Fix My Glyph of Frostbolt!

I've been doing my raiding as frost for the past few weeks. At first, I made a frost spec for kiting on Saurfang and I just lingered in it as long as possible until our RL realized the water elemental was out and made me change to arcane.

I've found that in Icecrown, I don't bother glyphing for Frostbolt. There are too many fights where being able to slow things with a frostbolt is valuable (Lady Deathwhisper, Saurfang, Valithria, and possibly Rotface/Putricide). I just can't justify a 3.5% increase to dps (about 175 DPS) to lose that versitility.

I would love to see Blizzard change the downside to the frost glyph and give me my snare back. I understand it's intended to keep the 5% increase in damage out of PvP, but I've got a different idea to fix that.

Make the Glyph of Frostbolt give 5% extra damage to Frostbolt when the Water Elemental is out.

Frozen Orb Blitz

There's been a lot of talk about the new 3.3.3 patch coming out soon.  On top of the buffs to frost mages and massive PvP overhaul, there will be a new vendor in the game.  What's he want?

Frozen Orbs

Yes, the things that have been filling our bags giving us nothing to do will be the new hotness.  You will be able to exchange them for a number of things.

4 Frozen Orbs for 1 Runed Orb
6 Frozen Orbs for 1 Crusader Orb
1 Frozen Orb for an Eternal Shadow, Life, Fire, Earth, Water, or Air.
1 Frozen Orb for 1 Frost Lotus
6 Frozen Orbs for a Frosty Flying Carpet Pattern

There's been a lot of doomsday about what is going to happen to the economy due to this change.  Here are my predictions.

Good Game, I Lose

Last night, we were running ToC-25, and we didn't have enough people to do it as a guild. We pugged about 1/3 of the people and had little to no issues. Except for me - I got all pissy and left. Why?

My guild was bullying the PuGs.

We have a DKP system that we run by, and it gets very interesting with people not in the guild. Basically, everyone who wants main spec on an item rolls, and if a guild person wins, it goes to the guildie with the highest DKP. Normal stuff. The problem we run into is people rolling for items they're not going to need. This was most apparent on the Trophies.

LARP, American Style

LARPing is way more prominent and more socially acceptable in Europe. There could be a lot of different reasons, but I would most likely blame it on the culture shock in the US around LARPing.

I'm sure everyone's read the nerd heirachy in some form or another, and it almost always has LARP at the bottom of the barrel.  I tend to disagree.

Pete and Repeat

Question: Pete and Repeat are on a boat. Pete falls off, who is left?

Answer: /ignore

This little gem, and others like it, have plagued the general chat in ICC on our server. It gets pretty ridiculous at times and I can't bring myself to leave the channel (I'm a glutton for punishment).

Do other servers have the same issue? What spam do you see in the general channels for ICC?

EVE Online: Guide for Newbies

I am quickly closing in on the end of the free trial that I got with EVE Online. I must say that it was a lot of fun and I'm seriously considering paying for the full version of the game. It has a harsh learning curve, as others have noted, but once you have the basic mechanics down, it shouldn't be that hard. Hell, 14 days in and I've almost got my first Cruiser!

Here are some points that I think new players would find useful if they were starting EVE Online.

Yo, We heard you like to blog about EVE...

So we put a browser in yo' game so you can blog about EVE while you blog about EVE. Or something to that effect.

So I haven't had a whole lot of time in EVE Online yet, but I have found one feature that is amazing for the kind of gameplay this game uses.

In-Game Browser

Here I am, shuffling silicon between bases so I can get out of this rusted out piece of shit, and instead of being bored out of my mind, I can surf the internet and even make this post you're reading now!

Well, looks like the prices just went up, so I have to check for trade somewhere else.

More to come!

Valithria Dreamwalker for Mages

Don't die, go frost, and two words for you.

Amplify Magic.

'Nuff Said.

Good Time to Game

I'm completely baffled on what game to play next.

There was a time a few years ago, where the stars aligned and a bunch of great games came out around the same time. It's like Hale-Bopp or Haley's Comet, coming back every few years to greet you with some spectacular game choices.

