Gimped for PVE

While I think that going 10/48/3 is really the only true way to not gimp a mage in pve, I had plenty of success as 40/0/21. Having AP for burst in pve can be a waste and a blessing. In most of the boss fights in TBC the tank has to establish a certain amount of threat before you can start dps (Shade of Aran & Gruul being the exceptions). Even after the initial wait period AP would get you above the tank or at least too close for comfort. So by the time you can finally AP the fight is almost half way over. Having AP for enrage timers and the last 10% of a boss's health can be the difference between a clutch win and just another wipe.

When to AP in raids was always question for me and eventually I made my peace with it. Now that I am 17/0/44 I don't think I will be raiding anything, but Kara in the near future (not that I plan to). I did a SLabs run last night that saw my mana pool take a beating. I was oom way too much and my dps dropped like crazy on bosses who were immune to frostbite and obviously shatter. Trash was much easier with my new found kitting abilities, but that is really pointless (trash is always easy).

It is a good thing I retired from pve for the beaches of pvp, because I would be spending a small fortune on mana pots for raiding. No worries, I can pop my gems, drink and evoke in arena if need be.

Arena Notes
Broke 1800 finally with my 3s team this week, we are still only doing 10 games a week which doesn't scratch my arena itch. We had a scheduled 5s time last night that never came to fruition, hopefully we can get our matches in before the coming AV weekend.

WE Day (PvP Revamp Project)

I went WE frost last night and man do I need to practice. It is a lot more complex than AP/Frost thats for sure. With AP all I had to do was start on my dps as normal and hit my burst macro when the target got to 40%ish and they usually died. Learning to micro manage my WE, when to summon it, when to go defensive and when/how to burst is going to take some time. I kept telling myself last night that it can only get easier and that it would ultimately make me a better player.

I spent most of my time in AV treating every opponent like it was the start of an arena match. I then went outside of Shat City and dueled my brother (AP/Frost) for thirty minutes. He has never beaten me when I was AP/Frost and he beat me on our very first duel. Eventually I got to the point where I could beat him as long as I had my WE available. It was progress, but I still feel panicked when I'm trying to manage my WE and watch my health at the same time. I had some solo fights against hunters in AV that I won hands down as well, it was a confidence boost, but I could beat most hunters as AP too.

I took some time to further refine my UI last night while defending the cave (two birds = one stone). I am back to using arena master and all of my bars are centered now with a lowered chat window for greater visual space (screens coming soon). I dumped proximo obviously, it was confusing as hell, sometimes I would go to sheep a pally in a 5s match and his name would be "X"ed so I could not target him. It wasn't like he was immune/bubbled either. No clue what I was missing.

More news on my WE adventure should be forthcoming as I have 5s matches tonight. Should be a panicked and fun time. I'll let you know.

Falling for Comics...Again

Originally posted at WNE on 08/29/07

I just finished reading the second volume of Chronicles of Conan and came to the realization that I'm in to comics again. The last time I fell for comic books was in 10th grade with number of different top cow offerings (Darkness, Witchblade and others), before that it was middle school and spiderman and before that superman in elementary school. I have been dabbling in independent comic books for two to three years now, most notably Becky Cloonan's work. Nothing that stuck to the ribs like a good barbarian in Hyborian Age story though.

I always loved watching Ah Ah Ah Arnold as Conan when I was growing up and whenever I catch one of the three movies on a lazy Sunday I will still sit transfixed with glee. I never knew how much much history the character and story had though. Robert E. Howard was a bad ass! His stories were ahead of his time, he palled around with H.P. Lovecraft and he influenced multiple generations of storytellers beyond his own life.

Chronicles of Conan is not Robert's writing however, though it is obviously his character and influence that drive the series. The comics collected in CoC were originally created in the 1970's by Marvel written by Roy Thomas and illustrated by Barry Windsor-Smith). The writing is hands down some of the best work I have ever seen in a comic. The art is better than most older comics I have seen and sometimes down right breath taking.

So where to go from here? I have a lot of Chronicles to read still and after that I am hoping to explore what is current on the comic scene, although I won't discount older comics any longer after the joy that Conan has brought me.

BioShock or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying...

Originally posted at WNE on 08/27/07

...and love the console.

