What topics do you want to see discussed?

So, I have a ton of topics that I'm happy to post about, but I don't want to just post flood people.

What would you like me to post on, or to discuss? Here's some ideas that I'd like your feedback on, but please feel free to add your own in the comments below for me to consider as well. :)

Building/joining a successful guild, and how to tell if they will be.
Discussions about addons (offer me a few you'd like to hear about, beyond just a "mandatory list").
Discuss strats for being a successful while fighting .
Gearing a , from fresh 80 to progression raider, and why this is done this way.
This will not be a simple gear list for people to choose from, but an educational discussion on why one would choose given pieces, and in what order.
Random funny in game stories.

And the beat goes on...

...to the tune of 4 HM's down in ICC 25. We also managed to do this without taking longer than we did for normal modes the week before. Progression is going well, we now have Heroic down for Marrowgar, Lootship, Dreamwalker, and Rotface. We expect to add at least 2 more to that list next week from the ranks of: Saurfang, Festergut, Princes, Bloodqueen.

Thanks to the 25 man going so smoothly and quickly, we also ran 10 man tonight, took about 3.5 hours to do every boss HM except for LK, and to go for the LK achievement for the meta. Unfortunately, while the stacks hit 32, and 30 stacks are required, the achievement didn't trigger for those of us that didn't have it already. We've put in GM tickets for it, but we doubt we'll get them. But, now just achievements for the meta drakes...the hard stuff is out of the way. :)

Needless to say, I'm excited to be making progress, and making it quickly.

...and another one bites the dust

The king is dead, long live the king!

The guild killed LK in 25 man this week. I'm very happy to get the achievement, and head into hard modes, but we went in with the expectation that we could, and would, get the LK kill...and we did it after only 6 pulls in total..with some people never having had seen it.

So, what does it take to kill LK in 25 man? Well, it's pretty simple actually. stack up, stack up, stack up, run for defile, switch targets quick...rinse and repeat, don't run into orbs. As long as people are raid aware, it becomes a fairly easy fight with this sort of mechanic. I love the rng of the valks picking up random people...despite that we would've killed him on our 3rd attempt if it wasn't a pal healer while the other pal heal dc'd. It keeps the fight from being 100% the same every time.

The thing I really like about the LK fight is that it is NOT a "gear it and win it" fight. Yes, you will need a minimum level of output or survivability, but anybody with some 10 man gear, a piece or 2 of 25 gear, and even some 25 toc gear should have plenty of that at this point, thanks to the 15% buff. What is nice is that this is a fight about awareness and skill of execution. There aren't too many of those left in the game these days.

Here's looking forward to HMs with the guild...some of which are jokes (gunship), and some of which have a gear and skill attribute to them. I have some experience in them from before I joined, but this should be a great time now for us to shine and push our way up the guild ladder quickly. :)

Not bad, considering it became a full 25 man guild just last week, so 1 week of progression is a full clear of available content to us.

Cataclysm - Will it suck?

By now, I'm sure everybody has heard a bunch of rumors and "blue posts" and random factoids about Cataclysm.

Here are my brief thoughts, with a couple reasons:

Druid changes:
1) Druid tank: New AoE bleed sounds really cool, I look forward to seeing how this works in combination with swipe.
2) Druid ability: BRING ON THE SHROOMS! Seriously, this new spell has a lot of potential to be amusing and useful, so long as it isn't abysmally underpowered or way overpowered.
3) Druid Tree: WTF? No more trees? GIMME MY FOREST! Druids are all about forms, if we wanted to stand around in caster form, we'd play....ANYTHING ELSE. We like our forms, don't take them away because you want to show off armor...make armor mold to our forms if you want to show the armor off. Don't be lazy Bliz.

Mark/Honor/etc changes:
This makes sense, but really doesn't change anything other than making bookkeeping (and explanations to new players) easier. 2 tiers of tokens/points...ignore the names and just think arena/honor and progression/prior-tier, and you're set.

Raiding:
WTF? Seriously, everything on 1 lockout? They clearly don't want people like me to play this game, when the only thing I enjoy is raiding. 10 man has the small charm to it, and I love running 10 mans with friends, either to help them out or to bust up an achievement. Then I run the 25's for gear and an actual skill check. Now, don't get me wrong, if Blizz can actually get 10 and 25 man raids to be the same...which they COMPLETELY failed at in WotLK (and let's face it, just scaling the fights means 25 mans can't be as interesting with as many things going on at once), then I'm on board for making 10 and 25 man gear the same types of drops. However, if you're making it so I have to choose to raid with friends vs raid with a guild of great players that I get along with...don't expect me to just go level another alt (which I can't do because I already have max number of chars on the server)...expect me to play less, which will lead to less fun with the game, which will lead to a canceled subscription. On top of that, now we'd be limited to only ever trying one mode and one type, so expect progression guilds to drop to 10 man mode for one boss, go to 25 man for the next, etc...and the whole system is just going to piss people off.

