Remember that post I made not too long ago about negativity and how some people can’t seem to post anything but negative stuff all the time?

Well golly gee, it’s me!

Not that I had myself in mind when I wrote that, but over the past few days you’ve seen karma working its magic. As a result, I’ve become my own worse enemy. I still feel I had a valid reason to be unhappy – as many are – with what is going on, but some counterpoints to all that negativity are really needed, such as:

Things to do while waiting out the zombie plague

1. Obtain “explorer” rankings in all zones you can reach.
2. Complete all instances that you can in order to gain the achievements for them, too.
3. You gatherer types stock up on crafting items!
4. Form a palli/priest/shammi/druid posse and establish “safe zones” in the capitols, and then spam /yell about it to frustrate the griefers! “Come to the bank for protection!”
5. Chase necropolii around!
6. Farm motes!
7. …

The list goes on and on. Point being, there are things to do out there, if you’re high enough level and willing to trade death for tedium.

So, sorry for the QQ. This thing really irked me and I guess the griefers really did win since I gave them exactly what they wanted – my delicious tears.

Meanwhile, in the news:

1. There are around 8 or so new bosses in various instances, good for only a few days, so go get them!
2. The Argent Dawn now gives out quests related to the invasion, plus if you wear your Argent Dawn trinket, you will get scourgestone drops.
3. Oh, and hey – the plague ends today. Tigole has confirmed.

The Scourge invasion has really annoyed a lot of people, to the point that they are quitting or thinking of quitting. There are times when I wonder what they are thinking at Blizzard. As an example, you would have to be living in a cave not to realize that there is a very large chunk of the population that consists of a bunch of immature jerks that enjoy making other peoples’ lives miserable above all things.

And Blizzard gave them the tool to do this with great effect.

The only way Blizzard can repair this faux pas in my mind is to reveal later down the road that the more times you got zombiefied, the less effective you are against Scourge for some predetermined amount of time. Oh, that would steam the griefers, but it would without a doubt redeem Blizzard in my eyes.

Meanwhile, the event moves on. Amus sent me this striking photo of a Necropolis outside of Ironforge, and he also saw the same outside of Stormwind. Things are moving.

With the expansion 18 days away, I hope they get the event done with so they can go about stabilizing things before they have to deal with that impending disaster.

Yes, I am a dreamer.

Here is the covenant between zombie lovers and keepers of order.

We understand that for whatever reason, you have the compulsion to aid the enemy. Fortunately this is Azeroth and not America, so you won’t be sent to Gitmo as a result. We don’t really care what your motivations might be (though most assessments are less than charitable).

You must understand that there are those among us that will remain true to our chosen affiliation, and part of that is the maintenance of order around our auction houses, banks, and so forth. As followers of the light, it is entirely correct and consistent for priests and other healer-types to try to protect what is ours.

It is a game, a completion between two different mindsets. As long as you accept it for that, I have no problem with what you are doing, and I’ll be fighting the good fight and putting down zombies wherever I see them. It’s consistent in my idiom, the same as inconveniencing your own faction is consistent in yours.

However, if you insist on harassing and insulting people that thwart your plans, the line has been crossed. Here on out, you will be reported. Blizzard created this problem¹ , they can damned well deal with it.

Play nice, and I will, too. That’s the deal.

Message ends.

1. What were they thinking? They must be pretty out of touch not to realize this would happen. [↩]

As the MC Frontalot song goes, anyway. Had me a charming encounter today with a charming night elf named Melerra¹ .

I was in Rachet getting Halloween candy – candy! – when these zombies pop up and attack the honest, hard-working shopkeepers. Being ever the helpful sort (especially since I hate zombies – I mean, with parts falling off and all? Disgusting), I set out to put them down.

I didn’t expect a parade, but what I got instead was this² . Oddly, that “lol” seems to have frozen him/her up. Who knew? I recommend it.

So to quote the Front:

If you’re dissing on my homos
then this censure’s what you’re risking
(I’m insisting on containing my temper but listen up):
you shouldn’t ought to be intolerant about who queers like to fuck!

Anyway, I’ll try not to get fag germs on y’all.

