One first-world problem associated with blogging is keeping up with current events. Well, we’re a couple of months into the Transmorgapocolypse and I’m just now getting around to saying the first thing about it. Mostly, because, well, I really didn’t think that making it a thing was going to be a thing. But it is, so there you are.
It’s funny the subtle distaste that some people show for using this new feature. I’m not sure really why it’s a big deal to draw a line and step to one side or the other of it, but you will find staunch proponents of each.
But seriously, to have the choice in how your characters appear is a glorious, fun thing for some, and as long as they don’t force fashion-forward sensibilities upon one’s withered soul, why should one complain? The game world has become filled with color-coordinated mages and bat-winged warlocks, toons actually have some individuality, and people wanna complain?
Maybe it would be better if I discussed my Wookie Jedi Techno-dance-fight master instead1.
Maybe not.
All I know is that the haters are out there, and they’re gonna hate. I’m going to point and laugh, because, well, it’s low-hanging fruit2.
If you were to look at me on the armory, the first thing you’d conclude is that I’m one of the haters, since I’m pretty much up there in my T12/T13 underoos for all the world to see. There’s a reason for that.
It’s true, I’m a hater. But I’m a hater with a difference.
I’m a hater of almost everything there is about the gear sets they’ve made for Hunters. Oh, I kinda liked the eyeball shoulder pieces, but that’s not much of a foundation to work from.
Basically, it comes down to mail. I’m not a big fan of mail. Woodsy ranger-type archetypes are generally more leather-y than we get depicted in WoW past level 40. Something I’ve never understood is how a woodsy ranger-type is supposed to function properly as a woodsman in all that clanky metal crap. And don’t get me started on the T13 shoulders … I’m wider than I am tall with those on! I’m supposed to slip between trees like this? Truly? I’m not an Orc, I expect my wardrobe to make some sort of sense!
Truth is, forest leathers and a camo cloak are the one right look for a Hunter, which IS available, but NOT to mail-wearers. And, unfortunately, one cannot mog mail to look like leather.
There is, also, a sad footnote for my favorite axe. You may recall that I had doubts that Legacy even existed, when it dropped for me in the twilight of Karazhan raiding. I’ve kept it all these years as a memento of past exploits and a reminder that patience may indeed be rewarded. When mogging came about, I was eager to mog my current staff3 to resemble my treasured axe. And, well, you guessed it. Can’t mog a staff into an axe. And there ARE no suitable two-hander axes in Cata endgame.
We’ve managed to get Jas and Illume gussied up, at least, and Fai’s choice was pretty much a done deal as soon as they made the DK starter gear available for purchase. Not gonna lie, though, Flora’s swinging towards frumpy, but we’re still looking at options. Her opinion that it all looks good when lit by the burning bodies of one’s enemies may well be true, but keeping up appearances is sometimes important. I guess we’ll come back to that. I don’t like the look in her eyes right now, nor how she’s swinging around that red-hot poker that passes for a dagger.
But here’s some armory links in case you’re curious about where the mog templates came from: Floramel, Illume, Jasra, Faiella. I’d include WoWHead links (for the 3D aspect), but that part of WoWHead is down.
Update: First post of this had two pictures not show, and that’s probably what made it into the feed, so if you normally read via a feed reader, you missed a couple of pics. I had to manually edit a few things. /le sigh
Open the sixth sub-folder and choose the sixth image.
Publish the image! (and a few words wouldn’t hurt, though I dare say I couln’t stop a blogger from adding a few words of their own).
Challenge six new bloggers.
Link to them.
Alrighty then.
As many bloggers thus tagged have found out, the originator of this meme was unually well-organized, and the whole sub-folder thing often falls apart. Or maybe s/he had a Mac. Who knows? the upshot is, we often have to interpret a bit, and I’m no different.
For example, I keep my WoW screenshots folder fairly clean, rarely accumulating more than 20 or so screenshots that don’t get dealt with. Right now, the sixth image is this.
When I went to the End Time, I just had to get a screenie of Deathwing’s smoking corpse. Possibly one of the most iconic images of the whole expansion.
My “Blog headers” directory is full of the images that you see appear at the top of this blog. They are an accumulation of screenies and art that I have come across over the years. The sixth image from that directory is this.
This is Jasra, with our guildies, preparing to attack Ignis in Ulduar. I will not deny, she’s voguing for the camera in this shot. If I remember, we took him down on this attempt.
