TankSpot - Blogs - Galushi

1h Shield Dps versus Dualwield Style

Galushi — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 21:25:19 GMT

Ok. I've done a majority of the work i think, and with the result im not going to press the issue further.

TLDR version: Dualwield style is still better then 1h/shield method, and will scale better with rage gain, dps gear, and raid buffs. 1h/Shield is a lot better then current but isn't the best. Might be good for dps situations while in tank gear when nothing to tank.

1h/Shield Prot Dps -versus- Dual Wield Prot Dps
The Battle of the ages!

Okay, so i set out to find out if the new talents and mechanics to protection based abilities would give us the means to dps with shields instead of the dual wield that we've been doing. I was thinking that with increased devastate and shield block average damage, and devastates chance to proc rage free shield slams, it would compensate for the methods lack of rage generation.

Let's start with some disclaimers and assumptions/simplifications i made. I'll try to be as thorough as I can, but as I'm typing this up after I did all my math, I'm probably gonna forget things.

1. I based rage gain off white attacks on a few mobs to estimate how much rage I would get per swing with a 2.6 speed weapon. Crits are double rage, offhand generates rage relative to its 50% damage it does.
2. The only buffs I factored into my calculations was Windfury as a rage gain benefit. Any further raid buffs or advancements in gear would scale non-shield slam methods better, because pure AP doesn't affect shield slam.
3. As I assumed, and also found through running numbers based on a rage generated per hit, Dual Wield's rage generation will scale faster then 1h/shield since it's white dps outscales a single one hander. This is to be expected. This also means that an increase in gear or buffs will scale dual wield rage more then 1h/shield giving dual wield an edge not shown in this simple model.
4. I based all damage on abilities around my current gear level. About 1850 AP, 32% crit, 9% hit, 100 dps 2.6 speed weapons. I did not factor in ArP or mob armor because differences in that nature would effect all methods equally. Due to my oversight, i did not include dodge/parry in the attack table. So for this test i'll pretend im also Expertise capped. lol
5. I did not factor in glancing blows or the prevention of glancing blows that heroic strike offers into the equation. Doing so was extra work I did not want to do. Because of this Dual Wield is slightly inflated i think, but it shoudlnt be much. Since I'm soft hit capped, we can probably pretend this test is with a lvl 70 mob that only has specials capped, 19% miss on white damage, and no glancing blows.
6. Even tho stats and ability levels are taken as a lvl 70, i used a level 80 spec because it would include all the talents that would be relavant at 80. Assuming each ability scales the same with eachother between 70 and 80, i think it's fair. Things like 1h Spec effect all damage equally so don't need to be calculated.
7. I normalized at 2.6 instead of 2.4 spd to save work. Inflates Deva/WW a little.
8. Oh ya, I included use of the Glyph that returns 10 rage on heroic strike crit. Since i dont know if the "+10% SBV after SS" meta will fit with my HS glyph, or how that sbv stacks with talents, ill only consider the HS glyph.

Now onto some data. From my quick test hitting a few mobs I made a guess that a MH white hit generates 12 rage on a non-crit. Critical hits will generate double rage. To figure out an average rage gain per swing i used this formula:

12 Rage x (.32)2 x (.68) = 15.84 rage / swing

The (.32) represents the crit rate being multiplied into the base rage gain to get an average. Since I'm using Windfury 20% haste for this experiment (cuz i wasn't sure if id be rage starved before i started), the main hand attacks at a speed of 2.6/(1.2)= 2.42 spd. I want to use a nice even number of gcd's and cycles so i will use a fight duration of one minute (40 gcd). With an attack speed of 2.42, we will have 60/2.42 = 24.8 swings in a minute.

24.8 swings x 15.84 rage/swing = 392.8 rage gained in one minute

Reverse engineeing this rage gain to include the 19% miss penalty of duel wield yields:

336.26 rage gained per minute, Mainhand
168.13 rage gained per minute, Offhand
-------------504 rage per minute, total.