I've been puffing my chest for PC gaming advocacy for years now. With only occasional dips in the console creek. I purchased an Xbox 360 for my birthday last September in what I would consider a weaker moment. The system usually collected dust outside of Gears of War and Crackdown. I beat and sold both within 3-4 weeks of purchase, they both had good single player elements, but nothing that truly grabbed me. They really shinned at cooperative play (co-op) and would have gone back to the store a lot sooner without it. Live has its merits, but only talking to one person at a time, outside of the game I'm playing, seems like a step backwards when compared to VoIP applications on the PC.

My slow slide towards the console starts with high quality single player games in high definition. This past Wednesday was the first time I purchased a first person shooter for a console since GoldenEye 007 for the Nintendo 64 (ten years ago). BioShock is the game that broke my video game console's back I'm afraid.

This game would look jaw dropping on a 15 inch CRT, let alone 50 inches in high def widescreen. Of course it is a raw numbers game, there are a lot of pixels and polys on the screen working over time, but art direction really ties it all together. The game play is engaging, there is a real survivor element to managing ammo and powers. There is five different ways to approach every fight and none of the them is necessarily the right one. Catch an enemy on fire and they will make for the closest water source (if one is available), when they dive in to put out the flames electrify the water to finish them (wow that sounds violent when I write it).

Ultimately the story is what really sinks in the hook. It is told through found recordings of small cast of characters and direct contact via in game radio. There is a slow progression to insanity that really heightens the experience. When you eventually get to fight against or interact with one of the characters it seems like you already know them or at the very least know their motivation. When I do actively think about what is going on in the game, it seems odd that everyone in this underwater paradise would record audio journals and leave them strewn about the world. It is a product of the game play though, the story is slowly trickled out to the player, keeping them transfixed.

To sum up, this is the first game that truly feels "next gen" in its approach to game play, graphics and story telling. This game is art, no ifs, ands or buts about it. Roger Ebert can bend over and kiss his hind parts as far as I'm concerned.

Ugh, I know another post about video games (doesn't he have another blog about games), two in fact. I promise no more after this one, well not directly, but man oh man this game is gripping.

PvP > Raiding

I think we all can agree that we play WoW for fun, a lot of times it can feel like work, but it is ultimately a fun experience when you take the sum of its parts. There are essentially three paths in the game to having fun, raiding, pvp and making gold. It can be a balancing act with a main focus on just one element, because there are only so many hours in the day. In recent weeks I have seen the fun I take from raids diminish rapidly and shift to the pvp side of the game. I have never been into gaming the auction house, so that leaves me with a pvp focus. If that wasn't abundantly clear from my last three post.

So as of Friday I am no longer a raid status member in my guild. I will throw off the chains of pve and focus strictly on pvp. That means my officer rank will change to pvp officer which entails recruiting for pvp and organizing premades on battleground weekends. Grajam is the other pvp officer and we already play 3s together and have known each other for going on 5 years. We should make a good team with my organization and his knowledge and elitism.

My 2s and 3s teams are a lot of fun, but we have always played our minimum limit and quit for the week. That leaves me with a total of 20 matches a week. Which means a lot of down time and a lot of cave defending, if its not a WSG or AB weekend. So last night when I got an invite to a 5s team I jumped all over it. One of my guild mates was looking for a dps to round out his 5s team and I guess I was one of the only players not in Mag's lair. Our matrix is a subtlety rogue, holy pally, resto shaman, and either a arms or fury warrior (it escapes me at the moment). We started at 2-7 and buried our rating, but after we changed our strategy and started to get a feel for each others play style we end up at 12-9 for the night with a rating above 1500. Everyone seems to be committed to the team, willing to play often so we can get better and is pvp focused. I am still learning about classic+hunter, 2345 and 4dps matrices so I don't have a clue about ours. It seems to have a lot of potential though. We are going to do another round of matches tonight and I am hoping we can get back on our win streak that went for 8-2 games last night.

If you are planning on starting your own 5s team there is a really good write up here. Check Tzatziki's other post for more good guides too. Learning a lot these days!

WSVG Notes
Great coverage of the WSVG in Toranto this past weekend at a number of sites. Check out Ming's commentary and oPlaid's (Check Six DoD:S player?) at gameriot.com for less numbers and more opinion. Radikal has a few post on the hunter drama that ensued and Yea We Lift has their side of the story up.