But I do have a folder where all the blogging stuff goes, and it has many subfolders, so let’s have a gander.
Ah, yes, Fanny Thundermar. This folder is where I collect “incidentals”, images that I use to illustrate whatever point it is I’m illustrating. It’s a real swamp in there, so I’m glad it was something as good as this fiery young lady, slayer of ogres using nothing but an iron skillet (hey, it worked for Sam!), and originator of the phrase, “arse like an anvil”.
And finally, for giggles, here is the image for the “My Pictures” directory.
Obviously from a Dwarf Humor website.
Oh, so now I have to challenge and link some new ones. Here are my choices.
In every MMO I’ve played in, we eventually see the game population divide up into populations of unusual – some might say freakish – creatures. The exact nature of these sub-populations varies, but the point is, they exist, and they’re downright weird.
Let’s take raiders, as an example. Once we hit level cap, it’s all about the raiding. Everything we do is bent towards improving our performance in raiding. We practice on target dummies, grind for cash for enchants and gems and potions, hone our trade skills to feed those needs, farm mats for consumables, do dailies for tokens and cash, fish for buff food, and so forth. If any of us manages to get off and do something that is the least bit enjoyable – but not related to raiding – we feel guilty about it.
And look at that gear. Min/maxing is hardly adequate to describe what we do to our gear, and what sort of gear we look for. It’s like you took a battleship, and shrank everything down to the size of a destroyer – except the gun, which swelled to five times its normal size. That’s a typical DPSer in a nutshell. A typical tank is a brick with legs. A healer is best represented as either a giant bandaid, or a giant ball of cotton (Disco priests, yo!).
I mean, Hunters wear mail. And mail with higher armor values is – by any measure of common sense – better. Except for raiders. If it doesn’t make our gun bigger, we’re not interested.
Don’t get me started on PvPers. I mean, they have entire separate gear tiers from everybody else in the universe. I’ve seen periods of time where priests have been the terror of the battlefield. Arenas give rise to such perverted stat mixes that even the developers can’t sort out what they’re doing. Hey, Johnnie found a +50 to pillar-humping sword!
My point here is that the endgame, be it PvP or PvE, warps perceptions of whatever game you’re playing. Somebody spent a lot of time and effort putting together a game world that has NOTHING to do with either of those things, and most normal people actually get out there and enjoy them. While we’re QQing about cooldowns and OP rogues, the larger population is taking its time and enjoying the game they paid good money for.
It’s true – Blizz kind of stacked the deck against itself with the inexplicably high XP rates during leveling (Most zones, you can’t even complete all the quests before they go gray). But outside of that, there are a number of interesting and compelling stories out there that the power-leveling supa-raider has never seen. I wonder how many people right now are scratching their heads over the entire "Fangs of the Father" questline, wondering where this black dragon came from.
The "normal" people out there know.
Right now I’m seeing a bumper crop of this syndrome from STWOR players. "I’m level 50, now what?" The usual answer is "grind, dailies, raid." Right now, a lot of people are finding out they paid sixty clams only to do the same thing all over again. All the work that Bioware put into other parts of the game, totally unappreciated and likely unsampled. As much as they wanted to break the mold, they simply failed to take the herd mentality of your average raider/pvper into consideration.
I have to give kudos to Blizzard on this. The average bored raider has no idea what to do outside of get ready for more raiding. So Blizz has provided a means to measure one’s progress in, for example, experiencing the stories told in each of the zones – i.e. the various Loremaster achievements.
Within the Raider / PvP / Roleplaying echochaimers, our plaintive bleats are loud and distinct. But from outside, all people care about is what is that annoying buzz and how do I stop it?It isn’t any wonder that you often experience resentment from those outside of your special little tribe. They’re enjoying all the new content while some group of shmoes have already beaten the end boss and are crying about how the game’s all over for them.
The ongoing challenge for MMO creators is to create content for all the normal people and all the mutants like us. We haven’t seen it yet, and nothing looks to have a solution forthcoming, so we’ll keep watching and hoping.
A couple of weeks ago, Saga blogged on the topic of honesty … specifically, being honest with one’s GM and/or guild about one’s intent with regards to other games, and one’s dedication to one’s guild when raiding. It’s a good, though-provoking read on the uncomfortable spot that not-quite-defectors leave a guild in at times like these – the times in question being times when there is something really popular – STWOR in this case – that people are trying out, but not yet ready to commit fully to.