So now we have an idea of how much rage we have to work with. Now our goal is to figure out some rotations with our GCD's and see how much rage they use, and hopefully have some left over to burn on heroic strikes. Heres the couple rotations I think would be most ideal

1. 3Dev/SS Method. Operating with 1h/shield, and using Sword and Boards roughly 1/3 chance to proc free shield slam. Ideal/Lucky situation.
2. 4Dev/SS Method. Operating with 1h/shield, and on average should have a total 120% chance to proc free shield slam. On paper this guarentees that condition. Safe.
3. 7Dev/1WW method. Operating with Dual wield, this is close to what we use on live, tho i added an extra devastate so that the full cycle of gcds is a good multiple of 40.
4. 8Dev Spam Method. Operating with Dual wield, this is an all out spamage of devastate, using any excess rage on heroic strike.

The rage gained and used in each situation is as follows:

1. 3dev/ss = 392.8 (gain), 270 (used), 104 Left.
2. 4dev/ss = 392.8 (gain), 288 (used), 122 left.
3. 7dev/ww = 504 (gain), 425 (used), 79 left.
4. devspam = 504 (gain), 360 (used), 144 left.

So we have our rage gain and spent in each cycle, and how much rage we have left. But how do we know how much we can heroic strike? Well, since i already assumed we got all that rage from white damage, we have to include the rage not gained in the heroic strike cost.

1h/shield : 15.48 (white swing rage) + 9 (Base - Talents) - 10*0.47 (rage refunded on crits) = 20.14 rage
DW : 13.56 + 9 - 4.7 = 17.86 rage

Now after taking the leftover rage and turning them into heroic strikes, rounding down, we have a total table of the attacks we get. Now the important part. DAMAGE! Using my unbuffed stats i gathered avrg damage values for each ability and calculated in crit rates and impale. Heres the list.

1. MH : 662.5 : 1325(crit) : 874.5 avg
2. MH(dw): 662.5 : 1325(crit) : 748.6 avg (lower due to miss rate)
3. OH(dw): 331.3 : 662.5(crit) : 374 avg
4. Deva: 810 : 1782(crit) : 1267 avg
5. WW: 993 : 2184(crit) : 1375 avg
6. ShSlam: 1108 : 2437(crit) : 1732 avg
7. H-Strike: 979 : 2152(crit) : 1531 avg

Whew! Okay so we have a list of rage gain, how many GCD attacks and heroic strikes that lets us do, and how much they all hit for on average. All we have left it to multiply it out and see how much relative dps each method does!

Prot Shield 4dev/ss method
MH = 19.8 x 874.5 = 17305 dmg
Dev = 32 x 1267 = 40544 dmg
ShSl = 8 x1732 = 13856 dmg
H-Str = 5 x 1531 = 7655

Total = 1322 dps

Prot Shield 3dev/ss method
MH = 18.8 x 874.5 = 16440 dmg
Dev = 30 x1267 = 38010 dmg
ShSl = 10 x 1732 = 17320 dmg
H-Str = 6 x 1531 = 9186 dmg

Total = 1349 dps

Prot DW 7dev/ww method
MH = 20.8 x 748.6 = 15570 dmg
OH = 24.8 x 374 = 9275 dmg
Dev = 35 x 1267 = 44345 dmg
Ww = 5 x 1375 = 6875 dmg
Hs = 4 x 1732 = 6928 dmg

Total = 1383 dps

Prot DW Dev Spam method
MH = 16.8 = 748.6 = 12576 dmg
OH = 24.8 x 374 = 9275 dmg
Dev = 40 x 1267 = 50680 dmg
HS = 8 x 1732 = 13856 dmg

Total = 1439 dps - THE WINNER!

As you can see, the 1h/shield methods do a decent job at keeping up, but this is a situation (nearly unbuffed, low rage) that favors 1h/shield. With dual wield white damage out scaling 1h/shield rage generation, and heroic strike for dual wield being slightly cheaper, Dual Wield will easily outgrow shield slam dps. This is coupled with the fact that AP buffs will not effect shield slam.

In the other direction, at low dps gear levels such as wearing tank gear (with some SBV stat as bonus), 1h/shield dps might possibly surpass dual wield damage. It seems to be stronger in low rage situations where the proc for a free shield slam becomes very useful.

Another interesting thing to note. With Devastate buffed to 80% weapon damage and getting a 15% critical strike bonus for Devastate and Heroic Strike, its not useful to use whirlwind on cooldown anymore. On more then one target it could be a dps gain, but its better to use that 22 rage on a 9 rage devastate and apply that 13 rage saved on a heroic strike. Doing that will be a better dps advantage. This means that for future proc dps after patch 3.0 , we will be doing nothing but spamming devastate and queuing heroic strike to dump rage.

