Then Pea and I decided to do the new Icecrown instances; it’s not random, but we still wanted to see it. Picked up Nighthawque and, well, there’s our DPS.   Tank and a healer joined in (the healer, amusingly, was the only one not from our server – and he was from Alexstrasza, where I once had a toon, once upon a time). We completed the Forge of Souls and Pit of Saron, and while I’m sure I’ll be sick of them eventually, I absolutely loved them. They were different, they were actually challenging since none of us knew any of the mechanics, and Bronjahm is a treat to fight. Sadly we didn’t make it past the Halls of Reflection; we wiped on Falric when he had virtually no health, and never managed to do that well again (it was about 2:30AM server time, so I’m going to blame it on that).

UI redesign: I spent a couple hours last night redoing parts of my UI from the ground up. Several of my addons were unnecessary or could be rolled into smaller, more efficient versions. Just for comparison, here’s what my UI looked like prior to yesterday (click to embiggen):

Several new addons later, I got something I like. I’m still fiddling with the precise layout, but at least I know I like all of the addons themselves – except maybe Magic Runes. I may switch back to SimpleRune or its successor. And I’m not a big fan of TidyPlates – I find that in groups of enemies they tend to completely overlap, making targeting an enormous pain in the ass. Here’s what it looked like, from the beginning of the evening until near the end (again, click to embiggen):

Since I know someone’s going to ask – the thin white circle you see around me in several of the combat pics is from Power Auras (specifically, that one’s letting me know that Unbreakable Armor is ready for use).

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Random dungeons and UI redesign

There’s just been a lot of stuff to deal with lately (though not stemming from the patch – frost death knights saw virtually no changes of note in this patch, which is just fine and dandy with yours truly), and it hasn’t been the best of times, but I’m hoping tonight fixes that. We’ll see. If I can’t get into ICC, maybe I can at least PUG a little bit with the new LFG mechanism (which Anea sums up nicely here with her in-game experiences, so I don’t have to). If anyone on Rampage runs into Rajaat, give me a wave.

Also: boy, that Core Hound Pup is cute! Lil’ K.T. has himself some competition for the spot of my favorite pet.

Tonight will also probably be when I redo my UI from the ground up. I mentioned on Twitter that a few things were non-negotiable. Those things are, in no particular order:

• A rune timer of some kind. I’m currently using SimpleRune because it lives up to its name.
• Unit frames. Currently I use Grid, but full-fledged raid frames are largely overkill for what I do. I’ve heard a lot of good things about Shadowed Unit Frames, and may give it a try. (Users of SUF are welcome to convince me. )
• A configurable bar mod. Currently rocking Dominos. My primary reason for this is a bar layout that matches my n52te. I’m not totally committed to this, but I like to at least have 14 keys, with the ability to page to 14 different keys by holding alt, and as just about any bar mod will do that… (Also, you can tell how old the screenshot in that post is because it still shows Unholy Blight as a clickable, actually-useful spell. Ah, those were the days.)
• I put the bar mod down as non-negotiable, but honestly, I dunno. If I could find a 14-button bar mod with paging on keypress and a few additional slots to the side for things I am lazy about, like mounts and Path of Frost, that might be sufficient. I might not need all the extra jazz that Dominos comes with.
• Quartz. More for my caster alts than my main.
• Jamba, but only until February, when my recruit-a-friend runs out again. I loooove Jamba.
• RatingBuster, because I hate crunching math on the fly.

That’s basically it. I do have some utility stuff (Auctioneer for bank alt, for instance), but a lot of my addons have been replaced by built-in features – for instance, from what I tried last night, I don’t think I’ll need to be toting around Cartographer or QuestHelper anymore; I could truthfully do away with Outfitter at this point; and LightHeaded’s built in features have been replaced by having a second monitor. I also have Buffalo3 but I don’t find it very useful. I also have some features I’ve lost that I’d like to get back – for example, a movable minimap like SexyMap or Carbonite’s map.

