Free Realms "First 5 Minutes" Impressions

I had to minimize the game here and type this up, because it pretty much has WoW's cooking tradeskill beaten, bruised and crying for mom. Within the first 5 minutes of launching this (hence the above title), I had a cooking "quest" that actually had me slicing veggies and tenderizing meat. Even the harvesting of said veggies was a Bejeweled type minigame. Not really Bejeweled, but like... you have a grid of different vegetables, and you can draw a line to connect adjacent squares, and you get a larger bonus for longer strings. Then the cooking portion was basically Cooking Mama for the DS. A lot of the cooking stuff felt very 'DS', with clicking to chop, and mouse gestures to pour liquid, but that isn't a horrible thing. It was certainly 8000% more interactive and engaging than 'grab 4 chilled meat from bank, click once to create campfire, click again to create Northrend Stew'.

This isn't going to dethrone WoW for its mainy endgame raidbosses or mindblowing arena showdowns, but it has a few 'things that make you go hmm' thrown around, and this is 5 minutes in. Combat itself is really simple, but WoW isn't exactly rocket science. I've pressed 1 over and over to kill some goblins, and pressed 2 to perform a cleave type legsweep. The overall package looks really solid, which is what everyone else is saying, and actually inspired me to give it a go. I admit I was invited to the beta, but seeing some flying squirrel with a blue mohawk on the welcome page didn't really entice me to try it out. I think I actually tried one night, the server timed out or something, and I didn't go back.

It's fully launched now, and there's no reason to not give it at least ten minutes, unless you think it will turn you gay, but if you're that close to the cusp that you're afraid this game will affect you, you need to just go kiss a guy and get it over with. I've heard slow jerks are nice for breaking the ice, too. Wait, where was this post going again..?

Ah. Yeah, there are different classes blah blah blah... microtransactions yadda yadda yadda... Mordiceius is upset that it launches from your browser instead of being a full install, but I had no performance issues (on firefox, and the windows 7 beta to boot). Every other blog is probably running down the bullet lists, so I won't bother. But I will say this: Check it out. It's worth doing, and will only take a second. Then you can get back to doing manly non gay stuff like watching a male tauren's ass run around all day.

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Moving Sucks

Especially knowing I'm just moving into another spot in Japan that I'll only be at for a month or so, as the last step before jumping off to America. It also doesn't help that it's my wife's mom and dad's place; but on the whole, I'm okay with it, even if I know (especially since I know?) it will drive her crazy. Trade chat accusations of living at home with mom will be met with "I LIVE WITH MY JAPANESE WIFE'S MOM, SO THAT'S DIFFERENT, OK?"

I should probably just make a macro.

Anyway, I haven't heard back from Blizzard yet (/sadface), but have talked to a few friends in the business that have told me that when a company gets as big as they are, the wheels turn bleedingly slow. They've been in similar situations, and when they've since moved on after giving up hope, an email appears out of the blue asking to set up an interview. So I guess I won't give up hope just yet? The job listings haven't been taken down, either, so there's that at least.

I reckon my next little project will be to type up some questlines, since they're looking for that, too. I'll eventually just work my way down the list, from game design to quest department, from CM to GM, to toilet scrubbing coffee fetching bitch. While my ideal position would be designing teh dragunz & encounterzes, quests and world events could be swell, too. Noble Garden is a fucking snorefest; I've figured out the optimal strategy for looting eggs is to triangulate a position where I can just stand still and still be in reach of three or so egg spawn locations to click them the instant they pop. Everyone else seems to be doing the same, so we just stand dead still and whack le moles when they pop. Zzzz.

Everytime I go on a rant in trade chat about how NOBELGARDEN IS A FUCKING TIME FOR SHARING GUYS, SO LEAVE MY FUCKING EGGS ALONE, I get a paranoid suspicion that Blizzard is actively monitoring my character's chat to suss out if I'm a worthy addition to the team, and all they're finding is how fucking gay I think Noble Garden is from my toons.

