Hello, faithful readers! According to the stats chart for the past week, you people keep coming even if I’m not writing anything, and that’s both inspiring and fascinating. In fact, one of my busiest days on this blog - ever - apparently came in the middle of last week, while I was on the road!

I haven’t been writing because I was on vacation, so if you were in or around Greensboro NC or Greenville SC, you may have seen me! However, you probably wouldn’t have known me from Adam. Such is life.

Anyway, here’s a smattering of things I felt were worth mentioning, and I’ll try to post something slightly more substantial soon.

• Two more down: Eye for an Eye and Skeleton Jack are closing their blogs. So long, gentlemen. E4AE always made ret paladinning sound fun, and SJ - well, what can I say? You made me like Unholy-spec DPS, despite all my best efforts to the contrary. Adios to both of you.

• Your stupid food trick of the day: you can eat a Magic Eater, be transformed, and still ride Argent Tournament jousting mounts (you’ll hover somewhere above it, except the basilisk, who rides on its back). If you’re in whelp form, you’ll also have a tiny whelp-sized lance in your paw attached to your wing.

• Thanks for saving me a month or two: The Argent Hippogryph is being lowered in price from 250 to 150 seals as of, well, today (even if it displays wrong - reportedly it may cost 150 but still display 250). I am pleased, as thus far I haven’t spent a single seal because I’m aiming to get the ‘gryph. It’ll actually be my 25th mount.

• Personal accomplishments: Freya down, Hodir down more smoothly than last week, Thorim…well, still working on that one. We essentially have The Siege and The Antechamber on farm, so I’m hoping I can see a Worldcarver soon. Or a Rune Edge. Either would be a nice upgrade. Unfortunately, the theme for Ulduar this week was “holy caster drops, Batman!” We did see two of the Rogue/Death Knight/Mage/Druid tier pants tokens this week, and I snagged mine, so hello best-in-slot-for-now pants.

And to finish this off, here’s a couple screenshots of the Magic Eater/Argent mount combo. Click to embiggen:

Well, I didn’t raid last night. It was an oversight, but one hopefully avoided soon. (Yes, I reserve the right to be cryptic.) However, in my don’t-feel-like-doing-anything funk resulting from aforementioned oversight, I started leveling… another Death Knight. Those starter quests go a lot quicker once you’ve got 20 days /played on another DK, except for the fact that I keep hitting buttons for abilities I don’t have yet.

If you’re on Kael’thas, say hi to Voltarus. Trust me, I’m just as surprised as you are that they accidentally let me name myself after Drakuru’s personal necropolis.

I see comments like this every day, whether it be in BA chat or Twitter or what-have-you:

Leafy: Anyway, now I am going to drive home and then fail to joust for a while.

It pains me to see so many people having such a hard time with jousting. It doesn’t require any twitchier reflexes or awareness of movement than, say, a typical raid boss - and not even a particularly hard one. If you possess the following skills, you can joust:

1. The ability to reach numbers 1-4 on your numberpad.

2. The ability to strafe in a circle, whether by using the keybound strafe buttons (Q and E by default) or by “fake strafing” (holding your right mouse button down and moving it one way while using A and D or the left & right arrow keys to move in the opposite direction).

3. Two functioning brain cells to rub together.

BIG FAT BOLD DISCLAIMER: Now, I am fully aware that there are multiple strategies for jousting. Everyone has their own strategy. However, I have been using this strategy since day 1, and I have never lost a jousting match except to (1) players or (2) complete disconnects. This works on valiants, this works on champions, and (as long as you drag them away from other enemies) this works on Boneguard Commanders. (Side note: get the Commander at the back near the stairs and drag him up them while fighting. You’ll thank me later.)

ANOTHER BIG FAT BOLD DISCLAIMER: This is going to be very hard to do correctly if you still click your skills. I have nothing against keyboard turners - you can keyboard turn and do this, probably - but if you still click skills to activate them, this more than likely will not work for you. Caveat emptor.

If you have your own thing that works for you, fine - DO IT. This guide is for the completely hopeless, for the totally-given-up, for the people who pitch hissy fits at the thought of having to joust again. Read on.

1. Mount up. Doesn’t matter what mount. Keep pressing using your Defend ability (4) until there are 3 little green shields circling your mount. Now you’re ready.

2. Walk up to your enemy of choice. Stand behind and a little to the side of them. Open the dialog box. Accept, and:

3. IMMEDIATELY STRAFE LEFT. Even better if you do so in a partial circle. While strafing, as soon as you can do so, launch a Shield Breaker (2) and keep strafing.

