TankSpot - Blogs - Sad Panda Warrior Ramblings by Wars

My first blog in 5 months, 8 days and 10 hours 17 minutes!

Wars — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 19:39:57 GMT

Long-winded Blog incoming!
A lot has happened since July 30th in both my world and the World-of-Warcraft. There have been nights of sleeplessness, at work, at home, in game. Nights of tragedy with realizations, and days of stress, relaxation and exuberance!
This blog will attempt to go through what has gone on, in nearly half a year, to a 25 year old gamer with a great life.

Overall, in the last five months I think I have had 12 days off of work. That's right, twelve total days which I have not gone to work. Pretty impressive? My bank account seems to not think so. That is not to say that I am poor, but I certainly spend frivolously. I use the money I make, working 70 hour weeks, to keep my life revolving in the comfort position I like. I don't scrimp certainly. If my girlfriend wants to go out and get breakfast, then lunch, then dinner and blow a quarter of my paycheck on my one possible day off a week; I certainly will!

I tried my best to keep raiding in the guild which I call home to this day, but sometimes it is just entirely impossible when you work a 12 hour day, haven't seen the love of you life in three days(whom you live with) and that is your one chance to see her that day. Sorry raid, just gonna have to try to see you tomorrow!

Needless to say between random computer problems and the need to feel "real" for a while, I quit raiding altogether for about two months. It was good, but I love Warcraft and know that I probably will never stay away!

The realization I have come to at least in the last five months. I work to live. I work so much, and trade so much of my free time, in order to provide the comfortable life and spending opportunity which keeps my wonderful girlfriend and myself happy.

Also, about 5 months ago, I started working out heavily. I was on one of those, I can't stand looking at myself in the mirror, kicks. I was going 6 days a week and worked myself down to nearly 215 lbs in two months.

Since August I have kept at it, even with going to school in the morning, work 3-midnight, then trying to hang out with my girlfriend from midnight-1am. It hasn't been much fun, and it has not been easy. But I am down to 200lbs, give or take 1-2lbs randomly and really happy. I dropped a total of 50 lbs this year and could not have dreamed of it 5 months ago.

That's about 215, can't believe that was 15 lbs ago!

My guild was never very hardcore. Red Dragon Society, of Bonechewer, is an amazing guild with some truly great players whom know what they are responsible for and what they need to do. Unfortunately I have never been able to take charge as I wished I could have and helped steer the guild into a successful position. Not to make the guild anymore hardcore, just more efficient and successful and show that I am a capable and proficient warrior tank who can impact the group he plays with!

I tried to raid two weeks ago, to come back, and everyone in has my gratitude! I unfortunately wasn't able to maintain attendance with work/girlfriend/school schedule and I think I have to take a back seat again.

ToGC has been a huge obstacle for and I wish I could get in there to help out. It is unfortunate that I have to sit idly by and watch as the people I want to help succeed have to struggle in my absence!

In the coming weeks, we will see ICC in game. I will again attempt to do my best to get in and help the people I love to game with and try to help them succeed. I know I could fit it in my schedule, I just have to ask myself if I have the constitution to handle that commitment along with my others? More than that, is it worth it to make the sacrifices that I would need to inevitably make in order to juggle even more game-time with my less-than-stellar sleep schedule, work, girlfriend, and school?

Don't even get me started with friends, I get to see them once every month, maybe.

The answer to these questions is of course, that it is up to me, as a person, to decide what is important to me. Of course I have answered that question already many times. Raiding always loses to my real life when push comes to shove and it will continue to. I live comfortably in my own place, and work helps me do that. I make my girlfriend(soon to be fiance I hope), and work helps me accomplish that as well. I could use some more time to do fun things for her but I do what I can.

I hope that at some point I will find the magic formula of time + effort = result which I want, though I doubt it.

I will be on Bonechewer on my warrior Warsn, my Shaman Warsen, or my Druid Lieluufan if anyone wanted to say hi. I will not be on until after midnight though! As usual, working 12 hours today, glad I had some time to write this lengthy-circumlocutory blog which I'm sure could of been simplified into a short concise version;

TLDR: RL > Raiding even when you love to raid.

