Still

Still 11/12.

Things about Nefarion 10 man that nobody told me and I didn't find at most of the strat hubs:

• Having a hunter turtle tank the adds with MD glyph and glyph of mend pet makes p3 much easier for picking up the adds and much less strain on the healers, while still keeping raid dps up.
• Nature resist is superpro. If you are hitting one or two crackles in p2, try to spread out nature resist between your platforms, it really helps with crackle.
• The mastery trinket with resist increases from the TB rep faction is great for your tanks. It's one minute CD is a great compliment to a tank's CDs for crackles and breaths.
• Hybrids in the transition helping heal and during p2 helping heal can make or beak a pillar group.

We aim for nef+H Halfus this weekend, if everyone is able to go. Last week with 1.5 hours of solid nef attempts we were seeing p3 pretty consistently. The fight isn't super difficult, it's just got 3 phases that require pretty solid execution.

Feel free to always drop a question in about anything and I can usually help out.

Been a while

The winds of change have pulled me away from my previous place of employment, and I am now in the middle of a career change which is going to be for the better. This and my raiding schedule have kept me away from here.

In more good news, our group is 11/12 now with our first week of Nef starting this weekend (maybe, we may be missing 3 of our cores). We went 9/12 with relative ease, and then Cho and Al'Akir were slightly more difficult due to the fact that I felt our dps was overall low. I went out and found a nice DK to replace our second hunter in the core, but am keeping the hunter with us as a small bench is something that we would definitely like to continue on with. I have begun subbing people in and out depending on the fights/loot available for farm content, so that I have 12-14 geared and knowledgeable raiders ready to go. Our first week with the specific bench we had all 13 people in attempts on Al'Akir due to a DC, a family emergency, and a work emergency. He died with our 3 bench players in on the raid.

More to come in the future.

Expected changes

I play a hunter, used to play a paladin. I swapped to the hunter the moment the hunter took over the crown of "most changed class" and "class which gets adjusted every patch." This was purely coincidence and not something I enjoyed while playing the paladin, but it gave me this outlook:

I don't really care how they want to nerf us and how PTR changes might potentially effect us... Yeah- I stay up to date so I know what to expect, but I figure with each patch I'll run a few sims, check out the changes, and adjust accordingly. People who scream sky falling way too early just end up stressing about things too much. If they nerfed hunters so bad they are unplayable, well that's unfortunate but I could always hop on my DK or my priest. If they nerf a single spec to it being crappy in comparison with another- then I'll swap over to it. If they give me a new meta, I'll use it- and if they don't I wont. It amuses me at how worried people get when generally speaking Blizzard is aiming for balance in raids among classes, and so far they've done alright. They buff what sucks and nerf what is overpowered.

This all being said- I like the buffs I bring as survival with WF and such. I dislike the general playstyle of BM, but have never really given it a chance. MM was always my favorite due to it's inherent complexity, but it is the most difficult to perform as when I'm trying to track my whole raid and stay alive (Survival is hilariously easy to maintain on the fly), but I'm sure I'd fare fine with it.

So, I hope they don't break hunters, and now that we have two I suppose it would be nice to be able to have us as different specs so we can bring more interesting buff combinations, but it really isn't game breaking. The way it is panning out- it would be expected that blizzard is looking to scale back surv dps by ~5%. This seems reasonable to me.

More good fun times

So yesterday's (remember- we only raid once a week) raid finally saw our set group with 8 of our regulars, and our 2 main fill-ins. This brought great joy to me as our dps chart was competitive for top spot (I was so happy I forced our rogue into mutilate, he hates the spec like I hate BM but when he puts up over 14k next to mine on heavy movement fights and is giving me a run for #1 he understands). And our bottom spot was at worst filled with our OT doing 10k as ret-which sucks horribly as a spec right now- This meant our dps charts look like a bar graph of a steady economy, as opposed to a bar graph comparing the economies of the last 5 decades (hilarious picture btw). You can check us out at World of Logs.

