PvP Christmas

I don't think I ever picked up five epics in a 24 hour period. I grabbed three from Molten Core back in the day because all the other mages were geared to the teeth. That only earned me a DKP debt that took almost five months to get out of though. Tuesday this week when season 2 rolled to season 3 I picked up the following:

Vengeful Gladiator's Silk Handguards
Vengeful Gladiator's Silk Raiment
Vindicator's Band of Dominance
Vindicator's Pendant of Dominance
Vindicator's Silk Belt

Welfare epics sure, I guess, but with the break up of FBD times are tough. Got to squeeze a few pennies and all that jazz. I gemmed and enchanted all my new gear out and broke my bank. The market has sky rocketed for gems and enchanting mats. Twelve gold for a Greater Planar Essence, gross! I did have a lot of friends who made bank though, unfortunately herbalism has fallen off and everyone has a friend of a friend who can make them potions. Maybe it is time to reroll my professions?

New Leaf

No this is not a post about tree druids. Last night we brought down the hammer in our guild, the artist formally known as FBD. For near two months we have been trying to recruit for and progress in SSC much to the detriment of the core players. We ended up downing Tidewalker as I posted previously, but it was down hill slide from there.

Players stopped showing up for raids because the raid environment became so hostile. Raiders who did show openly complained on vent and in guild chat. We had to recruit desperately and ended up with players who had not even geared out in Kara let alone Gruul or Mag. It was a sinking ship that I got off thanks to COD 4 about two weeks ago. Other officers stayed on bailing water frantically while our worst members simply bored more holes.

The tipping point came last night when almost all of the officers /gquit at the same time. There was simply no way to salvage the body so infested with disease. So we chose a new host. At 12am EST Soft N Pink was born. Mildly suggestive, but with a new focus. Friends and fun. We are going back to 5-10 man content and pvp.

We won't have a rank structure and all members will have the power to invite new members. The plan is to be a crystal clear as possible in our dealings and treat every member as a friend. We don't want clicks or groups that don't interact with each other or secret meetings that decide our direction. We have our new direction and anyone that does not want a part of it is welcome to leave in good grace.

Still Alive...

"and believe me I am still alive
I'm doing science and I'm still alive
I feel FANTASTIC and I'm still alive"

My new focus for season 3 will be a shift from stam to spell damage and crit. I started season 2 behind the curve with all pve crafted gear. Needless to say I had very little survivability and was a one trick AP pony. Over time I built my HP pool and resilience rating to the point where I slightly nerfed my ability to kill. For season 3, I should have the same survivability and control, while adding killing power back to my arsenal. In season 2 I picked up dreadweave vet gear for the stam. I'll be picking up all silk vindicator's for S3 and Glowing Nightseye instead of the Solid Star of Elune I was using previously.

Now that ice block will be trainable, frost mages get a new buff and it doesn't even change my spec (17/0/44), it just makes me stronger.

"Icy Veins (NEW Frost Talent) decreases casting time of all spells by 20% and increases the chance your chilling effects will freeze the target by 25%. Lasts 20 sec. 3 min cooldown. It is now in the Cold Snap position in the talent tree."

Icy veins will make rush downs that much stronger in 1v1 through 5v5. I also adds greater control with the increased freeze percentage and greater damage potential through faster cast time and more frostbite procs.

Worth a Read
Jasi on RMP Combo in 2.3.2
Raddy on Trainable IB and IV

Progression and PvP Planning

It feels like it has been forever since we took down a new boss, but last night we broke the slump and put 25 fist on Tidewalker! This kill took a concentrated effort and three straight nights of raiding and attempts to get him. The murlocs seem to be the only issue, without enough crowd control and AOE it is impossible to stay alive for the full duration of the fight. Hopefully the second, third and infinite other times we down this boss will go a lot smoother. With this kill FBD is ranked 4th in the realm among active guilds.

PvP Planning
With the announcement of season 3 coming on November 21st I put together a pvp planning spreadsheet. It was created for my personal use, but I tweaked it so any class could benefit from it.

http://stud-squad.com/wowfiles/pvp-spending.xls

I'm looking into making it completely web based, but that requires me to dust off my HTML skills and learn a little javascript.

My Friend Pete Makes Games

Originally posted at WNE on 11/06/07

Being a hardcore video game fan since I was a wee lad it is always a treat when I get to know someone who creates the medium that I love. Enter Pete, wicked Day of Defeat sniper and video game industry extraordinar. I have known Pete for going on 6 years now through the above mentioned DoD and he is a stand up guy that I consider a good friend. He currently works for Ubisoft in Canada and has previously worked for other Canadian game companies. His list of titles include a number of license based games for the GBA and his most recent work My Word Coach for the DS and Wii.

My Word Coach is the kind of game that should give Nintendo's Brain Age a run for it's money. It is edutainment, but not the kind of edutainment game I grew up with. This one actually looks fun and the multiplayer mini games look like they could get intense. As I said Pete is a good friend and he is passionate about video games so if you looking to expand your mind and have some fun My Word Coach comes out November 6th. I'll be picking up a copy sometime in the near future and I'll let you know how it pans out.

Walkthroughs and Previews @ Gametrailers
Preview @ Nintendojo

Bits and Pieces

Nothing I have done lately that is note worthy so why not direct folks to some important, but lesser known WoW news.

Warcraft Books
There is a quality interview with author Christie Golden at the Shadow Council Strider. Its a bit short, but they cover the books she has written and their background, how she got stated and her plans future WoW books. She just signed a contract to write three more by the way. Oh and those talbuk mounts you see everyone...you can thank Christie. Yeah check out SCS's previous interview with Aaron Rosenberg too.

Armory Statistics
Both Okoloth and Vhairi have done great things in the world of armory statistics. Okoloth has been doing class breakdowns for over 4 million armory profiles. Vhairi has done class break downs as compared to arena brackets and arena ratings from a sample of 100k+ teams. Both works should be poured over and reviewed by Blizzard (I'm sure they have this stuff already) and the player base. A lot of arguments in WoW are personal experienced based not quantifiable. Here is just a sample...

Mages are the second most represented class at roughly 13% of the population (Warriors are #1 at roughly 14%). They are are second to last in terms of 2v2 teams as rating increases. Sixth most represented in 3v3 teams as rating increases. Fifth most represented in 5v5 teams as rating increases. This seems to point to a broken solo class, but increasing utility as you add teammates. So be social mages, it is your best chance at getting your rating up...statistically speaking of course.

Update: It looks like Blizzard is already aware...

Honestly, 2v2 has a ways to go before I'd be truly satisfied with its balance. In fact, at one point during the Burning Crusade beta we considered removing the format in favor of 4v4, but have decided to stick with it since so many players enjoy only needing to find 1 teammate to be able to participate in arenas.

However, 2v2 balance goes beyond just a warlock/druid vs warrior/druid issue, there are a lot of classes out there that are left out of having a reasonable chance at the very high end because of the endurance nature of the format, and drain tanking felt to the class team as a meaningful part of the problem.