I was going to write an actual post about numbers and the top 5 specs for each class from data mined from the top 20 PvE guilds in the world, but instead, I’m going to just put this all down so I don’t have to type it over and over and over again.

But I have to hand out my email!

Once. From the Real ID FAQ, yes, you have to hand out your email to someone you know in order for them to real-ID-friend you. (There really needs to be a convenient way to verb that.) Furthermore, it’s not automatic friending, so if you see a name you don’t recognize trying to friend you? Deny the request. The other person is never notified of that. Got an asshole ex trying to friend you on Real ID? Deny the request. Got someone trying to friend you that you just plain don’t want to know the identity of all your alts? Deny the request. If someone puts in an incorrect email address, or their request is declined, the requester is never notified. If you have a friend who constantly has keyloggers or has been hacked or what-have-you, don’t give that person your email address to begin with. Or make them give you their email address. It’s common sense. Why don’t more people have it?

But then my email address is saved in their client forever and ever!

Incorrect. From the Real ID FAQ, mutual Real ID friends (and their Real ID friends) will see your first and last name, as well as what character you’re on, what zone you’re in, and the special Real ID stuff like status messages and presence. It explicitly states in the FAQ that your Battle.net email address is not displayed in the Real ID friends list.

But you said friends of friends! HAX OMG

Shut the hell up. From the Real ID FAQ (do you see a trend yet?), yes, when you click on a friend, you can see the names of their friends, so if you have mutual acquaintances, you can quickly friend them. However, since your battle.net email is never displayed in the Real ID friends list, you don’t know your friend-of-friend’s email, and they don’t know yours. You don’t have to hand out your email, they don’t get to know your email, and it’s easy to make friends. If you don’t know who this person is who’s trying to friend you? Deny the request.

But what if they harass me?!

I bet you see where this is going. From the Real ID FAQ, not only can you contact a GM – just like if any other player was harassing you – you can block individuals from communicating with you anywhere on battle.net.

But even after you assuaged all my fears, I still don’t want to use it!

Fine.

Don’t.

What, do you think there’s more to it than that? If you don’t want to use Real ID, don’t approve any Real ID friend requests. If you opt in then later decide you want to opt out, remove all Real ID friends from your lists. Friendship is a two-way street on Real ID (unlike WoW in general), and if you remove someone, they don’t see you anymore.

Guess where I got that information?

If all else fails, you can turn on Parental Controls. They’ll be updated to disallow Real ID.

The TL;DR Version

• People you are Real ID friends with do see your first and last name (the ones set up as your primary contact in battle.net).
• People you are Real ID friends with do see your character, realm, and zone.
• People you are Real ID friends with do see what game you are playing – WoW and Starcraft II support Real ID right now. You can safely assume Diablo III will as well.
• People who you would like to be Real ID friends do need your email address once, or you will need theirs once.
• People you are Real ID friends with do not see your email address in their friends list, nor do you see theirs.
• Friends of people you are Real ID friends with do not see your email address in their friends-of-friends list, nor do you see theirs.
• Read the FAQ before you start freaking out next time, internet.

Worst case scenario: someone finds out your real name, and it turns out it’s your boss, and he notices both of you are signed on during work. Whoops!

Let’s stop the pointless panic and the rumormongering, folks. Let’s save the panic for actual crisis scenarios, when things are actually wrong, and stop the "ZOMG HORRIBLE IDEA" righteous indignation over Real ID.

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Real ID: here’s some info, now stop with the righteous indignation

Damn it, DeathwBZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

(Inspired by Frost is the NBBBBBZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ, where you can learn how to turn your Horn of Winter into a vuvuzela.)

BZZZZZZZ well, my friends.

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BZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Yeah, I’m going to pick on warriors. I’ve been running instances from the teens up through the high 20s on Rhododendron and Brynhild, and while occasionally you’ll get something like Softi’s hunter with a growling, aggressive pet, or someone DPSing in Ragefire Chasm in bearform (because they don’t have cat yet, and evidently missed that part of the pesky tooltip for Maul (Rank 1) that says it causes high amounts of threat), the biggest issue I’ve had has been with warriors. Absolutely. Idiotic. Warriors.