This week saw two new kills- bringing the total up to 5/12. Maloriak was a pushover as soon as we controlled our green phases and stopped letting random people die to random things. And double dragons took a bit of learning, and a 4th healer. As it is a one tank fight we figured we had plenty of dps to make the enrage timer with ease and that living is a much better option than not. In our kill it was our first attempt where we had nobody get phased to the razzle dazzle, and deep breaths. This fight caused me some trouble trying to call the whole fight and be aware of all the mechanics happening as well. What really gave me the best experience to learn it was ultimately a wipe where I tanked the floor from early on and I had them burn a bres to pick up the healer over me, giving me the opportunity to swirl my camera around and focus on abilities coming up. I then got used to seeing how Valiona picks parts of the room and how to convey this to my folks. I decided on counting down, then (because our ranged are stacked up at the time on one side of the room) I call out one of the following "MID" "OUR SIDE" "OTHER SIDE" which denotes where the flames are and we scamper away quickly.

Additionally, I finally got people to realize if they stack up for blackout right as it hits- they can time it so they run in, and run out- minimizing dps loss and damage taken. Also, because a few of the blackouts occur during the 3rd and 4th transitions of dragons, I decided to forgo the world raid marker and instead just slapped a mark on the head of our healing lead- the one in charge of dispelling the debuff.

We recruited another hunter into our group, creating the biggest sharing of armor outside our tanks. This doesn't really bother me all that much though with all the valor points available for gear. This does however make me happy as now we'll be able to support full raids each week as opposed to looking for more people every time.

As we put in our time learning the new fights- and we are now having one-shots on ODS and Halfus each week with only mishaps stopping us on Magmaw (our rogue was like - "yeah, whatever I'll do spikes" and did not have any clue whatsoever greatly infuriating me as I had to explain it to him- after our 3rd wipe...), I would think that next week we'll end up being able to (as in, have the time to) down conclave and get some work in on chimaeron or atramedes.

Things keep going up and up

Originally we needed more ranged. This happened when one of our melee ret dps decided to swap over to his ele sham instead. BL+ moar ranged? Yes, please. Now our biggest issue is we haven't gotten our "starting 10" on for a single raid. In the first two weeks we had 7 of our "starting 10" and 8 in our second week. This has forced me to think about possibly recruiting another dps as I'm thinking that I'd be able to get them well over 50% playing time, and having that spot filled with a consistent person has many advantages:

1. I know how they operate. My probably biggest issue with pugs is simply that I don't know how to push them and I don't get their pushback. I can't rag on them like I do the rest of my raiders (as they rag on me).

2. I don't take risks on a pug's skill. Pugs can be horrible, and they can be decent. I have yet to fill a pug spot with someone who comes in and cleans house- but if I did, I'd be happy about it.

3. I don't have to loathe giving gear to pugs. Last week- ODS drops the hunter chest (Yay me!) but I end up losing the roll to the pug hunter we brought (He did decent enough dps, even though it was horrible dps for a surv hunter- 12k to my 16). Halfus drops the Agi+ trinket... I then realize I have to step up and just take this from him and the other pug hunter (we pulled in another by this time) as that gear will significantly increase my ability to do better which directly effects our raids right now. Gear helps, and we don't have a lot of it atm. Single upgrades to our players will help us push new content.

Anyway, we got do BH to start each week (free epix- yet not a single piece of tier for the raid yet) then move to BRD and got ODS our first week, Magmaw our second along with halfus. I fully expect us to have Double dragons this week and most likely Maloriak. Decent enough progression I think.

P.S. Conclave isn't very hard- yet for some reason our boomkin keeps getting DC'd in it, which leads to major issues as 9-manning that fight is quite difficult due to having to stack at the right times with everyone in the raid performing a location specific role (we end up always silenced from Rohash when he DC's).

Let the raiding begin

Sunday we put together our first raid as a guild. Being as none of us have raided together in over a month, and truth be told- we have never raided in this setup (I'm dpsing as hunter, a warrior dps is now a healer, a few other random changes). I hope it all goes well enough but I'm expecting a few growing pains.

