Monday Random Thoughts

- Today is a long random thoughts post, but the end part I hope you find as humorous as I did.

- I was thinking a little about garrisons when something popped into mind, a question.

- Kind of hard not to think of garrisons when thinking of warlords.

- Not like they are adding anything else really.

- Oh boy, now I can do archeology with digs all over the world without flying, I am so excited, it will be so much fun, I just can not contain my excitement.

- For those that are not so great with picking up sarcasm on the net, that was it.

- Now to that garrisons question, after looking at the prices for the level one buildings in a screen shot, how the hell are people supposed to afford that?

- Mind you, I will have not problem with it, I know how to make money but I am one of the few it seems.

- I am guessing most of the people that stumble across my little part of the world here might have some gold reserves.

- If you went this deep into the warcraft world to find this, you have to be the type of player that tends to look things up which means you are better than the average player to begin with.

- But look at the bigger picture here.

- I asked exactly 86 people this weekend a few questions about gold.

- Guild mates, people on real id, people I waited nearly an hour with (all 6 of us that stayed) in the LFR as we sat waiting for tanks after they dropped (oh what fun that was, more sarcasm for those that did not pick up on it).

- How much gold was the most you ever had on one character?

- What do you usually like to have on you, just to get by?

- How much do you have on you now?

- I decided on a completely arbitrary number of 30,000 to be a number that would cover any and all needs, to be the number most people should always be walking around with at this stage in the game.

- Yes, that number is my opinion and I made it based on the fact most of my characters I do not play often, or at all, are near that number.  As I said, it is just an arbitrary number I am using to base things off of.

- Being I make no effort to make money on these alts, but do I loot everything on them and sell everything I can that they happen to come by, 30,000 seems reasonable.

- They made it with no extra effort other than doing quests and looting everything, so others can do that as well.  At least I would think so.

- Of the 86 people only 17 of them had ever even had as much as 30,000 at any one point.

- Of those 17 people 12 of them had more than 100,000 at any one point leaving me to believe that if you have even 30,000 you usually have more.

- Only 2, myself included, have ever had over 500,000 on a single character.

- This means that 69 people never even had at least the 30,000.

-  I would have figured everyone was walking around with at least close to that.

- 5 of them did not even have 1,000 on them when I asked what they currently had.

- 20 of them did not have 5,000 of them.

- 48 of the 69 had never even had 10,000 at one point, can you believe that?

- Seriously, it made me think if there was something going on in game that I did not know about.

- Was there some sort of crack addiction going on here and people were spending all the gold on drugs.

- And how come no one told me about this?

- I feel so left out.

- Either way, looking at all the data, most people, at least of the small sampling I asked, were broke most of the time.

- And using my personal number of 30,000 being what I think everyone would have, the numbers of people that did not have it was astounding.

- Now, back to the garrison images.

- We can, I am guessing here, get some of those building for free through questing.

- But if you do not quest and level through dungeons or some other way you can buy them.

- Just the few we see, at level one, will be around 30,000 for all of them.

- Which is, oddly enough, the number I was using as my basis for what a person should have or be around at a minimum.

- It was also the number that the majority of players have never had.

- So the question really is, who the hell is going to be able to afford to spend this much on garrisons?

- And remember, this was for the level 1 buildings, and not even all of them, not even level 2 and 3.

- You would figure, of the people I did ask, they would be the type of people that should have more gold

- They are people that found a guild, one in which if they ask, I and many others in my guild will be more than happy to tell them how they can make gold.

- They were people working toward their legendary cloak and were even willing to put in the time of waiting for a tank, without even complaining which was amazing, because they believe working toward something good is worth a little wait.

- These people I asked, the type of people that should be on the higher end of the gold scale, and only 17 of 86 of them had ever even had as much as 30,000 gold on them.

- The amount that would be needed to start just some of the level one buildings for the garrison.

- So that is what had me thinking, where is blizzard going with this?

- The people that will not do the quests and just dungeon their way to 100 are the lazy people.

- The lazy people are less likely to make money, because they are lazy.

- Trust me, if you want to make gold, just go quest.

- Not f'n kidding here folks, if you want to make gold, just go quest.

- I used to joke I was making 5-8K a day when mists first came out just from doing all the dailies and selling all the junk I would get to the vendor or the auction house if I were lucky enough to get something good.

- Funny part of that joke was that it was no joke.

- Just spend some time questing and you will make gold.

- Then it occurred to me, like a bolt of lightning from the sky, that is what blizzard is trying to do.

- They are pricing them cheap enough so that people like me that actually play the game can afford it but it will not make us broke, but high enough that it will get others out there so they have to start playing the game.

- Being garrisons is all warlords has to offer, people will need to do it, and to afford it, they will need to go out in the world, and with no flying, they will spend more time out in the world.

- It is an amazingly complex and really intelligent idea and unique approach to getting people out in the world.

- I like it and I think it is a quality idea blizzard.

- Bad news for you however.

- I like to grind, I like to do quests, I will go out even if there is no flying, I am looking forward to building my garrison, I will do whatever I need to do to get it done.

- I am not most people blizzard.

- Most people will quit, or buy gold from a gold selling site.

- Simple as that.

- Heck, I have the gold and I am already thinking of buying gold from a gold selling site for this.

- It took me a while before I figured out where blizzard was going with garrisons, and it was their effort to get people out in the world, either to do the quests to get the plans for free, or to make the gold to buy them.

- Killer idea blizzard.

- It won't work.

- And people keep asking about PvP for garrisons.

- No, just no.

- I paid for this game, not as a PvP game but as an RPG game.

- I choice a PvE server, because I do not want to PvP all the time.

- I do not want people to be able to attack my garrison while I am sleeping.

- What to know why blizzard.

- Because this is not a PvP game.

- I did not buy a PvP game.

- I do not pay a monthly fee to have access to a PvP server.

- For an extremely odd reason you might not understand but I will explain.

- I do not want to PvP and even when I do what to PvP I want to do so when I am online and I am the one doing it.

- I do not want the work I put into my garrison to be destroyed while I am offline because you allowed someone to attack it.

- No blizzard, just no.

- Do not even entertain the idea of PvP in garrisons.

- Don't even joke around like that.

- Or feel free to send me a refund for my warlords preorder because that is not the game I paid for and I will just quit.

- I pay to play an RPG.

- I already am forced to deal with people I would rather not deal with and will have to do so more in the next expansion because you took out valor gear.

- Don't press your luck.

- I and many like me already have one foot out the door.

- Forced PvP would be worse than the forced LFR you are pushing people into now.

- Speaking of forced PvP I finally won two battleground on one of the 7 characters I continually lose on for that part of the legendary quest line.

- Not only that, but I won them both back to back after having 11 losses in a row.

- Because I finally got a group that had a clue.

- Two times in a row.

- The odds of that as alliance is like winning the local lottery.

- I was on my bear, got mines, did what I do on my bear, and that is completely control the entire horde team.

- It took 9 of the 10 horde to take me down.  I was on them the entire run of the cart.

- I knew I had no prayer of taking the cart, but they kept calling for help and more horde kept coming to help.

- And I am unkillable on my bear, to some extent at least.

- Unlike most groups that are stupid as sin, this group understood what I was doing and was escorting carts while I kept the entire horde team busy.

- That allowed them to take control of the game.

- When the horde cart landed a switched out of bear form and let them kill me.

- Why you ask?

- So I could get back to the center faster than they could.

- I then did it again.

- They did manage to take me out this time with a little better of a concentrated effort.

- 9 on 1 when the 1 doesn't even have 1 piece of PvP gear, they should have taken me out sooner.

- But the damage was done for the horde, me keeping them busy for so long, and them getting such a hard on for me, allowed the alliance team to take the lead, one they would not lose.

- Even if right at the end it almost seemed like they were trying to lose it.

- See, what usually happens is that the alliance see all the horde in one place and go to attack them thinking "look free honor" instead of trying to win.

- This time the group saw all the horde in one place and said, cool, let the bear keep them busy while we win this.

- It is extremely rare to see an alliance team adapt like that on the fly.

- But get this one, it gets better.

- And what makes it even more amazing is the group for temple did not seem like a partial premade, even if it could have been.

- No people from the same realms really.

- We start out and get our two orbs, horde get their two orbs, and then as if there was a script that popped up on screen the entire alliance team went after the same orb carrier.

- Okay, we got lucky right?

- No, this was more than luck, one player did not come down to fight, he ran the the where the orb would be returned, as if he knew it would be back there by the time he got there.

- And it was.

- So seconds in and we are up 3 orbs to one and the rest of the fight was us battling over that 4th orb, which I eventually took.

- And just like the bear god that I am when I am on my druid, I destroyed anyone that came close.

- Within a couple of minutes of the match beginning it was over.

- Us four held the orbs and the horde stopped even trying to get them away from us.

- All thanks to a beginning that looked as if it were scripted.

- I can not believe that guy ran to the orb platform and got to it the second the orb returned to it.

- You can not make that crap up, that is just too perfect.

- And that won us the match within the first few seconds.

- Well, with my PvP done and my druid being a tank and me not tanking the LFR it was back to never getting the things I need again.

- Poor bear has been so left behind.

- I did not get enough sigils in the start, was missing 3 if I recall, when ToT came out.