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This is not about my impressions of 3.3

1. Get into LFG and finish the 5-mans, straight off the bat. I was blathering Ratshag’s ear off again this morning on IM about how there’s 1, maybe 2 drops in all of the first two instances for me… and then I can replace damn near most of my gear in heroic Halls of Reflection. (Plus I kinda wanna see Uther.) In fact, "PUG randomly and constantly" is on my list of things to do because I need – need – to get rid of this crappy mix of T7, T7.25, and T8 that I’m sporting. Ugh. Just… ugh.
2. Figure out where the hilt for Quel’Delar drops, and get started on it. Papa wants a brand new legendary (as in its place in the lore, not its gear level – don’t be overly literal) sword to dual-wield with his beer mug.
3. Log onto my rogue and enjoy the 70% walk speed stealth! And, maybe level her or something.
4. Wish that "bind on account" actually meant "binds to battle.net account" and not "binds to WoW account" because I would really like to send my paladin some heirlooms suited for following my rogue around healing her, but unfortunately that won’t happen. One step at a time, I guess. (Cross-faction BOA! Woooooo~)
5. Keep working on Insane in the Membrane, since I’ve been slacking lately, kinda. (As far as I’m concerned, leveling my rogue is working on Insane in the Membrane. Those junkboxes won’t pickpocket themselves.)

So what are you going to do first when the patch drops?

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The first five things I’m doing after 3.3 drops

Anybody else find it a little weird that some of the tier 10 armor kind of looks like you took a random Scourge into a back alley and beat the crap out of them for their gear? Blizzard is definitely getting pretty wild with some of the armor designs, and they’re hit-or-miss – there’s a lot of people who love one or two classes, but hate another (and rarely does anyone love their own). Here’s my thoughts (starting with the classes I consider my “mains” at the moment):

Scourgelord’s Battlegear/Plate (Death Knight): Before the preview I was finished, I was pretty unimpressed with this set. It had the same old “put a few spikes here, put a glowing skull there, voila, Death Knight tier gear.” However, the helmet kind of ties it all together. I love the appearance of this faceplate, and feel it’s a natural revolution from the T8 helm (we’re ignoring T9 here, since its design was wildly divergent – and I loved the fact that, on Alliance side at least, it looked like a darker paladin set).

Frost Witch’s Garb/Regalia/Battlegear (Shaman): Phantom shoveltusks! As Jezriyah pointed out, they’re clearly wearing an entire shoveltusk head on their head, and those are definitely phantom shoveltusks sticking out of the side. Also, it doesn’t appear to be quite done yet – the icicles on the horns are untextured, mostly. Was it worth the wait? In my opinion, yes. This really makes me want to push to get my shaman up to 80 so I can start working on this awesome set. (No offense to Nobundo, of course, but my elemental shaman is not a ninja. He is a pew pew lightning master.) Oh – and those phantom shoveltusks better pop out of the shoulders occasionally; rogues and warlocks can’t have all the fun.

Shadowblade’s Battlegear (Rogue): Ah, the rogue T10. I would say it’s divisive except that it’s pretty much all the rogues on one side, and me on the other. No, it’s not the most attractive set of armor in the world (frankly, I still like the face-on-your-head of the rogue T8. However, this does have an obvious awesome side to it: the Shadowblade’s Battlegear is very obviously a geist outfit. Compare it to our old friend The Leaper:

Sewn together bag-of-rags look? Check. One-eyed helmet? Check. Noose around the neck? Check. Strappy gloves? Check. Rogues, it’s time to start bounding around like it was going out of style, pushing gargoyles off of ledges with wild abandon.

Now, on to the others…

Lasherweave Garb/Regalia/Battlegear (Druid): Okay, so, I really don’t recall ever seeing any lashers that looked like a combination of a moose, a piece of wood, and the segmented eyeball of a bee. Frankly, the face scares the crap out of me. I guess the only comfort is that I’m rarely if ever going to see it.

Ahn’kahar Blood Hunter’s Battlegear (Hunter): What? Just to refresh everyone’s memories, this is what the Ahn’kahar look like. Spiders. Big ugly spiders. The hunter armor? Again with the wood. In fact, they kind of look like wooden moose (mooses? meese?).

