re a guy, make sure that girls know it’s not unattractive for them to be gamers and a little geeky. Tell them it’s okay and encourage them to go do fun geeky things that they might have felt ashamed to do before. From what I understand, lots of guys would love it if their significant others were a little geekier and more into gaming!

And if you’re a girl? Do something particularly geeky this month. Break free from the patriarchy or something, ladies. Go to an arcade, have an all night wow-a-thon, tell the girls at work all about your tauren. If they look at you weird, tell them to go shove their eyeliner up their ass while you go get exalted with the Ashen Verdict.

Any other suggestions for fun GGG things Fuu and I can drag ourselves into? We’ve also decided we’re going to start brewing mead, so if you have any great recipes or links, send them our way!

Can I Get a Battle Rez?

2010-05-06T21:56:00.004-04:00

I've had a couple of emails, and some very pointy pokes from my friends so here's the skinny:

No! I'm not done blogging!

Hiatus? Yes.

I am currently working for the US Census Bureau knocking on people's doors, invading their privacy, asking them annoying questions, and overall just trying to avoid getting shot. I work at random hours based on when people will be home. And I am le tired.

Unlike working in an office, I'm not actually in front of a computer most of the time. I am only playing WoW somewhere between 2-4 hours a week, and it takes a lot of kicking and screaming to get me to do even that! I am woefully behind in my blog reading (see below).

Even before the Census job began, I was suffering badly from WoW Burnout. I don't know if it's the pre-xpack doldrums, or just the raider burnout I was/am feeling, but I go through this on a fairly regular basis. This is just the first time I've had such a long burnout duration while being a blogger... so I suppose it's more obvious!

WoW is still a big part of my life (is that really sad? I don't know), and much like my relationships with anything and everything, it ebbs and flows depending on where my head is that week.

I've been quiet because I don't like making excuse posts. I don't like reading posts that promise someone will be back in a few days, or apologizing for being absent. I'll write when I feel like writing, and I'm not gonna write filler crap in the meantime! If I post something, it's because I feel like it's worth other people reading. Otherwise, you'd read something like "Home ownership is stupid. It's like raiding. Because in raiding, there's always someone stupid who is dying in a fire. Wallpaper should die in a fire. Yeah." etc. (For the record, wallpaper really should diaf, good God!)

So, in conclusion, YES I will be back, NO I have not quit. Oh also, no, sadly I'm not knocked up like any feisty blood elf warlocks you may know (you crazy kids)! I am currently keeping myself frazzled by the following:

Knocking on strangers' doors, asking how many people live there, hoping they don't hate me
Making a huge mess by attempting to paint bedrooms so we can sell this Godforsaken house
Preparing to move about 50 miles south
Working out a way to go back to uni to finish up my graduate degree and/or get a Real Job TM
Trying to transform a Bachelor Pad House into something someone with any sense might actually consider buying (Sorry honey, but the storm trooper helmets and the alien heads will soon be in storage)
Documenting all the house stuff "properly", because writing about remodeling a home is way more fun than actually doing the remodeling of a home.
Avoiding my google reader like the plague, because it's really scary...

For shits and giggles, here's some random stuff for your viewing and linking pleasure.

My guild is named the Lothar Swingers Club (and we've recently added a few to our roster, so we now actually have ten people!). I'm considering purchasing this residence for our clubhouse. Totally a Swinger's house, amirite?
Druids don't approve of low cholesterol diets. Proof.
Quit taking smoke breaks during the raid! Start Vaming!
WoW situations that make map-lovers sad.

Posts That Never Happened - Rainbow Circles!

2010-04-21T14:44:00.005-04:00

Alright, time for the big reveal.

Your responses, while hilarious, were nowhere near the truth - with the exception of commenter Tannim Murphy. There's a very simple way to make the rainbow circles make sense. Here's the key.

If you noticed, the circles are drawn on a grid. Were you to count the number of squares that measure the diameter of each rainbow circle, you'd find the range of each AoE healing spell (I assumed maximum glyphs and talents).

The original intention was to measure the surface area of each heal. Unfortunately, the dynamics and characteristics that make each heal different and unique make it really hard to compare them to one another fairly, let alone measure surface area.

Chain Heal, for instance. Chain heal doesn't look anything at all like a rainbow circle. It looks, ironically enough, like a CHAIN. Imagine that.

Methodologically speaking, you can't directly compare Chain Heal to the other AoE healing spells, because it doesn't function the same way. It's linear instead of radial.

Divine Hymn is channeled. It works on ticks, and therefore it's unlike many of the other spells - You don't have spellcast -> spell effect.

In order to really compare all these spells, you'd also need to think about the differences in cooldowns, mana cost, and the amount of time it takes to cast each spell. The spells are also different in that some affect only one's party instead of the whole raid. Some are smart heals. Some, I have no idea how the UI decides who gets the heal (i.e. Holy Light glyph splash).

And thus, I gave up on the rainbow circle AoE heals post, because after spending hours creating my rainbow circles graph (not to mention days spent searching to find the perfect software program with which to create it), I went and confuzzled myself with all the ways that my methodology would not function properly. And then I abandoned it.

Rainbow Circles!

2010-04-20T05:01:00.000-04:00

Instead of actually finishing up the bajillion half written posts I have that I lost interest in, I thought it would be fun if I just presented small portions of them to you, and have you tell me in the comments wtf you think the point of it was supposed to be.

Case in point. Observer the rainbow bubbles below, and you tell me, dear readers, what post you think I was writing to go with this fabulous diagram I spent hours upon hours getting drawn properly.

Off Topic, but hilarious

2010-04-19T04:50:00.002-04:00

Best of the Healing World: April 9th - 16th

2010-04-16T00:00:00.004-04:00

First off, a couple of things.

Next week my mother is coming to stay with me for a few days, and I also start my new job (yeah, I know I said that last week... I have a bad habit of going into a new job a week early on accident >.<) so next week will likely be light on posts unless I get some substantial time over the weekend to schedule the 20 different drafts I have half-written.

Also, uhm, has anyone else noticed that my blog is now titled "Full Healing Blogroll" on google reader? I'm sorta weirded out by this, and have no idea how to change it. I'm assuming it started about the time I made my full healing blogroll post - any thoughts on how to fix it so that it shows Miss Medicina again?

As if you didn't know... more cataclysm class preview changes this week! Therefore, Druids and Pallies get the most attention for this week, just as Priests and Shammies got more last week.

Druid

Bell offers more thoughts on regemming for that elusive Haste cap - should you?

Unless you've been buried under a tree (I'm so full of funny), you know the Druid Class Preview Changes for Cataclysm have been released. There are a lot of angry trees storming around right now! Here are a few of the best analyses of the tentative upcoming changes:

Keeva's protest image is making the rounds! (Image above)
Bell at 4 Haelz
Lathere at HoTs & DoTs
Lissanna at Restokin
Kae at Dreambound
Fealen at Cow and Bones
Averna at Nerf this Druid
Angelya at Revive & Rejuvenate: Part 1 and Part 2
Jaslya at Cannot be Tamed
Restoration Druid

Priest

Wik at Holyform wants us priests to just take a breather, and stop hatin' on Leap of Faith - and I agree with him. I don't think I really made it very clear in my post where I discussed LoF, but I'm actually pretty excited about the spell. If anyone tries to say something like "omg healer! why didnt you yank me out of the fire?!!?!" I probably won't notice, because I won't be paying attention to dumb. I'm excited to see all the different cool ways LoF can be used!

Paladin

Great stat tips from Zabery for healing Valithria Dreamwalker. I especially Zabery's list of other classes that have abilities that can help you do your job even better.

Yup, Pallies got their Cataclysm Class Preview changes as well, so here are some thoughts from the blogosphere:

Tarinae at A Healadin's Tear: Part 1 and Part 2
Coriel at Blessing of Kings
Khraden at Illumination: Part 1 and Part 2
Kurn at Kurn's Corner
Codi at MoarHPS
Rudy at The Holy Light

Shaman

Apparently, Mages will be getting their own version of Bloodlust/Heroism, and so there are quite a few shammies who are not particularly pleased about this.

Crossovers - I'm a big proponent of the idea of perspective. A good healer in a raid has a basic understanding of their entire healing team, and the synergy between themselves and the other healing classes. That was the entire purpose of the healing questionnaire, and it's also the reason I make these Friday healing world posts. So, I especially enjoy posts where folks who play one healing class predominantly try out another class. They sure are a fun read!

Healing as a Pally, from the perspective of a druid. Very different healing styles, but Bell is here to help you out.
Healing as a Disc Priest, from the perspective of a shaman. And hey, I'm trying to level a shaman, so I especially loved this post!

This post took me 4 hours to write, in one sitting. ahmahgah

Cataclysm Priest Changes Part 3: Talents

2010-04-15T07:51:00.000-04:00

Aaaaand.... the talented stuff.

We want to improve Discipline's single-target healing capacity. One key is to make sure shielding isn't always a more attractive option than healing.

We may be seeing the end of Discipline as a viable raid healing spec, folks. Looks like they want to emphasize Discipline as the tank healer and holy as the raid healer. I don't really have any problem with this, as this is currently how I utilize the healing specs. Goodbye shield spamming!

We want to improve Holy for PvP healing. One way to do this is to make sure that Heal's throughput is similar between both specs.

Yay for improving Holy for PvP. I have no idea what to make of the comment about Heal yet.

We want to improve Shadow for short fights and reduce its susceptibility to school lockouts.

Seems like this is going to be done mostly through Mind Spike. Also, I suspect large amounts of haste will help with this, since both Shadow Word: Pain and Vampiric Touch will be affected by haste, and ticking more.

Discipline will finally be getting Power Word: Barrier as a talented ability. Think of it like a group Power Word: Shield.

YES PLZ OMGTHX. Shield spamming is dead, long live Power Word: Barrier! Maybe I was wrong about Discipline no longer being viable for raid healing? Hmmmm...

We want to make Holy a little bit more interesting to play. One new talent will push the Holy priest into an improved healing state when he or she casts Prayer of Healing, Heal, or Renew three times in a row. The empowered state varies depending on the heals cast.