:(

Maybe in the sprit of my Design a Raid Encounter thing, I can dream up a holiday or two that actually means something, or has more eventful activities than 'Right Click Eggs, then Right Click the Chocolates Found Inside'. I don't want to come off like a dick, but there's gotta be a point where the person coming up with these achievements is just like 'uhhh... yeah and then eat 25 chocolates, fuck it, it's 9pm on friday and I wanna go home'. I already have a few ideas about questlines and general raid sized quests with no prereqs that sound an awful lot like Warhammer's public quests but aren't... With the amount of time on my hands, I can crank out somehting interesting, I reckon.

Anyway. Looking forward to dragging refrigerators up and down flights of stairs AGAIN tomorrow. I'll keep you guys in the loop.

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WoW vs Guitar Hero

Melf_Himself over at Word of Shadow brought up comparisons between WoW and Mario 3, although I must admit from the title of the post (Faux gameplay - losing control), I thought it was going to be a debate on stunlocking and CC. Melf basically boils game time down to things you do (gameplay), and things you don't do (graphics, setting, etc). A reference to the Racoon Suit of Mario 3 popped up: In good games, the same feature of the game features both aspects. For example, in Super Mario Bros 3 I can obtain the Raccoon Suit. The Raccoon Suit is powerful. It lets me fly for short bursts, slows my descent when I fall, and lets me hit enemies that I couldn't kill by jumping on. The Raccoon Suit is also awesome. It gives me little ears, my tail waggles, it makes cute sound effects. I'm also not used to flying around in a game and defying gravity and ninja-hitting people with my tail, so I am left with a distinct cool impression resulting from the unusual gameplay.

It then goes on to relate this to terms of WoW and PVE encounters. And yet, as I read this piece, I couldn't help but think a better comparison might be to that of Guitar Hero.

Guitar Hero, when picked up for the first time, is an incredibly 'fun' experience. It's so different than something like Mario or WoW, that it's immediately appealing. Playing something like Smoke on the Water on 'easy' is a perfect intro lesson to how your 'class' works, and what each button does, and how you're expected to 'beat this encounter'. In addition to that, it's a huge amount of honest to god fun, and there's no denying that simple fact. If you've made it this far in life without having played a Guitar Hero game, I'm not sure what you're trying to prove to everyone.

Anyway, at that point you're still in easy mode, and using only three buttons. It seems a bit rudimentary, so you go to medium. It's still the same song, and you're still using the same guitar, but now your pinky makes an appearance from time to time. You've leveled up, and learned a new button to push. Instead of just spamming Sinister Strike five times, and then Eviscerating, you're learned to throw a Rupture on the boss. Your DPS is improving, grasshopper. Soon you will be fierce warrior.

Now, at this point, the game is still fun for me. I've challenged myself to use all four fingers, but I'm still playing an enjoyable game. I can enjoy the 'fight' for what it is, and can still sing along with the song as I play. Most of my strumming is done on the downstroke, and the note patterns aren't horribly punishing. There are a few times when I need to hit two buttons at once, and a few other times where I jump back and forth between a few different two note combos.

I challenge myself a bit further, and take on Thunderkiss 65 by White Zombie, it's a song I love even outside of the game. I never really got too into Deep Purple in my day, and would even go so far as to say that there are no tracks on Guitar Hero by anyone I play in my car radio (Redman? Dre Dog? I get the feeling "Cocaine Raps" isn't on the radar at Activision).

Anyway, sidetracked.

Thunderkiss 65 has a pretty distinct starting riff (first ten seconds of that youtube link above) that just felt like it was being ridiculously dumbed down on easy mode, and even 'not done justice' on medium, so I challenged myself to play it on hard. While the feeling of that intro is nailed much better on hard, the rest of the song has a few points where it's kind of a bit much for me. I realized I had stopped singing the song, and stopped swaying as I played. I was instead hunched over, tensed up, and focusing a little too intently on the screen. As I'd drop my combo multiplier I'd curse under my breath and I realized something important: I wasn't really having fun anymore. The game had become a test, and instead of running and jumping and flying, I was dragging some cross on my back, uphill, to the finish line.

Expert mode? lol, fuck that. Taking GH to the min/max extreme of Through the Fire and Flames on expert would offer zero enjoyment for myself. About as 'hardcore' as I get is the previously mentioned Thunderkiss 65 on hard. I can do it, but it's frustrating. I can bang it out almost perfectly on medium, though, and while doing it on medium it feels good.

