Monday Random Thoughts

- What do the flawless battle stones sell for on your server?

- Around 15K on mine.

- I tried to be greedy when none were listed, as I have two sitting around, and listed for 25K but they did not sell.

- But at 15K they sell like hotcakes.

- Am I really that much of a cheapskate or is that a little out of line?

- I will sell at that price all day long if I can get it but I would never, even if I had a hundred million gold, pay that much for one on general principle.

- I'd pay 250-300 gold, maybe even 500 gold and suck up every one I could get. 

- Anything more than that for something I can get myself just by doing dailies or pet battling seems excessive.

- Perhaps I might go as high as 2K if I was desperate because I just caught a super hard to find rare and wanted to upgrade it, but 2K would be the absolute most I would pay.

- Oh well, a fool and their money will soon be parted, I will enjoy the15K you pay me for it, thank you very much.

- Got my panda monk to outlands, pretty quick too if you could see how rarely I play.

- Even have my professions up to the point where I can gather stuff, which makes me happy.

- I am not sure what it is but she is suddenly a beast.

- Yes she, sorry, can not play a male panda, just not happening.

- I was feeling off before then, if I pulled three mobs it was a struggle to survive.

- Hit outlands, I can pull 7 or 8 with no problem now.

- Is there a scaling thing with monks where they become over powered at 58 or were the outland mobs nerfed to all high hell when mists came out?

- I am sure it was not that I suddenly just got better playing it moving from one area to the next.

- There has to be another factor added to it, be it skill scaling, or mobs there.

- Either way, I did 57-61 in an hour and 40 minutes yesterday of actual questing.

- So glad to be able to quest instead of just gathering.

- I feel so far behind at the beginning that I spent all of 20-54 playing catch up on my mining and herbalism.

- Yes, I leveled 34 level just trying to catch up my gathering profession.

- One good side effect was while I had a hard time finding nodes, when I did, I found tons of gold.

- And I promptly sold the gold at 20 gold per ore.

- Amazing.

- My monk is completely independent, I only sent it bags to start and nothing else.

- It is still near 3K gold when it entered outlands.

- And that is without even trying to make money.

- I just sold what I gathered by putting it on at the lowest current price.

- I did not save it for when it sells higher, even if I could have.

- That is a good bonus to gathering.

- You will never be in need of gold even if you sell at the wrong time, that is for sure.

- The monks mobility is awesome.

- Having roll and the flying kick I moved from mob to mob in a massive string of killing.

- I only dipped below 50% health once and that was when I was level 59 and was jumped by 4 62s and I still beat them.

- A huge difference from when I nearly died just a complete of levels earlier to 3 mobs that were a level or two lower than me.

- If they continue to scale this awesome as they get higher, I can't wait to see what it is like at 90.

- And to think, being I have not quested, most of my gear is gear I got from low level quests.

- So I have my heirlooms and a bunch of equip at level 14 quest items or item level 21 gear on and can destroy like this now.

- Can't wait to see what I can do when I get some real gear in those off spots.

- Still taking some time off pet battling, that is one of those addiction things for me.

- When I do it, I do it in bulk and do lots of leveling.

- I noticed I needed to stop it or I would have nothing to do later.

- So I just do some dailies each week and work on tailoring my teams.

- I've gotten it that I can do 4 of the mists battles with only one pet now.

- As I keep testing I am sure I can get some more down to one mob fights.

- Gotten all of them down to two mob fights with the very rare need of the third to even be there.

- Even the legendary ones.

- I can one pet battle 2 of them.

- The last pet master is without a doubt the easiest pet battle in all the game even if he has all legendary pets.

- Actually, no, the one in valley of the four winds in the easiest but at least his are only rares.

- One pet, ends the battle at full life too.

- Just takes forever, but I level one pet through it at a time, doing it every day.

- So even if I am not doing much pet battling, I still do some.

- Can't just completely abandon the addiction.

- Had a run in with a weird griefer this weekend.

- He tried to grief me but really just confused me.

- It seemed like he was trying to kill me but he was not very good at it.

- Things like standing on top of me while I was fighting mobs and taunting the ones I was fighting so they would come to me.

- Excuse me?

- Three things, 1, my pet will taunt back, 2, even if it comes to me because you are standing on me, it will attack you being you are the one that taunted it, 3, I am a hunter, I would just move, misdirect, kite, etc.  It was not going to ever hurt me.

- He just confused me, what was his deal.

- I looked him up online and it seems he is just a jerk.

- Standard way to tell if someone is a jerk when you look them up.

- Bad gear, lots of honorable kills, and none of that bad gear is PvP gear even.

- Standard jerk character.

- I actually did not think the guy was trying to grief me.

- I thought that he was just not a very good player, so I whispered him to offer to help him, as to me it seemed like he needed it.

- I might be a jerk myself, but I can be a nice guy and help others too.

- I got a message that he was ignoring me.

-  So basically, this guy put me on ignore before he even landed and started to taunt mobs.

- He was prepared for me to blast him in whispers or something?

- It explains why he hovered a little before he started, he was putting on ignore first.

- He must have a lot of experience being a jerk if he ignores people before he even starts to do what he does.

- It would have been nice to actually talk to him.

- Wonder what he would have thought when he found out I was whispering him to ask him if he needed help and not to yell at him.

- He would have probably thought I was calling him a bad player.

- Jerks will be jerks, nothing you can do about that one.

- But even if this jerk was bad at being a jerk, I mean, I could not even tell he was trying to grief me until I thought about it after I noticed I was on ignore, he had to have some previous jerk experience if he knew to ignore someone before he started to screw with them.

- I think he needs to get better at screwing with people because he was not very good at it.

- I am thinking he might be an alt of someone else that is a known jerk but I don't know any of the places to track alts.

- The one on wow-progress will not work, because this character apparently does not do any raiding.

- I did look there as that is the only one that I know that tracks alts.

- I just want to know who he is to put him on our guild black list.

- Even if he did not grief me, he attempted to, and we do not allow anyone that acts like that in our guild or invite them to any pugs we assemble.

- So black list time for him and I would love to get a list of all his alts.

- He has to have some, because he was riding around on a raid mount and that character has no raid clears at all.

- I still wonder, why are people like that?

- What fun could there possibly be in attempting to ruin someone's game time?

- And what fun could it be for him when he is so bad at it, that I could not even notice he was trying to grief.

- I just thought it was an every day bad player and if it were not for the fact I am a nice guy and was going to offer to help him get better I would have never known or suspected.

- He would have just been another bad player in the legion of bad players in the game.

- Speaking of bad players, I decided to try frost for the first time since I was level 60.

- Needless to say that first run as frost I was the bad player, big time.

- Of course I did read up beforehand but things have really changed for frost.

- I need to rebind pet attacks so use the freeze thing and I did not do that so I kept needing to click that.

- When you are not used to clicking things like that it really throws you off too.

- And add to that, it was a bitch to target.

- So often I was doing it and it would not go off, as if a pebble in the road would not allow me to cast it because it was not a flat surface or something.

- One trash pull I spent the entire time trying to cast that F'N thing and it never went off.

- Thank god it was a guild run, I would have been kicked in a pug.

- I was doing from 20K - 40K depending, even on trash.

- I did that one run and said, I'll come back to this later, and gave up.

- I am sure I can do better if I gave it more than one run and 5 minutes reading.

- If I set up my binds and took in some dummy time I would be fine.

- It just did not interest me enough to want to learn it.