My goals for our first day is go beat up on the TB boss, then get a first kill on at least one of the raid bosses. I'm certain that if people show up prepared we'll have enough skill and gear to take down at least one. I know one of our tanks is already fully decked in all that he needs from heroics, I've only got a 333 trinket (but it's Tia's Grace which is damn near BiS even in it's reg version) and a 333 bow (which if I can't get the BRC or VP weapons to drop, I'll just craft the engi one) and I'm set from heroics. I know a few of our other dps and heals are approaching this as well and I'm thinking that we're going to walk into raids more than "geared."

I've found that this normally happens to my groups- I'll put off raiding the first instances for an extra week or two to allow people to gear up, and my people end up being more than prepared and we all laugh about how we could have been in there a week or two earlier. I did this with Kara (I was fully epic'd from heroics and badges before- it felt unnecessary) and again in Naxx. In the end, I suppose this is a much better plan than just wiping needlessly.

Anyway- the goal this week will be to assist as best as possible the few people gearing up still and preparing by getting everyone to become familiar with strats and bosses before we step in the door. I want to be able to pull a boss less than 5 minutes after looking at him for the first time.

Hunter DPS-ing Cataclysm, with STYLE

The hunter is getting pretty jacked as of late. Made my engi goggles, got my epic ring from the ER, looking to upgrade trinkets to 346, legs, and shoulder and I'm all there and above. I leveled as MM, and have DPS'd heroics in a MM spec as well as the Surv one I'm running right now. I've heard that BM is behind in pure damage (to a point where getting BL for a non-BL group isn't even worth it) and I haven't even tried it out. BM's simple priority rotation just isn't my cup of tea.

MM does decent enough damage, and the burst potential is definately there. After you ramp up and pop racial+rapid fire, a chimera, readiness another chimera and burn through a second rapid fire I was usually around 16k. Surv can also do this, but that's happening when you are critting and procing a LnL which can possibly be RNG (If you are not trapping). Surv overall in heroics is much better as the AoE is leaps and bounds ahead, while also being higher overall damage on any boss fight, as MM comes back to earth after its 2 CD's are blown. Also, Surv get's an additional CC method (which is nice in that even in a great guild run I'm usually the only one CC'ing and I'll get both off with ease, and they are staggered in length). There is not a Heroic trash pull that isn't easier with effective use of CC of some sort, and I use my hunter utility as much as possible.

This brings me to my next point- the reason why I'm better than my other two dps counterparts in our 5man. Let's say we are all doing ~12-13k depending on the fight, CC'ing as much as we need to, and not being bad. What separates me out from them? I have MD, I have a tranq, I have a taunt, I have two slows, I've got a blind (in scatter shot) and I use them as much as possible. Scatter shot is harder to find times for, but I've been known to scatter healers who are marked as our secondary kill target so they don't get a heal off while we burn down the first target. Tranq should be used any time possible. If you can tranq it off, then you probably should be. I run most heroics with my good buddy who is a rogue and there are things I can tranq off and things he can't shiv. If he can get it easily and isn't moving around a lot- he usually does. If he's dodging fire and ground slams and such, I take over fully even though it's a larger dps loss for me. It's easy to work this out and my dps loss is made up for the fact the healer uses less mana and we move as a group faster. MD is used every fight, sometimes multiple times. No longer does transferred threat stay there forever, so I don't usually use it mid fight unless adds are running around, but every trash pull, every time. Why wouldn't you!? Slowing mobs is VERY useful. If you have a pull where you healer is going to get aggro and your tank is trying to round things up, slow them down for him! Your tank will love you as it becomes so much easier to grab everything and build threat if it isn't running, but walking.

Our taunt. You may say "Tur! Why on earth would you ever use a taunt in a group! You would kill yourself!" This may USUALLY be true, and when I'm tanking if someone starts taunting my stuff I usually get real mad- BUT if you know what you are doing you can do some SERIOUS help here.

Case 1. The tank death.
-Tank died? OH NOES!? What to do what to do! Generally our Boomkin has more threat than me (which is good) and things go running for him. If it's a big ugly I usually get as much space between the boomer and me, and when he's about to smash his face in I taunt and keep running. I throw up a slow (if he can be slowed) and dude keeps running at me for the length of the taunt. Note- while running at me he probably isn't hurting anyone, allowing your healer to catch up or take a break. When my taunt wears off he runs back to the boomkin and I taunt again when he's close. I ping pong them around until they are all dead.