Are any of our WoW encounters REALLY that different from a Guitar Hero song? Our defined rotations. The bridges of phase shifts, the chorus of running back and forth during Heigan. There are certain things we do over and over in any given encounter, and is my disc priest's 'trick' of throwing a Power Word: Shield, then burning a Penance (which, since it's channeled, doesn't consume the Borrowed Time buff), followed by a properly Borrowed Time hasted Greater Heal any different than nailing that certain distinctive Red-Yellow-Green-Yellow-Green of Smoke on the Water? To me it feels like a jumping roundhouse - crouching medium kick - fireball combo I'd pull off with Ken in SF4. I do that combo time and again in Street Fighter, but it feels good breaking it out. I'll mix it up from time to time and throw a Shoryuken on the end, or a
Tatsumaki Senpuu-Kyaku. Instead of Greater Heal, I'll chuck a hasted Flash Heal or Prayer of Healing on the end. It isn't rote, but it's a groove you can get into.

I want to be challenged by WoW, but at the same time, I had no issues with Naxx being 'too fucking easy'. I could just enjoy a nice run on medium and focus on other things. I could hum along with the song being played, and take a look around. I didn't need to curse under my breath when I realized I haven't had Prayer of Mending popping around for the past 5 minutes like I should have. Who cares, it's Naxx, let's just relax and enjoy it.

Since my last article, I've spent some time in Ulduar. I've managed to join a splinter guild that was a bunch of guys splitting off one of the main guilds on Cho'gall, and joined a Uld10 pug and took a ginvite in the middle of the run (note to GMs in the audience, THAT'S how you recruit. Not spamming trade, and not demanding applications). We spent two solid days wiping in Ulduar, and I had a great time. It was a different kind of fun than Naxx, but it doesn't make either playstyle superior.

I was never in Sunwell when it was hard. I've cleared it as an 80 just to see the place, but from what I hear, it was Through the Fire and Flames. So far Ulduar is looking like Thunderkiss on Hard. I'll be able to pull it off, and as time goes on, it will become easier. Am I alone in just wanting some stuff that's fun to execute, instead of being ridiculously technical and intricate?

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I Still Haven't Even Zoned in to Ulduar

Oh, how I long to be in a tight knit guerrilla mercenary crew like Hatch's 12 man guild. Twelve individuals who know exactly what they want from the game, and team up like the Superfriends to go and fucking get it when they log into WoW. Aquaman never gave some bullshit excuse about overheating video cards when it was time to foil the Legion of Doom. Wonder Woman could always be counted on to give someone a lift in her invisible jet. I'm stuck dicking around with a gimpy version of the Keystone Kops. The most people I've seen online in the guild tab since 3.1 launched was 12, and when I tried to rally those 12 to form up a 10 man, I was met with general apathy, or a sense that we should be 'waiting for something' instead of showing some initiative.

And so, it's off to the recruiters.

I guess I should have just not bothered sticking around when on patch day I noticed about 10 people leave the guild without a word. One of our main healers (and a high ranking officer) logged on last night, and was met with actual surprise by the one other guildie on.

"Woah, Moocifer! I'm surprised to see you on!"

Moocifer has gone offline.

Not even a hello or anything. Ugh.

So here I am, filling out applications to other guilds, hoping they'll let me play on the red team with them in Mario Kart. Those who know me know this is one of my most loathed aspects of WoW. I want to play the game. I'm able to distance myself from the drudgery of MMOs, and can appreciate the fact that, deep down, they're meant to be enjoyed; but when I need to provide 'references' and 'an available schedule' in order to even join a guild, I get frustrated. I honestly wish the guild I'm in would just log the fuck on so we can run something.

My experience with the patch thus far has included a 25 man 'new VOA' run that decided to kill Archavon first (thus saving everyone to that ID), then go back, wipe once on Emanuel (whatever their name is), and then spend 30 minutes just staring at the boss while various people link videos in their vent comments, or paste Wowwiki paragraphs in chat. I kept remarking that I thought the 'letting him die of old age strat' seemed to be working flawlessly, or how I hoped that the 'tabbing out and READING' debuff had weakened him enough for another attempt.

