TankSpot - Blogs - Krenian

The end of an era.

Krenian — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 03:23:08 GMT

My hardcore days are over.

That's right folks, I won't be doing the hardcore raiding scenario anymore. I just don't have the time nor the strength to continue those nights. Scheduling days coming from raiding are in direct conflict towards my night classes therefore I had to drop what I enjoy most in this game: the raiding aspect.

However it was time. I got a new job which will work all day, however I still want to continue my schooling and as such, will keep working towards night classes three days a week, 3 classes, and keep getting credits. Th earliest I ever get out of class is 8:30 and living about 45 minutes from home makes raiding quite inconvenient.

There's a couple of upsides to this: I'm starting a new relationship so I can focus on it. I also want to focus on my schooling a bit more and try to ramp up my marks from last year and get a stronger GPA.

I'll be raiding still but at a MUCH more casual level: with rl friends who play the game. I'll be way behind the learning curve with them but I'll enjoy my time and just take it for what it is: fun times with friends.

As for the posts...I don't think much else is going to be needed on my account to write the guides. If anything, I'll have more time to test, and to do the research because you buggers are too lazy to test. :D I'll keep the guides going as long as I can until I just cannot keep up with the change and at that point, I will step down and let someone else take care of the reins.

But for the fun times and not so fun times, for the good and the bad, thank you for all of it.

Aion Beta! (Cont)

Krenian — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 17:33:35 GMT

Aion Beta : Day 2-3
I condensed day two and day three together on the sole purpose that I did not have the time to really test it on both days. As we speak, I�m at work typing this and it gives me time while Aion�s installing on the PC at work. But here are my thoughts so far.
-Always remember to look at the gearset you can wear and take advantage of this. I levelled 3 levels without realizing that I could wear one set higher instead of what I was currently wearing. It really helped when I saw that and immediately I could see the difference in armor. Armor in plate > Armor in chain :D

-The mobs are starting to hurt. Bad. It�s becoming increasingly dangerous and I�ve died a few times so far through these last two days. Learning the class and what to do (Skill Chain�ing everything together at the right time and using your CDs at the best of times) and what not to do (Doing an AoE attack in an area that has three mobs around you without realizing. And yes, 7m (can only presume they mean meters here cause Americans still are using the old school Imperial crap :P), you notice the difficulty for solo�ing ramping up. I can still solo but I need to rest a lot more on the Gladiator. Furthermore, they may want to implement some sort of faster healing method than �resting�. The system of resting is archaic at best and really slows progression down. The healing salves are useful but they may want to consider doing it every five levels instead of 10. I know 300 a heal with a 15 second cooldown makes for some downtime when you have 1.5k health.

-Something�s bugging me about the game at the moment. There�s this feeling that I�m almost at the end of my rope when it comes to solo�ing stuff when it�s directly related to the campaign. This is in a way understandable but sad. This means now I have to start grouping up because in no way can I deal with the mobs that I must deal with, as they�re hitting for double the damage that a mob my level would. It�s a shame but it�s fine. What�s bugging me is that I�m running out of quests to do by this point to actually get to level 20. That, I don�t like. Some of the quests right now simply cannot be done due to the fact they �re asking for a group requirement (They hit hard. And by hard I mean one mob takes a quarter of my health, and these are taking damn near all of it.) This leaves the player with two options: Group up and do it, which some people will be able to do just fine, or grind. For a person that doesn�t really feel like grinding, I find myself slightly discouraged by that notion and hope that this is just the small loop. Maybe a small hovel of quests at level 18-20 is in order. Something for NCsoft to look at during the downtime.

-The game is more and more visually stunning, having a bunch of interesting color and beauty to the whole thing. Water�s an amazing attribute to this game and it really looks amazing. The character when stationary will interact with the surroundings: Try being at a pool of water and watch what happens! Or when it starts raining, another good example. All and all, roleplayers could potentially work great magic with this and make a world even more beautiful by the sheer mannerism that roleplay could bring out.

-One thing that bothers me as well that really disrupts the beauty of the game is personal trades. Now, I�m all for this idea, however when you have chat bubbles all over Sanctum when you�re walking, it really ruins the atmosphere of the area and really is something based way back in the Ragnarok Online games. It really doesn�t belong in a game this stunning and they should take a look at this and work on perhaps using the graphics to their advantage: when a shop is made, a small post of sorts appears behind the character�s chair. Perhaps make an option with a cog to be able to click on these messages and see what the wares are. Yes, it kinda removes the point of yelling out what you have, but it would really remove the clutter. I could only picture a bunch of bored level 50 characters (I believe the cap is level 50 at this time, 25 in the Beta we�re test) with a bunch of chat bubbles flooding poor Sanctum.
The levelling thing is bugging me a bit. I�m not a huge fan of grinding and they�re really pushing to make the North American release as good as possible. If they fix the 18-20 hub, they should be able to fix at least the first 20 levels so you can get used to your class and start exploring other options in the game. Also, some sort of looking for group channel could be a good idea instead of seeing shouts in your screen about it. Put some work into those screen channel s and try to make something a little more useful than an All, Normal, Combat and Group tabs. They are redundant and really don�t serve much purpose (I also found out you can�t delete those tabs at all. You can create new ones but you cannot remove the first four. Lame. Least you don�t see the tabs all the time, only when you mouse over.) In any case, I�m so far happy with the game. I keep dying, but it�s fine, the death isn�t too bad to deal with.
For those who were wondering, my PC doesn�t have the greatest video card: nVidia GeForce 8500 GT. I�m running the game full screen with all of the settings at max and am experiencing no lag. The only form of lag really was server lag and that�s to be expected considering betas are meant as mini stress tests. Other than that, I could say I suppose that my system�s a powerhouse on it�s own, bar the video card: Intel Core 2 Quad, 8 gigs of ram...pretty solid stuff. However really, it runs smoother than WoW and asks for less. If you can run WoW well enough, this game should be no problem.