Case 2. The Tank is getting low on life.
-Tank getting hit REALLY hard and has a lot of mobs on him? Taunt the biggest one if the tank has sufficient threat, let him get near and FD. This allows the tank a few precious seconds of not getting hit, and any healer will tell you that now 3-6 hits from the harder hitting melee mobs will give that tank time to get his life back up. Be careful on this one, you can die if your FD is resisted and you are too close.

Case 3. Adds.
-In a lot of fights we don't have our tank even deal with adds. We have enough dps to burn them down fast enough and the only real problem is they aggroing on the healer. Taunting them to you allows your healer to heal you instead of getting pushed back while trying to heal himself. And you are in mail as opposed to his cloth/leather/spirit plate.

On top of this, I've bought time for druid tanks to battle res, reposition mobs, and countless other useful things. Once you start using your utility buttons other than just straight dpsing, you become a more complete hunter. Also, make sure you are communicating each of these uses to your group. The worst thing ever is when you try to taunt a mob from your tank to let him take less damage and he taunts back and dies. If you talk it out, people will usually understand.

Happy hunting!

I swore against it.

I leveled my DK (Rash) to 80 as my 3rd toon to get there. I had it as a farming mule. Herb/Mine. When I got it there I wanted to get decent enough gear during wrath's waning times so that he's got decent gear for leveling up in. I then realized I hated the rune system and didn't enjoy playing it. DK done.

Yesterday I sat down to level my priest as shadow. For some reason I just wasn't enjoying questing and decided I'd try tanking an instance on my DK. I have to admit, as much as I'm upset about it- I enjoy it! I ended up 2% away from 82 and a whole ton more tank gear on Rashlen. I'm thinking this may be my second 85 and it really isn't all that bad in that it's a dual farmer and will help provide some much needed gold (I've burned through ~20k so far since Cata's ship) and I've been altogether too lazy to develop a new market in the AH yet.

Cataclysm Heroic 5 mans

Well, my guild has ran every heroic 5man there is to offer. Only one boss actually gave us second pause- as none of us knew what to do- the last boss of Grim Batol. Once we realized we needed to burn adds at all costs the fight was fairly simple. 3 wipes and done. I've personally ran all the heroics but stonecore and throne. I have yet to find why they would be "Hard." I can however concur that with a random pug they could become extremely difficult.

Twice now, I've had healers in our guild complain that healing is horrible. Twice now, I've had healers remark that when your group CC's every trash with as much as possible healing trash doesn't feel harder than bosses and feels like it should. In a group with my hunter, a spriest, boomkin, and shaman healer we usually throw out (for the standard 5 trash pack pull) a trap, MC, and hex if he can get it off. I throw down my CC in under 2 seconds of standing in front of the trash, the healer hex's the moment he sees my trap go up, and the priest does the same. We have a blast doing it and it goes MUCH faster than attempting to AoE crap down. Currently it's stupid trying to use AoE when you can do more damage with single target dps. I'm pretty much amp'd for raiding to start again as I do not forsee us having too much trouble with much of the regular modes.

Just remember! As long as your group moves as a cohesive team you will succeed. When you begin to think and act as a bunch of individuals put together in a group you will most likely face difficulty. This game doesn't require much skill, and the most important of that is being a team player.

Paladin, kinda gone?

My friend has played wow on and off from beta until now. Since then he's sold his account twice. After the first time he sold his account, he went and made a new one. After the second time he sold his account, he found out when he wanted to come back to the game that the guy he sold his account to never changed the email (this was before bnet changes), password, or anything else. He ended up using this account the 3rd time he came back.

That was up until a few days ago- when that guy decided to take that account back (as by this time the bnet account matched his name, not my friends').

This was kind of amusing to me as I had originally told him to transfer his toons off that account for his own security, but even that would have been complicated as the names would have had to match. What happened though was he was all of a sudden without an account and without the time required to level from 1-80, let alone 80-85 in a reasonable period of time.