Our latest shining winner, Darca of Drak’thul, ended up in a Stockades run with us after one of our DPS unexpectedly had to go, shortly before fighting Bazil. No, not Basil, Bazil. (Side note: Stocks sucks as Horde. The only thing I get out of it? Lots of wool.) Shoulda known something was up when as soon as she zoned in, she ran directly to the first mob in front of her, hit it with her sword, and Thunderstomped. Pardon me… what? Feral Faerie Fire, Growl, quit stealin’ mah mobs.

So we got to the three-way room before Bazil, and I couldn’t remember if it was him or Dextren Ward that has the fear (spoiler: it’s Dextren), so we went to clear the side rooms. I had no more than turned my fat furry bear ass to face the room before Darca … once again pulled. The entire room. My only response was "you know you’re not the tank, right?" No response. Once again, I grabbed threat back, we beat up all the inmates, we beat up Bazil Thredd, and we got our goodie bag. Our mage goes, "Requeue?" To which I have no objections; I figure if Darca keeps misbehaving, we can always boot her.

Unrelated: I wonder if the Alliance are ever confused about why their prison riot started? One minute they’re having a prison riot, next thing you know, a bunch of Horde warriors teleport in, smack down all the prisoners, and teleport out.

Also unrelated: I have to give credit to the Defias Convicts, for having the balls to backhand a bear.

We requeue, and huzzah, Stockades! Because the RNG has a horrible sense of humor. Darca immediately pulls; we finish and I say politely, "Darca, please let me pull."

Darca promptly runs into the room to our left, aggros everything in the room, and dies.

Then spirit rezzes outside.

And hearths to Tarren Mill.

So we four-man the rest of Stocks, with me periodically checking if we can boot Darca (I could’ve sworn they got rid of the minimum time to kick; if it was in the patch notes, it’s a lie), and manage to finish before the cooldown because this time we just went straight to Bazil Thredd. Beat him down, requeued, and… Darca picks no role.

Requeue. Darca picks no role. Requeue. Darca picks no role.

Vote to Kick Darca? You can’t kick people after the instance is over. What kind of idiocy is that?

So you might be asking, "what’s so unique about this story?" Nothing. If I had 50g for every arms or fury warrior wielding sword-and-board and trying to tank an instance when they queued as DPS, I’d have two damned mammoths. Does anyone have any idea why this happens? What is it about this particular class that seems to be attracting all the derp derp derp members of WoW society?

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What is it with warriors?

Phase 1: Got this down to a science by the end of the night.

Transition Phase 1: Also went well. Watching people get flung off by Ice Spheres during one of our wipes cracked me up, though.

Phase 2: Well, we’ve got the next few weeks to work on this. Our raid lockout is being extended until the Lich King is dead. Don’t expect much interesting out of me in the meantime.

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Defile is the opposite of love

I’ve been trying for it for a while now, but I just had a feeling, you know? I was in the pit, pummelin’ some warbears, and it suddenly popped into my head: today’s the day. And lo and behold, I got the bear. Huzzah! And yes, that’s the handle of a Cryptmaker peeking over my shoulder there. She’s a beaut, ain’t she? Doesn’t clip my cape horribly, either, like the other two weapons I own. Seriously, Ramaladni’s Blade of Culling looks like it’s stuck halfway into my back, though this might just be a problem with some dwarf models (it does the same thing when I’m in an iron dwarf disguise, but not when I’m in a dark iron dwarf disguise).

As for the other pic mentioned in the title -

It was a good weekend on the auction house, too. Just need nine more Primordial Saronites and Festergut’s Acidic Blood and I, too, can get harassed by Arthas whenever I like. It’ll be like old times – I haven’t had ol’ Lichy baby whisperin’ in my ear since I left Acherus.

Oh, and about that video. Got an email from Lionsface Entertainment announcing a WoW hip-hop single and video, "Fail," by Blood Type. Ordinarily I’m not very impressed by these (there’s only so many times I can take blood elves bragging about their epeen, though there are a few standouts, and I’ll admit to having a few on my iPod), but the production value on this one is above par, and the two vocalists can… you know… actually rap.