- They did not drop in ToT (that is new for anyone that did not know) so I never moved ahead until SoO came out and they dropped there.

- So I guess I could just tank SoO each week and do it that way.

- Just no LFRs, LFRs are bad, LFR are evil, we do not want to tank LFRs.

- The might bear god only fears one thing, and it is not chuck norris, it is having to deal with the jerks in LFR.

- Not so much a fear, more of a "these people do not deserve me helping them" feeling.

- So I decided to switch to healing on a whim.

- First time since wrath.

- I dropped healing on my druid the moment it was announced that druids would not longer be trees in cataclysm and never went back.

- Now with the glyph I could be a tree again, so healing again was once more an option.

- If I can't be a tree, I don't heal on a druid, kind of simple right?

- I had 5 or so pieces I got from siege that I look for "just in case" I ever wanted to heal as no one else needed them.

- With some timeless pieces to fill in the holes I switched my offspec to restoration.

- After about 2 hours setting up my mouse over macros for everything, setting up my healing addon, reading a few things online and seeking out some of the best druid healers online for some pointers I headed over to the proving grounds.

- I had no intention of doing well, just an intention for getting a feel for my mouse over binds and heal bot clicks.

- Like I said, only one trinket, no gems and no enchants, but I did quite well.

- In my opinion of course.

- And it was with the most over powered class for healing in the healing grounds, so take me doing well with a grain of salt.

- It really does not mean anything.

- Bronze was no big deal, did not even notice I was healing, it was a nice introduction and allowed me the breathing room to look down at my heal bot to see which click did what and to try and remember which mouse overs where bound where.

- After bronze I noticed a few things I wanted to switch around and did so then went after silver.

- I managed silver, but not without some effort.

- I went oom so fast and I did not have as much time to double check if I was clicking the right thing.

- Had the tank in trouble a couple of times where I was waiting on a clear casing proc to cast regrowth that just never came and had to blow mana I really did not have, but I managed it.

- It was fun and mildly exciting thinking I will not make it but knowing with some luck maybe I could.

- I was running on fumes the last two rounds thanks to a few wasteful heals and no doubt feeling the missing second trinket that would have been heaven if it were something that helped regenerate mana.

- Before trying gold I made a few more changes.

- Innervate on cooldown, absolutely, I will need it if I was stressing for mana on silver.

- I was cruising through gold no problem and did so much better with smarter healing choices in the earlier rounds.

- Needed to pull out all the stops for gold using tree of life and tranquility, something I did not need for either bronze or silver, and I knew I had it.

- Then the hunter decided that he did not want that to happen and he just stood in crap.

- While I was doing better with mana this time around I was just not capable of keeping him up while not losing others.

- Everyone was taking damage but I could keep them all up, all except the hunter.

- After stabilizing the group with only one mob left I went into full on heals on the hunter giving it everything I had, spending all the mana I could muster, because I knew this was it, the second that mob died it was over, I just had to keep him up.

- I couldn't.  He was taking more damage than I was capable of healing.

- He died, I did not get gold, all because the damn hunter would not move.

- Now I am not bitter I did not get gold on the first try.

- I was using it to learn, not to "prove" myself to a broken system.

- But what is wrong with this picture?

- I've healed for many years, monks are the only class I never healed on at least in one way or another.

- Some day maybe.

- And do you know how I handle that situation 100 times out of 100 if I am in that same position of mana problems, one mob left, and I can keep everyone except the hunter alive?

- I let the hunter die, we kill the boss, I case revive.

- So how is it losing in proving grounds when someone dies?

- It is not realistic.

- If does not teach anything.

- And if it did teach anything it teaches the wrong thing.

- If any healer ever said, I was trying to keep the hunter alive and that is why we wiped, they would be kicked from the group so fast with a "learn to heal" tattooed on their ass.

- Let the hunter die so the group can live.

- Hard decisions like that need to be made as a healer.

- That is part of what makes a good healer a good healer.

- One that knows when it is worth the mana to keep someone alive, or knows who to keep alive.

- If the hunter was stunned in the bad, maybe it is worth spending the mana on him because it is not his fault being there as he is stunned but if he is standing in it of his own feel will, he deserves to die.

- Anyone that disagrees there has never healed before.

- Apparently, no one at blizzard that designed proving ground ever healed before.

- Because every healer you ask would have said the same thing.

- Can the other two DPS down the last remaining mob?

- Yes.

- Then screw the hunter, keep them up and win the battle.

- 100 out of 100 healers would say that.

- But proving grounds says, you are all wrong, healers.

- How do you feel about that?

- Blizzard just called any healer that makes the hard decision to let someone die to save the whole group a bad healer.

- Blizzard says you are only a good healer if you heal someone that is too stupid to move from the bad.

- THIS is how you are teaching people blizzard?

- Really?

- What are you making people prove in the proving grounds, that they are idiots?

- Well, back on task, after I got a feel for my abilities I figured I would try some LFRs even though I was already capped.

- I did not try gold a second time, in my mind I got it, it is just an error on blizzards part why I did not get the achievement.

- I went oom trying to save that idiot.

- I so wish I were a priest at that point, I would have just leap of faithed his ass and been awarded a gold my first time healing on that character in over 5 years.

- See, I do not mind LFR as a healer, just won't tank it.

- Make all LFR fights one tankable blizzard, then I might consider it.

- I did okay, not well, but okay.

- I did every single fight I could get a secret on and managed up getting 7.

- I ranged anywhere from 30K HPS to 80K HPS, depending on the fight of course.

- Getting a healing trinket, even if it was a crap one, bought my healing set up from a 458 to a 490, how awesome is that.

- Have to love going up 32 item levels with one piece.

- But that one slot was completely empty, so that might be why.

- I had mana problems with my huge 6K spirit to work with.

- I felt mostly useless and if the raid was ever in trouble I never felt as if I could really get them out of it.

- But each run, as normal, had at least one healer that WTF owned the place.

- Which was okay for me trying to learn I guess, I just went through he motions learning my abilities and where and when to use them.

- Not sure if having the power house healer there was a good thing or a bad thing however.

- I can't truly learn unless I am really tested.

- But I wasn't really in the position to do much if I were tested, so maybe it was best I wasn't.

- Picked up a flex 4 last night where a DK solo tanked all three bosses, it was fun.

- Doing it for heirloom weapon drops of course.

- Still have not seen one, but I do not do it often, it will come.

- I really need to start doing it on a few alts every week.

- There was a fully heroic geared feral in the group and I was looking forward to seeing what he could do.

- I have a feral in my group and with all normal gear and I can see what he does so I was excited to go against one in all heroic gear (minus two pieces).

- I knew I had no chance to beat him, but I wanted to see how close I could come.

- It is always fun to press yourself to do the best you can even when you know you might not be the best there.

- Well, for me it is at least.

- Like the one time I ran with a guy from supermassive.

- Him in all heroic gear, me in all normal gear, and I managed to stay within 20% of his numbers.

- Sure, he destroyed me, but I considered that a great success on my part to even get that close to him.

- The group was good, we blew through things as it should be.

- No voice chat, we were all experienced players, we all knew the fights.

- The feral druid however let me down.  He beat me on 2 out of the three instead of all three like he should have.

- And the ones he beat me on, blackfuse and garrosh, he should have beat me by a lot more.

- Beat me by 80K on blackfuse, but what do you expect there when I did 3 belts.

- But only beat me by 35K on garrosh.

- I was expecting big numbers.

- Makes me wonder, how do people get that sort of gear if they do not know how to use it?

- I mean to have all heroic gear you needed to down a lot of heroic bosses right?

- He should have come close to doubling me.

- At least doubling me on blackfuse as I was on belts.

- There was another hunter in the group, had 7 warforged pieces, one heroic piece, so I guess he was more along the lines of who I should judge myself against.

- I just couldn't, because I only show the top 10 on my recount, and he was never on it.

- The healer in the group was awesome however.

- Disc priest pulling over 250K HPS and 150K DPS.

- She beat some of the DPS.

- She beat the hunter I said I should be competing against.

- Makes me wonder what people are doing sometimes.

- Are they even trying?

- That might be it.

- I mean, I was not trying my best so maybe they were not either.

- I was tying however, I was not phoning it in so to speak, but with this fill in computer until I get my new one I do not have all my addons.

- I am lagging a bit in large groups.

- And I have not completely set up my screen and binds to what I am comfortable with yet.

- Waiting for the new computer before I go all out, so I am not at my best.

- And I still pulled my own weight.

- Sorry, but someone with a 570 item level only doing 170K is not pulling their own weight.

- Sure, is 170K more than enough for flex?  Yes, by a county mile.

- But if that is all you can manage, you are not pulling your weight.

- The group tanked garrosh in a way I never did it before.

- We all stacked on top of each other at all times.

- Just killed the weapon with AoE when it came down on us.

- I wonder if you could get away with this in normal.

- Had never done it that way.

- Not sure we would be able to get away with that on normal anyway.

- It is one of those flex things, or when you come back to normal in heroic gear things.

- I do want to leave this random thoughts off with what I believe to be a very funny story.

- I decided to so some LFRs on my mage this weekend.

- He too has been languishing on the secrets part of the legendary for a long time.