Enter Turiel. My paladin. He leads my guild in achievement points, as the GM, and has more mounts, pets, and titles you can shake a stick at. A full character, my main forever. How do I retire a main when I know that I'll always feel obligated to complete achievements (Long strange trip anyone?), get him gear, and keep him up to date? I realized with the swap to the much better fit for me now hunter, the perfect opportunity has landed in my lap to achieve this. I made another bnet account, he purchased all the games, paid for a transfer of my paladin over, and now he has another account (RAF'd from my original one) and my paladin. I'm able to now go to our raids with both my paladin AND my hunter- at the same time. What better way for me to retire my paladin than to make sure it'll stay active in my own raid guild at the hands of my friend?? Perfect I dare say. (plus, if he ever quits the game the account is actually under my control, so the paladin is never really too far away!)

That being said I know I'll continue to discuss healing in general as well as my hunter's awesome skills.

Cata first look

Cataclysm, huh?

Logged in (took like 12 years to do so), trained flying, went to the breadcrumb for Vash and went on my way! Vash to me wasn't as fun right away, but it really ramped up fast. There is that lul where you start helping out Budd stop being an undead person and you are hunting sharks and such, but it is kind of amusing nonetheless. Also, Budd cracks me up because of remembering him from ZA (I think it's the same Budd).

The whole underwater thing I'm not a super huge fan of- I've been out of town playing on a terrible six year old laptop I have, and let me tell you- when you can't see very far it is a lot harder to navigate the depths... especially finding caves can get very tough. After a little while I can spatially map everything in my head and I get a feel in 3D where things land not just on the X/Y-Axis I'm used to, but incorporating the Z as well. I also realize if I was on my 1 year old computer I have at home I'll be a much happier camper as well.

Also, being a hunter underwater presents it's own difficulties as well due to not getting too close and the depth perception I have in this game without visual reference points all the time helping me see how close I am to something. I really liked Malygos and the vehicle mechanic used there, but I would quickly hate it if it was used frequently. Swimming was fun with Kael'thas in MgT as well, but in each instance these mechanics were used infrequently. In Vash it's fine for questing, but if I had to do this for a raid I'd probably kill myself out of frustration.

All in all I'm loving this zone but have only spent a couple hours total. This weekend I'll totally geek out on it.

Hopefully ya'll are loving it up!

Cata Ships, QQ.

Cata shipped this morning while I was sleeping in a hotel away on work for a week. I brought with a personal laptop that has wow installed on it- but when I'm away on work I generally work... all week. I work, eat, sleep, and work out.

I'm not trying to say poor me, because I'll have time to play it later, but the inner child in me wants to go dig though my parent's closet in November to find my Christmas presents NOW. Hell, I'll probably be happier to be able to sit down this weekend and power through stuff, and I'll probably take it at a more leisurely pace as well.

Also, there is a benefit to not trying to fight teeth and claw with everyone else during those first few hours- I don't have to deal with as much server failure and fighting for quest mobs being tagged like mad. I had it in wrath, and as fun as it was (because it was) I just don't necessarily NEED it.

If you have time for it I hope you are enjoying it!

Heroic Lich King

So someone in our group roped us into deciding we wanted to try out Heroic Lich King.

I personally couldn't make it to last weeks attempts- Oh darn. As much as I don't mind wiping I'm pseudo glad I haven't had to commit myself to this yet as I really hate leaving anything open and with Cata shipping next week it doesn't seem very smart to commit to a new task like this.

That being said apparently it looks as if they should be able to possibly get this fight down next week. Another thing I'm thankful for- I missed day 1 of wipes which allows the rest of the group to spend some time learning each aspect of the fight. True, I may slow them up in an attempt or two, but most of the time I learn at about 25% the time necessary than most of my raiders. Usually from watching a video once I can lead attempts on bosses that people in the raid have already killed and I generally get most of it right.

My schedule is up in the air and I just really don't know if I truly want to be able to go to the wiping this week or not. Time will tell.

