Be the Love Generation....

Well, I made it. Arawn is dancing with the trolls.

Getting there was interesting. I had not completed the Noggenfogger Elixir quest, and I'm not an engineer to craft a parachute cloak. So I ran to Hinterlands and got the mushroom to complete the elixir quest and bought up a bazillion of them (the slow fall effect needed only procs rarely).

From there, it was a simple task of following directions:



I died once (once w/o a soulstone, that is) and had to make another run for it. I died the next time too, but had a soulstone handy and popped it.

Here are some photos from the trip:

Here you can see the terrain tile border between Winterspring and Felwood. The village is hidden in the terrain border regions.


The deep breath before the last plunge! Village in sight!


WEEEEEEEEE!


/whistle... hey explorers have to eat! Here fishy fishy...


Peace at last. /dance.

They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. — Isaiah 2:4 & Micah 4:3

Stay safe out there kids. Peace.

"Death is the Only Adventure You Have Left"

Real life 1, WoW 0.

Well, more like real life 1, WoW 50 days /played.

I cannot continue to play WoW for the next few months. I have a political job, and this cycle is really starting to take over my time. I have an outside project going as well, and it is taking more and more of my free time. I am walking away for a while.

But not to go out without a bang, I am planning Arawn's last adventure: a ride to the dancing troll village for the final logout.

I will post about the preparations and, if I can get my Mac video capture working, film the descent to the village and my sign-off.

Stay tuned.

The Difference One Piece of Good Gear Makes

One new piece of gear
Leads to +70 resilience
Leads to...

...29 HKs in Warsong Gulch, and 1 death.

Oh You Better Run Now, Scrubs

'Cause my shoulders are merciless...

For those keeping a close watch on my stats, that's 419 resilience.

Don't drool on the new lewtz kkthx.

UPDATE: New logo based on the above.

Yeah Megan, I Stole Your Cartoon. WHAT?!

Servers and 3s and 5s, Oh My!

Okay, so I really stretched for a clever title. Shut it.

A brief update: I am back from my trips and have my horned helm and my spellblade, and they are all enchanted and I'm just lacking a better red gem for the hat, which I will grab up tomorrow after I get some honor points tonight. (+12 spell damage, shiny!)

This week I joined a random 3v3 and a random 5v5. The 3v3 was fun since it was a 1400+ rated team and my Season 3 helm provoked a very silly flame from a rogue we toasted. He accused me of 'smurfing' and I don't even know what that means. If you see Sadnev on the Cyclone Battlegroup, wave at him for me. Wanker.

The 5v5 was actually surprisingly good. It was a new team with random pickup players, but we ground out a 7-4 record. We *should* have had an additional two victories, but the server crashed - twice - while we were mopping up scrub teams. And then, while sitting at a very respectable 7-3, we fell for the "just one more game" curse. Gets you every time.

Last night I ditched trying to out-DPS everyone and stuck to my role as the Prime Annoyance. Howl of Terrors, DoTs on everything, Felhunter on healers, etc. Worked well.

How were your games this week?

You Know You've Done It

/farewell....for now

I'm leaving tomorrow for at least a 10 day absence, so I leave you with this to ponder until I return....locks are op:

Personally I think that the only class that can consistently beat a lock is a Rouge. Even then, the rouge has to have quite a bit of skill... I've heard it can take weeks of working on technique starting on n00b locks that are easy to beat, but help you to learn. It must suck.
I've also heard that if you're an engineer it helps, cause you can blast them with your blasting charges, but that's annoying to skill up in and isn't very helpful against high-level locks. Lower-level ones may be caught off guard by the bombs though and fly every which way.
The final strategy tends to not work in high-level locks either, as they employ complex strategies to not be so easily cracked, but you can use a Skeleton key if you have your Blacksmithing up.

Anyone else think we need to make some other way to open doors and chests? If you made it a Mage it'd be easy to get past... even a Spriest would be better!

/endirony

2.3

It is upon us.

I have enough honor points to buy the Season 1 Spellblade, and I will have plenty of points for an OMGpwnzor!!!1one1!! horned helm (with WINGS) when Season 3 starts.

I may be MIA for a while on the blog as I am preparing for a 10 day absence from work (and the country for part of it) but when I return, I will resume this essential work of non-fiction literature.

Insta-Corruption...Trainable?

I like it. You?

Newbie Guide to Farming Lower Level Instances, Part One

For those of you who have seen Hobbs's videos on how to farm shards in lower level instances, you know that paladins rock. You should also know, however, that we locks rock as well, and in addition to trade skills and daily quests, shard farming can earn you a lot of cash per hour in WoW.

There are some basic differences between a paladin or a mage and warlock mass-pull farming. Pallies want you to hit them and get inside their AoE aura. Mages want you to get close so they can freeze you to the ground or AoE you and your NPC buddies to death. But for a lock in a mass pull situation, having the mobs get close to you can be deadly. You'll learn this from ugly experience: low level mobs have spell interrupts and lockdowns that will get through your resistances and kill you if you don't have a parachute.

The key, then, is to get out your voidwalker and turn the autocast off of its Suffering ability. Suffering is an AoE, highly effective taunt effect. You must not use it until you are done gathering the mobs for your pull. Once you've got them all, you punch Suffering to make sure the mobs stay on the voidwalker, and then rapidly pepper 3-5 mobs with Seed of Corruption.

Timing is important, as slowness in casting the Seeds will cause them to pop out of synch, and you will either break the taunt or cause the mobs to run away in fear, and in a mass pull situation, if either of these happen, you are screwed in an instance.

Try it out. Let me know how it goes. Scarlet Monastery is a good place to practice.

Revised Revised Action Plan

Thanks to a reassuring reply on the boards, I have a much better, much more exciting plan for the start of Season 3.

We do not have to have a certain rating to buy shoulders and weapons from previous seasons, so I am in no danger of missing out on Season 2 shoulders. That means (and this makes me so happy) that instead of saving up for a hood and blowing the full current-season-point cost of a set of shoulders that would become old news, I can instead continue saving for my awesome horned hood that gives you periodic wings -- OMG -- with great stats, and pick up my shoulders at a reduced price a few weeks later.

And, I will also be able to replace -- with honor points!!! -- my Continuum Blade with the Season 1 Gladiator's Spellblade. I am very, very excited about the first day I'm back in town during Season 3.

Cloistered

I went back to SM last night with a friend to help run his warlock alt (yay!)through SM Library and SM Cathedral. The library didn't really give it up for us, although pulling it in 4 pulls plus boss was fun. It was so fun, in fact, that I got cocky and we died once in each of the two Cathedral runs.

It's okay though, because on the second run, he got Whitemane's Chapeau...that wonderful hat that took me a month to grab when I was coming up as a new lock. Grats, dood...you look like an evil caster of pimpness.

I spend so much time in SM that I might as well start wearing the tabard I snagged a while back and ask Mograine for my own cell.

...And Knowing is Half the Battle

Season 2.3 starts on November 20th. (via WoW Insider)

Revised action plan: get Arena shoulders next week, then save up any points I can accumulate for a small head start on next season's gear. I will have to do a LOT of honor farming between now and the 20th to get ready to get the new season's honor gear.

Man...I need 60k more honor to max out before the 20th. That means....60,000 points / 13 days = 4615 per day. That's a tall order for every single day...ugh...

Time to get to work!

Ogre Chicks Dig Me

Exalted with Ogri'la = friends with benefits.

Also, once I get the mats for a new rod, I can get more pew pew.

The Heat is On

My patch downloader just pulled down a 222 MB patch. Does this mean 2.3 is almost here?!

OMG I still need Season 2 Arena gear!

I need around 375 points each week for the next two weeks to get my Arena hood (easy?), and then 3-4 weeks to get my shoulders. After that, I won't care about Season 3's arrival...but I'm worried it will get here before I'm ready.

My wishlist-with-the-clock-running:

• 70,000 more honor points
• Merciless Gladiator's Felweave Cowl
• Merciless Gladiator's Felweave Amice
• Crystal Orb of Enlightenment or Jewel of Infinite Possibilities
• 4,700 more gold

Let's do this!