I hope this was useful to someone. I spent nearly all morning working out some stuff so i hope i didnt botch it too badly. Let me know what you think!

-Galu

ProtDps theorycrafting (relative to LK talents)

Galushi — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 18:02:14 GMT

Alright, this is some prelimenary theorycraft to view the benefit of the new LK prot spec 14/5/52 to a current Live cookiecutter prot tank spec 12/5/44. Basically the major difference for prot dps is that we gain Impale (+20% crit dmg bonus), Incite (+15% crit chance for heroic strike), and SwordnBoard (+15% crit chance for Devastate). Using one of my WWS reports, I will apply those bonuses to my damage breakdown and find a relative dps increase.

A few disclaimers:

1. My rotation isn't perfect. I'm sure there were times i could make better use of whirlwind on cooldown for better dps. Devastate gains an advantage with new talents, but should be still below WW on a dmg/gcd basis. Whether the increased dmg/rage efficiency of Devastate coupled with using that extra rage on heroic strike dumping is a dps gain, I do not know at this time. I typically dps under the assumption to use WW on cooldown, devastate spam otherwise, and dump rage on heroic strike at rage >40.

2. The fight may not be ideal. Squishy mobs, lucky crit rate, enviromental damage to fuel rage; can all play a factor. Theres also a little bit of execute/cleave damage in the log that I did not work out the numbers for, so the Impale bonus is slightly undervalued in my work. The main purpose of this theorycrafting was to establish the benefit of 3 *new* talents to protection specced dps viability. Since these abilities are the greatest percentage of protection's dps, aside from white damage, I consider this to be valid.

3. This is only on paper. Real dps situations are subject to RNG, latency, skill, and other factors. These numbers while being specific to this one WWS report should be reasonably accurate. One thing to note is that when raid dps increases, each players dps increases because cooldowns have proportionally better uptimes. Since I'm working math to show a difference between talented and non-talented pure damage, this shouldn't be an issue.

4. Things might change with the Heroic Strike glyph that returns 10 rage on crit, increasing the use of heroic strike and therefore boosting protection dps even further because heroic strike will be a larger part of total damage.

5. Since none of these talents affect rage generation, without the glyph, I think my rotation used (while not perfect) is attainable in a raid setting. Only the damage of the abilities increased, not there relative usage.

6. Missed attacks are independent of Crits on the combat table. While this does not effect any calculations, I included my "Misses" under the breakdown for each ability for continuity sake (adding hit/crit/miss together to get total attacks).

7. I'm making an assumption that all 3 of these talents would be achievable at 70. They aren't. But since I only have BC data to work with, I'm applying the new talents to level 70 Dps. Until I get some level 80 data (with and without Impale/Incite/SnB) this is the best I can do.

Hopefully my math is logical enough to follow.
Report used: http://wowwebstats.com/lloe3r2n5dtji...9357&a=x46a904

Total Damage Done = 384,731
DPS Time = 241 seconds
Active DPS = 1596

Heroic Strike with Live Talents
Total Heroic Strikes = 60
-Hits = 26
-Crit = 32
-Avoided = 2

Avrg Heroic Strike Hit = 1184
Avrg Heroic Strike Crit = 2294

Total Hit Dmg (26*1184) = 30784
Total Crit Dmg (32*2294) = 73408
Total Dmg = 104192

Heroic Strike with Impale, Incite
Total Heroic Strikes = 60
Hits converted to Crits via Incite = 9
-Hit = 17
-Crit = 41
-Avoided =2

Avrg Heroic Strike Hit = 1184
Avrg Heroic Strike Crit (w/ Impale) = 2523

Total Hit Dmg (17*1184) = 20128
Total Crit Dmg (41*2523) = 103443
Total Dmg = 123571
-----------------------------------
Additional Dmg Gained = 19379
Heroic Strike %Dmg Increase = 18.6%
-----------------------------------

Devastate with Live Talents
Total Devastates = 116
-Hit = 62
-Crit = 52
-Avoided = 2

Avrg Devastate Hit = 577
Avrg Devastate Crit = 1211

Total Hit Dmg = 35774
Total Crit Dmg = 62972
Total Dmg = 98746

Devastate with Impale, SwordnBoard
Total Devastates = 116
Hits converted to Crits via SwordnBoard = 17
-Hit = 45
-Crit = 69
-Avoided = 2