I love love LOVE this idea. They've already been playing around with this a bit with Serendipity, but I suspect this will be a lot more fun. Yay, holyform! I've always thought it would be cool for Holy to have their own version of Shadowform.

Since the Shadow tree has a lot of passive damage-boosting abilities -- something we're trying to avoid in Cataclysm -- we will need to replace several of the tree's talents. One idea is to play off of the new Shadow Orbs mechanic (see Mastery section below), possibly allowing you to consume an orb to increase damage from Mind Blast or reduce Mind Spike's cast time.

I'm trying really hard to imagine something other than a Shammy's Water Shield. BUT PURPLE.

Misery will no longer affect spell Hit chance. We want players to be able to gear themselves around a Hit cap that isn't variable depending on group composition.

That's probably pretty smart. It's one thing to have a group composition that will make the most of everyone's abilities, but Hit Cap is just that - a cap. You have a minimum number you really need to reach. I don't think it's a good idea to need a certain group makeup in order to reach a minimum number.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Most of this is actually old news, since Blizz used Priests as an example earlier when trying to explain how mastery would work.

For Discipline:

Healing (this will increase your healing power)
Meditation (this will increase your mana regen)
Absorption: Improves the strength of shields such as Power Word: Shield, Divine Aegis, and Power Word: Barrier.

"Strength" is somewhat ambiguous for the record, but I'm pretty positive it means it will increase the amount of damage the shields will absorb.

For Holy:

Healing (this will increase your healing power)
Meditation (this will increase your mana regen)
Radiance: Your direct heals add a small heal-over-time component to the target.

I love the fact that they chose the word "Radiance". I'm a bit of a word-nerd, I know, but I love the image this gives. Like... SPARKLES!!!

Blizz is really pushing the HoT mechanic for Holy Priests. I've noticed this more and more throughout Wrath. Druids are no longer the sole provider for good strong HoTs, but they are still the best. To be honest, as someone who enjoys running around with lots of Druids, I'm not very keen on it. There's such a thing as too many HoTs, as far as I'm concerned.

For Shadow:

Spell Damage (This will increase your spell damage... duh)
Spell Crit (This will increase your spell crit... duh - but... why crit instead of haste? hmm)
Shadow Orbs: Casting spells grants a chance for Shadow Orbs to be created that fly around you and increase your shadow damage. This will help lower-level characters feel more like "Shadow priests" before they obtain Shadowform.

Sorry. Water Shield. What?

There's No Escape from Wrynn

2010-04-14T01:05:00.000-04:00

Yeah, I still hate the ICC buff. Sorry. That's not ever going to change. In practice, it's become something of a joke amongst my raiding group, how stubborn I am about it.

DPS1: "Man, if only there were a way to drastically increase my dps in one night."
DPS2: "Yeah, woudn't that be awesome?"
Me: "There is. It's called fail less."

I stubbornly held on to my principles. Much of my guild remembers me leveling through BC and Wrath, and they know how I am. No, I don't want you to run me through that dungeon since you are five levels higher than me. Get away from me, you're tainting my sacred leveling path of teh solo. No I don't want you to run me through anything. No, I don't want you to partner up with me to make this quicker and easier. Yes I know that you're all sitting at level caps, waiting impatiently for me to get there so you have a healer, but DON'T RUSH ME.

However, I am one person amongst a group of ten, though Raid Leader I may be. I do try to take everyone's concerns under consideration, and mold things accordingly. The one thing I wouldn't budge on was the damn buff, but it was definitely starting to be a problem. I could tell people were getting frustrated with me and my stubborness, and the way I'd run straight into ICC and tell King Wrynn to piss off, because his presence annoys me.

I mean seriously, Wrynn's presence is supposed to make me 10% stronger? Is that like, aura of annoyance? Does it make me 10% more powerful because I just want him to GTFO and hurry up and finish this crap because I don't want to be around him anymore? I could kinda see that.

What about "Gordin's Presence"? Gordin is our warrior off-tank, who brings a huge air of serendipity to our raids. If it weren't for Gordin, we would probably be yelling at one another, glaring at bosses, completely tunnel visioned, and forget that we're there for fun. Someone sets themselves to follow Gordin when we are running back from a wipe, and he jumps off a cliff just to make them follow him to their deaths. Gordin yells "GERONIMOOOOO" while running into the second room of the pre-Marrowgar trash to trigger the traps so we can get our skellies dead. Gordin inserts "that's what she said" comments in raid warnings.

If there were an Aura of Gordin, bunnies would randomly spawn and start humping. At specific intervals, giant Smurfs would appear and pwn the healers. Occasionally you'd hear the Lich King in the background making knock-knock jokes. You know that glitch that everyone gets on occasion? The one where it appears that everyone is naked? Well, Gordin is the reason that glitch exists. One day he called up Eyonix on the phoney-mcphone, and he was all like "Yo, Whelpling. If you don't add some random pg-13 nudity into this game, I'm going to drive my bus over to your house... and you know that won't end well."

And thus, on occasion, you get to see some nice Male Dwarf boxer-briefs. Because Gordin wouldn't have it any other way.

Sadly, there is no Aura of Gordin. Instead, we get shafted with Strength of Wrynn. I'd feel more inspired by Thrall, though I'm pretty sure our hunter MuffinCups would be fairly distracted by flirtation.

My fiance and co-raid leader had been bugging me about the buff for a few weeks. "How about we just use the buff for the first wing? We have it on farm, so it's not like we need it, but it would make it faster so that we could spend more time on the progression bosses. We'd turn it off right after we cleared the first wing." "NO."

"NO."
"NO."
"NO."

But after a tearful conversation with a few of the DPS who really wanted to utilize the buff in order to see more content, I finally got off my stubborn stool and compromised. When you're only raiding 2 hours a week, it's true that time is of the essence. So, as of our Monday night run, we will be keeping Wrynn around for the first wing, and then telling him to GTFO as soon as we finish off Saurfang. Seems that it works. We're so eager to get rid of King Douchebag that we do power through the first wing much faster, and preserve our standards for the bosses we aren't quite farming yet. As far as I'm concerned, as of last night, the numbers on the first wing mean nothing. I don't care what the HPS or DPS is, because without the proper genuine context, it's useless.

Still no Aura of Gordin though. I'm submitting a ticket.

Cataclysm Priest Changes Part 2: Abilities and Mechanics

2010-04-13T07:34:00.000-04:00

Now let's talk about those changed mechanics...

"All HoTs and DoTs will benefit from Haste and Crit innately." This has been a long time coming, and Blizz has done a LOT of testing to see how they can make this work in a balanced way. I can understand why; giving over time abilities the benefits from haste and crit is a huge change, and it's a dynamic one. One of the big changes with this change is this portion: they "will not have a shorter duration, just a shorter period in between ticks". It's better to have this be something that is implemented with brand new content than try to add it in a patch with current gear levels, because it completely changes the value of haste and crit for those that use over-time components. If the duration of the effect is shortened by haste, it can drastically change rotations based on gear levels.

Oh man. The theorycrafters are going to have a FIELD DAY with this change. How much haste will i need for each individual extra tick of heal or damage? GO.

"We want to bring back Shadow Word: Death as an "execute" -- something you do when the target is at 25% health. " Okay. Uhm, thanks for the info? That was... helpful.

Making Priests viable tank healers. Well, I would argue, quite stubbornly mind you, that Discipline priests are perfectly viable tank healers, thankyouverymuch. Having said that, I know what they mean. I put a bubble on the tank, and it's gone in one hit, and I can't put another shield on them for 15 seconds or so. Most of my mitigation actually comes from Divine Aegis. I would love a more expensive, bigger shield for tank healing. Greater Heal *should* be the tank healing weapon of choice. That's how I've tried to treat it - much to my own detriment. Just because something *should* work a certain way, doesn't mean that it does. Thing is, all I really need is a big shield on the tank that could reduce incoming damage while I'm casting my big heal.

No More Divine Spirit. This makes me sad, but with the changes coming to how spirit works, it was inevitable. One of the things I really liked about this spell is that it added an extra component to the beautiful synergy between priests and druids. Now I weep. Druids won't want me around anymore. YOU ONLY LIKED ME FOR MY SPIRIT.

No more five second rule. As far as I'm concerned, 5sr has been essentially obsolete at end game since patch 3.1. This isn't really news either. I never really liked the 5sr so I'm not mourning the death of it. It was kinda cool back when Holy Concentration gave you free procs, and you could dance around a bit with Inner Focus in and out of the 5sr.

So... what about Spirit Tap? I'm anxious to see how this will change (if at all). I know that end-game healing priests don't use this amazing talent, but it's integral for leveling.

Cataclysm Priest Changes Part 1: New Spells

2010-04-12T07:28:00.001-04:00

Oh yeah. I'm weighing in on the Cataclysm Class Preview Changes as well. Because I have to, duh!

If you are what I would call a "purist", and do not want to be spoiled by any upcoming changes, look no further! I respect your choice, but I'm not always good at giving warnings, so don't hold it against me >.<

There's a lot of information coming, and so I'm going to split this up into multiple posts. I mean, let's face it - news is dry right now. We have to stretch out everything we can!

Heal. (The simplest, most basic name for the most basic and fundamental spell that any healer can have. Look at that, a spell named for exactly what it does. Can you imagine if you had two spells: Heal and Hurt? Anyway.)

You know what annoys me beyond all rational explanation? Waste. Wasted spells. Spells you learn at low levels that are replaced but never removed. Lesser Heal anyone? Heal? Especially when you have talents that affect those spells. I mean, why not just call them "Flash Heal" and "Greater Heal" at lower levels? The mechanics are the same.

So why do these two spells exist right now anyway? Pre-wrath, lots of healers used downranked spells to give their heals significant granularity. This was essentially removed from the game when Blizz increased the mana cost of lower ranked spells. Lesser Heal and Heal were occasionally used for added granularity back in the day - but since the mana cost changes, they were especially useless. Since mana is effectively a non-issue at high gear levels, and since we have significant gear inflation and saturation, most people just spam their quickest, most powerful spells, with little regard for mana cost.