- I think that is the problem with all DPS classes for me.

- I love hunters, have even gotten spoiled by them.

- I can not get into any other DPS class.

- Tanking and healing is easy to get into, for me at least.

- Damage dealers are hard, because I put too much pressure on myself.

- For me there is no such thing as good enough for a damage dealer, there is always room to get better.

- And I guess I do not want to work that long road of getting that good at something again.

- I am already good at my hunter, I do not want to spend all that time getting that good on other classes.

- Just not worth it.

- Any one can pick up a healer or tank and do it well, they are easier, in my opinion, damage dealers, now they are hard.

- But only if you put as much pressure on them as I do.

- I think the reason tanking a healing is easier for me is that I put less stress on them.

- As long as I can do my job and we win the fight, I can work on getting better as we go and am happy I did at least what was needed to get the job done.

- When I play a damage dealer, even if we win the fight, I always say, I should have done better.

- So it is not that damage dealers are harder, it is just that I put to much demand on myself to be better when I play one.

- But either way, I like a challenge, so I need to decide what other DPS class I want to learn, so I can be a level of good I am okay with.

- I am tempted to say a melee character, as I have never played any melee long enough to get very good at it.

- The last time I played a melee to any success was enhancement shaman back in wrath.

- Perhaps I will try that again.

- Or maybe that OP monk can be my melee class.

- Rotation seems easy enough looking at it.

- Checked out a little on it this morning after my experiences yesterday to see if they get a boost or something later on, if anyone else noticed it.

- I noticed I am alone, the only person that noticed it.

- I also noticed, I have basically everything I needed for my rotation already, and I was already using it, and using it as instructed as per noxxic.

- Interesting, that I picked out the appropriate rotation having never looked it up, all on my own, without even thinking about it.

- Are monks just that easy that you can't make a mistake at it or have I just become so use to the game that I was able to pick out the best way to do things because I have been doing them so long on other characters.

- To nail a rotation 100% perfect having never read up on it at all seems a little extreme.

- Either way, I can see how they can be fun.

- In a melee sense at least.

- I just hate melee because there are so many effects going on there, how do people do it?

- And when you are color blind like me and there are a million effects going on, how can you quickly tell which ones are the good ones and which ones are the bad ones.

- I have to give good melee players credit, it can not be a very fun role to play at all.

- How they do it is beyond me.

- Have a great day.

Is Blizzard Sending Mixed Messages?

I wonder if sometimes the people at blizzard really talk to each other when they design things.  I wonder if they actually look at all the data they collect.  I know they are capable of doing things right, we have seen it many times in fact, but sometimes they just lose touch with some of the concepts they themselves created.

Lets take valor gear next patch.  I know it is just the PTR but lets look at were things stand now and then hope they look at their own statements and data and change it.  From the little bits of data I have been able to find, mostly on wow-insider* posts, the new valor gear will be linked to raid reputation.  What is worse, is that you will only get reputation for beating bosses.

Mixed message #1 here.

Point/Badge gear was introduced as a catch up method for new players or alts to get gear or for people with bad luck with drops to fill in missing pieces.  If you link purchasing the gear to a raid reputation to get to be able to buy it and that reputation can only come from killing bosses the odds are that by the time you reach revered to be able to buy the valor gear you will already have full raid gear.  Excuse me?  I need to be in full raid gear to buy the gear that is meant to catch me up if I do not have raid gear?  Yeah.  I absolutely read that wrong or I am missing something because no company as large and successful as blizzard can be that off base.  You need better gear to buy lesser gear?

So point/badge gear was added to allow people to catch up, but you can not buy it until you are raiding the current raid anyway.  Mixed messages much?   I at least hope the LFR awards reputation for boss kills or no one will be able to gear up a non raiding alt.

Mixed message #2 here.

Item upgrades were added as an additional way to spend valor if you do not have anything to buy with valor.  Excellent idea.  Keeps people playing because it keeps them wanting to cap because there is always something they can use valor on.  The more ways to spend valor the more reasons there are for people to continue capping.  I like it, solid idea.

Now enter 5.2.  Already mentioned, people will not be able to get the new valor gear unless they raid, so there is no catch up mechanic there any more and it is something new players and alts can not spend valor on.  So at least they can use that valor on the 489/496 gear and upgrade it right?  Nope.  That 489/496 gear will still be locked behind a huge reputation wall for new players and alts, and you will not be able to upgrade it because they are removing the person that upgrades it.

So people are left with two options, do the rep grind to buy lesser gear that is out of date before you even buy it and you can not even upgrade it, making that an unattractive option, or cap valor because you now have absolutely nothing to spend it on because they are removing the ability to upgrade gear.

So you added the upgrade option to give people more to do with their valor, and then release a patch that only raiders will have something to spend valor on and remove it so others now have nothing to spend it on?  Excuse me.

Do you want people to continuously earn valor keeping them playing all the time?  Then let them have something to keep spending it on.  Locking the valor gear behind a rep non raiders will not have and removing the upgrade option leaves them with absolutely no reason to even give a shit about earning valor.  The exact opposite of why the upgrade system was released.

Mixed message #3 here.

They want people to get to end game as soon as possible.  It is why leveling has been made so much faster.  They design things for the end game so they want people playing the end game at some level.  Even if that means the most difficult content they ever see in the LFR, the designers want them there as fast as possible.

So why are they making it so hard for the new players to get into it come 5.2?  Sub par gear will be all they can buy with valor and that will still be locked behind a reputation wall and they won't be able to upgrade it.  So if you want to play catch up quickly, valor gear is not the answer.  So grinding dungeons and LFR will be.

Being the new players and alts will not be able to buy the 5.2 valor gear there will be no quick catch up mechanic for them.  They will need to grind dungeons to get to 460, then those LFRs to get to 470, then they will surely need some reputations to get some 489/496 pieces to help get to 480 to get into the newest LFR.  And that is only if they get lucky with drops and you know that will not happen.  One of my characters has done the LFR, all 5, for 6 weeks straight and has not seen one thing drop, not even something he did not need.  So gearing up by the LFR is not really a reliable option.  Valor gear was always the best catch up mechanic and that is a non-factor if the person can not even get into the LFR that gives you rep to be allowed to buy it.

So they want people to get to the end game as soon as possible, but they do not want people to be able to play it?  What is with this speed is everything approach and then slowing them down.  If leveling was slow and gearing up was slow at least it would be consistent.   Pick a type of game you want to make and make it.  Making it both ways just sends mixed messages.  Do you want people end game as soon as possible or not.  Make up your minds.

Mixed message #4 here.

We want to give people options.

If you want to buy valor gear?  Do dailies.  Do you want to get elder charms?  Do dailies.  If you want reputation?  Do dailies.   I am one of the people that love dailies, except for the golden lotus ones, but I just do not get it.  Am I missing something here or am I the only one that sees only two options. Do dailies or don't do dailies.  I do not consider them options.

This is how options works.

If you want by buy valor gear?  Earn valor from the myriad of ways you can get valor (dungeons, raids, scenarios, dailies, challenge modes, etc.) and just buy it.  No gates to it.  Now that gives you options to get it.

If you want reputations?  Get it from quests, mob kills, dungeons, repeatable quests, etc.  Not just dailies.

If you want to get elder charms?  Have 10 for the first dungeon and 5 each additional.  Have each raid boss drop 5.  Have all dailies, even old school ones like the SW/org fishing and cooking dailies give max level characters 1.  Have scenarios give some, have the world bosses drop a few.

