Joel’s Scattered Thoughts

Blue Priest has a good post on the categorization of WoW players in his post Hardcore something-or-other. Rather than focusing on what content you’ve seen, your honorable kills, the hours you play, he breaks it down by what interests you in the game. Thus you can be hardcore in some ways at level 20 and not hardcore in others despite having cleared Black Temple.

Here’s how I would rate myself using his scale.

1. Min-maxer: 70% - I will usually pass on significant upgrade if someone else wants it more. I have forgotten to upgrade gear for quite a while, e.g. my 63 paladin was still wearing level 45 bracers - oops. I do enjoy theorycraft, but not to the point where I need to squeeze out every last point of damage. I just want something that works decently for me. I will wear a dumb looking item if it has much better stats.
2. Economist: 40% I’d be on the casual end here, maybe edging towards hardcore. I do use Auctioneer and the Auction House pretty much daily but my AH dealings are very conservative.
3. Roleplayer: 70% I don’t have a backstory for my characters. My character names have to be appropriate ones, no IKillYous or DOTFearWins for me. In my mind, my characters have some definite preferences - Flint is a holy priest and that’s that.
4. Loot Luster: 40% Shinies are nice but if someone else wants I’ll usually pass.
5. Achiever: 80% I like maxing out my tradeskills (the major drain on my gold when levelling). I feel little compulsion to complete all quests. Random drop quests are the bane of my existence, and I will drop those quests if the drop rate isn’t acceptable to me. I like leveling characters. The reputation grinds don’t appeal to me.
6. Socializer: 40% I prefer to play with others, but I’m quite happy soloing through the levels too. Mostly I play with Jaimie so I’m not usually soloing anyway (except when she’s raiding or sleeping).
7. PvPer: 40% I’ll do up to a maximum of about 3 battlegrounds/night. Usually I’ll do the daily battleground quest and leave it at that. I have never been to arenas. I first leveled on a PvP server and the ganking got to me. I don’t get off on ganking lowbies, which more or less put me in a “pirates of Penzance” type situation. If my character can heal in battlegrounds, that’s often what I end up doing.

(blog found via Two and a Half Orcs)

50 nerdy pick-up lines are sure to thrill Jaimie to no end!

1. You’re like an exothermic reaction, you spread your hotness everywhere!

2. I wish I was your derivative so I could lie tangent to your curves.

3. You’re like a dictionary, you add meaning to my life!

4. If I was an enzyme, I’d be helicase so I could unzip your genes.

I spent a good chunk of Sunday tanking with my paladin, then switched over to tanking on my warrior for our static group. It was interesting to make the switch. I ran Ramparts and Blood Furnace on my paladin with a priest and a rogue. For one run we had a shaman and hunter and for the other two we had another paladin and hunter. We ran Live Strat with our static group.

The kinds of pulls that are easy on my paladin are a click-fest on my warrior. Multiple mobs including a couple non-elites? The paladin tosses a shield, throws down a consecrate and that’s all she wrote. The warrior is going nuts trying to get a sunder on every mob so that the healer doesn’t pull aggro. The situations that lead to trouble on my paladin are easy to save on my warrior. The DPS has gone a little crazy on a big mob? Taunt, shield slam, devastate and you’re mine! The paladin is hoping that righteous defense and/or blessing of protection isn’t down and that she can re-establish aggro before they wear off. It takes a bit of work to shift mindsets from one to the other.

(Now if only I had a feral druid for a third shift in perspective.)

Priestly Endeavors has a post On hiring for guild needs. It’s definitely something to think about. In essence his post seems to boil down to ask for what you need, not for a specific spec. This seems to me to be especially true with the Burning Crusade where a lot of hybrids have really come into their own. For example, rather than recruiting a prot warrior, recruit a tank; rather than recruiting a survival hunter, recruit a skilled crowd controller. Run an instance or two with them filling the expected role and if they can’t perform it, recruit someone else.

Pre-Burning Crusade I ran a lot with a paladin who tanked and did an amazing job. It drove him nuts that the raid leader would not let him tank in raids, even though he had demonstrated the necessary skill. Despite his being improperly specced and the wrong class I much preferred doing runs with him tanking rather than doing runs with most of the warriors in guild.

