I Quit

In the past I have tried to quit.

Many times, I would ask myself if I was really having fun or just trying to fit in.

Was I doing it because I wanted to or because it was expected of me?

I would set it aside for a while, but always came back in the end.

Well Beastmastery I finally found a way to quit you. I just needed a little help from The Patch.

 

After a good bit of testing, at least a week on each spec I decided to quit my beastmastery habit. I made the final decision last night after seeing my overall Dps climb by about 20%. Things die quicker, I rarely run low on mana, and most importantly I am having more fun.

Lots more fun.

Drupadi is a Survival Hunter now, and I am loving every minute of it.

Dad’s Kiss-up Points, or DKP for short

Let’s see here, how can I explain this without sounding like more of a madman than people already think I am.

Do you have kids? I do. Three lovely youngsters who see at times to exist for the sole purpose of fighting with each other.

One of their favorite arguments is to plead favoritism, trying to get the referee (in this case me) to side with them. They use such eloquent arguments as “but, she went first last time!” or “We always watch what she wants! (sob)” and a personal favorite “I do more than him, I should get to have my way!” 

Much thought ensued. Yes it made my brain hurt, but that’s what Tylenol is for. I decided that in order to truly determine who I should play favorites in favor of, I need to have a way to measure and record things like chores and school grades. The idea I came up with was simple and elegant. By behaving in a good manner, doing chores on time, and getting good grades in school the kids would be able to earn points that they could later spend to get what they wanted.

Since they will be working towards impressing dear old dad in order to get their way, I have decided to call these “Dad’s Kiss-up Points”, or DKP for short.

Points will be gathered as follows:

1. Each task will be assigned a set number of points based on how much it sucks to do. For instance doing a load of laundry is not quite as unpleasant as cleaning puppy landmines out of the back yard.

2. All tasks, and their respective points values will be posted on the “Kids can do this” board. Check frequently or you may miss out.

3. Any tasks on the “kids can do this” list that end up being done by parents will result in a loss of the chores full amount of DKP from each kid. In short, I don’t care who does it, as long as it gets done.

4. Good grades in school will also be rewarded, with bonus points for things like perfect attendance. 

 

Points can be spent later on either cash rewards (call it an allowance based on how hard they actually work) or to resolve disagreements using the silent auction method. Once an argument starts…

I want to watch Spongebob!…  Spongebob sucks, I want to watch Mtv!…. Mtv sucks!….. You suck!…….DAAAAAD!

 As I was saying before they lost their damn minds situations like this call for an auction.

Each kid simply writes what they want to watch and how many points they are willing to spend to get it on a slip of paper and hands them to Dad. The winner gets what they wanted and uses up a bit of their pool of DKP. It is up to them weather watching spongebob in place of Mtv was really worth burning all their points and not getting an allowance this week.

See, I told you I could play favorites yet still be fair.

Raid consumables for the prepared Hunter

Last night we had a guild meeting wherein we discussed raiding schedules and requirements amongst many other things that I choose not to write about here. Not because they are bad, if possible there was a negative amount of drama. I don’t bring it up because it has nothing to do with today’s post.

While I was in vent chatting with guildies I decided to rebuild something I used to keep back at 70. A set bag of gear that I would always have on me, and a second set that I could grab and go at a moments notice. The object of all this is that with my hearth set to somewhere close to a bank I would be able to go from questing anywhere in the world to repaired, raid ready, and waiting for a summons, in less than 5 minutes.

Yes I was a Boy Scout once upon a time. It kind of shows here. “Be Prepared”

The way I did this is to have basic supplies on me at all times. I would like to be able to do a couple of instances without having to run to the bank and sort through it for stuff I may need. Then I have a second bag that I keep in the bank. All I have to do is swap it out for one of the bags full of spleens, hooves, and clams I always seem to have. (on a side note, if you have not read Miss Elf’s post WTF Nerf Clams yet please head on over and check it out. It is totally full of win).

 

First off is my main bag. It goes everywhere with me.

Gnomish Army Knife

Hearthstone.

A  stack of Heavy Frostweave Bandages. (Seriously, the healer has more important things to worry about… like the tank for instance.)

My Moll-e. Because you never know when you will get an uncontrollable urge to check your mail.

A stack of pet buff food, spiced mammoth treats  Is Shadows preferred Scooby snack.

