2.3.3

Bug Fix... Yawn... No Wow for tonight then...

2.3.2

No WoW last night, due to maintenance and the upgrading to 2.3.2. Looking at the changes, the following stand-out...

PvP

• Warmasters/marshals in Alterac Valley now increase each other’s maximum health and damage by 20%. This is a stacking effect.

Nice change. It makes capping and burning the bunkers/towers more imperative now. I've seen succesful kills of Van with up to two Marshalls still active. From now on, defending capped bunkers needs a serious looking at. Re-taking of capped towers can put a serious dent in being ready for pulling Van.

Hunters

• Pet leveling speed has been increased.

Nice for those who tame pets of significant lower level than them (Spirit Wolf?). Maybe it's time to throw lots of money at getting the Spirit Wolf? :p

Mages

• Cold Snap (Frost) cooldown reduced. It is now in the Ice Block position in the talent tree. This ability will no longer reset the cooldown on Fire Ward.


• Ice Block (Frost) is now available on the trainer to all mages at level 30.


• Icy Veins (NEW Frost Talent) decreases casting time of all spells by 20% and increases the chance your chilling effects will freeze the target by 10%. Lasts 20 sec. 3 min cooldown. It is now in the Cold Snap position in the talent tree.

Very nice for Mages and really nice for Frosties... Oh wait... I don't have a Mage...

Shaman

• Lightning Shield mana cost reduced.

Nice. Lightning Shield is a good cheap source of DPS which just got cheaper!

User Interface

• You can now see raid members on the minimap as dark blue dots in addition to party members which still display as light blue dots.

I like this one. It helps in BG as the radar can be quite misleading on whether there are raid members near by. I've been using a 'mini-Map' for this but it's a bit too small to be able to see the details required.

Of course, there are still a whole bunch of known bugs in 2.3.2. Nothing truly gamebreaking, but it looks like there will be a 2.3.3.

Pitbull and an Update

After reading the comments on forums and websites, I decided to try out Pitbull, as a replacement for XPerl. It's pretty good actually and the amount of customisation is amazing. However, it looks like a heck of a lot of work to get it to look like what I want. XPerl is a lot less effort and although it doesn't look as good, it'll suffice for now.

Finally ran a Heroics daily, which was Sethekk Hall & helped a friend with his druid epic flight quest. Good fun, quite smooth except for an unfortunate wipe at the final boss... Really wish we can get that group together for more heroics runs... I got the Nether which is now in the bank... Will probably hang onto it for now, might need it for Spellthread if I get a good pants upgrade.

Oh, also got Mart's engineering to 375... I made a repair bot but didn't get a skill-up... :p So, in the end, made two flying machines and donated one to the guild bank... lol

2.3 Released

Well, Blizz released 2.3 on schedule so servers were down last night. I've taken the opportunity to clean out the WTF folder since I haven't done that in awhile. Besides, I'll need to update all my add-ons anyway.

Anyway, list of things to do in 2.3...

All
Go to Dustwallow Marsh and get the new flight point in the Goblin Town

Warlock
Grind for mats for Flying Machine
Grind for the Repair Bot (Gan'arg Analyzers; Blade's Edge Mountain) and Arrow Maker (Sunfury Archers; Netherstorm) recipes

Pally
Relook at the Ret & Prot builds with a number of changes to talents in both trees

Warrior
Relook Talents with the change in Weapon Mastery and Deathwish.
Grind for the Leatherworking Bag Recipe (Ogres in Barrier Hills)
With the change in Tactical Mastery and approaching lvl 70, to relook at maybe Arms Tanking with Mortal Strike
Relook the items to make in light of the new LW receipes

Will also be updating the Rep requirements based on some of the new patterns available.

Quiet Week

Been a quiet week. For whatever reason, had barely had five online for any meaningful run. The exception was the run of Botanica, but that got cut short when Elaina woke up brawling...

Been tinkering a bit more with my UI and I think I like how it looks like now. Nice buttons & a lot cleaner interface. Will be on the lookout for more add-ons... Main thing now is how to improve the 'radar' screen but yet to see something nice.

