Yeah, that sums up 3.1 pretty nicely, for me. I won’t lie, there’s good parts to it - I’m liking my death knight and warlock (yes, you read that right, warlock) better than ever, and love the new options available to most of my toons. The Argent Tournament is fantastic - I absolutely love it. But everything else? Frustrating.

Last night, it came in threes:

1. I ran into a delightful bug with the dual spec feature. Mild compared to others, but consistent. Non-spellcasters who have abilities in their talent trees where rank 1 is bought with talents and every rank afterwards is bought from a trainer will find that often switching between trees removes the lowest such talent and anything below it. This means that every time I switch to my DPS spec, I have to reapply 7 points into the Blood tree; when I switch to tank, everything between Frost Strike and Howling Blast needs to be retalented. I can only imagine how annoying this would be for Unholy DKs; if I’m wrong and it’s the highest, not the lowest, everything between Corpse Explosion and the bottom of the tree could potentially get removed.

2. I’ve been trying for a while to get a spot in a 25-man team with members of The Aftermath. Unfortunately my contact guy and I have been missing each other. Last night we finally got in touch and he says “hey, you want to come do 25-man Emalon with us?” New boss? Of course I want to go! So I hearthed from Outland, where I had been working on Loremaster stuff, to Northrend and notice we don’t have Wintergrasp. Wuh-oh. We fielded maybe 40-ish people in our group, with a few more besides… and still had from 3 to 7 stacks of Tenacity at all times. In short, it was an enormous lagfest that we lost through sheer numbers. So, no Emalon.

* Also? I doubt we'd have been able to go to Emalon if we'd won. The instance servers had been down for going on four hours at that point and showed no signs of recovery.

1. Oh, and then I disconnected, and the B.net login servers were fried, so I couldn’t get back on for at least an hour, maybe more, by which time my desire to log on had completely waned. Instead, I watched the debut episode of Pitchmen (Billy Mays is awesome) and played … incoming blasphemy… City of Heroes.

So yeah, that’s how 3.1 is for me: so good, it drove me to another MMO. Parts of it are good, but much like when 3.0.8 came out, the game is in a largely unplayable state at the moment. So how’re things for you?

Behold, my new Army of the Dead (click picture to embiggen):

Sadly, there were not enough cows to merit an achievement.

I’d like to give a hearty shout-out and a hello to Kel from Awakening in Progress, a fairly new blog. Kel’s got a holy priest and a death knight, and a pretty good storytelling style. Oh, and she’s further proof that there are girls on the internet! I particularly liked her post on the reputation of a Death Knight - how we have to prove ourselves more than other classes for a raid spot due to a massive influx of idiots (my words, not hers); Kel goes on to include some tips for DKs looking for raid spots on how to Stop Doing It Wrong.

I’m not sure if you know this, but like some sort of creepy Internet Matlock, I can actually see what search strings bring you to The Stoppable Force. A few interesting ones have cropped up, and so I thought I’d take this time to respond to some of them and hopefully answer a few questions I know went unanswered.

1. female death knight name generator
   I don’t actually know of a death knight generator for either gender, but for the love of all that is Unholy, can we please stop naming Death Knights by taking the word ‘Death’ or ‘Dark’ and appending a name to it? That trend was old on day 1.

2. exalted with gelkis?
   Can’t be done. Nor can exalted with the Magram. They stop giving honor just shy of Revered, I believe. Sorry!

3. death knight badge gear
   Heroism badges: This. This, if you’re tanking. You could do worse than this and this if you’re tanking, also. This is a good starter belt for you DPS-types, though haste’s better for the dual-wielders in general. Oh, and tier gear. Our token drops the most, but has the most classes on it, so you might want to skip ahead and buy some, if you can farm the badges up. Do not buy this, it has a terrible uptime.

Valor badges: these are fantastic for DPS, this is pretty good for tanky types, this is okay for deeps but there’s equivalents in Naxx and the occasional blue cape that’s just as good, you could do worse than these tank boots, these are a nice source of expertise, I’m fond of this DPS ring and this tank cloak, and - oh yeah - tier gear. Nice part about all the badge tank gear is none of it includes block. Well, good for us, anyway. Kind of sucks for warrior and paladins.