Love you guys and thanks for reading, tankspot.com is the community that has made me the tank I am today, and the community that keeps me humble and aspiring for greatness, even when I know I can't fit greatness into my schedule!

Yogg-Saron...The epitome of Failure.

Wars — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 07:58:14 GMT

So, my guild has been wiping on Yogg Saron for going on, I want to say 12 Nights of real wipes on him. Probably about 20+ hours total on him that are just wipe after wipe after wipe.

I'm quite fed up with this. It is always someone doing something stupid, brain link damaging their sanity leading to them being MC'd after a portal. Standing in an eyebeam. Walking next to a crusher to get into their portal. D/Cs. Bad dps. Goign to sanity wells that are just way outside of where they should be going.

I've tried to do everything I can for anyone that does't understand the fight. We have our best dps in there almost all the time. We raid late night and don't have the recruitment pool that most regular guilds do and have ended up with some less-than-stellar players overall.

I just get far too stressed about this. I've been playing this game since late 2004 and I expect that other people give a shit about their performance as much as I do.

I expect people to really pay attention and strive for 100% rotation perfection, along with the highest #s they can put up, while knowing they are situationally aware of EVERYTHING going on at once.

In my opinion, if you can't pay attention to: Crusher position, your sanity, your rotation, your health, the health of those around you, constrictor uptime, portal timers, brain links, malady's of the mind all at the same time, you're screwing it up.

Seemsl like a lot but as a tank I think its our role that makes us more situationally aware and I find it rare that dps and healers maintain this type of awareness in encounters.

Thorim for instance. I can tank him, keep my rotation/cds going 100%, stay out of blizzard, lightning and pay attention to positioning and timers along with how many buff stacks he has and I can check and reckeck these things within 3 seconds of each other.

WHY CAN"T PEOPLE DO THIS!?!?

I have a few options here. I can stick it out with RDS and either; chill out, or have a heart attack. Or, I can level my gnome war or draenei paladin on proudmoore and just wait for 3.2 to find a guild.

Will RDS kill Yogg before 3.2? Yes, I believe we will. Will I have a heart attack due to how badly people play the game before that? I think so.

What do I do? I've been so upset almost every night because people that screw up DO NOT GET BETTER. Its the same bullshit every single attempt. Standing in clouds, standing next to crushers, low dps, missing portals, taking other people's portals, getting MC'd, walking away from the group only to get a constrictor on you.

Sunday Blog and my Yoggy Observations

Wars — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 20:38:22 GMT

Coming into this week, had the world at their fingertips. We are by no means the best in the world, but we are some damn fine players, and I mean that. This week showed no regression in our progress either. We walked in and laid waste to Ulduar, even without our normal dk tank whom has all the gear and basically just tanks most fights that hit hard. It was of course, my job to step up to the plate and make the guild remember why I'm so damn amazing.

I ended up tanking most of the bosses in our clear, none more prevalent of our guild's synergy than General Vez. We've only had our DK tanking him because its "just easier," but this week we had no choice and I walked up to General, confident, and put him down. Big ups to all the healers in for keeping me up even though I am probably our least geared tank still! Thank you EPGP!

Yogg...Yogg-Saron, what a fight. This reminds me of learning all the other end-bosses with a little bit extra umph to it! Our guild is employing a shuttle method for the first phase. People of course are still clipping clouds and just outright standing in them, but c'est la vie, people make mistakes!

The phase 1 strat either goes super-smooth where dps really gets it, or it goes incredibly wrong. I really do like this phase as it is about CONTROL. If everyone can simply control what they're doing, then its smooth.

Phase 2(insert ellipsis here) geez, talk about needing people to pay attention. We have two groups of melee going in the portals, and I hear its just anarchy in there. I don't think people quite get the whole, dps while not going insane thing. Just as chaotic is the external phase. We have a lot of people whom are confused about malady of the mind, kill order priorities, insanity, brain links, never mind the actual execution of these tactics once they're implimented.