Anyway, without further ado, here’s the vid:

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Two pics and a video

That, I found, is Blizzard’s official terminology for it in the activity log: Valithria Dreamwalker rescues. Good to know, we’d been wondering what to call it. Wiped out all of Lower Spire + Plagueworks (including one-shotting Putricide) in the first 90 minutes last night, then went over and 2-shot Valithria, a fight we hadn’t seen before (in no small part thanks to the druid on the right there walking us through it – he’s Dantesparda, one of our many many new people; we suddenly have a full and lively guild at almost all times, it’s so awesome), then went over and pummeled the Princes into the pavement despite the entire East Coast suddenly disconnecting and taking a big chunk of our guild with it – and leaving the ones that could get back on with enormous lag. I think whatever happened, it was even affecting the Midwest – you can see my latency is at 516ms there. It jumped from 96 to 516 at some point prior to Valithria and stayed there last night, and was still there this morning in fact.

Also, another Fine Moment in Caffeine Raiding™, brought to you by Aelrict.

I love these folks.

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Enormous dragons rescued: 1/1 (Quest Complete)

Things have been rather sparse or, at best, fluffy around here lately. Why? Nib said it better than me. I just plain don’t have a thing to talk about because I haven’t done anything new in weeks. Breezing through the first six bosses or smashing against Putricide and, well, supposedly the Princes are on farm, but our luck hates them – we’ve gotten bitten two weeks in a row with the known bug where they summon important parts of the fight in the hallway instead of in their room; last week, it was Dark Nuclei, and I got by because I learned when to look for them, but now Valanar’s started summoning beach balls in the hallway. Add some attendance concerns on top of all that and it’s just become a weekly grind of breeze -> facesmash -> repair -> breeze -> facesmash -> repair. Tried to do Ulduar hardmodes on a raid night and 6 people signed up; did ToGC-10 for a little while, at least, and ran into the wall that is Faction Champs. I pretty much only log onto my DK for the facesmash repetitions; I need frost badges badly – 180+ of them – but I can’t even bring myself to do the dailies anymore.

In short, I’m halfway between frustrated and bored. Maybe I just need a week off or something.

A few days ago, Dechion mentioned the idea of "throwing everything up and keeping what sticks." (I bet now the pic of some sticky hand things makes sense.) Twice now, I’ve basically gone through an entire expansion with a single alt – granted, in TBC, it was an abbreviated amount of time, as I joined just before 2.3.2. After TBC, I immediately switched my main to a DK with no hesitation; my warlock languishes at 73, where – let’s be honest – she probably isn’t going to move up from anytime soon. I’m starting to think I might change again, because my DK is starting to lose his stickiness.

So who’s sticky?