Anyhoo, the upshot is some people weren’t being honest about this sort of thing, making up excuses about why they weren’t showing up to raid, so they would should they deign to return, still be assured a spot on the raid. They weren’t really able to commit, either way.
Thinking of this, I noticed another, similar, trend.
A lot of people are going out of their way to not have a strong opinion, one way or the other, on the whole STWOR-WoW1 thing. Time and time again I see people griping about either a STWOR or WoW feature or lack thereof, followed by more disclaimers than you can shake a stick at. In some cases the disclaimers are longer than the actual opinion.
Consider the lack of LFD in STWOR, for an example. That topic’s been popping up a lot recently, in posts that more or less almost approach thinking about almost committing to a possible opinion that STWOR might possibly under some conditions slightly benefit from such a thing, but NOT SAYING IT’S BAD WE DON’T HAVE IT Y’ALL and OF COURSE THE WOW ONE STILL MOSTLY ALMOST SUCKS EXCEPT IT PRETTY MUCH DOESN’T EITHER. SORTA.
Ahem …
Okay, the point I’m dancing around2 is that a lot of gamers are playing both sides of the street today, are happy with that, and want to blog about that new thing, but there appears to be a problem with doing that.
Being part of a large blogging community in WoW, we have all made many friends. Many of those friends3 have no interest in the new shiny, but still read the blog because, hey, still friends!
On the other side of the coin, they are also painfully aware of many of their peers (let’s assume STWOR peers for the moment) have far less "give" in their opinions, and are likely to have little to no tolerance of pro-WoW attitudes – or in some cases, apparently, tolerance.
What seems to be happening as a result is a lot of beating around the bush instead of getting right to the point of things one likes, dislikes, for fear of offending either camp. One wishes to remain in good stead with the New Order, but feels like being too positive for STWOR or negative on WoW might burn bridges one does not wish to burn.
It’s a shame this is happening, because it tends to marginalize all three camps. The STWOR partisans become more extreme in aggregate, as do the WoW partisans, and those in between end up tying their own hands and miss many great opportunities to discuss the merits – and pitfalls – of both games in an honest and frank manner.
Hopefully, as things settle out over the next few months, and we can manage to have honest opinions on the things that really matter, such as Pandas versus Ewoks.4
Or WoW-STWOR for those wavering the other way. [↩]
On January 18, 2012, a lot of sites are going dark (more or less) to protest a pair of bills1 that are trying real hard to become a law in the United States that will give the US government unparalleled power over the content that appears on the internet. In a show of solidarity, I should be taking this site down in the same way. Unfortunately, I’m a bit busy and haven’t had a chance to set that up or get whatever plugin I need to do it, etc.
This does not mean that I am not sympathetic to the cause. I am. So, tomorrow, if you are inconvenienced in the process of doing whatever it is that you are doing, please have a little patience and respect for whatever website it is. They are trying to make a point, and your frustration is part of that point. If SOPA / PIPA passes and becomes the law of the land, sites could go down by Federal mandate, diddled at the DNS level.
How long do you think WikiLeaks would last before they were taken down due to "piracy" charges, for example? What about Wikipedia? WoWPedia? Ars Technica? BoingBoing? Slashdot? All of them have, at some point, probably published something that could, without hearing or possibility of rebuttal, have them blacklisted in the DNS tables that are used in the US.
And if you feel that a temporary inconvenience is worthwhile to ensure content providers get paid, might I mention that the US government does not thus far have a stellar record of clearing people from its own "No-Fly list". Pretty much, once you get on it, you’re toast. I don’t trust these people to floss their own teeth, much less admit to a mistake and clear things up. This is the US government! Justice is not relevant!
Here are some links that may be helpful and/or educational.
Stop American Censorship hooks you up with your congresscritter so that you may express your displeasure at the concept of SOPA/PIPA. You get a canned message to send, or you may craft your own. Maintain level tones!
Hey, WikiMedia has a few words to say, such as "this totally impacts our ability to do our thing." Love Wikipedia or loathe it, one thing is certain: it represents something that most people consider a good thing. Imagine if it were gone. Oh, wait – tomorrow2, you won’t have to imagine.
Okay, it probably took longer to write this than to find and install the plugin to blackout my own site, but I never have been one of few words when many words would suffice. But now I’m really tired, and suffering from a head cold virus that we have dubbed "Murglesnout", because, brothers and sisters, that is exactly how it feels.
