Redhawks Gaze

Site News: New Blog Address and Affiliation

2011-08-26T14:12:00.000-04:00

This is going to be a quick post about some changes coming to Redhawks Gaze. First off, I have a new site and web address. I have moved the blog to Wordpress. In addition, the new way to get to the new site is http://www.redhawks-gaze.com/. When you go there, you will see some familiar things and a couple of new things that will be happening in the future.

Second, in collaboration with my wife, we have started a group called the Grooms Blogging Group. What does this mean for the site? First off, it means you will be seeing me blog more often that I have recently. I will be returning to a once daily blogging. Second, you will start to see advertisements on the blog. I would encourage you to click on the links because the more business you give me, the more contest, prizes, etc. I can give to you. It is a tit for tat situation. Third, I would encourage you to go to the main website above to see all the new blogs as we introduce them and would encourage you to check them out. There are going to be blogs about entertainment, politics, etc.

The future is looking great at Redhawks Gaze and I hope everybody will come along for this next phase of the journey.

Trends in MMOs

2011-08-07T13:57:00.000-04:00

I have seen many different trends recently in MMOs. Some have greatly advanced games and some have set games back considerably. Here is a list of current trends with my opinions on them:

1) Rated BGs - While this seems like a great idea and leads to a more competitive enviroment, the fact of the matter is if teams are equal, it comes up to either luck or gear, neither of which are great ways to determine a rated BG winner. While arenas can be quickly changed by tactics, the tactics for rated BGs stay the same and it comes down to execution. If excecution is equal on both sides, it comes down to luck or gear. Opinion: Thumbs Down

2) Reputation Grinding - I know yesterday I complained about reputation grinding for Firelands. The fact of the matter though is that games need reputation grinding. It seperates those who are committed from those who play casually. The issue I have is the style of grinding. If you put your all in to it, between tabards, daily quest, etc., you should be able to hit the highest reputation with a faction relatively quickly, not 30 days. Opinion: Thumbs Up

3) Looking for Dungeon - Any MMORPG that does not come with this standard will fail in the current state of MMOs. This has been the biggest improvement in any game.  I remember trying to run BC and Wrath heroics with people. It was a pain in the ass. Even in Rift before they implemented the LFD, it was a pain in the ass. This is a requirement for any successful MMORPG in these days. Opinion: Thumbs Up

4) Add-Ons - If you are exclusively a WoW player, you may say that addons are a necessity to playing the game. If you are exclusively a Rift player, you may say screw addons, just give me a highly customizable UI and I will be happy. My opinion is that addons should not be a requirement. If your UI makes it almost impossible to play without addons, that is a problem and is something that should be addressed. Hell, free MMORPGs like Dungeons and Dragons Online have a more customizable UI then games you have to pay for. Opinion: Thumbs Down

5) Free to Play - A lot of games are going free to play (F2P). While I admire companies trying to increase their numbers, this is a false increase. Sure, a F2P MMORPG may have 15 million players, but how many are actively playing. Why do you think WoW implemented a F2P model up to level 20? They have lost subscribers and want people to boost their numbers. Going F2P is ok, but you have to do it for the right reason. Unfortunately, a lot of companies are doing it for the wrong reasons. Opinion: Thumbs Down

6) In Game Money for Items Shops - Along with the F2P model is the implementation of spending real money for in game items. You have two extremes for this. One one hand, you have Blizzard selling pets and mounts in game. On the other, you have Runes of Magic that allows you to buy nice gear, etc. for real money. While I'm ok with paying money for pets and mounts, if any MMORPG goes to buying an advantage in a game however, that is where I draw the line. Opinion: Thumbs Down

7) Real Money Auction Houses - While not technically an MMORPG, Diablo 3 has announced a real money auction house to buy other players equipment. While I like this idea better than the in game item shops, it falls along the same path. People with more money will buy an advantage. If Diablo 3 is successful with this, don't be surprised to see this in other MMORPGs. The one thing I do like about this is that it benefits players selling as well as players buying. Opinion: We will see after Diablo 3.

