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 I do have some utility stuff (Auctioneer for bank alt, for instance), but a lot of my addons have been replaced by built-in features – for instance, from what I tried last night, I don’t think I’ll need to be toting around Cartographer or QuestHelper anymore; I could truthfully do away with Outfitter at this point; and LightHeaded’s built in features have been replaced by having a second monitor.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

1. I wanted to make sure I could get Sigrat’s keybindings set up ahead of time, and
2. It’s easier to pull with a mage, on account of having a ranged attaack with a range of greater than 10 feet, and
3. There have recently been changes that made dual-boxing a melee character … well, possible.

It’s still a touch awkward (namely if you try to attack with the melee character while the monster is still running towards you), but it’s a far sight better than having to run through the mob and flip it around. Here’s the guide. (Thanks to the folks at Dual-Boxing.com for figuring this out well before I ever needed it.)

• Besides the required keystroke passing app (I use Keyclone), you’ll want to have an addon that allows auto-following after combat. I’m currently using Jamba, last time I used TwoBoxToolkit. I can vouch for both; though Jamba’s got features above and beyond TBTK, and makes configuration a lot easier (plus has some graphical niceties like a small window on my "master" character showing how close everyone on my Jamba Team list is to leveling, whether they’re following, etc.), TBTK will get the job done.
• On the character or characters who will just be following you around, turn ON click-to-move (Main Menu > Interface > Mouse > check Click to Move).
• On the same character(s), go into the key bindings and bind something to Interact With Target. As the name implies, this is essentially a keybinding for right clicking. I set mine to the same key that, on all my other characters, makes pets attack. It’s fitting.
• And last but not least, you’ll want a macro you can hit to make this character assist your "master" character. I use a simple macro that says "/assist party1" because my dwarfadin will actually be following two different people. For ease of use I actually worked this into my other macros – I macroed together "/assist party1" and Judgement of Light, for instance.
• On the "master" character, combat goes like so:
• Engage target. For ranged classes, pull, for other classes, wade into combat.
• Once the target’s positioned, hit the keybinding that corresponds to the assist macro on the follower, then the keybinding that corresponds to the Interact With Target keybinding on the follower.
• ???
• Profit!

Because of the way that assist, click-to-move and the Interact with Target keybinding work, your follower will target your target, then "right-click" it – i.e., pull out their weapon and run into melee. This way you’re not strictly limited to having a ranged follower or healbot follower for ease of use. I was actually considering having him level up holy and using my rogue to do all the damage, but it’s just more fun this way.

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Dualboxing melee

Places to be

A trend I’ve noticed on my shaman as I’ve been leveling him up through the old world is that many of the old-world instances felt like places to be. It’s hit or miss, but it seems to be a largely “vanilla WoW” tendency that’s gone away over the years. Some examples:

Blackrock Depths. This is one of my favorite instances to run, ever. It’s a bit convoluted in places, and sometimes even an old hand at it like me has problems getting around, but BRD is the perfect example of feeling like a real place. A trip into Blackrock Depths really feels like you’re a visitor to a city full of hostiles, and are basically in there to bust some heads. It’s got barracks, it’s got bars (well, one anyway), it’s got forges and anvils and other dwarven trappings, and it’s got a king and his pregnant, maybe-she’s-kidnapped-maybe-she’s-not wife. It’s got love stories, it’s got an arena, and periodically it has a very angry dwarf who really just wants to enter the brewing competition, dagnabbit. And it’s got an entrance into the Dark Iron Dwarves’ biggest mistake: the home of the unleashed Ragnaros.

That’s not saying BRD doesn’t have its problems. It’s got a lot of the amateur mistakes you see in old instances; namely, quest lines that require multiple trips in and out just to complete something. It also is really confusing to get around in, and has tons and tons of trash. Tons of it. Tons. But BRD is hands down just about my #1 winner in terms of feeling like a real living, breathing place inside an instance portal. Stratholme (the level 60 version) is also on this list, for many of the same reasons.

Troll instances. The old-world troll instances are very good at creating this kind of place-ness feeling – Zul’farrak and Zul’gurub feel like actual places that trolls would hang out and do their thing, like summoning old gods into the world. (Sunken Temple is notoriously not on this list.) Some of the trolls are just chilling in their tents, joking with other trolls; some of the more important ones, like Bloodlord Mando’kir, are accepting important visitors when you show up. In Zul’farrak, the sheer number of trolls milling around is kind of outrageously high, but the city itself does a good job of giving that “trolls live here” feel – scattered tents and huts everywhere, little sanctums for some of the bosses, a party that got there before you and got caged after a wipe, and so on. There’s a few shortcomings (for example, I have no idea where the Sandfury were stashing that many slaves), but ZF and ZG are definitely on my list.

