Still AFK

Still AFK from WoW. Finished up my full Wrathful set a long time ago, including the Tabard. Account's been inactive for a good long while now and I haven't even picked up Starcraft2, yet. Do I miss the game? Yes, but it's more about the community and camraderie that I miss and the ability to engage in a group activity on any given evening.

On the plus side, I just completed my first Olympic distance triathlon, so I think I might start a blog about that, though I'm not sure what I'd name that blog... I'll have to think about it.

For those who are still spending 6 hours a night in front of the computer/TV after a full day's work, take some time to get outside more, get active, and spend some time engaging in some physical activity. The health benefits alone are worth the effort.

ORLY?

YaRLY.

I'm not just the President. I'm also a client.

An Update, of sorts

So, it's now approximately 5 months since my last post and not much has changed. I've been playing here and there, doing some Arena and grinding out some BG's. Season 8 started (Wrathful!) and some friends and I pounded our way to almost 2300 as Arms/Protret/Resto. My Resto Druid got his 2200 rating Main Hand weapon and I'm almost full Wrathful. I would have been full Wrathful by now if I hadn't taken 2 weeks to snowboard in the Austrian Alps, but sadly, I had to take one for the team and hit the slopes.

Since then, my Protret pally buddy quit for good and has made me promise to him to not regale him with stories of WoW so he'd be tempted to come back. Warrior buddy and I have been getting 10 games in a week with a Warlock we know. I've reduced my play time significantly, mostly out of boredom, but also because there isn't much to look forward to. I suppose I could try to push ratings, but gaming time isn't something that's abundant right now. In another sense, I feel accomplished. Getting the 2200 rating weapon is somewhat of an achievement in of itself. Alot of players cant break 2k, let alone 1800, so I'm somewhat satiated. Yes, I'm not a Gladiator, or even a Duelist, but perhaps I'm not meant to be. I notice that I make a ton of mistakes all the time in matches: Poor positioning, poor cc, poor prehotting.. yet it doesn't bother me as much since I know I have the goods to get past 2200.

So what of Cataclysm and beyond? I'll probably give Cataclysm a shot. I've been really enjoying playing as a Boomkin in BG's, even in nearly full Resto gear and I think I could enjoy rated BG's where people are actually trying. The Mushroom talent sounds like fun and the positional Silence seems like fun as well. With regards to the rest of the talents and abilities that will come with the expansion, I'll wait until I see them (if I make it that far) to comment on them.

The one thing I'd like to see is a Battleground that doesn't have any primary or secondary objectives other than killing the opposing team. Make it a sizeable map like AB or EOTS with LOS objects and elevation objects and allow unlimited respawns. Dying in the Arena is such a heavy penalty for your team (near guaranteed loss) that there really needs to be an 'Arena lite' where the responsibility of dying isn't as great. Allow for a respawn and maybe a comeback. Allow for swings in map dominance. Allow for regrouping and strategic decisions. Penalize people who have died with respawns with 1/4 mana so that they can't run back, blow cooldowns and turn the tide that easily.

Yeah, it's not an original idea, but in a way, it's the opportunity to come back from a disadvantage that makes an FPS fun for me.

Just sayin'

Gaming the Random Dungeon System

Apologies if this is an already widely known tactic.

If you play as DPS, then you know how terribly long the queue is for the Random Dungeon team making system. Sometimes it takes literally forever and a day to get a team going.

Want to know a faster way to get into a team and off earning your Emblems of Frost/Triumph without waiting until the cows come home?

Grab a friend who plays a class that 'can' tank. For the people who are completely ignorant about class abilities, that's Warrior, Paladin, Deathknight and Druid. Even if they only heal or DPS, have them queue as role = Tank. Once the team gets put together, which should be absurdly quick, have your buddy enter the instance and then drop team. Immediately elect to search for a replacement. This will put you at the front of the queue instead of at the ass end of it, giving you the first Tank available.

Voila! Instant reduction in frustration!

And knowing is half the battle.

Sometimes You Just Know

Sometimes, when you're in a pressure situation, your game elevates with the stress of the situation and when things click, you just know that you did something right.