1. Ooo, nice PvP gear there (wow, what a big surprise!). You might also wanna gem your gloves, sparky. [↩]
2. Note: some editing done to remove lines containing unrelated text [↩]

Bet you thought I was going to talk about the Zombie event, didn’t you? Wrong!

Well, not right away, anyway.

No, actually, last night we got griefed by our own.  We were in Kara, doing what we do in Kara, and of all things, the Chess event borked. Half the raid DC’d in the middle of the event. Now, I was King Llane and if I had been thinking, I would have let them kill me and then we could have started over. But I had the wrong mindset going, pushed through, and bravely finished the event. Naturally, the half that DC’d couldn’t loot.

This inspired loot drama, ruining the whole evening for everyone.

So … fellow guildies that acted like brats? Thanks for being total downers. Maybe I’ll raid again in the next month, and maybe I won’t. Seriously. It’s just a game; if you can’t be arsed to remember that, I don’t want to be around you. On top of that, you caused my friend some misery, and that terribly annoys me.

I am around 45% convinced that if I posted a MOTD cancelling Kara 1 for “mental health reasons” that the GL would be pleased at the opportunity to get away from the whole affair for a few days. I am also 35% convinced that one of the main perps would up and /gquit, causing more stress. I hate having to deal with “special” people. Get a rock band. THEN you can be a Diva.

Kara 1 Canceled for mental health reasons; plz leave drama @ home, kthxbai

On the plus side: DPS around 920s, and I’m not convinced I’m as tricked out as I need to be. For example, I haven’t even used Tuskbreaker yet, since getting it from ZA.

On other griefing topics: I have heard that a lot of people are getting into griefing their own faction, and get upset when people cure their zombie-ness. These people need to either (a) roll a Horde undead if they like being a zombie so much, or (b) go grief Horde instead of their own faction.

Jas says she’ll be hanging out in Westfall for a while, relishing every griefer’s curses with glee. Your tears are delicious to her, zombie freaks.

Last night was my first Kara run since the patch, and, well, forever in general. I was looking forward to it, really, because I wanted to see how my new spec r0xx0red s0xx0rs and laid down the smack.

It was an interesting night.  My personal DPS hovered around 900, much higher than expected, though our guild’s resident mage diva topped me by a sizable margin, in the 1100 bracket, with an Arcane spec. Nevertheless, as you can imagine, I am rather excited by the results, especially since there were … things happening that took me off target from time to time, such as … well, more on that later.

In Moroes, Random tanked Brave Sir Robin, who broke from his trap because … well, moe on that later. But the kitteh! He r0xx0red! He boxxored! I tossed healz at him occasionally but otherwise kept pumping pain into the fella, and he dropped. That was amazing.

Maiden claimed her traditional Dorf sacrafice¹ and went down like stocks after the bailout bill failed. Opera was Oz, nothing of consequence there.

We ended the night at Curator; he went down just after he came out of the first evocate. Probably would have been faster but some people forgot how to play or something and left me and one other person to finish off the last flare before turning onto Curator himself. But no matter. That was rediculous. And pretty cool.

OK, so about that thing … right now I have this macro for pulling into a trap.

/cast distracting shot
/stopcasting

Pretty simple, yes?

That last part isn’t happening. So when I pull, autofire kicks in. Because of this, I’m breaking my own traps. This needs attended to. To the target dummies!

1. Hi. [↩]

Draenei are not forgiving of unskilled barbers, and we are especially not too thrilled at the idea of Goblin barbers. Still, orders are orders, so when the word came down to go get mine, I saddled up my Heffelump and headed out.

Nobody said I had to make it easy (see picture to right).

To be honest, I liked the old cut, but a little change is good on occasion, so I landed on a hairstyle best described as “The Asimov.” (see picture to left)

What with all the achievements available out there for simply running around and looking at things, there are a few that stand out, such as the “LEEEEEEROY …” achievement. This achievement is, indeed, a tribute to the infamous video. It requires you to go to the scene of the crime and reproduce Leeroy’s famous faux pas, only without all the dying.

For you, anyway.

For the whelps, it’s a different story. You are required to take out 50 of the little fellas in 15 seconds or less.