Bugs and Demons

Blizz is listening to the warlock community's complaints about pet scaling with gear. Let 'em have it, people.

The Man in Black

...fled across the desert...

It's Over 9000!

75,000, to be exact.

When I Was Young...I Never Needed Anyone

Yes, folks, I am officially un-guilded. /cry, /qquit.

It was not a happy decision, and I didn't leave for the usual Dramaspear reasons. There was friction among the officers, and more than one was on my nerves, but it was nothing over and above the kind of thing you see in a workplace. (Therein lies a small problem but I'll get to that in a moment...) I left because my work schedule is very hectic and unpredictable, and cannot sign up for raids and/or attend raids with any regularity. Our guild started moving up in progression through the Gruuls / TK / SCC portion of the game, and I want to see this content. But as the guild reinvents itself into a serious progression guild, things like:

• mandatory attendance,
• officer activity, and
• regular guild meetings

become important, and I could not live up to my end of the deal.

The "play-as-work" feel comes with the transition to a progression guild, and I do not want added stress in what I view as my way to blow off steam from a very demanding job. This is a minor reason for leaving, but it was a reason.

I look forward to joining my original guild for fun in Kara as they start up their attempts, but for me, WoW takes a back seat to keeping a job and seeing my wife. My focus will be more on BGs in the morning to hoard (For the Hoard?) honor points and Arena matches on the weekend.

All...by...my...se-e-elf....

WAN BAI

Gimmie!

Just Stop, Part 2

Here is a story about a man named Lynxz who gets busted for having bought a high-ranked Arena team with a 2000+ rating and thinking that gives him the right to talk about what a badass he is without his felpuppy. Note that none of the people currently on the team have won any games.

GG.

Just Stop

Pls. KKthx

Whoooooooooooo's Got My Big Toe.......

Wired profiles MMOs and their Halloween shenanigans.

OMG, WTF, WTB BBQ

Durthoo, Onmyoji, Jrocks and I ran 2v2s last night and had a blast.

The most memorable match of the night (for me, anyway) ended with me and a rogue, one on one. My cooldowns were blown, my mana was low, and he was at roughly 75 percent life.

F***! My Felguard is dead!

He climbed right into the middle of me just as I dotted him up, and promptly threw at me every single spell interrupt / stun ability available to his horrible, horrible class, so it was stunlock vs. dots.

I blew Shadowburn, I pounded the Death Coil key but "THAT SPELL ISN'T READY YET."

The lifebars paced each other with eerie precision. 75 percent. 50 percent. 49 percent. 20 percent. 5 percent.

DRAW.

A freaking draw! We died at exactly the same time. No points, no plus-up to games played for the night, nothing! A ten-minute wait for naught.

But it was funny, and that's something.

SORRY

I know, I know, I haven't updated in a really long time. My job has been crazy, my raid attendance has been terribad, and I really haven't done much with WoW other than log on, tailor bags, log off. I will do better, promise.

So I have my gloves, my chest, and my legs from the arena. I am about 3 weeks from my hood, and if season 3 holds off for four weeks after that, I will have the full Arena armor set and be able to start saving for the weapons. WEWT.

Guild-wise, things have really perked up. (Just as my involvement has plummeted, go figure LOL) The guild can one-shot Gruul's Lair now and is working on Tempest Keep (skipping Mags for some reason I cannot figure out). Progression continues to not have much of an attractiveness for me, as my job and family commitments keep me out of any serious raid schedule...I will never be at the top of the list for loot. Our guild loot system switched from DKP - just when I got some respectable DKP - to a rank system. The setup is simple: the guild ranks are now tied to raid attendence in 20 percent brackets, and those in the higher brackets are always priority for loot rolls over the lower brackets. So again, I'm scre-zewed.

Sometimes I wonder why I'm in a progression guild, much less an officer in one...I love the people (LOVE them) but cannot commit enough time to the endeavor for it to pay off. Eh well.

More to come, I promise. SORRY!

Weekend Wrapup

I had a blast this weekend. For the Overmind had a great run of games and my guild went on a rampage on Saturday. Good times.

Arena: For the Overmind has really come together. One of our two losses was a dumb mistake on my part (I dotted a sheep...I know, I know, I suck...do you ever have those moments when you just totally lose it and hit a button you know you shouldn't? ) and the other was just...brutal. The latter came on our last night of the game. It was a rogue/mage/heal combo, and they made us come to them in the graveyard map. Our mage got out ahead, our healer fell behind, and I was stunned then blasted by the mage and rogue. I popped everything I had (healthstone, trinket, the works) to no avail. Dead in about 6 seconds.

Takeaway: do not spread out if you are going to them, call for a polymorph if you need it, cc as much as possible when it comes to a super-dmg combo.

Rampage: After our Gruul's raid fell apart due to lack of healers logged on (again) I called for some of our lowbies to come with me to SM for some powerlevelling. When we arrived in Southshore, we were met with about five members of Tarren Mill Deathguard. One of the lowbies logged in on his main, and we called for guild backup. The help was slow in coming, but this small skirmish eventually escalated into a bona fide old-school Hillsbrad throwdown. Most of our respective guilds showed up after I posted on the forum. Hilarity ensued. Highlights for me included catching about 8 of the Hordies in an Inferno stun and then summoning my very first Doomguard in the middle of Tarren Mill (Guess who was the sacrificial victim?! Soulstones FTW!).

The best moments came when our PvP team coincidentally showed up alone in the Southshore inn and held off huge numbers of Horde trying to take it. AoE's So much fun.

Well, eventually the Horde went away (aw!) and we found a huge number of us standing together in a field with nothing to do...

...so we raided Undercity...

...and Silvermoon...

...and after I logged, they raided MC...

Best weekend of WoW ever. :) And to top it off, I farmed all the mats for my needed enchants and am just watching the clock until tomorrow morning for my arena chest piece.

Screenshots to come.

Arenas 101

Or should I say, Arenas +101?

For the Overmind rocked the house today in the Arenas. We went 9/2 and added 101 points to our score, and we're sitting at 1723.

Arena chest for me, shoulders for our mage, here we come.

Incoming: Enchants!

At the moment I'm working my tailoring and the auction house to get cash for gems for the upcoming arena chest piece. After that's accomplished I plan to save up for the following enchants (see the gear guide on the right...very helpful):

• Enchant Weapon - Major Spellpower
• Enchant Chest - Major Resilience
• Enchant Cloak - Spell Penetration
• Enchant Boots - Boar's Speed

The total cost of this run of enchants:

• 16 Large Prismatic Shards
• 14 Greater Planar Essences
• 16 Arcane Dusts
• 2 Primal Manas
• 8 Primal Earths

Can you say "farming?"

FIVES!

I was recruited for a 5v5 team that seems to fit well with my weekend play schedule. Apparently their lock "doesn't know how to chain fear" and is being blamed by the rest of the team for their losses. I'm somewhat leery of a team that blames their losses on one player; 5v5s should be able to cover at least to some extent the mistakes of others.

However, I have a feeling they'll be happier with my play style. I'm perfectly fine with being CC the whole match. Basically I will CoT and Fear a pally, CoT and felhunter a shammy in that setup, and generally keep them locked down during the two-healer phase of the fight.

I am getting very excited about getting my chest piece on Tuesday. :)

Rating +80

That's what a good night in the arenas will get you.

One week away from my chest piece. If we so much as sneeze in the arena this week, it's mine on Tuesday morning. I am so freaking excited. :)

This 3v3 is pretty good, actually. We're sitting at around, oh, 1630 something (stupid Armory update lag) after two real nights of playing around 10 games each time, and our gear is not amazing. When the points roll over next week, my stats will skyrocket, and our mage will get his shoulders, and we'll be suddenly much tougher to kill.

RAWR

Rocking the 3s

Taking up Megan's advice, I started a 3v3: For the Overmind. ("FOO" is a fun abbreviation lol) Two guildmates, a so-so class mix (demo lock, shadowpriest, frost mage), but deadly in the opening phase of the game...and very able to blast down the healer immediately, two Fears, and lots of CC.