THE RAID BROKE APART WITHOUT A SECOND ATTEMPT.

Apparently 'Table Scraps' (the guild that comprised more than half of this PUG) decided that they would rather wait to be told exactly how to execute this boss than die a few times, because the VOA corpse run (3 feet from the instance entrance) is a killer.

I've actually managed to kill Emanuel (as he shall forever be known now) on my priest in a ten man, and was surprised to find he drops the same crap as Archavon? Whatever.

I've ran a few Argent Jousting dailies, and dual specced my three main toons. Sadly, the act of arranging my bars for each toon's dual spec has probably been the highlight of my time with the patch so far. I've figured out thew slash command to change specs without having to open the talent pane (/usetalents 1, and /usetalents 2), and made little macros for them. Hooray. Zzzz.

I like the people in the guild I'm in, which is why I hate being in the situation I'm in now. When a major content patch ships, and people just don't log in, you begin to wonder if this is just an 'alt guild', and people are laughing and cheering with their mains, while my mains are stuck with no one logging on. Being unemployed right now, I was really looking forward to having time to raid, and I even had a full day where my wife took the kid to go see her sister, and I savored the chance to... uhh... I guess make 57 Earthsiege whatever meta gems, and post them all on the AH...?

Aquaman! Wonder Woman! Hell, even those twins that turn into giraffes and buckets of water! Save me! The bat signal is overheating right now, and Super PUGs are Super Failing. Someone convince their PVE progression guild to all xfer to Cho'gall. Throw me a friggin bone! Either that, or it may be time to throw down (another) hundred bucks and xfer my three mains and bank alt to somewhere else.

Bleh.

:(

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I Don't Know How Video Codecs Work

:)

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UHCTGF Part 2

Just a quick update on thew Ultra Hardcore Toughguy Flower thing. I'm not going to turn this into a photo journal of the trees outside my apartment, but just a quick before and after to really drive home the point.

It's been five days since the last post, and while these aren't direct apples to apples comparisons of the exact same vistas, the general vibe is good enough to understand.

Where the previous photos were form the actual park where we went for Hanami, these photos are 'open my kitchen window while drinking coffee in my underwear, and snap off a few pics of across the street'. That's a winning mental image, I'm sure. The weather is a bit wet, and I think that's keeping some of the flowers on the trees, but you get a good sense as you look around of going....

... going....

... gone.


These same trees were in full blown pink-flower-madness-mode not 5 days back. Blink, and you miss it.

Anyway, there was a pretty positive reaction to the other post in the comments, so I figured I'd follow up a bit on it. Cheers.

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Looking for an Addon Feature

Forum posts on Curse tend to go unread, because the only people that post there register, make one post, then never follow up (guilty as charged). So I ask you! I'm looking for an addon feature that I probably won't even use once I set it up, but I want to give it a shot before completely dismissing it out of principle. I use Dominos as my Action Bar mod of choice, as it lets me drag and scale and generally move my bars around how I please (Bartender works in a very similar fashion, I just used to use Bongos, which has become Dominos).

One of the older features of Bongos was the ability to break apart a bar, and drag individual buttons all over the place, while still retaining 'bar' behaviour. That is to say, my action bar 1 is my main bar for my warrior, but when I pop into defensive stance, all those buttons are replaced, but it's still my main action bar... so I actually have 'three buttons' that bind to my number 2 key, depending on what stance I'm in. In defensive stance that button is intervene, in battle it's charge, and in berserker it's intercept. My number 2 key always makes me run around, but the button behaves differently in different stances.

I do a similar thing with my 6 key, it's a spell interrupt. Battle and def stance have it set to shield bash, while in berserker it's pummel.

You get the picture.

So the problem here is when I want to move one of my actual buttons that's already defined to somewhere else on my screen. Like, I could make a whole new action bar that's only one button long, and throw whatever spell I wanted on there, but I want to have it be the one I already have up, that changes as I change stances. If I were to make a single button for my charges for example, it wouldn't switch as I switched stances, and would require three full bars (trimmed down to one button each) to retain that functionality.