Aion Beta!

Krenian — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 08:28:59 GMT

Aion Beta: Day 1 (Warrior/Gladiator - Level 14)

- Stunningly beautiful game, the entire game itself has color and life and gives a great sense of beauty and well designed art. The title screen merely shows the potential of the game, whereas going into the game shows a whole lot more. Quite comparable to FFXI's art.

- Starting area is seemingly crowded, with adequate reason. To help out with the release, NGSoft should consider raising the refresh rate of the beginning area's mobs slightly. Tons of people looking for those bags of oats will make for a very messy beginning if people stay there.

- Skill Chaining - Really awesome way to enjoy the fighting. With WoW, it is simply hitting a rotation or hitting buttons that are assigned to keys. With the Warrior class, you have to chain your attacks in succession to actually be able to use better skill. Skill chain 1 links to 2. Using Shield Block usually will give you more chances to block, thus activating a Shield Slam ability. Unlike WoW however, this one stuns! And does a massive amount of damage to boot.

- The fighting is fluid and nice to follow, however you'll notice some lag issues here and there from time to time. Reports have indicated that sometimes there are lag spikes between skills that really don't help chaining them together. As Chaining is a really nice part and somewhat essential for damage dealing, you would want to look at the reaction time between both.

- The idea of putting mini cutscenes is an amazingly good idea and the story drives you to want to learn more about your character. It is a well thought view, seen a lot in FFXI, and the scenes are actually pretty kickass!

- Character Customization....wow. So many options. This rivals The Sims 3's ability to change everything so you can have a unique feel to the class.

- Quests are interesting, but definitely not enough information in your subquest. There is no indication as to where the items could potentially be, nor does the "Locate" button really help out much. (Either gives you the entrance to the area in question or sometimes doesn't work.) Also, it is not very noticeable when you must find quest items. The quest refinement should be done in the idea of helping players know what they're looking for. Sitting for a half hour trying to find a pig when there are no indications as to where the pig would be remotely located is pretty dumb.

- Sanctum is pretty damn awesome. Really well done and prettied up for those Eylos folk. Big too, makes for some interesting areas to sit.

- The four beginning chat tabs are a bit excessive. I usually sit myself in the group chat and added my Legion to that bubble. This filters the combat chat. The All one is really really annoying and getting spammed by messages is just irksome. I've already deleted the extra ones out and simply keep Group with Legion turned on and Combat. This will be enough information if I need to look at something.

- Solo'ing is pretty easy, and so long as you're smart, you could take on two things at once without dying, of your own level. Every class has it's ups and downs but you gear accordingly and help yourself to that. Potions and healing accessories such as bandages are your friend. (Even though at one point they tend to only heal about 1/6th of your health. ><)

- The rez system is actually a pretty neat one. It follows a FFXI style of release with a WoW penalty. This penalty however can be removed by paying gold, and that's your cost for dying. Either wait it out or quickly get rid of it. Gold is easy enough to obtain in the game so dying may not have really much of an impact other than being warped to some other place.

- The trade section is nice but I'm not sure how a personal trade and an AH together will work out. One of them may not be completely used or we'll have a lot of people sitting by the AH and placing their wares there. It's an interesting concept however all those chat bubbles are irritating. Speaking of chat bubbles, get an option to get rid of that. (Haven't found an option to remove this.)

- What I found great is that you have many 'instanced' areas and may not always be in the same area as your friends. However upon entering a group together, you can key yourself to the group leader's zone and play together. I found this option to be really neat and a great way to try to keep the server relatively stable by splitting people from each other and assigning them to different 'instanced zones' so there is never too many people farming the same creatures.

- Really, the only complaint are the quests as I don't think the log really helps out enough. It really is not informative at all and as much as giving the option of clicking on important details is nice, it doesn't give enough. And with a new world where creatures have different names, it is very hard to find a creature by a name we're not used to and for them to assume that we know what they're talking about. Anyone who remembers the Pig scenario as an Eylos in the Kobald section could agree that we had NO idea what the hell his pet was until we accidentally stumbled on the pig itself.

- The game locked up on me..twice I think in the 13 hours I played. Not too bad for a beta, and one was just a connection drop. The other was a crash. Nothing too major to report there.

Apologies in advance.

Krenian — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 05:56:09 GMT

I will immediately set this straight and apologize to anyone that will be dealing with me. For the next few weeks, I may be quite moody and very upset/angry/sad.