Giving more than one way to get everything means giving people options.  Telling people they do not have to do it if they do not want to is not an option.  Sure, it is a do it or don't option, but that is not a real option.  A real option is having multiple ways of doing things.  Having only one way to do things and saying do it or don't is not giving people options.  Definitely mixed messages, or just a complete misunderstanding of what options means by the people that work for blizzard.

Mixed message #5 here.

We want everyone to be able to see end game.  Okay, so LFR was created as a way for everyone to be able to see the raid content.  I can accept that, but if that is truly the case why is the LFR so hard?

I am not saying it is hard so to speak, what I am saying is that it is hard for the people it is aimed at.  If it were not for people doing slightly better, like me or you, or anyone that actually reads online about the game, the at least better than average player because we research, they would never get it down.  For the players it is aimed at, it is too damn hard.

So the LFR was created for the average player right?  Then why can't a group of average players do it?  If all the DPS were doing 30K and all the healers were doing 20K at most and all the tanks were rarely using the cooldowns, as those are the number the average player do, do you think anything in even MV LFR would be going down?  Nope, not in a million years and not with a million tries.  Those numbers are the numbers the LFR should be designed for.  The LFR should not be designed that you need at least a few better players to carry everyone else.  It should be designed for the people it is aimed at.

So if the LFR is meant for people to see content why is it not designed for the people it is meant for?  Yeah, really a mixed message here.  The message the LFR sends out is, it is okay to be bad and let other people carry you.  Sorry, not a good message to be sending blizzard.

Mixed message #6 here.

We do not want people to feel that have to do both each week.  That was the reason for making 10 and 25 man raids the same lock out.  They did not want people to feel like they were forced to do it.

Then they added dailies you needed to do to open valor gear purchases, making people feel like they were forced to do them.  Then they added the LFR as an additional gearing up step for those that might need it, making people feel like they were forced to do it.  Then they added an upgrade system to make valor useful all the time so you can always have something to spend it on, making people feel like they were forced to cap.

You removed what was probably the #1 reason for the raiding boom in wrath because you felt people might feel forced to do it and then added a whole slew of other things people feel forced to do.

Just give us the 10 and 25 on separate lock outs again and let us decide if we feel forced to do it.  You are content to give us valor gating and letting us decided if we are forced to do it.  If you want to recapture the glory days of wrath when it opened raiding to so many new people you need 10 and 25 back on separate lock outs.  This, we do not want people to feel forced to do it, argument just does not cut it when you made an entire expansion about people feeling forced to do things to gear up.  Can't have it both ways.

I just don't get some things they do.

Blizzard is sending us a lot of mixed messages but none perplex me more than needing a raid reputation you get from killing bosses to buy the gear you are supposed to use as catch up gear to get into the raid.  Don't they understand that if I am raiding on a character, thus killing bosses, I won't need the valor gear but on my alts that I do not raid with I will, if they want to at least stay somewhat caught up on the sidelines as back ups.  If I don't raid with my back up how am I supposed to get the gear to get ready for the raid if the only way I can get ready for the raid is by being in the raid.  It makes no sense.

At least we should be able to get the reputation in LFR.  At least I hope we will.  After all, we can get the legendary stuff in the LFR so we should be able to get reputation too.

But please tell me that I am not the only one hoping that this early information from the PTR about buying valor gear is wrong and I am not the only person that seems a bit confused by it.  I just do not see what use a valor chest piece will do for my raiding characters when they will probably have their tier chest piece by the time I have enough reputation to buy the valor one.  I must have read that wrong.  It just makes no sense.  Hopefully I missed a line reading about it on wow-insider.  Hopefully something else hasn't been datamined yet.  Because as is, it is the ultimate mixed message.

Need valor gear to get caught up quicker to the current raid tier for new players or alts, but can't buy that valor gear until you are already raiding it and downing bosses regularly and do not need it any more.

Yeah, some serious mixed messages there.

Please someone tell me I completely read that wrong.

* Source

Quotes of note that I refer to:

Join the Shado-Pan Assault in their singular drive to see Lei Shen, The Thunder King, defeated once and for all, and gain access to impressive Valor reward items. Reputation with this faction can be earned only within the Throne of Thunder raid dungeon.

Given that valor upgrades will be removed, and some valor gear, if not all, tied to progress in the new raid, how will players, particularly those with alts, gear up?

That is that is the same thing I am worried about in this post.

Has Active Mitigation Worked?

When I first heard about the change to active mitigation I was worried about it and how it would work out.  For those that do not know what active mitigation is I will give an over simplified expansion. 

Old school: Gear for dodge, have 30% dodge all the time.  New school: Use a button that gives you 60% dodge on demand, but it is not always available.  Yes, there is a lot more to it, but that should give an example for the people that know nothing about it.

When I heard about this the immediate thought that passed through my head was that tanks in randoms would never use their active mitigation buttons and because of the lack of passive mitigation, the avoidance that is always there, they would get hit for a ton more.  I also felt that this would add a level of difficulty to tanking that would make it annoying to play for many or impossible to learn for some.

Everything I worried about turned out to be true but not one of those things was "the sky is falling" sort of bad I was expecting it could turn out to be.  At least for random content.  As I do not pug all that often and my guild tanks, which I am one of, all know how to play, the only representation I can say I have seen is from the LFR and LFD and I make my judgements based on that.

From my own tanking experience I am loving active mitigation and that is no surprise.  I knew I would.  I said I would.  I was looking forward to it.  It gives me the ability to choose my play style a great deal more when playing my tank and that is fantastic.

Now when I tank a dungeon I can base how I play on the group I am with.  If I am with a solid DPS crew, everyone over 100K, and a fairly capable healer, I do not need to worry one bit about using my active mitigation.  Perhaps a rare cooldown here or there but that is it.  I can chain pull until my heart is content.  Yesterday was the perfect example.  We did 4 heroics in 40 minutes.  As I said before, heroics are faster than scenarios. I find that kind of humorous being scenarios are supposed to be the super short things you can do faster than a heroic.  But that is another story all together.

It helped I was in a guild group where everyone could do over 140K and the healer was an excellent healer.  Heck, if she DPSed too we might have gotten it down to 9 minutes per run instead of 10.

See, that is the beauty of active mitigation.  My DPS, and as such, my aggro generation, was a lot higher because I did not have to worry about mitigation.  That old 60% dodge my druid used to have because it was passive and I needed it was now all allocated to DPS and aggro generation stats because I no longer needed to stack up stats for mitigation, I now had a slew of buttons for it.

When I run I see the group and what they are capable of at the beginning of the run.  I've had runs where I was using all my cooldowns all the time because things were going down too slow or the healer was new and/or woefully geared and there is nothing wrong with that, we all start somewhere.  I've had runs where I had to do a mix and match of a little extra DPS or a little active mitigation.  Tanking for me was no longer what it always had been.  Stand there and get beat on and hope not to die.  Sure, I always contributed by doing damage but that always felt more like it was bonus damage, now if feels like it is part of the group.