Well … mission accomplished.

This is my very first Title, ever. I don’t think there is one that would have pleased me more, either. As the guild’s keeper of the Huntard Hat, Leeroy is in many ways my spirit guide.

I am: Grimmtooth Hussein Jenkins.

It appears that in patch 3.0.3, and thus in the expansion, you can buy training for the epic land Warlock mount without going through the complex rituals that I and many of my brothers and sisters in the Arts went through. All you need to do is pop level 71.

What, the Xorothians opened a franchise in Northrend or something?

I’m … still processing this. I think I want to join Grimm at the World’s End for a while.

:: mutter mutter mutter worked my ass off mumble a gazillion gold mutter stupid demon ::

All righty then.

Last night I was asked to come along for Heroic Mech, so I saddled up and headed for Netherstorm. I was eager to get some real numbers on my new spec in a live environment, and a Heroic was a good place for it.

Our GL’s frost mage was there as well, so I had a great benchmark to work with. Just prior to the patch, she and I were neck and neck for damage output, with me maybe edging ahead. So now we get to check my new OP-ness against hers.

Change #1: My pet stayed out and did its thing. In this case, my Fel Hound, and his thing is Fel Intellect. His damage output was decent if not glorious.

Change #2: Of course, moar dots. In the past I have been the Queen of Shadowbolt Spam, but with an Affliction build that just isn’t viable. So my rotation looked like one of these:

1. (Trash) CoA, SL, Corruption, Haunt, then SB spam and maintain the others.
2. (Boss) CoA, SL, Corruption, Immolate, UA, Haunt, and then SB spam with maintenance.

On reflection I am seriously considering removing Immolate from the rotation. It’s a slow cast, is done before CoA, and Shadow’s my thang.

I’m also trying to figure out how to shake some points loose to reduce cast time on SB. 3 seconds is forever. There is no way I can do useful burst damage with that, which is important in places like Curator.

So anyway, the numbes?

I am now, as an Affliction lock, just a jot lower in DPS than I was as a Destro lock pre-patch, which means I am lightyears ahead of where I was as an affliction lock pre-patch.

In comparison to our GL, she’s far ahead of me by at least 300 dps.

So can I make it work? I think I can. With practice I’m sure I can tack an additional 100dps on. While not top-tier DPS, it does give me a good cross between solo, PvP, and raiding. And talent reallocation may help even more.

After all, it’s less than a week after the patch. It is going to take a while for people to get used to the new builds and to find the best combos.

For myself, however, I am satisfied with the data enough to say that if pressed, I could very much go with an Affliction spec full time.

Late this week will be my day again, and at that point I will respec Demon and evaluate what a roughly shod build in that tree looks like.

Last night marked Part I of my new spec experimentation. As expected, I specced Affliction. I’m not sure, but I think I’m going to have to call the whole thing a wash and start over.  The main reason was that the lag was so horrendous that my instant-casts were actually taking 3 seconds at times. It is extremely hard to gauge your performance in such a gimped environment.

Having said that, I only died once after hours of dotting everything in sight. I was quite reckless, too, sometimes sending my blueberry across several mobs to get at my first target, thus gathering a whole … mob … of mobs.

I have to say that – executed properly – this build is tough as nails and harder to crack than ROT-13. Get Siphon Life up, then Haunt, and you have a guaranteed health income to work with, sometime from multiple sources. Mana isn’t a concern. Lifetap your heart out. It’ll grow back.

I suspect that had I not been lagging so much, I would have seen better numbers and probably not died when I did.

So, it’s a mixed bag. Overall, I am pleased. But I want a Mulligan to see what it can really do before I go Demon. I’d like also to run at least a Heroic if not Kara, but Grimm’s going to hog Kara for at least one week, so I’ll have to bide my time – unless they, you know, specifically ask for a warlock.