* **SIDE NOTE: **A lot of people recommend meleeing here: this is worthless on Champions, in my opinion. Remember, Champions start off with three shields, and Valiants with two, so you're only doing 10% of a melee hit to a champion. Regardless, if you can launch one as soon as you speak to someone, do it on Valiants. For Champions, start strafing instead.

* **_For the rest of the match_**, **_strafe in a circle around your opponent_**. They will usually try to move away: pursue them, then keep moving in a circle. This keeps you from being an easy target, and keeps you in range to do Shield Breakers and Charges.

1. As soon as the cooldown is up, launch a second Shield Breaker. Champions will now be at one shield; Valiants will be at 0.

2. Charge! Valiants will take the full brunt of your charge, Champions will take most of it and lose their shield.

3. While you are charging, start hammering the Thrust button (1). You’ll get one melee hit during the charge.

4. The charge is going to carry you a ways past your opponent. Wheel around to face your opponent, press Defend (4) and when you reach your opponent, press Thrust again. Thrust is on a separate cooldown from the rest of the mount abilities, so you’re able to Defend and Thrust literally at the same time.

5. Return to step 3, and continue until your opponent is defeated. Circle-strafe, shield-breaker, charge, thrust, circle, defend, thrust, repeat.

6. Rejoice in your victory.

Once the fight is over, heal up and get three layers of Defend again. Repeat the process until your dailies are over. That’s all there is to it.

Ordinarily, I’d be all about a holiday, but Blizzard’s desire to shove nonsensical PvP requirements into primarily PvE achievements is getting really old. There’s a reason why Zulfon can be ”Zulfon the Noble,” and Queklain is always ”Queklain the Hallowed,” but you’ll probably never see either be ”Merrymaker.”

I’m not entirely able to explain why I hate this, but I think it’s the same thing as why I don’t play on PvP servers: if I want to PvP, I’ll go PvP. If I don’t, I don’t. By throwing in these achievements, in order to receive two tangible in-game rewards (the title and, eventually, the mount), Blizzard is essentially saying “suck it up: you have to go do PvP, no matter how much you hate it.” Yeah, I know, no one is forced to do them, but no one is forced to get a 2200 arena rating either: arena people arena because they enjoy that, and I hunt achievements because I enjoy that, but when my achievements force me to do meaningless PvP-based sub-achievements? Screw it. Holidays can piss off.

On top of that, I don’t even think Blizzard has completely thought through how these holiday PvP achievements work. I wouldn’t want to be a battleground-runner this week. I had a feeling that hundreds of non-PvPers struggling to complete objectives that more or less pit them against their own team and the other team would be an… inhospitable environment. Apparently I was right. Euripedes has a plea from the PvP side of the fence for Blizzard to please, stop this nonsense:

So here’s a suggestion, Blizzard:

Stop it.

Seriously.

Nobody likes it this way.

The people who want to PvP are frustrated because their battlegrounds are filling up with these incompetent morons who haven’t the slightest idea what to do and have absolutely no will to change that.

The people who don’t want to PvP are frustrated because they have to participate in something that, at best, has no interest to them and, at worst, is akin to smashing their face into mirrors and then stabbing themselves in the legs with the shards.

You want to have these people participate in PvP for an achievement? Fine. Then do it this way:

• Win all five battlegrounds with your orphan out!

Shazam. You still force them to do something they don’t want to do, but at least this time they don’t have to completely screw up the battleground to do so.

Let me clarify: I’m not totally against PvP achievements. I think forcing them into the meta-achievement is a stupid idea, but I can understand maybe they’re there to give the event a more well-rounded flavor. Fine. What I am against is poorly-designed PvP achievements. Here’s a few examples of what I consider good and bad PvP achievement design:

• Well-Designed

  • G.N.E.R.D. Rage. Neither side is negatively-impacted by the G.N.E.R.D.S. buff. If you die, applying the G.N.E.R.D.s buff is super-easy, because you get them out of every damn candy bucket in Azeroth, and you can trade them between people - so if you’re out, but your buddy has a ton, just let him give you some before you queue up. In fact, this one has the bonus that you can do it anywhere - world PvP, Wintergrasp, Battlegrounds, maybe Arenas even. You name it, if you can get an HK, you can finish G.N.E.R.D. Rage.

  • Rotten Hallow (H). This is the Horde PvP Hallows’ End achievement, and it’s really only PvP in the loosest sense of the term. It’s quick, it’s fun, and on some servers (Feathermoon, looking at you) it’s not even going to get you flagged or attacked.