Karazhan. For a long stretch of instances in TBC, you lose the “place” feel – until you get to the raiding level, and set foot into Karazhan. From the moment you start going through Karazhan, you realize this is a place designed for people to inhabit, and it shows. Of course, it makes sense – Magus Medivh did live here, for quite a while, as did a few others – but it’s got a certain aura around it that other raids and instances in TBC definitely don’t have. It really feels like if you cleared out all the crap, and figured out exactly why the top of your tower is sticking into the Twisting Nether, you could move your guild in and call Karazhan your extremely spacious home.

Naxxramas. Now, I know, Naxxramas is probably an odd addition to this list, but Naxxramas really fits its purpose. The place is supposed to be a floating war fortress, where the forces of the Scourge are assembled and ready to attack. Granted, most of what they seem to be doing is milling around, but the place that I think exemplifies this the most is Instructor Razuvious. Since abdicating his position as head instructor aboard Acherus due to a hostile takeover, he’s actively tutoring a new generation of Death Knights, just like he always did. There are, however, a few bosses that throw off this image – Heigan, anyone? Or Loatheb? But Naxx actively feels like a fortress preparing for war, as soon as Arthas delivers the word.

Places to die

The number of instances that fall into this category are many and varied, and the vanilla instances aren’t exempt from this at all – Wailing Caverns, I’m looking at you. Instances that don’t have a sense of “place-ness” generally give the feeling of a straight line between the goal and the finish, in between which there are enemies roaming around whose only purpose in “life” is to roam around and wait to be killed. They’re linear, they’re generally short on story, and they make up most of the instances between 60 and 80.

Hellfire Ramparts. This is the worst offender, and the first one that jumps to mind when I try to come up with examples of linear instances. This is pretty much because other than a few negligible turns, Hellfire Ramparts is almost literally a straight line from start to finish, with trash and bosses scattered along the line. Oh, sure, there’s a little bit of choice at the end – do we kill Omor first, or the other guy? – but it still gives none of the feeling of a place to exist that the others do. Maybe it’s just a place for them to patrol? Well, sure, but where do they go from there? No one’s hanging out in Shattered Halls or Blood Furnace, that’s for sure. Ramparts always gives me the impression of fel orcs milling around, waiting on you to wander by and kill them.

Wailing Caverns. Can we buy the Fanglords a chair? What’re they eating, snakes? Why hasn’t Mutanus already wandered out and killed Naralex? How did Verdan the Everliving even get into that room? All these mysteries and more, in the linear craphole that is Wailing Caverns. Of course, WC also has the side benefit of also being fairly confusing to get around your first time in.

The Nexus. Parts of this have a certain veracity to them – namely, the wandering wildlife in the crystallized section, and the blue dragons fighting an ongoing fight against malevolent magical oddities. (Although, in that case, why haven’t they formed a raid and gone to fight Anomalus themselves? I guess no one wanted to heal.) But other areas… especially the parts all around Grand Magus Telestra. Why are the humans all just hanging out in the Nexus? Yeah, I know they’ve sided with Malygos against the world, but why are they hanging out in the Nexus of all places? It’s a cold, unfeeling shell of a place, apparently built to service the scale and needs of dragonkin (and serve as a prison for Malygos’ mind-controlled mate), and yet these humans are all just standing around. Maybe they’re waiting on a delivery from Ikea, or for the mage who went for takeout to get back. Even Telestra herself is kind of oddly placed: she has a giant featureless glass bubble. Talk about sparse accommodations.

What difference does it make?

I won’t lie to you – I’m whitewashing the old-world instances a little. They tend to be immense, have poorly thought-out questlines in terms of travel time (why does everyone in Feralas want something from the Hinterlands?!), and have way too much trash. But the linear instances, well, they get pretty boring after a run or two. In Cataclysm, how about some instances with some thought and attention put into it? Maybe the Lost City of Tol’vir really will feel like a City – the place-ness feel of older instances and raids, but with the design lessons of the new (less trash, more interesting fight mechanics, questlines that all can be gathered and then end in the 5-man).

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Places to be, versus places to die

This is a short example video of how I joust. It may not be the greatest demonstration in the world, but it should give you an idea what I do. Barring the few times I’ve mysteriously gotten 2500ms+ ping, or down in Icecrown when I accidentally tagged 3 Commanders at once (ouch…), I boast a 100% success rate.

Jousting? Yeah, I got that.

I’ll add this note for Nibuca’s sake: a few people have told me they don’t “get” strafing. It’s also probably true that what I do isn’t strictly strafing – it’s a combination of strafing and mouse movement. Anyhow, for those of you who still have your movement bound to the default keys, Q strafes left and E strafes right – moving you left and right without actually turning. It’s great for getting at range from someone.