This morning we had a winning record, and two of the losses were just silly, including one DC on my part that was a real heartbreaker and cost us 19 points. OUCH. Another of the losses was my fault, having gone the wrong way to catch a healer and finding myself on the wrong side of the field.

Our mage is a beast. He has several pieces of Arena gear and knows how to play his spec. Several games he would be the last one up and would find himself against two opponents, one with low HP, and would wipe the floor with them. Do not mess with him if you see us...you will die.

We plan on hitting the Arena over and over and over to get the rating up. LOVE. IT.

QQ of the Day

Flavor of the month: "lifedrain."

Times They Are a-Changin'

I'm abandoning my 5v5. We're suffering from several difficulties, but more than anything this has to do with my schedule. I am working out again (yay!) very early in the morning, and it leaves me with more than an hour before I have to get ready to work wherein I can play arena matches. It makes more sense for me to get a team together for those hours.

We've also had some teamwork problems. With our conventional team makeup (lock, MS warrior, resto shammy or holy pally, rogue, shadowpriest) it is essential that we work together to take someone out in the initial moments of the matches. We all have /assist macros. We are all supposed to use them and focus fire an enemy immediately. I use Proximo to keep track of our opponents, and unfortunately in the initial moments of *every match,* I can see damage being scattered across anywhere between 2-3 opponents. I've tried to address it repeatedly and nothing seems to change, so as soon as I can find a new team or start a new team, I am out.

No big loss, no hard feelings. This team has been an excellent introduction into the do's and don'ts of the arena, and I've obtained some fair points from the experience. It's just time to move on.

Regrets

"Battle With 'Gamer Regret' Never Ceases"

Mixed Nuts

This weekend was a mixed bag, as usual:

• Failure again to take down High King Maulgar. Although we failed, I feel like it was a personal success. Those felhunters stayed Enslaved and Taunting on every attempt. Once or twice some whiney punks tried to blame them (as usual) for our failure, which led to me turning on my mic and very firmly suggesting they check their combat logs and shut up. Queue crickets.
• Adornment of Stolen Souls from Prince (which will form the start of my PvE set once I get my Arena pieces). If I am not mistaken, the takedown of Prince officially puts the official stamp on our guild's second Kara team.
• Spectacular failure to take down Illhoof, even with a temporary respec to Destruction to deal with the interrupts on casting Seed of Corruption. The respec didn't help much because I don't have the crit gear for a Destruction build, and we just weren't taking down the chains fast enough.
• 14000+ honor points from AV, well below what I'd planned but within striking distance of the ever-elusive trinket.
• A poor string of Arena matches that left us at 1422 for the week, brought on by no-show regulars, some awkwardness in the teamwork, a moderate lack of gear on our team, and skill of our opponents.
• Tailoring up to 348, which allows me to craft Netherweave Bags and Imbued Netherweave Bags. These things are incredible money makers, and I am happy with the cash flow I've established by selling them on the Auction House. Now I can seriously start saving for the epic mount.

I've decided to save up for the Arena chest piece, which I can obtain in three weeks even if our team does not improve beyond the ugly 1400 bracket between now and then. We are months away from SSC and The Eye, so there's no possible way for me to get a Tier 5 chest piece in the near future. I'll grab up the other pieces as fast as possible after that.

Darkspear Stalker

Spotted in Alterac Valley just now...for those of you that have no clue who this is, watch the video!

He's BACK ZOMG

Syphonis is posting on teh forumz! Preserved for posterity:

hey all

i checked my forum thread and like freaked out it had 16 pages!!

a lot of posts said 10/10 which i didnt really get but whatever
and i read through and got some advice and people wanted to know what happened so i'd figured id say
what did happen

i asked my mom yesterday why she was upset at the succubus thing, this is kinda how the conversation went

can i play WoW again?

-no, and what does that stand for anyway

world of warcraft, but anyway, it was just a minion, its a pet that i control

-hmm yea, a pet thats dressed inapropriately, you will not play a game like that

but PLZZZZ i really want to i get this new pet at level 30 so then i wont use the succubus (i now know how to pronounce it lol) besides the succubus sucks all ive heard it can do good is like seduce people, and also i have other pets
(Wow i shouldn't have said that.....)

-she stops what she is reading and looks me in the face with a weird look, and then she says, "she does what to people"

(so i try to get off of the subject)

thats no the point I just want to play I promise I wont play with that pet

-Honey, thats not all about the game that is bad, i read this article about those games mmgrpo's (thats literally what she said) there are lots of child predators that will try to find where you live and blah blah blah blah

then she goes into this weird conversation where she tells me if anyone touches (in real life) my private parts I should punch them immediately in the face and run away, and not be scared to tell people like her or my teachers
(i was like WTF?)

then I said i would allow her to get full parental control over the account and all of that kind of stuff, and eventually later in the day after talking with my dad she agreed i could play

But school is starting and I'm going to take a break from WoW for a while before I get things straight

Thanks for the replies and posts people!

This is better than Christmas!

QQ of the Day

LOL

Arena Knowledge

Learn! From Radikal Noise:

Armchair likes to put Azael's FG and Dahis (warrior, omg duh) on me the whole game; between Skillherald and the FG I end up taking a lot of damage and doing very little. I basically end up kiting out of LoS of the mage so I don't eat the shatter burst (between Intercept, Skillherald, FG intercept and novas, it's pretty annoying to not be a gnome) and poking out to decurse teammates and drop a poly or two. By taking me out of the fight, the game becomes a longer game and while our priest is more free to burn and harass, they have the mana efficiency advantage with a FG lock spamming mana drain the majority of the game. If I start to get more aggressive, they look to burst me down with a MD on Ice Block.

Pewp Machine plays against us very differently; they are much more damage oriented and really go for the early kill on our priest. Doing this also ensures that despite the lack of heroism, their priest can win the mana burn war as ours is unable to cast. Unlike Azael's constant fear and tongues spam, you see a lot more of PM's lock, Streygo, shadowbolting faces off. I seem to fall for the same, FG intercept->poly->psychic scream combo EVERY game.

From Jayno's Arena thread:

20/41/0 http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=Nq0rVRbZbxczIizzesd
- I call this the felguard drain spec. I used it last season as a LOL-SPEC cos I always LoL at felguard locks. Then surprisingly I managed to get nearly 2100 2v2 lol. Since then I started liking the felguard.. a lot..
- Use felguard stuns defensively, use it to let your priest get some heals in or to save your own butt.
- Use deathcoil defensively if you have to.
- The main playstyle was to keep your pet on their healer, while continually mana draining their healer until they are oom. (If they dispel very fast, spam rank 1 corruption and drain manas, once he stops dispelling, go max rank. Either way he SHOULD oom first.)
- Have your priest help mana burn.
- Once their healer is OOM, trinket and blow ur hardest dots and kill 1 of em.

...

8/42/11 http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=Nq0bZbxczIizzesuxx0z
- I partnered with a Pally + Warrior and it works great. With this setting, always focus on their priest first, whatever spec it is. Kill them before you mass dispel your pally IF he ends up having to bubble.
- All 3v3 partners I mentioned before should be viable. The advantage of going with a warrior in this case is you don't need to worry about breaking sheeps or blinds from your Felguard's cleave.
- Remember, a felguard stun is a "lesser counterspell". It's a 30 sec CD instead of 24 sec, and always only lasts for 3 seconds. Positioning is very important as a felguard lock. Make sure you have that 8 yards to charge stun.

...

Versatility
- One of the warlock's main strength is their versatility. Be sure to be versatile!
- When your team is getting hard pressed, e.g., healers yelling they got silenced, cc-ed, and any of your team mates are under 60% health, immediately fear every dps-er of your opponents team, and keep re-applying fear until your team is in the safe zone again.
- When none of the oponents are low, apply Curse of Weakness and reapply Curse of Tongues to soften them up. When someone is under 70%, do a double fear on their healers and follow up with a quick assist train.

...

Role Summary
- DoT the main assist target
- Curse of Tongue + intercept or silence + fear healers
- Fear DPS classes to relieve pressue off of your team
- Do bursty damage when your team is doing an assist trai

Good stuff. Hopefully I can use some of this over the weekend to help our team get our rating up into a respectable range.