  • Elders of the Alliance / Elders of the Horde. It might not be the easiest achievement for some people (heck, you might have spent some time running around the city as a ghost looking for the elder), but at the very least, you could strip naked and corpse-run your way to victory. It may not be easy or enjoyable, but it’s sure as hell not going to run anyone else’s day.

  • All the Midsummer events: Desecration of the Horde / Desecration of the Alliance and King of the Fire Festival. I did these before there was an achievement for them on Queklain (well, I think I missed a few fires in Outland), and I look forward to doing them again as Zulfon. Stomping out fires is quick and easy and earns you a skirmish here and there from dedicated defenders (unlike Rotten Hallow, stomping out the fires does flag you), and as for the city fire retrieval… these things are a lot easier to find than the elders (well, except for Orgrimmar’s, because we have bonfires everywhere all the time - but in, say, Stormwind, a bonfire in the park really sticks out), and sneaking from spot to spot as a non-stealth class? Hell, it was like Metal Gear Solid meets World of Warcraft. One of my fondest memories was riding into Stormwind on my dreadsteed, stealing the fire of Stormwind, sprinting north, and jumping into the canals; the guards gave up, though an intrepid hunter didn’t. Deep underwater, I died, then self-rezzed… then, sneaking through the canal system of an unfamiliar city, I made my way nearly all the way to the castle itself without ever drowning. Finally, I found a boat next to a low section of the wall… leaping out, I mounted up my dreadsteed again and rode like a bat out of Hell to the tram, /cackle’ing all the way IRL. It was awesome, and I look forward to doing it again (and finishing it as Queklain - Flame Keeper Queklain seems apropos for a warlock!).

• Poorly-Designed

  • Rotten Hallow (A). The Alliance side of the Rotten Hallow achievement is at least partially like the Horde one, in that they have a “crash the party” achievement, and the wickerman area well outside of Undercity is arguably even easier to get to than the Southshore Inn. The issue is the other half of the achievement: the Alliance is relying on being around the Inn when someone from the Horde does their Hallows’ End thing to get this finished. This is ultimately unfair, and if this is the design Blizzard truly wanted, than the Horde should have been forced to clean up the mess at the wickerman as well.

  • With a Little Helper from My Friends. This would have been a lot better if there was a Winter Wondervolt machine in the battlegrounds and in Wintergrasp, or if the buff didn’t wear off after death. I tried doing this one: tons of gnomes show up, swarm out, get a few HKs, die, lose the buff, and /afk ou t to get a new one rather than wasting their time. Great job on this one, Blizzard.

    • And lastly, the inspiration for this, School of Hard Knocks. I don’t curse often, so when I do, you know I mean it: Blizzard Entertainment World Event Designers, what the fuck were you thinking? I entirely agree with ‘rip: if this had been “win once in each Battleground with your orphan out,” this would have been (1) entertaining, (2) possibly enjoyable, and (3) at least contributing to the point of the battleground, i.e., to win. As it is? Let’s take Eye of the Storm: not only does your average PvE achievement hunter not bother taking any towers this week, you also end up with a giant clusterfuck around the center flag, with no one doing any kind of D and eventually a win is achieved (for the other team, of course) via the towers because there were only 2 people on your team who weren’t chasing the flag and only the flag. Alterac Valley and Arathi Basin are even worse, I’m sure: I don’t dare poke my head in to find out.

So no, you won’t see me in Alterac Valley with an orcish orphan trying to keep up, or letting the Alliance cap farm so I can take it back and get a quarter of an achievement. That’s not my style. Brewfest? Midsummer Fire Festival? I’m all over those. But as for my orphan… all he gets is a day away from the orphanage, and I get a pig and a beholder.

Sorry Blizzard: maybe next year, if you’ve started thinking these things through.

In the Alliance stronghold of Wintergarde Keep, Commander Eligor Dawnbringer educates Alliance adventurers about the many bosses of Naxxramas). About Instructor Razuvious, he has this to say:

“Pay attention. This is Instructor Razuvious, Kel’Thuzad’s appointed trainer of all death knights. It is said that his own technique is so potent, only a disciple of his could possibly withstand his might.”

Due to neglecting my RSS reader, I hadn’t seen Anna’s Friday 500: To Battle!, but when I did, it struck me as the perfect opportunity to imagine a meeting between master and student. At least, I’m imagining it - to poor Zulfon, it’s life or death. Also: 500 words is kind of hard - I had to keep finding words to remove… sorry ‘bout the actual story, I don’t do this kind of thing too often!