8) Guild Leveling/Challanges/Quest - This is probably the biggest change in the past year of MMORPGs and I love it. This encourages guilds to run dungeons, raids, rifts, etc. together to get benefits. It adds a whole new dimension to guilds that is incredible and makes it where you almost have to play with a guild. And if you want to get anywhere in an MMORPG, you should be in a guild.  Opinion: Thumbs Up

9) Quest at the Start of the Dungeon - Yes, the good old days before LFD, you had to go through an entire quest chain just to get the quest that will take you into a dungeon. Not anymore. Usually, the quest you need for a dungeon are right inside the dungeon to begin with. Especially while leveling, this makes it so much better to get good gear and gives a great incentive to stay queued in the LFD while leveling. Opinion: Thumbs Up

10) World Events - It is so unfortunate that some games only have world events right before an expansion because world events are insanely fun. They are a different type of daily quest that provide greater benefit and you actually feel like you are part of the world itself for once. Opinion: Thumbs Up

Goodbye WoW, Hello Rift (a.k.a. The State of WoW)

2011-08-06T09:17:00.000-04:00

Yes, you have read the title correctly, I'm saying goodbye to WoW and my druid. I have canceled my account which runs out of time in November and I haven't decided what to do with it yet. (Honestly, I'm thinking of MMOBaying it and getting some money for it.)

So you may be asking yourself? Redhawks, why? Why is a beloved moonkin blogger quitting WoW altogether? Now, first don't get me wrong. I'm not going to say WoW sucks. I have devoted almost 3 years of my life to this game and it will be around for a very long time, maybe even longer than Rift or other MMORPGs. However, there are major reasons why I'm quitting WoW.

1) Money - It is amazing that $77 for every 6 months is still the price for WoW. I know that people will pay it and the market drives price, but that is insane. It comes up to more than $10/month. As many people know, I was recently married and while I didn't think a thing about cost in the past, now I'm supporting another person and cost becomes a major factor. Also, I realize they made WoW free up to level 20. And while twinking out a level 19 rogue and ganking people in BGs sounds fun, I would much rather do something else. Rift's current price is less than $10 per month if you pay for a year subscription, which I would gladly pay up front to be able to save the money in the long term.

2) Staleness - I know people still find WoW content exciting and I still like some parts of it. However, even raiding a little bit recently made me realize that the content has been used over and over again. Same mechanics, same ideas, same fights. And while Rift is guilty of this too, there seems to be a freshness with it that I can't explain, but you just feel. You can run expert 5 mans, group together with random people to do a daily raid rift, run raids, run PvP, run crafting rifts, do the world event, do zone events, or do dailies. They have even just implemented on the weekends where they change a PvP map to another game and it was exciting. In addition, you got massive amounts of favor for it. Also, look at content updates. Since Cataclysm released in December 2010, there has only been one new raid tier opened up in that. Since March 2011, Rift has released 4 major patches, 3 raid tiers, Cross-Shard LFD and PvP. And they are going back and putting in a starter raid between expert dungeons and Greenscale's Blight in patch 1.5.

3) Grinding - This is more of just a personal argument, but I remember the 30+ day grind to get the Crusader title in patch 3.2 and I have no desire to do that again anytime soon. I'm looking at you Fireland dailies. It is absolutely insane that you have to grind out 30 days to get the vendors to get the new equipment, etc.

In addition, doing ICC for almost an entire year killed my desire to go back. There is only so much of one raid you can do. We did the normal raid. We came back and did the heroic versions of the raid. We came back a third time and did the achievements for Glory of the Icecrown Raider. Week after week after week of the same raids over and over again. And unfortunately, what people are going to find in Firelands is that it is going to be 10 times worse because there are only seven bosses. With the exception of the Argent Tourney raid, which in my opinion is Blizzard's biggest blunder to date, all the other raid tiers had at least 10 bosses. And people tired of Argent Tourney too and I feel a lot of people are gonna do that same with Firelands.

However, I'm not just talking about PvE grinding. I'm talking about PvP grinding too. Grinding for the latest season of gear. And while there seems to be a variety of rated PvP games, the fact of the matter is it comes down to basically two. Capture the Node/Flag or Capture the Relic. (And that's assuming they put Strands back in the rotation, which I doubt.)

Rift has dailies and factions to grind. Rift has Prestige to grind in PvP. However, the benefits seem to come at a faster pace than what they come in WoW. Sure, you have to buy the PvP set with favor, but after that, you upgrade them for Prestige without having to spend a single point of Favor. Then they have added PvP Rifts which encourage world PvP, something that has arguably been dead in WoW since Burning Crusade. In addition, they offer alternatives. If you haven't had time to grind out the head enchant, that's okay because there is a rune that you can use in the meantime that is not as good, but still will give you benefit.