Hybrid Kos discusses what to do at 70 with a nice breakdown of activities by the amount of time you’re able to dedicate to them. Most nights I play from when I get home to 7PM (1-2 hours). In that time I do dailies, check the auction house, and maybe do a little rep grinding. Then I take a 1-2 hour break to help kids with homework, clean up the house, and get things ready for the next day. If our static group is on, we’ll generally play from 9 to midnight. If not either I’ll work on leveling an alt or Jaimie and I play together. Weekends are when I get a lot of discretionary play time.

If we divide up the possible activities by the amount of time they take it makes it easier to see what you can undertake if you have a set amount of time. Of course, if you have 3 hours it means you can do anything in the 3 hour list as well as anything in the smaller time blocks.

3+ hours
• Heroic Instance
• Raid Instance
• Heroic Instance Daily Quest

2-3 hours
• Normal Instance
• Instance Daily Quests

Less then 2 hours Committed
• Arena
• Party Quests

Less then 2 hours Uncommitted
• Grind Reputation
• Grind Gold
• Grind Profession
• Grind Mats for Gear
• Grind for Cosmetic Items (pets and tabards)
• Battle Grounds
• Solo Quests
• Attunement Quests
• Reputation Daily Quests
• Battle Ground Daily Quest
• Start over on an Alt

Arthemis’ pet Arge has dinged 70! I’ve had the same pet since level 10, apart from briefly taming other beasts to learn their skills. I am very much looking forward to the pet leveling fixes in 2.3.2 because the next pet I want is a bear and the highest tameable bear is level 60.

Totem Talk: So you’re still working on your Shaman… - WOW Insider is about where my poor little shaman is these days. Between the daily quests on my hunter, trying to get get my paladin up to 375 mining (and to 70 for the flying mount), and a fair amount of runs on my warrior with our static group (the Scholo key is mine!), I haven’t been leveling my shaman at all. I haven’t even finished the water totem quest. Since he’s basically a solo character, I’m most likely to run him in the mornings on weekends which then leads to why my 61 warlock will likely never hit 70.

The LEGO City Fire Station would make a great Christmas gift for my sons. Now to see if I can a) find it and b) afford it. There’s also the tricky issue of having the two of them share a gift. Mind you they do get along fairly well when it comes to playing with stuff like this.

Home Power Magazine looks like a good source of information on alternative ways of powering a home. (via Cool Tools)

WOW Insider has a column on guild management called Officers’ Quarters. This week’s column discusses Zero-pressure raiding? aka the move to becoming a raiding guild. I’m not sure if we’ll ever get into raiding in Sleep Deprived on Quel’doei, but here are some of my preliminary thoughts.

My plan is to not require specific specs, any level of attendance, or specific professions. If you want to bring your 20/20/21 blacksmithing/leatherworking warlock on raids every 3 months and there’s a spot for you, you’re welcome to do so.

Here are my first thoughts on requirements for if we get to raiding.

• I will insist that anyone who raids has 375 first aid. There are two reasons for this. Firstly 375 first aid is fairly easy to get. If you’re not willing to do that, raiding is going to be too demanding for you. Secondly a properly applied bandage can be a lifesaver. Sometimes the healer just can’t get to you.
• If the first pull has not happened within 30 (?) minutes of scheduled raid start, I will cancel the raid. Everyone is expected to be fully buffed/repaired/supplied before the first pull happens. We don’t have a lot of time to play and I don’t want to spend my time sitting around waiting for people to log on. There will be a scheduled raid end time. Assuming raid end time comes at a bad time, i.e. just before pulling a boss, those present will be polled to see if they want to continue for one more fight. There will be at MOST one fight after scheduled raid end time. I need my sleep, dang it.
• Read my post on Raiding Consumables and have appropriate consumables for yourself. I will make potions for free for all raiders (at least at first). However, I need to know ahead of time what potions you will need so that I can gather the mats. I can also supply the oils and stones for weapon buffs. Thanks to the cooking quests I will be able to supply at least some food buff items, but I encourage you all to level cooking.
• Once we get up to 70, I plan to designate at least one night a week where I will help with attunements and leveling. I can supply a tank (Tristam or Andromache), a healer (respec Andromache as needed), or DPS (Arthemis). I will most likely be leveling another class that can spec into healing as that seems to be our biggest lack right now. Everyone who raids must have run at least one (?) heroic instance with me.
• I will insist on a couple addons. However, I want there to be as few required addons as possible. For now I’m thinking a threat meter (probably Omen), a boss warning mod (Bigwigs or Deadly Boss Mods or ??), and a raid tracker (CTraid or ??). Am I missing anything?
• Should I insist on Minimum Class Stat Requirements for Karazhan or is that asking too much? If I do insist on that, it pretty much means that anyone wanting to raid will have to run multiple heroics, which is a good way to prepare.