On my day off, I randomly did some 2's games as Rogue/Shadow Priest, with myself as the Shadow Priest. Games were fast and high pressure, rarely lasting longer than 2 minutes. The beauty of it all, was that, having not played as Shadow in the Arena for any appreciable amount of time, we were able to pull out trinkets and defensive CD's to force kills, usually by the second fear or silence. In no time, we were beating 2k MMR teams (not that it's a huge deal, but.. you know.. just sayin')

It just feels good when you figure out the steps to beating an opposing comp and you know that for the most part, success is just execution.

Oh, by the by: 2nd run ever on my Druid in H. Pit of Saron and 2 Battered Hilts dropped. Guess who won one?

Thats right, the Feral with the il200 gear.

Maybe it will bump my DPS from 'terribad' to 'scrub'.

Pissin' My Life Away...

Just when you think you've broken free of a soul breaking obsession, certain sequences happen in life that make you run eagerly back to indulge... nay, -feed- whatever addiction that held you so captivated for so many weeks, months or years.

Yep. I'm back playing WoW.

I'll get into what I've been doing recently in a bit, but something happened last night was prompted me to write today.

I was doing VoA 10 PUG on my Priest when a raid member, and complete stranger piped up with, (paraphrased) "Rukuz? What are you doing online?"

Befuddled, I responded with my best 'this is how I respond to strangers shorthand': "?"

The stranger went on to explain that he/she had saw that I had quit playing via my blog.

!

Wow. Stunned, I quickly explained (in non-'I don't know you shorthand') that a buddy of mine had suckered me back into playing WoW. but that I hadn't posted anything about it.

In a way, I felt pretty good that someone had actually read this jumble of poorly thought out analogies and excessive carriage returns, so I tried extra hard to DPS Archaevon the Stingy* & friends with my janky outdated gear. (*That b!tch never drops anything useful) I was surprised that I broke 3.5k dps. I'm such a bad dragon slayer.

So, what have I been doing? Well, considering this is a PvP blog, I've actually been.. well.. PvPing.

Actually, that's somewhat of a lie. I actually stealth leveled a Warrior from 70-80 without telling friends and ground some honor under the auspices of possibly gearing him out as a new main character. It's quite amusing how the first thought (among my friends, at least), when we get seriously frustrated with our Arena experience, is to change classes. I thought that swapping to a Warrior would make me happier with Arena and PvP overall.

Did it?

No.

The problem that I had/have with PvP is the massive amount of time I have to spend grinding honor. I've said it time and again, but grinding honor is mad stupid. Watching the Nightfall Horde, geared in what digitally resembles used tissue paper, repeatedly fling themselves single-file like lemmings into the Alliance woodchipper is not fun. Playing a brand new 80 and grinding honor while expecting the Horde to not act like a SPED gym glass that takes to kicking each other in the nuts as a good idea, is a decidedly even worse way to work up a whole new level of frustration towards the BG Honor grind system.

So the Warrior got relegated to status: Not Even An Alt, and I started picking up honor on the Druid again to build up my Feral set. I already had my Furious Staff from last season's left over points, so I went to work grinding up Relentless offset pieces while saving up my pittance of points from my bogus weekly throwaway teams. I'll (maybe) comment about Feral in a future post, but let's just put it this way: Even poorly geared, Feral does a ridiculous amount of damage to equally poorly geared BG denizens.

Somewhere along the line, 3.3 came out and Haste got synergized with Dot classes and my Priest got forcibly yanked out of retirement. I will say that I've never actually been good on my Priest. I got carried to 2k+ in 5's as Discipline, and never really broke into the 2k+ brackets as either Disc or Shadow. However, 3.3 is about as close as we can probably get to 'The Golden Age' of the Shadowpriest, and 5 things in 3.3 really make Shadowpriests shine alot brighter (darker?) that before:

1. Haste affecting Devouring Plague & Vampiric Touch,
2. Vampiric Embrace becoming an undispellable buff on the Priest
3. Improved Devouring Plague hitting alot harder upon initial application
4. Mind Flay range increase without losing the snare
5. WotF nerf.

The amount of pressure a high haste rating Shadowpriest can generate to force cooldowns is absolutely ridiculous. Again, I'll (maybe) comment about Shadow in a future post, but for right now, melting faces is really, really easy and Rogues aren't as bad as they used to be (however, still a pain to deal with).

So, I'm back for a bit.. still not playing crazy amounts like I used to, but trying to stay positive about my gaming future.

Will this return herald more posts in the future? Tough to tell, really, but we'll see.

Cheers.