- Figured I would do one or two and whatever popped up maybe I would get lucky and get a few.

- Didn't happen, but I did manage to experience of the most head scratching moments I have ever experienced in the LFR.

- Not once, not twice, not even three times, but over and over through three different LFRs.

- What am I talking about?

- My mages rune of power.

- I've been trying out the rune of power lately and all I can say about it is that it needs to be instant cast.

- However, whenever I would place it anywhere on the ground, people would move to it.

- I mean, like instantly.

- One time while waiting on some people before a boss I walked to the side and dropped my rune of power.

- Nearly the entire raid moved over to where I dropped my rune of power.

- The first thing I thought of was, I wish I could get the DPS to move like this when I am on my healer.

- People used to run from my healing rain on my shaman.

- Not kidding, I used to tell people that had to stand in it, that it was a good thing I put down.

- People seem to always run from crap on the ground.

- Well, some of them, at least, that are not hunters in the proving grounds, like to run from things on the ground.

- Yet through out a few LFRs I did, whenever I placed my rune down, people moved into it.

- I would place it on the other side of the room, as I knew I would be moving there shortly, and the three or four people standing with me would run over to it before I even got to it.

- Not on one fight, on all of them.

- Was some memo put out that said the rune of power is where everyone needs to stand?

- Does it offer some benefit to people other than the caster and there is just something I do not know about it?

- Were they just using it because they had no clue and the figured they would follow me?

- Did they confuse it with a healing circle?

-  I just found it weird that they kept moving into my rune of power, no matter where I placed it.

- I was on vent and started to play a game with my friends called, guess how many people run to me.

- I would place a run of power down and you had to guess how many people in the raid would be in the radius of it after 10 seconds.

- It was so funny.

- Maybe if it were a one time thing I could chalk it up to coincidence they moved as I moved or to the same place I moved to.

- Maybe if it only happened in one LFR I could chalk it up to perhaps a few people didn't know what to do or where to move and I made for an easy maker of who to follow because of the rune.

- But to happen in multiple LFRs with multiple different people?

- Yeah, that one will keep me scratching my head for a while.

- It was funny however saying on vent, "I am going to make them all run to the other side of the room."

- And then laughing my ass off on vent as they did it.

- Have a great day.

Reagent Bank, Toy Box, Void Storage and Stack Size... Sometimes The Little Things are the Best

In case you have not heard the news we are getting a little more storage space.  No sign of new bags yet and if I remember correctly a blue posted on twitter we will most likely not be seeing any new bags in the near future as they believe they have gotten big enough.

So there needed to be other ways for us to clear up bag space and it seems one of my biggest "wants" on my wish list is getting some addressing with the coming of warlords.  Over the years I have posted many articles on things I wanted to see added, and more bag space was always on it.  Or things that I would buy from the blizzard store, bag space was always on it.

When ever you would ask me what were the things I most wanted to see added, in that conversation bag space would come up.  It is a little thing but it is an important thing, at least to me.  In every game I have ever played bag space is the most important thing.

I've played many games and many free to play games, which basically means you buy stuff and one thing is always the same.  In all the free to play games the very first thing I do is go and buy all the options for bag space.  I do not buy the other goodies 99% of the time but you sold me, you made money off me, with anything that provides me with more space.  See, that is how important bag space is to me.  I will actually pay real life money for it.  Even in a game I am just testing out and don't even know if I want to play.  Just to make life a little more bearable while testing it out. Bag space = instant sale.

Warlords is coming with a lot of ways to help clear up bag space and I would say they are all extremely welcome.  As I keep saying, warlords is a one trick pony.  It is all about garrisons.  The expansion has nothing more to offer.  But while it does have nothing more to offer in terms of actual new content that couldn't have just been added via patch it does seem to be offering us a lot in terms of quality of life issues such as storage.  We should not have needed to pay for an expansion to get any of this, but that is a post for another day.  Now we will go over some of the ways that blizzard has been so kind as to give us, or at least me, some of the storage things we wanted.

1) Quest Items:

Stealing a page from Rift, which I said they should have done since the first day I played it, they are changing how quest items work.  They will no longer take up bag space, they will now go directly into your quest book like they do in Rift.

Nothing was worse than picking up a series of quests at a low level when all you had was your starter bag and maybe one 4 or 6 slot bag otherwise and two of those quests give you items you need to use on something and another one required you to pick up four items and bring them back.

This wastes 6 spaces, and when you only have 20 or 22 bag slots (16 plus that 4 or 6 slot bag) to begin with this was very taxing.  More than any other time in the game you do not want to leave anything behind.  You need to pick up everything to vendor it off to make some coin because you are broke.  So you want to pick up everything so you can sell it off.

Having quest items that are given to you to use and quest items you are required to collected appear in the quest log instead of in your bag frees up a lot of very important bag space at a point in time when your bag space is of the most importance it will ever be to you, at the beginning.  What a wonderful change that is incredibly long over due.

2) Stack Size:

Some items, not all, are getting a long needed boost in the stack size they can stack up to.  The last few expansions we saw things like volatile life, fire, etc in cataclysm stack to 250 and kyparite stack to 200 in mists and each time I would see them and think about them I would say, why can't everything stack that high?

It has routinely taken blizzard an extremely long time to update their stack sizes.  Do you remember when healing potions only stacked to 5?  Yeah, it took them awhile to let them stack to 20.  Do you know there are still a great deal of things in game that only stack to 5?  Yes, tons of them actually.

This time around for warlords they are not just adding one type of gathering reagent that will stack higher like the volatiles in cataclysm did or kyparite in mists did, they are adding everything.  Well, almost everything.

Your herbs, ore, leather will all stack to 200.  I just hope our cloth follows suit, and blots, and inks, and gems, and all the other crafting supplies we use.  Even if it turns out that only some of the things like the basic gathering items that come from the gathering professions like herbalism, mining and skinning are the ones that stack to 200 it would be a good thing.  Another one of those about time things.  Larger stacks for things we usually have on us in larger quantities is a nice thing to have.

I do have 2 worries about this however that I would like to bring up. 

One, this will allow bots to farm even more than they used to.  Does this mean blizzard is finally going to try and do something about them or does it mean blizzard is finally going to admit they do not mind if people bot.  One needs to be done or said with this change.  Either blizzard needs a 100% crackdown on this and will actively ban bots on sight or they need to come out and say they do not mind.  They can not remain status quo as have have been for the last years.

Two, are they going to change how these are listed on the auction house?  I am guessing not, they will allow people to list whatever the stack limit is.  I might be completely alone on this one but I believe even if we do now have a stack limit of 200 that we should not be able to list stacks of larger than 20.  Call me selfish if you must but there are various reasons as a buyer why I would not want to see selling stacks of 200.  One is that you will see stacks of many different sizes which in turn clutters the listing.  Two is that you get those jerks that will sell 20 for what a stack of 200 is going for and people will fall for it, they do it with 20 now, but it is more noticeable seeing a 1 in with the stacks of 20 than seeing a 20 in 200 will be, trust me there will be a lot of people complaining.  And three, because I would hate to need 6 of something and go to the auction house and only see stacks of 200 up there.  If I need 6 I might not mind buying 20 if I had to, I will use the others sooner or later, but I would not want to buy 200.  So I believe selling should still be limited to 20, at least for my own selfish reasons.

3) Reagent Bank:

Just take a look at this and tell me that it does not bring a tear to the eye of a pack rat?  It does to me.  I want to reach out and hug it and tell it I love it.

mmm.... donuts

98 slots of increased stack sized love all conveniently located in your bank.  Words can not describe how awesome this is.  I feel like Homer Simpson does about donuts when I look at this.  And do you see that quick add button at the bottom?  Click that baby and all those herbs or ore you gathered while out on your daily pilgrimage of slaughtering the natives will be placed into your reagent storage instantly instead of having to find them all and click them to move them into your bank.

What is there not to love.  98 more slots of storage, larger stacks in that storage space, and all located in a place you have probably visited a million times since you began playing, your bank.  But I bet you that I can make this even more appealing to you if you are not already doing your Homer Simpson impersonation like I was when I saw it.

Get this, now you can craft directly from your bank.  Yes, you heard me right.  You walk into the raid and think, oh crap I forgot my flask and all my herbs are in the bank.  No worries, pop open my professions tab, click on the flask I want to make, and it makes it from the materials in your bank.  So as long as you have the materials in your bank, you can make anything.  You no longer need to carry them around which in my case is awesome because I always carried enough around to make anything for anyone that might need it.  One more bag slot for me on characters with gathering professions because I no longer need to carry my profession bag along with me.

But that does beg the question, what is going to happen to all those profession bags?  They are now really a complete waste.  I have characters that are catch all characters.  I have one where all its bank bags are gem bags, one where all its bank bags are ore bags, one where all its bank bags are leather bags, you get the idea.  With all that stuff going into each characters reagent bag, with larger stack sizes to boot, what is the use of those bags any longer?  Is there a use for them?

With us being able to label our bags and what goes in them, any bag can be a profession bag while out questing.  I no longer need one character to have 6 gem bags in their bank because the reagent bank can hold more and hold them better.

