As I was leveling cooking last night (370/375 - and I don’t feel a rush to finish it, as I can make all the food I need to make for raids and such and I’m sure there’ll be something better to level it on in Wrath than a green recipe), something occurred to me: is it just me, or does a lot of the food in World of Warcraft sound really appetizing?

I mean, sure, it’s dropping from weird otherworldly raptors sometimes, and sometimes you probably don’t want to know what’s in it, but there are other times where food in World of Warcraft has made me hungry in real life from sounding delicious. So what’s your favorite thing?

I was tempted to go with Warp Burgers, until I remembered what warp stalker flesh looks like before you cook it:

That just doesn’t look healthy, folks. I honestly think I’d have to go with a treat taught to us by our favorite mushroom-based friends, the clam bar. I figure I already like fried clams - why not just make them into a bar?

Delish!

I have to admit, though, that I’m kind of curious about the food that the Consortium offers - like Diamond Berries. Are they more diamond or berry?

I’ve recently been doing some looking at that delightful mechanic of spell hit (or as Wrath calls it, ‘hit rating’ - hoorah for homogenization of stats). For a warlock, in Burning Crusade, the magic number if you wanted to have a 99% chance of hitting a raid boss was 202. Doesn’t sound like much, but honestly, getting 202 spell hit prior to actually doing any raiding was a pain in the ass. There’s an occasional rep item like Ashyen’s Gift you can pick up, some main-hand or off-hand items, and even the occasional enchantment, but what it boils down to is that spell hit is a fairly annoying thing to stat for prior to actually raiding.

Hence, a catch 22: many raids want you to be hit capped to go on a raid, but you need to go on a raid (or gimp yourself in other areas) to hit the hit cap.

Well, friends, it looks like Wrath is set to fix a great deal of that.

Right now, this is Metamorphosis.

You transform into a Demon for 30 sec. This form increases your armor by 600%, damage by 20%, reduces the chance you’ll be critically hit by melee attacks by 6% and reduces the duration of stun and snare effects by 50%. You gain some unique demon abilities in addition to your normal abilities.

Those unique demon abilities, incidentally, are Immolation Aura, Demon Charge, Shadow Cleave, and Challenging Howl. Yes, an AOE taunt. What the hell? Metamorphosis: A Better Way To Die™

I have a better idea. My version costs, say, 35% of base mana.

Transform into demon form, increasing damage by 30%, armor contribution from items by 600%, reducing the chance you’ll be critically hit by melee attacks by 10%, and reducing the duration of stun and snare effects by 50%. You gain some unique demon abilities while in demon form, and your spellpower will be applied to your melee attacks. Your controlled demon is unsummoned while in demon form, but you retain any benefits gained from Demonology talents.

You’ll notice something missing: duration. Here’s why: I think Metamorphosis should work more along the lines of, say, Dire Bear Form. Frankly, as a 51-point talent, I feel we should be able to stay in freaking demon form as long as we want. Taking the demon away seems fair, since theoretically the demonologist’s damage will make up for the loss of a demon in this form, and the demonology talents still apply, such as the effects of Master Demonologist. Hell, if Metamorphosis worked like this, then this might actually create a reason for demonologists to use Demonic Sacrifice! Oh – and I’d get rid of Challenging Howl, and re-add Shadow Bolt Volley. Seriously, warlocks shouldn’t be tanking.

Man, I can hear the cries of “OP!” and “nerf warlocks!” already… :)

The current shared topic on Blog Azeroth is ”what do you wish your profession could do?” I have two, so I’ll pick tailoring since I’m a little more familiar with it.

There’s one item I’ve always wanted to see tailors be able to make. It certainly wouldn’t be a moneymaker (I don’t think so, anyway, but people pay for weird stuff), it’s not exactly obscenely useful like Saresa’s suggestions for improving tailoring, but it’s just one of those fun things I’ve always wanted.

And, to top it off, I’ve heard rumblings we might get something like it in the game - even if tailors don’t make it. What is it, you ask?

I don’t know what the mats would be (hint: cloth, thread, probably bleach). However, I do know that basically, this would be the blank grey tabard until such time as you used it. Using the Personal Coat of Arms would open the same tabard creator that guild masters get when they go to create a guild’s tabard, it’d work exactly the same (except it’d be free), and you could change it pretty much any time you like. (And it’d give you a reason to always be toying with this Flash tabard creator.)

Mine, of course, would look something like this:

It actually looks pretty good, though finding the right frame to display this was difficult due to Horrible Forsaken Posture™.

I think, even if no one’s calling it that, expansionitis is setting in with the guild. Raids are slowly being canceled left and right; even last night’s Kara run got called off, which annoyed me for a bit because I was supposed to sub in (and finally see the inside of that damn tower). Oh well. Maybe Monday or Wednesday. As for me, I’ll be taking the weekend off gaming and visiting my parents for a while.

Oh yeah, and the dancing robots thing: I didn’t know until yesterday, poking through the model viewer, that the fel reaver has a dance. What the heck? My guess is that when You, Robot was originally designed you were supposed to completely take control of the Scrap Reaver rather than just have it as a pet.

Can someone double-check my numbers? I’m trying to figure out some things about Curses. I’ll put them after the jump for those with a terminal fear of math.

