Monday, December 31, 2007

TPS report (yes, i read the memo!)

I am not the hardest grinder ever, though always looking for ways to make money without putting in much effort. I was reading somewhere and looking for engineering-recipies (somehow I wanted to level engineering on Kirosta. It was stuck at 367 or so) when I stumbled upon the Zaptrottle Mote Extractor. It seemed you had to do a quest to get the recipy, then make the device and you could extract motes from the gasclouds which are sometimes running around in Nagrand, Zangarmarsh and Netherstorm.


I must be stupid to put it here (but have faith in people not reading this), but boy oh boy: THIS DEVICE IS AWESOME. Since the gasclouds appear on the minimap (if you have the goggles), it is very easy to spot them and each and every one of them gives you 3-5 motes. Motes of air in Nagrand, motes of water in Zangarmarsh, motes of mana in Netherstorm. One round flying in Nagrand gives me on average 3 clouds which give on average 4 motes. That is on 1,2 Primal Air each round I fly there. The same goes for Zangarmarsh and Netherstorm. I am actually mining on those rounds and these come with them. Since I discovered this, i pressed my gold for an epic flying mount (indeed my 3th (paladin and lock have one) and lend 1400 gold from Milker to get me it 2 weeks earlier. I am farming a little extra now to get him his gold back sooner. Lovely! Tnx Milk.

Zhero (warlock)
Last week I bought my vengefull legs and had 500 resilience! Since the soft cap is 492,5, I replaced two 8 resilience gems, with 4 resilience + 6 stamina gems. I had to do it like that else I did not make my setbonus by simply replacing one 8 resilince with one 12 stamina. My lock is VERY HARD TO KILL. I end up in BG’s with 200k more damage than anyone else, simply cause i can keep dotting. I do my 2v2 with Krexxor (lamer, where the f*ck are ya atm?) and was invited to a 5v5. All people got my kind of gear there, but we’re still working on being a team. I like the people though, so it’s easy to stick around. Not doing much with Zhero in terms of playingtime. A daily every now and then, some herbing+ganking (those 2 i always combine) and I ALWAYS GANK. This keeps herbing interesting. Got a few vindicator-items to go, but at 12.9k hp, 492 resilience I am fine really.

Kirosta (rogue)
Since the start of season III, i have been playing him frequently. I had 2 merciless maces and had 3k arenapoints on him which i used to replace some blues. He is fully epic and fully enchanted (mongoose for offhand still being worked on, first I have to pay back Milker) except for 1 ring and the gun/throwing weapon slot. Close to 300 resilience (packing some Kara-items). I respecced him shadowstep (18/0/43) and have a blast really. It is so much fun to play. Premeditate, shadowstep, cheapshot, 5 pt. Evis (on cloth). BOOOM HEADSHOT! Ok, warriors are less fun, but even with a good rupture/vanish start i come a long way. With ghostly strike and evasion I get 90% dodge, so i give warriors a run for their money. My record eviscerate is 3900 on some lowby alliance scum. I hope he read his combatlog :D A lot of fun, playing 2v2 with Nimroth in our combined druid/lock—priest/rogue team which is actually doing very good (the lock/druid that is :D). Will keep playing this one, but currently focussing on…

…Maix (druid)
Healing in BG’s is fun when you are with friends in there, it is not much fun with all strangers and nobody to look out for you. To make sure I do the necessary BG-grind (i am not going fast at all with the gear) I respecced. I follow all the 1337-blogs, so ofcourse I am aware of the Deep-spec (34/0/27) which I took as well. To make a long story short. My gear is severely lacking for it to do real damage, but it is a lot of fun to play. When Nimroth (priest) is with us, i don’t watch others too much, but else i keep my healing-eye open and jump into healing when needed. This makes it a lot easier to sologrind those BG’s. My healing (+100) and manaregen (40/5) went up a lot with this spec as well as rejuve and regrowth being cheaper. You miss swiftmend (and i do indeed) and the feral charge/longer bash/more armor (i don’t), but that’s it. I might respec back when doing arena, but since Nimra is my warlockpartner (and on holiday for the coming 5 days), I have plenty of time to enjoy it. Mainly playing this one 2v2 with Nimra. Now Nimra has full S2-gear and I can see how overpowered this combo is. I wait (especially against no-burst teams) till he is halflife before i even show myself. Since I do not have the survivability yet, I am playing very defensive. Whenever they go for me, i try and kite them around while Nimp is killing them. Whenever they go for him, I hassle them and keep him alive. Our rogue/priest combo keeps running into warriors (bad bad bad), but our lock/druid combo can handle them it seems (this bracket that is). I don’t want to know what happens when i have 4-set bonus and a lot more hp/resilience. It should make for higher ranking than 1667 (but only playing 10 a week now)

Soni (paladin)
Somehow I transferred some gold to Soni, respecced her to shockadin (40/0/21) and did a few bg’s (in healing gear). It makes it more bearable, but a battleground here and there is it for the moment. Being able to play something else when you want, is very nice.

Coming targets:
- Getting Milker his 1k gold back
- Gearing the druid (belt and legs this Wednesday! Epic healinglegenchant already bought)
- Getting someone on 1850+ * (i gear a lot, but can’t seem to get high. I blame the common factor of all my teams: me :D), but I can live with that.


-- Zhero (happy newyear and remember: if you quit because of RL, you are a failure to begin with)

PS: I have this all the time: I watch a clock and it says: 13:37! It must be a sign!

Monday, December 17, 2007

A lot of "stuff"

It’s been a while. I don’t know why, but time just flies. Quicker than you would want. At least: quicker than I would want. I turned 38. Depressingly old, especially when I play a game which is filled with 16-25 year old guys/girls (ok, I don’t mind the girls). And I am not depressed either.