We can still use them for additional space, but that seems like over kill, at least at the get go now that we have this massive storage space available.  What do you think the future of profession bags is going to be?  I think that is a solid question.

4) Toy Box:

I am a self confessed pack rat, a hoarder, a collector and many other things that tend to mean I have a lot of junk.  Some of that so called junk just happens to be toys.  I can not even begin to recall the number of toys I have had to throw away over the years when hard choices in storage needed to be made.  But no longer thanks to the toy box.

 

 

New toys... for meeeee.

From the early looks of it most of the archeology junk seems to go in there and many of the pieces of junk we collected around pandaria as well as most of the junk from the timeless island that we have littering up our bags at the moment.

The most intriguing thing I see there is the innkeepers daughter.  She is a dwarf and all but she most definitely will be a little on the squished side being stuck in a toy box wouldn't you think?  For those of your that do not know, the innkeepers daughter is a hearthstone replacement.  It works just the same, has the same cooldown as your hearthstone would, but when you use it the innkeepers daughter will follow your around for a little bit after it is used.  Now think about that, it is a hearthstone, in your toy box.  Does this mean another free space?  No more need to carry a hearthstone?

I love free space and so do most people but I hear a lot of complaints about this already.  "Why is this not in there?", "How come I can not put this in there?", "This isn't taking all my stuff, what use is it?"

Well in my always grumpy and completely diplomatic way of making perfect sense I will try and answer all those questions in one.  Who gives a crap if it missed a few things or a few things do not fit the definition of toys.  You still just had a boat load of space freed up.  Be happy with that you ungrateful little jerks.

Yes, I understand your complains.  Yes, I might even agree with them.  But as someone that easily has 100 plus things taking up space if they manage to put 90 of them there I am going to be happy to have 90 more free spaces, I am not going to be upset because 10 of those spaces are still used.

I used all 100 spaces because I wanted to keep those things.  Just as I will now use all 10 spaces filled because they do not go in the toy box.  Because I want to keep them.  If you do not want to keep them, throw them away.  Choices need to be made and like I said, I made a lot of choices that saw me throw away things I wish I had kept.  But the ones I did keep I kept because I wanted to keep them.

So will Dartol's Rod of Transformation be in the toy box?  I don't know, but it has been with me for, I don't know, 6 years maybe, and if it is, awesome, a free bag space but if it isn't, it is still worth keeping in my bags just like it was worth keeping in my bags for the last 6 years.  Just because a new system was added does not change the fact it is, in my eyes at least, something worth a bag space.  I am not going to complain because it is not in the toy box, I will just be happy that many others are.

5) Void Storage:

I am not really into trasnmog.  I don't do it on many of my characters.  My warrior does his helm and weapon as does my monk with their helm and one of my DKs with their starter gear but that is about it.  Only my main has a trasnmog set I went out of my way to look for and assemble on my own.  My main has a trasmog that is almost entirely made with things that are no longer in the game including Rhok'delar, Longbow of the Ancient Keepers and various other things that can no longer be attained.  I do not wear it because I think it is cool to have things no one else can get, I wear it because I think it looks cool.  To me at least and isn't that what transmog is about?

What should I wear today?

If you will notice from the image we are getting a second tab to void storage.  Something I and I am sure many others have asked for.  They could have added more too, heck, they can add one new tab every expansion, I would be happy with that and I am sure the mog enthusiasts would be ecstatic over that idea.

Oddly enough, even as someone that does not trasnmog at all I tend to keep a lot of gear.  Not so much old gear all the time but even current gear.  Maybe this will be better when I get something new and have that let me hold on to it feeling because maybe if I get the four piece I will put this on but not until then, etc.  Stuff like that.  Basically, enough that it clutters bags but with more bank space now it would be fine.  Now with the added bank space we will have with reagents going to their own tab and toys going in a tab of their own as well I will have more space in my bags but before that I used to keep all those pieces I might use some day in my void storage.

Sure, some might call it an expensive way to keep a pair of bracers that I might never use, but it was space and any space that is usable matters to me.  I also have a habit of the "this looks nice" thing where I hold on to something because it looks nice.  Usually weapons.  Not that I ever mog into them mind you, but I still keep them because they look nice.   With that said, they all end up in void storage.

For a great many of people this will be a huge boost to their personal space, something that might not seem like a lot to you or I, but it was something that was needed even if it is not something I would really mind if they added or not, but it is not just about me, it is about everyone and when looking at the bigger picture of not just me, this addition is freaking huge.  Outside of my main who keeps everything that says hunter on it, none of my characters will really need to take advantage of the second tab of void storage but my hunter will finally stop throwing away weapons that I think look nice.  Not like I would ever trasnmog into them, but I just like to keep them.  Hey, I have a problem with being a pack rat, I admitted it, now stop bugging me about it. :P

Side note for those that might be wondering, that mount you spent a ton on this expansion for the reforging on it looks to have a transmog guy in its place since the removal of reforging.  Can't say it will stay that way, but most likely it will.  I was so hoping it would be a personal banker in that space.  You know, a bank only you could use.  But oh well, looks like I wasted 120K for nothing and so did many others.

All in all the future of storage in warlords is looking kind of nice, a big step in the right direction.  But I will end this by saying what I have been saying for years, we still need a way to increase the size of our starter bags blizzard.

10 Reason I Will Not Get an Alpha or Beta Invite

Blizzard is sending alpha invites out and mostly the people that will be receiving them are people that are "known" for being streamers, bloggers, or otherwise ones that would give them press.  The entire intent of the alpha testing and the invites that are going out now is not only to test but to create some buzz.

So as someone that has been blogging for a number of years, has a fair (even if not large) amount of readers, and has been linked by others on their guild web sites, on reddit, wow insider and even the official forums you would figure I would be someone that could neatly fit on the hype train for them.  Even more so when I usually make an average of 5 posts a week unless I am on a break, and sometimes more if I feel there is something to write about so that would assure them that the hype they are looking for would be out there, in large amounts, and often.

But someone like me will never get an invite because for as much as blizzard wants press, they do not want me and people like me to be part of the people giving them it.

 10) They Don't Know Who I Am

It is kind of hard to invite someone when you don't know who they are to invite them.  So even if blizzard wanted to invite me, which they wouldn't, they would have no way to activate my account for warlords access as they would not know which account to activate.

9) I Sometimes Use "Bad" Words

While it is true that in the grand scheme of things my blog is not exactly what you would call bad in terms of curing.  I actually make an effort to keep it clean.  If I ever really spoke my mind about how I really feel about some of my LFR experiences most people that read from work would never be able to access my site because I am sure it would set off some word filter blockers. I might use a word here or there but in no way is reading my blog like listening to a couple of sailors on shore leave.  It is pretty clean in comparison.

8) I Have a History of Reporting Bugs They Call Features

This might sound silly but I report a lot of bugs in the game and you would think that would be something they would like from a tester.  However it seems a lot of the bugs I report turn out to be intended features.  Sorry, but if something does not work it is a bug.  Just because you intend to leave it that way doesn't mean it is a feature.  It just means it is a bug you do not care to take the time to fix.

7) I Report A Lot

Not just bugs, but I report a lot of things.  I report people for pulling ordos and wiping the group on purpose and other jerk type moves like that.  Act like an asshat and you can be sure there is a report in the game because of it.  I report that bot flying around the valley of the four winds and I keep following him around and tell everyone in my guild to report him and even switch characters to report him from other characters as well.  It is not just any little bug I report, I report everything that is wrong with the game in hopes they might actually fix it.  Bugs, people, errors, and my favorite error that they still never fixed, the dead zone while flying over ZG where it will dismount you, and the dead zone in the vale that does the same.  I've died from each multiple times.  I can even repeat the errors.  But they never get fixed.

6) I Report The Same Things Too Much

If I experience a bug on a quest while leveling my lock today and then experience it again tomorrow on my paladin while leveling him and then later that day on my priest while they are going through the area, I report it.  Hey, I reported it, is has not been fixed, I report it again.  Honestly if it takes them more than a day to fix a minor error they either need to hire more people or get better people than the ones they already have. (yes, I know how coding works and it is not as easy as that most of the time, but there are quests still bugged after years, there is zero reason they should not have been fixed yet)

And not just bugs, but like I mentioned the bots.  Not only will I follow him around and report him from multiple characters and get everyone in my guild to come and report him, I will continue to do so every day I see him.  I will even go look for him so I could start the reporting again.

5) I Put In Too Many Tickets

Like the tickets that me and everyone in my guild has reported this bot three days in a row and it is still flying around, why is no one there doing their job.  I will file it again and again and again and again until I see something done about it or someone contacts me and tells me what they are doing about it.  I've even gotten a warning for reporting a bot.  Yes, a freaking warning for reporting a bot.  As if blizzard is protecting the bot.

4) And I Am Confrontational About Them

As the previously mentioned bot thing.  If, on rare occasion, I get a person to respond to me and they give me the whole "we need to run a full investigation before we ban an account" line I do not give them a break.  It is an 85 flying in pandaira.  All their gear is broken.  They only land on the ore in the valley of the four winds where they are little to no chance of there being fights.  Open yours eyes, use your brain, and do your job.  What is there that need to be investigated?  No, seriously, what is there that needs to be investigated.  Case is closed, it is a bot.  End of story.   Now do something about it.