Bloodmage’s Regalia (Mage): Well, the teeth kind of make me giggle, but I have to admit I like the look of this set. It has a very generic look to it, though. I don’t know if I could tell the mage T7-10 apart, to be honest with you. It’s also more obvious Scourge fashion: the mage gear is definitely an upgraded (fancier and less faded) version of the outfits worn by the San’layn.

Lightsworn Garb/Regalia/Battlegear (Paladin): Hey look, the paladins are cribbing from the Death Knights for ideas. And the shamans & warriors from a few tiers back. And – wuh oh, a plate skirt. Let the QQ begin… again.

Crimson Acolyte’s Raiment/Regalia (Priest): Not sure what Crimson Acolyte they’re talking about. Pretty generic, though. These (at least, the versions other than the white ones) kind of remind me of collarless Scourge necromancer duds. If only priests had gotten the dead-cow-skull helmet that seems to be a feature among the Scourge. Speaking of dead cow skulls…

Dark Coven’s Regalia (Warlock): Also nice! But unfortunately I don’t think anything will top the pseudo-Putress look of T8, at least in my mind. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this look on a Cult of the Damned member somewhere, but it escapes me at the moment.

And last but not least, Ymirjar Lord’s Battlegear/Plate (Warrior): A pretty awesome-looking tribute to all those ymirjar who’re now dead in our wake. Probably the closest anyone will get to looking like the king. I anticipate several screenshots of warriors in their T10 sitting on his throne just because they can.

And no, ladies, I haven’t forgotten about you. The T10 on females: death knight, rogue, druid, hunter, mage, paladin, priest, warlock, and warrior. As for the shaman T10… well, we only have a picture of it on a male human, so we don’t even have pictures of it on races that can actually be shamans yet, much less women. (An orc would totally rock the hell out of a shoveltusk helmet, and you know it.)

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Scourge fashion

I am sure this topic has been covered, but among all my other fails I fail at searching.
I have noticed a string of my recent posts covered how I fail, often epically. I would like to see how others fail.
I think it is very good for newer players to see how those of us make dumb mistakes, even though we have been at this for quite a while.

Never let it be said I’m not a resource to others. Let’s see how badly I’ve failed, shall we?

• After the Great Talent Reset of 3.0, I spent 20 minutes wondering why I couldn’t summon my Felguard. At least I wasn’t alone in the confusion.
• You know, I’m noticing a trend. Just last week I took a long time trying to figure out what was missing from my bars when I respecced Unholy, then once I figured out it was Unholy Blight, I couldn’t figure out where the button was. Did they change it so badly that I needed to return to a trainer? Only after several rounds of the “open spellbook, open talent sheet” dance did I actually mouse over the now-passive talent.
• My ghoul was once a continuous source of fail for me. I used to have a pet attack macroed into most of my strikes. That is, until I figured out that if I didn’t have a target (say, because my current target had died), and I was aimed towards the next pack of trash, my ghoul would promptly leap into the next pack of trash with a sort of glee.
• I also used to do this with my felguard in Kara constantly. I remain amazed that my guild at the time didn’t hunt me down and kill me.
• Speaking of that guild, my recruitment story was a fail. Y’see, leveling up, I had actually completely skipped Hellfire Ramparts (which is really not hard to do at all). So when I got invited to do Heroic Ramparts with the people who would later be my future guildmates, I of course didn’t know about Omor the Unscarred’s Bane of Treachery. So I may have sorta-kinda caused a wipe by getting it cast on me and standing directly in front of the tree druid. To be fair, no one told me not to stand in front of the tree.
• There were also a few times in Kara that I failed to watch where I was going and fell off ledges, usually into the library. Whoops.

However, I never – ever – moved in a Flame Wreath. That, after all, would blow up the raid.

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Shared Topic: Fails

Then, two attempts later (note to self: install a screenshot addon):

Got that one in just under the wire, eh?