High King Maulgar Tonight!

Tonight we're attempting High King Maulgar again...but I would note that we still refuse to do anything but try to tank the warlock first with the felhunters as opposed to the priest. Here's a video showing the right way to do it:



Wish me luck...we're going to need it! Hopefully we can rock him like Megan's group.

You're goin' down, Maulgar!!!

QQ of the Day

PVP AT LOW LEVELS IS SERIOUS BUSINESS.

Nerf Over Time

Well, get ready people...tomorrow comes the dreaded DoT/Resilience Nerf:

Resilience Rating: The reduction to the percent chance to get a critical strike now also reduces the damage dealt by damage over time effects by the same percentage.

My reaction:

So?

I've posted on this at length in the past, so I won't bore you with my arguments against them (just trust me that I'm right), but all in all, I don't expect this to affect me much in the Arenas. My utility to the group is tied up in my abilities to:

1. Draw focus fire in the initial barrage and rely on high Stamina and good healers to survive. The resilience change actually favors me in this role - less effective DoTs mean if I succeed in becoming the focus of attention, I will last longer.
2. Disrupt the flow of the enemy's strategy through Curse of Tongues, Fear, Howl of Terror, and Death Coil. No change.
3. Open up at the opportune moments with Searing Pain, Shadowbolt, and Shadowburn. No change - resilience already affects me here.

Sure, I spread the DoT love around like Old Freda, but again, they are used primarily to disrupt, to push the enemy healers to heal random targets instead of the focus fire target.

That's why you don't roll Affliction in the Arenas, people.

Weekend Report

This weekend I spent most of my WoW time farming for Primal Mana and working on Tailoring and Enchanting. All in all, it was a blah weekend, mostly because I avoided the BGs. I burned it pretty hard getting all my honor epics, and I'm having trouble motivating myself to get back on the horse for my trinket.

No new loot this week, no new attunements. But the cash has really finally started to roll in from the Primals and from tailoring bags. Maybe one day I'll see an epic flyer...one day.

The good news is that the 5v5 team is active again. After several weeks of frustrating MIA team members, I have decided that I am not going to wait around until Monday night to get my teams act together...rather, we're going to play on weekend nights with people we can get, and if people are no-shows, then they're gone. We need gear!

The team has (sadly) been unable to break out of the 1400 bracket. We have a winning record this week, but every time we get into 1490s, blam, we lose. Most of the problem is gear; not a lot of purple on some of our players. But, they are solid players nonetheless, so we'll keep them around until they get geared. At least they show up...

How was your weekend?

Dramaspear

So
Fun.

QQ of the Day...or Not?

I'm pretty sure this is an overpowered attempt at irony...but I suppose I should grant that this person may just be kind of, well...not smart.

Focus Targeting

Yea We Lift (thanks, Radikal Noise, for pointing out this blog) is one of the best 5v5 teams around, and lucky for us, they have a blog!

One of their recent posts talks about focus targeting and how their mage prioritizes potential foci:

1) [The other team's] main CC class (usually mage, sometimes warlock). This lets me see the poly coming before it lands and often gives me the time to pre-spam dispel or make my way out of LoS to avoid it myself. It's also a very reliable way of knowing when to cast SWD to break yourself out of polys (which is really not as hard as it may seem). I tend to use this in the smaller brackets (2v2 and 3v3) where avoiding CC can be game breaking. There are some really nasty CC chains that can put you out of commission for long enough to end the game and being the only dispeller on my teams, I really have 1 on-call break every 2 minutes.

2) Our primary target (the one we're trying to kill first). This is often my choice for 5v5 games since getting poly'd and CC'd myself isn't as big of a deal. In most cases I'm the focus target and even when I'm not, most teams will put their CC on dps (aka the warrior/mage) rather than the secondary healer. The only CC that I get hit with relatively often in the 5v5 bracket is fear, so as long as I keep fearward on and have my trinket up, I'm in good shape.

This is interesting to me, as I always, always put the enemy's primary healer on focus so I can Curse of Tongues / Fear / Death Coil them to my heart's content to keep them from getting the heal off when we pick our first DPS target. Only after the healers are dead to a switch my focus to their mage (or another caster class if there are no mages). But the bold text above is also interesting to me...DPS gets CCed more than healers in top brackets? Hmmmm....going to have to try this out.

Fear is Fine, L2Play

Sorry, I'm writing about Fear today, and I couldn't help myself (see title).

Rantings of the Afflicted is the blog on an Affliction-spec lock who thinks Fear needs a nerf. I don't agree with him, but I'd be fine with most of his suggestions.

I posted a response, which I will throw in here because, well, I am a blatant self-promoter:

Eh, not bothered by Fear, and I wouldn't be bothered by switching it to pure cc. I play a Demo lock...most of my damage comes from burst damage and a pet. I use Fear as a CC anyway to keep healers out of the fight.

But...for affliction locks such as yourself, I think if the devs touch it, they will bust it and you will hate it more than you do now. :) Cynical? Yes.

The main problem with Fear is a problem of frustrating and perception, not game balance. Yes, it is horribly frustrating to lose control of your character. Mind Control is used less widely, but it is just as frustrating.

So if I were going to propose to nerf Fear (which I'm not) I'd propose taking it out completely and giving us a pally bubble. Same effect...you're doing damage to them while they aren't doing it to you, but they are still in control of their character and thus (somewhat) less frustrated.

Most of this comment is just me theorycrafting because I think Fear is fine and people are just frustrated when they have to sit and watch their character take damage. But rogue stunlocks are just as frustrating, and I take my hits like a grown-up.

What do you think?

QQ of the Day

Seeds!

QQ of the Day...er, Yesterday

You know, besides my previous post...

No such things as papers or rocks.

@#$%&*!!

My 5v5 teammates were no-shows...again.

I've been pretty nice about this. I sent two reminders via in-game mail this week to team members. I've asked people to please let me know if they can't make it. And I sent notes to last week's no-shows politely letting them know that if they can't make it, we might need to make room for more regular attendees.

When I log on again on Wednesday night, half of these people are getting the boot.

I'm not happy about it...we had a really good run of wins once we got the right mix of people together. The problem is that the run was more than two weeks ago. Since then, no one has shown up for scheduled games.

It's not like I didn't do due diligence before recruiting, either. I asked them point-blank: "Can you make it at 6:30 p.m. server time on Monday?" and only after they say "yes" did they get invites. Then they got two reminders via in-game mail.

Does anyone have a suggestion on how to get better attendance, or on how to week out deadbeats?

EDIT: Okay, rant over. I will probably not go around kicking people. But I could use your advice on how to get people to actually show up.

Yoohoo!

Uhews has a new video out. I trashed his last one, but this one is a definite improvement:


Uhews2.wmv

I posted the following critique on the forums:

Not bad, not bad....def an improvement.

The music irritated me in a couple of places, but that's a personal preference. Sometimes the switch to envelope screen didn't actually seem to be highlighting things of significance in the fight, or if they did, I was unable to locate it...maybe some text to explain what we are supposed to see.

8/10.

5v5 Tonight!

Tonight is my 5v5's regular scheduled play time....although if you've been keeping up with our previous scheduled nights you know that this is more of a hypothetical than it should be. This week I've recruited an extra MS warrior, so if one doesn't show, it doesn't kill the team for the week.

This time I'll be focusing less on DPS and more on my CC. The games we tend to do well in are the games where I CoT/Fear/DC their healers...so tonight I will be all about controlling the opponent's healing rather than joining in on the fun burning the squishies down. I figure my standard opening will be:

1) Send felguard after primary target.
2) Target then focus the primary healer.
3) Focus-target the secondary healer or squishy DPS.
4) CoT and Fear focused healer repeatedly.
5) Keep focus CoT'ed and DoT'ed and nuked.

We'll see how this goes. Wish me luck. :)

QQ of the Day

Period.

The Massacre Continues

Now with more than 7,000 lifetime honorable kills. Yummy.

Farming

While farming the mats for my Runic Spellthread, I succumbed to the joy of farming.