Artwork/Graphics:
The concept art looks amazing in most aspects, and the screenshots look pretty good that have been shown so far. Here's hoping it'll look great, but not make everybody have to get a brand new computer to run it...that's always been one of the nice things about WoW is that you didn't have to have a hardcore gaming system to run it, even if you wanted to be mostly hardcore about playing it. Now, I doubt they can come out with something that won't run on one of my systems acceptably, but I know many people with systems just keeping up with acceptable play levels in WotLK...so let's hope they won't all just stop playing WoW since they have no reason to get a newer computer otherwise, not being hard core gamers.

HELP! GEAR DROPPED! WHAT SHOULD I DO!?

I get this question so often, even from people not my class, that it is no longer funny, nor something I can often be helpful with in a time frame they hope for (while rolling on 1 item vs another).

I could tell you that you should always grab this stat vs that stat, or to tell you to take higher item level gear, or to always use your set bonuses, or to roll on everything usable...but all of those would be wrong answers (I may try to generalize for different gear situations though in the future). The truth is, there is no "easy" way to judge what gear and stat is better (though I think it is plenty easy right now, if you understand how your character works). This is because what stat is better for you will change based on the other stats you currently have.


Let me use a real example for me from recently.
There are 3 trinkets in icc that casters care about: Dislodged Foreign Object (haste with a sp proc on cast), Phylactery of the Nameless Lich (crit with sp proc from dot tick), and Muradin's Spyglass (crit with continual refreshing stacking sp).

When I was in my 3 pc t10 and 2 pc t9, glyphed for insect swarm, my moonfire dots could crit, and my insect swarm did more damage. Now, in 5 pc t10 I'm glyphed for starfall instead of insect swarm, and moonfiire dots can no longer crit, so I don't keep dots up as often. When you look at that, and being at more than 50% crit when raid buffed now, it is no surprise that while Phylactory was by far my BiS (Best in Slot) trinket then...it no longer is, and DFO is now my BiS by a good chunk. The trinkets didn't change, but my gear, stats, and bonuses did.

That being said, since I'm still using Eye of the Broodmother...either one is a HUGE upgrade, so I should, and will, roll on both (I already have Muradin's). I'd love to go get Reign of the Dead, but it just never drops, and the one that would beat out these is the Heroic version...which I doubt I'll be going back to get anytime soon.


So, how does one know? Well, if you're not math oriented, there are a lot of tools out there to help you out. The easiest one though, which helps very quickly answer the "which is better for me now?" question is to go use RAWR. It used to be download and run only, but now has a pretty handy web interface as well (though unfortunately it requires MS Silverlight to use it that way). You can find Rawr here:

Downloadable:	http://rawr.codeplex.com
Web usable:	http://www.elitistjerks.com/rawr.php

Once you load it up, go to the file menu and choose Load from Armory, put in your realm and character, and go forth. When you want to compare things, just choose that slot from the drop down on the right (just above the gear list that looks like a bar graph).
For dps, it is pretty simple...the larger the bar, the better the item is for you right now.
For tanking it can be a little bit different, as you have threat, survivability, and mitigation. You can sort by all of them, depending on what you need/want more of at that moment, as well as how the items are overall (which uses all 3 rankings).

I'm not going to go into the details of everything you can do with Rawr at this point, likely I will in a later post...but this should allow you to look at the gear you want to compare, and with reasonable certainty, know if it is better, similar but different, or worse.

The Short Version:
Don't trust a BiS list, or that Blizard's tier items are going to be the best. Figure out the math, or use a modeling tool like Rawr, to see what is actually helping you the most.

Blogging is go!

Due to popular request from many druid friends for information, tips, and gear/rotation help, I will be starting a blog.

This seemed like a good place to get started with a placeholder, so here it is. If I don't end up using blogger, I'll link to the blog location here.

The focus of this blog will be WoW from a druid perspective. I raid hardmode content as a boomkin and a bear, and have a background as a kitty as well. That being said, I also have many casual players as friends, and there will be lots of advice on how best to play, how to work with the gear sets that are likely available to you, and discussions about which talents are best in various situations and why. If you like the concept of theorycrafting to be most effective, but hate all of the math, you'll probably like how I discuss things and offer suggestions.

I realize there are many blogs out there on the subject, as well as countless forum posts in several high profile boards such as elitist jerks. I do not intend to copy them, nor discredit them, and likely will be basing some of my information on what is said in them.

Look forward to an update within the next month or so for me to get started.