And end of a chapter in my life may come forward in the next week. I'm not sure how I feel about it but I will know for sure later. For now, I'm sorry to any of you that will deal with a rather rough 'me' in this time.

The Death Knight Q&A

Krenian — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:22:20 GMT

Now, like many of you, I was eagerly waiting to see what Ghostcrawler was going to write about the Death Knight class. Having been subjected to many changes since the class was released, it was going to be an interesting view as to what the Devs were thinking on doing with our class.

Safe to say, a lot of people will be sorely disappointed.

The biggest thing I mean by this is that if you expected your answer to be given to you, you probably may not of gotten it. Dual wielding was addressed as well as the changes to the cooldowns, however it is interesting that they released the Q&A after 3.2 and the interview is set before 3.2, which means we knew of the changes. Does the Q&A really do much in this case? Not really, we knew what we had and this was most likely a failed timing issue for the Q&A release.

Now, onward to something that I read which kinda puzzled me. At one point, this question was asked to Ghostcrawler, and I will ask you all to read the reply he gave:

Q: Are there plans to change or improve the Frigid Deadplate talent?

Ghostcrawler: We don�t necessarily consider the deepest talents in a tree to be the best ones. Generally when we push talents deep, it�s because they are of limited interest to other specs or else so powerful that we want to keep them away from other specs. Frigid Dreadplate is a great tanking talent since it adds avoidance. I can�t imagine a death knight tank actually skipping out on Anticipation, so it doesn�t bother us that the Anticipation talent is considered better. That said, we think avoidance is likely too high on all tanking classes, so we aren�t likely to buff Frigid Dreadplate.

Now, Frigid Dreadplate right? Nothing that a DK dpser like myself should worry about right? No, something here seems wrong. It's the first line I would like you guys to reread for a moment:

"We don�t necessarily consider the deepest talents in a tree to be the best ones. Generally when we push talents deep, it�s because they are of limited interest to other specs or else so powerful that we want to keep them away from other specs." -Ghostcrawler

This is something that bothers me. When I'm going down a talent tree, as early as Diablo 2, I was going down a tree and getting talents that seemed to be better and better and allow my character to become more powerful. Think of it as an investment: the more time you spend in the investment, the more you expect to get something good out of it. What bothers me is that it sounds to me that they're more pushing the talents down so other trees cannot get those skills more than simply giving the class advancement. And maybe this is something that the Devs may want to look at.

I know that I've read from time to time that people feel like their classes are stale. Many times, we feel as if some of our higher end point talents are just not worth it. If this is the way that the Devs are thinking instead of giving utility and damage increase to the character, than this would explain why that we feel the way we do.

I would sorely suggest that the Devs and Ghostcrawler would look at this and perhaps consider changing their philosophies. Perhaps not right away and maybe not even in this expansion. However it could be time for them to go a different road come 4.0. Allow some sort of feeling that when you go down the tree, you feel as if your character is evolving better, instead of going with the idea of placing talents so other trees cannot get to it. Worse comes to worse, bloat the better talents at the bottom and make the top not as inviting for classes to hybrid themselves into.

It's weird how as well, they wish to work hybrids in and yet hybrids are being pretty much discouraged with the philosophy in which the class trees are built.

Just some food for thought for you all.

ArP and Death Knights. Confusion?

Krenian — Sun, 17 May 2009 17:50:57 GMT

As I sit here and browse through the WoW forums as well as other forums, I am finding a disturbing trend happening for Death Knights. This is more towards the Blood Death Knight than anything else but this is something that needs to be discussed.

Many Death Knights are starting to look and are trying to get more ArP and giving themselves a minimum percentage before switching to Blood.

The fact that people are putting such an emphasis on ArP is a bit disturbing. One of two things will happen:

1) ArP's going to get nerfed. It's starting to become too solid of a stat that Blizzard never intended to overwrite others. As soon as you begin putting importance of one statistic over any of the others, especially your main statistics (Strength, Int, Spirit), a skill then becomes too powerful for it's own good and usually gets nerfed. Look at Haste and it's plentiful changes in it's time. Crit is another huge stat that has had changes. Expect changes to happen there.

2) People are not fundamentally understanding the Death Knight class and the fact that no matter what spec you choose, there are two types of attacks that Death Knights use: Physical and Magical.

People really need to realize that sole focus on ArP for a Death Knight can end up hurting them in the long run. A total of four global cooldowns are used in a twenty second rotation to simply dump your runic power in a magic based attack: Death Coil. Death Coil absolutely does not benefit from ArP whatsoever. Furthermore, in regards to the new Sigil, and the fact that it empowers that attack, people are focusing away from Death Coil when it is an embedded attack in a Blood rotation: Your Heart Strikes will be launching the random Death Coil from time to time thanks to Sudden Doom. Add that to the two piece tier 8 set and you see that Death Coil is still a part of your rotation.