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The last death knight in the US to solo Onyxia

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:

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Still alive

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.

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Blizzard, fix this nonsense

Been doing a little thinking about Blood-spec in 3.1. I’ve done some testing on the PTR, and outside testing’s confirmed it, but Blood (with diseases, as opposed to without, which is what I’m rolling with now) is a real contender for DPS again. And, on top of that, bonuses to Obliterate in the Blood tree have more or less vanished, replaced with Death Strike bonuses (including Improved Death Strike, which is sexy), meaning Blizzard is trying to encourage Blood DKs to use Death Strike at least alongside, if not in place of, Obliterate.

In fact, my testing on the PTR has shown them to be just about equal, with Death Strike coming out moderately ahead. Which is fine with me – that’s 13 fewer points I have to take in Frost – but now I have the pesky job of trying to figure out a spec, so I don’t spend tons of gold respeccing even in the face of dual specs (my other spec will be for my tank spec, thankyouverymuch – have to hammer that one out, too). Here’s some contenders.

• Skeleton Jack’s blood build. The post in which he explains it is here. I tend to take SJ at his word, and this was the build I tried first, I’ll admit. I have a few reservations about it, mostly centered around the ghoul (I really hate pet control with the damn thing, and it’ll have to be even more micro-managed due to not getting Night of the Dead for avoidance), and Blood-Caked Blade (which Jack’s build is 3/3 in, but which – a mere two posts later – he says isn’t all that hot anymore). Also, with Death Strike getting such a buff, I really feel like I should have Glyph of Death Strike in there somewhere, but I can’t decide which one would have to go to make it worth it with this build – maybe Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon, since DRW already has an extended duration in 3.1.
• Daniel Whitcomb’s blood build. Daniel’s piece on the rise of Blood from WI also brings up the Ghoul-babysitting, as well as the tightness of the rotation. With 2/2 Epidemic, though, you already get 21 seconds of disease – I could see them falling off in movement-heavy fights, but they do that now, and against less movement heavy fights, I wasn’t experiencing a problem at all. Daniel’s build grabs Corpse Explosion, something I hadn’t considered, but forgoes the extra runic power cap of SJ’s build.
• My ghoul-included blood build. As you can see, this is basically Skeleton Jack’s blood build, but with Ravenous Dead instead of BCB. Our biggest hits are all physical in Blood spec (namely Heart Strike and Obliterate/Death Strike), and my gut feeling is that the 3% Strength, plus further Strength and Stamina to the ghoul, is a boost if the ghoul is to be included. (That said – Glyph of Dark Death? Really? Is Richard Knaak writing glyph names now?) The problem with this is that I’ve managed to create a more ghoul-dependent build, because if the ghoul has such large increases to Strength and Stamina, he’s going to be doing an even larger portion of my DPS, and I’d be even more crippled if he died. Would probably need to replace Glyph of Blood Tap with Glyph of Raise Dead, ‘cause I’d be going through a lot of ghouls.
• A sans-ghoul blood build. Here’s my thinking. Right now, on live, on a boss fight, the Dancing Rune Weapon will actually do more damage than a normal summoned ghoul, even with Glyph of the Ghoul and 3/3 Ravenous Dead. In 3.1, the Dancing Rune Weapon has an extended duration, but does 50% less damage. So my thinking is, leave in Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon, take out Glyph of the Ghoul, put in Glyph of Death Strike. This also builds up the new-and-improved Plague Strike a bit. I am pleased with the performance of the new Plague Strike, to say the least – it does enough damage that I no longer cringe when I press it to apply diseases.

Obviously I can’t do any math on this at the moment (mostly because, due to Blizzard’s “wonderful” (/airquotes) copy process, my DK on the test realm has 6 gold), but my gut feeling is that the last one listed there will end up being roughly equal to any of the above builds, but without the hassle of pet management. However, if anyone else out there is trying out blood specs in the brave new world that is 3.1, I’m interested to hear your take on things.

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Sanguine ruminations

In conclusion, bwaaaaaahahahahahahahahaha!

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Truck Fains