The idea is to bring back that granularity to healing. Priests are arguably the most granular healers as it stands - we have a massive arsenal of healing spells. That's what makes playing a priest especially fun and interesting for me. Lots of decision making when it comes to spells. So, I'm very excited about having that extra level of granularity that was taken away from us with the changes to mana costs for downranked spells. I started raiding right before that change, for the record - I never used downranked spells. I hated it, and managed to heal well without using downranked spells, but I was also not participating in any real progression raiding.

If Blizz can pull this off effectively and bring back the granularity and decision making that has gone out the window in recent patches (and as a fangirl, I have faith that they can), then I think they are heading in the right direction.

Mind Spike. (im in ur hed hertin ur neuronz! STABSTABPOKE)

I actually have a hard time judging this spell without understanding exactly what the debuff it causes does. First and foremost though, "spell school lockout" has been a significant problem for shadow priests. I haven't forgotten you viscious Brittle Revenants - back when you guys were actually cool, dammit. Reducing the mana cost of Shadowform is great and all but... yeah. A frost spell is a great idea.

Now, back to that debuff. I think that in order for this to work effectively (meaning that this is a spammable spell used in situations where time needed for the buildup for your regular rotation is not available), that debuff needs to be short. Short enough that in order to get any real use out of it, you really will have to spam Mind Spike. And in that case, that's not really that fun anyway, is it?

But then again, in a battleground the other day I was confused about how I got even 1 killing blow... apparently I mistargeted and accidentally Penanced someone to death. As you can see, damage is not really my forte...

Inner Will (vs. Inner Fire)

This has been a long time coming. There won't be charges on the new version of Inner Fire. Why did we have a spell that was an armor boost with charges anyway? Because if it didn't have charges, it would require no decision making whatsoever. It would have just been a flat spellpower/armor boost (also, keep in mind that the spellpower buff was a Wrath addition, and Inner Fire doesn't give spellpower until your level 70s). Taking those charges out and implementing an alternative turns it into a self buff with a decision tagged on to it - much like Mages and Warlocks already have.

I love this idea. Need more throughput? Inner Fire. Need more mana? Inner Will. Lots of adds with physical damage? Inner Fire. Lots of movement? Inner Will. Making the gear switch between a damage spec and a healing spec? Use your buff to help you make the transition (for instance, my damage set may have more spellpower than mana regen - I would turn on my Inner Will to help fill the mana regen gaps until I pick up a few new pieces).

Leap of Faith. (HEROES! TO ME! /Jaina)

The description of this includes the following: "Intended to give priests a tool to help rescue fellow players who have pulled aggro, are being focused on in PvP, or just can't seem to get out of the fire in time."

Now wait just one second... Players already have this amazing ability to get out of spot focused damage. It's called legs.

Yanking someone closer to you because they have aggro? Not a great idea. In most cases this will not make them lose aggro - it will just bring the mob closer to you, potentially pulling aggro on to yourself.

Yeah, I can see the PvP argument.

But I find this spell fascinating. So now I'm just randomly brainstorming on non-PvP specific uses for it.

A 30 yard range isn't enough to justify pulling the target in to put them in healing range, since 30 yard is generally within healing range. I can also see this as another indirect form of crowd control. Send one of the melee over to a spellcasting add, have them get aggro, and then yank that member over to you and the group. Seems kinda like a weird way to handle it though, especially if you could just silence the mob or something.

Maybe it's intended to just be situationally useful. Assuming you can use this on people who are rooted in some form, then yes, I likes it a lot. I'm thinking of our recent ventures on Putricide, with people getting rooted in slime puddles. They can't move out of the crap on the ground - for once people have an excuse! Instead of spam healing them, I can pull them to me. Now I'm going to start looking for scenarios in which I can use this spell!

Best of the Healing World: April 3-9

2010-04-09T16:24:00.001-04:00

Druids

Jasyla talks about Barkskin and its underappreciated value, providing specific examples from ICC of where it can be used well.
Ohhh, I love this post by Bell. Are resto druids bad at tank healing? I've said it before, and I'll say it a million times more - every healing class has the ability to tank heal, so that they can effectively heal 5 mans. Some classes perform better at raid tank healing. Bell talks about this specifically for druids, and how you can be a better tank healer.
And on the same topic, Beru chimes in with even more explanation about why "sucking at tank healing" is not the same thing as "not the optimal choice for tank healing".

Priests

HEY GUYS. HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT CATACLYSM CLASS PREVIEW FOR PRIESTS? NO? ->

Paladins

Do you dual spec holy/prot? Illumination has some tips for you on creating a UI that will do the trick for both.
There was a lot of sad faces about the fact that Paladin class changes are coming out so very late. Poor pallies...

Shammies

Cataclysm Class Preview: Shaman. Because I'm sure you hadn't heard yet. Oh and Nethaera posted this one, so it must be the best.

All

Druid Main starts this post by talking about how dispel mechanics will work in Cataclysm (according to the current information, obviously). All healers will be affected.
Actually, there were a lot of people who chimed in about those dispel mechanics, particularly the shammies. Check out Borsked and Blueberry Totem.

POSTED BEFORE FIVE PM SO IT TOTALLY COUNTS AS A FRIDAY POST (to be fair, I was waiting as long as possible because I had hoped the Druid class preview changes would be out before 5 today - LAWL wtf was i thinking anyway? I'm sure next week we will be overloaded with waving branches)

Practicing Progression

2010-04-06T01:56:00.003-04:00

You know what's more fun than breaking my wimpy back painting over white walls with... a slightly different shade of white (yay home improvement!)?

Wiping on Putricide for 2 hours straight!

What a fight. I've heard the nightmare stories, and I've dreaded it for weeks and weeks. But if you look beyond the repair bills, and the stress, and the arguments about positioning and who should stand or run where and yada yada yada... every wipe is followed by a slightly better attempt. It's not a one-shot. It's not a tank n' spank. It's not an ez-mode.

It's progression. Bloody, frustrating, messy... but I'm there, with 9 of my friends who may hate me for two hours (and several days afterward for that matter), banging my head against a boss fight. And each bang leaves a slightly deeper dent. And it's hard. But I know that when Putricide finally falls to the ground, mutilated and defeated, it will be one of my proudest in-game moments.

If it were easy, I wouldn't be proud about it. I don't mind struggling through the tough times, the rough nights, because I know that once I conquer it, I will be proud for persevering through all of it. I don't really care about the gear - it's the feeling of hard-won victory.

That's the attitude you need to have when you raid. You need to be able to see the big picture, and then step in and objectively identify the details that present problems.

Now, I'm going to take that positive raider attitude and try to apply it to my REAL life. Back to the paint can with me, folks. I start my new job next week, and I'm going to try and be more productive this week before I start, so bear with me as my posts may be light as I endure this phase change!

Here's a question for you guys: How do *you* define "progression"?

Best of the Healing World: March 27 - April 1

2010-04-02T05:42:00.001-04:00

You know what's tricky? Spending hours trying to discern "real" thursday posts from "APRIL FOOLS" thursday posts. Yes, I know that I am just as guilty. Shove it.

Lots of heroic mode impressions and Lich King kills this week folks. A hearty congratulations to all of you! Maybe my babyicc10 group will see a Putricide kill before Cataclysm!

One last side note, or rather, plea: If you or someone you know sets the feed settings for your blog so that people can only read a brief description of the post or the first few lines via feedreader... I'm begging you to change it. Please. I know you put the effort into your sites, and I know you want to see people actually visit your site as opposed to reading it through a feedreader, and I understand that... but for those of us who read a bajillion blogs, or for those of us who try to feed our blog addiction from work in a filtered environment, it just means we can't/don't read your posts. I always *intend* to go back to those posts and click through and read them, but I forget as I'm going through the other material that is more readily available to me.

<3 MM

Druids:

Tree Bark Jacket provides a PSA regarding the 4pct10 bonus amongst several resto druids in a raid.
Speaking of t10 and set bonuses... Jasyla examines the functionality and benefit of that 4pc set bonus... WITH MATHS.
Angela at Restoration Druid has some nice videos of the heroic versions of Gunship10 and Rotface25 from her perspective.

Paladins:

Kurn's Holy How-to #4! Gems, Libram, glyphs, and more.
Zabery explores the use of Shield of Righteousness to get a bit more mana back. As a pally-noob, I spent an hour trying to understand this, and even tried testing it, and was still completely lost, but I thought it was a pretty interesting argument regardless!
Oooooo I *love* Pally-as-a-raid-healer? posts and Illumination has a great one this week! (Unless of course it's an April Fool's Joke... look, no one really believed that I would ever pull a Paolo... did they? Now I'm wondering if Pallies as raid healers is more or less believable than that...)

Priests:

Okay, this isn't about a specific post, but the writer of this blog left a comment for me on my blogroll post this week linking me to his blog - and I thought it was such a great concept, that I wanted to tell y'all about Priest and Pilot. Tim writes about all the exciting adventures he has... trying to play WoW with the internet service he has available to him in Iraq - things such as switching from Holy to Disc in order to deal with the high amount of lag (which I thought was a pretty good tip). Also, I really do hope that I can send a bit of traffic his way to wish him well and send him support. <3
Leafie offers some tips for lower level Disc Priests healing Maraudon.
I don't know wtf Ava is talking about; Her lolpaintdiagrams are vastly superior to my own. Anyway, it's the moment you've all been waiting for: How to Disco with the Lich King... AVA STYLE

Shaman:

Zorash at Healing Council gives some tips on how to anticipate damage. I'm listing this under Shaman, but it's actually good info for ALL healers, especially <begin bias> my fellow Disc Priests <end bias>!
Borsk gives some impressions of a few 10 man heroic ICC encounters - but the best tale of all was about solo-healing heroic Putricide from 81% health to dead. What an awesome feeling it is to pull something like that off - nice one B!

This Special Section is Reserved For Codi's Genius

Codi provides some great tips for healers who are having mana struggles. I know that at top gear levels most folks don't run into mana issues, but particularly for those gearing up, mana may be more of a problem. Codi has advice for each individual healing class, in addition to a list of great items to help you out.

