March 2012
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February 2012
3 posts
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A guild update
Storm of Medivh-US is 3/8 in Dragon Soul heroics. We went 7/8 normal modes the first week but didn’t quite eek out that Madness of Deathwing kill. We got it immediately the second week. The week after that we brought a fourth healer like everybody else does and got our first heroic kill easily. We then stayed at 1/8 heroics for a while. Then we finally got the big idea of trying Ultraxion;...
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October 2011
3 posts
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This. →
On the video shown at the Blizzcon closing ceremonies. The final line of this essay is the keeper.
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September 2011
5 posts
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20% nerf to T12 normal & heroic incoming →
Well huh.
Seems a little early for this, doesn’t it? The obvious conclusion is that patch 4.3 is coming in faster than we think for a patch that hasn’t showed up on the PTR at all yet. Even with the buff to legendary staff quest item drop rates, I’m not sure we’ll manage to finish one before T13 lands. And we’ve been clearing Firelands steadily. Can’t imagine...
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Allison Robert dares ask the hard question about... →
Is the game outgrowing 25-man raids? Are two different raid sizes just not worth keeping around anymore?
A followup to her previous discussion of how post-Ulduar raiding hasn’t been as much fun for many people, with one possible cause being the normal/achievement/heroic triple kill need.
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8 people logged in at raid time
You know what that means. Yup. We need to recruit again. We had a couple of weeks of blissful overpopulation with players on the bench at raid time. Now we’re down 2 and we nearly could not raid this week.
To compound the roster problems, I have had a very nasty Internet service degradation this week that causes packet delays of up to 5 seconds. In a raid this translates to all action...
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On recruiting and guilds throwing the towel in. →
I just read the above link, on the decision of a long-running guild to stop raiding. The raid leader who wrote the blog talks about all the reasons for burnout: constant recruiting, constant churn, no loyalty from players looking to hop up the progression ladder, little reward from the work done other than the ability to raid. And when you succeed and you have a full raid plus a bench in case of...
August 2011
9 posts
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If Blizzard's game is full of assholes, it's... →
Let’s try this theory on for size.
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Alison Robert on why raiding isn't as much fun →
A different approach from the last link on this topic: Allison considers how achievements and heroic modes have changed our experience of encounters. Note that she also ends up at “Ulduar’s model was the most fun”, which again, is something everybody but Blizzard seems to think.
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Why is WOW raiding less fun now? →
Liore on why BC-era raiding and Ulduar were more fun for her than recent raids have been. Partly it’s the progression model changing (the ruthless dumping of any content that isn’t the current tier into irrelevancy) and partly it’s tedious heroic modes (everyone but Blizzard agrees that Ulduar’s model was way more fun & interesting).
Two raids that always stand out...
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About two weeks too many.
After nearly a week off from the Molten Front dailies on Leafie, I cautiously attempted doing some of them today on Aegidius. He could actually use the gear, poor non-raider he. And I swiftly discovered that it was killing my will to live, never mind my will to play the game. So I stopped.
I think I’ll level my warlock some more tonight. Low-level questing is actually fun.
The Molten...
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Do a fun thing often enough and it becomes...
Well! Since the last time I wrote a proper blog entry with a theme and everything, we’ve gone 7 of 7 bosses in normal-mode Firelands, and I finished off the Molten Front quest line. I was about a week behind the main wave of people finishing that, in part because I went on a trip in the middle of July, and in part because there were some days when I just couldn’t bring myself to do the...
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July 2011
8 posts
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Circle of Healing questions & answers!
I was tagged by Angelya of Revive & Rejuvenate (which is a great name for a healing blog, by the way), so here are my answers.
1. What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?
Leafie, restoration druid.
2. What is your primary group healing environment?
10-person raids. I do some 5s on Leafie but only as many as I am forced to do to cap out Valor for the week. Though I did...