The problem we seem to have is people's attention span on things that must be done. Really its like, first portal phase, perfect, possibly 4-5 seconds too slow from optimal at the moment. But I believe that is just practice we need. Outside, the tanks are trying very hard to get the crushers to keep their debuff off at all times. This is really our only job between stunning nearby corruptors and I feel so useless in this phase!

Really its all about the ranged dps just going balls out on these crushers? Seems like it, but we had like 3 of them up during our wipe on the last good attempt we had. It seems our dps just needs to get it more. Also I think our dps is going a bit light in the portals as well as we haven't been even close to getting him to P3 in 3 portals, best attempt was brain at 55% I think

I am one to expect perfection out of the people playing with me, I even have unreasonable expectations most of the time. Being the person I am, I have been slightly disappointed by the failure of some people on this encounter. It is quite frustrating to hold someone's hand through fights they don't get, but in Yogg, everyone needs to execute 50 things, not just the tanks, not just a few dps, everyone.

I'm sure in a week, possibly two, we can really get this fight down, will my blood pressure hold out? Will my tongue continue to stay silent? I think so, I have plenty other things to get upset about and direct my anger toward.

Until then, stay tuned, Same Bat Time, Same Bat Channel!!!!

Ahh Tuesday Maint, time to recount Uld.

Wars — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 17:41:58 GMT

Well, its been a while since I've updated the blog on tankspot.com I've been meaning to but unfortunately working 60-70 hours a week along with raiding 5 days a week, and still trying to have a wifey and friends is pretty rough!

Yes I have so much to do, so exciting, but my busy life isn't what this is about, this blog is about Ulduar, and my experience as one of the best tanks out there, with the smallest amount of time to play!

I began 3.1 with a full head of steam, my guild was waiting, anxiously to destroy every encounter in Ulduar and wipe our faces off in the new hardmodes and content. After we hit Thorim in about a week, we started wiping. I would get home late from work, and would never get a spot, so I started looking for a guild who has raid times which I can make.

About two weeks later, broke up. A very sad day as some of the best players I had known were in that guild and it was a big part of my life for nearly a year!

My guiding light was that I had finally found a guild with acceptable progress and a raid time which works for me. You have no idea how difficult it is to find a competent guild that raids later than 9PM PST(I get home around midnight EST and need a few minutes to settle in).

I came over to Bonechewer and joined . This guild is led by a few guys who are just laid back and great along with a few officers who are also just as nice.

Playing my warrior, I still have delusions that somehow I'm gimping the raid with my shield and lack of frost presence, though as it is, I outperform so many dks/druids just because I'm a competent person and have years of experience tanking compared to their few months.

I have settled into RDS's crew very well and now, they seem to me like a crew I could run with for a long haul. We seem to have very, very good dps, some very very good healers, and three main tanks who are all capable of doing their job, some bitch more than others but its about getting comfortable and knowing your team to get things done!

I can't stress how insane it is to come into a guild where the focus is not hardcore insane progression and PROGRESSION > ALL attitude, yet still one shot every boss besides yogg-saron in two nights.

As I said before, we have some insane dps. I do not know how many of you have changed guilds lately, but when I came to RDS, the ranged dps(a fire mage named Zergg, and a destro lock named Formosan) are absolutely insane. I have never been pushed for threat before because I am one to say that I do my rotation almost to the perfect priority. These dps characters absolutely push my threat on a regular basis and I think it makes me iron-out the last few errors I have made during encounters.

Ulduar itself is absolutely fantastic. I really really do love this raid zone. We have the hardest, hardest hardest working guilds out there still going hard at it to beat the hard modes after two months. For us, its not about those hard modes yet but we are thoroughly enjoying the content. Yogg itself is a great fight, I really do enjoy all the fast-twitch movement you have to do in yogg, and I am a nazi when it comes to being fast on the draw. Constrictor up, dps! Dps off the skull, on X! Yogg is just a hard fight to get if your guild isn't used to all the intricacies of the fight and I expect we will work on it again this week and again make progress.

I am predicting probably sunday as the day we make our first kill and 7th on Bonechewer and we begin working on 10man hardmodes. I have it on good authority that we can do XT/Thorim/Hodir quite easiliy with some practice and repairs.