BEST APRIL FOOL'S DAY POST

Sometimes I let monkeys write my posts too, V.

THIS IS TEH END

2010-04-01T11:39:00.003-04:00

So, the real reason I posted my blogroll of healy blogs yesterday?

I'm done with this healing thing.

Between life-tapping warlocks, tanks forgetting their pants, aggro hungry mages, and other disc priests bubbling my target, I just can't handle it anymore!

The sickest thing about being a healer? When everyone is doing their job properly, YOUR job is mind-numbingly dull. When everyone is screwing up? You're pissed off because they keep screwing up.

I'm sick of wiping up after your messes, non-healers! It's a thankless job. It's a stupid job. Seriously, healers are completely pointless. Basically, your health is your green bar plus a multiplier of my blue bar. Do you ever think about how ridiculous that really is? I mean, couldn't you just, like, not take damage? This is sort of like throwing money at a problem. I'm throwing my mana at the problem - YOU!

SO NO MORE

Shadow I become.

For the record, this is known as "Pulling a Paolo".

The Full Healy-Blog List

2010-03-31T07:30:00.015-04:00

I follow a lot of healing blogs. I mean, a lot. Big or small, I’ll add most any healing blog to my feeder to at least give it a shot. If you’re wondering what my resources are for pointing out goings-on in the healer blogosphere (especially if you’re wondering if I’ve missed something), here is my full healer specific blogroll.

I don’t limit my list of resources due to popularity, size of readership, or any politics. I don’t care if the writer bashed me in a post that one time, or if they are smelly and a big jerky mcjerkface. If people post something I don’t like, or I’m not interested in… well then. I just don’t read that post.

The purpose of this list is to keep me up to date with what healers are saying in the blogosphere – from the small bloggers to the big ones. I don’t care if you only have 2 subscribers, and I’m one of them. If you post something that is good, I want to know.

This is a direct list from my feed-reader. If you know of a healy blog that is not on this list, please let me know so I can add them to my personal feed-reader. (comment or email: missmedicina at gmail dot com)

If you go through these links, you may find there are bloggers who have stated they are closing up shop. If the blog is still open, I am going to keep it on this list until after Cataclysm's release, because until the massive overhauls to our world and our classes, there may still be lots of relevant information on their blogs. Also, a lot of bloggers and players choose to find other things to do during the pre-expansion doldrums, so some may come back to the blogosphere.

If, however, you click on a link and it is broken, please let me know.

Druids

Pallies

A Healadin's Tear
A Touch of Arcane
Blessing of Kings
bubblespec
DI the Tank (3+ months no post)
Divine Plea
Flash of Sadysm
Holy Powah (also about priests)
Holy Shock
Holypaladin.net (6+ months no post)
I am a Paladin
Illumination
IndecentHealer (6+ months no post)
Kurn's Corner
Moar HPS!
Non-Squishy Heals
Parsley's Blog
She's a Healadin (3+ months no post)
The Bossy Pally and the Giant Spoon
The Holy Light
The Holy Paladin
The Physician's Log (6+ months no post) (sad face)
The V-Team (3+ months no post)
(Un)holy Randomness
Zabery

Priests

An Absolutely Ordinary Priest
BobTurkey's WoW Blog
Desperate Prayer (6+ months no post)
DiscoPriest (3+ months no post)
Divine Aegis
Ecclesiastical Discipline
Flash Heal
Guild Mum
Healer Trek
Holy Fire Spec
Holy Nova
Holyform (3+ months no post)
I Like Bubbles
"Priest" board on PlusHeal
Miss Medicina (she's pretty annoying though)
Pain Suppression (3+ months no post)
Penance Priest
Priest and Pilot (3+ months no post)
Priest Punditry
Priest with a Cause
PW: Bubble
Raging Monkeys
Righteous Orbs
Runcible Trout (6+ months no post)
Save the Lightwell
Shy at WoW
Soul Warding
Tales of a Priest
The Angry Healers!
The Impenitent Priest
The Mediocre Priest
The Munch Land (6+ months no post)
The Wanted Priest
Thoughts of a Discipline Priestess
Type "H" for Heals

Shammies

Multiple Class Healing Coverage

ETA: Last updated September 1st, 2010.

I will continue to keep this list updated (though I'm slow), so feel free to leave comments with suggestions :)

Image Overload

2010-03-30T02:40:00.014-04:00

I don't often post screenshots, but I was going through some of mine last night looking for killshots, and figured I would share some of my more... entertaining experiences!

Fuu and I helped my aunt do her Pally mount quest old school style. As the only holy resident without a super fancy fairydust pony, I felt very left out.

But... I got over it pretty quickly. Pansies.

This is why Zodrick is not getting an invite to the next raid.

Chillaxin.

Small Dwarf, big throne.

Sky-swimming.

Violet Hold Gone Wild

Don't you dare close your eyes!

This is what happens when only one server is up.

I'm actually not sure if I find this frightening... or vulgarly offensive. Something about C'thun's eye just make me feel like I'm sitting in a Georgia O'Keefe painting.

You know, some people just can't sit politely on their insect mounts for a nice killshot.

I've got wings. And a pail. AND I WALK ON WATER. I am the priest your priest could spell like.

Best of the Healing World

2010-03-26T13:00:00.002-04:00

ETA: Added a good priesty link!

This week is incredibly skimpy on healing class-specific posts. Fuubaar keeps sending me frowny faces over gchat, wondering why I'm not posting as much, even daring to ask me if I was done with the blog. WHAT?! Hell naw.

The general answer across the blogosphere is that times are tough, folks. We're in the late-patch lull that even patch 3.3.3 can't really fix. There weren't that many changes for healers. We'd already talked about the changes to t10 for priests ad nauseam. People are bored.

That's not my issue. Mine is more of a personal thing. I have 7 posts half written, bookmarks out the wazoo providing content for relevant posts. I cannot bring myself to post a piece that is not fully researched and completed. I'm having more of an issue where my brain is asleep. I cannot seem to maintain focus or interest in anything, and all I want to do is sleep and/or watch Law & Order. I went to the doctor today, and I have been on my SAN character trying to level, but nothing that feels particularly exciting.

No, I am not abandoning this blog. If I only make 2 or 3 posts in a week, that is never meant to suggest I'm leaving the blogosphere. It usually just means I'm very tired, and having my own personal version of a relapse.

So to the meat - there's only a couple of things that stood out this week as particularly helpful to specific healing classes, but they are good reads anyway.

Druids

Got a fresh 80 druid? Lathere has a great guide for gearing up your fresh sapling - with badge amounts and maths!

Paladins

Ever wondered how Aura Mastery worked? Ophelie did a little exploration herself.

Priests

Wheee! Shield calculator from Paolo - very handy for Disc priests who want an idea of how powerful their shield is.

Shaman

Vixsin debates the value of Tidal Force - is it really worth it? WITH MATHS!

Patch 3.3.3 LOLNotes

2010-03-23T12:47:00.002-04:00

There's nothing relating to my priesty audience in the patch notes that I haven't already covered.

And so I direct you to Amber's in-depth and totally analytical and relevant explanation of the patch notes. That is all.

ETA: Here's a linky to the real patch notes, posted by Zarhym. They are too long for me to C&P here for now.

Dear Greater Heal, We're Over

2010-03-23T03:12:00.000-04:00

Dear Greater Heal,

I've long been a staunch defender of you, heal-bomb.

I have held on to you and your friend, my dear sweet Divine Fury... from the 80 levels spent Holy as I quested and killed mobs, all the way to 10 man ICC. All the way through to Festergut...

Where my love for you wiped our group.

We have a very strict 11pm cut off time. We were stretching it for a couple of minutes to try and do a quickie Festergut to close out the night. Final inhale, and my eyes are squinted, my shoulders tense, as I weave my way through a very strict tank healing rotation. Tank is at full health, so I decide that at my next Borrowed Time buff, I'm going to squeeze you, Greater Heal, into my rotation. Raid buffed, even without Borrowed Time, I've got 35% haste. The cast time on you with Borrowed Time is approximately 1.6 seconds.

And you just weren't fast enough.

I don't know how much mitigation value was on the tank at the time. Pain Suppression had probably worn off, and during your precious 1.6 second cast, I'm sure any bubble (Power Word: Shield or Divine Aegis) he'd had was gone. But nothing makes me angrier than having my heal land a microsecond after the tank dies.

I'm livid. And I may be abandoning you from here on out, Greater Heal.

Granted, that was definitely not the best situation in which to use you, and I fully recognize that. But when my eyes are squinted and my shoulders hunched, sometimes my snap decisions aren't the best. It's the analysis I do afterwards that makes me a better healer.

Here's the thing. You're very powerful, Greater Heal, and I certainly can't deny that. You heal for somewhere between 11k and 17k, depending on whether or not you crit, stacks of Grace, etc. You're great for filling up the tank when he or she takes a big hit. So in general, to be effective, I prefer to use you when the tank is low on health (or when I expect him to be low on health by the time the heal hits). That generally means they are going to be below 50% health... which is where your arch enemy, Improved Flash Heal, kicks in. That extra bonus to crit means I have a 10% higher chance to proc that yummy Divine Aegis on the tank.

I was already planning on dumping you, Greater Heal, once I picked up the two piece t10 bonus but it looks like I may have to abandon you sooner. You may be more mana efficient... but I just can't rely on you. You just aren't dependable. You weren't there when I needed you, GHeal. How much crit have I sacrificed in your name? Five talents points that could make me a stronger, more independent Dwarf... and I have given them to help you be a Better Heal.

BUT NO MORE. We're done.

No love,
Jessabelle

This is What a Troll Looks Like

2010-03-19T14:47:00.006-04:00

ETA: Don't worry. It's not real.

When SAN first started, there were a lot of people who were excited about the prospect of a drama-free social space. I believe at some point Gevlon even commented that it would be a boring guild, because there would be no drama.

There is absolutely no way that a guild with over 400 human beings in it can completely avoid drama.

There is absolutely no way that a guild full of bloggers whose hobby is based on their ability and desire to express strong opinions clearly would ever avoid drama.

