Long absence explained…

Just a quick update to let everyone know that the blog isnt dead.

Fact of the matter is that I have been really short of time for the last few months, and to be honest when one adds up the changes in WoW, to the race gathering the new JP and figuring out how the new talent trees work from 3 classes at once, with arriving home late from work every single day of the week, it becomes really difficult to gather any thoughts beyond dinner and sleep, to provide material for a decent post.

I’ll be more active once the expansion hits release day. At which time I hope to have my three guides ready for publishing (Warrior Tanking & DPS, Deathknight Tanking & DPS, and Hunter (Survival) Guides).

Regarding the expansion, I must say I have mixed feelings at this time.

Im looking forward to it, but Im not sure how it will feel to have the dreaded experience bar show up again.

I feel right now – I may be wrong as it is too early to form a proper opinion – that having the level cap raised again is not needed, all they had to do was give us more content, a couple new races, and fix the bugs present in the old system as far as talntes and spell went to have a really good expansion pack.

Time will tell, I guess.

Love(?),
The Angry Dwarf.

Car Insurance Companies…. Stay away from this one!!!

This is an entirely unrelated to WoW blog post.

I want to start by apologizing to you guys but I feel this had to be told, so that others thinking on getting an insurance with this company, think twice and are not cheated and lied to, the way I was.

This is a WoW related blog, but it is also a vehicle of free speech and information transaction and distribution.

Recently I received a letter from my car insurance company – Mapfre Portugal – stating they had unilaterally cancelled my insurance policy.

This came out of the blue, and as far as I knew when I got the letter, I had done nothing wrong to have it cancelled.

Payments were on time, as a matter of fact they were direct debit payments, i.e, they charged my bank account directly, so they always got paid timely.

When I phoned them, they stated that they had cancelled my insurance due to high rate of accidents.

That surprised me a lot, and seriously pissed me off, because in more than 10 years driving I have not had many accidents, 2 in more than 10 years, and sadly both happened this year.

The accidents were in both cases not my fault, but you guys can judge for yourselves based on the facts below:

The first I was stopped on an acceleration lane waiting for room to join the main road, with the turn-light on, and another car ripped off my left outer mirror.

The second a pedestrian jaywalked and caused me and another driver to have to emergency brake and thus collide against the back of the first car because the road was wet from rain, and then the jaywalker run off after seeing what he had done.

Based on this, they cancelled the insurance…. great job there guys.

After checking with the insurance institute I found that they had considered only the first incident as being my fault, and that I even had a bonus of 50% discount due to good and safe driving, but the company had never the less cancelled the insurance.

Amazingly enough, they considered me guilty on the first accident because I was carrying out a dangerous overtaking manoeuver ( I was stopped, with the turn-light turned on Einstein!!!!…. how the hell and in what planet is that overtaking???, even on Azeroth – which is a fantasy world – that’s NOT overtaking!! ).

Much to my amazement, in Portugal, insurance companies can revoke your insurance on the grounds of the general clauses of the contract, which is to say, whenever and for whatever reason they feel like.

You, the consumer, have absolutely no defense, because the portuguese institute for insurance will not defend your consumer rights, and will allow insurance companies to do whatever they please.

Then again, what can one expect from a country whose politicians announce a cut on their wages and privileges of 5% so everyone does their bit in fighting the global recession, and then they do not take the cut for no reason whatsoever, but instead announce more tax increases, as well as wage reductions for the employees both in the state service ( civil servants ) and in the corporate markets ( the private business sector ).

Anyways, back to the insurance policy issue…

I just want you all to know what sort of company these guys really are.

In WoW terms they are nothing more than a bunch of n00bs who want to “ninja” your hard-earned money and then “leave” the instance leaving you hanging out to dry, and feeling like a total jackass because you fell for their crap.

Love(?),

The Angry Dwarf.

Aaaaand we are back… sorta…

After returning from Holidays, I discovered a nasty little surprise. The phone lines at home had been cut.

I dot mean cut because we forgot to pay for them, but rather someone doing some construction work in our area decided it was a great idea to dig a ditch with an excavator without checking first if any pipes or lines passed through the area.

The result is that Im stuck using my slow 3G USB pen to access the internet.

Playing WoW on such a connection is more of an excercise of patience rather than skill.

The latency is simply horrid, over 1600 ms usually with some decent days with only 600 ms. Of course instancing or raiding is totally out of the question, let alone fighting any mob unless I have the lowest latency.

Also upon getting home I found a lovely suprise, Blizzard had sent me an invite to try out the SC2 Beta.

While I cannot divulge any details, I can let you all know that the game is absolutely stunning in its graphic detail.