My old MT friend Koraru on Blackrock has been telling me that his 10man crew has taken down all the hard mode keepers except mimi, and half of his players have down syndrome!!

I'm excited and with a few months left until any word on 3.2 on the PTR, I think my new guild, on Bonechewer, and I have a great chance at getting us some proto-drakes before all is said and done!

Warriors are the new Black?

Wars — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 14:31:18 GMT

Fashionista metaphor aside, I have found a few things out during the first week of Ulduar which I am pleasantly surprised about.

First, I am now a DK. I mean, I have CDs like my DK. The first time I noticed this was Ignis. I was dying on our pulls about 15 seconds into the encounter. Directly after a flame jet, just too much aoe damage along with my incoming 25k damage per hit means a dead tank.

The solution? Blow Last stand + enraged regen + trinket.

This is a tactic that can solve almost any incoming damage if you're getting any semblence of healing. Next time I would just blow shield wall, boom, another phase of danger down.

The next time I would have to survive on raid heals alone, or have shield block ready to go, though taking a few K less damage is always nice and helpful!

After this, my CDs are back up!

My warrior is doing more damage!!! 5%? Maybe, maybe not, I lost deep wounds in search of greener mitigation with Imp Disciplines. Though, I am still doing 2k ish dps while tanking, which is a step up from my 1.7k usual dps in t7 instances.

, the guild I am a member of, does not run with a druid or paladin tank. We feel we don't need one at the moment. We have two warriors, myself and another top notch warrior, along with 2 death knights who are among the best I have seen, and being on blackrock, I have seen more than enough.

Warriors are in a great place at the moment. Hopefully we scale well in Ulduar gear and by the end we can be enough to tank Algalon the Raid Destroyer, I am very much looking forward to this, immensely. Our guild missed out on black drakes due to immortal being RNG screwed for 8 weeks straight. One single death each week for two months, very dissapointing.

We are Waltzing through Ulduar with some steam, and if our dps steps up a bit, we can wail out some hard-modes this week or next(thinking Hodir to start, very easy encounter once everyone knows what the intricacies are).

Hope you all are having as much fun in Ulduar as I am, if you have any questions as far as progression goes, or if you are wondering about the guild, feel free to ask or send a PM.

is recruiting dps that can pull big #s, Moreover, you can't just stand in fire and pull big #s!

WTS tears to feed on, pst, cheaper than AH!

Ulduar Theory, and H: GotR via Warlocks

Wars — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 11:32:16 GMT

Here in , we have had some serious problems getting immortal. Every week, we get into naxx and for the last 3 weeks, it has been perfect, perfect runs. What happened? Warlocks.

We have great warlocks, some great dps, unfortunately on one week, one of our warlocks pulled aggro on Gothik post dance(nerf affliction during dancing). This past week, we had another affliction lock not soul shatter when KT MC'd. KT shifted, making melee adjust, and they didn't get an interrupt on the frostbolt, boom warlock dead. This was everyone's fault, it just seems warlocks percipitate failure!!!

Ranting aside, I am ecstatic that Immortal/Undying will not be part of the meta achieve for Uld. I am not a fan of this type of achieve which requires no RNG rediculous for an entire night.

We're some of the better players on blackrock, and thus, in the states(<500 on wowprogress), and the fact that we got sarth3d 282nd in america, then 6min maly quite quickly afterward. Yet, so many guilds that have lackluster skill/drive compared to us, just walk in and get their immortal. Quite disheartening to our members.

Ulduar looks promising, lots of achievements, waht this is going to mean is long raid nights, even after we can nearly 1 shot everything, it is still going to more than likely be 5 hours twice a week to do all the hard-modes.

I'm quite happy about this and hope that it turns out to be a challenge, I work late nights and miss the first two hours of raid time usually, thus it is advantageous to me when raids actually go their full duration.

Also, I've been asked to go back to my warrior as we had only one warrior tank and at the time 3 full time DKs. Thus, back to my tclapping/cshouting/shield slamming self. Though, I do miss all the HP of a blood DK!

