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.