Two stacks of general purpose food, I like using what I catch while fishing up buff food, your mileage may vary. Currently I am using smoked rockfin .

1 stack runic mana potions

1 stack runic healing potions

one stack of Agility food, I prefer Blackened Dragonfin  since I am a fisherman. (Yes I realise I need to go fish up some more)

A fully loaded ultrasafe bullet machine  (Mammoth Cutters, When you care enough to send the very best.)

 

Secondly comes my raid bag. It spends its days sitting in the bank on standby for grab and go raiding.

1 stack runic mana potions

1 stack runic healing potions

2 stacks general purpose food, here more smoked rockfin.

A stack of attack power food. In my case Poached Northern Sculpin (Mmm, tastes like whoop ass. Maybe I should can this stuff)

Another stack agility food, more Blackened Dragonfin (crap, I really need to go fishing, I thought I had a full stack in here)

5 flasks of endless rage  (More Attack Power, and it persists through death. Sweet!)

1 stack of repair bots  (because the little red man makes the raid sad)

Another stack of Heavy Frostweave Bandages.

Another stack pet buff food,

Two more Ultrasafe Bullet Machines

A stack of  stam scrolls  (you never know when you will end up with no priest in the party)

A stack of agility scrolls  (more agility is more damage, and damage is good)

A stack of  protection scrolls  (I like to use one before AoE heavy fights to ease the healing burden a bit)

A stack of  intellect scrolls  (Int becomes Attack Power with Careful Aim, and Attack Power is made of win)

 

There you have it, my basic load out of gear. With these two bags I could spend half a day raiding without running out of supplies, and I would never have to be the one saying I have to run to the auction house while the raid waits for me.

That was random

Totally random, but I caught myself humming this last night while I was leveling up my shiny new Druid, Giligan.

Nuke, nuke, nuke,
All day long,
Wrathing Murlocs while I sing this song.

Gonna burn them down,
Till the sparkles shine,
Then I’ll go through their pockets and see whats mine.

I did not say it made any sense, just that it happened.

Managed to get him almost to level 12 before calling it a night due to repeated disconnects. I am thinking I made the right call with going balance. I did not even bother to go get bear form till after I dinged 11. (it’s availible via questing at 10 for those who don’t know offhand). After I got it I set up my feral action bar and then promptly ignored it, I am having way too much fun as a caster.

So far I have figured out a few things on my own, and gotten a bit of advice from my readers as well. Here are a few things I observed yesterday.

• I am looking for Int and Stam on gear, Spellpower is nice if I stumble across it. If you want those stats at low level you are wearing cloth.
• Entangling roots has been changed at some point in the last year or so to work indoors. This is huge in the way I am playing this toon.
• If you put hot’s on yourself while running it takes more than 4 mobs to smack you down before resetting.
• Unless you catch an unlucky stun, then they beat you like you insulted their ancestors.
• speaking of hot’s, if you wait till you need them to put them on it’s already too late.
• Sometimes trying to help people just ends badly, like the level 12 petless melee Hunter I tried to talk to that told me to STFU since they knew hunters better than me…
• He had not spent his talent points and was wearing cloth with spirit on it as well, but this is not a rant.
• Hopefully he gets bored and follows the link to BRK that I sent him.
• Never take a drink of diet coke while you have a Mentos in your mouth… Just trust me on this one.

Alrighty, well I guess it’s back to perusing Wowhead for low level boomkin gear work. Catch you on the flipside….

Another day, another alt

Looks like I have up and done it again.

Like I have not been down this road before.

Like I don’t already have enough on my plate just leveling and gearing up my existing characters.

I went and rolled a baby druid.

Flash back to my first Wow character to make it beyond level 10 and you would see a druid. I have always enjoyed the lore behind them. That first Druid made it to somewhere in the high thirties before I rerolled to a different server to stay with friends. He was leveled almost exclusively by going bear form and grinding mobs for their leather. Pretty straight forward, I just did not know better.

Since discovering Hunters (and leveling via questing) with that server move I have gone back and tried to level a druid twice more. Both made it to just after level 20 and ended up abandoned. I think I figured out where I have gone wrong though. You see, I have this problem. I can’t stand playing a Rogue (or Rouge just to annoy Garen). I am not busting on those who like that class, I just am not one of them. The whole energy and combo points mechanic just did not click with me.