I have purposely avoided farming Primal Things for a number of reasons. Everyone is doing it. It sounds boring. Don't feel like fighting with Horde for my motes. blah blah blah.

When the AH ran out of Primal Manas on me, I had to do something. So I griffed over to Netherstorm and farmed the motes I needed at the Ruins of Enkaat. It took me a very short amount of time. Enkaat's north ridge has a perfect spawn rate of mana-bearing mobs; I never ran out. Suddenly I'm staring at a globe in my inventory worth 20 gold. Not bad!

I have seen the light. I'll be farming primals and Scryer rep during my non-BG, non-raid, non-running-friends-through-SM time.

Here's a video showing a lock farming with a hybrid spec. WoWATM.com is a gold seller site...I do not support them and hope you will avoid them like the plague. Just watch the video and forget about them LOL. I'm pretty straight Demonology, so I'd have to make adjustments to the method shown, but you'll get the idea:

Learn from the Master

Obviously an undead lock...note the acquisition of Tier 6 at the end.

Sideways

Mystic Worlds has another excellent post about desired added WoW features, but reading it reminded me that I said I'd post on horizontal improvements I'd like to see in WoW.

Heroic versions of Azeroth instances. Seriously, this is a no-brainer. You would not be able to pry me out of Deadmines or Strathholme (although Strat would be a real b*tch due to the crowds of adds...tons o' fun for a tank!) or any number of my favorite old-world instances.

Scaling instances. Building on the last idea while recognizing the huge scope of work I'm asking for, I'd like to see instances that scale up. Every instance could retain its original starting level, but it'd be nice to see ten-level plus-ups to difficulty. So say Instance X is designed for 5 level-40 players, there would be level 49, 59, 69, and heroic versions available.

Scaling equipment. MMORPGs are enjoyable in part because of the feeling of progression and improvement. A major failing in their catering to this feeling is the failure of the current progression system to foster and reward attachments to hard-to-get items. I would have *loved* to keep my Soul Harvester, but doing so would have gimped me, so I gave it up when the next item dropped. WoW should take a page from tabletop DnD and let you pay or quest to improve your existing items through stacking, level-restricted enhancements. Come on, Sulfuras? You have to find a way to let people keep using that. Things that you wrest from iconic lore characters should stay usable as you level...let us spend resources to keep these things in the fight!

Player housing. MW has this covered, so I won't go into it here.

Fix my "end-game" pets. I continue to pine away for a usable Infernal or Doomguard, but I'm not holding my breath.

As I said earlier, I'm not a fan of raising the level cap...I'd much rather have more content that brings Azeroth back into the game at max level.

Raid!

Just...watch it.



LOL

Two Epic Threads

I'm still excited about a shout-out from WoW Insider, which is silly. The Syphonic thread is still going strong this morning, and it's still funny.

Last night I obtained a Runic Spellthread for my Merciless Gladiator's Dreadweave Pants. With that augmentation my pants are now adding just shy of 90 stamina and spell damage to my stats. /Drool.

I am now my guild's class leader...let's hope I can be online enough to fill the role properly (what exactly is that role?). I've let the guild leader know that there will be no hurt feelings if he needs to pass it on to someone else if I can't play often enough. More balancing of real life and WoW issues...I suppose I'm just going to have to be very focused about when I play and not just log on to screw around.

So Monday nights = PvP nights, Tuesday nights = raid night? Crap...that's not going to work. At all. Hmmm...maybe I can convince them to shift at least one of the raids to the weekend.

QQ of the Day

Wherein Scissors cries about Paper being overpowered.

Bow Down Before the One You Serve

During the Suck-Ubes saga, someone commented that "we have a new Kralnor." A lot of people had no idea who that was, and we had a helpful poster dig up and post the link to the original Kralnor thread. Here's a nice article explaining the significance of it. I'd recommend reading the original thread...it's amazing how many warlock in-jokes started there.

Thus, I have added the Kralnor and Syphonic threads to the Book of Vile Darkness on the right. Read 'em if you want to L2Lock!

Suck-Ubes

A kid on the official forums discovered the wonders of his succubus, reacted just like you'd expect him to, and his parents caught him...OMG, one of the funniest threads ever! For your enjoyment, here is the original post, preserved here for posterity in case the thread is shut down:

hey all

i just started Wow like 2 weeks ago and i got to 20 and did this long quest to get a succubus pet. i think it really sucks :( anyway, i was in the living room and i was checking out the pet and zooming in to you know what :) and then it made this sound like

uhh uhh uuhhhhh
whiip whippp

i think warlocks will know what i mean
so then my parents looked at me and the screen and they were like omg!! what are you doing. i guess they thought it was porn or something. it told them it was a succubus, but i pronounced it like

suck -ubes

and i guess that pissed them off even more and told me i couldnt play WoW.

now im stuck and dont know what to do :(

any tipz?

PS: how do you pronounce succubus

Check it out now, because I have a feeling it will be deleted soon. Here's to you, Syphonis of Daggerspine...level 20, and already a legend.

UPDATE: WoW Insider took me up on a tip I sent in regarding this epic, epic thread, and they gave this blog a shout-out. Check it out!

Grats Chris

Regular L2Lock commenter and WoW Addicts Anonymous blogger Chris has his first post up on WoW Insider. Grats, man!

Doompadee Do!

The fun with today's QQ of the Day continues! Check out the adapted Ooompa Loompa Song inspired by my Willy Wonka quote:

Who do you blame when your main is a brat?
P'wnded by a warlock, he musta gone splat.

Blaming us locks is a lie and a shame
You know exactly who's to blame

Someone needs to learn to play ...

QQ of the Day

Update: Thread deleted! Good job, CMs.

When all else fails, just make stuff up.

But check your math, LOL.

My Exhaustion Level Lies Somewhere Along a Continuum

Ah, the Continuum Blade. I was so happy to get this at the time. The phantom blade graphic, the 122 damage, the joy of pairing it with a Star-Heart Lamp...

But now I've had mine for a while. It's getting a little dated compared with the rest of my gear. And it's ubiquitous, meaning it gives no advantage against Arena opponents. In fact, I'd say it forms the baseline of Arena weapons nowadays.

Looks like I'm not alone in my Continuum Blade exhaustion.

Here's to hoping for an upgrade before I get the Merciless Gladiator's Spellblade, which is currently the last Arena item on my list.

Miscellany

Thing One: To close the loop on last night's teaser...no 5v5s were to be had. Laugh it up, fuzzball. Learning from the first week's debacle, I have made it a team rule that we do *not* roll without our MS warrior and two healers, regardless of how many people are on. No MS warrior last night, so no games. To rectify that in the future, I used our team's last open slot to recruit a second MS warrior.

Thing Two: As you can see, I've been a busy bee on Photoshop to spice up the graphics on the site. I'm trying to evoke things from the game...the scaly skin of demons, soul shards, etc. What do you you think? I'll probably work to tweak to post elements and borders next.

Thing Three: I've been farming SM for shards to make money for enchants and gems for my Arena gear...but I think I can safely graduate to Zul'Farrak or possibly even Sunken Temple and not really run into any serious difficulties. I'll give it a shot tomorrow morning.

Drakedog Seduces and Soul Fires Himself

OMG. Drakedog is dead (again). Long live Drakedog.

Two ways to look at this:

1. One of the iconic PvP warlocks from the pre-TBC era is hanging up his spurs. That's sad.
2. When faced with new situations and challenges such as Arena combat, resilience, and team PvP play that does not work the same way as battleground pvp, one of the iconic pre-TBC warlocks QQ'ed instead of adapting, and he is hanging up his spurs. That's sad.

I will miss his videos, as they were well-edited (Uhews, pay attention!), but from what I hear, he had a lot of help with that anyway.

I am suspicious, however; all this happens at the same time.

My Pants are Merciless

Oh yes, they are.

Get Ready to Rumble

T-minus 2.5 hours to 5v5 run. RAWR.

Level Caps Should Stay...Caps

I am not a fan of another level grind. There are already too many grinds in the game:

• The 1 - 70 grind.
• Farming for mats.
• Grinding for rep.
• Farming for gold.