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Leafie's to-do list
I’m going to improve my gear a bit since raid drops seem to be thin on the ground for me so far. Some of these items are best in slot or close to it given what I have access to, so I can’t go wrong.
Buy Firescar Sash from the raid rep vendor & get it gemmed up. (buckle, +int gem, +int/spirit gem)
Buy Soothing Brimstone Circle with valor.
Buy Firemind Pendant with valor.
Get...
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Rotations and the roster conundrum.
My guild killed Alysrazor for the first time this week, making us 5/7. I was not in that raid, however. For the first time, we have more than 10 active raiders. On the Alys kill night, we had to sit 2 people, and wow, one of them was going to be a healer! I chose to sit rather than make our shaman or our disco priest sit. The shammy is new to the guild, and we want to give him a good shot at...
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June 2011
20 posts
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In search of the perfect mount mod.
ETA: Added notes on GoGoMount, Pokedex, and Yay Mounts.
This week I tried out five eight mount randomizer mods in search of the perfect one. With the perfect mount mod, I press one button on all of my characters and the Right Thing(tm) happens. The right thing depends on where the character is and which class it is:
If in zone where flying is allowed, a flying mount is summoned.
If a druid in...
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Project PUG Tank report
Aegidius the pugging prot warrior is now level 85. (See the previous post!) This means he gets to run Lost City, Halls of Origination, and Grim Batol until his brain dribbles out his ears. I intend to run normals until I have managed to get his Therazane rep up. Right now that requires questing through Deepholm. This is the downside of leveling by instance-running. Fortunately he’s got a...
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“Vanilla WoW was a notorious grinding treadmill, and time has done little to...”
– From an IGN article about moving on from WOW. What’s fascinating to me is that vanilla WOW was, for MMO veterans like me, a major relief from grinds. It introduced the concept of questing to gain levels instead of endlessly killing mobs for XP. It was so very much less grindy than anything...
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Project PUG Tank rides again
Three pure pugging experiences documented for Project PUG Tank. This project aims to find out how long it’ll take for me to lose my temper, lose my sanity, or lose my will to live because of running instances with strangers. The tank is a blood elf warrior, level 84.
Instance: Stonecore
Gear upgrades: 0
Blood pressure spikes: 1
Good players: 1
Space cases: 1
Jackasses: 0
Healer:...
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Allison Robert on why the tank Q&A sucked. →
And oh boy did it suck.
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Five Project PUG Tank runs.
Aegidius the Project PUG Tank ran five randoms last night. He met two space cases and his first genuine jackass causing loot drama. He also had his first blood pressure spike. He’s now level 84, so my next required goal for him is to open up the Dragonmaw faction far enough to get a tabard.
I secretly have RP-style characterizations built up in my head for all of my Wow characters. I tend...
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Project PUG Tank: grounding field edition.
An odd little Vortex Pinnacle run yesterday afternoon. The shaman healer seemed completely out of it. My health would drop to 50% immediately on every pull, sometimes dip way lower. I died once to trash. It became an exercise in cooldown chaining for me, counting Shockwave as a damage reduction cooldown. The shaman had, as is typical, the only CC that could be used through the air elemental...
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Project PUG Tank: Sunday afternoon edition.
Three more runs for the afternoon. All three of these runs completed with the same roster they started with.
Pug run #3: Vortex Pinnacle.
The initial line of sight pull was a mess, because nobody moved out of line of sight. The hunter trapped the instant the blue square went out onto any mob, so I learned to save it for last. Nobody followed instructions on the grounding field pulls in the...
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Project PUG Tank begins.
Aegidius the blood elf warrior is level 82 now. He’s most of the way through Hyjal questing, has done enough of Vash’jir to get his seahorse, and has opened up Deepholm. My plan with him is to finish Hyjal, finish Deepholm, and do enough of Twilight Highlands to unlock the Horde dailies there. (Even though I disapprove of the Dragonmaw and am definitely on the side of the Wildhammer on...
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