1. tier 9 death kbight
   Whoah, whoah, whoah. Getting a little ahead of ourselves? Tier 8 hasn’t even come out yet.

2. unmerging my battle.net account
   You can’t. Moving on.

3. too many death knights
   Tell me about it!

Do not adjust your picture - this is not a test. That pic (click to see the full-size version) is yours truly, standing in front of the boss. Why? Because I told my guild I had respecced to a tanking spec and tanking gear, and wanted to tank something. “Oh, let’s run a heroic!” they said, and we started trying to find people.

Then someone realized it was 30 minutes or so until we had to fight for Wintergrasp again. “Want to run a 10-man Vault?” people started asking. So, sure, we went to Vault, and it was bizarro world - Vorgar, who I’ve only ever known as a tank, was DPSing; Skelli, who is almost always demonology, was a PvP-oriented affliction build; Kel, the tree, had spent 150g getting all boomkek’d up and was ready to blast some things thankyouverymuch; Vixx, the rogue was in a PvP spec… okay, Vixx, loves stabbin’ the Alliance, that’s not really a surprise.

And yours truly… was tanking. See? Bizarro raid! And yet, down went Archavon, boom - no problems! (I even picked up a Hateful Gladiator’s Dreadplate Chestpiece, though I haven’t the faintest what I’m going to do with it.) So apparently, we were feeling cocky. “Let’s do OS-10, they say.” But one of our healers can’t go. “OS-25?” One of our DPS warriors has to switch to his resto shammy, sure, but OS-25 is agreed upon. I /faulsey* a little.

“Let’s do it with 20 people for the achievement! Oh, and don’t worry Zul, you’re the only tank, but you’ll be fine.” I /faulsey a lot. Yet, everyone seems confident, I do my very best to hit the buttons, mitigate the damage, and keep the monsters punching me in the face, and eventually all three drakes, then Sartharion himself fall to us, with very few deaths (a couple facepulls, a few people getting swarmed with elemental adds). And I got the achievements from the screenshot above. Ta-dah!

Tanking is such a rush. I think this might be what I really want to do - to be honest, I was getting pretty complacent with DPSing. Rotate, rotate, dump runic power, snore self into coma. This, though… it was downright exhilarating, and I loved it.

• I should explain /faulsey. It comes from Faulsey, of Master’s Call - when he started showing up in BA Chat, he was also starting to raid, and he frequently displayed a mixture of panic and excitement - maybe 1 part panic, 3 parts excitement? This quickly became known as /faulseying. (If you’re more panicky, or frustrated, it becomes a “flailsey.” And now you know.)

Here’s a neat little tool: Pugchecker. All it does is take all the info on boss kills from your armory profile and display it in an easy to read numbered format, ordered by dungeon.

One caveat, apparently Drak’tharon Keep is very buggy about granting kill credits for Tharon’ja - if you’re dead or in skeleton form, you won’t get the credit (and often won’t get the achievement). I guess I got lucky. Anyway, here’s my Pugchecker page. Kind of cool!

Inspired by Maerdred, I figured I’d toss up a mock guild application here. I’m not really looking to leave my guild, per se, or maybe even Feathermoon (unless your offer’s pretty good…), but I am looking to find a new raid. I’ll include relevant info here on that, too, since it’s a bit of a story in and of itself. EDIT: Visiting my armory, you may notice I am tank-specced and wearing my tank gear. My current raid, while it may not ever progress anywhere, still needs a tank - and frankly, I’d like to tank things. That said, if you need a DPS, I’ll switch back.

Main character (include class and spec): Zulfon, Troll DPS Death Knight (currently 0/20/51 dual-wield) - I also have the gear to off-tank or run a two-handed DPS build, if so desired, and will respec/reglyph accordingly; however, my tank gear is not suitable for main tanking as of yet in my opinion (Be.Imba disagrees)
Link to Armory: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Feathermoon&n=Zulfon
Alts (include class and spec): Queklain (70 demo warlock), Joratox (22 prot warrior), Whitebough (23 balance druid), Valmafra (45 SV hunter), Xajek (45 shadow priest)
Real First Name: Phil
Age: 26
Location: KY, USA

Detail the WoW guilds you have been in (Server, Guild, Length of Time) and the reasons why you left those guilds.
Korialstrasz(US) - I was the guildmaster from March 2008 until July 2008. It was a casual guild with low membership. I left this guild to transfer to Feathermoon(US) due to the extreme Alliance-Horde imbalance on Korialstrasz, lack of Horde population, and because of friends I had on Feathermoon.