Here we go server firsts, bring on ulduar. Though, its a bit more difficult when you have D&T, Nurfed, and a few other quality guilds on the server. I personally think it is worth the competition!

The Current question; To DS, or to HS?

Wars — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 03:11:45 GMT

I have switched from a warrior to a deathknight. There I said it. It happened a few weeks ago and have since done wayyyy too much research and have posted something today on EJ that I believe would be relevant here. My DK tank is amazing, and this whole blog is about whether or not, in 3.1, with the current implemented formulas and weapons in Uld.

I have done a few hours of math and have gotten some average aggregate data regarding DS versus HS using my own AP and an Ulduar weapon, Stormedge which is not all that spectacular and even less impressive than a BoH. Please let me know if any of the formulae are off or any of my calculations are incorrect!

Stormedge:
212.3dps
594-892, 3.50.
AVGDMG= 743dmg
Assuming OPDK unbuffed AP: 3182
AVGDMG= 1538.6 w/AP scale.

Attack Power Scaling:
Attack power (AP) increases your base DPS by 1 for every 14 attack power. For example, an AP of 28 will give you 2 DPS. To convert DPS into average damage per swing: (Weapon DPS + AP/14) * Weapon Speed. -WoWwiki
Example:
(avgdps+(AP/14))*speed
(212.3+(3182/14))*3.5
(212.3+227.29))*3.5
1538.6 contribution from atkpwr

Death Strike Formulas:
[(g).75] +225.75 = x

Modified Formula(Blood Spec'd while Blood Gorged and DS glyph assuming 40RP)
[(g).75]+225.75 = 1.86x

Heart Strike Formulas:
[(g)(.5)] + 368 = y

Modified Heart Strike w/blood gorged/2hspec/bloody strikes/2 diseases/20% extra from BS glyph
[(g)(.5)] + 368 = 2.603y

Actual #s!
Death Strike (FU)
[(1538.6)(.75)] + 225.75 = 1.89x
1153.95 + 225.75 = 1.89x
1379.7 = 1.89x
X= 2607.63
2607.63 Damage per Death Strike when Glyphed+fully talented.

Heart Strike (B)
[(1538.6)(.5)] + 368 = 2.603y
769.3+368 = 2.603y
1137.3= 2.603y
X= 2960.39

2960.39 Damage per Heart Strike w/blood gorged, 2h spec, 2 diseases, 20% glyph, and Bloody Strikes.

Conclusions
This does not reflect anything else other than non-crit, average damage. Though, if you were able to connect with your HSs, it would seem that they would be the optimal choice in a rotation. Thus giving credence to the need for Death Rune Mastery compared to just using DSx2HSx2 in a 2nd part of a rotation.

HS also seems like it will be the better choice given gear since both benefit from MoM, yet only HS benefits from Subversion(9% more crit). HS also has the added benefit of launching a free DC at the mob in question dealing around 1100dmg on the PTR during my testing using only HoW and my blood buffs.

----------------------------------------------
Higher AP Values, Assumes 5500 AP buffed.

Heart Strike:
[(2118.025)(.5)+368 = 2.603y
(1059.0125+368) = 2.603y
1427.0125 =2.603 y
3714.51 = y

3714.51/HS given 5500 AP + Bonuses

Death Strike:
[(2118.025)(.75)] + 225.75 = 1.86x
1588.52 + 225.75 = 1.86x
1814.27 = 1.86x
3374.04 = x
3374.04/DS given 5500 AP + Bonuses

Seems even at higher elevated APs we see higher HS damage. So:
HSx2
7429.02 per 2 Blood runes, and a higher crit % and the ability to launch an extra DC.

3374.04 per 1F 1U + Healing threat, along with the ability to get more Tanking Utility talents such as IRT, Spell Deflection. Also gives the added benefit of easing your rotation and gives more freedom on GCDs and Rune Dumps

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Waiting on Ulduar, Heroic Strike: Time for change?

Wars — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 16:21:06 GMT

As one of probably a couple hundred thousand players our there. I have taken some time off as we have had everything on farm status and completed all achievements in the past few months.