Random thoughts to finish off:

• I am still not sure what my wardrobe choices should be now. There’s badge pants that interest me. But I might hold off. I think partly it will depend on my final spec. For this build, high stamina will be better.
• I have six – count them – six DoTs now: CoA, Corruption, Siphon Life, Immolate, Affliction, and Haunt. I quickly gave up on everything but CoA, Corruption, SL, and Haunt, because the mobs were dead before I was done casting everything.
• DoTs critting? Holy CRAP.
• <3 Haunt
• The new graphics for many of the spells are cool.
• Spellstones and Firestones – alas, they are soulbound.

I started writing up a big ranty thing earlier, about all the negativity that some people feel compelled to bring out at the drop of the hat, especially if it makes them somehow look like mavericks bucking the trend of enjoyment that others are feeling.

So how was I going to come back at it? More negativity, because, golly gee willikers, that sure does help, doesn’t it? Yep, naming and shaming. Was your reaction to the barbershop a dire warning about RMT? I was right there rubbing your nose in it. Dislike warlocks having a blast with Illidan-form? I point and sneer. Hunters getting stompy with exotic pets got you down, friend? Your tears are delicious.

I pulled out of that though. I see no reason to make it worse by bringing embarassment to people that are maybe not having a good day, or week, or year or whatever. I don’t care that they are incapable of having fun, for whatever reason. What’s important that we unload that baggage.

I tell ya what I’m gonna do. I’m going to make it real clear who the ones are that make the online WoW community a lot of fun. Like Big Red Kitty and his irrepressible good humor and excitement over the goodies we Hunters got this time out.  Or Hydra’s wide-eyed innocent look as she burns things down with fire and beams all sweetness and light. Mania’s hard work and impeccable professionalism in producing one of the handiest hunter sites out there. Ratshag and his amazing stories¹ . Ego and her hard-hitting, pragmatic, helpful views on healing.

These, the good, always readable WoW blogs, will be featured over there to the right.

The ones that don’t pass muster … will either be moved to the links page only, or they’ll just disappear. I don’t believe in rewarding that sort of thing with even the meager pickings that traffic here provides. I don’t care if you are an esteemed, established, credentialed gaming blogger; if you insist on being  a drag, you’re going away.

To the rest of you: thank you very much, from the bottom of my heart, for keeping it real.

/Salute

1. Regardless. [↩]

I’m sure that my spec is off the wall and that I’ll need to adjust something before all is said and done, which means I blew a free respec, but hey ho, I don’t care. I just don’t.  Last night was all about getting back into the game, and having a good time. Mission accomplished in both cases.

Now I need to think it out and strategize.

Addons

First of all, it appears that Omen has undergone another rev, this time with far less fanfare, pain, indignity, weeping, or lamenting. It looks like a solid upgrade. Looks like he listened and changed the UI to something people were happier with. We shall see.

The one that upset me the most though is Talented. I had just started using it a month or so ago and was kinda getting used to it. But with the new changes to pets, this addon fell over and died. It wasn’t that it wa blowing up. No, it’s that it didn’t have a tab for pet talent trees. Hopefully that gets resolved.

Lookit him go!

Rigel is a joy to behold. We went romping around Q’D, Hellfire, and other places taking 2, 3, even 4 on at once. He leveled and didn’t go down even once.

One thing that concerns me is that there are now a huge number of pet skills, comparatively, more than the pet bar can hold. I think that the spells that are not visible are still proccing, but it’s hard to say. Just in case, I moved Growl out to the bar to make sure it was functioning.

Spec Spank

I am going to be lost on spec for a while, but I have seen what an ineptly put together spec looks like (mine) and it didn’t suck. It follows that if I make a good spec, it won’t suck … less. Whatever.

Aspect Mastery makes things really interesting … well, what they did to aspects in general. Aspect of the Viper, for example. I know a lot of people said it was nerfed. I don’t see that. I almost refilled my mana bar in 20 seconds, with a mild reduction in damage. Then I switched back to Hawk and life was groovy. Call that a nerf if you like, but the passive regen isn’t nearly as interesting to me as the in-combat, as any hunter that has lasted through a full boss battle can attest. In the past, for a boss, I would switch to Viper and stay there. Now, I’ll have to work harder, but I’ll hit harder, too. Win! Well, I need to see this in a raid.

