I have to agree with The Egotistical Priest’s What Ego’s Most Excited About in Wrath. 10 player raids for all content really appeals to me. I don’t like 25 player raids as that’s just too many people. I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up running some 25s in Wrath, but I’m hoping there won’t be too many.
Archive for October, 2008
Push ups Two Weeks In
Oct 30
I’m making progress on my push ups. I’m up to 31 now. Only 69 to go!
Reverse QQ
Oct 29
Now the reverse QQ about the zombie event is coming out on many blogs. This amuses me as well. “How dare people not enjoy the things I did! They should suck it up and enjoy it anyway!” Cue The Four Yorkshiremen
Stats: Devil or Angel?
Oct 29
Starman makes some good points on the use of
Stats: Devil or Angel?. We always post WoW Web Stats for our raids. We have some new raiders joining us, so I need to make sure to emphasize the use of stats as a teaching tool rather than simply a race to the biggest numbers.
Open Source Versus Piracy
Oct 29
Techdirt asks Should Proprietary Software Companies Be More Concerned About Open Source Or Piracy? His argument is that every pirated copy of a popular program means that someone is not using the open source alternative.
I think it’s a good point. I’m using a lot of open source solutions at work because I don’t want to pirate anything. Hence the reason DRM really ticks me off – I’ve paid for the software when I could have gotten it for free, I get punished and the pirates get an improved product?
Scribus
Oct 29
As part of my work, I sometime need to layout a couple of pages of photos and annotate them. I had been using Microsoft Word to do this because it’s what we use to write up reports. Unfortunately this gave me huge, easily corrupted Word files with little fine grain control.
I switched to Scribus for the last couple projects and the difference is amazing! The files are tiny, the load time is speedy, and I can actually put notations where I want them rather than just in the right general area.
I’m pretty much positive that Scribus is nowhere near as nice to use or as powerful as professional desktop publishing programs, but it’s powerful enough for me and it’s free. If you don’t already have a desktop publishing program and you have to make up documents that include both images and text, take a look at Scribus. My next challenge will be to see if I can layout an entire document in Scribus and have it look better than its Word counterpart.
ThinkTank has a Druid Bear FAQ for 3.02/Wrath. It’s so nice to have all this information summed up concisely, especially given that I’m new to druid tanking. Now I need to dig up something similar for druid healing.
I don’t know about the educational value of these 4 Flash Games to Help Educate Your Kids, but they might be fun. I’ll point my kids to the sites and see what they think.
Item point scales
Oct 27
Warrior Best item point scale to use going into Wrath? looks like a good point scale for rating items in Pawn for Warriors.
Looks like something similar for paladin tanks.
I’ve missed having a Pawn Scale. Now I need something for a resto druid, tanking druid, and resto shaman.
Shaman Play in 3.02
Oct 27
I had a chance to play my shaman this weekend and got him a good chunk of the way through 67. The changes to shamans in 3.02 are huge. My enhancement shaman now feels like a real hybrid class rather than a self-healing rogue.
The trickiest bit has been remembering to use all these fancy new abilities. For example, I was fighting a weak elite, meant to hit chain lightning and brought out my spirit wolves instead. That was a very happy surprise! I’m going to try to solo a tougher elite next time I get on, just to get practice in burning through my cooldowns.
Maelstrom weapon is a lot of fun – I love popping those instant heals if my health is down. Water shield keeps my mana filled up. I’m now doing roughly 50/50 physical and magical attacks as opposed to the pre-patch 80/20.
I’m probably going to switch to resto when I hit 70 and I’m looking forward to seeing what I can do with that spec. I think I’m ready to play a healer again.
EDIT: I managed to trivially solo Torgos and Terokkarantula at 67. Windroc Matriarch was somewhat tougher but I got her down too.
Maintankadin has a nice straightforward list of Frequently *Answered* Questions 3.0.2 & Wrath. for paladin tanks. I’ll be looking at this a lot.
Just Say No To Zombies
Oct 26
The latest event in World of Warcraft is a Zombie Invasion which fits beautifully with both Halloween and the upcoming release of Wrath of the Lich King. Anyone can become a zombie by fiddling with conspicuous crates or killing infected cockroaches. Once you’re a zombie, you can infect and attack other players regardless of faction. You can also attack and infect NPCs. This gets really annoying if you’re questing as instead of wanting 15 shiny objects quest givers want to eat your brains. I’m hoping that it only lasts for a day or two.
EDIT: After trying to get stuff done in capitals, particularly in Shat, the zombie plague is officially upgraded to a pain in the arse. Looks like I’ll be leveling my shaman the rest of the way to 70 since that doesn’t require going near a capital.
See Lume the Mad and Big Bear Butt’s perspectives for well worded arguments against the way the zombie plague has been implemented.
Epic Flight Form
Oct 25
The quest to get the druid epic form is amazingly well done. I wish there were a quest line like it for every class. Apart from having to run Sethekk Halls, it’s a beautiful example of a quest line that proves that you know how to play your class. Ideally I’d have it instanced so that you can’t get help from others (I had help with the essence quests). Anyhow, thanks to a fine group of people, my druid finished his Sethekk Halls run and got his epic flight form. (I couldn’t find my item to summon Anzu, hearthed out to go talk to the quest giver, and realized that it was in a bag I hadn’t opened. Oops.)
TankingTips.com has a good post on Maximizing DPS and Minimizing Damage Taken for Warriors. I’ve been in the top 3 overall DPS for our last two Kara runs (okay, so we swapped some other people in and I’m counting trash, but still). I’m looking forward to applying these tips.
Multi-Timer
Oct 24
I’m still looking for a good timer app. Oddly enough, the best one I found was an addon for World of Warcraft called Alarm Clock Wrangler. Since that one stopper working, I’ve been using the timer on our stove. Multi-Timer looks as though it might work for me – I’ll have to give it a shot.
The Art of Manliness has a good post on How to Write a Thank You Note. I’ve been thinking about doing this more as one of my projects. I’m trying to gradually ramp up with self-improvement stuff as I think I’m likelier to stick with it that way.
"Think of the largest number you can think of, then multiply it by 8 – that’s how much RAM you should have." — Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie.
My computer and Jaimie’s have been getting terrible frame rates despite having upgraded our graphics cards earlier this year. An NVidia 8600GT isn’t the fastest card out there, but it should be enough to handle World of Warcraft with low video settings. I went home at lunch and upgraded our computers to 2 and 3 GB of RAM and we were getting decent to excellent frame rates. Now to test things out in Shattrath at peak times. The next upgrade will be a better motherboard/CPU and that’s a much bigger chunk of change.
Keyboards Without Labels
Oct 22
One of my bad habits is staring at my keyboard as I type. I can touch-type, I just don’t. One of the most popular keyboards on Lifehacker is Das Keyboard which has no labeled keys at all. I’m not prepared to drop $130 on a keyboard at this time, but I have a couple of keyboards that are approaching their end of life. If I’m feeling brave I may try the DIY Das Keyboard project and see how I like it.
No More Coke Zero
Oct 22
Every two weeks or so I buy a pack of Coke Zero to drink. Sadly, I’m going to have to quit doing that. For some reason it seems to make me twitchy and irritable. Ah well, with winter coming fast a hot cup of tea is a fully viable alternative.
CarZen
Oct 21
CarZen looks as though it might be a useful tool when it comes time to buy a new vehicle. I’ll have to play around with it. (via Lifehacker) See this search.