I don’t often blog about the world outside of WoW, since this is, yah, a WoW blog. But I do watch other games closely. And yes, that includes STWOR. I guess it’s assumed that the main reason I don’t want to play it is because I have never heard of George Lucas and his progeny. That’s a negative, Ghost Rider.
Anyhoo.
In an interview on Eurogamer (as pointed to by Massively), the Game Director for STWOR, James Ohlen, had this to say.
Star Wars: The Old Republic Game Director James Ohlen isn’t surprised that the game’s received the flak it has from a segment of reviews and fans. In a candid interview with Eurogamer, Ohlen addresses both the issues of being a "big target" for critics and the claims that SWTOR’s lacking innovation.
For the most part, players and critics have praised the game, Ohlen shares, and BioWare is seeing an "exceptionally high" desire among its playerbase for continued subscriptions. But was BioWare prepared for the backlash as well? Ohlen says it was: "We knew that there was going to be people who wanted us to fail. But that’s just the nature of the game. If you’re going to build a huge game and try to go out to a lot of people, you’re going to have people who just react poorly."
Basically, he seems to say, if you have something bad to say about the game, you’re a hater.
In one fell swoop, he attempts to reduce any criticism – legit or not – to just plain "haters gonna hate, bro" and thus, in his mind at least, can move forward about talking about how wonderful the embroidery is on the next tier of armor or whatever.
I’m not going to address the concerns expressed elsewhere either collectively or individually. Not my concern. But when I see a video game company handle legitimate criticisms in such a cavalier fashion, it really annoys me. It’s a sleazeball move and it just paints the whole development team in a bad light – and usally they don’t deserve that.
Well, sure, he works at EA, and we all lower our expectations whenever we talk, shake hands with, or generally share space with someone at EA these days1. But that does not excuse the practice, any more than if it were someone at Blizzard2.
If I ever have a critique of a game, it will be based on the game and not on nature of the players within or the nature of the content. The fact is that the "franchise" does not interest me, but that is not a critique of the game itself. What I’ve heard of the game itself has been largely positive. I’ve heard more negative about the community around the game than the game itself. That doesn’t make the game a bad game, any more than LFR makes puggers into bad people. They are mechanisms only, and should be judged on that basis.
When you try to insinuate bias without proof, you come across as a sleaze, plain and simple, and when you do that, you inch closer to losing a sale from those that care about that sort of thing.
Now, do I actually believe this guy meant things that way? At the moment, I’m on the fence. As usual, reading the full article embellishes things a bit. But this is the bit getting the widest exposure, and it so far hasn’t been walked back too briskly, so I don’t know what to think about this guy.
What I DO know is that this is a practice I have seen over and over again, from game makers at all levels (including Zynga, ew). So if it’s gonna quack and walk like a duck, I’m going to lay down the duck-like attributes on it.
The practice itself is just not cool, it shouldn’t be pandered to, and "reporters" on the scene should call it out when it happens instead of nodding and smiling and holding on to that free pass for one more quarter.
More’s the pity, I remember when EA was a known mark of quality and excellence. [↩]
Has that happened? I’m sure it has, and there’s still no excuse for it. [↩]
Go boldly amidst the noise and haste of LFD, and enjoy what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without grinding, be on good terms with all factions. Speak your strats quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the l33tsauce and the preeners; they too can serve as examples.
Avoid loud and spammy persons, they are vexations to /Y. If you compare yourself with others players, you may become vain or bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser gearscore than yours.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your gear plans. Keep interested in your main, however boring dailies may be; this is a real asset in the changing endgame raid tier.
Exercise caution in on the AH; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what deals there are; many persons strive for undercuts; and everywhere life is full of profit.
Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about your guild; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as constant as the stars.
Take kindly the counsel of experience, gracefully surrendering the gear of youth. Nurture PvP gear to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many wipes are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the Titans, no less than the Gnomes and the Dwarves; you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt lore is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with Metzen, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your Transmog set. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful virtual world. Be cheerful.
Still, you have to admit that losing a GM and over half the core raiding team is a pretty difficult obstacle. Throw in the fact that the new GM has some stuff keeping her away from the game for a few weeks, and conditions are ripe for the typical collapse cycle.
Fortunately, there are many things that mitigated these factors. First of all, the new GM was quick to let people know what was going on, so the usual ennui on the part of the rank and file did not occur. Secondly, we have some individuals that are willing and able to take up leadership roles – interim or not - and maintain a sense of order that a guild needs to survive. And, thirdly, efforts to recruit are bearing fruit – whether to get new members, or to build a guild alliance, remains to be seen, but progress has been made and thus far the new faces have been met with amity and approval.
