Author Archives: Sam

The Avengers

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I interrupt your regularly scheduled warcraft posts for the most awesome, epic film – The Avengers. It was released on dvd yesterday in the UK. I’d ordered it from Amazon with guaranteed delivery for yesterday. I waited in all day for the postman and we didn’t get a delivery yesterday, not even of junk mail. It will probably be delivered today but I didn’t want to wait so I went to the store to buy it. Surprisingly it was on sale for a little less at the store than it had been online. However, predictably they’d sold out. I had a premonition that that would be the case when I walked in, I got to the dvd aisle and just laughed. I drove to the next store and bought it there, for more money but I finally had a copy! Nothing would stand in my way of watching it now. I’d seen it at the movies for my birthday and I’d been waiting for the dvd release ever since.

Did I watch it as soon as I got home? No because as I drove up we had a delivery of wood so I had to put that away in the wood shed. I then had to cook dinner as I was hungry, which is the best reason for cooking dinner. Then I checked my phone and saw that Theramore’s Fall had been released (a post about that later) so I logged on to run it with a couple of friends. It didn’t take long but then my friends wanted to run a dungeon. As I love playing with my friends, and the movie was still going to be there later, I agreed. One dungeon turned into two but a good time was had by all.

I then watched the movie.

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Breaking down my UI

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It might even be a year now since I decided that the standard ui just wasn’t cutting it for me. It’s been a while anyway and when 5.0.4 came out, and I had to reinstall my addons, I decided to roll out my custom ui to all my characters. When I’d set it up I’d done so on my main, my paladin, and hadn’t prepared to roll it out any further. So when I did try and put it on my priest, it messed a few things up with some differing placements, as it was pulling from the same variable sheet.

Anyway, I thought I’d post what my ui looks like, and what addons I use for it. That way if anyone is interested then it might help someone.

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Breaking the fourth wall

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I decided I needed to check up on my blogroll today so I went for a read through posts that I’d missed. Confessions of an Altoholic had one updated entry that I found really interesting. It talked a bit about impressions of 5.0.4 and then wondered about fourth specs for classes. In 5.0.4 druids got a fourth spec, they are the only class in the game with one. In practical terms they’ve always had one but bear and kitty shared the feral tree.

Now I’ve read blue posts on the forums, where people have suggested potential fourth specs for classes, that say that they aren’t interested in implementing them. I think one blue post, quite correctly, pointed out that it would be like introducing lots of new classes. It’s hard enough to balance one new class, let alone a lot of them. However, let’s play let’s pretend and think about what these fourth specs could be.

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Mog My Closet: The Willbreaker

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This was another attempt of mine to make a new prot set, for the start of level 90 at least. I actually like this one a lot and I’m collecting the pieces to put it together. I started with the sword and I worked the rest of the set up from that.

I hope someone out there likes it as much as I do. Oh and this is only for paladins as some of the pieces are class restricted.

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10 Day Blog Challenge

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Over at Blog Azeroth this was suggested as a good topic. I agree I think that it makes for an interesting post, that the questions reveal a little something about the player, or blogger in this instance. However, the questions don’t really lend themselves to a full post each in my mind, so I’m going to include them all on this one.

I’m still working up posts about those different things I mentioned I’d be writing about. In truth I thought I’d have a warrior post by now but part of me is rebelling playing it until Mists. I don’t know if that’s because when I see that avatar I hate it, as I’ve spent an expansion loathing my warrior. More likely though it’s because Mists drops in three weeks, so playing and getting gear now is completely irrelevant. I don’t like doing pointless things so I’ll be waiting three weeks. Anyway on to the questions.

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Lockouts and LFR

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There’s been a lot of talk lately about LFR and it’s place on the gearing ladder. Some progression raiders are unhappy that they feel forced to run LFR to remain competitive. The solution that they presented for this is for LFR to share a lockout with the regular raid. The blues have responded by trying to make LFR less attractive to run, without removing the possibility to run. LFR and lockouts are a contentious issue as everyone has their own opinion.

In addition to LFR problems lockouts have a problem of their own. It’s been a whole expansion now. since flexible lockouts were introduced. so I don’t hold out much hope of them fixing them. They are bugged or certainly don’t seem to work in the spirit that I thought they were intended.