Ranking Notes
Far Beyond Driven's jutsu ranking on the server is up to 12th after being as low as 19th only three weeks ago. Good work to everyone who is working hard on Void Reaver and Mag. After breaking 1k spell damage finally in my pve gear, I dropped some pieces for vet pvp gear and am now back below 1k. I have tons more stam and res now though!

UI & Macro Work (PvP Revamp Project)

Old UINew UI (WIP)

Alot of changes to my UI in the past 24 hours, the most obvious being the placement of my targets and my health/mana bars are much more localized for easy viewing. I also added a larger set of buttons just below my new castbar. I placed my assist macros for my 3s team on it as well as my stones and pvp trinket. Curse is on their too, but I have yet to setup a macro for it.

Its late and I will be working on removing useless spells from my bars the rest of this week. So expect another post with a new screen this weekend maybe. If you have any questions about mods that I am using please feel free to leave a comment.

The process begins (PvP Revamp Project)

I did a little hunting this morning and found Radikal's armory profile. Does WoW stalker sound too extreme, or am I more like the teenagers who use to pass out at Michael Jackson concerts? The dude knows his shit and for someone like me who knows damn near nothing, it is nice to have someone to model my strat and play style after.

My WoW night did not begin till 9:30 pm last night due to the power outage. So I started out revamping my UI mods and positioning to be more pvp oriented. I dropped bongos built in caster bar for Quartz, just so I can be pro one day and use /stopcasting to defeat the great latency monster. I dropped Arena Master for Proximo, because everyone (Ming and Rad) says it's better. The many change I made was moving my character plate and my target's plate to a more visible place. It was in the upper left hand corner before, which meant I never looked at it. I also increased the size a bit, which means less visible playing space, but more emphasis on the info I need during a fight. Screens coming soon, I assure you.

The next change I made to my old setup was new sets of macros. I took the time to set up a focus target macro and a stop cast/counter spell macro for regular and focused targets. I then set up some of the water elemental (WE) macros that I plan to use, but not all as I need to rewatch the "Suck at Dueling" videos again and take notes.

Last night I was mixing ui and macro changes with AV cave defending. So by the time I got around to respecing, I held off on WE deep frost and opted for a quick fix. I went 40/0/21 again, but this time pure pvp oriented. It works for the next few days, but my ultimate goal is to be a pro WE frost mage. After I finish prepping my other macros, get used to new key binds and my forced UI changes I will take the WE plunge.

Just to get back on the horse after vacation, I ran 10 games of 2s (more Rad and Ming influence) with my shadow priest friend Aireez. We went 7-3 and I was quite impressed with our performance. We probably could have gone 9-1 or 10-0, but we are both still green to arena and have some mistakes to learn from first. It was nice to have discussion about what we messed up and how we could have won had we made better decisions.

I'm hoping we can get another 10 games of 2s in and 10 games of 3s tonight. 3s is where my team has the most to lose with my still new to the arena experience, so we will stick to a solid 10 games a week. I think Aireez and I can play as many 2s games as we want, because at the end of the day it is really just practice.

Relearning everything (PvP Revamp Project)

I first came across Radikal's blog via PvPScene.com, while looking for frost mage strats, talk about a revelation. Radikal is one of the top dueling/pvp/arena mages in the WoW community and he shares his strats and techniques through his writings and videos. It's pretty sick, it has opened my eyes to the true power of the water elemental frost mage. I planned to respec tonight and get to work on learning a whole new style, but my power went out around 7pm and I'm at the local library right now watching frost mage youtube videos.

Food for thought, new specs care of Radikal...

More rounded frost build w/ Imp CS

Maxed out burst bolt dps w/ Imp CS

I also came across World of Ming today while browseing Rad's site. Good writting and more prospective from on the top pvp player(s) in the world.

Good Times!

WoW Vacation(s)

I have been sporadicly hopping in and out of WoW for the past week and a half because of all sorts of real life reasons. Hammer came into town at the end of last week, my cousin is in town as of two nights ago and a second cousin (not second in relation, but as in an additional) came into town last night. All the cousins are in town because we are heading to the outer banks on Saturday and staying for the week. So that means no WoW at all for a week, on the heels of two weeks of light play.

I must confess that all of this non WoW time is coinciding perfectly with a recent feeling of emptiness with the game (guild drama and lack of progression). These three weeks will hopefully allow me to recharge my batteries and look forward to playing when I get back. I am still super geeked about getting better at arena and general pvp, but my blood lust for pve content was (is) on the decline.