WoW blew EQ out of the water because it was less grindy (i hereby christen 'grindy' as a new word) than EQ.

Blizz didn't learn the lesson of TBC, or more specifically the lesson of the ghost towns that stand gorgeous, well-scripted, and near-impossible to get a group for:

• Naxx
• UBRS/LBRS
• Molten Core

Soon, once the cap is up, these sad, lonely examples of WoW excellence will be joined by:

• Tempest Keep: The Eye
• The Black Temple
• Hyjal Summit

I want to see all of these places. When the level cap raises, off go the raiders to get 80 and the leet greens that will drop just outside the first town in the Frozen Jihad.

Blizz's response to this concern is silly. Yes, we could still "choose" to do slow down our leveling to see this content. That response ignores human nature, and it shows they haven't listened to the frustrations of warlocks like myself who have had to practically beg people for groups to run the epic mount quest.

It's a classic cooperation game, namely the stag hunt. But in this particular Stag hunt, the rabbits taste like cocaine and uber stats. Stag = current end game instance the day after the level cap raises to 80. Rabbit = Northrend and all it's glorious level 71 greens. Hunters = the people that would have made an excellent raid group.

I'll post more on this later, but Mystic Worlds has a much better suggestion...horizontal expansion. I disagree with some of MW's suggestions and have my own as well, but this kind of thinking would be so much more productive if you want people to actually enjoy the product of hours and hours of intense coding that Blizz did to script instances like Molten Core.

Goooooooooaaaaaaalllllllllllllll!!!!!

This weekend's WoW grind was super productive.

First, the Veteran's Dreadweave Stalkers are mine. That completes my honor point epic armor grind, leaving only my trinket remaining in the "must have" honor point column. Knowing I can't possibly grind out that much honor in a week if I'm going to get to the gym in the mornings, I'm making the trinket a two-week goal.

Also, looks like when I had to bail on my last raid group in Kara, they continued to kill enough monsters while I was afk to push me into Honored with The Violet Eye. I discovered this to my surprise yesterday and obtained another epic ring.

I've also gone into my first Heroic instance (The Mechanar) and obtained my first Badge of Justice...woot!

Tonight is my 5v5's scheduled play time. If our MS warrior is on, we'll jump in and see how close to 1600 we can get. I'll let you know how it goes.

In Case You Missed It

Nyhm's latest...looks like he got a new robe, too. :)

QQ of the Day, Sunday Edition

Thank you, that is all.

Misbehavin'

Okay, as promised, here's the video of us being dumb in Old Ironforge. Juvenile, but funny. Need a soundtrack for this clip? Here you go.

QQs of the Day

So many tears today: Eight dots! and Drain Life! and Buff Gnomes! and Your Wronge!

Can't Raid

Until my wife is fully recovered, I have to stay out of raid groups. I tried one last night, but she had an attack and I had to afk with little warning to my group, and I was gone for hours. They rightly went on without me. Nothing for it. I should have just stayed out in the first place. Sorry guys. I'm despairing of ever getting any Kara loot, but some things are more important.

UPDATE: Thanks for the comments and your concern for her health. It's a bad, bad mix of asthma, allergies, and horrible air quality where we live. We've had a rough week of it...but hopefully a specialist we're going to see on Thursday will be able to help.

Banner Graphic Upgrade

You may have noticed I continue to spruce up the title graphic on the right. I am an obsessive tinkerer. You'll probably notice more small changes over the course of the weekend.

Epic PvP Knowledge

This thread is full of win.

Scarlet Carnage

In preparation for my Arena leggings, I've been shard farming Scarlet Monastery for cash. I found out last night that my friend's mage is the *perfect* level for SM, and I am going to take him with me for some uber XP this weekend.

L2Richard

EDIT: There is stupid excessive violence in this cartoon clip, to the point of ridiculousness. Not even sure I recommend clicking it. But...Richard is our only real animated icon...

Set in Stone at #53

See our Kara lewts.

QQ of the Day

Nerf warriors...I mean locks.

Arawn's Expansion Pack Beta: Achren

Yes, there is a theme to my character names. Have you figured it out yet?

As Durthoo will tell you, when we destroyed our college GPAs via EverQuest, I had a problem with creating alts. And by "problem" I mean that I had too many and I never reached max level with any character. When WoW came along, I resolved to pick a class and stick with it until max level.

Well, here I am. I am at max level, and I am really not all that in to raiding, mostly due to a lack of time available for it. Most of my gear comes from PvP, and I'm fairly happy that way.

I just read Vogel's "View from the Bottom #9" and I can't really argue with his thesis that "endgame is stupid." Well, I guess I can argue...at level 70, your gear advancement replaces your level advancement. Whoops, blew that out of the water pretty easily, eh?

Actually he's got a fair point. At some point, you have to get off the treadmill for something new. So, enter my mage alt, Achren.

I plan to PvP on my 'lock still, but aside from BG weekends and Arenas, I will probably spend a good chunk of my game time figuring out how the other side lives. No rush to 70 this time...just some fun twinkage.

New Chapter in the Book

Another scroll absorbed into the Book of Vile Darkness on the right. Enjoy.

Amen!

Preach on!

Recovery

As you might have noticed, I was offline for the first part of this week. My wife had to go to the emergency room because she was having trouble breathing.

She was in the emergency room for two days, during which she was admitted to the hospital on paper but never taken up to a bed. We had to sleep in very uncomfortable positions. She was poked and prodded and scanned to her limit.

Unfortunately we have no conclusive diagnosis, so she has to make appointments with specialists. She's doing better at the moment, though, and seeing her able to breathe at least a little easier makes me feel a lot better.

The day we got back from the hospital she decided to turn in a little early, and I sat next to her in bed with my laptop while she read for a while. I logged on and found 3 of my best 5v5'ers online. The MS warrior was missing, and a couple of our healers were in Karazhan raids, so we took the scary step of recruiting (gulp) and found another MS warrior and a shadow priest.

We tried to run skirmishes to practice, but queuing into incomplete teams. We log into Vent and find out that only two of us can talk, but everyone else can listen due to various technical problems with people's equipment.

Not a recipe for success, right?

Wrong.

Out of our first ten games, we won eight. I had our MS warrior call targets since he could speak on Vent, and we just laid into them. This team works very well together. In fact each member can make such a nuisance of themselves that I was only focus-fired down once, and for a lolguard lock, that is saying something.

Many games I was left completely alone, and in others I just sent in the felguard and spammed Curse of Tongues and Searing Pain.

By night's end, we had raised our rating 120 points to 1475.

This weekend I have no doubt will break 1500, and possibly 1600. I'll also get my last piece of honor armor (c'mon, you can't hold it against me that I didn't make my weekly goal...hello?! Wife in hospital!!) and my trinket AND my Arena legs.

Nothing can compare to the relief of seeing my wife recover somewhat from a very scary episode. Closing that laptop after recovering from last week's debacle and turning over to see her sleeping soundly, though, was icing on the cake.

The Comeback Starts Today

I'm done whining about last night's Arena matches (awful). I'm taking responsibility as team captain and as the original organizer of Insert Witty Name Here and taking the necessary steps to recover a decent rating.

I've done some reading over at Arena Blogger (excellent site...added to the linkroll yesterday) on the basics of team setups, and other bloggers have commented on this site as to their suggestions.

The plan is as follows:

• Recruit an MS warrior, a holy paladin, and a priest who can commit to playing at the scheduled time (see below) every week.
• Establish Saturday at 11 a.m. server time as our scheduled play time, with Thursday night at 8 p.m. as the backup time in case too many of our players can't make it
• Reorganize Social Security (my 3v3 team) as the farm team for testing out new team members. You are eligible for entry on the 5v5 only after we've seen what you can do in the 3v3 arena. The 3v3 also serves as insurance in the case of massive schedule conflicts that prevent the 5v5 from playing on a given week.
• Establish entry requirements: Must have at least 4 pieces of epic honor gear and at least one piece of current season Arena gear, or 2 pieces of last season's gear. The requirements will be adjusted as our rating and gear increases.
• And, most importantly, raise the money ASAP to buy out the other contributers to the charter fee so that I can make roster changes with a clear conscience.