Avrg Devastate Hit = 577
Avrg Devastate Crit (w/ Impale) = 1332

Total Hit Dmg = 25965
Total Crit Dmg = 91908
Total Dmg = 117873
-------------------------------
Additional Dmg Gained = 19127
Devastate %Dmg Increase = 19.4%
-------------------------------

Whirlwind
-Hit = 22
-Crit = 21
-Avoided = 1

Avrg WW Hit = 628
Avrg WW Crit = 1310
Avrg WW Crit (w/ impale) = 1441

Total Crit Dmg = 27510
total Crit Dmg (w/ impale) = 30261
----------------------------
Additional Dmg Gained = 2751
----------------------------

Additional Dmg from all three sources = 19379 + 19127 + 2751 = 41257
Dps time = 241 seconds
Additional dps = 171
Previous Dps = 1596
Total New Dps = 1767
Percentage Dps Increase = 10.7%

Prot dps in a raid setting.

Galushi — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 07:15:58 GMT

A week or so ago, on one of our rare full attendance nights, I had one of my other warriors in my tank corps MT Anetheron. Being a one-tank fight, this allowed me to strap on my pewpew gear and do some dps on the boss. My dps gear is a ways beyond the other prot warriors in the guild, and his prot gear isn't that far behind mine so it seemed like an obvious benefit to the raid. So got myself in the melee group (we have no fulltime dps warrior atm), threw on my Solarians Sapphire, and went to town. I was a bit shocked at what the meters showed at the end.

I landed 4th damage on the WWS for the fight. As a protection warrior. Because i had opted for Salvation from any pally willing to toss me a 10min blessing, i ended up losing Kings to get it. So i was missing kings and might and still pulled the numbers i did. My group consisted of our Enh. Shaman, Feral druid, and i believe two rogues. Towards the end of the fight at around 5% boss health, i died an infernal landing next to me, then a carrion swarm that hit for 6k and finished me off. At time of death i was 30dps from pulling off top fight dps under a rogue, and by the time the boss died i was down to 4th on total damage.

I'm not quite sure if it was because i got lucky with proc/buff synergies lining up, an increase in rage from enviromental damage (even tho i didn't feel like i was using that many heroic strikes more then normal) or what exactly happened. But when a guild maintank switches gear without changing spec and pulls top 5 damage against the normal dps crew it makes people wonder. Are the rest of the dps'ers just slacking, or am I just doing way beyond what i should typically be doing as prot?

I use a pretty standard protdps rotation that from personal experience and everything ive read to be the most efficient. Using devastate every GCD, Whirlwind when its up, and blowing extra rage on heroic strike whenever my rage is above 50. It seems that prot dps still scales pretty well with gear cuz of a few things like 10% 1h dmg, 10% bonus strength, very rage efficient abilities, at a cost of generating a lot of unnecesary threat. With Salvation and a decent tank I dont seem to have many threat issues. Yet with all my dps gear, I always seem to surprise other people with how much a prot warrior can do.

Unbuffed in zerker stance I have 1834 ap, 33% crit, 147 hit, 140 ArP, [item]Claw of Molten Fury[/item](Executioner) for Mainhand and [item]Talon of Azshara[/item](Mongoose) for Offhand. Currently i use Solarians Saphire, Romulos Poison Vial ( to get +hit over 9%), and the SSO rep neck for an additional AP proc. I believe i was self buffed with Sharpening stone on offhand, Str food, Str scroll, and an Elixir of Major Agility.

1248 dps according to the report
http://wowwebstats.com/qhwedijfvx4ak?s=7938-8237

I'd like to think maybe my dps is just way beyond what a typical prot warrior does, but maybe my raid dps is just that bad to make me look good? I'm also scared to know what I might be capable of with a "real dps spec". But i enjoy prot dps so much more. It makes me pretty happy to know that I'm almost as viable as a feral druid when it comes to MT'ing then Dpsing, though a gear switch is completely necesary for me to change roles.

Tank/Officer Burnout

Galushi — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 06:50:58 GMT

I'm really starting to get sick of raiding.

Currently my guild is working on progression in Hyjal and Black Temple, and the occasional nights in TK to work on Kael'thas since we didn't kill him prior to 2.4. Two raiding guilds, at minimum, have fallen apart on our server since 2.4 went live. I believe they stopped raiding due to lack of attendance and very competitive recruitment from the top guilds on the server. I think my guild is going through some of the same things.