See, I am very confrontational about it but it is extremely easy to be that confrontational when you are 100% right and there is zero chance in hell you are wrong.  They are flying, at 85, they are a bot.  I still do not get the we need to investigate thing, open your eyes, see that level 85 paladin with broken gear flying?  There, you are done investigating.  I know it sounds like ranting, but I have actually said all these things to a GM.  I will always wonder how the hell these people got the job, they are all morons.  My favorite was the GM that said an 85 flying in pandaira is not proof of bottling.  Yes, and all that rain falling from the sky is not proof it is raining.

3) I Am Not Active In Other Social Media

I do not stream, I am not asking questions on twitter all the time, I do not have a podcast, I never post on the main forums.  All in all, even if they wanted to send invites out to bloggers to get some hype out there and even if they knew of me and my blog, I am not exactly as attractive of in invitation as someone who will stream and who will tweet about every tiny little thing they run across in the alpha.

2) I Am Opinionated

In and of itself that is not a bad thing but when many times my opinions are counter to what the masses might believe they figure that puts me at a disadvantage.  I like the idea of valor gear, I don't think letting people have easier means to gear up is a bad thing, I like focusing on making the content harder and making the gearing easier.   Blizzard does not like this idea because it goes against their desires.  The elitists do not like this idea because they do not believe that getting gear should be easier, they want to stay special snowflakes.  And the lesser player do not like this because it would mean the content would be harder because the gear would be easier to get and they do not want content harder, they want to faceroll everything.  My opinions are mine and I am usually completely alone in having them.  Blizzard really does not like the idea that anyone has an opinion different from them and they really dislike the idea of opinions that almost no one likes.  So my opinions hurt my chances.  What if I don't like something and am not blowing sunshine up their ass while in the alpha, they would not want that.

1) I Do Not Kiss Ass

Just take a look at everyone that is already in the alpha, they fit into one of three categories . They are already "famous" in game and have a huge following or they are press and/or addon makers or they kiss a ton of ass by always being on blizzards side or being so active in other mediums like twitter, that they can not be ignored.

All those types of people are the type of people they want riding their hype train.  People who will scream excitedly about every little thing they see.  People who will keep saying how awesome everything is.  People that will point out the best parts and completely ignore everything else.  People that will apologize for every misstep along the way.

I can not or will not ever be that person because I care about the game and want the best for it.  If something is not functioning smoothly I will not be one of those people that says "the feature is really great even if the interface is a little hard to deal with but it is worth it."  I will say, the interface is hard to deal with and no matter how good it is it will never be right until they can made the interaction with it better.  All because I care about the game and think the game should be best.  I am not going to forgive a bad interface because the end result is nice, the interface should be nice too.

But if I were to kiss a little ass and say everything blizzard does is golden and everything they are doing is the greatest thing that has ever been done in the gaming world and totally ignore every misstep they make along the way, I too would be in the alpha right now.

And that is exactly why I will not get an alpha or beta invite.

The Big List

Okay okay, I stole this idea from Alts Etctra's Big List.  Thanks for the idea, been a long time since I listed my characters and where they are in terms of leveling.  I am at work now so I am going to basically play this by memory and many of my low level characters will not be mentioned unless they happen to be ones I am currently working on, as I might have forgot them.  While I do not have as many alts at max level as Lyrestra does I am definitely no slouch either I would say.

Yes, I have multiple accounts and yes the server is merged.  That is how I have so many characters on my main server.

My Main Server:

Night Elf Hunter Level 90
Night Elf Hunter Level 90
Night Elf Hunter Level 85
Dwarf Hunter Level 85
Orc Hunter Level 80
Orc Hunter Level 17
Human Death Knight Level 90
Human Death Knight Level 90
Gnome Death Knight Level 71
Troll Death Knight Level 68
Night Elf Druid Level 90
Worgen Druid Level 37
Gnome Mage 90
Pandaren Monk 90
Draenei Paladin 90
Human Priest 90
Worgen Rogue 90
Draenei Shaman 90
Pandaren Shaman 90
Human Warlock 90
Dwarf Warrior 90

+ some other lower levels horde side.

My Role Play Server:  (I intend to have these all at 90 by expansion end.)

Night Elf Hunter 90
Human Death Knight 70
Night Elf Druid 27
Worgen Mage 90
Draenei Monk 35
Human Paladin 57
Human Priest 41
Worgen Rogue 33
Draenei Shaman 29
Gnome Warlock 27
Human Warrior 41

Horde Server: (New one I just started)

Blood Elf Death Knight 59
Troll Druid 15

Other Notables:

Tauren Hunter 90
Gnome Priest 90

Not listed but notable:

I have a horde server with 10 of the 11 classes but it is on an inactive account at the moment (pre mists which is why it does not have all 11 classes) and I have no intention of activating it at the moment.  That account also has a few 85 hunters floating around as well.  I also have hunters on various other servers at various other levels from 1 to 80.

Don't Panic: It's All in The Execution of Your Tactics

Don't panic if you are up against a boss and hitting a wall and you are following the guides completely but just can not seem to get the job done.  I am here to try and convince you that sometimes following that world first video on youtube is not exactly your best course of action.  It is all in the execution of course, but perhaps you just need to execute your tactics, not someone elses.

Sometimes even experienced raiders need to be reminded to go back to the basics.  Over the years I have had many friends ask me for help with strategy for their raid teams and I have sought out help from others for my team. 

While it is completely true that sometimes you will meet a wall that stops you because of the ability of your team or the gear of your team the majority of the times you can fix whatever is holding you back with a little practice and better execution.

If you can get to a boss easy enough, then you are on the boss you should be doing, in theory anyway.  So it is not a wall, it is not too hard.  You just have not figured out how to do that boss yet.  So lets get to some progression time.  Lets develop your tactics and not some tactics you saw a video for or read a guide on.   Everyone hits walls from time to time when the strategy guide they were doing just doesn't seem to be getting them past it.  Don't panic.

This tends to be a problem for all teams and I have surely seen it in mine this expansion a few times.  Each team is different and each team needs to handle a task differently.  I believe that is the key to being a casual raid leader because you can not just watch a video and say, okay lets do it that way.  It might not work for you because that is not how your team works.  So the key is to realize, as soon as possible, that you can not follow some video guide and you need to figure out how to make it work for your team.

The key for any teams success is the find the appropriate strategy for their make up and to execute it correctly.  Sometimes it takes a long time to find what works for a casual raid team, other times you get it right away.  It is why I find it humorous sometimes that my guild has no problem with bosses that many guilds consider a wall, but we will wipe 50 or 60 times on bosses other guilds say are no problem.  It is a matter of playing to your strengths.  In the end our raid team is not the average raid team because there is no such thing as average because we are all different so we can not go about things the average way.  Every boss we need to figure out how to do it in a way that works for us.

I've heard this line at least a hundred times from a pug, "I've never seen it done this way".  Many times when the fight is done they say something like, I am surprised that worked or I can't believe how easy that was.

It does not mean we are a better group, hell no we are not, but we play to our strengths and work with what we are best at executing.  As I said, we are not the average group.  We have had some great luck over the years with finding some exceptional damage dealers but we rarely if ever have any really outstanding tanks or healers.  Capable, yes, more than capable, sure, but exceptional?  Nope.  There have been a few exceptional tanks or healers that passed through, but they either moved on to more progression, or they quit the game outright, so we make do with what we have.

Most guilds usually hang their hat on an amazingly over powered and exceptionally skilled healer or tank or if they are lucky both.  When they have that combo you can see them usually as a realm first or realm top three team.  We have sat realm number 4 at best since wrath and that is because we never had that one magic piece that could carry us through.  We needed to work our way there on the pure power of execution, and more so finding out how exactly we need to execute fights to make it work for the team we had.

I think I learn more each tier when it comes to being a raid leader.  I am still not a very good one in my opinion.  I get comfortable with my people and learn what they are capable of doing and I play to those strengths but whenever we get new people in the mix it takes me a while as I get a feel for them, what they can do, and how well I can trust them with a task.  But the key to nearly every boss we down for the first time is not my ability as a raid leader that gets it done but their ability as players to execute things in a way that perhaps the videos did not show.  Them following my sometimes insane tactics with excellence of execution is what downs the boss.  In the end, it was because with our make up, we could not do it the way the videos showed so we needed to do it a different way.

And this is what the post is about.  It is all about the execution of your own tactics.  They might not be the right way to do it but sometimes, based on your teams make up and ability, it is the only way to do it.  Remember what I said, usually if you can make it to a boss without issue, you can beat that boss with a little work once you find the tactics that work for you and execute them correctly.

Many guilds get caught watching a video, then another, and finally a third, and they see three guilds doing basically the same thing and think to themselves, this is how it is done.

Let me be the first to tell you that assumption is completely false.  That is how it could be done.  That is not how it should be done.  Just because it worked for them doesn't mean it would work for you.

Most raid teams that get stalled on a boss get stalled there because they are trying to do something they are just not capable of doing, or they might be capable of doing but it will just take more wipes to learn to do it.  They would need to go back to basics and build a strategy that works for them or keep attempting to do it someone elses way that does not meld well with their teams strengths.