When I started up an alt of a different class I would read everything I could about them. Everything I read about Druids said “level as feral, cat form is your best friend once you get it”. I was following conventional wisdom about what was “the best” way to level and failing miserably.

I would hit 20 and get cat form. Then burn out quicky once I started playing using a Rogue mechanic.

After I realized this I decided on a bit of an experiment. I rolled yet another Druid, and this time I am leveling as Balance.

Now I just need someone who has done it to post about talent and gear choices for leveling that way.

It remains to be seen weather this one is yet another failure or will end up as a boomkin joining the team later this year.

Squeeeee!

Yes I’m a guy.

Yes I am allowed to squee.

Now that thats out of the way I figured I would stop in an let you nice folks know where the heck I am going to be hiding for the next few days. You see the FedEx driver just stopped in and dropped off shiny new computers for both myself and my lovely wife.

They are both Dell Insperion 1525’s, here are some of the specifics for those who are curious.

• 15.4 inch widescreen monitor
•  Intel core 2 duo processor  T6400 at 2Ghz with 2Gb of l2 cache.
• 4Gb of ddr2 sdram
• intel graphics media accelerator x3100
• Windows Vista (unfortunately)

For the rest of the day I will be busy scrubbing all the bloatware off the systems and getting the programs we actually want installed. With any luck I will be able to get back on Wow by tomorrow. Then I may actually have something more interesting to post about.

Flippin COLD

Ok, this has absolutely nothing to do with Warcraft.  I understand that, but it is flippin cold here.

I am talking -15 below outside right now, not including the wind chill. Schools are canceled due to the weather, churches are canceling services, some businesses even closed down for the day. I am sitting here trying to recall how I got talked into moving here from Florida. (still not quite sure how that happened)

Other than that, I am still waiting on the computer to get shipped here. I have a three day weekend coming up so with any luck it will show up sometime soon. It is kind of hard to blog about a game I can rarely play, I hope to pick the pace back up after I get my new system.

Apparently I lost my marbles

I have been sitting here thinking.

Ok, quit laughing, I was really thinking, not just watching the arms on the clock move ever so slowly towards quitting time.

As I was saying I was thinking. Thinking about all the raids I have been on, all the instances I have run. Oddly I ended up thinking about how some television shows have characters you could almost see finding in a random pug some day. Not the actors that play them, but the characters they portray.

For instance, just to look at Gilligan’s island I see a few things.

• The Professor would have Gnomish Engineering as his profession. The man could make a radio out of two coconuts and an empty soup can, yet half his inventions went horribly, yet hillaroiusly wrong. (hold up a second guys, I want to try something.)
• Gilligan would play a hunter, and play it badly. Things would just seem to go wrong around him, for no apparent reason. (Hey skipper I fell through a hole in the world, again!)
• The Skipper would be a bear tank and raid leader, you can almost see him shaking hit hat at his monitor as he herds the cats. (Dammit Gilligan, that’s a 50 dkp minus! blue square is ice trap not snake trap!)

Skip forward a few decades to the show House. Can you not see House playing a horribly sarcastic Priest? One that mocks you while he heals you? I certainly can. Hell, I can see him playing a warlock and loving it.

How about Lost? Can’t you just picture Hurley nuking things as a boomkin and loving every minute of it? Or Kate running a rogue? How about Locke as a death knight?

Perhaps I am just seeing things, but I think some of these folks would be fun (or at least entertaining) to run with.

Either that or I finally just lost my marbles watching the clock.

What to do, what to do….

For those who stopped by hoping for something at least remotely related to Wow, I’ll do my best with what I have.

My gaming machine died a horrible death last week. I have managed to get Wow to run on an old desktop, but it crawls so bad it is completely unplayable.  I am talking 2 fps in Dalaran.  I could probably log into a lower level character in a less populated area and do a bit of alt leveling.

Actually I may give that a shot. I need to level Herbalism on one of my hunters. I could level all the way to 400 without ever setting foot in Northrend if I took the time. I may also get a chance here and there to use my daughters laptop, possibly when she is at work. Either way it’s safe to say that my gaming will be pretty limited for a while.

My new system should arrive late next week and bring with it a whole new issue. I am going to have to rebuild everything from the ground up. All my addons, all my macros (and I use lots), all the things that make up my UI are going to need to be redone.