For those of you using the n52 or n52te, with movement bound to either the keys or the joystick, you can simulate the leftward movement I do in the beginning of the video by moving the joystick/keys left while mouse-moving to the right – it ends up with a pseudo-strafe rotation that still leaves you facing your opponent (even if it doesn’t look like you are). The right movement is exactly the reverse – joystick/keys right, mouse move left.

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How I joust

So why did I revive Kallech? It’s hard to say. I’ve been taking a greater interest in my alts lately, mostly out of a desire to try different things. After all, prior to my DK, I only really had one other main – my warlock – and so there’s a lot of things I haven’t done. I’ve never leveled a healer past the 40s, for instance! Kallech is proving to be fun, too. Just for fun, I bought a mix of greens and blues off the AH and talented him up as elemental. Why? Mercurial whims – I woke up yesterday and was, for no apparent reason, really jazzed to play an elemental shaman. Turns out the late 40s is as good a time as any to do this.

After wandering over to Ironforge to get my Totem of the Earthen Ring, and equipping my newer bigger bags and my new shiny horribly mismatched greens and blues (I’m practicing my Outland clown suit look, if anyone asks), I then took the annoying trip to the Exodar. I hopped on my slow elekk, wandered down to the tram, took the tram to Stormwind, took the boat to Darnassus, got on the boat to the Exodar, and almost made it all the way to the Exodar without anyone pointing out that I could get my fast mount at 40, what a nub.

Sigh.

So after getting equipped with fast mount, then helping some lowbies stop the horseman in Azure Watch (fun fact: it is nigh impossible to see the fire in some places in there), I went back to the Hinterlands and pew pew’d my way through wolves, trolls, slimes, and what have you. Yay!

In 3 more days I’ll be the Champion of Ironforge, which will in turn bring me all the way up to Crusader level. I believe my first purchase will be a vest and those goofy-ass elemental shoulders, and maybe even one of the weapons. (I have a lot of champion’s seals.)

Alternately? I may just buy the two heirlooms, and a pony, since Ghostcrawler finally gave us that pony he promised. 

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Because Bell did it

• Have just about completed moving the alts I have any interest in playing over to the Sidhe Devils on Kael’thas. My warrior made the trip today, while my warlock made the trip earlier and is forced to (*shudder*) spend some time as a gnome, because he can’t be a damned werewolf yet and I just don’t really like humans. Soon… soon!
  • Fun fact, on this note: faction transferring gets you every flight point in Northrend that doesn’t need to be unlocked. He who had never left Howling Fjord suddenly has FPs in every part of Northrend, excluding (as I said) ones that have to be unlocked – Sons of Hodir, Shadow Vault, and so on.
• Been playing my rogue a lot, too. I’m leveling her up to 60+ so I have a pocket pickpocketer (see what I did there?) and, as a personal challenge, am leveling her in the battlegrounds. It’s a little bit slow at times (do not ever seek a Warsong Gulch after 1AM server time unless you feel like getting roflstomped) but at least it’s fun. And sometimes, the achievements just roll in:

  
  
  

• And yeah, my big thing, as shown to the left side of the blog (if you haven’t visited, you really should), is that I’m currently working on Insane in the Membrane. It’s time-occupying, but it’s really not hard, and after awhile grinding through Dire Maul repeatedly just gets to be automatic. I think I’m killing ogres on muscle memory at this point. It’s why I need a rogue.

  • Getting exalted with Shen’dralar is actually proving easier than freeing Knot enough times to get goblin rep. At this rate, even if I turn in a crapton of Ogre Tannin for ogre suits, I’m STILL going to end up exalted with the book nerd elves well before I do the goblins. I’m going to end up grinding pirates or Venture Company mobs anyway, I can already see it in my future.
• In real life, I’ve been planning my Halloween costume with my roommate (it’s awesome), and preparing songlists for his big birthday bash in November. I also just celebrated my own birthday (much drinking of the alcohols occurred, and then my roommate and I attended a kickass Jay-Z concert), and have rounded the corner into 27. So far, it feels a lot like most of the years previous. I also need to do an update of my game progress page, as a lot of things have been updated or finished, and primarily if I’m at a console, I’m busy failing miserably at Demon’s Souls for the PS3. It’s Nintendo Hard (and even that might be too mild a term), and yet I haven’t found myself wanting to ragequit it and sell it back or trade it to a friend.

  Yet.

So what’ve you been up to?

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In progress

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

Brewmaster!

Hooray!

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A small update

Hey, guess what? Yeah, it’s just me. My stuff can’t be sold back but plenty of other people can. Fanfuckingtastic.

So, yeah… 10 tokens. Now to ram race and daily quest my way back to 200 for the Brew of the Month Club, and 100 after that for the pink elekk. I should be able to get it done in 6 days or so, assuming I don’t get boned out of a full ram ride like I did last night.

Oh well. At least I have my other new title to keep me warm at night. And, uh, titled.

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Brewfest, more like screwfest