Horridon the guild killer was a boss like that for my guild.  My guild was good at numbers, we could burn things down with the best of them, but we were slightly lacking on tanks that were good at developing and maintaining AoE threat and we were at a huge disadvantage of having only shaman healers.

For weeks we went at the fight and wiped using the strategy that every video we could find, even different ones, we tried them all and for weeks we wiped.  We started to get a little further with practice, with some pieces off the first boss and some valor gear, but we needed to find a way that worked for us.  And, as a bad raid leader this time around, it took me way to long to make the decision to drop all the different strategies we were reading and watching and trying to find my own, one that would work for us.

Yes, it is mostly my fault as a raid leader.  It is my job to design the attack plan and I took way to long before deciding that following what everyone said is not what would work for us.  It was time to make a strategy that would be more suitable for our team instead of trying to do what everyone else was doing.  Sure, I could watch them, take ideas from them, learn from them, but none of those groups were my group and my group just had issues doing it their way.  I had to build a new way, a way we could do it.

We downed it shortly afterwards because we played to our strengths and built a strategy that worked and most importantly the group executed those new tactics designed just for our makeup perfectly.  We never wiped on horridon again.

When we would bring in a pug, or I would come into the second and third team and try to lead them past it, everyone would say, but that is not how it is supposed to be done.  And each and every one of them said, 10 minutes later while we were rolling on loot, I can't believe that worked.

Execution is key and it is not just for the heroic raiders dealing a lot more going on and many more abilities to watch out for.  Execution even matters for the casual raid team, at least if they want to down bosses.  Doing the right thing is the most important thing you can do.  If anything execution might be a bigger deal for the casual group than the heroic raiders because the casual group has to do the little things better because unlike the heroic raiders they are not getting near 100% of their potential otherwise.  So casual raiders need to be better at execution.  Execution wins battles.

Many bosses this expansion came down to that.  Tortos, find a kicker that is golden, the boss was an easy kill.  Tell them, do not worry about DPS, you have one job that you must execute correctly, kick the turtle.  Once done and you have managed to execute it perfectly, you can start worrying about your DPS.

It is often the little things that mean the most at the end of a fight.  The guy that kicked the turtle, the person that interrupted the venom volley bolt even if he was never assigned to interrupt duty before, the person that soaked an ability solo that never knew they could, the damage dealers taking bombs on jug because they could and it took pressure of the tanks, all little things, all executed correctly, all from people doing things they might not normally do.  It is all in the execution.

Lets take Jug being I just mentioned that.  A friend and I tanked a pug a bit ago, it was actually a guild run that just had no tanks so we both tanked, and one of the bombs was all the way in the middle of nowhere ville next to a hunter.  I was on bomb duty but if you ever tanked it you know after that is switch time and there was no way for me to make it there in time without using any speed and gap closing ability I had and to be able to get back to take the boss in time.  Not going to happen.  Plus, we have been killing it for months and whenever a bomb is way the hell out by me when I am on my hunter I pop deterrence and jump on.  I do not think, I do not hesitate, I just know that it makes the tanks life easier if they do not need to worry about it and losing a few seconds DPS is no big deal because Jug is not a DPS race anyway unless you have insanely low DPS.

The raid leader yelled at us after we wiped later, as tanks, because we missed the bomb.  I politely said in whisper, when a bomb is that far away it would be better for a damage dealer to use a cooldown and take it.  He responded that all the guides say that the tanks can handle them all and the damage dealers should not jump on them.

It is all about execution, if one bomb is taken by a damage dealer that can handle it then the fight becomes so much easier.  Like three tanking the shaman makes it so much easier.

Apparently I convinced him, perhaps it was the fact we had been downing it for months and his group never had, but either way he told his group that if one is far out like that to hit a cooldown and take the bomb.  We downed it the next attempt with no problems.

Just because you see a guide doesn't mean that guide will work for you.  You need to adapt, you need to execute correctly, and you need to work with what your team has.  If your team has damage dealers capable of taking a bomb that is far way, let them, it makes the fight easier.  If your team has someone that can switch to third tank on shaman, let them, it makes the fight easier.

On protectors, earlier in that run, the raid leader called for the mark to be put on the hunter, which is a heroic tactic, on normal we just put it on the He tank.  Sure, a hunter can take it no problem and for heroic it is the common tactic, but it is not necessary really.  At least that I could understand why he was doing it that way even if I did not agree with the need to do it.

In the past I often used heroic strategy on a normal fight.  When we first made it to ultraxion in DS I had 2 people stay in, when asked why, I said, just in case someone makes a mistake we have a back up, and we rotated so everyone got to stay in at some point.  While the for our own protection thing was true, and did save us on more than one occasion, it was with the idea that it didn't hurt us to do that, and when we got there on heroic a little later we were already used to doing it that way and downed it easy because you did not need to teach people to stay in that never had to stay in before.

So sometimes it makes sense when first learning a fight to learn it with some heroic tactics in mind.  However, you always need to be mindful of the group you are with.  Each group is different and each group is capable of different things because of that.  So it is more important to do the fight based on what your group can do then it is to do the fight the way it is supposed to be done.

One time a pug with my group said, we did a fight wrong because that is not the way it is supposed to be done.  I said, we downed it, it was easy, so how exactly did we do it wrong?

That is the biggest issue with raid teams and when they hit walls.  They are trying to do something their team is not capable of doing.  If they just switch up their tactics some, find out what their groups strengths are, and use those strengths to develop a plan and then execute correctly, bosses will fall.

You can follow a guide, a video, or advice from a friend to the best of your ability and still not down a boss.  Maybe, just maybe, the next time you hit a wall you need to look at your team and think, we are not them, lets find what works for us.  Every fight comes down to execution, we all know that, but maybe it is not just execution that matters but the execution of the right tactics and the right tactics are the ones that work for you.  Who cares if someone tells you that you are doing it wrong.  Did the boss die?  Then you did it right.

Don't panic, start from the basics and use what you learned from the videos and guides to design a plan of attack that works for you because if you can make it to a boss with no problems, you can kill that boss with the right tactic.  Don't panic if the right tactic for your group isn't the same one as in the video.  You made it there, you can do it.  Just find the tactics that work for you and execute them.

Good luck.

Are We Too Dependent on Addons?

A few months ago there was an update to deadly boss mods and I had not downloaded it before raid time.  Being I had done all the fights already many times I figured I can live without that particular addon for one night.  I know what to do and when to do it.  I was tanking that day.  It was actually the most fun I had since I first learned the fights.

I needed to watch for abilities, I needed to pay attention on went to taunt, I need to basically "play" the game instead of just listening for announcements telling me when something important that I should react to was about to happen.  Admittedly being I had done the fights so many times by that point I really did not have any issues but it was still fun to actually have to pay attention to what I was doing again.

That did not change the fact that as soon as I logged out that night I updated my deadly boss mods so the next time I was in there I would have it up to date and ready for use.  Sure I might not have needed it and had done just fine without it but I'd gotten so used to having it it felt weird not to.

Setting up the game completely again as I lost all my addon settings as well as the list of addons I used made me realize that the game as presented by blizzard is severely lacking.  At least when looking at it from the point of things I can not live without.  Or at least feel I can not live without.

Some of the addons I believe should be something already in game, others I believe just add little extras that should not be added into the game.  For the things I believe need to be in the game, by default, the list would include an encounter addon like DBM, a UI addon like bartender, and a display addon like move anything along with adding raid frame functionality to make the in game raid frames work like a healing addon such as vuhdo or healbot.  I use mouse overs so I can actually use the in game raid frames to heal, but some click functionality, size modification and display options would be a huge addition to the game and like the other things I mentioned, should all be baseline in the game and should not require an addon at all.

I am still fishing up addons as I remember them, usually when I need them, but there were the few addons that stood out that I down loaded right away.  Addons like weak auras, while amazingly useful, require a massive amount of work to make them work exactly how you like them, and while just trying to get my characters functional again even if not as good as they can be, I waited on downloading them until I have time to set them up correctly.

Here is a list of some of the addons I installed as soon as I downloaded the game, and the ones I believe are absolutely required for me to play, or at least play at minimal comfort.

Deadly Boss Mods:

This is an addon I can not believe has not been made standard in game yet.  At least some of it.  I have seen more than a few blue posts they explain why it was not added.  They believe it is better to let others design it because they should not give everything away about an encounter and would rather people experience it.  Or something along those lines.

Now, let me play the voice of reason, or at least reason as I see it.  Any player that cares about their raiding will have deadly boss mods.  Also, any player that cares about their raiding could probably do the fights without the addon because they care about their raiding and they would at least attempt to know what to do and how to react addon or not.

The people that do not download the addon are the people that need it the most.  So while blizzard believes it would take away from the game if they added these in game hints, they are wrong.  It would add to the game.  It would help people learn and if you have ever done the LFR you know taht there are a lot of people that have a lot of learning to do.

The people that do not need the hints have a add on that gives them, sure it makes them a bit lazy sometimes, but they have it.  The people that do need the hints however will not have the addon.  So it should be base line in game.  Something that yells at the person, you are standing in fire, move.  Or you have a debuff on you, move out of the group until it is dispelled or falls off.  You need to stack up at this point, you need to spread out at this point.  The people that really actually need to see those tips are not seeing them because they do not have deadly boss mods or a similar addon.