Leading off, we've got Bioshock 2 and Mass Effect 2. I believe those were two of the games that came out the first time, but they're back and ready for action. Some other great titles coming out around the same time were Army of Two: The 40th Day, Bayonetta and Darksiders. If all I played was Xbox 360, I'd still have a hard time deciding what to play.

I started playing Eve, which is tough but fun. STO didn't turn out to be as big a mess as Champions, so that could be fun to try as well.

I may be suffering from withdrawal due to work on the kitchen, but at least I know I'll be able to fall off the wagon and overdose on some proper games when it's done.

Off The Grid

I've been out of the loop for about a week. We've recently decided to redo our kitchen, and with all the minor problems along the way a four day job quickly turned into an eight day job. Well worth it though.

For all of those who partake in the great Lowe's v. Home Depot debate, I've recently changed sides due to the update of our kitchen. I used to be a diehard Lowe's supporter, but after receiving the absolute worst customer service ever, I've seen the light and I'm now a Home Depot guy.

Here's the quick version.

Ensidia Redux

A supposed member of Ensidia gave an Anonymous post at mmo-champion.com, stating how Ensidia acted with respect to the bug how this player was sorry for what was done.

If the guy is a fraud, this post means nothing.  If this guy truly is a member of Ensidia, it simply supports the argument that Ensidia should not have been banned - that a less harsh penalty should have been enforced.

I'm sticking with my guns here.  I understand in the past, Ensidia should have wiped the encounter and reported the bug.  No big deal - in the past.

Lich King is an encounter with limited attempts, Blizzard.  You wanted this.  You are now actually penalizing players for acting with a conscious, because wiping from a bug removes an attempt they could have possibly had on the encounter.

Is Ensidia being shady about what they did?  Yes.  But this is not like the analogies being made by people in the thread.  The set up for the encounter and the limited attempts makes this event less like being pulled over for speeding.  Blizzard caught Ensidia by entrapment.

The Ensidia Debate

For those of you living under a rock, the mighty Ensidia downed Arthas in 25-man ICC, giving them the world first kill that counts the most in the history of World of Warcraft. They were then subsequently stripped of their title and banned for 3 days for exploiting the encounter.

Here was the issue.
In the fight with Arthas, one of the mechanics is that the floor slowly gives way, reducing the room available for the raid to stand, eventually killing the raid. There turned out to be a bug where saronite bombs would actually heal the floor, thus giving more time with floor present. I will point out that rogues competing at the top level of content are expected to use saronite bombs, as they are a DPS increase and are therefore part of their rotation.

I am not an Ensidia Fanboi, but I'm siding with them on this one. Why?

Persistent Worlds

I had an interesting conversation at our weekly D&D session. One of my friends recetly got STO and was telling us about the game. I'm still not really sold. From what I heard, and what he described, I could see it getting old very fast - much like Champions Online. In fact, I liked the hero genre more than Star Trek, so I would probably quit STO faster than I did Champions.

As an aside, I thank Champions for the fact that it got me started in blogging, and even then I spent more time on my blog posts then I spent in the game.

Anyways, the conversation went like this (paraphrased, because I'm not a stenographer).

Me: After all the hype about STO, I went straight to my computer... and downloaded EVE Online.
Him: EVE isn't worth it. You do just as much playing the game as when you're not. You can't skill up faster.
Me: It's not about skills, it's about money [ISK]. It can be about money because the world is persistent.
Him: Yeah, good luck trying to pilot a Titan with money.

What Do You Look for in a Main Tank?

Sundays are 25 man VoA/Ony/ToC. Our guild is not skilled enough for ICC 25 quite yet, so we keep pounding content we know we can do in an hour or two. No big deal right?

We had a hell of a time raiding last night. We wiped on Jaraxxus twice, Anub twice, and ony once. It was three hours start to finish, and on top of that it just wasn't fun.  Our MT/GL started by saying "I don't feel like tanking. I don't want to think so I'm going to DPS." There are so many things wrong with that statement.