It is fun running scholo and challenging the DPS in my guild to beat me.  There are two rooms in there I can easily break 300K on, while still using my active mitigation, and it is fun to be able to do damage and avoid damage all at the same time thanks to having all my abilities at by beck and call.  Before the fun of a pull like that was, can I survive it.  Now the fun of a pull like that is, can I survive it and beat all the damage dealers while doing it.  Darn survival hunter did 520K DPS and beat me. :(

It turned tanking, for me at least, from a one trick pony into something that can be done on various different levels.  Work at full mitigation mode, full damage dealing mode, or a mix and match of both depending on need.  Tanking is really active now because you are always adjusting to the needs of the situation.  I am loving it.  So from a tanking perspective if I am the tank, yes, I believe active mitigation has worked.  I am enjoying tanking more than I ever have.

From a learning perspective I think it does make tanking a little more involved.  Check that, a lot more involved.  Avoiding damage by using abilities has become as important to a tank as using abilities to heal or deal damage are to healers and DPS.  No longer can they just get by letting the system handle their avoiding.  Not saying they could before in some content but for a majority anyone could put on tank gear and made sure they were gemmed and enchanted and reforged for avoidance and they would be good to go.  Not so any more because of active mitigation.

However, this made questing as a tank better.  Tanks learn to use their cooldowns while questing to keep themselves alive so it becomes more habit for them.  Even more so then in the past.  In the past those cooldowns were oh shit buttons, the help I am about to die buttons, the only use them for the big hit buttons.  Now with active mitigation and the fact there are so many available for all tanks and many are on short cooldowns they become part of the every day for a person out in the world questing as a tank.  They learn to use them on their own because it is worth using them.  It is no longer something you save until you need it, you use it before you need it so you will never need it.

While there will still be people, many I am sure, that will have issues grasping it, active mitigation is much more user friendly to learn because it is something you do, not something that is just there.  So yes, tanking is a lot more involved now which makes it more complex than it had been but those cooldowns are more useful which makes them part of the every day game play for players now meaning they are more likely to learn what they are used for.  So in this case, yes, active mitigation has worked.

How about teaching new players to tank?  How about knowing how to tank but not having any tanking gear?  Thanks to active mitigation anyone can become a tank now, if a person knows how to rotate cooldowns and what they do.

You could be in 100% DPS gear.  A few lessons and some easy content like a heroic or two and I can turn any damage dealer into a tank.  They might need a tank weapon and a shield if they are a shield tank but they can tank as good as anyone else in all DPS gear now.  At least for content like a heroic.  All thanks to active mitigation. 

Where it used to be a tank with tank gear would have 50%-60% passive mitigation, even when first stepping into a random, now they might only have 15%-20%.  So before, losing 60% hurt a ton and that is why you really needed tanking gear to tank but now losing 20% is not so bad, as long as you keep that active mitigation rolling and control your pulls.  It gives tanks more chances to get geared because if you are using some DPS pieces it isn't really going to kill you like it could have before.

That means, as I see it, active mitigation has made it easier for someone to step into tanking, to make that transition.  They do not need to completely assemble a new set of gear, just switch specs and read up on it and you should be fine.  So in this case, active mitigation has worked.

About the only issue I have with active mitigation thus far is as a healer.  Anyone that has healed a random and had a tank go from 100% to 0 in less then the time it takes to cast a flash heal will tell you that many tanks completely ignore their active mitigation.  One little button could make it easy as sin, you could stay near 100% all the time with some heals and one cooldown but without it you are dead in less than 2 seconds.

It has happened to me twice while healing a random so far this expansion and I am sure it has happened to people that heal more often that I dozens of times.  Tank pulls an entire room, I start to cast my heal, they are dead before the heal comes off.  Come on people, you do not even need to use a big cooldown, anything would have kept you alive.

Looking for raid is a place where you can really notice the tanks from the tank wannabe that can't even be bothered to read their abilities or figure out what active mitigation means.  You do not even need to be a healer to notice it.  You can tell just watching life bars which tanks are really tanks.  Wow oh wow I wonder why so many people that are not tanks queue as tanks for the LFR when the wait time for a tank is insane.

So as a healer I do not like active mitigation.  Before active mitigation I used to have a saying about DKs.  DK tanks are easy to read if they are good or bad.  I can tell on the first pull how the entire run will be based on how much damage the tank takes. 

Being DKs were the only ones that used active mitigation for the most part back then it was easy to tell.  It used to be when I saw a DK tank I would watch that first pull and then decide on if this was going to be one of "those" runs or not.  Now it is every tank.  Before achievement mitigation I could heal any tank, no problem.  As long as they had tank gear on, there would be enough passive mitigation that even if they did not know how to use any cooldowns it was no big deal. 

Unless you have an OP group, like my guild group was, you can not get away with a tank never using any cooldowns.  If you happened to be a fresh healer starting out, just hit 90, and you have a crew of damage dealers that can not even top 30K, the fights will go on for a long time and if the tank does not use any active mitigation it is wipe city.  That is just the way it is.  No way around that. 

Even with my OP group for that content, I still used barkskin on those pulls.  I still popped a FR if I took a damage spike.  I still made sure to use my dodge trinket and dodge cooldown.  So even when I say I did it without cooldowns, I don't mean without without.  I just mean without concentrating on them outside of the first few seconds of the pull when they were still needed.  So even when doing it with all the right parts, the tanks still need to use their active mitigation and as a healer you will notice instantly if they do not.  There just is not enough passive mitigation to get by any more. 

So from a healers standpoint, active mitigation has not worked.  Sure, when used it makes my life a dream but when not it is a nightmare.  From a healers perspective I would like to see constant mitigation passively because there are too many tanks out there that just do not know what active mitigation is.  However, I will be first to admit is not nearly as bad as I was expecting.  It does seem like the majority of tanks, at least the ones I have run into, have embraced the active mitigation model.

All in all I would have to say active mitigation has worked to make tanking fun.  But I am still not that impressed with it as a healer.

Do you think the active mitigation model has worked?

When do You Think 5.2 Should Come Out?

On the official forums someone asked when 5.2 was coming out and a blue answered them by asking, when do you think it should come out.  I thought that was a very interesting question and decided to answer it here with my opinion on when it should come out.

Being it is a raid patch and my opinion on when raid patches should come out differs from content patches I will look at it from that perspective only.  I will address when I think a new raid should come out and my reasoning for that opinion.  That would answer the more specific version of the question the blue asked

As always, for arguments sake, I'll look at the other side as well and share my opinion on when I think content patches should come out too.  You know, the ones with daily hubs, new heroics, new scenarios, etc.

I think standard filler content, non raid patches, should be every 3 months.  No particular reason really why I believe that 3 months is good for content like.  It just seems like a decent number.  The way I see it is the people that consume content fastest will be done with new content from a content patch in 2 or 3 weeks at most unless held back artificially by things such as reputation or spawn rates or what have you.  So three months seems like it would be ample enough to allow the people that want to get everything done, even if they play on a more limited play schedule, to get it done.

Now, to the question the blue asked, when do I think 5.2 should be released, the next raid patch.

For making my judgement on when I think 5.2 should be released, as it is a raid patch, I look to raid statistics.  Seems fair enough right?

Off to wow progress we go and take a look at how many guilds have finished the content on at least normal.  23.20% have finished the raid content on normal.  To add some more perspective 0.49% have finished it on heroic.  Looking at those numbers alone I would have to conclude that the game is NOT ready for a new raid patch.

The next little bit is purely opinion as I have absolutely no facts to back it up, but I am going to roll with it because it makes sense to me. 

Wow progress is no in any way accurate following the number of guilds in the game.  I have characters in 7 guilds, that I have noticed, that are not listed on wow progress that have downed at least 1 boss in this raid tier.  So I will consider this next statement fact, wow progress does not follow all raiding guilds.  Now for where my opinion comes in.