One last thing is that I've been re-thinking of what to do for my pally in end-game. As it stands, I think we have more than enough tanks but not enough healers. With the itemisation, I think end-game pally healing is quite viable, so this is one area I think I'll explore.

Expertise

New in 2.3 as a replacement for the +Weapon Skill bonus.

What it does is that it reduces the chance for your melee attacks to be dodged or parried. Frankly, it seems like a modified +hit which you could collect in addition to the +hit you are collecting. It also seems to be a good way to increase your damage after you've hit the hit cap.

For ranged attack, since the target can't dodge or parry those anyway, this will be replaced by +hit or +crit rating.

For racials, these are all changed to +1% crit.

Edit: The melee weapon +skill racials are changed to 5 pts of Expertise. Ranged remain as +1% crit.

It's a huge buff to the 'casuals' out there since the hit cap is relatively meaningless since you are never going to meet any lvl 73s, so having +1% crit instead is a direct increase to DPS. For the raiders, it's losing +3% hit on bosses which will have an impact. This 3% will now need to be made up for in gear & gems.

Since Gren is hardly even fighting anything above level 71 (the elementals in Nagrand), more crit is great. :)

2.3

It's on the PTR and patch notes are out.

Early days yet but looks like some nice stuff for sale for badges. Guess Heroics might be back in fashion again.

The engineering mount looks like a gyrocopter. Definitely going to be built. Question now is which to use, this or the drake. The mats are rather reasonable. No crazy nethers or stuff like that.

The CE mount is a Hippogryph. Looks nice. Thinking of grinding CE rep for Shev for that.

They are also tinkering with the Warrior trees. If this is what it is, then Arms will be looking good, with Deathwish & Improved Intercept.

Now, just to wait till it goes live.

I LOVE Transporter Malfunctions

In another display of my hidden wish to look good (aka be Ally), the Transporter Malfunction which afflicted Mart made me look like a male Night Elf,



Then, it was a female Draenei (aka goat lady)



I think I should teleport more often...

Back

Yeah... Back...

First Impressions...

As with everyone else, I rolled my Blood Elf pally and ran around to see the 452342603461065 other BE pallys running around the starting area. It still wasn't so bad since some people haven't gotten their xpac yet or are too busy grinding the post-60 content. But, the 'queue' for quest mobs is just odd...

But, the most amazing thing was to be Horde and finally look nice, no, gorgeous. Even something as plain as Brown Linen Robe looked amazing. If only I had this option when I first started playing...

Finally, it's great that the BE racial compensated (at a certain extent) one of the worst part of playing a paladin, the lack of a pulling ability. Now, the mana burn ability means that I can pull anything that has a mana bar, rather than the body pull I had used as a human pally... Guess ally are all going to get upset now...

Of course, I had to send my lock through the Portal. After spending a ridiculous amount of time looking for the Tailoring trainer, I started exploring around. There's apparently some algo now that compensates for lots of toons in the same area by increasing the spawn rate of mobs. It made for some pretty hairy encounters as you see mobs respawning as fast as you can kill them! Some of the quest rewards are amazing, replacing some long standing blues with greens. Wonder how long this will last...

Well, there goes sleep...

Christmas PvP - a story

A friend linked this story to me from the European WoW forums... So... Touching... :)

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I often play PUGs, and I encounter a lot of bad players on the opposite team. But, I just can't take it when they're female gnomes. I have a heart, and it just feels so bad killing those small buggers, especially around christmas times.

My story begins with me playing my shaman. I run up to a female gnome mage and slay her without her being able to do anything. Now I do this another 5-6 times and that poor female gnome mage is like the only alliance who dares to step outside their flagroom (EVERYONE DEFEND FTW!)

It is a really bad player, I don't even have to try very hard and could just autoattack kill the poor female gnome. She tries to channel fireballs, I ES and she wont even channel another fireball before my ES is ready again. She never silences and overall she's like one of the worst players I ever seen. (but at least she tries to move out from the flagroom and WIN the game!)

So, I just can't take it anymore. I see that gnome mage running up to me for like the 7-8th time and I look at the scoreboard, the mage got like 0 HKs and 10 deaths. She starts channeling a fireball and I just let it hit me. And let another fireball hit me. She doesn't have very good gear, it's noticable - still decent gear though. I hit her 2-3 times, with windfury deactivated to not get some lucky instant killing WF crits.