Looking at my recount statistics as well as any parsings I've had to look at, my rotation usually follows this breakdown:

Melee: 25ish%
Heart Strike: 23ish%
Death Coil: 18ish%
Death Strike: 13ish%

Granted, three of those four attacks are physical based attacks that benefit from ArP. However one of your main attacks isn't and as such is a completely wasted stat for that attack. You will NOT get stronger Death Coils with ArP.

As such, I must wonder if you are hurting your DPS by simply using a pure ArP set. You cannot in your right mind sacrifice statistics for ArP. It shouldn't be done. ArP is a great boost to your DPS however Strength and AP will benefit all of your attacks. not just 75% of them.

In short, a lesson everyone who reads this must learn: In no way should you focus on just one stat. It takes a lot more depth to understand the mechanics of a class than to simply presume that one stat must be the way to go. My ArP is dismal. I think I probably have something in the rage of 3-5% due to gear selection. But truthfully? I don't mind at all. I'm still pushing 5.5 to 6k DPS on most boss fights. That's the same amount of damage that most people who focus on ArP are doing.

Would I like more ArP? Perhaps, it's always nice to have something help my physical damage as Blood is quite the physical tree. Am I going to actively gear for that? No. And most of you shouldn't either.

If ArP is on the gear, then consider it an added boon; not a requirement.

Tier musings

Krenian — Fri, 01 May 2009 05:35:28 GMT

I've been a fan of the tier sets for Death Knights for a while now. Tier 7 had a great look and a really neat bonus..

And then we get slapped with Tier 8. Oh it's pretty awesome looking, I won't deny that part...but at first, the bonuses kinda made me wonder.

The two piece bonus is pretty..meh. 5% extra crit on FS and DCs. Ok, for Blood that's not bad at all. With Sudden Doom proc'ing as much as it can, that can give some nice extra damage. For Frost..? Well yeah, 5% is 5% but the problem with that is the fact that Frost revolves on abilities which make Frost Strike or give Frost Strike a damn near gauruntee to crit. So really..adding critical strike damage to it is redundant. Unholy does benefit a bit of the crit damage but really..it doesn't do much else. So a really lackluster two piece bonus.

The Four piece actually has me curious. You're using the skills that it empowers but it's just weird that you'd work a skill that way. Also, it comes to my attention that both Frost and Unholy really rely on RP generation to be successful: Frost's main attack is on RP and Unholy's main attack does benefit from more disease damage. However some attacks really require a high RP generation that Unholy doesn't seem to push up on to be honest. Unholy and Frost are almost having to need the four piece tier 7 bonus for their rotations to push great numbers.

I'd like to stay off from saying the four piece is bad. Honestly, it's an interesting idea: Empower your main attack skills with diseases. However I see it as being great for Blood, alright for Unholy but really a waste for Frost.

Now, the point of the Blog: What in the hell is up with having Blue Sockets in our DPS gear!? The pure blue gems are mostly defensive/avoidance/tank gems and really make it a pointless gem. Furthermore, the only set that has a strength bonus for it's gem selection are the pants. And that's only 6 Strength. This means you've got a better increase by shoving a 16 Strength red gem over a 8 + whatever else. You can only get 14 strength max with either a green or a purple gem which leaves you short 8 AP. Really?

Seriously, switch those gemslots to Red, please. It makes no sense to put a blue slot like that. It's a weird itemization and makes no sense.

This is the gearset I'm working on getting for Ulduar.

http://www.wowhead.com/?compare=4611...59;45521;45516

Now, that's the gearset I t hink I'm going to aim for, but the weapon selection has me thinking. Earthshaper has a higher top end (1003 o.o wowzers) which means your hits can get a lot higher. However Voldrethar has two slots (a blue slot...AGAIN. x.x) and with the sword, I'd still be just slightly over the hit cap, get more ArP (As any of you would know, I'm actually raiding Blood and loving it, so ArP is useful), Slightly higher Crit Strike rating and a higher DPS. However, it loses hit (Which would mean if a shadow priest died, I wouldn't have to fret about missing with my silly spells, although Blood really doesn't use that many spell damaging skills). It also has more strenght. This isn't a big issue as you could shove two Strength gems in that sword to beat it but it's still noteworthy.

It's not a HUGE difference in top end..4. But it's still enough to wonder if I could just get that weapon and just sit on the dkp till i get the rest of my stuff and let the others go after the sword. It's a sidegrade to be honest at the most.

..Kinda sad that the best weapon is a sidegrade to a weapon that normal mode can get. =/ Ah well, tis how WoW is heading!

EDIT: Did some of my own research: Voldrethar is actually a HUGE dps increase over Earthshaper. I fiddled with Rwar and it gave me readings for the sword. It's a pretty gigantic jump between both. Also, for some reason, Worldcarver ranks higher than Earthshaper. o.O I'm not quite sure how that works.

Further testings: Ooooh, I get it now. Actually, Worldcarver's better if you're Unholy. Earthshaper for Blood/Frost. I'm still getting used to Rwar, bugger off :p

About Exams and Multiple Choices!

Krenian — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:11:49 GMT

So, I did my Psychology exam today.

100 Multiple Choice questions involving the material we covered. And seeing this is a first level course, it's pretty much a broad overview of EVERYTHING and it's mother in the biological section of Psychology.