It does however list the guilds that look up their progress, which means they care.  So I am going to say the numbers we see is reflective of the number of guilds that care about their progress at least to some degree.  Yes, that is opinion, but like I said it makes sense.  So I am going to take their numbers, even if they do not follow all raiding guilds as a fair representative of what community that raids is like and consider their numbers accurate for the usage of saying who is downing what.  Like I said, opinion, but I am rolling with it.

So with that said, if only 23% of the guilds that actually care about raiding have finished a raid tier even at the normal level the next raid tier should not be released yet.  Imagine if we were to add all guilds that downed bosses in their tier.  Me, as just one player, would add 7 more guilds to that.  There have to be tens of thousands of more guilds out there that raid but are not listed, it could even push that number down to, or even well under, 10% if every single guild that killed at least one boss was counted.

But the people that raid just for the sake of raiding will raid whatever is there.  So we can not use the 10% guesstimate number.  We will use the solid 23% number as the number of people that care.

So when do I think the next raid patch should be released, in my opinion, when a fair majority of people that actually care have, at the absolute least, finished the content on normal.

So when the number of guilds followed by wow progress that have finished all content on normal surpasses 70%, then and only then should we have a new content patch.

At the moment it means that 77% of the guilds that actually care about their progression are not done progressing.  Perhaps nerfs could be added for them.  Perhaps the raid patch should wait until people are actually ready for it.  Either way, to answer that blues question, the way I see it 5.2 should not be coming out any time soon.  The majority of the player base is not ready for it because there is still so much left for them to do in the game.

I say, release a new raid tier when the majority of players that care about raiding are looking for something new.  Not when the 0.49% are bored off their ass.  I love the faster releases and I am very excited for the new raid but I don't think the game or its player base is ready for it.  Not even close.  One look at wow progress will tell you that.  23% are done with normal?  That is just way to low to even consider looking to release a raid patch.

So there you go mr blue, hope you stumble across this and you can have your answer.  When do I think 5.2 should be released?  Not any time soon.  At the very least, let 50% of the raiders that care, the limited ones listed on wow progress, finish it on normal before you start thinking about adding another raid patch.

In Search of... Omnis Grinlok

Somewhere along the way of our super fast leveling we seemed to have missed the fun of something not being an easy push over.  Gone are the days of having to battle for every scrap of experience we got because there is no way we would ever run out of quests to do to level us up as there are so many that offer so much experience for so little effort to level us to max level as fast as possible.

With the loss of the time taking factor to leveling the true challenges, even if they are not really all that difficult, are all gone.  Don't want the challenge of facing Omnis and his entourage then you just avoid him and come back when you hit 90 and can demolish him and all his cronies in less than 30 seconds, like my hunter does now.

Somewhere along the line we forget that the challenge was fun.  My main, the first one I leveled on that first day, was so far ahead of the pack that I had all the rares to myself.  Hence the reason I had the glorious achievement so quickly.  The only rares I did not see while leveling were in the jade forest, because everyone was there, but I got each and every other one while leveling.

They were all hard fought battles.  While there were a few I might consider push overs even at level there were none that could not have taken me out instantly if given the chance so they still needed perfect, or near perfect, execution.  One mistake and you are dead.

How often do we come across that in the world while questing?  Even more so, how often do we come across that with the rares as a hunter?  Not all that often but Omnis was one of those unique challenges that could get any hunters blood pumping, even if I knew I had him the whole time.

So lets join a level 89 hunter doing his quests in the dread wastes when he notices something, or someone, in the distance, someone by the name of Omnis Grinlok.  As soon as he does so, the hunt begins.

In search of... Omnis Grinlok.

Now I had done this before on a level 89 hunter on day one of the expansion, so I had some experience with it but I also had become a little cocky about it being my first hunter is now over geared and I can take them out so fast I do not often think about strategy any more so needless to say I made some mistakes which prolonged the fight and I took the pull for granted.  Meaning, I did not trap one of the many adds that he likes to travel with.

I did, however, plan my attack.  I picked the spot on his route that had the least amount of mobs that would pat through it and started to clear it, waiting for him to come around.  Why clear the non-aggressive animals you might ask?  Because I did not want to accidentally aggro them with AoE, they do seem to have a habit of walking right through the battle field and I did not need more mobs to fight, I would be pulling enough to begin with.  So start the counter now, as this was all part of the search for the kill.

In the time it took him to make his path around I killed everything I thought might be an issue.  Remember, he does like to jump around a lot and he puts a vicious bleed on my pet which means if I want my pet to tank I was going to need to use some tricks to kite with pet management once in a while.  This means I needed a nice big clear field.  It also means I did not loot anything.  Not sure if it is rumor or if it works or whatever, but I have always believed unlooted mobs take longer to despawn.  Longer to depawn means longer to respawn and thus less likely to become part of the battle.

I put my pet in tenacity spec knowing quite well the amount of damage that the grinmister could put out and sent my pet in completely forgetting that this guy hits for a ton and my pet is not a level 90 pet like I am used to and lets not even mention there are 4 mobs along with the rare that I had to deal with as soon as he reached my target area.

It was battle time and my pet went big and red and I multi spammed as fast and my fingers could tap the keyboard.  The first couple of shots were on the rare but after I got my pet a nice aggro lead on him I switched to an add.  Oh my god, multi spam did nothing, the adds are barely hurt.  Crap, I was expected near death.  Mistake #2, thinking I would do more damage then I actually do.  That with mistake one of not trapping one and this was going to either be a very long fight or a very short one.

Well, near death happened, just not to the adds on the opening multi spam, to my pet tank.  That near death was shortly followed by the actual death.  I called stampede, and as anyone that reads my blog knows, I have my stampeded set up as a defensive cooldown when out in the world.  This means all tank speced, all with taunt on, and all ready to buy me some times, as that is what defensive cooldowns are supposed to do.

I feigned and revived my pet and sent him back in, the stampede held them long enough to get things back in order.  I did a misdirect and multi to get some aggro back on my pet and started to single target adds, all of which were still alive at this point.

One add down and my pet dies again.  Time to take the chance, I am max range, as I usually try to be on a fight like this and hit revive hoping that I can get it off before they start eating my flesh for lunch.  They reach me and I hit 50% fast, but my pet popped up and I feign again as he picks them up and I make my distance from them again.  I have spirit bond on while questing so my life is a non-issue, I will be full again shortly, the only one that needs healing is my pet and I keep mend pet rolling as if my life depended on it.  Which it did.

Another add down and a third follows shortly.  One more add to go and I start to think, I do not remember it being this hard last time I did it.  Like I said, how quickly we forget how fun this stuff is.  Just as I am finishing off the last add I noticed, to my dismay, that in my efforts to get away I moved out of my preplanned route for the kiting.  I did say I made a few mistakes didn't I?

One of the big stone giants saw me and decided to come play.  Crap.  I let him beat on me until I finished the last add off and then hit misdirect and did a jump turn disengage on the stone guy and fired a few arcane shots to get him off my back, literally.

At this point my pet is hurting and my mend pet is just not keeping up.  I fire off an ice trap between me and the mobs and put my pet on passive to get him back to me.  A little tip for people that might not know this trick, masters call will get your pet back to you instantly, like faster then fast, split second instantly.  This is important because the second you put your pet on passive he would be dead from a hit from behind.  So it is all about timing you have to do them as fast as humanly possible or you go from saving your pet to a dead pet.  Either way, that ice trap was going to give me an assist.  If it killed my pet I had slowed them to try and revive it, if they did not kill him, it slowed them so I can kite while letting the debuff fall off my pet and letting the mend pet work.

