Flipsides and other Ramblings

I don't have focus to form a coherent post so here's some completely random observations from the last few weeks of WoW.

People say you can leech your way to your epic gear even if you fail all the time but the flipside of this is that you're maybe making 200 - 300 points a week meaning you won't even see a decent epic for at least a month. At 1 epic a month (provided you don't have another gear source) it'll take you for bloody ever to get your set complete.

In arena gear > skill and matchups are ridiculously random. I ran into multiple teams that are at least 2 gear seasons ahead of us in the 1200 - 1500 bracket. Even if you focus fire and are clever about it there's just no chance in hell that you're going to win against people that outgear you by that much unless they disconnect or you have a really really solid approach to CC. Tell me what you like but nuh-uh yousa no win.

I queued up for dozens of bg's and it turned out that I was the raid leader for at least 80% of the battles which was way more than just pure chance. I get this position a lot... I doubt Blizzard appreciates my tactical skills so I am left to wonder how a RL leader is picked.

Running a shockadin spec has resulted in some interesting whispers where people show genuine interest in the spec. Controversely people that ridicule the spec do this in public channels, yells or make sure they are heard at least by 20 other people who happily chime in undoubtedly knowing nothing about shockadins in the first place.

Loot drops are really really strange sometimes. You know things are getting bad when you can extract a huge polearm, a stack of gold, some random feathers and some other random trash out of a creature no bigger than a hellfire peninsula vulture. Where do they keep all their crap?

Speaking of crap. I currently carry around at least 40 items of random junk ranging from foods, to gear to mounts and other novelty items. I'd wager a vital organ that this is more than the average woman carries in her purse. Beyond the fact that I have no idea how my frame could support that many bags and ridiculous amounts of gear I wonder if we're not getting a little too feminine when it comes to our 'purses'.

Not to mention the dozens of quests where you're sent out on a relatively simple kill x collect y quest only to find out that the drop rate for human skulls is really appaling. I am sure I saw a head on all of them... I thought zhevra had 4 hooves too... but there you go.

What in the blazes do people do with their marks that like 2 or 3 of the 4 battlegrounds but can't stand the other(s)? I have a huge stack of AV marks on most of my characters followed by a ludicrous low amount of WSG marks (if any). Of course I have nothing left to buy with AV marks either... I should be allowed to breed frostwolves into pets if I had enough of them.

Ring of blood is the quest chain to do when you need a quick 100g, no travel required easier than any instance and enough fun that it realistically should be a daily.

Much like blink a warrior's charge can turn a potentially fatal fall into a no damage landing. Target the nearest enemy, wait till your fall brings you in charge range and hit charge. I never thought of mobs as potential life savers but I suppose there's a first for everything.

Flying mounts do not keep you from being dotted up. Going afk while pvp flagged even when you are 2000 yards in the air is no protection from dot-crazed warlocks with soulstones. Beware of falling warlocks (he he).


There, that's enough ramblings to fill a blog post. Editorial duties completed :P

Guilded and future expectations

So despite my previous antics about wanting a guild to invite me to DM I decided to tag along with the Solace fellows and join my second choice guild Monstrous Regiment.

The leadership seems fairly level headed and have a couple of high level alts / mains that would indicate at least some past experiences raiding.

Not that that really matters to me but it's nice to have some people available that can voice opinions on various skills and whatnot.
Plus I am fairly certain they will take the time to help me out with this inane dreadsteed quest before I give in and just buy the skills to ride some other silly epic mount.

Either way it's time to re-focus and put some useful information in this blog rather than bother you with my endless deliberations about what guild to choose.

So for the month of february you can definitely expect the arrival of part 2 of the The Warlock. A little warlock guide I've been working on.

The primary reason for the slow progress of the guide is related to the fact that I want to end up with some kind of guide template so that I don't have to re-invent the wheel when I decide to write a quick guide based on my paladin.

I am also wondering to what extend I should keep the guides up to date. After all patches come quick and hard and really affect how to pick skills. I could leave that part out but how valuable is a guide without a talent description?
I don't have time to keep guides up to date for each patch so I am thinking of delving into the skills and devising a more 'general' evaluation of talents that can be utilized throughout at least a couple of patches.

For us noobs it's usually really important to be fairly clear on why things are the way they are which is hard to combine with a generalizations... ah well February here I come, I'll probably have some luminous idea on what to do at some point or the other.

In the meantime expect more useless ramblings about whatever tickles my fancy during my limited time in WoW.