So how did I do? Well let me put it this way: Multiple Choice questions have a good side and a bad side to them.

On one hand, you have a 25% chance of having nailed the right answer when you answered the question. This is pretty good out of four possible answers.

On the other hand, you have a 75% chance of picking the wrong one and absolutely destroying yourself on that question.

So to end it all: I'm thinking i have a 25% chance of having done well, and a 75% chance of having utterly failed the exam.

(FYI, I am retaking the course as I was going into that exam with a 60ish percent which is unacceptable for me. Unless some miracle happens, and by miracle I nail a 65+ percent average which is around a C, I'm almost sure I failed it and was going into that exam with very low expectations)

Aaaah the joys of University life. :D

Musings of current PvE content and beyond..

Krenian — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 07:28:18 GMT

This is something I wrote in the WoW Raids and Dungeons forums that I hope will garner some sort of response/attention. But feel free to post your thoughts on the blog.

Hey everyone,

If anyone knows me well enough, you will know that I'm a community author at Tankspot, and have my death knight DPS thread up there for anyone. I always am willing to talk and discuss things with you guys if you need advice about something. However today I'm going to talk about my thoughts and ramblings about the current state of Raiding and in essence the current state of PvE'ing in World of Warcraft and how I feel about it.

Yes, this is going to be a TL;DR thread so you may as well avoid it if you're going to be lazy and not read.

At first, when I had Wrath in my hands, I was excited. I had a brand new class to play being the Death Knight, and it suited my needs perfectly. A dead warrior who uses a two handed weapon to tank things. Perfect. It also meshed two systems I liked greatly in the form of Energy (Rune regeneration every 10 seconds) and rage (Runic Power gained by using rune attacks). In this fashion, I was excited about the game and finally, we would fight the Lich King and his minions and I could get a shot at that dead sexy Frostmourne. (Who knows if it'll be in the game, I'm presuming it probably won't be because it's such a big weapon Lorewise that it would make little sense for an individual to have the weapon. It's also cursed anyway, so it wouldn't work out very well. Anyone refuting that the weapons Illidan had were considered legendary need to be reminded that they weren't cursed with an ancient spirit.)

In any case, come the day I had the game, I rushed home, installed it eargerly, got the patches, and quickly got to work on the Death Knight. I'm proud to say that I was the third individual on the server to hit 80 on my Death Knight. I simply couldn't keep up with the Death KNights ahead of me and to them I say kudos. A brand new world awaited us and I wanted to go through it. I practically ate everything Blizzard sent us. In the end, I hit 80 in about six days time, the third in my guild to do so, and began my journey to gear myself up.

Having done this, I had gotten materials ready to get my blacksmithing and engineering skills up to par so I may have gear to keep up with my guild members. It was assumed that they would already be raiding by the time I got to the level, to which I surprised them. Engineering...was lacking. With being the third to 80, I was ready to get gear at the same time, which made Engineering (In the idea that I could make the helm as a decent weapon) obsolete as I could get a helm on my own, and Blacksmithing had it's own Plate helm. Alright, fine. A wasted profession for now.

Making my shiny new Titansteel weapon and getting my Ebon Blade rep up, I was one of the first on the servers to finish up the Sons of Hodir and getting the exalted shoulders. I also finished all the quests in Northrend and pretty much was ready for Naxxramas. This is where it began to become odd...

Having run the instances, having run everything..it just seemed too easy. I was ready for a raid and yet I hadn't really pushed too hard to get the gear needed to raid. Something had happened along the way that I would not realize until I am sitting here now typing.

The guild does Naxx, OS, and Malygos. I'm proud to say our guild was third on the server when we killed Malygos...we got through Sarth +1..then 2...and are now working on Sarth 3D and have been for a while..but the more and more I got through it, the more I became frustrated.

And this is where I begin writing about the problem.

It almost seems too easy right now. There is no challenge, no test, nothing to really get yourself ready for Naxxramas. I remember the days of BC where doing five man instances was actually worth something because you had to build towards your goals. You went into an instance and did some grinding of rep to be able to unlock the heroic version to get better gear to get the gear ready for raid tanking. From there, you did raids and unlocked more quests to allow you to do more raids and so on and so forth. It gave a purpose for people to run raids.

Now? As I sit here and look at the Vendor badges and go..hrm, I don't need anything anymore, I am left with a sense of emptiness and a lack of purpose. It feels as if I hit the end of the road on my character and I don't know what else to do. Naxxramas was accessible from the start and let's be frank, was an easy step.

Now one would stop and say: Whoa Krenian..you are saying this and yet you haven't done any of the achievements that make it hard. Alright, granted, I haven't. However I need people to look at it from my point of view: What's the point of it.

Looking at achievements right now, they don't do much else than two things to me:

1) Allow bragging rights to show that you accomplished a hard task

2) Have access to a mount that is unique in look.

...That's it? I'm pushing myself to do hard content because I want bragging rights and a mount? I have my dead bird that grows in speed when I grow in riding skill. I have my dead horse that rides at it's max speed wherever I want. I don't need more mounts, I have the ones I need to have. Mounts don't do anything but show your eliteness and if that's something people like, I don't discredit them whatsoever.