At this point I had my readiness back for a while, yes the fight was already that long.  I did not use it however because the bodies I killed earlier were all long gone, so long gone that even stampede was about to come off cooldown and you could never be sure when they would come back and possibly enter the battle.  I was doing this whole thing defensively.  I did not want to switch to offensive now, defensive had been working thus far even it things were going really slowly.

After my pet was ready to fight again I took his growl off and sent him back in while I did a little kiting.  When he was fully healed and ready to tank again I gave him the rare and I took the stone guy.  We sort of split up somewhat but of course stayed close enough so I could heal him.  The rock guy would just not die.  I hate this level 89 quest gear DPS, the rock guy should go down in 10-15 seconds, what was taking him so long.

At one point we switched, so the debuff had some time to fall off and I took the rare and he took the rock guy finishing him off.  Thank you, finally it is me and the rare and as we all know a hunter and a rare one on one means a dead rare, even for a bad hunter right?  Well, even a decent hunter is going to have issues when they make mistakes and I made another one.  Namely not turning off thunderstomp when it was no longer needed.  Guess what my pet did?  Yeap.  Add two turtles and a crab to the fight.

Don't worry, I got this, was all I could think.  Going offensive now, but not full offensive, saving stampede.  Blew my cooldowns and readiness and cooldowns again and just like the original pull, it did not quite have as much effect as it does on my geared hunter but at least it hurt them enough that it was manageable.  Killed one turtle and then the other when my pet died again.

Stampede once more to save the day as I feign and revive my pet.  Not sure exactly what that crab is eating but he was hurting my pet more than the rare was.  I think popeye was sharing his spinach with him, he was on steroids because as soon as my stampede pets went away my pet went down again.  Yes again, no stampede this time, no readiness to call an extra dire beast or something and I could not exactly stop and let them beat on me like they did last time.  If that crab can take out my pet that fast imagine what he would do to me?

So kite time it was, I actually let the boss get to me a little here and there, it was the crab that was my issue here and when I controlled him it was about how to get things right again. I was losing life fast, so fast in fact that even if I disengaged and ice trapped to slow the rare he would kill me if he were to beat on my while reviving my pet again and that would mean the crab would get free.  So I did about the only thing I had left as an option and that was pass aggro to whatever I could that would not make me reset the battle.  Dire beast and snake trap here we go.

I popped the beast, dropped the trap a few steps behind me over my shoulder and hit disengage and then feign death, just for a split second so the beast and the snakes could get aggro over me.  I popped back up and fired one auto shot.  Enough to put me back on the list but not enough to pull aggro back and started to revive my pet.  The beast and the snakes kept him busy for all of three seconds maybe, but that was apparently all I needed.  My pet returned to life just as he was about to lay a hay maker on me.  I managed to kill the crab this time, by kiting it, I kept my pet far away from it.  Don't know what the hell that crab was doing but it was not very nice to my pet, that is for sure.

We are back to where we are supposed to be.  Some of the non-aggressive animals have returned and did join battle and are once again sitting there unlooted so I should be able to kill this guy in no time being it seems I have things well in hand.

I spoke too soon as there was a human paladin that decided he was enjoying the show.  Maybe he was waiting for me to die so he could take the kill and was getting a kick out of me going through all this hell but he got bored after the 10 or 12 minutes this was going on so he wanted to finish it.

Not in the way you might think, by coming down and helping me kill it.  Nope, he wanted the kill for himself so he went up on that little mound right there where all the lizard dudes are and grabbed 6 of them and bought them back with him to me and bubbled.  Thanks to blizzard and their all mighty awesome design team they all went for me instantly even if I had not hit them at all.

Son of a B.  I had the dude under 50% now, this fight was over, it was just me and him.  It was all easy street from here on.  Thunderstomp was off so no more non-aggressive adds.  The rock guy was dead so even if I went all the way to the wall again he could not join.  There was nothing that could mess me up now, outside of myself, which if I had not made some mistakes this would have been over already.

Time to give up, rolling on over 15 minutes now if you include the clearing time I did before the pull.  Nope, I am a hunter, I never give up, I just kill whoever gets in my way.  I trapped one of the mobs that was staying at range and turned my pets stomp back on and started to misdirect multis again.

Those lizards do not mess around.  At this point I had absolutely zero focus on the rare, these guys were going to rip me and my pet apart.  I tabbed around killing healing totems and interrupting what I could with silencing shot, intimidation and scatter shot and rolling mend pet like a mad man.  With the exception of a few shots here and there this is all on fluffy, he is all alone fighting these guys.  I am working control the best I can.

The paladin came back, probably expecting to see a dead hunter and a rare he could kill but when he returned flying over me there were three dead adds, two I was working on, and one trapped.  I knew he would try it again and I was too close to that little village, if he wanted to bring mobs to me I was going to make him work for it this time.

I ran as far away as I could while still being in range of the fighting and stopped healing my pet.  He landed in the little village and started aggroing mobs again.  My pet died quickly once the ticks of mend pet stopped rolling on it and I started to revive him as fast as I could.  I could see the paladin with mobs on him actually fighting them, probably he figured he needed to keep them engaged if he wanted to get them all the way to me as I did move quite a bit from that area he was taking them from.  Could his bubble even be off cooldown already?  Have I really been at this that long?  Why is Omnis still alive?  Why does it look like he has gained life?

This time him trying to mess with me worked for me, not against me.  Thank you mr paladin that tried to kill me.  I revived my pet, he ended up with the mobs he was pulling to me and one of the mobs that he delivered to me the first time.  I am sure that was not his intention.  He just gave in and killed them.  Maybe his bubble was not off cooldown and he noticed it.  Maybe he could not drag them to me as I kept moving away.  Maybe he had a moment of decency and realized that being a dick is not how this game should be played.  Whatever the reason, I am glad he did not bring me more and took one of his friends from the first time.

I finished the adds I had and used some of my previously mentioned fancy dancing like the passive masters call move and doing a little kiting to take the pressure off my pet once in a while when suddenly three lizards appeared out of nowhere and I do mean nowhere.  I do not recall a pat coming by here.  I do not think the paladin found another way to bring mobs because he was still flying over me probably taking in one hell of a show and I doubt it was anyone else as the area had been pretty empty with the exception of some gnome that passed by earlier picking herbs on my battle field and the paladin.

Either way, I have all my cooldowns ready, Old Grinny is under 10% and those lizards are not going to stop me from my rightfully earned kill.  No more multi target BS for me, it is burn time baby, just need to lay that multi to get them on my pet then I have to burn that last 10% with everything I have and some.

I pop all cooldowns and forget the mend pet because that will be a wasted cooldown now, I have a plan.  My pet goes hog wild on them and lives long enough to at least use all his bestial wrath for its full duration and some extra too boot.  Now they all come for me so it is stampede time once again.  I call them, feign, and let them get to work while I revive my trusty companion once more.  Thank god this is not vanilla because he would have abandoned me with the number of times he has died this fight.