4) Desire - This is maybe just a personal thing, but I have little to no desire to sign on to WoW. Nothing in particular wrong with it, but if I get on, I may check my auctions and if I have time, maybe run an expert ZA/ZG as a tank. But beyond that, I have no desire to do anything else in game. The raids aren't PUGable. PvP is not great unless you are in a pre-made. It is almost like a feeling of completeness. I defeated the final boss of Wrath and most of the hardmodes in ICC before Cataclysm and I feel accomplished. On the other hand, in Rift, if I find nothing to do, I'm not looking hard enough. There are people always looking to run raid rifts, expert rifts, expert dungeons, PvP, etc. It at times seems almost like too much to do in the game and I enjoy that.

5) Excitement - This week, Blizzard got the copyright on the name Mist of Pandaria, which means more than likely, that is the name of the next expansion for WoW. I'm not looking forward to grinding out more levels, fighting with people for quest items, etc. in order to grind my way to level 90 or 95, whichever they choose. However, I also realize that in the year and a half it takes that expansion to come out, I will probably have a bunch more raids and more content in Rift likely before even the first expansion comes out. And we know from prior history that in WoW, there are only two more raid tiers this expansion before the next expansion. Two raid tiers in a year and a half doesn't cut it anymore in my book.

So these are my main reasons to quit WoW. It still is a great game but it doesn't have the allure that it once held. Will I come back one day? I don't know honestly. Even if Rift does end up failing, which I doubt at this point since it has been the most successful launch since World of Warcraft for an MMO, I don't know if I can bring myself back to WoW.

To all my WoW friends, thank you. It was a pleasure raiding with you, PvPing with you, and just hanging out with you in general. And don't worry, I'm gonna still be blogging, although it will be heavy Rift focused.

Best Warrior Leveling Souls in Rift (In My Opinion)

2011-06-12T16:25:00.001-04:00

I'm sure many players in Rift are still leveling as quickly as possible. I have my warrior at level 47 on the brink of 48. (Two bars away). Having leveled through, I have played around with the souls a lot. While I'm certain that this will change a little when we get start raiding, (FYI Conquest of Emberlord is recruiting all classes and roles for raids, rifts, and warfronts.) I think I have found the best souls for leveling if doing PvE with a little PvP on the side. Again, this is just my personal experience and may just be my observation more than anything.

When leveling, I think of a few requirements. First, the soul should be able to put out as high of DPS as possible. Second, they should have some mechanic to help if you pull multiple mobs. Third, they should be able to have a mechanic to decrease downtime. Finally, it should be able to be used in instances or warfronts.

Looking at these requirements, some souls would be out. Clearly, anything that is focused on tanking would not in and of itself be a good solo leveling soul. Those tend to focus on threat and mitigation but does very little for high DPS output. And while Paladin does have a self heal, there are no real good mechanics to decrease downtime. However, I would recommend one of your specs to be a defensive spec, especially when fighting elite mobs. (Also, I should add in that Hazeed in Shimmersand is a bastard and should burn in hell for all eternity.)

So now, we turn our attention to the offensive souls. Champion, who is probably the heaviest of damage but also the most vulnerable of the offensive souls; Paragon, who uses duel weapons and has ranged abilities; Riftblade, who has elemental buffs and more crowd control than the other offensive souls; and Beastmaster, which is the only offensive soul to have a companion and self heals in combat. So with these four choices for offensive roles, which would be the best ones for leveling.

In my personal opinion, Beastmaster is an absolute requirement for leveling. It gives you a companion who could potentially tank if you pull multiple mobs. It also gives you two different self heals, one that can be cast on cooldown and a bigger heal that cost attack points but heals for 150% of weapon damage. In addition, it offers 3 different buffs for while you are leveling and you can switch your pet to tank or damage.

This leaves room for the two other souls in your leveling spec. The second choice should be really based on your playstyle. You could make an argument for Paragon; however, I think the Champion soul is the best second choice. One, it puts up huge damage with two handed weapons. Second, it has an attack power ability that is a "kill" ability, Deathblow. In other words, when you get an enemy to 30%, you have a way to finish them quickly. The quicker you kill an enemy, the less time you have to recover. Add in the fact that you get heals from Beastmaster and you are talking very little down time. Plus, you get higher damage the faster you move with Bloodlust.