Feathermoon(US) - I am still a member of Fatalis. I’m in no hurry to leave.

Previous raiding experience in WoW.
I started playing WoW just last January, so my raid experiences have been all TBC or later. My guild had a rather small core group of raiders, so while I had multiple full clears of Karazhan and Zul’aman, I only saw Magtheridon’s Lair near the end of TBC (also cleared). In Wrath, I’ve been raiding Naxxramas and Obsidian Sanctum fairly consistently; I have seen a full completion of Naxx with a 10-man group that pulled me in as a PUGged DPS, but as for my 25-man group, we haven’t had that sort of success.

At the launch of WotLK, Fatalis was on course to team up with a fellow guild, Avenging Warpath, to tackle 25-man content. A loot system was set in place, times were set, raid balance was assured, and so on. By the time the actual date to start raiding arrived, a few members of Fatalis had already joined another regular 25-man raid, the loot system was ignored, and Avenging Warpath was contributing roughly 3-4 members to the raid. While we have managed to pick up some regular members, this raid has (for various reasons) not even completed more than two wings of Naxxramas (Spider & Plague, Construct except Thaddius, and no progress into Military), and Fatalis is largely pulling out to create its own raid group, which I cannot join due to their weekend raid time. This puts the kibosh on this joint raid, pretty much, and so I am looking for a new and improved raid experience.

Please tell us about any previous leadership experience in WoW.
I have led a small casual guild on Korialstrasz, but haven’t really held any sort of formal officer position in any other aspect since leaving that guild.

What do you want out of your playing time?
I want two things: fun, and to see the content. While I had fun in TBC (I was leveling, I was raiding on a consistent schedule, it’s all good), it sort of bothered me that I was never going to see anything past Z’A. I like that sense of achievement and conquest, as well as learning my own class as I go along - there’s always something new to learn about how to do my job just the tiniest bit better. There are other things I enjoy, like leveling alts, achievement hounding, and so on; additionally, while raiding has to be taken seriously for there to be success, I appreciate groups that also treat it as “serious fun” and not a second job.

What is your availability for raids?
I am available Sunday through Thursday, 6pm - 1am EST (3pm - 10pm server time). I may occasionally be online on the weekends but never consistently enough to guarantee any raiding.

Please describe your computer/Internet setup and indicate whether you tend to have lag or connectivity issues.
I built this PC from scratch and continually upgrade it as I have the available funding; it runs in a raid environment at full tilt with all effects turned up, averaging 40-60 fps. (Tons of layered AOE can be a bit sketchy, but it doesn’t affect my ability to do my job.) I periodically have connection issues stemming from connecting to a West Coast server from the Eastern side of the country; however, generally if there are going to be issues on a given night, they show up early enough and consistently enough that I can let my raid leaders know I will not be able to take part in a raid. (This has only happened once in my WoW career, when I started experiencing 3000ms ping times prior to a Thaddius attempt and voluntarily sat the fight out.)

Are you willing to occupy a bench slot (on line and still available to sub in) when needed?
That’s how I got my start raiding; that’s what I’ll do again if necessary to raid with you.

In your opinion, what do skilled players of your class and spec contribute to 25-man raiding?
Death knights can tend to be a bit low on the multi-class synergy. However, unholy DKs do bring a couple things to the table. One is our ability to apply a debuff applying +13% magic damage, covering potential holes in the raid; the other (at least until 3.1) is a 15% movement boost for the entire raid. However, our most consistent things we bring to a raid are flexibility - I’ve gone from off-tanking to kiting to straight-out DPSing just with a change of presence and gear, on a single night - and damage, pure, plain damage. Damage: it kills bosses!