Any other suggestions?

The History of the Dark Side

Like all good histories, this one is told as an epic poem.

Reacting to a Meltdown

Okay, readers, I seek your advice.

Once it's become apparent that your team line-up is not working, what do you do, especially when you have members that contributed to the startup charter?

I admit that the temptation to abuse the power of team captain and just start dropping people is very strong. Last night we had some very bad things happening. (The most egregious example of which was a teammate telling our healer that she "has to put out more damage than that") Now, I am all for training people up. I'm fine with that. Lord knows I could use some training up myself. But at what point does that trump getting your team where you want it?

We bumped some no-shows from the team to make room for the stringers, but now I thoroughly regret that decision. A lot of last night's disaster comes from that decision and the decision to play just to obtain the points for the week. I suppose I got what I paid for.

However...how do you guys go about altering the team roster in a way that's fair to people to obtain the right class balance?

A 5v5 Tragedy

Last night was awful in the Arena.

Half of the group did not show up. One of our good healers who did show up disconnected and never came back. That was the only night this week I could play, so we took half of the team and they recruited people they knew to fill in.

It was a total disaster. We managed to take about 80-100 points off our rating.

I do have to say that I warned them that we were not geared enough for a 4dps setup. We are a relatively new 5v5 team without a lot of Arena gear (I have none) and you really can't burn people down as fast as you need to in 4dps w/o the gear.

I almost felt like we should have just not played at all...but then I'm still going to get 320-something points for losing most of the night. Still on track for the Arena legs in a week and a half but man...I'm bummed.

Note to self: Do NOT let yourself feel peer pressured into running an arena setup that you are not comfortable with.

The only upside is that we used the Social Security 3v3 team this morning and managed to up the rating by 80 points....still an abysmal 1361, but the trend is upward, so eh...the team serves its purpose.

Silver lining....no matter what happens in the Arena next week I get my leggings. Still pretty down about last night though...was looking forward to this all week.

I guess I should just get a reality check on what my ambitions are for this team, though. Right now, the only consideration I should be focusing on is: Am I getting Arena pieces at a fast enough rate? I suppose the answer is yes. I know that I am not geared or experienced or flexible enough in my available play time to be a PvP god right now, so I should take my 300+ points a week and be happy.

Warlock Data

Some great data on locks to be found over here at Okoloth.

Affliction dominant as the most common spec...and there doesn't seem to be a lot of people wearing this season's arena gear. Interesting.

Nuke It, Dot It

WoW Addicts Anonymous has a great post on the math of spell damage and DoTs. L2Dot!

QQ of the Day

Cake!

Edit: OMG! They actually locked down a thread on the warlock forums?! I am shocked!

Future Events Like These Will Affect You...In the Future

Four of my 3 of my best 5v5 teammates have committed to playing tonight at 8 p.m. server time, and I have tentative commitments from a backup healer in case our main healer doesn't make it. IF we manage to play like I've seen this particular lineup play before, and IF we can avoid the random superteams that sometimes magically appear in the lower brackets, and IF we can keep the rest of the team from playing and screwing up the rating for the rest of the week...I'm confident we can make it to the 1600s this week...and that would mean...Merciless Gladiator's Dreadweave Robe. OMG.

There's really no pressure, though...if we don't hit that rating, it will only delay me by a week. Moahahaha. But I would *love* to grab that sucker as soon possible.

Hero Character?

I have mixed feelings about the death knight hero class supposedly being introduced in the supposed upcoming expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. My main concern is the mechanic for obtaining the death knight. Apparently you meet certain criteria and can unlock the class for play, which will begin at "a high experience level," meaning it's already got a bunch of levels.

On one hand, thank God that if I roll a death knight alt, I don't have to set foot in Northshire Abbey or the Barrens. But...my concern is that hero classes would then replace the base classes under this mechanic. I love my lock. I want to take him all the way to 80, or 10000, or however high they'll let me go. But, if the hero classes end up being more powerful, will I have to abandon my main to see all the content?

I'm betting they'll be balanced against the other classes and that you'll just be able to make them after you meet the criteria...I hope....

Sponsor Them

Sponsor Me is looking for locks. If you are a badass pvp demigod of darkness, go apply.

A List of Noobs to Fire

WoW Insider tips people off this morning to the most idiotic article to feature WoW to date. From the Australian:

Kevin Zuccato, head of the Australian High Tech Crime Centre in Canberra, says terrorists can gain training in games such as World of Warcraft in a simulated environment, using weapons that are identical to real-world armaments

Are you f#@!ing kidding me?! The head of the Australian High Tech Crime Center thinks that there are weapons identical to real-world armaments in WoW? In that case, I will be digging through my local Army surplus store for a stranglestaff.

This article should lead to some firings:

• Natalie O'Brien, the author of the article
• Jeebus, please God fire Kevin Zuccato, who is obviously bilking the government for a paycheck by posing as an expert in a field about which he knows nothing

I don't want to go into this too much, but I work for people who have a *lot* to do with understanding and combating terrorism. I've sat in rooms and listened to some of the actual experts in this article describe online terrorist activities. And the offending paragraph quoted above is absolute utter nonsense. The SL portions of the article...maybe. But I'd be a hell of a lot more worried about webpages and/or games like Rainbow Six that I would be about a game where characters summon demons and gather animal livers for gold.

Give me a break.

The forums have more.

Raiding with Thoogun

Euro forums are so much more helpful than ours. L2raid with demo.

ZZZZZZZ....

....scheduled maintenance....

T7 Warlock Chest Piece

teh purplez

Off Topic

But still very 'lock like:

QQ of the Day

"By simply CLICKING this button following EZ coil warlocks can ANNIHILATE anyone, anywhere, anytime."

I'm pretty sure my response wins the thread.

Non-Weekly Goal

On my list: Seal of the Exorcist. Once my honor gear is finished off, I'll use all my play time I can to farm Spirit Shards. Anyone with this ring...how long did it take you to farm the shards?

I've Been Bad

Okay, okay, feel free to post comments about what a jerk I am...but today some guild mates and I had fun at noobs' expense with creative use of the Ritual of Summoning.

First, we used the duel/fear-or-sheep bug in Ironforge to knock us down into Old Ironforge. Then we tried to summon people off the balconies into the open air over the lava. I KNOW! What a jackass, right?

But wait! There's more! Stay with me, our experiments have yielded important information for the 'lock knowledge base.

For one, we can confirm that the Blues did in fact fix open-air summoning...it just summons right on top of you if you're standing on the ledge. Damn.

However! If one were to say...jump down into the lava at the bottom of Old Ironforge and MC-raider-style lava hop into a barely safe nook in the cave wall, one might discover that lava counts as solid ground for the purposes of Ritual of Summoning, meaning that if you and two mischievous guild mates stand in said nook an open a portal, it will open over the lava.

Hopefully I will have video later today. :) ROFLMAO!

If I get banned, you know what happened.

Gooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllll!!!!

The Veteran's Dreadweave Cuffs are mine, complete with a +12 Stamina gem and a +7 Stamina enchant. That brings my self-buffed spell damage to +839, and my Stamina over 700! Wewt.

This week's goal: Veteran's Dreadweave Stalkers.

Kara Busted

We took down the Big Bad Wolf tonight after several wipes...on our successful attempt I slapped my felguard on him and then proceeded to be Red Riding Hood three times. Turns out I'm very good at running away. :)

Still no loot. Still not Honored with Violet Eye.

And the instance servers crashed. &^%$$### I'm trapped.

Like I Said...

...heroes have heart, but villians have style.

Mystic Worlds has a great post (essay?) on why warlocks are the new villians of WoW, and explains the problem with most player complaints about the current state of locks:

Everyone hates Warlocks unless their in your group and working toward the same objectives. And even, then some people just flat-out hate the class now, and screams for nerfs and laments of how over powered they are, flood the forums on a daily basis. Chief complaints are DOTs, 2 instant cast Fears, burst damage, high HP and pets. The problem is that when people complain about Warlocks they consider all of the talents together as though every Warlock as them, which isn’t the case.