A completely drama free guild WOULD be boring, but there's no need to worry about that - we have no such lofty goals as far as I can tell.

So. We might as well have a sense of humor about it ;)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Today I was shocked - SHOCKED I tell you - to find that I am the target of some truly cruel and unfair words by some weird dude with a fascist name like Klepsawhatit or something.

I don't have to stand for this. Here is proof of his vicious attacks against me last night in SAN chat.

You're right, jerky mcjerkface. I don't have to put up with this... this.. HARASSMENT.

If you support me..... Tweet it! #TEAMME

STOP THE TROLLING EPIDEMIC

Best of the Healing World: March 12 - March 19

2010-03-19T09:01:00.001-04:00

This edition of "Best of the Healing World" is dedicated to my friend Crankyhealer - in my mind, you will always be part of the community that I value.

Druid

Another great guest post from Beru on Rejuvo, where Beru gives her thoughts on the differences between 10 man healing and 25 man healing. My experience between the two are somewhat different than Beru's, but I found it really interesting to read it from the perspective of a Druid as opposed to a Priest.

Paladin

Leveling a Holy Paladin - Healadin's Tear (with details on heirlooms, what gear to snatch from the AH, and the Dungeon Finder tool)
Tips for holy pallies healing the boss. Which, normally, would not actually be a good tip in and of itself. But, you know, Valithria and all that... seriously though, Valithria is your chance to shine, Pallies. Enlynn tells you how to do it right.
Pallies have a number of super special add-ons just for them. You can find a solid guide to CLCBPT, arguably the worst named addon ever, at The Physician's Log.

Priest

Domni provides some very good survivability tips for Priests - remember, we're squishy!
THE MOST IMPORTANT NEWS OF THE WEEK. Our dear Tamarind (the writer) has made some switcharoos and produced... CALIDORE THE DWARF PRIEST. Tamarind has switched to being a Pally, and did I mention dwarves rule? Also, Milton sucks, just sayin'.

Shaman

Ever wondered when was the best time to pop your heroism/bloodlust? Borsked provides a list of best timing for bloodlust/heroism use for ICC and ToGC fights.
Rahana finished up her series on shammy healing in the ICC 5 mans with lots of great advice for Halls of Reflection.
This isn't really healing specific, but I got a kick out of reading about Phix's funny moments when adjusting to the switch from a draenei shammy to an orc one! Things to consider if you ever want a faction change...

WoW in an Hour

2010-03-18T17:10:00.002-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, Gameldar at WoW in an Hour asked me to answer some questions about how I spend my in-game time; Particularly in regards to my ICC10 2-hour-a-week raiding schedule.

If you are interested, you can check out the interview here, and while you're there... pop around WoW in an Hour to get some tips on things you can do to maximize your in game time if you're on a tight schedule!

I think I Need a Makeover

2010-03-18T06:13:00.006-04:00

There is a crisis in the Priest community right now. It's regarding gear.

Am I talking about improper itemization for shield spamming Disc Priests? No.

Am I referring to the bait and switch for our tier bonuses? Nyet.

WHAT IS THIS NONSENSE?

Now, I don't consider myself precisely a fashionista, and I'm quite proud of the fact that in general my lovely dwarf eschews all forms of vanity but... Really?

A turtleneck?

80s shoulderpads on crack?

Dominatrix inspired chains on my skirt?

My head is not only ON FIRE, but it also appears to have sprouted wings. In fact, if you look at it from behind...

I appear to be a very brightly dressed vampire.

I know I am not the only priest who feels this way. Must we be so poorly dressed?

And apparently there are some Pallies who feel the same way. The Light shines down and illuminates our crappy wardrobe, apparently.

Moar Tier Drama!

2010-03-16T03:11:00.001-04:00

I'm watching the changes to the Priest t10 4pc bonus closely. There was a very strong reaction to the change initially proposed on the PTR, but I think it's really important that people recognize how often tier bonuses change on the PTR. It's not uncommon for Blizz to start a PTR cycle with a fairly blase tier bonus, and then tweak it. Currently, the initial 5% bonus to Power Word: Shield and Renew has been changed to a 5% bonus to Power Word: Shield and 10% to Circle of Healing.

That is a fairly powerful bonus, though I still don't really like how it's being changed from a really interesting bonus to a boring buff. I can understand the argument for it, however. The truth is, the default WoW UI is not very good at alerting the player to procs - and Blizz really does need to design their tier bonuses with the default UI in mind. That doesn't mean I'm not still sad about the change. Maybe it's an indicator that Blizz needs to spend more time tweaking the UI - there are lots of weaknesses from the perspective of this healer!

I definitely approve of the change from buffing Renew to buffing Circle of Healing. I realize that Renew is becoming particularly popular among Holy Priests, but Circle of Healing is the trademark Holy spell. Buffing Renew is a buff to single target healing - even if you heal several people, one at a time. The more druids you have in a raid, the easier it is to argue that Renew is not as useful. Instant cast burst AoE heal? That's Circle of Healing - and that's the signature Holy Priest move.

The post on the forums announcing the changes appears to have an error, but check out the test realm patch notes on the PTR site to see the change.

Best of the Healing World: Feb 26 - March 11

2010-03-12T02:24:00.001-05:00

The past couple of weeks have been a bit light on healer specific posts, mainly because we've all been wrapped up in <Single Abstract Noun> fun, so I skipped my "Best of the Healing World" post last week, and am combining the past two weeks into this single post. Let the healing begin!

Druids:

Beruthiel from Falling Leaves and Twigs does a guest post for Virile on Rejuvo giving a great background and discussion on haste for druids, along with some basic numbers you'll need to know for raiding and instancing.

Priests:

Avalonna tells us how we mistakenly did not really appreciate how awesome the t10 four piece set bonus is. Ava converted me from a hater!
Paolo feels you need to understand how Divine Aegis really works, Disc Priests. Paolo is da man.
Do you like to play around with a Smite spec? Holy Fire Spec has a really great post on haste and several other details about improving your smiteness.
Sorry Priests... Derevka tells us why we're not really optimal Dreamwalker healers. Whine fest at my house.

Shammies:

Nim provides an overview of all the different glyphs a resto shaman might choose.
Rahana gives detailed tips for resto shammies healing Forge of Souls.
There's just so much good stuff going on at Flow, but over in SAN, I've been listening to Wugan as he tries out this leveling-as-resto experiment while I try to level a shammy as well, so I find this series particularly interesting.

Paladins:

Intellect vs Spellpower, and Holy Light vs Flash of Light - more napkin-math theorycrafting over at Divine Plea! Always an intriguing Holy Pally debate.
Codi examines the Tier 10 4 piece set bonus - with maths! (That's how she rolls, yo)
Dristanel gives you a video of a pug in the life of a Holy Pally, along with some tips on healing Halls of Reflection.

All healers:

Codi looks over the numbers, and recommends a priority list for healers rolling on Trauma.
Shintar talks about disappointment with Valithria as a so-called "healer fight".
Vixsin teaches us how to analyze healers with World of Logs.
Lissanna ponders, "Should healers have to deal with mana management?"

Outhealed by the PvPer

2010-03-11T00:29:00.000-05:00

Last night I had a humbling VoA pug experience. For the first time in months, I tank healed alongside another Disc priest who actually knew what the hell she was doing - and that is an incredible understatement.

I know this, because her tank target actually had weakened soul on them the whole time. In fact, one time I was slow on the uptake, my tank target's health plummeted, and she shielded my target. I imagine she was probably wondering what the hell I was doing, and, while hesitant about shielding my target, figured it was better to be annoying than dead. She was the best Disc Priest I'd seen in a raid in a very long time.

But what has me totally fascinated, is that she's not a raider - she's a PvPer.

She was in full PvP gear (966 resilience). She carried a PvP heavy disc spec. Her glyphs and talent choices and gear priorities were nothing I would ever recommend for a PvE healer. Her gems were full of resilience and stamina. She had 128 hit rating. Everything about her gear, talent, gem, etc choices screamed PvP. And she healed just as well, if not better, than I did.

Her spellpower: 2569. Mine? 2840.
Her haste? 162. Mine? 716.
Her crit? 17.5%. Mine? 31%.

She matched me almost exactly on pure healing output, though I had significantly more mitigation/absorbs from peppering bubbles throughout the raid (because rapture procs make me smile). This makes sense, because her spellpower, crit, and haste are lower. She would, in theory, spend a little more time casting and have less Divine Aegis procs.

But the end result was the same. In full PvP gear, she matched my healing ability, and her tank stayed up just as well (sometimes better) than my own.

I shot her a whisper after we finished the fight, and told her she was amazing, and it was nice to heal next to someone who actually maintained weakened soul on the tank. She laughed and thanked me, and I'm sure she'll never see this post. She'll be too busy in Arena, kicking everyone's ass.

You might see her doing her daily random heroic, accruing emblems of frost. It looks like she does the weekly raid every week, and obviously pugs VoA (not surprising for a PvPer anyway). I'll think of her next time I see someone laughing at another pugger's PvP gear.

As someone who is completely oblivious about PvP, I admit being pretty jealous of the people who are good at PvP - I am awful at it. I personally think it requires a lot of quick thinking and maneurvering at which I am simply awful. So, I'm not ashamed I was, in my mind, out-healed by a PvP Disc Priest. I am, however, a little embarassed that I was surprised.

Everyone Loves a Farmer Joke

2010-03-09T11:59:00.001-05:00

I recently acquired the patterns for Leggings of Awesomesauce and Sandals of Consecration. I am hoping to craft those boots for myself soon, but do not, as of yet, have the required Primordial Saronite. Therefore, I've been offering up my services in crafting the afore-mentioned pieces in Trade channel (using trade for trade?! Me? It's a first!) in order to save up some cash to purchase the Primordial Saronite I need.

So there I am in Dalaran, bored, occasionally clicking on my macro announcing my willingness to craft these items for people, with their mats, for 300g. As I'm sitting there debating over whether I should lower the price to 200g, I get a tell from a level 72 hunter, asking why on earth I would charge people for crafting something with their mats.