And I die after a time. I don't know why. Somehow in my mind I see this dad, who actually plays the character, who sits with his kid and lets him play. Because it was really THAT bad play, slow reactions and everything.

And that female gnome.. I just couldn't.

I respawn again, the score is 2-0 at this time and we're really dominating the game. The female gnome, who still is the only alliance stepping out of the flagroom, is now in our base, running VERY slowly and stopping on every corner. Which only makes me believe even more it's a someone showing a small kid the game. Move around the corner, standing still for a few seconds, move a bit further.
The only reason she managed to get this far, was because all other 9 hordes are killing the defenders in their flagroom.

I follow the gnome (looking at the female gnome around the corners by rotating my camera) slowly into our flagroom. She entered our base from the ramp, and from entering it took probably 1 minute to get into our flagroom - which for a "normal" player takes a few seconds tops.

Now she stands in front of our flag, totally still. Nothing happening for 10 seconds, and in my mind I'm so sure that it's the dad saying "Good kid, now rightclick on this flag and run fast back to our base!". I'm so sure of it, I can't believe anyone who's level 60 can play this badly and move around so slow if they level hours & days by themselves.

She picks up the flag, and I run in. Hey, can't have them capture without having to fight for it. The female gnome mage stops, looks at me for a bit and after 4-5 seconds starts channeling a fireball. After a epic battle of attempting to make it look like a epic battle, she brings me down. She slowly moves closer to my corpse, then a bit closer and then loots my corpse. She turns around, stands there 3-4 seconds before she runs the 10 yards to reach the tunnel in our flagroom. Stands still another 4 seconds then she turns facing the tunnel and after another 3 seconds she starts running forward.

I'm so sure now, but no matter - a player that bad and who's the only one who actually is trying to win the game needs to be rewarded for the fighting spirit.

"/bg Hey guys, the one who picked up our flag is a friend of mine, it's his little kid playing. He loves this game and is it ok if we let him score 1 time to make a little kid happy? It's christmas week after all."

Ok, it's a lie. I don't know the guy, and I don't know if it's a kid. It can just as well be a really bad player. But believe it or not, the brutal hordes all show a great heart. The female gnome runs through the middle to their tunnel, which takes probably a 3 minutes. The hordes are all ganking people who's defending their flagroom now, it's actually quite a slaughter. All of the hordes, including me, are in their flagroom killing everyone trying to get in there.

Then our favorite gnome comes running into the room, she almost hits the glasswindow straight ahead before he stop. Waits 3 seconds, turns 90 degrees to 3 seconds later walk straight into the middle of the room. He walks a bit to far to the west, so it takes another 3 seconds and he moves backwards a few steps with all the hordes watching. She turns around facing their flag. Moves forward, stops for a second, then moves forward again and the female gnome mage captures the horde flag!

Horde picks up the respawning flag and runs back to the base with a female gnome mage untouched shooting fireballs after them. Some people stops to /wave and /dance with the female gnome mage, and let her kill them - as she don't have the speed to keep up with the flag carrier.

Horde wins 3-1, but one little happy mage ended 4th in killing blows (among alliance) with her 8 KBs and 17 deaths.
Maybe it wasn't a kid playing, maybe it was a handicapped person, maybe it was a regular person watching TV while playing, or maybe someone who just opened a ebay account. I have no clue.

But I had a merry christmas.

TBC Launch

OK, so I was crazy but I went down to the launch event for TBC at Suntec... What a madhouse...

It was hilarious to see Glenn Ong trying to get all the people hyped up when no one is interested in the event & just wanted to get their game, go home, install & roll blood elves...

The 'magic show' was pretty funny too... The mage with the 'Azuresong Mageblade' & the warlock in the bad costume...

The most champion person is the one who queued since 10pm THE NITE BEFORE just to be 1st in line to get his game... Of course, he gets to go on national TV & probably cop a ribbing from his family. Frankly, I think his time would have been better spent grinding the last few hours pre-TBC getting more money set aside for his epic flying mount.

Now, I'm just waiting for the game to finish installing/patching and I can get to serious grinding...