Read the full post here.

Off the Bandwagon

Recently I've tried to restrain my WoW playtime during the week to one night. However, this past week I've failed miserably and felt horrible for it. It's like I'm on autopilot...if I'm not doing something else, I tend to log on. This week, though, I think I can easily get back on the wagon for a few reasons:

1) I am on a 2v2, a 3v3, and a 5v5 (and hold the charter for the 3v3 and 5v5). Why would this restrain my playtime, you might ask? Simple, really: unless you're blowing through people and winning every game, you have an incentive to play ten games and stop. That would get me weekly points on the way to epic items, and that would satisfy me.

2) My guild's raids have recently come off the rails. This may be temporary since our guild leader / main tank has temporarily lost his Internet access, but until he comes back and gets everyone back in line, I don't see us having *any* success in Karazhan.

3) I am getting *very* close to having all of my honor point epics, and that accounts for a lot of my play time. Next week it's possible that I will get the remaining items. That means that I can raid / run instances / PVP quite a bit on weekend nights that I usually reserve for battlegrounds.

Here's to getting back on the wagon.

6000 Lifetime HKs

Wewt.

6500 more honor points to the weekly goal, btw.

Grats, Onmyoji

My friend Onmyoji (Durthoo's alt) hit 70 today. Grats dood.

Set

I finally got a 5v5 team together...and it was awful lol. The first five of us together paid equal shares of the charter, and then proceeded to lose 4 in a row.

But then the second string came in.

The original group had to break up for the day, and I wanted to get the team to go active for the week with ten games, so I recruited four other people. This time, instead of one healer, we had two, and three straight DPS. We didn't start off with Vent, so we had a very simple strategy: I used my Arena Master add on to quickly id the targets. I'd locate the main healer. I'd say "set." Everyone would hit /assist. And we'd focus fire my target. Then their backup healer, then their DPS, etc. ect. ect.

We went three and one immediately.

One of the healers had to leave, and I brought back one of the previous team members. We ended up with a 1450+ rating. Not good, not bad. Good points, though.

Now we just have to keep the rating up until Tuesday...by not playing until then. :) Woot.

Statistics Say...

...locks rule the top small Arena teams, more average on the larger teams.

Batman...

...once got kicked from the team for keeping a file on the other superheroes' weaknesses.

A Question for the Masses

This week I will pass for the first time into the fun realm of "I can now afford some Arena gear." I'm facing a fun dilemma: do I buy the first armor pieces I can afford (the gloves, shoulders, etc.) or save up all my points for a couple more weeks and go for the best pieces first (legs, head, chest, etc.)?

The horns of the dilemma:

1) If I buy the cheaper items first, I'm significantly improving my stats faster. That means I win more often earlier, which contributes to higher lifetime points...right?

BUT

2) Our guild (hell, our server) is nowhere near the progression needed to see the higher end pieces, so saving up for the chest piece and the like makes sense. Plus, we *are* in the areas where the smaller pieces drop, and it's possible that I could buy the gloves only to have their PvE equivalents drop on my very next raid.

Right now I'm inclined to lean towards #1. I'm relatively new in my guild, which means that if any other casters want the pieces that drop ahead of me, they will get them. And, improving my stats rapidly means that I will fare better, especially as we're fighting to get our teams into the higher brackets.

What do you think?

EDIT: I think I just answered my own question...the math looks like I should go with #2 (edit...good lord i had #1...Durthoo suggested #2) as suggested by Jedi master Durthoo. The reason being is that the stat increase I would get by saving up for a couple of more weeks for the chest piece is more than twice what I'd get for the lower pieces, but it would be far less than twice the wait...

This is the Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny

Holy. crap.

Read the tale on WoW Insider.

A Safety Net for the Poor

Last night my usual partner was getting levels on an alt (grats Onmyoji!) so I needed some quick Arena points to stay on track. I bought a 3v3 charter and just grabbed...gulp...a PUG Arena team.

Much hilarity ensued.

Our lineup: a lock (me), a hunter, and a druid. I think I may have been the most experienced person on the team in Arenas, which is scary, but you'd never know it for how fast I dropped under focus fire (note the lack of healers). In the end, we went 2-8.

Funny notes: with our 1398 end rating (ouch!) we earned as many points for this week as my 2v2 team got for a 1508 rating the previous week. I now have more than 1,000 Arena points thanks to that little excursion, and I need to start making decisions as to what my first piece of gear will be. Also, our abysmal record is exactly equal to the first week Durthoo and I played 2v2 together. That's just sad LOL.

The team serves its purpose, though...a last resort when my regular team isn't available to grab points. It's more of a safety net.

Oh, and its name: Social Security. LOL.

Weekly Goal: Veteran's Dreadweave Cuffs

This weekend is the Eye of the Storm PvP holiday. I am pretty burned out from this past weekend's honor grind, so I'm opting for the cheapest PvP epic left on my list: Veteran's Dreadweave Cuffs.

Next week is Alterac Valley (drool), so I'm saving the two expensive items left for then: Medallion of the Alliance and Veteran's Dreadweave Stalkers.

QQ of the Day

In college, back before WoW came out, I got a C in my statistics class because I was skipping to play Everquest.

Once Upon a Time in Kara...

...a second Kara team failed to take down Illhoof, wiped on trash, and watched as a member QQed the raid leader and /gquit the guild.

So I guess you could say we did not win at WoW on Saturday. ;(

The Day is Mine

That's right, people...Veteran's Dreadweave Belt.

Ugh...honor grinds like that on an AB weekend make my head hurt.

13,000 of 17,850

I am so sleepy but I have to get this damn belt!

LOL

Just because you saw it coming, doesn't mean it's any less funny.

Community Managers on Lock Forums (U.S.) MIA

I posted a grumpy thread on Bliz official lock forums about the total lack of community management there. If you look at the post tracker, the amount of good community management that goes on in the WoW Europe forums compared to the U.S. forums is ridiculous.

Trolling is against the stated forum policies...I would interpret nerf threads to fall under that category per the bolded text below, and the WoW Europe folks agree. But any time you come into the Warlock forums on the U.S. side, there are always several multipage threads posted by trolls and QQers, and I have *never* seen one locked down.

From the Forum Guidelines:

Spamming and Trolling

This category includes:

* Excessively communicating the same phrase, similar phrases, or pure gibberish
* Creating threads for the sole purpose of causing unrest on the forums
* Causing disturbances in forum threads, such as picking fights, making off topic posts that ruin the thread, insulting other posters
* Making non-constructive posts
* Abusing the Reported Post feature by sending false alarms or nonsensical messages
* Numbering a thread, IBTL, TLDR, or any other fad statements

I am fairly sure that Blizz is paying someone to moderate these forums. They need to fire them.

QQ of the Day

A rogue hates not being able to do anything while his opponent whales on him.

Cough.

L2Arenas

Some lock info mixed in.

Why Warlock

I was thinking about starting an alt (finally) this morning, and it made me think about why I picked this class in the first place.

It turns out that I just like villians.

Lex Luthor. Darth Vader. The Shredder. The good guys have heart, but the bad guys have style.

The WarCraft Universe is full of moral ambiguities, and the warlocks are the epitome, especially on the Alliance side. Yes we're fighting the Scourge, the Forsaken, the Horde, the Legion...but we gather under a rundown inn called The Slaughtered Lamb and summon demons and steal souls.

And we do it with style.

Shadowmoon Valley Vacation

Thought I'd share some fun screenshots from this week:



The night of the Gruul's run that wasn't, Durthoo, Meltnface, Legales, and some other friends of mine did The Battle of the Crimson Watch quest, which is a lot of fun and gives you the coolest looking tabard in the game, imho. It also gives a nice chunk of gold if you have already hit the level cap.



This morning I discovered the joys of my Improved Enslave Demon talent points with an enslaved pit lord. The best part of this little jaunt over to Legion Hold was the use of an enslaved pit lord to pwn another pit lord. The low point came when I discovered that the second pit lord was NOT enslavable, but still doesn't appreciate you trying...