I close my eyes, count to ten, and then calmly explain to him that those patterns cost me the price of the Primordial Saronite needed to purchase the patterns themselves, the months spent in ICC getting reputation high enough to purchase them, not to mention all the time and effort I spent in leveling my profession. "Wow u must b rich!" is his response. I ignore this, thinking to myself how after purchasing these patterns I am most assuredly not rich anymore, and then he continues by asking me how much gold I have. For some reason this strikes me as particularly rude, coming from a stranger, and I tell him that is none of his business, and he responds "lol im not going 2 rob u", after which I simply stop responding to him at all.

I am not a gold maker. When I have a large supply of gold, which is rare, it is usually due to weeks spend grinding dailies. Truth be told, I rather suck at it because I simply do not have the patience. I can run dailies every day, but for me, that is less an issue of patience, and more a chance to play around with my shadow spec. I learned to play shadow by doing dailies. When someone asks in trade chat if someone can craft something for them, and I can, if I'm not busy I will help out, and usually I just do it for free if I'm just standing around bored. I suck at making money.

Having said that, I have a very extensive list of patterns for both Enchanting and Tailoring. I don't talk about it here much, but I'm slightly obsessed with professions. They are quite possibly my favorite part of the game. When I played Aion, I would sit around all day and craft things. So I really should probably spend more time selling combines in trade chat.

We share a small chat channel amongst the folks who make up our core 10 man raiding group, simply because we've all grown pretty close, and we're not all in the same guild. I was relating this story to our resident ret pally, and he commented about me farming. Confused, I asked him what he meant.

Tordun: "You said you were doing combines. So... you were farming. GET IT? GET ITTTT?"
Me: "..."
Tordun: "Are you seriously telling me you don't get that?"
Me: "..."
Muffincups: "I got it, but then.. I'm from blahblah county." (A county near where we live that is largely made up of farmers)
Me: "... OH IT'S A FARMER JOKE"

The more you know.

Single Abstract Noun Bloggers!

2010-03-08T23:58:00.002-05:00

By popular request, I am making this post as a placeholder.

If you a member of the Bloggie guild Single Abstract Noun and you have a blog, please comment here with a link to your blog, as well as the name of your character(s) in the guild - and if you are EU or US.

In order to keep this a bit tidier than our guild bank, excess comments will be deleted - please just comment once with the above information.

LET THE COMMENTING COMMENCE

The Most Annoying Proc of All Time

2010-03-08T09:51:00.001-05:00

So on Friday night I managed to get into a pugged 25 man ICC rep run. For those of you who are unfamiliar with what this entails, it involves clearing all the trash up until Marrowgar, and then resetting the raid and doing it all over again. There is a lot of initial trash, so you can get quite a bit of rep this way. I managed to get myself to Revered with Ashen Verdict, which meant I could upgrade my ring, as well as spend some Frost Emblems on Primordial Saronite to buy a couple of Tailoring patterns.

This new ring is the first in its specific series to have a proc on it. The proc in question?

"Your helpful spells have a chance to increase your spell power by 285 for 10 sec."

For most healers, this is probably a perfectly satisfactory proc. Granted, I'm not a big fan of random spellpower increases for healing, since you can't really depend upon them, but it's still not bad. You can use it as a good opportunity to blow some cooldowns, like Tranquility or Divine Hymn.

Unfortunately, for Disc Priests, all this does is make me want to punch someone.

"A more powerful spell is already active."
"A more powerful spell is already active."
"A more powerful spell is already active."
"A more powerful spell is already effing active, stop spamming your shield key in rage."

ARGHHHH.

I know that the bubble on that mage only has an absorption value of probably 10-20 health left on it. I have a tool on XPerl that gives me a good indicator of how much shield someone has left. And I cannot put a new shield on that mage.

This isn't a bug. This is an annoying error message that people get all the time with spellpower procs. Thorns is a good example. There is a little thread over on the WoW forums that talks about it a bit. Why is it a particular problem for Disc Priests?

Because it's more than just annoying. The current combat log system does not seem to actually record the absorbtion value of the shield on people. You can't hover over the Power Word: Shield icon in your buffs and see how much shield you have left. All that matters to the combat log is that you have the buff. Period.

I get a spellpower proc, and I put a shield on you. You take enough hits to wear down 99% of that shield. In fact, you only have enough shield left to absorb about 20 hit points of damage. Weakened Soul drops off, and I go to bubble you again, only to find out that I can't put a nice fresh bubble over the one you currently have that only has about 20 hit points left to it... because the combat log still considers the old bubble "superior" to the new one, since the original shield I cast on your was larger than the one I'm trying to cast on you now, due to having more spellpower when it was cast. It doesn't matter how much shield value actually remains.

So instead of having a shield on you that will absorb 10,000 damage, you are stuck with that nasty old used up one that will only absorb 10 points, until the buff times out, you take another hit, or you have the presence of mind (and nothing better to do I guess) to right click off the old buff.

See the problem here?

Again, we find ourselves in a situation in which tank healing Disc Priests have much less of a problem with this than raid healing ones. The tank will almost always use up that original shield before Weakened Soul drops off anyway. For shield spammers... be prepared to get very frustrated with a proc that will mostly just screw up your shielding rotation.

Hopefully an updated combat log reporting system will accompany Cataclysm - shields are not recorded in a very good way with the current system.

Things About Which I Pre-Emptively Panic

2010-03-05T16:45:00.001-05:00

I have kept a journal since I was in the single digit age bracket. Since college, most of my self-philosophy has been via online journaling - previously livejournal, and now here, though I do try to keep things relevant to WoW.

It is usually fairly entertaining to read my Deep Thoughts as a pre-teen... but sometimes it's actually quite frightening. Sometimes it helps me put things in perspective.

Within the month, I will be creeping one number close to the big three oh. 27 is really not that big of a deal, so I'm not going to flip out about it. I keep telling myself this. But then, on occasion, I hear the very loud ticking of a biological clock, and I start to panic again. I should be married. I should have a career settled. I should be preparing myself to have kids. SHOULDN'T I? I'm running out of time! TIME!

And then, in an effort to "soothe" myself, I pull out one of my old journals from when I was 15 years old. And I read the entry that always reminds me, in a somewhat calming way, that I am simply fucking insane. At the risk of humiliating my 15 year old self, I will share it here.

"And Lilly," (yes I called my journal Lilly so just shut up) "I'm wondering if God would forgive me if I went out and had sex just enough to get pregnant. Because I really want to have kids. And I'm quickly running out of time. I mean, if I don't do it soon, I may miss my chance entirely!"

Did I mention I was FIFTEEN YEARS OLD when I wrote that?

Due to that somewhat enlightening recognition of my internal panicky nature, I have decided that I just can't worry about this crap, or I will drive myself insane. Or at least... I will try not to worry about it, but I'm not always successful.

Why am I even bothering to mention this on a WoW blog (aside from the fact that, let's face it, that's pretty entertaining)? Because I have a tendency to have this panicky attitude in every facet of my life - not just the ticking biological clock.

Bornakk announced some "hot fixes" on the WoW forums yesterday (oh hai thar you sexy orc with an Amish beard) and when I read them, I grew very suspicious. And that suspicion grew into panic, which then degenerated into all out heartbreak. All in the span of 30 seconds. That's how I roll.

Why wait so late in the ICC game to make these fixes? In fact, I might venture to say that these aren't really "fixes" at all, but mini-nerfs. Maybe they were justified in some scenarios, but plenty of people were able to move past these difficult encounters with little complaint.

It's one thing to have a nerf-buff that can be turned off. But I can't turn off hot-fixes. I can't turn back time and ensure that my raiding team gets the same epic experience in ICC that so many others did. In a way, I feel like we've missed our chance. Apparently the real challenge of ICC was to clear it out before it stopped being as challenging. We haven't even conquered Plagueworks yet due to ID resets and time. I was determined to make this ICC10 group work, and work well... and now I feel as though I've failed to get what I really wanted out of this whole experiment: The same experience that hardcore 10 man raiding guilds got.

A lot of people seem to think that the people raging over nerfs are the e-peeners and the elitists. And I will agree that there is plenty of that going around. I will be the first to step up and admit that Blizzard opened the raiding doors to people like me and gave us more accessibility. I don't think I'm a poor player - but I refuse to leave my friendly little guild for a raiding guild.

Not all of us who are upset about the "easy-ing up" of WoW are hardcore e-peeners. Some of us are just your average players who occasionally dance naked on mailboxes. Some of us just care more about the process than the end result. Some of us want to know, for ourselves, that we achieved something truly spectacular, against all odds. It's not about showing off to others, it's about proving it to ourselves. When I got my GRE scores, I was excited not because I could flash the number in front of grad schools - but because I had proven something to myself, even if it were just a standardized test. I hate how easy it is for me to gear myself up, yet I don't begrudge others for doing it. It's just a giant let-down for me, because I don't personally feel as though I did anything all that great to get my epix. I just queued up. It doesn't have any value to me unless I found it difficult to achieve.

It's not uncommon for 10 man ICC teams to struggle on Rotface for six hours. The difference is that for them, that may mean two days. For us? That means three weeks. Since we aren't a raiding guild, people weren't picked for this raiding team based on "Are you available during this time slot?" - they were chosen first, and then asked "What time will work best for you?" and thus we have two hours a week that works for everyone that I wanted to join me in ICC. I could have picked people based on schedule availability, and run with entirely different people. But I wanted to achieve this great feat with my friends, so I did everything I could to make sure it was my friends who joined me.

And here I am, quickly running out of time to "do it right". My chance at conquering a challenging ICC is passing me by so quickly, and I feel like I'm missing out.

Or am I just being that silly 15 year old girl again?

Single Abstract Noun is Recruiting Stateside!

2010-03-03T23:02:00.002-05:00

So, in the interests of fostering that "community thing" you always hear us bloggers nattering on about, Tamarind (who will always be Tamarind to me, no matter how many name changes) decided it would be a lovely idea to start a guild specifically for us bloggers and blog-lovers and readers and commenters - the WoW blogging community at large. Basically, all of us social folks who just love to chatter.

It's almost like the antithesis of Gevlon's Blue Guild... we have absolutely no real purpose EXCEPT to be social.