Through our progession in tier5 content, we always had our 25 online plus 2-4 people on standby any given night. Sometimes more. Though some people have moved on to other guilds, it seems most of our attendance problems are due to people just not showing up or having RL issues come up. Now every night we have maybe 22 confirmed signups, and often times a couple of them dont show up. So for the last week or so we haven't had a full raid and are struggling just to get thru hyjal trash let alone kill a boss.

Now to the reason behind this post. I'm the tank officer of the guild, and one of two dps officers ( I share it with a longtime friend ive raided with for 2 years, who now raids as a mage). Because of our attendance difficulties, I've been getting a lot of tells pre/mid raid about various things, and they're making me go crazy. Sometimes it's people trying to suggest somewhere else where to go, or asking if their barely kara geared friend can come, and I just don't want to deal with it anymore.

I realize that lot of guild leaders or raid leaders are tanks, and i don't know how they do it. I have a very hard time juggling my duties as tank with managerial decisions mid raid. PreBC i was a warrior class leader in my previous guild. Whenever i lead a MC raid I let another warrior Maintank it so I could focus solely on the leading. I feel like i slow way down whenever I get bogged with so much to do. Then the raid slows down and people get upset with that.

Hyjal trash is also very stressful on me. We typically take 2-3 prot warriors and a feral druid. We don't have a protection paladin, nor have I had any remotely decent ones apply to the guild. So Hyjal trash is a huge pain in the butt cuz the 3-4 tanks are scrambling constantly to hold agro on all of the mobs every wave. 15-20 minutes of straight chaos every boss attempt. That is, if we can get thru the trash to attempt the boss since we're short a couple players that didn't show up.

Lately I've been thinking how nice it would be to just not be an officer anymore, and even just respec to dps. My dps gear ranks about the best in the guild so I could easily hold my weight there, but then we'd lose our best geared tank, not to mention our most consistant one. But if we keep this up much longer, i don't know if i'd even want to raid at all. Maybe I'm not cut out for maintanking like I thought I could. But I feel like I've gotten in a position that i can't back out of without leaving the guild high and dry.

I love getting new bosses down, and most of them have been fun or at least laid back thus far (Bosses 1-3 in hyjal are basically tanknspank which i don't mind at all). But the work falling upon my shoulders as part of the leadership in addition to being the maintank is just making raiding a job. Jobs suck.

Tanking Normal 5mans, in T5 Gear.

Galushi — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 19:58:38 GMT

Lately I've been running some 5mans with some of my core friends that have been leveling new characters to 70. It wasn't long ago that I completely dreaded the idea of tanking a normal 5man, knowing the fact that if theres any competent dps player they are gonna rip agro from me right away since I'm going to be rage starved wearing T5 gear with about 50+% avoidance. I took this as an opportunity to challenge myself.

I started by optimizing my gear. In reality with a solid healer, I could have tanked these instances with my DPS plate on. Afterall, in my dps gear i still have over 15k armor and 10.5kish hp. That probably blows away whatever I had when I first hit 70. But I decided I wanted to stick with *mostly* tank gear, to make my healers job easy and so that I could multitank entire groups without much risk of dying.

I dropped a few health and avoidance pieces for threat gear. Threw on the serpentshrine shuriken (hit, crit), romulos vial (hit), a couple pure block value pieces, PVP legs (high armor, crit, hit). And the most important piece, a [item]Talon of Azshara[/item] in my main hand, enchanted with Executioner. This weapon makes an amazing low rage threat weapon. Even though it doesn't have stamina, the armor/agility/hit/ap make for good tanking stats.

One important thing to note in running these normal 5mans in mostly tank gear, is that decreasing your incoming damage greatly lowers the amount of heals you need, thus reducing the amount of healing agro you have overcome to AoE tank. The key is getting your dps to assist train correctly so you know where to prioritize your threat. A thunderclap and a devastate per mob will easily hold agro over a healer if you don't take much damage.

The stats I'm running in this 5man tank set are as follows:

13.9k hp
16.7k armor
17% dodge
16% parry
37% block
493 defense
551 SBV

798 AP
74 hit
14.97% crit
15 expertise

Granted, my "threat stats" are lower then what a lot of main tanks use in their standard raid kit, I don't like sacrificing my durability in raids to boost my threat as much. If it's actually a threat sensitive fight I'll swap a few pieces, but generally my playing well, managing my rage, and efficiently using my abilities I dont seem to ever have threat issues.