However it's not enough for me.

I play this game to see a progression. I want to see and be able to follow a line of sorts that leads me towards a goal. Right now? I feel like I hit that end of the line and so early in the expansion, it doesn't feel right. There should be more to do. And to me, achievements and mounts are not worth it.

Dailys? They get annoying after a while. All you do is get money. I do enough money to raid and even that seems pointless. The dailys are more than sufficiant and can be done in about an hour and have enough money for flasks, food and necessary repair bill money. At this point, it is a rare commodity if I even die during raids, and if I do, it never really pushes above 50g. What's 50g nowadays in this game? Nothing.

There's no risk, there's no push to do something. And that's where the game is lacking. The motivation in which people have right now is nonexistant and I don't think Ulduar is going to solve it either.

If they add extra quests like I think I heard in Icecrown about Ulduar, that's nice, but those will be done too. Then what..? Once ulduar is done, will the achievements allow for progression? Well perhaps. Maybe -and I'm hoping Blizzard did something in these regards- they put the achievements to drop better gear that make you have to strive to be better than you are to get that. And I'm hoping it's not just a couple of extra pieces that one could pass by. I hope those items are actually bonafied solid upgrades that one would love to have and would push to have for every class in the game.

But right now, it just seems the motivation in which one would want to PvE is at a very big standstill and that I'm fearing won't be fixed with Ulduar. If that's the case, it will be time for me to potentially call it a day and look into other options.

Don't get me wrong. I love this game. I love a lot of things about it.

I hate not having anything to do nor feel that i have a sense of accomplishment in advancement. Achievements that give nothing but a title and a mount mean little to me.

To the raiding community, I ask you this: Do you truly think that right now, this is the case? Do you feel the same way? Or do you, like most of you I believe, like the current incarnation of WoW and how they are handling things? This could be quite an interesting discussion that i hope could garner attention from the Developers and perhaps shine some idea of what they are planning on doing to hook us in.

I guess I just needed to say my point as I'm quite unhappy with a game I've been playing for years now and feel a little bored.

Personal Blog for reflection..

Krenian — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 18:39:58 GMT

I'm sitting in my class writing this and I'm starting to think that I'm doing a lot of things that I shouldn't be doing right now, and one of those is being in the classes I am now.

I sit here and listen to my teacher talking about Gender that society has pigeonholed themselves into and I'm barely paying attention. I guess it's the fact that I'm not interested in any of that. IN fact, I'm starting to realize that I have taken the classes I took out of necessity and not out of wanting to.

I sit here and ponder about my choices in life and how I've always done things because I have had to, and not because I wanted to. My first year and a half in college was like that: I had to do well and had to do the classes to get to university.

Now? I sit here in class in a social science program that has absolutely no interest for me at all because I need a Bachelors to even apply to Law. And that's without having taken the LSAT. I just don't know anymore if I have the drive to push myself for two more years in programs I don't even wanna do.

I mutter to myself about having to see an Academic Advisor and this annoys me; I never look for help. I've done things on my own and did them the way I can do them since the age of 14. Asking for help is really not in my system. I feel like a failure every time I have to ask for help and now I look at my options and once again I have no choice but to do so.

So what, am I doomed to have to do things because it has to be done? This just feels like yet another step towards something that isn't getting me any closer to my goal.

I want to become a Lawyer. I want to practice Law and head to court and fight cases. But right now I'm having a very hard time even wanting to get up and go to class because I dislike them that much.

..guess it's time to swallow my pride and just go talk to someone who can guide me through this turmoil and hopefully set me on the right path. Because right now, as much as this seems to be the right path, I'm losing the motivation of being what i want to be, and that's about 25 years of motivation going down the drain fast...

Self rantings

Krenian — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 04:52:43 GMT

Boy did I ever fail today at tanking Sarth 3D.

First night doing Sarth 3D after killing him with two drakes and I must of absolutely been the worst possible tank I have ever seen in my life.

A) I couldn't hold aggro or could grab all the adds worth my life. Don't ask my why or how, but as soon as the Whelps came out, casters would get aggro, they'd get out of my Death and Decay, I couldn't pull them off with Howling Blast, It was just an utter mess.

B) I was put on drake duty and I got nailed in the face by a wave all the time. That's completely my fault as I should be able to notice a big wall of bloody fire coming at me. Twice I got hit by the first wall too which really shows the lack of attention I have.

I don't know what it is anymore, it just seems that I cannot grasp the simple concept of having to watch more than one thing. I'm either too focused on trying to solidify my rotation that I don't notice a void zone under my feet or I'm too busy doing something else to notice the wall of fire coming and hitting me.

Sartharion has seriously shown me one thing: I cannot tank. Nor should I even be in a position to tank. I'm sincerely regretting volunteering for the position and really wish I could just destroy my tanking gear so I don't need to deal with it.

/end rant

Is it just me..?

Krenian — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 07:45:38 GMT

...or does this expansion really..REALLY have nothing much to do?

As I sat down a few days ago with my GM on Vent and had a discussion, the expansion was one of the main topics and we were discussing about how generally seems to be a lot less things to do in this expansion than there was in BC.