• My warlock? When the class changes came out and I realized how much they were going to buff my favorite spec, I went demo on her again, only to find that, well, the urge to stick to her wasn’t there. I throw the pet at the mobs, I throw the magic, and the magic is gone. Leveling her would be hell for leather. Has completely lost her sticky, much like an old toy.
• My death knight? WotLK was a rollercoaster of a time to be a death knight. Overpowered, underpowered, middle of the road, one-and-only flavor-of-the-month specs, other specs utterly nerfed into oblivion for entire patch levels. It’s a little mentally exhausting. Plus I switched roles and I did it fairly thoroughly. Hell, I barely remember how to DPS anymore. Is my DK losing his sticky? Maybe.
• My rogue? You’ve never met a bigger failrogue than me. I really need to just use this guy to farm junkboxes for my DK’s insanity. Not sticky.
• My warrior? I don’t level this toon much, but when I do, it’s always a fun time. As a DK tank I’m a little envious of all the fun buttons warriors have to push (Vampiric Blood just isn’t all that appealing when I could be Thunder-Clapping or Shockwaving or Last-Standing or Shield-Walling or Devastating or, or, or…). The announcement of an alternative to Titan’s Grip is also nice – I admit I’m a fan of single-handed weapons, but they’d need a serious boost to keep up with the stat boosts alone from TG right now. However, with my warrior, it’s just finding the urge to level her. In short, she’s sticky, but not enough yet.
• My hunter? I want to get into my hunter, I really do. I have many hunter blogs in my RSS reader. I just can’t summon up the mojo to level her past 45. Unsticky.
• My shaman? I was leveling my shaman pretty consistently for a while; come hell or high water, I was determined to get him out of Outlands. And out I got him, and now he’s parked at 68 in Valiance Keep, where I keep telling myself I’m going to take that resto spec and go heal some instances. I really do keep telling myself that. Inconsistent stickiness.
• My priest? My priest has been my little side project for a while now. I really only mention her at any length to Tart, who is my pocket advice priest. ("Oh, God, where do I put these talent points?!") And as you can probably surmise from her Discipline spec, I’ve been leveling her almost solely through instances. It’s not entirely instances, of course – whenever she reaches a new level, I gather every newly-available dungeon quest available for the dungeons in my queue list, and usually can gain a level or two from those – but she’s only level 20 (on the verge of dinging 21). She’s got a long way to go to even be considered a main, even moreso than my warrior. But the important part is that she’s fun. It may be just because of the complete change in role – Brynhild is only for healing, at least for now – but I like that healing rush, the feeling of keeping a group alive against odds that they probably shouldn’t have lived through (like three underleveled DPS and me taking on VanCleef because we’d waited 20 minutes for no tank). But right now, Brynhild is very sticky. Those twirly red braids may as well be made of glue.
• An alt I don’t have yet? At this point, if I don’t have an alt of some class, I’m probably waiting on Cataclysm. I fully intend to level a worgen druid or mage, which is the main reason I don’t have either of those. As for paladins, well. I’d love to have a paladin, and if I could get one past level 15 without getting utterly sick and tired of him, I probably would by now. Maybe once 4.0 hits and new baby paladins have a button to push, I’ll look into it, but right now, paladins bore me senseless to try and level.

The dilemma is: if I focus entirely on one alt, I risk burnout on that alt (see also: DK, warlock, shaman), but if I don’t focus on that alt, I’m an incredibly slow leveler. At least in my opinion. I know plenty of people whose progress feels like they’re speed demons, and I figure I’m the slow one. Or is this all pointless wankery – do I just stick with my DK? I mean, he is my only 80, my primary source of cash and heirlooms, and my only actively raiding toon. And no one can deny that we need all the tanks we can get – but I’m looking to maximize my fun here, as well as provide something useful to my guild.

It’s a set of questions that I don’t have any easy answers to. If anyone else is going through the same thing, I’d appreciate any insights you have.

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Keeping what sticks

I love this job sometimes.

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The downside to raiding with bloggers…

On the realm where I was born
Lived a gnome who sailed to sea
And he told us of his raids
In the land of submarines

So we sailed on to Vashj’ir
’til we found a naga queen
And we raided ‘neath the waves
In our yellow submarine

We all raid in a yellow submarine,
yellow submarine, yellow submarine
We all raid in a yellow submarine,
yellow submarine, yellow submarine

And our guild is all aboard
Many other guilds are just next door
And over Vent, we start to chat

(trumpets play over Vent chatter)

We all raid in a yellow submarine,
yellow submarine, yellow submarine
We all raid in a yellow submarine,
yellow submarine, yellow submarine

(Full speed ahead, Mr. Copperpot! Full speed ahead!)
(Full speed over here, sir!
… At least you nearly got my name right that time,
Captain Cloudkicker…)

As we swim in epic seas (epic seas),
Every one of us (every one) has all we need (has all we need!)
Replacing blues (lousy blues), and sharding greens (so many greens!)
In our yellow (yellow raiding!) submarine (submarine, haha!)

We all raid in a yellow submarine,
yellow submarine, yellow submarine
We all raid in a yellow submarine,
yellow submarine, yellow submarine

(fading)

We all raid in a yellow submarine,
yellow submarine, yellow submarine
We all raid in a yellow submarine,
yellow submarine, yellow submarine

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Raiding in a yellow submarine

However, on phase 2, I finally perfected a little dance that I do with the professor that seems to keep things in line. I’ll even throw in some MS Paint directions for you on how we do phases 1 and 2. This does operate on an assumption that may be fairly big: that you get the professor to phase 2 during or shortly after the first Gas Cloud (orange add) spawns. (At one point, we got him to phase 2 almost before it spawned…)  If this is not the case – if the Volatile Ooze (green add) was the most recent spawn – then flip all the directions. None of this is perfect, but if your tanks are flailing their arms wildly during the Putricide fight, maybe this will help give them a place to start, then you can adjust it to fit your raid’s needs.