Unfortunately, EU players are separated from US/Oceanic players by more than mere ocean. We are unable to play together on a single server, sadly. However, <Single Abstract Noun> has both a US/Oceanic charter as well as an EU one! Tam is taking up the lead for the EU side, and I've started up the US end. Both are on our respective Argent Dawn servers.

If you play on a US/Oceanic server, you can join us by rolling up an Alliance alt on Argent Dawn. If you are EU, you will want to roll a Hordie toon on Argent Dawn, and see Tamarind's post for more details. For US/Oceanic, I've set up a chat channel. Simply /join simgleabstractnoun, and ask anyone in the channel to shoot you a guild invite. I *think* I've set it up properly so that everyone can invite members.

You do not have to be a blogger to join us! Part of the fun of this adventure is in getting to interact with other bloggers AND our readers. If you DO have a blog, you can add the URL in a public note on your character under the guild UI thingie. There is a guild tabard if you'd like to pick one up. (Quick note about the tabard - Tam told me exactly what tabard icon he had in mind, and it was intended to be somewhat reminiscent of PPI... but I'm not sure he tried it on a female character. So... be prepared for "Nice jugs!" comments!)

If you enjoy RPing, Argent Dawn is an RP server. If you want to level your toon, I'm sure others will be happy to do so as well. If you just need a break from your home guild or raiding, and want to go chatter with other similar-minded folk, this is the perfect opportunity for you. Several folks have offered up their vent information as well so we can chat with one another in real time. Maybe we can eventually chat with our EU friends via vent as well!

Aussies! Kiwis! Canucks! Americans! Calling all of you - come join us for completely frivolous socializing, and occasional Hogger raids.

And, it wouldn't be a guild without RULES amirite? So I'm going to copy and paste Tamarind's rules, since I consider him the REAL leader in all of this!

The guild rules of Single Abstract Noun are as follows:
1. Anybody with even the vaguest passing interest in the blogging community is welcome – which is why it’s a blogging communities guild, not a bloggers’ guild.
2. Single Abstract Noun is a pantocracy – which means, not only that pants are encouraged, but it’s rule by all. The guild belongs to all who belong to it.
3. Use the guild however you like, as a meeting place, for conversation, for running the occasional dungeon, have a million alts, have a single character, whatever you like.
4. There are no rules about respecting other people because GODDAMN IT I’M TAKING THAT AS READ.
5. Leave your wowcock in the stand by the door.

I am going to add my own additional rule in there. You must accept the fact that, uhm, people will likely blog about this guild. Just sayin'.

Also, please pass the word around. The problem with being a healy blogger is that... well, all of the members of this guild thus far are healers. Lots of interesting healing discussions going on but... in the interest of conversational balance, let's try to get some non-healers in there too!

I will try to be on at random hours so that I can shoot out invite to several of you in different time zones. If there is no one on when you log on, either shoot me a Twitter DM (MissMedicina) or an email to missmedicina at gmail dot com.

To Bonus, or Not To Bonus

2010-03-03T08:32:00.004-05:00

So, about that T10 4piece change.

Haven’t heard about it?

Well, the most recent PTR build has a change for Healy Priests’ T10 4 piece tier bonus. The current, live version, is this:

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.

I always thought that was rather confusing, but then let’s be fair. I’m slow. I had decided to forego that particular tier bonus for two reasons:

1) By a strange twist of awesomeness, whose details I am not at liberty to discuss, I miraculously acquired a free Leggings of Woven Death. Since I now have those, I figured what the hell, and went and purchased Meteor Chaser’s Raiment, because Dwarves look oh so hot in a turtleneck. Cough. This essentially killed my opportunity for the 4 piece bonus anyway.

2) Did I mention I’m slow? I don’t even want to see the stats on how many times I would miss the reset cooldown on my Penance. It would likely just throw off my tank-healing rotation, and confuse me.

Now, there was a lot of outcry about the crappy set bonuses for Disc Priests, because it just looked like Blizz was completely out of touch with what Disc Priests actually do most of the time. In 10 mans they may tank heal (and both tier bonuses for Disc Priests are very much directed towards tank healing IMO), but in 25s it is much more common for them to be raid healing – Pallies are just that much better in 25s. The tier bonuses don’t really do much for shield spamming – but to be fair, gear itemization in general does not do much for shield spamming Disc Priests. It’s a bit of a mess. Borrowed Time means you don’t need haste. Shields can’t crit, so you don’t need crit. You don’t need mana regen. So basically, everything that’s not Spellpower or at least Intellect is just *yawn*.

Okay so let’s take a look-see at what the PTR may have in store for us in terms of a new T10 4pc bonus:

Priest Tier-10 4-Piece Healing Set Bonus: Redesigned. This bonus now increases the effectiveness of the caster's Power Word: Shield and Renew spells by 5%.

I feel very ANH about this bonus, but it is definitely superior to the previous set bonus for shield spammers. It’s pretty irritating to change the bonus so late in the game though – quite a few people have already made their badge choices for tier or non-tier gear.

For Holy priests, I think it’s utter crap – and my main reasoning for that is coming directly from something Zusterke (for whom I have the utmost respect and admiration - who doesn't?) pointed out on the PlusHeal forums:

I'm confused by the idea that we get a FHeal bonus in the 2P and a Renew bonus in 4P when those spells seem to be competitors as filler spells.

I see Renew being touted more and more as a replacement for Flash Heal in many ways for Holy Priests, and I’m not sure yet how I feel about that. As someone who always ran with a lot of Druids, I hated it. Druids are better at HoTs, so it's better for me to focus on more burstiness while they deal with ... uhm, health pool softening. If you aren't druid-heavy, then yes, Renew is great.

In a raid, I do not heal in a vacuum - I heal as part of a team, and therefore, I consider the strengths of others in my team when making my own gear and talent choices. When I'm holy and healing next to a Druid, I rarely use Renew.

In conclusion though, if the PTR changes go through to live, it won’t really affect me personally, though I am sad for all those who saved up the emblems to get the bonus and will not like the change – Holy and Disc alike. If you had a good way to keep track of the free Penance or Circle of Healing proc, and if you were a tank healing Disc Priest, I would have thought it was pretty good.

As a side note… every time I read comments about Dawn Moore (the Healy priest column writer at WoW.com) I breathe yet another sigh of relief that I did not get that job. I may not always agree with her evaluations of things but… I know for a fact I would not handle that much criticism very well. Yes, yes… I’m a wimp.

I REJECT YOUR PITY BUFF

2010-03-03T06:27:00.001-05:00

Yesterday when I woke up I fell right into a mental pit in the ground, so bear with me as I try to climb my way out over the next couple of days. I guess there's only so much srs healing philosophy posts in one week, it appears. Also, the debate rages on about Holy Pallies and Disc Priests in the comments section of my Single Target Healing post, and I'm reading it with great interest.

So, first on the docket: ICC nerf buff. Luckily, it's optional, because I'm with BobTurkey - WHY SO SOON? I want none of that nonsense. As soon as I heard about it yesterday I alerted all my ICC10 team members via a very professional, thoughtful, and mature email, that consisted of only one line.

"I REFUSE THE 5% PITY BUFF"

Of course, some of the DPSers who shall remain nameless were totally in favor of utilizing that buff. If we were really struggling with the content, maybe - but we aren't struggling any more than the average raiding guild. The only thing limiting us is time. But wouldn't it make more sense to wait until a lot of different guilds have completed it on Heroic? No one on our server has yet. As far as I know, there's no way to differentiate between achievements gained with the buff or without it. My achievements are a mark of pride for me, especially since my guild is so small.

See, I'm that annoying person that never wanted to use the door exploit of Shade of Aran in Kara. I refused the "walk behind the Lich King in Halls of Reflection" cheat long before purple lightning of death doomed its existence. I never wanted higher level players and friends to run me through dungeons or quests. I am, quite possibly, the most irritating person ever... BUT I DON'T WANT YOUR PITY BUFFS.

In all seriousness though... it does seem rather soon for the buffs to me. I realize we're slow on progression, but... really? Hmm. Maybe I'm just ridiculously out of touch with the raiding scene.

Cataclysm Stat Changes

2010-03-01T19:17:00.002-05:00

If you cannot access the full text of the incoming stat changes for Cataclysm that was posted on the forums today, mosey on over to BigBearButt where he has kindly provided the full text of the announcement.

(If you can't access it from work, add http://thebigbearbutt.com/ to your feedreader)

Healing Roles: Single Target vs. Tank Healing

2010-03-01T07:04:00.003-05:00

You'll hear a lot of people talk about how Paladins or Discipline Priests are tank healers, or how other classes are subpar tank healers. I mean, everyone knows that Druids and Holy Priests are raid healers, and Shammies are Chain Healers, right?

The biggest mistake a healing lead can make, especially in a ten man raid when you only have 2 or 3 healers, is to pigeon-hole your healers based on their perceived niche. The larger the group, the more healers you have. The more healers you have, the more each healer can be specialized based on their niche. Thus we find ourselves in a situation where healers often have very specific roles in 25 man, but require a bit more flexibility in 10 mans. And too many people equate the strengths of each healing class in a 25 man to what their abilities will mean in a 10 man scenario.

Yes, some healers are better at certain tasks than others. However, never fail to recognize individual player style in combination with the flexibility of their class. A very important thing to remember is that all healing classes are balanced with abilities to heal single targets in addition to group heals. They absolutely have to be designed this way so that they can solo heal 5 man dungeons. Therefore, all healing classes can potentially do a stellar job with a tank healing assignment.

In order to break this down, we need to systematically break down the descriptions of single target healers and tank healers, and we also need to learn to differentiate between raid healers and AoE healers. Today I’m going to discuss single target healing.

Single Target Healing is an ability. It’s a niche that some healers, by design, excel at better than others. Tank Healing is an assignment. Got it? Wondering what the difference is? Well, it’s a subtle difference, I’ll give you that. The two classes most often referred to when discussing Single Target Healers are Disc Priests and Holy Pallies.