The maps are interesting and beaitful to look at, which avoids the eternal problem of the RTS games, doing the same thing over the same scenario over and over again does get boring after a while.

The scenarios have interesting tidbits which again I cannot publish, but they will keep you busy for quite a bit.

The races are those anounced, and they are pretty much the same in general terms as they were on the original SC.

The fun thing is that this time away from the internet has also left me a lot less interested in WoW.

The new Cataclysm information is sketchy but my itchy bone keeps nagging at me with the impression that Cataclysm will indeed be a Cataclysm for WoW.

Perhaps Blizzard intends it to be the end of WoW and the begining of the preparation of the SC2 and D3 releases, so as to leave room for developing maybe WoW II.

The fact they are now also selling online pets such as the ethereal horse hints to an attitude of milk the cow while it has anything left to milk, which again points to the forseable future of WoW going offline after Cataclysm is launched.

Still, with such poor internet conetcion as I have now, maybe I have too much time left on my hands to ponder these things, or maybe its just Murphy’s law.

“All that is milked…. ends”.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Love(?),
The Angry Dwarf.

Away on Holidays

I’m going to be away a few days, taking some much-needed rest and relaxation. The place where I am going to be at has no internet (OMG!!!), so I will not be updating the blog until I come back.

The blog is not dead, it’s simply on standby while the author is away relaxing.

I will see you all back in Azeroth in a few days.

Love(?),
The Angry Dwarf.

Patch 3.3.3… Warriors – The Return of “Maximum Revenge”? – Hunters using Focus?

While I have allways had revenge on my rotation, if for no other reason than simply because it made sense, I find the latest changes done absolutely outstanding.

Warrior tanks have gained a improved version of revenge, that adds a cleave component. And a hard hitting cleave for keeping those mob packs glued to you.

It reduces the number of tabbing when pack tanking, and avoids issues where tabbing lead to targeting something other than the mobs.

However, a number of players seem to be debating what the priority on its use should really be. Should we prioritize it over Shield slam?, should we keep shield slam up and revenge later?.

In all honesty, I have to say that it feels more like an option depending on gear on gear and style of play. Revenge refreshes the Shield Slam coool down, and Revenge procs from what exactly? a Dodge, Parry or Block.

Since in the current badge and tier 9 content gear dodge is a heavy stat in its presence, this means Revenge will proc quite often, refreshing through its continued use our usual main threat and dps ability which is in my opinion Shield Slam.

On my gear I have struggled to keep dodge, block and parry, as close or above 20% as possible for this precise reason. All these 3 stats help me have a larger uptime of revenge and many more Shield Slams. But add in an often forgotten Glyph.

The Glyp of Blocking….

Since Block is increased by Strength, on a ideal raid buffed situation you will gain a lot of Block from those same buffs through the increase of Strength. But here is where it comes in the Glyph of Blocking. Because this increases your Block value by 10% each use of Shield Slam, it means that Revenge procs from Blocking are increased by a not so small amount thus allowing for the situation I have taken to call – though the expression is far from being mine – a “Maximum Revenge” situation.

Yes, I know it does sound a lot like a movie title, but I like it. Sounds good and reflects what I think will be the ideal situation for any Warrior tank. Use and Abuse of the Shield Slam & Revenge combination to produce the best results for threat and damage generation while tanking trash and/or a Boss.

There is another angle to consider, with the recent changes to Thunder Clap, we suddenly have become able to manage better trash pack tanking. The fact that it uses the same hit table as a ranged attack, much like Shockwave, makes it another powerful improvement to the Warrior-as-a-Tank class play style.

In sum, good job WoW Dev Team, at last abilities are being linked in a clear manner so that people know that by chaining A to B and adding a pinch of C and D will result in a smooth tanking run with calm and tranquility.

All told I think warrior tanking is at the highest point since Vanilla WoW, and I hope this is the way they choose to go for other classes.

The same cannot be said regarding Cataclysm’s changes to hunters resource management. Mana is gone… in comes Focus… right… so now hunters are what? ranged Rogues? Player controlled Pets for other classes?.

If managing something as simple and straight forward as Mana is hard, then it is obvious the player should not be playing the class.

Mana management is part of what makes this class fun, a large pool well managed, allows for not runing out of mana and thus loosing little next to no time in Viper Aspect.

Furthermore, if you choose the right Spec and run in a properly organized and balanced raid, you will not  have many mana issues.

Focus is a mechanic that has given source to untold amounts of Rogue and Kitty Druids complaints. The regeneration is too slow, causes inability to perform your “casts” due to its very slow regeneration, in sum, its flawed from the base up.