As soon as my pet pops up I wait the 6 seconds I need to and I hit bestial wrath as it is back now and then my readiness and cooldowns again.  This is why I basically let him die.  I knew this was what I wanted to do.  It was the all or nothing moment.  On that burst phase the rare finally died, Omnis Grinlok was laid to rest.  I finished off the lizards after with much less effort than the entire fight took even if my pet almost died again.  I mean like less than 10% life when the last one went down close to dying type of death.

The paladin flew up to me an clapped.  I looted and was rewarded with the golden fleece for my efforts but of course it did not drop a piece of gear I could use.  You noticed it never drops anything you need when you need it but once you don't it will?  In a moment of shame I must admit that to add to all the mistakes I made I did that entire fight with my pet hat on and not my helm.  Oops.  That is what you get when you do not have helms show.

My biggest reward of the whole thing was the fun I had doing it.  Sure, it wasted a crap ton of time.  Sure I screwed up more than a few times making it more difficult on myself.  Sure, I had one of those moments that show was a shitty community this game has when they would rather wipe you than help you.  But hot damn it was exciting.  It was fun.  It got my heart beating in over drive more than a few times because I refused to die and I knew I had to think fast to figure out how not to.

This is what the game is about, or should be about.  These are the moments that make someone fall in love with the game.  These are the moments that in a few weeks I will completely forget about, but at least thanks to this blog I have a record of it I can come back and get a smile reading.

I'll forget about it just like I forgot about doing it on my first hunter.  I forgot how fun and exciting the leveling process could be if only there were something challenging in it.  Sadly I hit 90 less than 30 minutes later.  The next time I run into Mr. Grinlok I will probably have much better gear and he will not even give me enough trouble to notice it.  In time I will have so much gear that he will be about as difficult as a tauren picking an herb is difficult.

This reason, this excitement, this is something you can only have while leveling.  So when someone asks me why I think it should take longer to level I will say this is why.  This is what makes people fall in love with the game.  Not the end game.  The end game is for the addicted, to keep us paying the subscription fees.  It was during the leveling process we fell in love with the game.

The search for Omnis Grinlok was a success but more importantly, the search for what we all play for, a reminder of why we play, was also a success.  Damn, that was fun.

Monday Random Thoughts

- WTB Hit rating for pet battles.

- I did not do much battling this weekend, just defeated some of the quest guys in a failed effort to get a few stones.

- They hate me and do not like to give me any.

- When you lose the same battle three times in a row with a team that usually blows the other team away thanks of missing it gets frustrating.

- How do you miss 7 times in a row when not using any abilities that say they have a chance to miss, moderate or high?

- Once I got to the last mob with two fresh pets on the bench and one about to die.

- I let that one get its one shot in and die and then figured two on one with one of them being strong against the one that was left leaves me with an easy win.

- I was wrong.

- Wiped out, my two pets swing a total of 9 times and only hit 2, the first 2, then 7 misses in a row.

- The other two times I had a pet left with more than half life and the matched up pet on the bench when I got to the last one and miss miss miss.

- Wipe.

- Both times.

- God damn it I wanted to throw a shoe at the computer screen, to punch the monitor, or punch the sadistic mother F'er that coded these things.

- Hit rating please.

- Not sure where blizzard gets the idea that missing is a fun and engaging part of game play.

- I've said it before a long time ago with our characters, they should just lose hit rating.

- This goes even more so for pet battles.

- What is worse is there is no rhyme or reason to it.

- My rare level 25 was fighting a poor level 19 and he missed the poor 19 3 times in a row.

- All this is doing is wasting time and has no reason to be there.

- It will not let the 19 catch up, I was not going to lose the fight.

- So why was the miss mechanic there?

- To extend the fight?  For what?

- There should be no such thing as a miss unless the ability has a chance or miss or you have been debuffed to have a chance to miss.

- If neither of those things are in play, you should never miss.

- Why isn't silencing shot off the global cooldown?

- I could swear it used to be, but maybe I am remembering wrong.

- It has been frustrating me since they changed it to hunters being able to do cobra/steady while moving.

- I had to make a stop casting marco for it.

- I used to just stutter step.

- I guess that is what people say with dumbing down the game.

- The good player knew how to stutter step.

- Well, I think they just changed what the good player has to do.

- It is still the same, now it is just the good player knows how to make a stop casting macro for their silencing shot.

- That still does not change the fact we can not cast it whenever we want.

- On all my melee, I can interrupt any time I want, even if in the middle of doing another ability, even if I am in the middle of a GCD.

- Silencing shot won't work for me if I am in the middle of a cobra/steady and it will not work if I hit it while in the middle of the GCD.

- So either my silencing shot is broken, or they changed it, because I am sure it used to work correctly and like all other interrupts before mists.

- I got another character to 90 by the way, so that is 7 now, this one is the first to 90 horde side however.

- A hunter of course, as if you needed to ask.

- Under 10 hours over 3 days with rested running out at level 88.

- Could have been less if I were not a double gatherer, stopped for all rares and all fishing pools along the way.

- One rare was an epic 25 minute battle between good and evil that I could write stories about and probably will one day.

- It was amazingly fun, invigorating, and how a battle vs rares should be.

- I've been blowing them away for so long now I forget what it was like to do them at level with crap gear and lots of pats entering because the fight was going on longer than it should.

- I felt alive, I loved it, and while it did waste a ton of time in the leveling process I would do it all over again all day every day.

- If only leveling was not a blink and you miss it thing I could have more experiences like that while leveling.

- But it seems blizzard forgot that getting to end game is part of the fun, and getting us there so fast makes us lose that moment I just had.

- Yeah, I should write a post just about that, it would be a fun thing to share.

- Those are the moments which remind me why I first fell in love with this game.

- So I am a double agent now.

- Made 8K leveling, that is not counting selling my fishing stuff and gathering stuff either.

- The fish sell upwards of 400 gold a stack, why do you think I stopped at every pool while leveling.

- Nearly any fish.

- The cheaper ones, if you can call them that, go for 250 gold a stack usually.

- If you can't make money, you are just not trying.

- You do not even need to level fishing to catch fish.

- Pools always get fish, so only fish from pools.

- Level fishing and make gold at the same time.

- But I get it, the people that have trouble making gold would never do that because they would need to leave the city to make the money.

- How can they troll trade if they leave the city.

- Hunters are leveling machines.

- My rested ran out at 88, thanks for all the herbs, rares, and found items eating it up, and with all those distractions it still only took 10 hours.

- I bet with no gathering professions and no stopping and keeping rested the entire way I can cut that to 7 hours, maybe even 6.

- I think my dwarf hunter will do that, he has no gathering professions to distract me.

- I will have to turn off pet tracking too, that always makes me stop.

- I started to level one of my DKs and must say they are pretty much insane too.

- The one I am leveling had a massive item level of 318 going into mists, I had never really played it after it hit 85, and it still mowed through things like they were nothing.

- I am leveling blood, so you know from what I said here how I tank quest.

- I pull whole zones.

- Starting part where you have to beat those little sha things, I gathered up enough to finish the quest all at once, and of course some extra that just happened to tag along, and mowed them down.

- One quest I needed to kill 15 mobs and a boss guy, grabbed all 15 guys and the boss guy and killed them all together.

- All this in crap gear and doing only 4K DPS single target.

- I was doing over 40K easy on packs, but 4K on singles, so guess how I decided to kill things.

- Kill everything in your path, even if you do not need to beat it for the quest, just to get your vengeance so you can mow them down faster.

- Amazing that I can kill 20 mobs at once faster than I could kill 5 mobs one at a time.

- So even if I only need 5 I pull 20.