So for the past couple weeks, I’ve been venturing into Ulduar 25-mans with The Aftermath. I’m still a member of Fatalis; however, our previous raid teamup with another guild was full of fail, and so Fatalis formed its own core raid that has actually been pretty successful at repeated full clears of Naxx and is venturing into Ulduar itself. Why would I leave such a raid? Time constraints, unfortunately - Fatalis raids on Saturdays and Sundays; while I can raid on Sundays, Saturdays are almost either spent spending time with my girlfriend (which only happens on the weekends for now) or visiting my parents. They’ve been nice enough to let me pop in from time to time, but for the most part, I spend my time behind instance portals with The Aftermath nowadays.

The past few weeks were pretty rough - we’d go in, punch Flame Leviathan in the mouth, then throw ourselves at XT-002 or Razorscale for a few hours to no avail. I’m not sure what changed last night, because we were taking down bosses left and right (compared to our previous attempts, of course - we’re not down to Yogg-Saron, but we made serious progress). Heck, I even came away with some of what you kids would call ”phat lewtz.” (Unfortunately, I was running low on DKP by the time the phattest of lewtz for the night came along.)

I didn’t get any screenshots of Flame Leviathan, because it wasn’t a first. We did do him with one tower up (Thorim’s Hammer, which is ludicrously easy to avoid), and I was doing a different job this time (siege driving instead of siege gunning), but it was pretty much a breeze. Here’s just a few highlights of the rest of our evening…

Razorscale down! I can only attribute our failure to do this last week to lack of focus. Heck, we were just a few DPS away from keeping her permanently grounded this time around (she did a deep breath, blew us all backwards, took about 6 yards into the air - and came back down).

Ignis down! And for some reason I was cheated out of Hot Pocket - even though I was the very last person in the pot! Grrr. Next week, Ignis!

XT-002 Deconstructor down! It was kind of nice to see this guy eat it after our previous attempts to him. Oddly enough, I don’t think I got a single bomb the entire fight, and the only reason we didn’t pick up Nerf Engineering too was a single Scrapbot at the very end of the fight. Blah. Next week, XT!

Kologarn down! And yes, that’s me, down-left, teabagging Kologarn (and rocking a Sporeggar Tabard). This might be the only kill shot where I’m clearly visible, since on most I’m behind a fireball. Dagblasted warlocks.

And last but not least…

Yes, that’s right: I finally got the one achievement I wanted from the moment the Ulduar achievements were announced. Thanks, Iron Boot Flask! Heck, I even put it on my bars so I wouldn’t forget it, and popped it when Brundir was at 200k or so health:

It’s a touch hard to see, but it’s on the 3 - in place of Death Grip, which I most certainly did NOT need for this fight.

Oh, and obviously:

Iron Council down! Yeah, that’s me, dead center. I like my Iron Dwarf costume!

Tonight I believe the plan is to go do Malygos and possibly a quick sweep of Naxx for a few items for people who still need upgrades (because, hell, I wouldn’t say no to a BoH or Death’s Bite), due to people being absent (like, say, the raid leader) - but who knows, maybe we’ll be back in if everyone’s on? Hey, it could happen.

Okay, seriously - can we stop with the random talent point refunds? I don’t even know what the criteria is anymore. During the first part of 3.1, it was pretty simple to figure out - the lowest (or close-to-lowest) talent taken that had multiple ranks bought from a trainer (i.e. rank 1 is from a talent but ranks 2 through whatever were from a trainer) would refund itself every time I switched back to a spec, leaving me about 7 talent points to respec. No big deal. Had to redo Heart Strike through Blood Gorged in my blood spec (I wasn’t taking Dancing Rune Weapon, are you kidding?). My tank spec would remove everything between Frost Strike and Howling Blast, inclusive. Also no big deal.

After the first minor update, everything worked fine. Specs no longer refunded talent points, I could spec and respec and swap back and forth freely and nothing would ever come back. Huzzah!

And now that we’re at 3.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1a or whatever it is… one of my specs now randomly refunds itself. Thanks! Here’s the best part: it only happens some of the time, but when it does happen, it’s only my DPS spec. While in my tank spec, I’ll flip back to my DPS spec, and I can already tell it’s gonna be a problem before I hit “Activate these Talents” because only one talent is shown (3/3 Improved Icy Touch), and it tells me I have 29 points to spend. (29? How random.)