So from a mechanic that works and is at best a little harder to manage properly if you do not know what you are doing and how to setup a raid we move to a flawed mechanic no one is happy with.

Furthermore, we move from a pool which required balancing to a fixed amount that need no balancing but lacks a proper way of regenerating.

Warriors have 100 rage, and it regenerates from damage they do or take as well as some passive generation through tree talents, focus does not do this.

Death Knights have 100 or 150 Runic power depending on build and spec tree, regenerates through damage done and ability use, as well as being dependant on rune cool downs to power abilities. Focus does not do this.

Rogues and Kitty Druids have 100 Focus, but it doesnt regenerate from damage done or use of abilities., and as far as I know, and I could be wrong on this, it does not regenerate faster through the choice of any talents.

So, unless the change to focus is done in such a way that it it is regenerated through doing damage and ability use coupled to choice of talents to create a pssive regeneration we are looking at putting yet another class into the sack of the broken mechanics.

The only good thing – and its not that great by the way – I see coming for hunter is the end of the need to carry 10 or 20 stacks of ammon in your pack. It will be good if the ammo is craftable by an engineer as it is now, it will be good if it becomes available also from vendors, it will be good if it improves dps as it does now, but it will not be good of it becomes something you have to hope for in the way of a drop from any mob anywhere inside the game.

The reason is siple, the random loot droping is not fair for any player. You have to go through the same content over and over and over and over in the hope it will drop, and when it does you have to contend with other players of the same class and/or with players of other classes that can use ranged weapons such as the Warriors.

An example of this is 2 items which I have been desperately trying to get, The Needle Encrusted Scoprion Trinket, and the Battered Hilt quest Item. After a Grand total of 75 runs in 3 separate characters on the new instances in heroic mode the results are:

Battered Hilt – Forge of Souls (HC) + Pit of Saron (HC) + Halls of Reflection (HC):

Drops: None

Grand Total Runs: 75

Needle Encrusted Scorpion – Forge of Souls (HC):

Drops: None

Grand Total Runs: 35

Some will say its just bad luck, but to me it seems like something is really broken with the way the loot drops are generated. So, if ammo would be a boss drop, then considering the above results, it is obvious what the problems will be.

Time will tell, but to me its starting to look as if its time to close the curtain on my Hunter and embark on another journey with a different class or perhaps even a different game.

Love(?),

The Angry Dwarf.

Idle time…

I’ve been rather busy with home, work, and all other things. This has left me to wonder where can I find some idle time to play WoW.

If all the maths are done, and a day has only 24 hours, then I guess of late its become a choice between sleep, or warcraft. Sleep wins hands down.

Still, I have once again noticed Blizzrad have been stealthily implementing things on the servers behind our backs. Two items jumped to my sight almost immediately. First, my warrior tank, Glaive, has 1.1k hit points more out of nowhere.

No gear changes, no buffs from food, groups, raids, or any other buff gained in anyway ( was sitting quietly near darkshore fishing away while I waited for the LFG tool to drag me to some instance ).

Secondly, both of the characters I played 2 days ago, got a funny feat of strength called “Emblematic”. The tooltip reads “Emblematic(0) — Earn any variety of emblem”. If it was a new character, I would assume this to be normal, but taking ito accout that I have earned all types of emblems & shards there are to earn in the game, it makes me wonder what exactly have they got prepared for emblems in Cataclysm?.

Are they removing them, and thus they give you a feat of strength for it?…. what will replace the said Emblems?… thats soem food for thought.

If they did remove it, people with the stupid idea that those who cannot raid, or cannot raid as often or as long should not get access to any gear besides what drops on a heroic instance have won the battle.

If that’s the case, then I’ll be closing my account on Warcraft for good, because it will have become a game where a few, a very few have a say, and the rest of the paying customer base counts for nothing more than to pay for a poor service,and worse customer care.

If I was a CEO and I saw this happening on my company, I’d fire the development team and those listening to the minority complaining about their right to epeen. Sadly Im not, so Im reduced to, if this comes to happen, cancelling my account because since my opinion doesnt matter, their service doesnt matter to me, and Id rather go spend my money elsewhere.

Love(?),

The Angry Dwarf.

Triple specs, old PvP titles, and player housing…

Recently while browsing Tankspot’s forum I came across an interesting discussion. Players wondering if Blizzard should allow the players to have a third spec, purely for PvP purposes or for an all-round use.

To be quite honest I understand some of the reasoning behind dual spec. WoW is now a mature game environment, with an established playerbase which is not growing as much as Blizzard would possibly like to see. Thus it follows that they need to introduce a way for letting existing players with developed characters move around inside their class’ niche, and not be stuck into a single position.