Then again, maybe I'm just way too into my UI layout, and everyone reading this is like ".... huh?"

Look. Here's my current layout:


What I basically want to do is break that main bar up, and spread it out like this:


I know you want to puke, it looks ridiculous. Bear with me; there's a reason! The reason is that I use a Belkin n52 speedpad as my weapon of choice:


And my button layout matches what I have going in the second picture, look:


As a tank, I want to be able to keep my eyes on the action, and not down on my bar seeing when shit lights up. You can see I've already put little icons in the middle of my screen that light up with certain buffs etc. I use Satrina Buff frames, and its filtering fuction extensively. You can see if you look above that I have 9s of shield block glyph uptime remaining, my trinket has buffed me for 9s, I'm enraged for 10s, and spell reflect is up for another 4s. My shouts show next to my rage bar... look, whatever. I love fucking around with my UI, so sue me. I should write an article about just how to wring the maximum use out of Satrina, because that addon is shit hot, and not many know how to use it.


ANYWAY.

Do any of you guys know of an addon that can break apart your main bar like I've illustrated? Throw me a bone. I'll try any addon out, I don't fear the reaper.

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Ultra Hardcore Toughguy ...flowers?

Yeah, sorry. No internet dragons today. Just a wind down on what will be my last Hanami while living here in Japan.

Hana means flower, and Miru is the verb 'to look', so Hanami is a time where you just go... look at the flowers. I'm sure everyone has heard of the cherry blossoms in Japan, and if you've ever watched an anime, there has invariably been 'that one scene' where the sun is setting, and sakura petals are slowly drifting by in the foreground as the heroine is getting all jiggly eyed over some guy that looks like he belongs on the cover of "Men's Egg".

Then the tentacle rape scene goes down, and the moment is broken.

What people don't usually realize, though, is that this period of time where the cherry blossoms are actually in bloom seriously lasts all of like 12 seconds. You could go run Naxx once and miss it. Okay, I'm being facetious, but there's about three days where it's in full swing, and then all of a sudden it's over. The trees go from winter mode with nothing on the branches, to pow bang full bloom, to no more flowers and just a bunch of boring leaves over the course of one work week. You'll be driving to work on Monday, and everything looks brown and whatever, then Tuesday and Wednesday are like fairy tale world, and then Thursday is like half and half, and Friday everything is just green.

People take time to get together and go spend a day just sitting under the trees to drink and chat and just unwind, but it's something that can't really be planned for until it's that day, and you gotta go today or tomorrow or wait until next year.

Japan loves to sieze on 'Japanese things', and so of course there are a billion cherry blossom trees sprinkled all over the countryside no matter where you go. They lie in wait, just looking like normal trees all year long, until they pull some ninja shit and just bust out of nowhere for two days, before vanishing again.

It really needs to be seen to be appreciated, but like I said, it isn't something you can really plan for. I mean, you can narrow it down to a week or two, but it's not like you can say 'I'm going on a three day trip to Japan next year, and I'll go when the cherry blossoms are going in full swing'.

Thinking back over my time spent here... when I first came to Japan, it was at a time in my life when I was fed up with a bunch of crap. I was kind of in a rut, mentally, and needed a fresh change of pace to shake things up in my life.

One of the things I was sick of was the general vibe you encounter when meeting people on the street in America. People either want to fuck with you, or generally think you're trying to fuck with them if you ask a random person on the street a question. You can't ask someone what time it is without their very first thought being 'what does this person want from me?' before you've even started your sentence.

That was one of the things that amazed me about Japan when I came here for a visit. People are honestly falling all over themselves to help each other out, or just chat with random people. The other day on one of the local trains to the Embassy in Tokyo, my wife and I had some printout from google maps, and were trying to figure out which station to get off at. We asked some business man, and he actually insisted on walking us there. He worked nearby (a few blocks off), but wanted to make sure we found our way, so he just came with us to the front door of the Embassy, and we chatted along the way. I don't doubt these people exist in America, but they're just ... rare ... you certainly don't come across them in Oakland or San Francisco. People there are just too busy, too shady, or just CBF to help out. I'll miss that when I head back.