As always, click to embiggen.

Phase 0: Understand the Layout

The black square at the bottom is the entrance. The gray circle is the circle that is on the floor of Putricide’s room – it actually has four little spike-like "corners" near each of the ooze nozzles, and two more closer to the entrance of the room. The brown rectangle is Putricide’s table; when you enter the room, he’s just south of it. The orange circle and green circle represent the ooze nozzles.

Phase 1: The Pull, and the Easy Part

Putricide isn’t really dropping anything besides neon green ooze puddles on the floor that your off-tank, in the abomination, will be eating. If you can do so without dragging him too far away from the top part of the room (where he’ll be for most of phase 2), do so. Have your DPS control themselves, and between 83% and 85% (depending on how many dots people have up, how quickly people respond to directions, etc.) have DPS stop on Putricide, burn down any adds that are up, and let the abomination eat ooze puddles that are on the floor. There should be plenty of time to do these things if people are on the ball. During the pull, we have our off-tank charge in to the table, then I pull Putricide off of him, leading to an initial pull where he’s right here:

Then during or after the period where the DPS is burning down the green slime, I’ll typically either try to hold him by a slime pool, or move him to here, which is often roughly the same thing:

I usually hold him here for the rest of phase 1; an orange Gas Cloud will spawn, and your raid should burn it down before continuing into phase 2 – this starts at 80%. Let the abom mop up spare puddles, let the DPS burn down the Gas Cloud, then burn the professor into phase 2.

Phase 2: The Putricide Tango in Earnest

This is where the fun part starts. This is also where I used to run around like a kid high on Pixy Stix, leading to me running out of range for heals sometimes or leaving Choking Gas Clouds in weird spots for the DPS to maneuver around, which is just all kinds of nastiness. This works much better. Step 1 is to pull him near the orange slime container, as close to the alcove where the tables are as possible. Trust me, it makes sense.

Putricide will do these three abilities, and in my experience they always come in approximately the same order: Malleable Goo (very easy to avoid if your DPS is on the ball), then Unstable Experiment, then Choking Gas Flasks. Sometimes the last two get swapped, but they’re always very close together, and they’re your signal to move! Think of them as traffic cones telling you to get the hell out of the way. They are not, in any way, snow cones. Drag Putricide to the opposite side of his alcove, again, as near to the corner as you can manage.

During this time, a green slime will have spawned due to Unstable Experiment, and your DPS will have burned it down and will be back on the Professor. He’ll once again use Malleable Goo, Unstable Experiment, and Choking Gas Flasks, and the original set of gas flasks will have gone away. Once he tosses down the new one (and the orange slime is probably chasing someone), here’s what you do (I bet you’ll never see this coming):

Stunning, I know. However, essentially, you’ll be alternating between those last two dance steps for most of the fight. It’s not a very complex tango. Positioning adjustments will have to be made, of course, if Putricide drops a slime puddle right where you expect to be standing, but most of the time, it won’t be an issue. Enjoy your dance time with the Professor – tanking it is honestly a pretty effortless job, other than paying some attention to what’s going on – and watch his health very carefully.

Stop before 35% (I’d say 38% to 40% is safe, assuming you’re not bumping up against the enrage timer), eat all the slime pools, and burn down any adds that are up, then knock Professor Putricide down to 35%.

Phase 3: ???

I told you we haven’t finished this one yet. I have a pretty good idea of how to do it, though. Truthfully, we need to make that phase transition a little more masterfully – I wasn’t watching Professor Putricide’s health as closely as I should have, and so my warning for the phase transition as a Gas Cloud was spawning went something like this: "sh*t, he’s at 36%, stop and burn that–oh, well, never mind." Then the orange cloud zoomed around at full speed and smacked us all in the face.

Phase 4: Profit!

Collect yer phat lewtz.

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The Putricide tango; or, anecdotal advice on positioning the Professor