But the whole aspect thing is really interesting for raiding. As I said, in the past I have done what I can to mitigate mana issues on bosses. Now, if Viper works the way I think it will, I can get all my mana back in 20-30 seconds, then switch back to Hawk.

So that means that Improved Aspect of the Hawk becomes interesting. It would be nice to figure out a spec where I can have that and the talents I need from Marksman. I need 14 to get everything I need from that tree, so if I can still have extra to put in IAotH, I’m game. The proc is what I am looking for here. Totally worth it.

Pet Talents

Pet Talents are a complete mystery for the moment regarding which ones are best to have. The big problem, as mentioned elsewhere, is that there is not enough room on the pet bar for all of them. However, you can mitigate this by putting a few on macros and putting those on regular spell bars, such as Growl toggle on/off.  I am going to have to play with this. Foshizzle, though, Rigel sure seems to like what he’s got.

Glyphs

Glyphs of interest. Jotted down for later. This sort of thing will have to do until a decent guide is up.

Major:

• Glyph of Hunter’s Mark
• Glyph of Arcane Shot
• Glyph of Aimed Shot
• Glyph of Deterrence
• Glyph of Freezing Trap
• Glyph of Bestial Wrath
• Glyph of Improved Aspect of the Hawk
• Glyph of Aspect of the Viper

Minor:

• Glyph of Mend Pet
• Glyph of Scare Beast
• Glyph of Feign Death
• Glyph of the Pack

Afterglow

For hunters, this patch is an unmitigated success. We’re a bit OP now … we’re going to need to get to Northrend STAT or our heads are going to make us fall over. I hear that about a lot of classes now. The new talents are crazy! But I like them!

Well, yesterday was an unmitigated disaster from just about every perspective as a user, but today things were stable enough that I was able to go out and have a little fun and get my dailies done.

One thing that I had to try was the barber. They have emo hair for Dwarves! Two styles, even. I also fluffed out the beard for that ZZ Top look.

As expected, I respecced deep Beast Master and took Beast Mastery, so an Exotic pet was on the radar.

Rhinos were out of the question, but I’ve had a bone to pick with Devilsaurs ever since I encountered them in Un’Goro as a wee 50’s. So I set off looking for King Mosh, and encountered instead a white one. Given the number of other hunters I passed on the way in, i decided to go for this one.

Ladies and gentlemen, dwarves and gnomes, say hello to my latest team member: Rigel the Devilsaur. His turn ons are Defias Bandit Burgers and fresh belf. His turn offs are emo music and mean people.

Aye, he’s a strange beastie, but he earns his keep. We plowed through Money Island like a hot knife through butter.

Over at WoW Insider, Zach Yonzon has a pretty comphrehensive guide on the new Warlock talent trees. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited at the changes coming to us. To be honest, I am having sly thoughts of trying Affliction or Demonology again, just to see if Blizz has succeeded in balancing the three trees.

Zach has done a great job of boiling down several weeks or months of beta testing into a three-page missive. I’ll try to boil it down to the stuff that has me excited. No guarantees.

Affliction

I know of a couple of locks that hit some crazy numbers rolling affliction, but my gear does not lend itself well to that. However, the new trees might make Affliction a viable raiding build. This would be especially handy on bosses like Netherspite, when playing the blue beam.

This is a good thing because I have always liked the beauty of the Affliction tree’s way of doing things. The only worry I have here is having to keep so many balls in the air at once. A risk I will be happy to live with.

• Improved Corruption – not only a DPS boost for Corruption (which, by the way, is now an insta-cast for everyone), but a crit boost for Seed of Corruption. Hey, Illhoof – you thought I was a pain before? Say hello to my leetle friends!
• On the other hand, there is something terribly wrong with what happened to Amplify Curse. Dare I say it? A SLAP IN THE FACE!!!111!  :: ebil warlock laughter :: Where was I? Oh, yeah. Giving new meaning to the word “talent”.
• Improved Felhunter makes Affliction stand closer to the true Warlock Way by making your pet truly beneficial, and more raid-friendly to boot!
• Eradication makes me all tingly.
• Pandemic makes me want to sing.
• If ever there was a talent that belonged on the Affliction tree, Death’s Embrace is it. Just look at that! The only downside I see here is the possibility of it proccing on a boss and getting unwanted attention. We’re going to have to play that one by ear.
• Look at Everlasting Affliction and give me a HOLY CRAP, BATMAN!  Thank you. Am I reading that right? A stacking damage tick that has a chance to reset? That’s just crazy!
• Haunt is beautiful. They have again come up with something that truly captures the spirit (heh) of the Affliction tree.