Since I don't see much of a point in taking the other high damage tree, Paragon, since you are going to be focusing on two handed weapons, this means the final soul is kind of chosen for us. Even if you go deep into Beastmaster and Champion, you can still get the Flaming Spears in Riftblade and have a decent ranged attack.

In order of preference, while leveling, I would get Beastmaster to 31 points to pick up the bigger heal that requires attack points. From there, I would get Champion up to 31 points. Then go to Riftblade to get the Flaming Spheres. This should be enough points to get to level 50 which at that point, you would go for more mitigation or damage based on your role in raids.

The Single Meanest, Cruelest Technique to Use on the Auction House

2011-06-11T17:42:00.000-04:00

Itty Bitty Poker Kitty

I have seen a lot of crazy stuff at the AH. I have seen massive undercutting. I have seen people trying to drive markets down. I have even seen people for insanely high prices. However, I would like to think that I have come up with the single cruelist technique to use on the AH. This technique actually punishes people for not using addons like Auctioneer. It also punishes people who use the remote AH. But the biggest people it screws over is people who don't pay attention.

Let me set up the scenario I like to use. Let's say that Fortune Cookies are the following on the AH:

Seller 1: Fortune Cookies X 20 for 400 g (5 stacks)

Seller 2: Fortune Cookies X 20 for 399 g, 99 s, 99c (3 stacks)

Seller 3: Fortune Cookies X 20 for 390 g (10 stacks)

Now, most normal people playing the AH would set up a stack of 20 Fortune Cookies for 389 g, 99 s, 99 c. If you sell it, you would be getting approximately 19 gold per 1 Fortune Cookie. Not bad in any market. But how can you improve it. You can't post it for higher without buying the other 18 stacks which let's be honest gets expensive. Plus, you know more than likely all the sellers will come back and undercut you.

This is where the single meanest, cruelest AH technique comes into play. What if you were to sell only 5 Fortune Cookies for 389 g, 99 s, 99 c? You just increased the price for one Fortune Cookie up to approximately 77 gold per 1 Fortune Cookie.

But the biggest advantage is how you played your hand. If this was a game of poker, this would be equivalent to a bluff. Someone who uses Auctioneer would see that your price to market price percentage is too high and would not buy it. However, someone who doesn't have addons, like weekend players, or someone who is using the remote AH may buy it thinking they are getting a stack of 20 since your price lines up with the other stacks of 20. When they buy it, they will realize they were bluffed out of 15 Fortune Cookies and you are walking away with the money.

And in this case, the best thing in the world could somebody come in and undercut you. If you are posting stacks of heavy savage leather or bolts of embersilk cloth, you will be surrounded by both higher and lower by people posting stacks of 20, which means they are even more likely to click yours thinking it is a stack of 20.

Is this applicable to other MMOs? Well, the Rift AH is kind of messed up right now. However, as more people are getting to level 50 and having established characters, this technique would probably work even better since they don't have addons yet. When they get addons, it would only be punishing people who don't use the addons.

So, I would encourage you to try. It feels a little dirty and a little underhanded, but it is a technique that can make your profit margin higher. Much higher. And if you feel really bad about it, think of it as playing poker and you just pulled off a really great bluff.

Redhawks Gaze Season 2 - Electric Bugaloo

2011-06-10T17:55:00.000-04:00

Redhawks Gaze 2: Electric Bugaloo

Ok, yes. It has been a long while. I haven't forgotten about all of you. I hope you didn't forget about me. So you are probably wondering where the hell I have been all of this time. Well, I have had a lot of exciting life changes going on right now.

First, I got married. I have been engaged since December 2010 where I got engaged in Charleston, SC during a snow storm. (Thinking geographically, you should see how unique that really is.) We originally were going to get married in late 2011 or early 2012. My second big life event changed that completely. We found out in May that we are expecting. This made it where we had to push up the wedding a little so that we can accomodate the new baby on the way. Plus, she needed healthcare to be able to take care of the baby. We are going to have an actual wedding for all our friends and family in July, but we had to go ahead and get married.

So, the big question you are probably wondering is what is going to happen to Redhawks Gaze. First off, I am going to keep blogging. Will it be as frequent as it once was? No. Will it still be as informative as it once was? Yes. Will is just be WoW? No.