The post in which I revised our 10man group

Found out our Fulltime Tree healer isn't going to be able to commit 100% of the time for our group setup. This saddens me greatly. He is one of my favorite people ever to raid with. Truly one of those people if I'd meet IRL who I'd buy a beer.

As problems present themselves, as do solutions- A few weeks back we had two friends who wanted to join in our group who I apologetically had to inform we were already all full up. Turns out they are ok with splitting up and raiding separately as one of them will have ample time to raid while the other not so much. This also means I can take one and not have to worry about taking the other. So, he's willingly offered to be the "first backup" for our tree (he is also a tree, but also a totem-totaller, and a faith bearing priest... so he's given us the first choice for them).

His reason for this decision being that he believes our group to be the most professional and highest in skill on the server. This is probably true up to maybe a tpo 5 standpoint- either way, we rock and people know it. There is not much more gratifying for a game that is essentially rewarding you with digital achievements and pixels than for another person to give you mad props.

Anyway, someone convinced me it'd be a good idea to try out H LK before cata ships- so that's going to be my Sunday. Not exactly excited for it tbh, as I have not heard good things. But I'll figure out how much of a chance we stand about 2 pulls in.

Enjoy your Turkey.

People Hate Me

As the title suggests, I have many people on my server who are not my biggest fan. I have repeatedly made tanks leave randoms (I usually only start criticizing when I'm on my ret pally and know the healer, so if the tank leaves mid-pull I am able to finish tanking the fights... and I'm actually 4-0 for successful transitions after tanks try to screw us over). I generally do this by asking why a tank with a GS of over 6k with a healer in over 6k is single pulling each mob, and losing aggro to me even after I give him significant time to build a threat lead. On my hunter I find it hilarious when tanks want me to die because I pulled an extra pack or two for them with Misdirects... but they seem to forget that hunters don't die-we feign.

Now, I used to tank a LOT for randoms and such, and I have no personal issue at all with other people pulling stuff for me. My job is to tank, if people try to pull aggro I'm going to try to take it back. If they are really trying to kill themselves, they will. If they are pulling aggro and they know they can take a punch or two- it'll be fine. I just never understood the whole "IF YOU WANT TO PULL, WHY DON'T YOU TANK THEN???? RAGEEEEEE." (Also- If I pull aggro as a dpser and I die, I understand why I died. I'm ok with it even. Action--> Reaction. That's how it works)

All this being said, I used to care what people thought of me in game personally and of my guild's name. Over time I realized that I'm an awesome guy, and a great player. I like raiding and I don't mind being in the average pug. I look back at the reactions I get from our guild tag and I realized that our performance is what got us there, not how we treated people. This all being said, I do generally treat people well I just don't go out of my way like I used to, and I have found myself in situations where people telling me that me leaving a fail pug is making me look bad, it doesn't stop me anymore.

This also translates into our raids, as I no longer feel bad about not calling people out for their mishaps. I have failed at certain things as well, I usually try to call myself out (If someone doesn't beat me to it) and I want to fix what I have done wrong. If we don't call each other out, we can't get better. We have to realize as a group that we have a single goal to achieve and it is not personal when we try to fix the mistakes we make. If we have a weak link-it must get stronger or the chain will break.

Tying back to the beginning, I guess what I'm trying to say is that when I learned to not care about what people's perception of me is I enjoyed my game experience better and we found so much more success as a group. I don't want to become The Prince entirely but there are some effective things to learn from it.

The 5 minute Ret Guide 4.0.1

To be honest, as we're not pushing content and I'm not extremely interested in staying cutting edge at the moment, I stopped using epic gems, stopped min/maxing my gear to the T, and more or less set up a gearset that makes sense but isn't complicated at all. This conversation also brings itself into a full realization of our priority rotation as well.

Here's how I'm gearing for Ret:

Hit to cap(8%), Expertise to cap (which is actually 23, NOT 26-this was confirmed by a blue and you can google "ret expertise cap 4.0.1" to find ample evidence) STR, Haste to a flowing rotation (More on this later), Crit (this is about equal with haste, with the flowing haste in mind), mastery (mastery does not compare to anything else and can cause problems).