Demonology

What can I say other than this is my all time favorite tree? I desperately miss my Felguard; he always made those long nights out in the field go by easier. He has a hell of a poker face, so you gotta really be on your game playing “Go Fish.”¹

But I digress.

The changes here are exciting to me because it may mean that Old Axeface will be back in my stable, and I’ll still be able to bring the pain in raids. Yay!

• A note on Improved Healthstone: it will no longer be possible to have more than one Healthstone on your person, so gone are the days of having locks of different levels on this talent so provide two, or even three different stones.  But to be honest, I always felt that was a futile practice – the stones are too wimpy to provide a solid rescue, and the cooldown is so long that the fight will be over before you get to crack the second one. At any rate, there is no strategic reason to pick a lower rank now, other than having better things to do with two talent points than getting an additional diddly-squat improvement.
• Master Conjurer is actually worth it now, because Firestones and Spellstones² are now buffs applied to your weapon rather than sitting in the wand slot. Excellent change! The only other viable change would have been to remove them completely, really, so I’m glad to see they found a more positive response than mine.³
• Demonic Pact is the warlock’s answer to the Hunter’s Ferocious Inspiration, except it focuses on spell damage. I can live with that, and so will the mages and boomkins and mana batteries. Oh, yes.
• There are a number of other talents that scale our damage or crit or both, and sometimes the demons’ too. I won’t go in to them individually other than to say: take ‘em all, as many as you can stuff into your spellbook.
• Metamorphosis is a huge disappointment. As Zach notes, it is analogous in a way to the Hunter’s Bestial Wrath, but without all the usefulness. I can’t really say I’d take it, though, as one Blizz employee stated, “All warlocks really want to be Illidan.”  Well, OK, yeah, but can we agree that that’s not Illidan? Thanks.

Destruction

My current spec, and a very fun one. In this spec I am 1st or 2nd tier⁴  in our guild for damage output, hands down. One other warlock can bring more hurt than I can, and our Guild Leader’s veteran frost mage gives me a solid run for the money, but almost nobody else can touch my output when I have all my things ticking.  In fact, I usually have to shut things down so I don’t pull mobs off my tank. So, while Destruction is not my favorite tree, it does have a level of satisfaction to it.

Having said that, it is the last spec that I wanted to play. It is a fragile spec, good for raiding but not very survivable in solo play; one has to be extremely careful.

It’s also the spec that seems the most confused; Blizz seems to want to draw us off of Shadowbolt spam into a more AoE-ish fire spec. I’m not convinced that will help. I guess it will depend on what happened to my shadow- and fire-specific damage bonus togs, such as my Shadoweave robe.

And then there’s what they did to Nether Protection; This sucker has saved our raid multiple times in the Illhoof encounter by virtue of keeping me out of harm’s way while I hammered the imps. Now it is mitigation, rather than immunity. I’m not sure what to think of this, but my gut reaction is that Illhoof just became a two-warlock fight.

Overall, I didn’t see a lot to excite me in Destruction. If I see good numbers in Demon or Afflic specs, I may never find out. This is not to say that Destro is a bad spec. It simply means that there wasn’t much jiggered on it. Maybe because it was in pretty good shape to begin with.

In Conclusion

I will need three weeks to figure this out, raiding Kara with a different spec each time. I know Grimm’s going to be jockeying for position as well, so it’s hard to say how long it will take me to find out for sure which spec is the best. But right now, it looks like it’s a very good time to be a Warlock!

/horns

1. I heard that, you pervs. [↩]
2. I wonder if we will be able to pass these out now? [↩]
3. What can I say? I like to destroy things. [↩]
4. ”Tier” being some ill-defined level of being, subject to change without notice [↩]