Oh, and I finally ended up getting Windows Vista forced down my throat. Nothing like having to learn how to do everything all over again. I also look forward to hours of sifting through the shiny new system nuking all the preinstalled bloatware that always comes with them. At least I have links to some sites that have good advice on cleaning up a new system.

Crap, now that I think about it I also lost all my bookmarks, shortcuts, hotlinks, saved documents, blog backup files, and *busy signal as brain shuts down*.

Well, as I said, I am going to be faced with rebuilding my UI. So here, in no particular order I am jotting down my list of “must have” addons. I would like to think of this as a post about my prospective UI. The reality is I am just putting this stuff here where I can find it easily.

Yes I know, just go to Curse or Wowinterface and search right?

I am planning ahead, by the time I scrub all the crapware off my system, get it configured to play nice with my network, and get Wow installed, my brain is going to be mush. I am not going to want to have to research anything. I will just want to load up and go.

Without further ado here is my list ‘o addons.

• Auctioneer
• Omen
• Deadly boss mods
• Cartographer
• Questhelper
• Doublewide
• Lightheaded
• Gatherer
• GathererDB
• X-pearl unit frames
• Edit: How did I forget Decursive?

Also after reading an interesting post on the Greedy Goblin I have decided to try out the addons he mentioned there.

• Possessions
• Whohas

That’s all I can come up with off the top of my head. I am sure there are others out there I am not thinking of right now.

Ps. if anyone knows of a good “how to build a UI” post let me know.

Blue Smoke

Todays post has been put on the back burner (way too literally, as you will come to find) while we have an interesting scientific discussion.

For todays lesson I will be discussing “The Blue Smoke Theory” and how it effects electronics. Particularly of interest will be it’s potential effects on computers and their peripherals when connected to the Internet. As an example, my laptop.

The theory is actually quite simple. You will read about “gates” and “processors” as well as “power supplies” and “ram” all being made possible by sophisticated little wires and switches that are so small you can only see them under a microscope. However, I was also taught to only believe what I can see. Last time I looked I did not have an electron microscope in the garage.

I do have a magnifying glass in my toolbox for reading small part numbers and burning holes in things, but it is unable to see these alleged “microcircuits”.

In reality all electronics are made possible by top secret “blue smoke” technology. It was  originally developed during the cold war in an effort to make missile guidance systems compact enough to fit on a rocket smaller than the empire state building. Since that time blue smoke has been carefully concealed within almost every electronic gizmo made.

The blue smoke is contained within specially designed devices, most commonly called “components”.  It is commonly believed that the shape of the component and number of connections it has is directly related to how much blue smoke is sealed inside. Careful observation of these components will show that they are all carefully sealed against smoke loss. In short, its the smoke contained inside that makes them work.

The theory is supported intense scientific research. These experiments are generally conducted by people trying to make the stereo go just a little bit louder or the computer go just a little bit faster. The results are pretty conclusive.

If you attempt to make something louder, faster, brighter, or in any other way “more uber” it is about 99 percent likely that you will get one of two results.

• The device in question accepts the change and runs better, enjoy your new uberness.
• The seals on the components fail under the load allowing the rare blue smoke to escape, throw it away it’s wrecked.

 

The problem with this technology is that the blue smoke will often escape even if you are not trying to make a 5 watt speaker rattle the windows in your house.  The escape can take place in one of two ways.

The first and by far the most common is leakage. Ever noticed how after a time your electronic devices work less efficiently? Cell phones start dropping calls and chewing through their battery life like I go through fried rice at the Chinese buffet. Computers will run slower and slower as time goes on, no matter how many spyware scans you run. Televisions will start to show fading colors. The remote needs to be thwacked with a stick just to change channels. These are all signs of a slow leakage of the blue smoke that makes them go.

Less frequent, but far more dramatic when it happens, is a complete seal failure. The seals on one or more components within your electronic doo-dad fail catastrophically, releasing large amounts of blue smoke into the surrounding area. This will often be accompanied by a sharp almost ozone like smell and the sounds of cursing coming from the devices user.

Such was the case yesterday when my laptop suffered multiple catastrophic seal failures at the same time.

 

Game play, research, and posting will be very limited for the next week or so. I should get back in the swing of things once Dell ponys up with the new laptop that I ironically ordered Tuesday.