That's really about it. I find it much easier to keep these guidelines in mind when I'm reforging all my gear and gemming is still pretty much +STR (following the guidelines above). Enchanting is still the exact same as before and isn't hard to logically reason out.

The discussion of haste flow- The goal of haste currently is to get (the amount changes depending on your lag, if you are playing with a larger amount of lag you'll need less haste) your CS to time itself with every other ability. You want to be able to hit CS after everything else you hit. This allows you to maximize your HoPo gains while never having downtime in your rotation. If you are adding an extra ability between CS and something else, it means you are missing out on HoPo gains and will be able to TV less during a fight (which means less overall dmg). If you have too much haste and your CS is coming off CD while the GCD is running from your "off-CS" ability then you just wasted the time when you could be gaining HoPo (less TV, less dmg, less crits, less big recount numbers, less epeen).

I usually play with ~100-200ms in lag. This is apparently much better than most people get, and may explain why I don't find many movement fights difficult at all... But that's a different story. I currently can't get enough haste to even this out- yet. I end up waiting about .25-.4 seconds waiting for my CS to come off CD (which is still a DPS gain than not using it). Granted, this is an ideal rotation, and one I don't see a whole ton of (with the exception of fights like Marrow p1, LK p1... etc), and if you are waiting for your CS to come off CD, but have a moving enemy or you have limited time left, you are better off putting in an extra ability than nothing (I usually would save an Exo proc and Judge for sindy so when she took off on flight phases to tag her with both for the extra dmg).

Anyway, ~100ms, my 700 haste isn't enough. I'll update this with the true total, but I believe I'm looking at like 1100 as my exact number, while if you are playing with more lag you will need less haste.

EDIT: My current haste is 704.

Paladin Guides and such

I just wanted to point out real quick that I'll probably never lose the inner healer in me and I'm not sure I'll ever be able to stop thinking "like a healer." (Note: This is a good thing in terms of raiding.)

That being said I have been complimented many times over from friends and apprentices of all sorts of specs for being able to analyze and theorycraft, then break it down in layman's terms for the common folk (you).

When I took Statistics in college, I had a professor who most people didn't like because he would move through topics with extreme pace. He would basically start a class by showing all the information behind calculating certain stats but would tell us not to write much down in what he was doing. He would then, after showing us how the calculations are working and what effects they have on end results finish by showing us the "shortcut" way of calculating these same results. The things most Math teachers tried to hide from you- Now, this teacher I believe thought that we were smart enough to handle the shortcuts and if we needed to gain a further understanding, we would do so on our own. I was in love with this method, so I try to apply it myself.

My outlook on theorycraft is as follows: Every good raider needs to UNDERSTAND what the math is doing behind the theory. If you don't know WHY you gear a certain way, you are just a mindless follower and will never be able to be cutting edge and leading the way. BUT, you don't always have to be the one hashing out the math itself. I don't think it is lazy to consider other things more important in life than re-doing what other people have already done and made available.

This is where EJ comes in, one of my favorite websites ever. They more or less have the same outlook and say "Hey, if you want to post, contribute. If you don't want to contribute, we'll just let you read." Which is fine by me. I contribute to theory from time to time, but I'd consider myself more of a reader than writer there. My gift is translating the pages upon pages of goodly information into more sensible writings for the common person. (You)

That being said I plan on giving my own synopsis of ret and holy in their current form for 4.0, while continuing on with hunter information as well with brief overviews of at least Surv and Marx (Idk why I am so inclined to hate BM so). Along with this I could possibly throw in a quick this and that about priesting of all 3 specs because I do love me some priesting as well. I'd say "hey, want to know about DKs?" Because I could probably do a decent writeup on Frost at least, but to be frank- I hate my DK.

So yes, more to come.

Setup for the 'clysm

Calling things Cata still reminds me of an STD. I just think it's something you'd mock your friend for getting- "HAHA! You just got CATA!!!! HAHA!"

Hell, I guess "The 'clysm" does too...