Dualspec allowed this, letting those classes that can fill more than one spot, thus allowing more felxibility, faster grouping and easier raid organization. I believe their basic rule-of-thumb behind this was “If you are missing a healer, have a friend change the spec from dps/tank to healer and get going with the instance/raid”.

However, a third spec has been something that people like Ghostcrawler have consistently shied away from. Since one of the lead developers, if not the lead developer of the game itself seems diametrically oposed to this it is a moot discussion.

But, and here is a big one, those pushing to have a third spec allowed by Blizzard do have a point. PvP players would enjoy having an extra spec slot available to them simply to PvP.

The fact is that there is perhaps only one way to actually put it to work.

Keep the third spec something that works solely for PvP environment content.

My take on such an implementation would be simple:

First. give the third spec slot in exhange for high honor points, and a large amount of shards/tokens, and avoid gold costs for such things.

These two things ( honor and shards ) can be gained solely through the PvP side of the game ( ok, the shards can also be gathered from instances, but we could easily replace the shards for tokens from Battlegrounds and/or Arena points ), thus requiring a moderate to large commitment to PvP to have this spec.

Further, the way I envision it working safely and avoiding forum complaints, as well as raids composed solely of hybrid classes, is to make the so called third spec not only available through a mechanism of PvP content but also limit its functionality to within PvP content.

By PvP content, I mean exactly that.

Playing a PvP server is not PvP content. Dueling is not PvP content.

The third spec enable/disable trigger would thus be, enter an Arena or a Battleground. Once inside you would automatically be “respeced” to your PvP spec, but once you leave, the PvP spec would be automatically disabled, leaving the player to enable their main or offspec for PvE content.

What if I do not yet have the third spec? well thats also easy, if you dont have it, then it doesnt get enabled/disabled.

This automated change would also benefit the game balance in another way. By making something work specifically for PvP, you can force the talents and spells to perform in a way that are balanced solely for PvP.

This would also mean there would possibly be no “Nerf Class X!!!”, or “Class Y is over powered!!”, or even no more “Nerf Class Z because Class Y cannot kill them in PvP!!!” sort of posts.

Another upside of such an implementation of what I have taken to call “zoned” talents is that the PvP balancing changes will not affect directly or indirectly the PvE content players. It would also further emphasize the difference between PvP and PvE, which is something that Blizzard through their developers have allways claimed to be one of their goals.

I could go down the historic archives of the forums to find a bunch of quotes to back this up, but suffice it to put as an example, the posts regarding the need to “nerf” the Beastmastery talent tree because of PvP, prio to the mass exodus to the Survival spec due precisely to the nerf that “Steady Shot” suffered.

Another topic Ive found interesting is the possible return of old PvP titles. Blizzard posted when they removed the titles that they would never be coming back. If you had earned it, it would be unique/grandfathered, never to be gained again.

I was one of the lucky few who had a title by then, and was quite pleased keeping it, as it lended my main character an aura of “veterancy” which fitted rather well with how I envisioned him.

Quite a few of my long standing WoW friends, also agree on this, they see him there with his “Corporal” title before his name, and they envision him as grayed old veteran of the first wars.

The picture of the old-school drill sargeant who is tough as nails, because he has been through hell and back again ( twice ), who leads them into the unknown is quite alluring to most roleplayers. Being a roleplayer at heart myself, I find it sad to see that not only has Blizzard failed to keep to a statement and a decision made long ago, but also that they are not interested in what those that have something unique and special which makes them stand out from the crowd in these days of easy titles which mean nothing, have to say about the subject.

Again, I fail to see the logic or reasoning behind this decision, except that they are running out of ideas on what to do to calm down the rabid horde of PvP screaming for somethign else to do because they are bored out of their socks of Battlegrounds and Arenas.

I fail to see the need to devaluate one of the last true marks of being “old school” that are left in WoW, by turning it into something every single last player can get.

I find this idea as silly as I find silly the thought of allowing players/guilds to have their own houses in cities or elsewhere.

The player-owned housing reminds me too much of UO and the horrible experience of going adventuring in some areas, which were so crowded with player houses that you needed to page staff to remove them to allow players to access content such as dungeons.

It reminds me of the problems housing had, with item thefts, houses vanishing, and the home-owner bank access from inside the house. It reminds me of the horror of the latency/lag the servers had then, and looking at how many players play WoW, Im suprised Blizzard has made no serious commitment to rejecting this for once and all.

It reminds me of the use of houses to cause grief to players by trapping them through “optical illusion” placement of items to kill the player over and over again, just to steal their equipment and/or gold.

Love(?),

The Angry Dwarf.