There will be no DKP for 10 man instances. I have no idea what we’ll do for DKP if we get to 25 man instances, but that’s a long ways away.

I doubt that we will raid more than twice per week. Our schedules just don’t allow for more than that.

I hope I didn’t scare anyone. I just wanted to get some thoughts out there for the future. Please feel free to critique any of the points I’ve brought up.

Remember that this is all hypothetical as well. If we continue our current play schedule of about 2 nights/week and roughly 1/2 level/night we’re still looking at a minimum of 12 weeks before we hit 70. There are at least 3 instances that require you to be 70 to enter, so that’s another week and a half of runs. There are currently 15 heroic instances so even if we run each one only once, that gives us another 8 weeks. With our current play schedule at earliest it would be the middle of April 2008 before we would even be thinking about our first raid.

For some reason I’m having a lot of fun doing the daily cooking quests in World of Warcraft. I’m really not sure why I like them so much - basically you go find some ingredients, cook them up, and bring them back to a goblin in Shattrath. The goblin then gives you a crate of meat or a barrel of fish, either of which can give you a random recipe. I don’t think I’ve missed a day of doing the cooking quests since they’ve come out.

Joel Spolsky has a post on How to demo software. I was thinking of applying the following to a presentation I will be giving late this winter. Rather than just doing facts I’m going to see if I can work it up into a simple story.

The only interesting way to design a demo is to make it a story. You have a protagonist, and the protagonist has a problem, and they use the software, and they… almost solve the problem, but not quite, and then everybody is in suspense, while you tell them some boring stuff that doesn’t fit anywhere else, but they’re still listening raptly because they’re waiting to hear the resolution to the suspenseful story, and then (ah!) you solve the protagonists last problem, and all is well. There is a reason people have been sitting around telling stories around campfires for the last million years or so: people like stories.

Girl Meets WoW: Akil’zon’s Gauntlet, The Easy Way sounds like it would work. Mind you it also sounds like the kinds of thing Blizzard will be nerfing ASAP.

Blessing of Kings: Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Karazhan
From Sussemilch of Sanctum Patria, Moon Guard (via the WoW forums):

Attumen taught us not to waste time.
Moroes taught us that everyone needs to be paying attention.
Maiden taught us that some strategies are better than others.
Opera taught us to expect the unexpected.
Nightbane taught us to look out for each other.
Curator taught us that there’s a time for everything.
Aran taught us to never give up.
Illhoof taught us to think about who we bring along.
Netherspite taught us that sometimes you should just run away.
Chess reminded us to have fun.
Prince taught us that sometimes bad things happen to good people.

I somehow forgot to note that Arthemis, my blood elf hunter, hit 70 on November 11th. That last half level to 70 was a killer. I don’t think I would have made it without my dear wife pushing me along.

Unfortunately Arthemis’ cat, which she’s had since level 10, still lags 2 levels behind her. I think that if I were to do it over again, I would have either grabbed one of the Springpaw cubs for the different skin or possibly a bear. As it stands I doubt I’ll train any pets below level 67 as leveling them is just too much of a pain.

