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

Raiding

Progress in ICC continues apace; we steadily progress every week in 10-man, making it to either Valithria, Sindragosa, or the Lich King himself on night 1. Caffeine can easily field two 10-man teams during the week (truthfully, I bet we could do 3, but 2 is working for now), with my tank being able to attend one. My rogue has now poked his nose into ICC as well, showing up in an alt and "leftovers" run on Sunday night. Assassination is still fun – I have a weird love for daggers – but I think I need to keep toying with my spec some more. And the spreadsheets! Oh, how I love the spreadsheets. My raid leader pointed me at these when I was griping about my low DPS.

Anyway, ICC. ICC-10 is almost through the Lich King (it’ll only be a week or two more til one of our teams gets him down, I figure), ICC-25 is working on stuff as well, though sadly I can’t attend the 25-man raids most weeks due to the raids being on Friday and Saturday, which are designated for spending time with my girlfriend when she’s not busy studying for the Praxis II. I’m signed up for this weekend’s, though, so maybe I’ll get Festergut’s blood and finish off Shadow’s Edge. That’s right – after four weeks of buying absolutely nothing but the necessities, I have 25 Primordial Saronites. Well, four weeks of nothing but necessities, plus I bought several with Frost emblems, plus Thalois was nice enough to just give me one (thanks Thal!).

Honestly, there’s not a lot more to say. I have been noticing an influx of new DK tanks, though, and I’m going to recommend you go to Pwnwear and check out the contest and forums – especially the forums! – there. It’ll set you on the right track to redeeming our class-wide reputation again.

Guild

Still enjoying my tenure in Caffeine. I was asked to become an officer a week or so ago, and so I did. Huzzah! Looking forward to helping the guild move forward through Wrath and beyond.   Also hoping our next tabard design has a muffin on it. If I win, you’ve all been warned.

Non-WoW

Yeah, that’s right, I do non-WoW stuff. Sometimes I even blog about it. Sometimes I blog about it on other blogs. Surprise!

• I’ve been playing a few games here and there, including 3D Dot Game Heroes and Super Street Fighter IV. I’ve come to the conclusion I really need to invest in a good fightstick for SSFIV.
• I actually have two other blogs, sort of. If you need your daily fix of my non-WoW stuff, check out Midboss (which could be nearly anything) and iDevice (which is about my iPad, which is on the truck for delivery as I write this. Glee!). Oh, and I write – sometimes – for Polygamerous, which you should really check out. Mostly the Morning Quickies segment. I’m not on the podcast, though, but that’s probably for the best because I don’t talk much when I’m on podcasts unless I’m one-on-one, as anyone who heard me on the Twisted Nether roundtables can attest.
• I’m also shopping for a couch. It doesn’t get more exciting than that, loyal readers.

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Small pieces (of posts), loosely joined (into one post)

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

So that’s been making the rounds, so there you go. I love it, especially Illidan’s little cameo, and – oh God – is Archimonde humping the World Tree? What has been seen cannot be unseen.

After finishing up my Fool for Love requirements, I finally took the jump yesterday and made my second spec a tank spec. My primary spec for raiding, at least for the last two weeks, has been a variant of Gravity’s single-target raid blood spec – somewhat adjusted for AOE, by moving 3 out of Spell Deflection and into Morbidity, like so. I may just end up copying Gravity entirely, though; I just informed my raid that my AOE would suck, and they adjusted accordingly. Second tank was a bear, and the two of us took it up to the plague wing, so I’d call it at least a moderate success. Also through Sister Svalna and, for a change, took a poke at Valithria Dreamwalker. I can also DPS in this spec if I absolutely have to, like last night when we 7-manned (or 8-manned, my memory’s fuzzy) XT for the weekly (just under the wire).

My other spec is now a pretty stock 2H Frost with IIT build. This one is explicitly for five mans; it ends up with about 1000 less health than the blood build, and in my opinion feels moderately squishier, but in heroics that hardly matters – it’s just being able to build snap AOE threat, and that’s one thing this build excels at (barring, of course, stupid DPS – like the fury warrior I ran DTK with yesterday who insisted on, if I paused for a second to get HB or DnD, pulling himself with Heroic Throw > Charge > Whirlwind. I should’ve let him tank, by which I mean tank the floor, more often than I already did).

I guess that’s that, then. No real progress to speak of, a few new shinies on my equipment list but I still can’t get rid of those damned blue boots. It’s starting to get a little ridiculous. At this point I’d put just about anything in that spot. Wish me boot mojo!

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The World (of Warcraft) Is Just Awesome

Got unexpectedly pulled in to tank in ICC-10 when a spot opened up and I was on standby. I probably should’ve passed to the other person who could’ve tanked and was also on standby, because holy shit I am not ready for that place yet. Especially Deathbringer Saurfang. After several valiant attempts, including two glorious screwups by me (one of which involved Heimdall tanking Saurfang solo for about 3 minutes straight while I chewed on the pile of bones that was accumulating at our feet), we wandered over to ToC-10 instead so that I could work on gear and Malak – the aforementioned other tank – could work on tanking experience (along with me apologizing copiously for not being ready yet).

Apparently ToC-10 is more my speed! Definitely felt less like I was flailing like a roper at my keyboard. Gormok is a decent way to learn at least the tank portion of the fight – obviously it doesn’t compare on the DPS end, but the coordination of switching off at X time is pretty similar, but less of an emergency. Malak and I seem to be able to out-threat each other when we have to when switching, as well, which is nice. Made it to Faction Champions before a variety of non-fight-related issues (sleepiness, weird lag issues, etc.) knocked us out for the night.

So yeah. It was a learning experience! This weekend, since SNOWPOCALYPSE 2010 is supposedly on its way, I’ll be taking the opportunity to do things I want to do that don’t include raiding, including grinding mass numbers of badges, trying to pug a VoA or something of that nature, possibly transferring and leveling my shaman or warrior, or … other things. I dunno.

Oh! Before I forget: does anyone know how to get Skada to show threat? I switched from Recount to Skada since Recount seems to be all over the boards sometimes, and while I was able to get it to show DPS, Skada has never once shown me anything except a blank window when I’m looking at threat. I suspect I may have a setting switched on that is causing it to get ignored or somesuch, so if anyone has a good intro to using Skada, I’d appreciate it.

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Still alive

In other words, it was a great experience. I did feel a little bad soaking up that much loot on day 1, but there was only one piece that anyone else even rolled on – Ramaladni’s Blade of Culling – and as a ret pally, he was kind enough to defer it to me so that I could gear up my … wait for it … tank set.

That’s right, yours truly is working on tanking. I’ve had a long history of DPSing. I originally intended to roll my death knight to tank all along, but once he hit 80, my first raiding guild found that they already had enough tanks (a pally, a warrior, another DK, and maybe even a bear?) and so I was shuffled into DPS. And thus my DPS set grew leaps and bounds ahead of my tank set, while I still soaked up pieces from 10-man Naxx as well as the stuff no one else wanted. In every other guild I joined, the story was the same: I was needed for my DPS, because there were sufficient tanks. And so it continued: my DPS set continued to get constant upgrades, while my tank set suffered for it. For a while I didn’t even like tanking, or so I told myself, but the random heroics have changed all that. They reminded me of the times in Naxx, in OS, even the few off-tanking opportunities I had in Ulduar. But the intention and the skill (and the learning from Gravity) don’t mean much if you don’t have the gear to support it…

…but hey, you can always buy, craft, or farm new gear.  

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A regular Loot Hoover