SBV is a huuuuge reduction in damage in normal 5mans, usually resulting in mobs hitting for 50 (550 blocked). These types of mobs kinda make me laugh, especially the dual wielding ones that get a miss penalty and barely tickle. Stacking block value and block rating seems to be pretty efficient for normal 5man tanking, and the side bonus is the extra SBV translates into shield slam threat.

Now the other counterpoint to managing your rage in this situation is effective use of your abilities. Besides the fact of the Talon having nice threat stats and high base dps, it's also a very slow sword making it slightly more effective for devastate. It will make the effective rage cost of heroic strike much higher, but I find it's a horrible idea to use heroic strike the low rage situations anyways. If i somehow pop above 60 rage, I'll queue it up, but to efficiently use my limited rage i have to use every GCD perfectly before ever considering Heroic Strike.

I think tanking Black Morass on normal with limited rage and still averaging 1k TPS was a good indication that what I was doing was working. It's not so much that you have to avoid being rage starved, it's more about making sure the rage you do have gets spent wisely.

And now it's time for a nap. I've been up all night doing the new dailies and farming since a good friend of mine just loaned me 5000 gold for my epic flyer, and now I'm horribly in debt.

Maybe I should hire myself out to tank normal 5mans? LoL.....

Take care and tank well, Tankspot.
~Galu

Hello!

Galushi — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 14:24:12 GMT

Soo...being a longtime reader of TankSpot and an avid theorycrafter I'm surprised it's taken me this long to finally register here.

A little about me. I started playing WoW about a month I think before the game went live during the open beta. I first rolled a Dwarf Paladin which i got to about 44ish on a pvp server. When a bunch of real life friends quit playing, I decided the pvp server was not for me. I've never been a fan of pvp, I'm a pve player at heart. Even with FPS's, RTS's and RPG's I've always prefered Co-op gameplay. Heck I even hate dueling. Something about the competitive gameplay gets too personal when one side gets upset and things get ugly.

Anyways, I digress. After quitting the pvp server I started fresh on Shadowsong where I knew a few players from my Everquest days. I played a warlock to about 30 or so, before creating Galushi. Galushi was my dwarf character from Neverwinter Nights so the name naturally transfered over. Leveled up slowly as fury and hit 60. Did a few 5mans but never really got into the raiding scene for a while, especially since up to this point I was on dialup. Started leveling up a gnome rogue, and when server transfers became available transfered my paladin over here as well.

I moved up to college in the spring of 06' and finally had stable broadband internet. Shadowsong, being an original server and highly overpopulated was offered free transfers to a brand new pvp server. Threshold, the leading Alliance Raiding guild on the server basically split up and most went to the new server to start there. A few members remained on Shadowsong and of which one of them I knew from EQ. They were looking to start a new raiding guild, starting over in MC and they asked me to sign the charter since they were short warriors. was born and my history of raid tanking began.

I MT'd all the way through MC and BWL as a 5/31/15 furyprot hybrid. That was perfectly viable back then, seeing how shield slam was still subpar, and 15 in prot and 5 in arms gave me all the mitigation that was necessary. It was amazing being able to MT for a boss then turn around and get top 5 dmg on the next. When 2.0 patch came out and 41 point talents, I went prot and never turned back.

That about sums up my history. To this day I have worked my way to being the Main Tank for a t5 guild on the verge of breaking into t6 content (just gotta kill Kaelthas). Can't wait to get into Hyjal and Black Temple.

It is my hope to become a little more active in the warrior community. I've been pretty low key in the warrior forums, tho I read them constantly while I'm bored but rarely do I post there either. I will be trying to post here regularly with my thoughts on warrior changes, mechanics, styles of play, or just venting whatever crap is going on that day. I hope at least someone out there will benefit from it, or at least brighten their day. :)

For now, I leave you with one of my favorite Ciderhelm quotes.

"Criticizing me for my choice in gems is like an Amish person criticizing Danica Patrick for not driving an Indy car to go camping. In the end, I'll still be able to explain the mechanics of both cars and their advantages on different terrain, and you'll still be Amish." - Ciderhelm