A quick note up-front: if you are reading this in your RSS reader, just about every post may appear to be new again - because we are finally on a new domain, thestoppableforce.net! You shouldn’t have to update anything; the feed will continue to be served by FeedBurner, and the old URL still redirects here.

So I was dropping by Auchindoun anyway, and I thought, “hey, I’ll go check on those fine folks over at the Sha’tari Base Camp.” And lo and behold, they have a lot of things for me to do… so long story short, the number of arakkoa I had to hunt for my Lower City key turned out to be 0, and I’m now finally keyed for every heroic instance except Magister’s Terrace.

Funny, a little over a month and a half to go in BC and I’m just now able to do all the heroics.

I’m on kind of a short semi-break from Queklain, as Fatalis has canceled its Saturday Kara raids, citing lack of interest. Since the odds of me getting into the 25-man Raid 1 group are slim (being as how they’re already full, as far as I know), and now the odds of me getting into Kara are nonexistent (again, Raid 1’s full), I’m sort of considering just building up gold on him, going for the epic flyer, and leveling someone else in the meantime. Heaven knows I’ve got Recruit-a-Friend characters to build up…

You know, if I can get just a few things done, the list of instances I need to visit with Queklain overlaps nicely. I can save myself a few trips!

1. Figure out the easiest way to get 1441 Lower City rep and finally pick up my Auchenai Key. It annoys me that this is the only key I don’t have, but Lower City is so freakin’ annoying to get rep for.

2. Heroic Shattered Halls, for Trial of the Naaru: Mercy. The annoying part of this is that it has to be the 55-minute no-one-gets-executed run, and I don’t think my guild’s ever tried that. Basically we would have to have 0 wipes between Nethekurse and Bladefist (since exiting Grand Warlock Nethekurse’s room starts the timer).

3. Botanica, on either difficulty, for the second half of How to Break into the Arcatraz. This’ll also net me A’dal’s Gift. In theory, however, this one is totally optional.

That’ll get everything up to where it nicely overlaps, and I can start running instances for multiple goals! Whee!

1. Heroic Shadow Labyrinth, for both Entry into Karazhan and half of Trial of the Naaru: Strength.

2. Heroic Steamvaults, for both the other half of Trial of the Naaru: Strength and half of The Second and Third Fragments.

3. Heroic Arcatraz, for both Trial of the Naaru: Tenacity and the other half of The Second and Third Fragments.

Funny how that all works out, isn’t it? Methinks Khadgar and A’dal have a racket going. :) After that I’m just a Mags raid away from a title, and a BM run away from having a Karazhan key (which I admit I am mostly doing for the rep).

Whew!

Getting there, slowly but surely…

Tonight was a fun night. First I made myself productive, by maxing out first aid and then adding 100 or so points to enchanting (currently at 247, unfortunately; still too low to enchant items from heroics or many green Outland drops). Then, after the summons to heroics, ended up running Heroic Ramps, Heroic BM, and Heroic Mech back-to-back. Yes, back-to-back.

First, in Ramps, I picked up the Headdress of Alacrity, which in addition to looking like a completely pimped-out mohawk frame (and it’s even in my favorite color, Warlock Purple), is a pretty good helmet and will be even better once I hit revered with the Sha’tar and can enchant it.

Then, in BM, while I didn’t get anything apart from badges, Vandersloot picked up an Hourglass of the Unraveller while Mandollf got himself a Quantum Blade. I was kind of hoping for Khadgar’s ol’ kilt, but it didn’t drop. Alas!

Finally, after some technical difficulties (Van needed 1 rep point to get his key, then one of our DPSers apparently lost internet in his entire region, and so on) we popped into Heroic Mechanar and ran over the place. I did half of How to Break Into the Arcatraz and picked up a Mana Wrath. I kind of feel guilty, because I joked to Mandollf saying that I was going to laugh if we went through all this nonsense to get to the end of Mechanar and the Mana Wrath dropped instead of the sword he was going for, and then it did. Whoops.

And last but not least, because I didn’t think I’d be able to compile quite as large a collection of badges by Wrath as I’d like, I went ahead and picked up an Orb of the Soul-Eater, too.

So, yes, I’m slowly getting there… and I guess if it turns out that even after all this work warlockery isn’t for me, it’s nice to know I can always turn to a life of piracy.

Yarrr, matey.

At this point, I think it is safe to say that I am probably not getting a beta key for Wrath. Ordinarily I’d be kind of upset about that except that I’ve started to come to terms with it simply because of the amount of things I still have to do in the game we already have. In no particular order:

• I still need to get epic flying skill for Queklain, as well as a mount to go with it.

• I need more badges, I need trips into Kara, in short I need gear.

• I have four skills on Quek to get to 375: first aid, cooking, fishing, and enchanting.

• I need to get Eladhon and Xajek to 60 before the 28th of November, and need to level Galehorn as well so she can make the most of those granted levels.

I have a lot to do and see and learn still about the TBC world, especially since I officially only started in it about 8 months before it looks like we’ll be moving out of it, and not nearly enough time to do it in.

…

All that said, though, if someone’s got a beta key they’re not using… :D