The net effect this weekend was that we actually had to sit some people out for our weekend raiding. Oh, sure, the new faces were a factor, but that’s the point of bringing them in, or getting together, or however you want to put it.
The ultimate result is that we’ve managed to move on to 4/8 Normal. I realize we’re not talking world or even server firsts here, but it is achievement, it is progression, and I don’t think anyone walked out muttering bad things about anything.
As usual, I am not satisfied with my damage output. There were one or two fights where I did exceedingly well, but for the majority I’m close to tail-end Charlie by the numbers. On the second day, I realized that I had some gemming and reforging issues, which I’m not sure how happened, but even that didn’t improve things much. I have some time this week, so I’m going to investigate a Survival build. I hear that’s the hawtness these days. Always in motion, the future is1.
So, anyway, the future of EtI is far less full of woe than it once was, and I consider that to be a good thing.
Obligatory required Star Wars reference. Wouldn’t be a WoW blog without it. [↩]
There is a scene in one of my favorite sci-fi series of all time in which one of the main characters is expressing his frustration with the daily flow of little deaths that define the life of a bureaucrat. It is of course a take-off of our Earthly expression "Being pecked to death by ducks", an expression of how thousands of little pinpricks can add up to some serious damage over time. Each may be a mere annoyance, but taken together, they can topple empires.
In this case, cats did not topple the Centauri Republic. That required B5′s version of an Old God. But that’s another show.
Where we do find parallels, however, is in how we as citizens of Azeroth deal with little annoyances that have no seeming impact in the immediate sense. You see things every day that you decide aren’t worth getting excited about, until that day comes that everybody’s doing it because nobody raised voice to object.
It is good to know in our little universe that some people recognize this and work actively against it. While some will see a tiny injustice and shrug, "that’s the way the world works", there are others that step forward and state flatly, "that was wrong, and I’m calling you on it."
The former like to portray themselves as laid-back realists and the opposition as strident nitpickers. This is how it’s always been. "Don’t rock the boat" wasn’t invented by hipsters in 2007. Establishment types will hold the line as viciously as any attacker, all the while working hard to make it seem like a chilled-out real-world response.
So we hopeless idealists often find ourselves somewhat overwhelmed by an army of trolls at the anonymous beck and call of kindly patriarchs (or matriarchs, it’s happened). There’s not much you can do about it besides stick to your convictions in the knowledge that you are right to call people on their bullshit. You may take damage in the process, but a core group of good people will think better of you for it.
The world IS out to get you if you aren’t just going along for the ride. If you challenge convention and the old world order, you will be savaged and drug through the mud. Your worldview will be challenged by an endless stream of "trivial" things that mean practically nothing by themselves, but in aggregate represent a larger evil that has to end.
If your cause is just and your reasoning sound, however, you will have company in your travels. A herd of nibbling cats, spread out over a wider sample, can be withstood.
It is all the rage these days to disavow any regard whatsoever for damage meters. One is expected to denounce their use, purge them from one’s system, deny them access to your chat window, and make fun of those using them.
Well, I say, nuts to that!
If you are DPS, this is your instrument
Neil Armstrong did not land on the moon by looking out the window1, he used instruments – and Buzz Aldrin calling out other instrument readings. Lindbergh didn’t even have a front window, he flew across the Atlantic on instruments. There are automobile races where the participants don’t even depart at the same time – they completely use instruments to determine who won.
In short, a reliable instrument is worth any number of other observations.
And a damage meter is the DPS role’s instrument of measurement.
You need to know if you are performing properly
The DPS role is dependent on its numbers, whether you take them subjectively or absolutely is irrelevant. But of the two, an absolute reference is much better than a relative one. Numbers are absolute. You can feed them into spreadsheets, save them off, compare them to each other. You can make multiple passes and chart your progress or lack thereof. Your damage meter is your friend. If you were doing 20K last week on a particular boss, and only 18K this week, you have something to look in to before you’re the cause of an enrage-timer wipe in the future.
Target dummies are liars
"Well, fine", you say, "turn it on for your target dummies, I got no problem with that, but using them in a live encounter is bad!" To which I say, pfah! Target dummies give you a baseline, but they don’t take anything into account that you get from a live boss. You won’t see all the group buffs, or group procs, or even be able to use your execute abilities such as Kill Shot or Decimate. You might as well just sit there with autoshot, the approximation will have the same level of accuracy (and much less variability!).