Since all of this started happening, I have also formed my own Rift guild on Emberlord-US called (no surprise on the name) Conquest. You can find the site here. (We are recruiting for all classes, callings, etc. for PvE and PvP.) Also since I am having a lot of these life changes, I actually have a co-GM by the name of Lilstick. Do I know what the future holds? No. Will I be MMOing forever? Probably not.

So this brings me to part 2 of this blog post. How will this site change? First off, I realized that updating two seperate blogs is next to impossible and I'm not going to even try to. So, as of this post, Redhawks Ascension will be deleted. This also means that Redhawks Gaze will now cover both WoW and Rift. I will make it clear as to which is being covered in the title. In addition, you will probably see some general gaming post as well to add a little spreading out, especially if it is news related to MMOs.

So, as I mentioned in the title, welcome to Season 2 of Redhawks Gaze. Hopefully, you will enjoy the new content you will be seeing coming up.

Most Annoying Thing About 4.1

2011-04-28T14:59:00.000-04:00

I have liked most of what has come out in 4.1. While I wasn't wild about Call to Arms, I have noticed a much shorter LFD queue time when going as moonkin. ZA is fun albeit pretty difficult. (I haven't had a chance to run ZG yet.) I like being able to do 7 LFD at one time and get all your Valor points for the week. I haven't run AB yet for rated BGs, but I'm looking forward to it. I even liked the fact that they reduced the number of Conquest points you get per rated BG win so you have to win more at higher ratings.

However, there is one thing that is driving me nuts with 4.1. Especially considering that I pay extra for it and it is working like crap. I'm of course talking about the Android WoW Remote App. I'm glad that we finally have an armory and guild chat, but something about this thing broke the remote AH on Android. I can't collect my gold from sales. I can't put stuff up to auction, especially things where being on market quickly matters. It is driving me insane.

Yes, I know that I can log in game and do all those functions. However, I am paying $3 more per month for this functionality and I feel like I'm being cheated here. Now, I could run off to the forums and complain like everybody else, but I don't think that will help. I also don't know if other people are having similar problems to me, so I'm sure somebody is going to say something.

Am I going to demand money back? Probably not. I still have guild chat functionality, which is great, although I haven't seen anybody talking in guild chat yet. I also have some armory functionality. Plus, I use it so much, I used probably $8 worth of AH dealing for $3.

So, remote AH users, has anybody else been noticing issues or is this something that is just happening to me?

How to Screw Pure DPS and Guilds in a Single Move

2011-04-07T11:54:00.000-04:00

Blizzard announced something that truly made me ask, what the hell are you thinking? In case you haven't heard, 4.1 is presenting a new system that will offer bonuses if you queue for a small represented role (read: tanks).

Now, this sounds great on the surface. Bonuses for tanks and healers and shorter queue times for DPS. However, while they get shorter queue times, the pure DPS classes get screwed over. Let me make this very clear. If you are a pure DPS class (hunters, warlocks, mages, rogues), you will never have a chance at these rewards. NEVER. There will never be a day when there is an overflowing of tanks and healers enough to make it where you will get the Call to Arms. Now, yes, you do get faster queue times which should mean more instance runs in, however, that will only help you for the first 7 dungeons of the week. After that, there is no pont for DPS.

The other group that gets screwed in this is guilds. A lot of guilds are approaching the level 23 rank right now. As I mentioned on Monday, the quickest way to level up a guild is guild heroics. This new system completely takes away the incentive to run guild heroics. Thankfully, the perks are still there, but after you hit 25, what is left? Nothing. If I'm not getting guild incentives, what is the point of going with a guild group, especially considering that I have to solo queue for a chance for a mount or gems or anything else.

Hybrid classes are loving the changes. As a resto/balance druid who has a good set of tank gear in his bank, I'm loving this new system. When 4.2 hits and all the old gear becomes Justice Points gear, you bet I'm gonna try to catch up on gear if I'm needed in emergency for a raid. And I have chances for extra gold or a rare mount in the process? Yes, please.

So, is it possible to fix this? In my opinion, yes. One, it should change every four hours and just make it random, not based on what is needed. That way, at least the pure DPS have a chance to get the rewards. Second, if a guild, not just a group, are queued for the random role for the next 4 hours, the people filling that role still have a chance to get the goods. Yes, this means that 1 of only 5 people may get the chance for a mount, but that person is not sacrificing the chance at least to run with the guild.