FBD did their first Void Reaver attempts last night and I must admit that I am jealous. Even if they didn't down him, I wish I could have been there or wish I could be there next week when they try again. Is it wrong to hope my guild fails so I can be their when we succeed?

Arena Notes
No 3v3 this week as Pen is on vacation till Friday and I leave Saturday. Tazeer and I did some last minute 2v2 last night and stunk up the joint at 2-8. We will both be at the beach at the same time, as we are brothers and all, so at least we will get some points this Tuesday.

Other Game Notes
I had an opportunity to get back into Guitar Hero 2 with all my recent WoW downtime. We picked up another guitar and have been playing a bunch of coop. I learned how to hammer on and pull off, which is a skill that makes the game incredibly easier. It also leaves me wondering why my pro GH friends (talking to you Mehtul) would not point my major technique flaw when they saw me struggle in the past. In any case my goal for the up coming week at the beach is to finally venture into the land of Hard.

I also spent some time with Insurgency Mod, when Hammer was here, and I must say that I'm impressed. It feels like a mix of Raven Shield and Call of Duty (1 & 2) with a bit of Battlefield objectives thrown in for good measure. Definitely worth your time if you download it.

See you in a week,
Wrex

Quick updates

Guild Notes
Some Kara drama has left a bad taste in my mouth recently, so I have decided to focus more of my time to pvp and 25 man raids. We have now downed Gruul three times as a guild now and it keeps getting easier. We are going for number four tonight and hopefully will have the cleanest run yet. Magtheridon is up next, we will be dedicating four hours Thursday night to learning the fight and if we are lucky getting our first kill shot.

PVP Notes
Our 3v3 team keeps on winning, at thirty matches (23-7) played we have a rating of 1756 which means I'll soon have a new pair of pants. My goal after the pants is to snag up the season 2 dagger before Blizzard possibly puts it out of my reach. This past weekend was AV weekend so I racked up 10,000 honor in no time and got myself a new neck.

Thats all for now, more on the new expansion soon.

Strangers on the Internets

Originally posted at WNE on 08/01/07

At 10pm tonight I will be at the Richmond airport picking up a friend I have never meet.

I have been playing video games online with the same group of guys for going on three years now. We know all about each others personal lives, poke fun at each other and generally have a good time. All of the guys who live in Richmond, about eight including myself, get together for lunch on a regular basis. When a tournament was announced for the game we play competitively, we saw it as an opportunity to meet the rest of the team outside of in game voice chat. Plane tickets were purchased, carpools were planned and preparations were made. Then it got canceled.

War_Hammer or Doug, if your in to using real names and not game handles, still had a ticket purchased from Texas to Richmond. So we made a mad dash to plan a LAN party and cookout in his honor. He will be staying with Crystal and I tonight and tomorrow night and then with other members of our team till Sunday.

When relaying this story to some of the ladies at work I got concerned looks and questions.

"Do you have a gun for protection?"

"Your letting a guy you meet on the internet stay at your house?"

I guess the situation sounds bad when you try and explain it to people who see the internet as a place to send chain letter emails and watch dogs ride skateboards. We have built our own community, often share family photos and spend most evenings chatting with each other and playing games for hours on end. I know these guys, without having to be in there physical presence. We are friends.

After sharing my coworkers misplaced concerns with my internet friends (see that sounds bad) we all had a good laugh and made some morbid jokes at our own expense. Hammer let us know that his wife had also expressed some concern, you know, in case I'm the crazy one. I guess all this concern could be attributed to the news media and their rhetoric of fear, a la a Michael Moore stump speech. The internet is the tool of pornoholics, pedophiles and kidnappers as far as Nightline and other "hard" news programs are concerned. I guess I never thought of myself of living and interacting on "that" internet. I grew up using this here interslice and fancy myself one of its savvier users. Its a place to build friendships and have fun as far as I'm concernicus.

I look at Hammer's visit as an opportunity to hang with a good friend, not meeting a stranger for the first time. Tomorrow we will be tooling around Richmond hitting the civil war sites, grabbing lunch with the working stiffs and going bowling with the rest of the gang in the evening. Friday we are going down to Jamestown and Colonial Williamsburg and coming back to my house for a Guitar Hero, burgers and beer cookout. Saturday we will be host to Hammer LAN 07 and Sunday we may get out to Colonial Downs.