But somehow when I was 18, I saw people my age now and thought they were boringly old. Now I am here, and all I can say I still think the same as I did back then. I still see those people as boringly old, though I am as old as them. Somehow they went ‘on’ in life (whatever that may be) and don’t spend time on kiddie-stuff anymore, but on serious stuff only. Let’s analyze that a little:

Uh…..serious stuff would be…?
- Mortgage? Your fault that you went in over your head because you wanted to live big. Now you’re stuck, but hey! You have a big house! Gratz with what I call: ‘irrelevant stuff’ and make sure to mow that mega-lawn of yours on your free saturdays.
- Kids? I have 1 too. She is eight years old and awesome. The difference is that you take your kid to the ‘kermis’ (dutch word for ‘fair’) as an adult being responsible and all (1 icecream! No more) while Serra, yes she is called Serra and yes: I’ve played competetive MTG for over 10 years, and I go with the 2 of us as 2 kids, but the good part is: 1 has money! Haha, we spend it all on stuff we like, eat too much, go in every machine…twice! and leave with over 10 teddybears. It’s not called spoiling, it’s called: having a good time!
- Caring about the looks of your car, cellphone, suit etc? I am a manager in a telecom-company. I lead a department which is responsible for all automated workflow related stuff (interfaces and such). Most of my colleague-managers don’t understand what I do and my interests. I am about the only one who does not care about his car (bmw), his phone (nokia, 3 year old model) or the price of his suits (cheap) and don't forget status. I gamble, watch movies, go out, play games and (before all else) enjoy time with my daughter. Those are things that matter to me. I’m fine with you caring about your car and phone, now let me care about what I care about. Not that difficult.

Serious stuff. Aha, it doesn't exist. It only exists in one's mind, so it can have multiple meanings and my serious stuff is as good as yours.

“Aren’t you too old for that stuff?”. Uh….no. You might be, but I am not. Not gaming and qualifying it as ‘something that you can be too old for’ actually tells me you’re jealous and wish you were me. I can understand that. I wanna be me as well.

Enough ranting about age and stuff. General message is: be what you want to be and enjoy it. Let others be what they want to be (sheep? o_O) and let them enjoy it. And remember: if there were no sheep, you would never be outstanding…

More on Maix, Kirosta and Zhero next time

-- Zhero (played his rogue extensively over the last few days)

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Nat Pagle came in my life.

I did some digging, as I have been levelling my fishing (on Zhero) lately, on the fishing subject and got some nice stuff:

Nat Pagle (who is believed to be Pat Nagle, a game-designer for WOW and TBC) is the man you should see when you want to train your fishing from 225 to 300 (I am at 235 now, started at 171 where I left it long ago)
Not only is Nat standing on an island somewhere in Dustwallow Marsh, he also is to be seen in Old Hillsbrad where he has the following conversation (copied from wowhead):

Nat Pagle: Hal...
Hal McAllister: Yea, Nat?
Nat: Had that dream again last night...
Hal: Which one?
Nat: In this dream, I was fishin' master of the world. I moved to some place called Kalimdor...
Nat: And people from all over the world come to me to pay homage... and learn to fish.
Nat: I'm like some kind of fishing god...
Hal: Nat, I've heard a whopper or two in my day but that one takes the cake."


Funny guys there at Blizzard. Must be a good laugh when developing this game. But back to the subject: I decided to level my fishing (and cooking) on Zhero. I know that rises some questions as I already have 375 cooking on my paladin and my rogue, but here is the answer:

I feel Zhero is reaching completeness (is that even a word?). My gear and stats reach heights that I have never seen before. Whenever I play with him, I feel like a true warlock….a real master of demons, top of the foodchain, the great dark leader of Azeroth. You can’t imagine the power I feel when playing with him. To make that picture as perfect as I can, I have to level those 2 professions. I just have to. I really have to. It’s just something I must do…can’t really explain it. Forgive me...

...maybe...

...dark powers...

...possess...

...me.

-- Zhero ()

Monday, December 03, 2007

Warlock + healer = Chuck Norris?

Nimra is back and not only on his lock, but on his priest as well. Grinding honor with a healclass is one of the most frustrating things to do when you have no partner to do it with (most frustrating must be a partnerless warrior imo), because they never ever pay attention to you or communicate with you, besides the standard ‘Healme’ and ‘Randomretard is low on health’ macro’s that they are running.

I used to run with szwok (on his imba warrior) and Dier (very good geared paladin) and myself in EOTS and AB. Really working like a team, which does not mean run into 12 alliance and hope the paladin can keep up and resist the counterspells thrown. No, when Dier was in trouble we used to take a step back and fear, intercept the adds off her. Worked like a charm, we got scores of 25-0, 33-1 etc. with 80-110 HK’s and this really adds up to the honor.

I forgot how nice that was until Nimroth (lovely 0 resilience blue-instance geared priest) healed my ass in AB last night. Not only did we win all but 1, but we got some very nice HK’s out of it while doing massive damage. He remembered me to rebuff my fel armor and threw heals while I tried to fear, CoeX the adds of him. It worked pretty well and we got some good honor in the games we did.

I just wanted to post this next pic(s), because I don’t really see difference with 2.3. Locks are not dead, we are more than ever alive! I am doing lots of damage, I am harder to kill than before, we only have rogues now which kill us but that is fine with me. I’ve played that way for more than a year from the beginning, I can handle it. At least they have to work for it now.

Anyone ever got more damage than this in 1 AB? (tnx to Nimroth for imbahealing)

Haha, we all need whispers like this sometimes because it makes you feel good. At least, that was what it did for me.

-- Zhero (flying back to earth now)