I swear they vaccuum the forests here, Japan is so TIDY

I often told people when I first arrived here that I was 'coming to Japan' just as much as I was 'leaving America'. Those are two completely separate things, and people either got it or they didn't. After about 5 years here, though, it's time to go home. I'm not sad to head back to the States; I'm actually surprised it took me this long to get around to doing it. It'll be both good and bad to be able to understand all of the conversations going on around me again. It was nice to be able to just tune everyone out if I wanted to focus on something, but also frustrating at times. I don't speak Japanese as well as I know I could if I really knuckled down to study it harder.

My wife was a huge rock to lean on here, but also made it so I didn't need to study as much as I would have had she not been there to help me out every day.

my wife hiding behind my son

I really can't stress how much living abroad for this time has changed me. I grew up a lot over here, and left a bunch of crap behind in America. I've got a wife and kid now, and am taking the next step in my life, by coming back home.

I can't stress, too, how simple it actually was to do. People think it's a big thing, but it's not. I know people who have come over with their girlfriends or significant others, and people that have come alone. I know American girls that have married Japanese guys, British guys that have married Japanese girls, random Canadians, New Zealanders, Australians, and South Africans. I now have friends all over the planet. That's crazy! I know people that have come for one year, and people that have been here for over fifteen. People that came just to check it out, and people that came because the money is actually pretty good if you push yourself to do extra things outside of your given work week. One Canadian guy taught a bunch of private lessons, and another Irish guy I know is some fake minister that stands at the front of wedding ceremonies in some robe and spouts off some random English for 10 minutes and makes like 200 bucks a wedding for doing so.

Living in another country also gives you direct insight on how other people view your home country. An Australian friend of my wife's blurted out how she 'was surprised I wasn't an asshole' after meeting me, knowing that I was an American beforehand. I just laugh about it, but people honestly just expect that. By going out and proving otherwise, you can maybe open their eyes as well...?

Or you can just be Terri, and be a loud dumb cunt at every opportunity you're given, and prove Japanese people's suspicions about foreigners to be correct. She's not American, but for a lot of Japanese, being from Jamaica (or being from the moon) just lumps you together in the 'not Japanese' basket. For everything those of us tried to do right, she'd just yell and scream and undo it all in one afternoon.

/sigh

Yeah, I won't be missing Terri at the weekly Friday meetings in Kamogata.


Anyway...

End of an era, baby. Not gone yet, but on the way out...

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Tanking Feels... Spammy

Yeah yeah yeah, I hear you already. The entire game is spammy right now. I guess I just didn't really feel it until I started to tank the 5 mans. I'm really enjoying the new side of the warrior's prot tree while out soloing and questing, but the instant I zone into a 5man, it becomes some random mashing of the tab key followed by a random string of buttons about as fast as I can hit them. I mean, I know how to tank. A prot warrior was my first toon, and my only toon for vanilla wow all the way up through Blackwing Lair. My various guilds ran the 20 and 40 man raids, and counted on me to MT or OT effectively. I got the job done.

Back then, though.. oh jeez, and so it begins... BACK IN VANILLA WOW WE USED TO WALK TO SCHOOL UPHILL BOTH WAYS. No, but seriously... back then we used CC during pack pulls, and generally had to assist one another to know who was attacking what. We didn't even have the skull or X icons, etc. Even when those came along, there was a general flow to pulls.

The other two classes I've played in Wrath are a Warlock and Priest. I basically soloed to 80 on the lock (with a felguard/SL spec that allowed me to solo the '5 man quests'), and have been healing on the priest. I'm just as guilty as the next guy of just spamming Rain of Fire on every. fucking. pull. on my lock, with DoTs sprinked around in the mix, but a warlock's damage is pretty gradual. Rogues and Mages are very spikey, and tend to be pulling mobs off me pretty regularly.