Being on Blackrock Horde, it is not entirely easy to say that you have accomplished something. We in OP are some severely amazing players who had the server 9th 3D kill on 1.6.09.

Being 6th on the server, we were #283 in the US I believe. We're officially ranked 20th on the server due to our late maly/kt25 kills because our deeps couldn't lvl as fast as our tanks. We had unofficial 3rd KT10 kill on blackrock because I was on 24/7 back then. Killing KT10 only 9 days after the xpac dropped.

Well time passes and achievements hit the back burner and we're all sitting around. Raiding maybe 3 days a week lately. What to do?

Well I now have 2 lvl 80 tanks. 1 prot warrior and one is a DK.

I have been looking over tankspot recently and looked at the Heroic Strike discussion. In summation, the ability is a needless strain on players as well as a flaw in the system of needed rage generation pulling double duty. Flawed in the two reasons that it not only takes up a next swing to deal the additional damage from the ability but decreases a chance to reduce rage. When rage is abundant it doesn't matter, but then, why have the mecahnic in place?

Solutions? Put HS on a toggle? I am not convinced by this argument as this would more than likely make paying attention to your rage more of a priority than basically anything else in a boss fight. As if you get an avoidance streak, and you are in a movement phase, then you are going to have to prioritize turning off HS toggle, moving, making sure positioning is correct, waiting for avoidance streak to end.

This could be very problematic if you all of a sudden don't turn off the HS toggle and you're moving, not generating any rage and your ranged dps is plugging away at your threat(we should be looking at 6k dps in Ulduar with our threat not scaling much.

The second school of thought is to put HS on a cooldown. I am a huge fan of this. Some people don't like to pay attention to cooldowns and I am sorry, get something to help you, an addon, and egg-timer, it doesn't matter to me.

There would need to be some dps scaling conversions with it along with devastate(to truly make all 1handers viable for Warriors), but it seems that is just the best option.

Despite my intrepid run on sentences and incoherent ramblings I hope I have not lost your interest yet.

If anyone else is sitting around with nothing to do but ride their proto-drakes and attempt to farm the hell out of achievement points, let me know what else you are doing to counter-act the boredom.

Though, as we all know, sometimes time off is just needed. This seems like a great time for some as I have just returned from a 4 week hiatus to return to blogging on my Tuesdays while the servers are bollux'd.

Moreover, what are everyone's thoughts about raiding on the PTR? When Ulduar is up, is your guild going to go at it? If so, how many times a week? Provided you are in the same situation as my guild , will you devote most of your allotted raid time to this new instance?

My opinion is that with Blizzards CM recent post about Ulduar on the PTR, we will not have more than 2-3 attempts at it any given week. Even if we do, the GMs will be watching closely as there will be thousands of guilds in there and I am quite sure the lag will be particularly immense.

Quote: "Ulduar will be on PTR in the future, but we're going to have tight controls in place on what can be tested at any given time. Ulduar will also not be up permanently like Naxxramas was in the WotLK Beta. If we have something to test, we'll make the zone and encounter available. If we don't, we'll disable the zone." -Daelo, Blizzard Staff.

Source- http://blue.mmo-champion.com/12/1390...le-on-ptr.html

I am looking very forward to this new zone and the content in it. Especially the challenge. I await the chance to prove the superiority of over some of the riff-raff that inhabits Blackrock! Or are we the riff-raff? Oh well, who cares, bring on the impossible cock-block headbanger encounters!!!
"I just want to take a loot at c'thun" *BOOM RAID DEAD*

The Plight of Loving your Home server.

Wars — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 17:40:39 GMT

For once I am able to write at my apartment instead of work. I am having a lot of difficulty as of late, even though I am having a great time tanking. I come from a small server, Skywall. Skywall is enormously casual and we have had at most two real raid guilds at any one time on the horde.

I have been playing for nearly two months on the server, Blackrock. It is just as crazy as people make it out to be. There are just tons of horde players here. And we basically dominate every aspect of the game. Moreover, the raiding is great, I can log on anytime I want(am not at work that is), and find a PUG for nearly anything; Tk/SSC/Hyjal/ZA/Mags/Gruul/KZ, anything!