What do you, as an individual, bring to raids that distinguishes you from average players? Here’s your chance to convince us that we need YOU for our team.
I know it sounds hackneyed, but I am a team player. I may not have a ton of raid experience prior to the current content, but I am a quick learner, and can adapt to your team’s way of doing things. I do my very best to stay on top of the newest changes coming down the pipeline to WoW, and how they affect me and my position in the raid. During my time raiding with Fatalis, I have consistently served in a DPS role, and when I’m not in the raid bringing down bosses and trash, I’m trying to figure out how to make myself better. If that means switching specs, gear, or playstyle to eke out just that last bit of performance so that the raid can be better as a result of my contribution, so be it.

What mods do you use , and why do you like them?
I use quite a few addons, but the ones most relevant to raiding are MetaHUD, Power Auras, Grid, DBM, and Omen. Omen obviously helps me keep on top of threat, so the tank doesn’t have to play Aggro Ping-Pong. DBM is a must-have for raiding, in my opinion. While I may not be a healer, Grid still is my raid frame of choice, if only so I can see the raid’s condition at a glance. MetaHUD and Power Auras are all about reaction time - visual and audio warnings about things like missing buffs and incorrect stances improve my playstyle and reaction time, while MetaHUD keeps relevant info (namely, my life, the boss’s life, buffs, and debuffs) at eye level so I don’t need to look away.

What websites do you usually visit to gather WoW information?
Wowhead, Wowwiki, Elitist Jerks forums, Tankspot, BossKillers, MMO Champion, WoW Insider, and a variety of blogs from a variety of authors.

I suddenly find myself without a raid. Anyone Hordeside (preferably on Feathermoon) need a DPS DK (or I suppose an offtank; I’m uncrittable, but not geared to be a main tank at the moment)? Let me know. I’m available Sunday nights and weekdays; I cannot raid on Friday and Saturday, please don’t ask.

It’s Monday again? Sheesh. Too sleepy to post real post yet. Here’s screenshots of what I did this weekend. First, Zulfon:

Then, new recruit-a-friend warrior Joratox (leveling with Vandersloot’s new warlock, Vandorah; I told him she needed to finish World Explorer so she could be Vandorah the Explorer):

And back to Zulfon for the late-Sunday-night finish:

Not pictured because apparently three achievements won’t show up simultaneously: finishing The Argent Crusade and The Argent Champion (yes, my death knight is now Zulfon the Argent Champion) also earned me 5 Exalted Reputations.

As we were warned by quite a few WoW bloggers this past week (including Kestrel, Anna, Rohan and World of Snarkcraft), a rather sophisticated WoW phishing scheme has been circulating disguised as a 3-day suspension notice. While, yes, Blizzard has pounded it into our heads that they will never ask for our username or password, sometimes in a moment of panic or unclear thinking or, hell, just haven’t had caffeine yet, you may still accidentally compromise your account by falling for one of these scams. Furthermore, there’s always keyloggers out there, waiting to snap up your info next time to log in and transfer it to more malicious sources.

The Blizzard Authenticator is the best thing we’ve got for now, and it’s a damned far sight better than having no authenticator at all. However, I’ve heard a lot of recent confusion from different sources - how does the Authenticator connect to my account? How does it “know” it’s me? That sort of thing. Well, I’m here to not just tell you, but to show you - I’ll walk you step-by-step through connecting an Authenticator to your Battle.net account or unmerged WoW account, and using it to log into WoW.

As long as you’re not doing anything today, you should go read Darraxus the Warrior’s deep thoughts on raid bosses who are dumb as a box of rocks. He points out things I’ve thought about many times while raiding, such as:

…the enrage timer.

Patchwerk: “I have been hitting you guys for six minutes and you arent dead. I guess I will just kill you now.” If they are capable of this massive amount of damage, why do they wait to use it? If I were to get into a fight, I wouldnt try to slap someone for 5 minutes and then decide to hit them with some haymakers.

I have to add that aggro radiuses in general, while a necessary game mechanic to some degree, are just idiotic. I mentioned Heigan in my comment on that post, but really it could apply to any raid boss, just about. Except maybe Loatheb; I get the feeling that that walking pile of fungus just isn’t quite all there.