We have a lot more 'oh shit' buttons, and actually... just a lot more buttons in general. In vanilla, Thunder Clap was pretty useless. Well, not useless, but you just kept the debuff up. It wasn't some all-in-one magical-AoE-magnet like it is now. Between it, and demo shout, we could get a pack of mob's attention, but then we had to start spreading sunders around to keep them on us. Concussion Blow was your interrupt if Shield Bash was cooling down, and until 3.0 didn't even do damage at all (right?). Now it's some point blank nuke that stuns to boot, and people are saying you should be blowing it every time it's up or it's just going to waste. Same with Shockwave, it's like 'AoE Concussion Blow', and generates more threat than a Devastate. Given the choice between either of our 'stuns' or 'Sunder 2.0', you should go with a stun for max threat.

Huh.

Shield Block is the one tool that's seeing less use, but only because it's a 1 min cooldown instead of 6 seconds. That isn't to say it's not used, you use it whenever it's up (basically), but you just don't need to push that button as often. But with all these new skills, it's becoming the Pop'n Music GCD game:



bleh.

But even then, I'm still pulling off some amazing feats of survival while soloing or questing. When everything is under my own control, I can tab around and interrupt the Raven Priest casts while proccing Sword and Board on the Scarlet in front of me, while two others just beat on me for free rage. But in a 5 man, I've got no one following any kind of order, and just throwing random nukes around at anyone in particular. It's totally fucking up my flow, and generally making tanking become a fight against my group, rather than against the mobs. Hopefully this will get better as I leave PUGs behind and step into raids, but I'm still only 73, and that's a ways off.

I think in general, I just need to become more comfortable with the idea of tanking again (I really do enjoy it), and just slow down and become more methodical. But when I read posts about 'speed typists having an edge in TPS', it makes me think pop'n music is the future of tanking, which saddens me. I know we can expect better challenges in Ulduar, but I don't see any 5 mans coming down the pipe any time soon. What we have already is what we're going to have for a long time, and there's no CC or any semblance of order to any pull in any of these.

:(

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What Day is it Today?

I've honestly lost track. I think it's like Saturday or something? I've been without a job for all of 4 days, and already the time is just blurring together. It's not like when I was younger and could just drink myself silly any day of the week or anything crazy like that; I actually find myself still waking up around 'work time', but am spending late, late nights in front of the computer, grinding out quests on my 71 warrior. I ran a BT pug and picked up 3 pieces of T6 and a nice ring, and have come to realize this is the best way to level (obviously).

I did the same on my priest for the trek through Northrend. There's a guy named Evac on Cho'gall that farmed BT over and over getting glaives for his rogue. He's got quite a system going... forms up the PUG, gets everyone on his vent, and just blasts thru the place. He does free rolls for any item that drops, and keeps all the greens, gems, and Hearts of Darkness for himself. Then, any item that drops, you can 'bid' on if you don't trust your luck to rolls, or just want to 'overpower' the roll system itself. Starting bid is 100g, with 50g increments. This seems like something Gevlon could get behind. The funniest is when Illidan drops, and a glaive is on the corpse. Bids quickly spiral out of control, and I've seen the offhand go for 3000g. Just yesterday, a dagger that summons some ... something... went for 2500. People have too much money, and are just looking for ways to spend it. This gold just goes in Evac's pocket, for the hassle of organizing the run, and explaining strats. He does Sunwell, too. I gotta start paying attention to the quick-and-dirty strat rundowns and start some of these up myself. : /

While at first it seemed kind of silly, and the runs I went on my priest on I didn't spend a cent (still getting 2pc T6, 2 cloaks, an OH, rings, and a helm), I decided these last few to just chuck a few hundred gold around, because the warrior set is just so bad ass, and I want to just get a decent tanking set together without having to scrape around in 5 mans. Hit 490 def with a bullet, and am plowing through quests. I never thought I'd say prot was a good soloing spec, but MAN, they've made some real changes to that tree, and it's actually a lot of fun to play. I missed my warrior, which is why I chose this guy to /follow my priest for the RAF run (never played a priest, wanted to try it out). In groups, the threat gen is through the roof, and with talents like Warbringer, Sword and Board (nice synergy with Critical Block), and glyphs like this Revenge one, prot is officially off the hook.

Anyway, yeah. I'm not dead, and will make a concerted effort to fall into a regular groove with posts. I used to just have a bunch of dead time at work where I would hammer out posts, but now it's going to require a conscious decision to sit down and crank one out.

God, my life is so difficult, right?

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