Unfortunately my friends who still reside on skywall are content to stay there until the end of days. Our connections within the community are great, and our times playing together are priceless over first 3 1/2 years of the game.

What is it worth though? We have had fun playing, but when I'm not playing with them, they are not online, the server is just dead. Pugs are terrible, no one has any gear that's worth trying a pug t5/t6. There just are not enough resources to foster a great raid community on skywall.

Last night I did a heroic mgt with a resto druid, enh shaman, rogue, and ret pally.

Almost no cc, if this was on skywall, we would of never got past the first four pull. On blackrock, we rolled the place in a little under an hour, all the dps was insane, and knew how to play. The healer was great, and though we had to kick our ret pally for a mage after he blew phoenix duties twice, it was F****** great!

This has almost sold me on staying on blackrock, asking my friends to come over and enjoy the experience.

Though, no matter where I am, I think I will always love being a big fish, in a small pool. Nothing beats being one of the most well known players on the server, and being an "old schooler" on that server.

Again, where does that lie in my heart though? I am just another face on blackrock, no one in particular, a great tank that pugs love and even death and taxes players gave credit to.

On skywall I could easily get titles for kills in naxx, malygos, sanctum. On blackrock there would be almost zero chance for that to happen. I am pretty good and hardcore, but nowhere near the 7 days a week raid scene I know many blackrockers are.

Blackrock is better than skywall, but where can I rank it? Where do friends come into play, where to loyalties lie when it comes to wanting to win for once. Instead of struggling with finding healers for ssc/tk runs every week on skywall, I want to not have a problem finding things in the xpac.

I know if I go back to skywall, I will be dissapointed. All the people who I miss, if they wanted what I want, would be coming to blackrock, right? I am in quite the mental circle here, and with a new great job offer on the table IRL, my life is as hectic as it gets.

Nerfed Devastate? No problem

Wars — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 05:03:25 GMT

I think my screenshot will speak for itself....
This was lvl 70, wearing nothing but average, t4/badge gear tank gear.

That is while solo'n lvl 70 elite groups in shadowlabs normal. I LOVE NEW REVENGE!!!

I truthfully can not wait until this goes live, I am so happy with my god mode warrior right now I could cry. I will probably end up crying though due to the nerf revenge will probably get due to FUCKING PVP!!!!

Loremaster, a rerolls frustrations!

Wars — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 02:30:41 GMT

Well, while I am sitting here at work, trying to not pay attention to the ground faults in my HIP(Hot Isostatic Press) units, I decided to blog about my recent forays into attempting to pre-complete the achievement of "Loremaster" and "The Seeker" to the furthest point before WOTLK comes out.

Being a Lore junkie(not the P*****n!), I just love the warcraft lore, it is the reason I keep playing this game. The quests are the window to this Lore, the reason I really want to do these achievements! Though there are a few issues...

The problem stems from this, my main has only been around about a year, and like most rerolls I leveled him quickly and in the minimum amount of time.

With this came missing quite a few quests. My prot warrior was, as of two weeks ago, 157/750 quests in Kalimdor and 120/550 quests in Eastern Kingdoms(we'll leave out Outland for now).

I set out with the intention of starting Kalimdor in Mulgore and fanning out from there, doing the lowest quests, to the highest quests.

I spent about 4 hours in Mulgore, doing all the quests from start to finish for the Taurens, pretty good rep too. This should help with my reputation achievements as well.

This led to me heading to the barrens, where I had previously thought I had completed a good amount of quests, I was wrong. I spent another 5-6 hours alone in the barrens just doing quests there, ratchet, WC, deliveries, etc.

After doing all this, the delivery quests began to seriously pile up, go to Hummul Runetotem, go to the Sepulcher, Delivery to Shimmering Flats, etc etc.

This begins my plight, if I were to do this same achievement on my Priest, my long-time main, I would be more than likely halfway done with this stuff by now!!!! Oh well, c'est la vie vraiment?