I’m flabbergasted that BigRedKitty linked to me on his blog. For any of you who followed his link here, welcome! This blog mostly serves as a notepad for me to jot down ideas I may want to pursue in my current hobbies. Not too much original content - mostly links to things other people have written and notes on why I linked to it.

Priestly Endeavors has good post on Growing your Guild. Our guild on Quel’dorei, Sleep Deprived, will doubtless be in this position in a few months. We have 6 people who play regularly and a couple of people who play from time to time. I’m not sure what strategy we’ll pursue. A lot depends on whether or not everyone wants to run Kara and when exactly we get to the point of running Kara. If we progress fairly quickly, there is another small guild that I’ve PUGed with a couple times that might be interested in forming an alliance. If we progress slowly then all bets are off - who knows what thing will look like in 6 months?

Blessing of Kings has a good Guide to Blessings. I’ve run a couple of instances with my paladin now, so it’s nice to have a breakdown of what blessings go with what classes. Looks like my big mistake was forgetting to put Salvation on the rogue and DPS warrior. Ah well, we had successful runs anyway.

Warrior (tank) - Kings, Light, Sanctuary, Might
Warrior (DPS) - Salvation, Might, Kings, Sanctuary, Light

Druid (bear) - Kings, Light, Might, Sanctuary
Druid (cat) - Salvation, Might, Kings, Sanctuary, Light
Druid (other) - Salvation, Wisdom, Kings, Sanctuary, Light

Warriors and druids usually cause the biggest hassles when organizing buffs. DPS warriors do not have ways to drop threat, so Salvation is very important to them. At the same time, putting Salvation on your tanking Warriors ends extremely badly.

As for healers, I generally prefer to put Salvation on them first. It’s safest, and you don’t want to lose your healers to adds, or if the tank gets incapacitated.

Hunter - Might or Wisdom, Wisdom or Might, Kings, Sanctuary, Light
Hunter (Survival) - Kings, Might or Wisdom, Wisdom or Might, Sanctuary, Light

Because Feign Death is a complete aggro wipe available every 30s, hunters do not need Salvation. Additionally, not having Salvation will give them more control over trapping and improve the effect of Misdirect. Might will usually do more damage on short fights, but Wisdom will do more on long fights.

Hunter pets get the same Greater Blessings cast on the Warrior class. This is a source of great amusement to paladins.

If you have a Survival hunter with Expose Weakness, Kings can provide more DPS for a 25-man raid. The hunter needs at least 800 Agility for this to be the case.

Mage - Salvation, Wisdom, Kings, Sanctuary, Light

Paladin (tank) - Kings, Light, Sanctuary, Might
Paladin (DPS) - Salvation, Might, Kings, Wisdom, Sanctuary, Light
Paladin (healer) - Wisdom, Kings, Salvation, Sanctuary, Light

Paladins are all over the map as well. Since paladin heals are innately low-threat, you can get away without Salvation. As well, paladins wear plate, so if a healer must pull aggro, it’s better to let a paladin do so.

Priest - Salvation, Wisdom, Kings, Sanctuary, Light

Shaman (healer/caster) - Salvation, Wisdom, Kings, Sanctuary, Light
Shaman (Enhancement) - Salvation, Might, Kings, Wisdom, Sanctuary, Light

Rogue - Salvation, Might, Kings, Sanctuary, Light

Warlock - Salvation, Wisdom, Kings, Sanctuary, Light

Warlock pets get the same Greater Blessings cast on the Warlock class. If the warlock uses an Imp, make sure that Phase-Shift is turned off while Blessings are being cast. A phase-shifted Imp will not receive any Blessings.

My Blood Elf Paladin, Andromache, hit 58 and headed out to Outlands. It amuses me that she hit 324 mining and 364 herbalism without picking a herb or mining a node in Outlands. The bright side is that as my gatherer she should be able to start pulling in money for me. Now to get her to 70 and the flying mount…

BigRedKitty: Magnitudes is an excellent post on damage meters and their uses and abuses. As a former healer and current tank I can guarantee you that I would far rather have a DPSer that does 4500 DPS and does not grab aggro to one that does 5000 DPS and grabs aggro every six seconds. I love the way BRK writes these things up.