Business time; Our setup is (was set in stone, then just changed out of nowhere**) put in writing on the wall right now and looks like this:

Tanks:
1. Warrior (new to the group)
2. Warrior

Melee:
1. Combat rogue (apparently he hates Mut)
2. DK (He's game with going either frost or UH, depending on what we need)
3. Ret Pally (formerly on his druid tank**)

Ranged:
1. Hunter (The king of bling himself- yours truly)
2. Mage (Formerly on a warrior in our last setup, and he had a problem with dying... maybe being in cloth will teach him...?)

Heals:
1. Druid
2. Priest (Holy/Disc depending on the fight)

Swing Heal:
1. Druid (He's a boomkin/healer, depending on what we need, which means some progression is 3 heals, some is 2)

As far as buffs go (because the only ones we need are for physical damage ofc-now that I use them that is) we're missing either 5% crit or 30% bleed damage (which only matter to the rogue and me-if I'm MM) so I'll probably have to go get like 3 wolves so I can swap in different colors for different fights. As for the spell buffs, we're just missing spell crit I believe, if our mage goes fire and gives the 10% spellpower buff.

So, we're not sitting horribly all things considered it'll still be the strongest raid I'll have ever been at the helm for in my raiding career.

**The ret pally was originally going to be Holy and we'd have the second druid be full-time boomer, thus keeping up boomer buffs 100% and we'd get the 3% all damage from the mage as Arcane. Then I was informed that he no longer desired to heal and that he wanted to dps as ret- forever shattering my hopes and dreams (not to mention the reason why I went to the hunter in the first place) for a raid group that had consistently more ranged than melee, because we ALWAYS have too much melee.

The hunted have become the hunter

So I posted about 3 months ago I came back. True story.

Since then we decided we'd mess around and maybe get a drake, who knew? I played the end of the xpac out as MS Ret, OS holy. It was actually very fun getting used to running with some people from time to time again even though ICC isn't the most challenging of all raids (with 30% buff ofc). We got our drake, but because it was more or less 5 of us showing up each week and we'd fill in the final 5 spots (meaning we could either be FoF-Full of Fail- of very strong) I felt like our healers had to try to heal through stupid and that was our biggest obstacle.

When we'd get a decent 5 set to show up with us we'd clear Heroic ICC10 in under 3 Hours (11/12) with a reg LK Kill, then head to RS to wipe on trash and lol at not using CC or even kill orders.

Long story short I'm ready for the new xpac, I'm very pumped for it actually-

Oh, and I'm playing my hunter in our raid group. I decided this a long time ago and I can't not. I love my hunter so much... I'll begin posting here quite a bit I'm sure, but yeah- My main raiding toon will be a hunter. That being said I know too much about all 3 specs (and can't seem to NOT pay attention to stat weights/talent builds/patch changes) for all things paladin to not consider myself a solid resource in that area. So, if you ever have a question about paladin-ing I can help ya out.

I returned

So, I kind of (actually did) quit the game for a while. I had only started this blog a month prior to, but I realized that this blog was a part of me trying to find more fun in the game.

Well I started up a while back again. This time I came back ready to play on my own terms again (not attempting to be a business professional IRL AND a hardcore- 4 nights a week raider. It gets tough raiding 20 hours, and working 70 a week. I mean that leaves 78 for "everything else" as in... eating (8+ right there), drinking, hanging with friends, mindlessly doing things I like.). I instead enjoy the game as if I can't log in for a week or so at a time, that's life. If I can log in a bunch and I want to, I do it.

I also re-formed my original guild (which I run) and got back with my original crew (who are all awesome players who also have RL to tend to, and a massive raid schedule isn't what they want). Anyway, the idea is that we will be rocking our old raid schedule: Once a week, 5-6 hours.

Most people look at that and initially say "What can you do in 1 raid day a week??? and a fourth the time that most raiding guilds need??" Well I tell you this, sir: We can do everything we want. So far we are 6/6 in setting goals and achieving them (historically). This means I'll be playing cata (though I'll probably be MS ret, or switch entirely to the spriest) and dominating. This also means we may be looking for a body or two to help out.

Long story short, it's nice to see you again!