- This means my DK could possibly pass my hunter as the easiest questing class.

- Once I hit 88 and get to townlong when things actually start to hurt will be the real test.

- Can the DK keep up with the speed of the hunter when they can no longer pull 20 mobs at a time?

- There is no way you can pull 20 of some of those bug mobs, or the cow guys.

- They hurt more than some raid bosses if you take them in large packs.

- I can't believe I still have not made a panda hunter, you would figure it would be something I would do right away.

- In time I will but the thing I want most I still can not have, a troll paladin.

- Trolls have a great body model and the paladin gear would look awesome on them, not to mention I like playing trolls.

- It probably has something to do with how they walk.

- I notice I enjoy classes that I feel comfortable with the walking movement.

- Yes I know they all move at the same speed but they just feel different.

- I have a whole mess of taurens, but I really hate how they shuffle.

- Gnomes and goblins?  Just no, they move horrible.

- Same for dwarves.

- Most races just feel funky when moving.

- Even trolls do, but they and blood elves are the only ones horde side that I can deal with the movement.

- And the blood elves just look all shades of horrible in my opinion which leaves only one option for playing comfortable horde side, troll.

- Alliance has two good races for walking movement.

- Human and night elf.

- I am thinking of race chancing some of my other races to the big four for movement.

- Just because I play better on those races.

- Call it subconscious, not sure why, but I just play better on the characters that are those 4 good walking, for lack of a better phrase, races.

- Not just walking, it seems like the game was all designed for them.

- Size wise they fit the world better, things are never too big or too small of them.

- Same for armor.

- Look at a night elf in warrior gear or a human in paladin gear or a troll in hunter gear, it just looks right.

- It looks like it was made for that frame and then adjusted for all others.

- And that helps with me feeling comfortable with a character.

- And as I said, people always play better when they are playing something they are comfortable with.

- That does not only go for class or spec, but faction and race also matter.

- People play better when they are comfortable.

- Doesn't change that I always want one of each, just, because.

- I am a completest, what can I say.

- Which means some day I need to start a panda hunter.

- A female, because there is no way I could play a character as huge as the male.

- I probably would not have any tauren males either if it were not for druid form, and because they added the option for paladin.

- A druid is always in form, so what race they are doesn't matter and if you want to see cool seek out that tauren paladin in thunder bluff and see how cool he looks.

- That alone was enough to get me to make my tauren paladin male.

- I wonder why they have this obsession with making all male characters huge.

- I wouldn't be surprised if a fair amount of male players that play female characters only do so because the female characters have better builds.

- More reasonable looking size wise.

- Most of the females in game are the size I think the males should be.

- I can't speak for anyone else but I know that is the reason when I roll a draenei it is always a female.

- Not because of some sex thing or that they look like a barbie or something, but because they are more reasonably sized, the males are just freaks of nature.

- Not saying the females are not freaks of nature either, they must all have back problems, but at least frame wise they look better by a mile.

- The only two races I would say the females do not look better than the males are orc and worgen.

- The worgen women look like their head is three times too small for their body.

- Same with orc women, their heads do not fit their body, it looks... odd.

- Nothing says bad art work worse than worgen females however, how that ever made it from development to live is beyond me.

- It is beyond anyone that as ever looked at a wogen female.

- Everyone except blizzard, which seems to do things oddly sometimes.

- Like why all the nerfs to the questing area in the valley?

- Was there an actual reason to make those elite hozen non-elite?

- Because some people had a problem with them maybe, but I do not find that a suitable reason.

- A few of my characters had issues with them, so I avoided them, I mean we can fly up there right, so I just land where they are not.

- Simple right?

- So why were they nerfed?

- Let me guess, cry babies that do not understand the simple logic of if you can not beat them, do not land near them.

- And the goats, they were nerfed too, even if no one else noticed it, I did.

- Last time I did them my pet went in and grabbed all 5 or 6, whatever it was, and I mowed them down.

- They knocked him back once, just once.

- If I did that 2 months ago they would have tossed him around like a rag doll and made it an adventure.

- They used to sing pinball wizard as they were bouncing poor fluffy around like he was the ball in a pinball machine that they were bouncing back and forth.

- It was funny, and it was great seeing people getting thrown off edges, and people being bounced around and flying off edges.

- A guild mate and I used to make bets, sitting there watching.

- 50 gold the next one that goes flying off is a horde.

- 100 says it is female.

- You're on.

- Now that was fun, blizzard nerfed it.

- All blizzard knows how to do is nerf fun, and for no reason what so ever.

- I babbled too much for today but remember, it is still possible to see people go flying off, just not as often any more.

- Let that thought fill your mind during the day and I am sure you will get a smile on your face each time you think of someone getting shot off the edge and falling to their death.

- Just add a little scream in there with your mind and turn that smile into a giggle.

- You can thank me later.

- Have a great day.

Return of the Wrath Lockout System?

There are some people that loved wrath and others that hated it.  It is just the way life is and everyone has their own opinions.  While I am always open for debate and have been known to change my mind on many topics when presented with a good argument for the other side there are two things, in regard to raiding, that I don't think anyone will ever be able to change my mind on that wrath hit dead on balls perfect or damn near to it.  That was raid design, in ulduar at least, and the separate lock outs for 10 and 25.

We will be revisiting the ulduar type of design, or so we are told, with the coming of 5.2 so does that mean that the other great raiding piece of the puzzle from wrath might also make a return some day soon, separate lockouts?

While it is true that I had issues with the separate lock outs here and there and the gear between the two and the different challenges each type had, as they say hindsight is 20/20, and looking back the wrath design was quite good even with as many problems as we might have perceived they had.

During wrath I raided both 25 mainly and 10 mainly.  When we were raiding 25s mainly I would pug 10s on the weekend and when we were raiding 10s I would pug 25s on the weekend.  That is not even mentioning alts and shuffling them in one or the other here or there. 

The design was great.  You had the easy 25 mans that made pugging a dream, or at least as much of a dream as any pug could be, and that was good for community and good for keeping people playing.  It was a great design, sorry, just had to repeat that.

The 10 man guild could pug 25s on weekends and being it was easier they would be guaranteed at least partial success and higher gear to boot which in turn would basically give them heroic 10 gear (25 normal gear) to try and make the 10 mans easier for them.

It was sort of like a create your own difficulty design.  10 man guild stuck on a boss?  Get some 25 man gear and make your life easier or just stick it out and try to be 10 strict, which back in wrath, 10 strict was the real hard mode.  10 strict was brutal and the fact that LK was not downed on 10 strict in heroic mode until well after the buff was 30% and it was out around 8 months is proof of that.

I think bringing back the wrath lock out system would be good for the game.  It would encourage more pugging on the server which could help the community, it would give people more ways to get valor, it would give people more ways to get gear, it will open the doors to make things easier on people, even more so if they keep it like it was in wrath were you can easily carry those bad people in 25s. 

We all remember those pugs were half the DPS were doing less than 5K, many even in the 3K range, and we still downed things.  25s in wrath were basically LFRs you assembled and it was good for the game.  A lot better for the game than the LFRs are now with no organization, no community impact, lesser gear and a feeling of us vs them in your own group doing the content.

Bringing back separate lock outs would be the best thing raiding has seen since, well, wrath.

The difficulty of the raids can be left up to debate if you wish, but the separate lock out, regardless of the difficulties, was a solid idea and one that I believe should make a return.  What do you think, should we have the double lock out system again?