Then when I switch to it, every talent point is refunded except 3/3 Improved Icy Touch.

Hey Blizzard: respeccing 7 points in Blood or Frost while you work on a fix is not a big deal. Respeccing an entire 17/51/3 build every time I switch from tanking to DPS - a problem THAT IS SUPPOSEDLY ALREADY FIXED - is an enormous fucking pain in the ass. FIX THIS BULLSHIT.

There, I feel better.

0/10/61 is one of the cookie-cutter builds floating around the internets for Death Knights in the brave new world that is 3.1. I’ve been trying this out, because so far I’ve been doing pretty successfully with builds that scale well with gear, and I have a few thoughts on it. Not so much any changes at all - I’m happy with the way it works - just maybe a few caveats.

• If you’re coming from a rotation-based spec, this is going to be a bit of a wake up call. The multiple-target rotation is pretty familiar (PS > IT > Pest > DnD > UB), but the single target rotation is like a weird cross between a rotation system and a priority system. The default single-target rotation is:

SS > BS > BS > SS > RP dump
SS > SS > SS > RP dump

RP dump, in this case, is Unholy Blight if it’s not up, or Death Coil if it is. Scourge Strike, at any time, should be replaced with PS > IT if your diseases are about to fall off (including the very first Scourge Strike listed) - however, the Glyph of Scourge Strike ensures that most of the time, that won’t happen.

• Despite the way that this build takes Improved Unholy Presence, please do not use this spec in Unholy Presence. I’ve tried it, others have tried it, even more have done the math to back it up - it’s simply a DPS decrease compared to Blood Presence. I feel IUP will shine in Ulduar due to that movement boost, personally, even if you don’t get a ton of use out of it during a 5-man or most Naxx bosses. Ulduar fights, from my limited exposure to them, look and feel a lot more mobile.

• Learning to insert Ghoul Frenzy into the rotation - which you should every chance you get - is damn near an art form. My recommendation would be to insert it after the second part of the rotation. It’d look something like this:

SS > SS > SS > Blood Tap > Ghoul Frenzy > RP dump

Another recommendation I’ve seen, esp. for when Blood Tap is on cooldown, is to use it as the first Death Rune in the second half of the rotation, then to use our strongest single-rune nuke (Icy Touch) for the other one. I’ve not gotten a lot of practice doing this. Originally I was trying to insert it after the first round of the rotation, but that caused major slowdown with the third Scourge Strike of the second half of the rotation, as I was waiting on the second rune to come off cooldown.

• In fact, as long as we’re on the timing issue - the timing of this build can be very weird to get down, especially the SS > SS > SS portion. You’re effectively waiting on runes to come off cooldown 2 at a time, which causes a little pause prior to the swing that those coming from rotation-only specs (including me) need a little bit to get used to.

• Tanks these days put out so much threat that the lack of a mechanic to reduce threat may initially seem like a problem. Frankly, I’ve been running with non-Subversion builds since before 3.1, and I’ve only had one instance where even a much-lesser-geared tank couldn’t keep a threat lead over me (and to be fair, he couldn’t keep threat off of the shadow priest, or anyone else). Nevertheless, get Omen and watch it. You want to get a feel for how your tank performs when you’re in this build. Most builds prior to now have taken full points in Subversion, so running without it may be a new experience.

• Oh, and don’t forget your gargoyle. Not that I did for two full heroics or anything. cough

In a day or two, I’ll take a look at a real experiment: I’ve been tanking as Blood-spec. Quick verdict: much better than it used to be.

Finally knocked out my last achievement for heroic Arachnid Quarter.

Stupid Ice Bomb.

Aaaaaaagh SOMEONE GET THIS BUG OFF MY HEAD

I’m in your necropolis, stealin’ your throne. (And /cackle’ing on it.)

Dear Kel’thuzad:

Better luck next time!

Love,
Fatalis

(3:37:17 PM) Nibuca: Lesson learned: make sure to delete your wow combat log more often than once every 4 months

For those of you who log, for use with WoW Web Stats or one of its ilk, you may not have noticed but there are a couple interesting facts about the WoW combat log:

1. It’s super-verbose, meaning it grows really quickly as a result, and

2. WoW never deletes it, archives it, or starts a new one - when you turn off then turn on logging, WoW will gleefully keep appending to the same file.

As a result you can end up with a combat log over 5 million lines long, like Nibs above. Yikes! Well, if you’re a Windows user, I’ve got a solution you can use to automate some of this, to take the tedium out of needing to edit a log or archive it manually. Follow me past the break…