No, a live boss (or live trash, if that is your interest) is the only way to truly gauge your performance in a raid setting. And since things vary depending on raid make-up, procs, and the like, you will need multiple samples.
Well, you don’t need to run it for everyone
Yes, you do.
You are not a single unit. You are part of a team. And how you perform relative to the rest of the team is important, if for no other reason than that of self-preservation. For if you’re performing in line with the guys at Elitist Jerks, but behind that of your guild (what, you think that EJ is infallible? Lol.). You may be in danger of being sat without realizing it. Because if you’re part of a serious raiding guild, I guarantee that your Raid Leader is watching your performance.
The more you know …
But that’s what World of Logs is for!
It is indeed, and in my opinion it is a far more accurate instrument than Omen or Skada, provided all members contribute logs (if it’s just you, then it’s on par with the other two, not better). But you probably won’t have WoL for all of your Heroics, trash runs, and so forth. You need all the things. Else your dataset is incomplete.
A damage meter is always there.
People use them badly!
They do indeed. Jerks spam chat with them all the time. But not you, right?
And the damage meters don’t do that automatically, so if yours does, it’s totally your fault. You are misusing the instrument. Stop it.
What idiots do with damage meters is not my concern, and it is not the fault of the damage meter. Get over it.
I don’t need a damage meter to know how well I’m doing
Yes you do. You will always do better with solid statistics than you will with a "gut feeling".
But if you just want to use the Force, have I got a game for you.
It might also be that you’re a PvPer and see no need. I contend that you don’t even belong in this conversation. Fire up All Healers Must Die and go do that honorable thing you do.
There are valid performance issues.
Yes, there are. But not for me, and not for most people that I know of. If, however, you are one of those people, and cannot afford a computer made after 2001, then by all means don’t run with one, because for certain it does suck CPU cycles.
You already have problems and damage meters are the least of them, but, whatever.2
Don’t shoot yourself in the foot.
In general, however, a damage meter is a valuable and useful tool for DPS self-improvement. Feel free to sneer at the idiots spamming party chat, and feel free to kick people that get hung up over somebody else’s DPS in a PUG3. But don’t blame the instrument for these things.
After all, both Tommy Dorsey and myself play the same musical instrument. But nobody has ever proposed that the Trombone be banned because of me.4
Your damage meter is your friend
If you’re serious about self-improvement in a raiding environment, you need to use your damage meter to its fullest to provide nice, juicy data from which you can draw useful conclusions, and then apply those conclusions in such a way as to improve your performance (or detect bad decisions of that sort).
This is my damage meter. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
My damage meter is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life.
My damage meter, without me, is useless. Without my damage meter, I am ineffectual. I must use my damage meter wisely. I must DPS better than the boss that is trying to kill me. I must kill him before he kills me. I shall.
My damage meter and myself know that what counts in this raid is not the DPS we do, our meter dumps to raid chat, or the noise we make. We know that it is the overall damage that counts. We will do massive damage.
My damage meter is human, even as I, because it is our life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weaknesses, its strength, its range, its triggers, its filters and its scope. I will keep my damage meter prepped and ready, even as I am prepped and ready. We will become part of each other. We will.
Before the Light, I swear this creed. My damage meter and myself are the defenders of my world. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviors of my life.
So be it, until victory is ours and there is no enemy, but peace!
He looked AT the window, which had guide markers on it! [↩]
We did that last night, and when asked why, the reason given was "Insufficient Beardiness." The fact that the mage in question was so quickly votekicked speaks for itself, however. He was an insufferable bore. [↩]
Basically, it comes down to mail. I’m not a big fan of mail. Woodsy ranger-type archetypes are generally more leather-y than we get depicted in WoW past level 40. Something I’ve never understood is how a woodsy ranger-type is supposed to function properly as a woodsman in all that clanky metal crap. And don’t get me started on the T13 shoulders … I’m wider than I am tall with those on! I’m supposed to slip between trees like this? Truly? I’m not an Orc, I expect my wardrobe to make some sort of sense!
But here’s some armory links in case you’re curious about where the mog templates came from: Floramel, Illume, Jasra, Faiella. I’d include WoWHead links (for the 3D aspect), but that part of WoWHead is down.
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