And I have to agree. The game hasn't come out what, more than a month yet? (As I write this, it indeed has been a month.) And I'm already done all the content in the game PvE wise, and am now working on a fight we've seen, but really is added in difficulty only because of added situations (Read Sarth and his drakes alive.)

As much as this may be a much more stimulating fight, I have to admit that I've grown kinda bored with World of Warcraft as of late. Let's be honest here: I blew through Wrath's content with my DK in six days total, 3 days game played. That could potentially be my fault for doing so. But as I leveled my warrior, I found it less and less interesting to do so. At this time, he's stuck at 77 and I think at this point, even leveling as a Prot warrior and smacking things in the face..it just doesn't have the same desire. I don't have that oomph to see the game in the end. Maybe it's because I'm burnt out; again, I've pretty much done everything in the game. (Exceptions to this rule are Heroic Nexus and Heroic Occulus. Nexus, I have no idea why I haven't done. Occulus, I've just heard it's bad.)

However I'm not sure if it's just content lacking. I honestly feel like the drive to even continue doing instances is not really there. I've maxed out my rep with most factions I need to.

Achievements you say? Meh..really not interested. I mean, I could really spend my time getting the drakes, but really, that's not much fun and tends to be more of a chore for me.

How about professions? Well, at 449 Blacksmithing, I've hit a snag with it and am seriously considering the point of any of the professions right now. I mean..really, all the recipes you have are 445 profession only which means you can finish everything off and just leave your profession at 445 and not have a reason to push it. Gear? Nope, I've already surpassed that level by clearing the whole game and doing the stuff 25 man. So really, I could push and finsih off Engineering and Blacksmithing, in the hopes that Uldaar might drop some interesting patterns..but I'm not holding my breath about it. When it comes the time that we see Uldaar and if it has patterns, then I will decide if it's even worth getting the patterns up. (Which I have an odd feeling that it probably is not. It'll be equal to some items, but I think that's how Blizzard wants most of the stuff badge wise or profession wise to be: sidegrades to items you may not necessarily get.)

Being the only DK in the raid, I have to fight mages, rogues and another class..druids, that's right. Well, really, th eonly class I really don't have much choice in the matter are druids and I usually am over my rogues and mages in the guild in dkp. So my gear selection is rather easy to get. Replacing gear with profession only items is really a waste of time to me.

So how about leveling the off professions? Cooking? Fishing? ...ugh, give me a break. I hate both. >< Cooking is dull and I understand the use of cooking, but really, I don't really care for the profession itself. And fishing's even worse. So interest is not there.

So I guess the whole point to this rant is this: Maybe I am putting myself in a situation where I don't see anything to do, but to me, there's nothing in the game right now that's FUN to do and that's what the game needs to be for me: fun. Maybe when Uldaar comes out, it'll be interesting..but right now, that may not be for another month or two. If we get it in February, I'll consider myself lucky.

Meh, maybe this is just a 2:45 am rant but it's just getting dull to see myself rotting at my computer at 12:30 in the morning and doing nothing at all for two hours, staring at my WoW button and wondering why I have no will to go in the game. Maybe it's time for a break =/

Needing to get a few things off my chest.

Krenian — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 00:00:16 GMT

I have been raiding 25 mans for a week now, and this is week two.

So far:

Naxx has been fully cleared in one week
Sartharion has been cleared

Malygos is next on our list to do and potentially will be done this week.

All and all, it really hasn't been that hard to do either. Sartharion is a joke (This is not including the drakes, which we got ownt when we tried with two. This week it's just with one.), Naxx was ridiculously easy, as in only one boss really stopped us and that was Thaddius.

A lot of you will remember my rant about how the merger between SK-Gaming and Nihilum and how they had cleared the content. A lot of you will also remember that I was rather pissed off about how they dared attack Blizzard when they had criticized their game already and they had the best players.

...well..I almost have got to apologize for my rant now because it really was a joke.

So far, to the exception of the Sartharion adds, WotLK raiding has left a very sour taste in my mouth. It's almost too easy that I'm already bored of raiding because of it. To me, raiding has got to have some sort of challenge. It needs to have a key factor of frustration for when you kill the boss, you know you accomplished something.

Naxxramas. The best dungeon that Blizzard has ever made in their game, proclaimed by players and Blizzard GMs alike...was reduced to a joke. And not even a good joke here, but a terribly sick and stupid joke. Every fight, from Sapphiron, one of the deadliest creatures of the game prebc to Patchwerk, a dps fight that really made you check if you had the right gear...gone. The challenge, disappeared.

Naxxramas. The keystone of what blizzard called their best...in my eyes, now the worse as it was a far bigger joke than even Karazhan was post nerfs.

I'm at this crossroads with this game right now. I understand that they had made Naxxramas to be easier than Kara and a very easy raid dungeon to begin with...

..but really, that doesn't put much hope for the next dungeon, Uldaar. Granted, we have yet to see what blizzard has in store for us, but it's disheartening to be able to be finished the whole content in two weeks.

Maybe that Endosia or whatever it's called guild has elitist folks that probably think they know how the show run. But they might be onto something.