So, without any hesitation, I say this is one of those must need addons and even more so, it is one of those must be added baseline to the game addons.  Just like they added quest helper because it was such a huge success and it made questing easier and better for everyone, deadly boss mods does that for raiding.

Along with DBMs I downloaded the BC & Vanilla mod, the wrath mod, the cata mob and the PvP mod.  Might as well have them all, even more so if you ever do any throwback stuff.  I had never had the PvP mod before and even after doing some PvP I still do not know exactly what it does, I surely did not notice anything.

Bartender4:

This is the second thing I added and I really do not understand why there is not a functionality like this already in game.  I mean really, the bar system is horrible in game.  I had, over the years, used others like dominos and while I liked that dominos gives me more options in some places than bartender does, mostly the ability to move the loot roll area and the boss boxes, bartender just seems so much more user friendly.  And now more than ever before I just wanted to get my characters set back up again.

I used to have a different bar set up for all my characters as it was built for them over the years and it was what I was comfortable looking at.  Healers had one type, hunters another, tanks a third, etc.  For now however, just to get things rolling, I built a standard set up and excluded bars 7, 9 and 10 because those bars are used on some classes like a rogue for stealth, a druid for bear or cat form as well as stealth, a monk switching stances, and things like that.  Then I just copied that set up from one character to the next and moved my abilities around a little to work with that set up.  For the time being at least.  I was not setting characters up for optional, just setting them up for capable.

How anyone can play with the default bars amazes me.  I know some very good players that do, seen some videos of top players that do.  I just can't.  I need to have my bars looking more, uniform.  Hey, I am weird that way, what can I say.  Either way, I can not live without this addon or at the very least, I would not want to play without it.

Altoholic:

Oh my god how does anyone that has as many alts as I do live without an addon like this.  When it comes to addons that should already be in game this one has to be at or near the top of the list just for its functionality.

I love that if I need something like ghost iron bars I can just hover over a ghost iron bar and see my warrior has 32 in his bags, my hunter has 2 and my druid had 14.  If I had no bars I could hover over ore and see who has it so I can make some bars.  When making stuff, or when leveling, it is invaluable.  Sometimes someone in guild will say, anyone have some star rubies, I would say link one, then I click on it and say, I have 19 in my guild back, how many do you need.

Why is a function like that not already in game.  And even if you do not have the item as long as you know how to spell it you can search for it.  Great for finding where you sent those plate heirlooms.  Ah, my DK on the proudmoore server has them.  I can find them no matter what server I am on because the game tells me who has what in their bags.

One issue with installing this is that you need to populate it which meant when I logged into each character to fix them up I needed to open all their bags, their bank bags, their void storage, the guild tabs, and their mail, so I could populate my list and have all that stuff at my finger tips.  Another beautiful thing is it telling you when you have mail about to expire.  Sometimes it does not work perfectly, but if you are like me and have lost over 1000 frostweave cloth back in wrath when bouncing them around, you use whatever you can to try and keep that from happening ever again.

Altoholic should be part of the basic game, no doubt about that.  But seeing how long it took them to add something to search our own bags I don't foresee them adding anything that lets us see all our characters bags any time soon.  Maybe in 50 years at the rate they are going.

Quartz:

There are other addons that do cast bars and some might say there are other addons that do cast bars better but for me quartz is a winner hands down.  Again, like with my bars on bartender I used to have different set ups for each character, I also had different set ups for quartz for each character.  However in an effort to just get going I made one master quartz set up and copied it to all my characters as I logged into them.

I like that I can put so many bars in the places I want and change their appearance.  For DoT tracking each class has class based addons but if you are like me you can do just fine with quartz.  Right over your cast bar will be what debuffs you have on the mob you are attacking.  So as long as I can see that I can make sure to recast my rupture with less than 1 second left, or see if my serpent sting fell off, or see how much time is left on my shadow word pain.

Again, there might be better addons for each case, but this one addon is so friendly and easy to use once you understand it (which could take a little playing with) that I only need this one for now to get going and it really should not hurt me to be missing a few others because it really can fill a lot of holes by giving me the data I need.

As much as I like this addon it is not one that I would say should be base line in game.  This really is a mod, doing something differently.  Everything is does is already in game, I just like the way this does it so much better.  A friend said, I do not play any casters, what do I need a cast bar addon for.  I said, trust me, you do, and he downloaded it and never regrets he did.

OmniCC:

This is one of those addons that you download and forget you have, but when you log in and it is not there you notice instantly.  It places a timer on all your abilities to let you know how much time you have left on them.  For the longest time I used other things to track this (as will be noted later) but once I downloaded this I can't see how I ever lived without it and even more so I can't believe this is not an actual function in game already.  How hard would it be to show a countdown on your ability?

Healbot Continued:

Honestly I have not been happy with healbot this entire expansion.  From hiding your in game raid frames, to not remembering your settings on a per character basis the addon has become as much of an annoyance as it has been a godsend.

I despise that when setting it up again I made a profile for "priest" so I only had to do it once for my multiple priests but low and behold it doesn't work that way.  It saved the layout I designed for priest, sure, but I still needed to set my abilities for each one.  If right click is power word shield for me, I want it to be power word shield for me on all my priests and if I choose the priest set up it should copy that completely.

Then general annoyance two is that when I log into my shaman with my new shaman profile it loads as priest, because a priest was the last character I was on.   So I switch it to shaman, play on my shaman, then later go back to my priest, and it is on my shaman profile, I have to switch back to priest.  If heal bot really wanted to fix themselves and get back in, at least my, good graces they would fix it so that a profile that is saved like "priest" saved not just the layout, but the abilities, and each character would remember what its own design is so when I logged into my priest I got priest and when I logged into my shaman I got shaman.

All that aside, and it might seem like a lot of complaining, the reason I downloaded heal bot over vuhdo or any other healing addon is because heal bot is still the absolute easiest to use, to set up, and to understand for a beginner.  As such, to get going, which is my number one priority now, it was the best one to use.  Maybe if I used one of the other addons more often I would know how to fix them up nice and quick too, but while some might offer more power, or some better functions (like the range and arrow on vuhdo) that I like, heal bot gets the job done and gets it done very well and very quickly.

Remember, as I said I use all mouse overs.  I don't even need a healing addon to get the job done, but it does make things easier, much easier, and as such I like the light weight heal bot over many others.

Not to mention the number one best reason to use heal bot as opposed to other addons.  Because it is so simple and so customizable, you can use it on any character for any reason your heart desires.  I use it on my paladin for my hands, from hand of protection to lay on hands.  I could use it on my hunter for misdirection and masters call.  I can use it on my tanking druid for a the battle res.  I can use it on my warrior for intervene.  I can use it on my DK for his res.  Anything that would require me to select a target and then hit a key is done much much faster if you can just right click on a name on heal bot to get it done.  A DK battle res in the middle of battle when you do not need to find the person to target and can just click and revive can be the difference between life and death.  Removing the step of targeting is always going to up your game and heal bot helps me for that.

Might there be better addons, sure, but I am comfortable with this one and even with my many complaints about it this expansion it is still my healing addon of choice. 

It is also something that should already be in game.  I can, and have, pulled the in game raid frames out and healed directly from them, thanks to mouse overs.  If blizzard added some ability to modify them such as size, shape, click ability and display, they could effectively replace many healing addons or even make healing a much more attractive endeavor for the player that doesn't know about addons but would really like to heal.  Sure, there would still be addons that will do it better, but some of the basics of healing addons should already be capable of being incorporated into the in game raid frames.

Need To Know:

Being I am using my quartz to track my debuffs on targets I need something to track the buffs on me.  Again, there are many others that do this but I like the ease of use of need to know.  It is simple and even a beginner can figure out how to use it really fast.  You can place it anywhere you like and add as much as you want to it, buffs on you, debuffs on your target, tracking cooldown, etc.  You can change it size wise, position wise, color wise, display wise, and make it just exactly what you want it to be. 

Being I have omnicc taking care of cooldown and quartz taking care of debuffs I tend to use need to know for buffs on myself like stacks of backdraft on my lock or slice and dice on my rogue or tigers paw on my monk.  Either way, having this in a good and easy to see place can mean a lot when it comes to doing your job to the best of your ability.

Tidy Plates:

Tidy plates and its associated packs change the way the name plates appear and how they act.  I love this addon and it is really useful and was even more so back in the day when aggro management was actually really important.  You can adjust how the plates react so you know when you are starting to come close to pulling aggro and then when it gets nice and huge and red and spiky you know that you are about to be facing the floor boss if the tank does not taunt.

The treat plates are also great as a tank on keeping an eye on aggro and even in today's game you can lose some mobs on AoE and this will let you know which ones you might be on the verge of losing or even more so which ones you have lost by making the name plate huge.

It also can be used, if you wish, to track the debuffs you have on a target visually with images and timers but I tend not to pay attention to them myself as I monitor them elsewhere but it is a good feature.