Now I am stuck, I have spent over 15 hours already, just doing delivery quests, the barrens, and some stonetalon/1k/ashenvale stuff.

One good point is, Wow! Blizzard really did put a lot of effort and quests into this game. I've been playing it since release in 2004 and haven't really ever appreciated all the effort in here.

The converse in this situation is, geez, I really haven't done much. Being the completionist I have been in previous games really hates the fact that I haven't put that much effort into this from the start!

As I said, I have put quite a few hours in, though many many more to come, I am now 235/750 and still only a paltry 175/550 respectively in kalimdor/EK.

There are a few innate problems here, some of which Blizzard is solving, some which they have not yet. First is that you can not see any low lvl !s when roaming the land atm. Blizzard is fixing this come 3.0, thank ***.

The second, and much larger problem, is that we do not have a zone-by-zone breakdown of quests done out of possible quests done like in outland. This, blizzard is not fixing yet, though hopefully they can. This will really be more along the lines of involving "The Seeker" as doing 3,000 quests is more than getting "Loremaster" takes.

Either way, Blizzard, solve these two things and we've got gold. I don't want a walkthrough of what to do, but at least a hint of what I might be missing when I am 2990/3000 would be pretty damn helpful and make me drink a few cups less coffee that dreary night when I am attempting to finish it up sometime in 2009.

I'll keep the post updated, but if you're looking for things to discuss on this, feel free to comment and ask a question.

Sad Pandas First, Small Server vs Huge Server!

Wars — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 02:08:31 GMT

First off, I have to say this is just going to be a placeholder blog atm. I am at work, and after having so many blogs over the years on myspace, I'm sure my loyal readers would not mind seeing a more direct place relating to Warcraft to read some of my misadventures and shenanigans.

I have inconsequentially transferred to Blackrock in search of greener pastures, what this resulted in was an icrease in player base for my faction from about 4,000 lvl 70s to around 13,000.

Blackrock is plenty different from playing on a medium size server such as skywall. This results in a number of differences:

1) PuGs, anytime you want to find them. Be it KZ/ZA/MAG/Gruul. Hell even a TK run was going down today when I left for work.

2) Cheap stuff, the AH is littered with voids, primals, shards. There is no shortage of almost anything on there, even if you wanted to sell your Surging Mana Pauldrons(as I just got them to drop randomly last night), there is of course 5 other pairs up there for around 20g. Go go small/large prismatic.

3) Guilds, there are so many guilds in sunwell and t6 that if you have the time to put in during any regular hours, you can have t6 in a heartbeat, provided you're not terrible....no wait, even if you're terrible.

Besides all these great things to keep me going there is still something which I have noticed and makes me want to go back to my small, fun, empty, server.

PEOPLE ARE STILL BAD.

No matter where you are, no matter the server population, the amount of guilds killing Illidan, there are still so many players out there that just can not play this game.

I'm not much of an elitist, as long as you show you're trying, or have a semblance of a clue, I'll show you the ropes and help you out. I've been told I'm the best tank there is. Of course this was in several pugs and the people were not in any high end guilds, but I still think I hold my weight.

The people who are really bad, are usually in a good guild, or at least a guild who lets them tag along and "Pew Pew."

These people always pyroblast at the beginning of a pull, or spam shadowbolts, or mind blast, or just stun the hell out of a mob before it even gets to me. These people refuse to change their playstyles and seem to think I am the problem here.

These people are there, regardless of server, regardless of faction.

To stop and rant, I guess this is turning into quite a larger blog than I anticipated, maybe I can get into some of my dealings.

I am planning on xfering back to my home server of skywall(skylawl) oct 13th. I miss my home and all the guys and girls I have played with since 2005 when the server opened.

Skywall has never been a place of huge progress(actually quite bad realistically), but once you get accustomed to being somewhere, it feels like home. I believe it is more the people than the actual carbon-copy of a server.

If you're looking for a good home, skywall has to be it, most friendly server there is out there, just don't read or try to help on the realm forums, you will just end up dissapointed.

Lastly, thanks for reading, provided anyone has, but you'll see much more of this Protection Panda in the future.