Only time will tell. Patch 3.1 can't get here sooner, as right now raiding is going to stop very shortly for most guilds that clear it.

DK Dual Wielding?

Krenian — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:06:32 GMT

I don't know if it's me who's fundamentally flawed in my brain but there's something that attracts me to dual wielding classes:

Played a rogue as my first class and I had to dual wield swords cause it just looked hella cool to me.

Played a Warrior and I dual wielded axes for lolcritdamageftw and it just looked better on that class.

Played the shaman and dual wielded maces or axes, depending on what I had to get, just because of lawlfury proc'ing stupid numbers.

Now, i'm playing my death knight and a lot of people will remember that when the beta wasn't even out, I was number crunching Arms dps spec as that's what I was looking at in the time. (Granted, I was moreso looking at TG's viability but Arms was an interesting concept to me and I had curious notions to slam)

So two handers should fall into my comfort zone, right? ...well then I saw in Icecrown the Death Knight with two swords and got chills of giddiness in me. Go figure =/

So, I've been thinking about this and this is what I'm thinking.

1 - All specs should have at the least 17 points in frost. This includes Imp Icy, Glacier Rot, Nerves, 2 points in Black Ice and probably 5 points in the Icy Talons to get haste cause Dual Wielding does get better with some haste anyway so why not give yourself 20%. This leaves 2 points for whatever else. Technically you could go 3 points and finish off Black Ice for more ice damage but only one attack really is dealt with ice damage and that's your DoT. It's an important skill but not your biggest damage dealer. Another option I'm thinking about is Annihalation: this would make it your damage dealer as it's got the most potential damage..however this would come into conflict with using the deep end blood or unholy talent. More testing needs to be done.

At this point, this is where I'm torn. You can either go full blood or full Unholy. Scourge Strike sounds like it will hit harder than Heart Strike due to the fact it has an extra disease to proc on. Blood also doesn't give as much damage other than personal damage and a lot of your casters will love the 13% extra damage from your talents.

So, I offer two choices here.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=000000000000

This spec utilizes you to use Scourge Strike as your tool of damage. With a two hander, I was hitting things for damn near 5k a shot last night in Naxx with a similar spec. Rotation would go something like this:

IT, PS, SS, BS, DC, DS, SS, SS, DC

And repeat. I think. I'm still looking at the rotation factor of the spec. The big thing here is to see how much damage you could hit with SS with a one hander. I'm thinking a slow/fast weapon may be more beneficial seeing how we don't really get much out of our offhand other than damage. None of our abilities work off of using the OH so you may as well quicken the speed so you can hit more often with the MH.

Second spec:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=000000000000

This is the blood spec. Focus will be Heart Strike which does a good chunk of damage, however your diseases don't stay very long on the mob so it's a shorter rotation

IT, PS, HS, HS, DC, OB

Rince. OB wipes your buffs off and gives you that extra oomph. This is where I could potentially see switching three points in Black Ice into Annihalation to get that 3 more crit and so OB doesn't wipe my diseases off, however this would only change the rotation to put OB before HS.

IT, PS, OB, HS, HS, DC.

Rince. Those are the two specs I'm looking at. The Two hander specs are a little different but I won't get into that as this is a focus for DK Dual Wielding.

Now, with this in mind, this has brought up an interesting question: Could Dual Wielding tanks exist? The main reason why you do not want to dual wield tank is due to the fact you can proc off a lot more parries on a boss and Parry gib yourself to death. However, with the inclusion of expertise in the mix, and a lot of it being prominant, I'm wondering if you couldn't dedicate a few pieces to expertise and allow yourself, perhaps by rings, cloak and trinkets, to get the required expertise with a weapon bonus to remove that.

As we know, I believe it's something like 5.2% or 6.1% that all bosses have to parry. Fine, I get that...Lower that with the expertise and you're looking at an interesting build where parries and dodges don't miss, dual wielding can potentially do more damage:

1) You're more reliant on Runestrikes. With Parry being higher, you could technically replace one or two death coils with hard hitting Runestrikes and put out a lot of threat that way. Threat should not be an issue.

2) You could easily use two one handers that have decent stat, or hell, even your offhand could have the expertise you're looking for to cap you off. use your MH to have a high slow damage and your OH a quick stat boss boost and you could do well.

The problem is trying to find a good balance between the two. It's worth a look at and it's something I plan on doing soon. However, spec wise, I would probably want to fall into Frost to test that build out.

Something like this:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?deat...h=000000000000

Your main attacks would be Frost Strike and Oblit, and something in the form of

IT, PS, OB, FS, FS, DC, OB, OB, FS or some form. I'd have to look ingame how the runes would change on that rotation. Tundra Stalker will give you 5 expertise which is always nice too in the fashion of getting towards that number you want for expertise.

The biggest thing I need to check is this: Can I get enough expertise without hurting my stats to the point where it's not worth it? More to come.

And ding!

Krenian — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:24:15 GMT

And that's how much played time I got on the DK before it hit 80. Minus a couple of minutes cause I was questing and went oh wait, may as well show this.

Taken on November 19th, 2008 ^.^; 6 days not bad!