The only thing that could make tidy plates better is something I do not believe can be done in game and that would be to move where the plates appear.  I would love, mostly on bosses, if they could move the plate to appear at the mobs feet instead of its head.  Even playing as I do with my camera all the way out there are many times I can not even see the name plate so the theory of even having one means nothing.  It would be nice if blizzard would add a way to change where the plates appear in reference to the mob.   Top, middle, bottom, what have you.  Either way, it is a good addon and I have gotten so used to having better name plates playing with the basic ones is just, well, boring.

Recount:

Not really required, but I do enjoy seeing how I am doing as it helps me get better.  As a damage dealer it is always nice to see yourself at the top of damage done and at the bottom of damage received.  It is even more fun to tank ordos and be top in damage done.  I am going to miss vengeance.

Pet Battle Teams:

I do not know why this addon is not already base in the game.  Having the ability to make multiple teams so you can switch out on the fly is invaluable.  Name the teams so you know what they are for.  Sadly I lost all my teams and have not been battling for a long time so I do not remember them off the top of my head and it will take forever to make them all up again.

I had a leveling team to power level pets, a few different ones, depending on where I decide to do the power leveling.  I had multiple PvP teams.  I had teams for every daily boss, for every end boss, for every spirit boss.  I had an all beast team, I had an all flying team, I had an all critter team, etc.  I had my teams for all celestial bosses and teams for all the battles I might run into leading up to them.  I named them all so I knew which one was for which and could switch on the fly.

Why oh why is this not in game as is?  If it were I would not have lost all those teams.  Now I need to make them all over again and I am not looking forward to that at all.  A long time ago I was going to make a post and list all the teams I used for all the bosses and now I am regretting that I never got around to it because I could have used that to rebuild my entire collection of teams.

At the moment, this part of the game is the game that lost the most from me losing everything. Sure I still have 100s of max level pets, many rares and many perfect ones for battling, but I need to redesign the best team for all challenges and I am not looking forward to that.  So I do not see myself doing any pet battles any time in the near future.  Maybe I will look online, maybe someone else made a list of all the best teams for all the battles and I can just copy them.  But it will not feel the same.  When I made all those teams it was before there were "best" teams.  I figured them out on my own because there were no guides.  Oh well, at least I know I did it on my own before, now I would just be happy to get it going again.

Silver Dragon:

It might be the oldest, it might not, but I call this addon the grand daddy of rare finders.  I call it that because any other one just wishes it could be as good as this one.  I use NPC Scan and of course NPC scan overlay as well and I would suggest you do also, but silver dragon is the best.

I love it even more for leveling because it shows all the rares out in the world, not just the new ones or one needed for achievements.  Any rare it takes note of and any rare is worth killing.  When leveling, depending on your level, a rare could be anywhere from the value of turning in 1 quest to turning in 3 quests, and that is a boat load of experience.  When you only need 35K to reach the next level and killing a rare of a higher level might net you as much as 12K when in heirlooms and rested, it is worth having an addon to make sure you notice that rare is there.

I always liked rare hunting even before all the cool kids where doing it and this has been my resource to do so since, well, as long as I can remember.  It might not really be something I could call a required addon, but I can't see me playing without it after so many years playing with it.

Handy Notes:

This is a newer addon for my addon collection but something I remembered so it was something I downloaded right away.  Although the site says it has been around since 2008 I only started using it when mists came out and even at that I started using it a little too late.  Already had the achievements for finding stuff but this addon made it so much easier on alts so I did not need to remember where things were.

Out in the rest of the world there really is not a great deal of use for this addon, at least not that I have found, but on pandaria I have found this addon priceless.  With additions like timeless chests, lost and found, lore walkers, and so much more it takes a lot of the hunt and peak out of tracking things down.  Love having it for when leveling so I stop and pick up all the treasures, can spin by all the rares, and when I get to max and get to the timeless island I know exactly where every chest on the island is.  All that and it ties into silver dragon to make rare hunting even better.

Handy notes are indeed handy.  And if you never got around to doing some of the holiday stuff like the lunar festival or the summer festival it even has additions for that as well.  If there were one addition I would say not to add it is the timeless island rares one.  Reason being, it puts skulls on the mini map where the rares might spawn.  It annoys the crap out of me and makes me think there is something there but it is not.  Let silver dragon keep track of the rares and let handy notes handle the other stuff.

Quick Mark:

A super simple raid marker addon I have been using forever.  There is not much to it but it is a decent marker addon I think it worth having and have been using for many years.

Move Anything:

I never had this addon.  Kept saying I would download it and never got around to it.  I figured being I was restarting from scratch, now might be the time to grab this bad boy and start moving the things that bartender could not move and there are no other addons that can move.

I had my first chance to test it out last night when trying to get some battleground wins to move one of my characters along on the legendary quest line (lost 5 in a row and gave up if you are interested).  I keep other things near the top of my screen, so the alliance and horde scores were obscured so I popped open move anything and moved them nice and quick and easily.  Awesome, how did I ever live without this addon.  It is now part of my must have list.

And Many More:

I still have a lot of addons I have not gotten the chance to get to.  I downloaded the things I felt I need just to get going again but in time more will join the list.  Weak Auras (even if I hate having to set it up again) will make a return for monitoring procs and perhaps even a few of the class specific ones like jshunter bar, slice admiral, shock and awe, and the like.

End Note:

So yes, I believe I am too dependent on addons.  I can play just fine without them but I don't think I would enjoy it half as much if I did not have them and some, like pet battle teams, make the mini game so much more fun because I do not need to keep a list on paper beside my computer so I can get the right teams together for each match up, doing that just seems so 1998.  Can I live without addons and play without addons?  Sure.  Would I want to?  Absolutely not.  I am spoiled by addons and freely admit that and I have become dependent on having them.

Monday Random Thoughts

- I have very good reason to be grumpy today.

- Oddly enough I am not really feeling grumpy, just defeated.

- My hard drive crashed and I lost everything.

- No warning, nothing, just died.

- I went out and bought a new computer and it had windows 8 on it.

- After just a few minutes using it I came to the conclusion that windows 8 was designed by a 13 year old girl with ADD.

- What is with all the giant squares with colorful stuff in them all over the place.

- Where the hell is my desktop.

- How come every single thing I open has no way to close it until I control alt delete to close it.

- And then it puts me back to that stupid screen with all the big colored squares.

- It seems like it was designed to work with a touch screen only.

- Ladies and gentlemen, we found a company that makes worse decisions than blizzard.

- And that is no small task.

- I want to thank the salesman at best buy that helped me out, it is not his fault that the person that gave the go ahead for the release of window 8 should die a horrible death.

- He asked me what I was looking for, I said, anything that can handle gaming.

- He was surprised, said as long as he had worked there only one other person had ever said they wanted a computer for gaming.

- Is being a gamer still that big of a stigma that people will not admit they game?

- He plays Eve, has for 7 years.

- We talked about gaming some and he was a really nice guy.

- Like I said, not his fault windows 8 sucks and the best buy didn't have any better gaming machines in stock.

- Either way, it was $1000 bucks wasted.

- I ordered a new computer online, much better suited for my needs, and it has windows 7.

- Cost me $2500 but I would pay that again 10 times over to never have to experience windows 8 again.

- I was looking at programs that can try and get the data off the old drive.

- None have worked so I am looking into the places you can send it out to.

- That will run me a lot more money I am sure and I am already $3500 in the hole.

- It is not the money that bothers me, it is the lost data that bothers me.

- I feel defeated.

- I had 3 new books I was working on that I had not had backed up yet, which is my own fault.

- Had no problems with my computer so you know the saying, out of sight out of mind, and I did not back up.

- All that time lost, over 800 pages of writing lost, so many other personal things lost.

- Then there is the gaming issue.

- Trying to remember all the addons I had.

- Then setting them all up to my liking again.

- New weak auras, new need to know, new bars, new heal bot.

- I spent the entire weekend, I am mean entire weekend, setting up my characters to be even remotely usable.

- I had wanted to take advantage of the double valor to get some alts some valor, but couldn't.

- Setting up all the addons made me wonder, maybe life would be easier without them.

- I should depend less on addons in the future, I just got so used to them.

- I really think blizzard should back up our addons and settings.

- Hey, at least I did not lose my macros, and I had hundreds of those.

- That would have been worse.

- So in case you ever lose anything, blizzard does keep your macros for you.

- And then after setting them all up there was knowing I was setting them all up only to be getting a new computer delivered in 2 or 3 weeks, it makes it feel like it is even more useless.

- If anyone has some idea how to get information off a hard drive (it just would not boot any more, not even from CD) please send me in the right direction.

- If I can't get my old settings back I might just say, screw it, and quit playing.

- It really sucks to feel like you are starting from the beginning.

- Even on a character I worked hard to set up I was walking around the world and it felt like I was playing someone elses character.

- It did not feel right, it did not feel like I was on my account.

- It felt like I was playing on someone elses account.

- I just do not feel comfortable right now.

- And I need to find my mouse disk and my keyboard disk, because playing without those "extras" they give me is killing me.

- Yeah, not so much grumpy, just defeated from losing everything.

- The game stuff I can rebuild over time, the personal stuff, sucks at a level of sucking I could not even explain.

- I can't wait until I get the new computer because I am going to take the other one I just bought out back and shoot the F'N thing.

- Windows 8 can suck my left nut

- It make what was already a horrible day worse.

- And on that note, have a great day, it can't be worse than mine.