Last week Kurn had a post that discussed this conundrum with Holy Pallies, and it really got me thinking. Here’s a snippet of what Kurn said, but you can also read the whole interesting post yourself:

Single-target healing is our focus. True, this will generally be a tank, but that’s not always the case. Tank healing does not equal single-target healing. Apart from anything else, calling us “tank healers” completely ignores paladins who like to engage in PVP and arenas. There’s no way a mage, for example, can properly be called a “tank”, unless they’re tanking Krosh Firehand in Gruul’s Lair… Tank-healing is a subset of single-target healing.

I agree completely with Kurn (though I would probably flip that 3rd sentence and say that while tank healing IS single target healing, single target healing is not necessarily tank healing). And I will take that one step farther with Disc Priests.

When I was in charge of healing assignments in 25 mans, we had far too many Holy Pallies, and not enough raid healers. Therefore, when we had a Disc Priest, it was a challenge for me to come up with a specific assignment for them at first… and then I realized that most encounters have a situation in which a single player aside from the tank will start to take considerable damage.

Slag Pot. (Ulduar - Ignis)
Stone Grip. (Ulduar - Kologarn)
Bone Spike Graveyard. (ICC - Lord Marrowgar)
Mark of the Fallen Champion. (ICC - Saurfang)
Mutated Infection. (ICC - Rotface)
Penetrating Cold. (ToC - Anub'arak)
Legion Flame. (ToC - Jaraxxus)
Incinerate Flesh. (ToC - Jaraxxus)

Our resident Disc Priest could easily focus on these individual targets and allow the tank healers to continue doing their job and the raid healers to continue with theirs. It worked out fabulously – that is the strength of single target healing, and it does not necessarily need to be tank healing. I'll bet Kurn would agree that Holy Pallies would also do an excellent job at taking on these single-target non-tank healing assignments.

The Discipline Priest versus the Holy Paladin

There have been a lot of discussions lately about Disc Priests simply not being up to par as tank healers. Personally, I do not see a particular problem with tank healing as a Disc Priest in 10 man ICC (though I’m not a Hard Moder), but I can definitely see the argument in a 25 man raid.

The issue is actually less to do with single target healing ability, and more to do with the fact that most fights are two-tank fights to some degree – and Grace in effect punishes Disc Priests by 9% when we switch healing targets to try and heal two instead of just one. That is a significant gimp on our throughput. Pallies, on the other hand, can simultaneously heal the Main Tank AND the Off Tank through Beacon of Light (though they may not always choose to do this – see Saunder’s post).

Therefore, anytime there is a two tank fight, Pallies have an advantage over Disc Priests. In a 25 man environment, Disc Priests make better support healers for tanks, whereas Pallies can really do the brunt of the throughput healing. In 10 man, the problem is less extreme – Binding Heal, a Power Word: Shield, a Renew or a Prayer of Mending along with a splash heals from the raid healer will often be enough to keep up the OT until an actual tank swap occurs.

So, fine, Disc Priests are weak compared to Holy Pallies in terms of Tank Healing, at least in 25 man. Even Ghostcrawler has admitted this, albeit somewhat cautiously and grudgingly.

Personally, I suspect that it’s not so much that Disc Priests aren’t very good at it, it’s that we just can’t compete with Holy Pallies. For a vast portion of the healing public, that competition factor doesn’t really come into play – but for those who are in progressive raiding guilds, it does.
Therefore, the problem with Disc Priests as tank healers is that we are quite possibly the perfect example of a Single Target healer – whereas Holy Pallies are dual target healers. And current fights are usually designed around dual- tanking.

Other Classes as Tank Healers

As I mentioned before, all healers can adequately tank heal when necessary. I’ll repeat myself here – it is a requirement of designing healers that they be able to maintain the tank and group because healers are not just designed around raid encounters. They also need to be able to do their jobs well in a 5 man scenario in which they are the only healer. This was the most important thing I learned from the Circle of Healers survey – most responders who were not of the “tank healer” category commented that too many people don’t understand that they CAN tank heal.

Of course they can. There were plenty of times when, as a Holy Priest, I had to tank heal. This is one of the strengths of the Holy Priest, for the record – the ability to slip into ANY healing role at a moment’s notice without any significant gear or talent changes. If the tank healer goes down, the Holy Priest can slip right in to the role quite easily. Yes, a Holy Priest can definitely keep the tank alive and do a damn good job at it – they’ve got the burst and the single target throughput abilities to do it. They have a solid, and yet simple, rotation – as well as some “health pool softening” talents with Renew (side note: how do you like the word I chose to describe HoTs? Health pool softening – yay? Nay?).

For most raiding purposes, what sets the role of Tank Healing apart from other roles is that of sustainability.

Holy Priests can slip in and do an admirable job. However, they are not usually the best permanent choice for the role because of sustainability. In many situations, a Holy Priest will really struggle with their mana if forced to heal a single target for the entirety of a boss fight. It’s much better than it used to be, of course – now that we don’t have to pop in and out of the five second rule to stretch our mana, we can do a better job of it. But even still, Holy Priests just don't generally have the mana regen capabilities of a Disc Priest or Holy Pally unless they really go out on a limb to gear specifically for it.

I regret that I’m not as well versed in the styles of Shammies and Druids, but I suspect that in order to perform at their best as a tank healer, it requires a specific talent and gear selection. I rather like Druids as tank support healers, but burst is not the strength of a Druid. In my opinion, the best tank healers are the ones that have a reliable burst throughput and sustainability.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this though – especially from you Shammies and Druids. How do you feel your tank healing abilities compare?

Later this week we will discuss raid and AoE healing.

Best of the Healing World: Feb 26th

2010-02-26T09:42:00.000-05:00

I realized this week, as I started counting, that I read about 75 different healing blogs, which encompasses more than half of my WoW reading experience. Instead of making a post every day to inform you of some of the best coming from the healing realm of the blogosphere (and from many blogs that you may not have even heard of), I will sift through it all for you and try to provide links to the best of the week on Fridays.

Hopefully you can discover a lot of great healing blogs this way!

If I tried to link every post I found interesting, the list would never end - so I'm trying to limit it to posts that can give you tips and interesting insight into a specific healing class, or sometimes healing philosophy in general.

Priests

Avalonna gives a great explanation of the under-appreciated Hymn of Hope - and how to maximize its usage.
Holyform offers some tips for Disc priests for the Festergut fight (including how to tell Rotface and Festergut apart!) I'm trying to focus on recent posts, but I can't resist linking to Wikwocket's other ICC Disc tips as well: Gunship! Deathwhisper! Marrowgar! Hope Wik posts Rotface tips in the next week so that I know what to do when my raid tries Rot again... (hint, hint!)
Shintar asks... two healers or three in your ten man raid?
Mongrr responds to Ghostcrawler's forum comments on Priests, and finds himself happily surprised. He's just as pleased as I am about GC's explanation of how single target healing is STILL raid healing.
Speaking of raid healing... Disc Priests are getting too much attention. Derevka is here to give Holy Priests tips on how to raid heal effectively, and he does a great job explaining situations for every spell.

Druids

Another great Kae pictogram boss explanation! This time it's Blood Queen Lana'thel.
Druid specific tips on healing in the Sindragosa fight, provided by Tree Bark Jacket.
Looking for a list of ICC loot for Resto Druids? Tree Haelz has a very nice one. It includes both 10 man and 25 man, as well as heroic versions of both.
Beruthiel has a really nice analysis of Living Spirit versus Empowered Touch - so well explained, I even understood it!

Shamans

Wugan waxes philosophical about different types of healing, and categorizes Resto Shammy healing spells accordingly.
Also, if you are a healing lead or raid leader, check out Wugan's explanation of the different Resto totems and their abilities, cooldowns, benefits, etc.
Ancestral Knowledge provides tips and pointers to Resto Shammies for Frostwing Halls.
Windsoar at Jaded Alt gives us a pretty nice Resto Shammy cheat sheet!
Woot, I've been looking for explanations like this. Zigi tells us (and draws for us... with BOXES) how to face the Rotting Frost Giant for the weekly.

Paladins

The Bossy Pally talks to you about all the different things you can do with your Cleanse spell.
Uhm, so, Bossy Pally was super awesome this week, because she ALSO had a great post giving advice and suggestions to the Paladin who has just picked up a Holy offspec at level 40.
Next week I plan on talking in depth about healer pigeon-holing - and Divine Plea has an excellent discussion about how Pallies get typecasted all the time by people misunderstanding the difference between single target healing and tank healing.
Saunder at Non-Squishy Heals talks about how he chooses to use his Beacon of Light, which often differs from the traditional Pally expectation of "Beacon one tank, heal the other".
What do you mean Pallies can't solo-heal Sarth +3? Dristanel says pfffffft to that, and tells you how to do it.

Podcast Interviews Wheee!

2010-02-26T02:22:00.002-05:00

I might just do a whole buncha posts today!

First things first though... Wednesday night I did an interview with Exanna at OMGpriest! for her podcast, and it was pretty fun. I sound so tired and goofy, so all of you haters will want to listen to it and give me hell for it!

In all seriousness, it's a fairly short interview just talking about some of the basics of Discipline priesting... things you might want to know if you're switching from Holy to Disc. Listening to it now, I keep thinking of all these other things I should have said, but alas, hind sight is always 20/20. It can be rough making the switch, but Exanna and I went over some of the basics that a fresh Disc Priest may need to know.

Check it out on her page: OMGpriest!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~

And speaking of newbie Disc Priests, I want to leave you with a lesson I learned in a ToC25 pug tonight - It is far better to do nothing but cast Power Word: Shield as a Disc Priest than it is to go through entire fights without casting it once.

I've run into this a lot lately in pugs - other priests healing tanks with me, and me feeling that I needed to shield their tanks because they just weren't doing it themselves. Yes, Penance is an awesome spell - and you could argue that Penance is a bigger staple of the Disc Priest diet than even Power Word: Shield. But the foundation of Disc Priesting is mitigation - SO USE YOUR SHIELDS OR I WILL CRINGE.

And then I'll blog about it.

But at least I don't name names. I'd like to think that if you are a Disc Priest, and you read this blog... you know better.