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Second pair at 80

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My second pair, a warlock and a druid, are now at level 80. I got there faster than I thought I was going too. Patch 5.0.4 dropped on Wednesday and I was about 3/4 of the way through level 74 at the time. Anyway, I logged in on Friday morning intending to get it to perhaps level 76. I wanted to tank a dungeon on my paladin, but I hate pure pugging, so I was waiting till some guildmates come online. Anyway I started levelling and before I knew it I was level 76 and so I kept going and by lunchtime I was level 80.

Now I’ve not seen any announcement, or a datamined report, that the Wrath xp has been nerfed but it must have been. I know that the Cata xp was nerfed this patch so maybe they just extended that a little. Either way comparing the two isn’t very fair now. However, I didn’t have Have Group Will Travel which did mean more travelling time, on the other hand I had the benefit of aoe loot.

Anyway the /played time was 1 day and 5 hours. I did make a couple of adjustments to when I hit certain dungeons, and I added a few dungeons in. All told I felt it went a little easier this time round with the benefit of experience. There are certain bosses which killed my boosting characters every single time though.

I have all the enchanting mats up to 425 ready, and some cata mats. I need to work on getting more of those. I also have a lot of cloth left over. I have a fair bit of low level cloth already that I know is excess. Hopefully I’ll be able to make a little on this in Mists with the rerollers. Failing that hopefully I’ll be able to help my friends.

The only question now is now what? I can’t get on with other faction stuff, as I can’t faction change the second paladin until after Mists. Given that the xp nerf was applied in 5.0.4 I could level the warlock to 85. I’m pretty sick of Cata levelling so I might not, it depends what I feel like. I won’t be boosting any more pairs, though I have another seven weeks I think of RaF left. I’m ready for Mists basically. The achievement nut in me doesn’t like that none of my bars are fully green anymore, what’s worse is I can’t even go after all the new achievements yet to make them green. Oh how you torment me blizz. Hopefully the pre-expansion events will be more, than just one scenario in the last week before Mists, so I can get on with that in the month that’s left.

Happy Patch Day

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This post could just as easily have been entitled “Surviving the pandamonium” or “A taste of things to come”. The first referencing surviving the patch to start Mists of PANDAria (see it was a deliberate spelling mistake), the second because of all the blog topics I now have in mind.

I remember when the world changed for Cata. I was excited to see the changes and annoyed at the bugged exploring achievements (which were never fixed). However, the patch was just an exciting event and I wasn’t really affected by it. I just logged on and played like I always did. This time it was very different, and several hours later I’m still not at the stage I was when I logged off Tuesday night.

The talent system has changed, abilities have been changed/removed/added, glyphs are all different, rotations are different. I’ve not even got this set up right yet on my protection paladin, I haven’t even done my ret offspec yet. I have an alt of every class so some might not get set up until Mists at this rate.

I also run a fair few addons now. I decided to wipe the slate clean with Mists and deleted all the addons, and the wtf folder (after backing it up of course), to clean it up. I’d had a custom ui on my paladin and so I decided to rebuild that and then roll it out to all my characters. Addons, even updated ones, and patches don’t tend to mix so I’ve still not got this properly sorted on one character, let alone all of them.

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Mog My Closet: Runeblade of Baron Rivendare

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Anyone who’s run Stratholme, hundreds of times for the mount, will understand the joy you feel when you’re numbly looting and see an epic item. When you realise it’s not the mount, it takes that elation away, leaving you feeling worse than seeing yet another Helm of the Executioner. However, that does the Runeblade an injustice as it’s an awesome looking sword, much too awesome looking to sit in the bank.

Be warned though that if you try for the Runeblade you will drive yourself just as insane as trying for the mount.

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Bringing transmogrification to the account level

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In Mists of Pandaria mounts, pets, titles and achievements are going to the account level. What you have on one character you will have on all characters. There are some exceptions most notably a large amount of pvp associated items. However, for the most part these features are going account wide.

Transmog is a purely cosmetic feature which allows further customization of our characters. We have to choose what gear we wear because of stats and sometimes our personal tastes mean we hate the tier set. In the past we’d wear it as we had no choice, now we can wear it for the stats and transmog into something we do like the look of.

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