Let the Race Begin

2011-04-04T12:45:00.000-04:00

It is expected that my guild, Conquest (Who is recruiting for both the PvE and PvP sections. I mean we are really recruing for PvP. See sidebar for link to guild.), will reach guild level 23 by today. (Latest will be tomorrow) This means that the race will start for the first level 25 guild on Ner'zhul since I'm expecting other larger guilds to hit the cap at the same time we do and I don't think anybody has hit server first level 25 guild. So how do you win the race to level 25? I have a few ideas.

1) Run Heroics - Probably the fastest way is to have people in the guild form up and run chain heroics. You get guild XP for every boss kill plus extra XP for every dungeon completed. This will be the likely quickest way and easiest way to get guild XP.

2) Level Alts - This will be the second easiest way. You get guild XP with every quest you turn in. While the amount is less than if you were running guild chain heroics, it still is a hefty addition to the guild XP.

3) Random Guild BGs (Not Rated) - Ideally, doing rated BGs with a very good team, would bring in a great amount of guild XP. Unfortunately, when you can have rated BGs that last a full 25 minutes between two good teams, it may not be the quickest. What would be quicker is to form 2 5 man groups and queue for WSG, Twin Peaks, or Battle of Gilneas. A guild group against random PUGs should roll them pretty easily. Not as good of guild XP as the first two, but not bad.

4) Raids - Break the 25 man raiding group into 2-3 10 man groups and clear out all the farm content with no hardmodes. That will likely bring in a good deal of guild XP if you can get people who don't normally raid in your guild into the third 10 man group to complete it or alts.

5) Loremaster Anyone? - If you could have a couple people devoted to going and getting all the quest on their max level alts done, all that guild XP would be coming in. It is better if it is an alt so that you are leveling them too, but if you don't have anyone leveling, you could easily send your 85s out to try and get Loremaster after guild level 23. However, those 85s would be better suited to be running heroics.

I'm sure there are bunches of other ways to get guild XP. I have tried to help my guild this weekend by finally leveling my mage to level 85. The fact of the matter is a lot of guilds on your server are probably hitting level 23 right now, which means the race starts soon.

And Now, The End is Near. I Face The Final Curtain.

2011-04-01T08:30:00.001-04:00

This post is going on both Redhawks Gaze and Redhawks Ascension.

It is with a heavy heart that I'm reporting that I'm stepping away from blogging. Main reason that I'm stepping away is that I don't have time to play WoW or Rift anymore.

My career has taken me in a very different direction than I ever thought. I know I was a player, but I never thought that Jay-Z would actually listen to my rap single. He e-mailed me and told me that I spit hot fire and he wants me to make an album. I'm gonna be recording a new album with his studio, Rock-a-Fella Records. He has even lined up duos with Beyonce and Rhianna. I'm super excited to be moving into this new area of my life. I also have talk show apparences for Conan, The Colbert Report, and co-hosting with Kelly Ripa on Live after Regis leaves.

I want to give out many thanks. First, I want to say thank you to Conquest for encouraging me to start this blog in the first place. While I was hoping to achieve the same success as Matticus from World of Matticus, you just can't let go of the rap game. Also, I want to thank Qieth not for his blogging skills, but helping me with my new rap name, Quick Qieth Quipper. As the first person to respond on my blog, I'm glad to honor you in this way. Also, to Lufitoom and Tralina, you are welcome backstage at my rap shows anytime.

In addition, I want to thank all the people from Rift who have come on to support my new blog. While I'm a little upset that I'm not gonna hit the level cap for a while until I become bigger than Jesus, be assured that anybody who stands in the way will be hitting a very different cap, most likely in the ass.

Finally, I want to thank Charlie Sheen for teaching me the philosophy of winning. I have tasted the Tigerblood and now I'm succeeding in the rap game. I hope to be doing some Charlie Sheen with you soon.

So, with a heavy heart, I thank everybody for their support. Also, pick up my new joint on Rock-a-Fella Records, Q Cubed, coming in July 2011. Don't hate the player. Hate the game. (Which if you believe this, you just lost it.)

How to Nerd Rage While Winning Friends and Influencing PvPers

2011-03-31T10:45:00.000-04:00

Last night, I did something that I don't usually do in WoW. I went on a major nerd rage during our rated PvP group. I was leading the offense and was calling targets and telling people to CC stuff and things were not going down. I saw targets that were not the kill target going down first. I even had somebody say they were CCing the kill target literally 2 seconds after I said that person was the kill target. In addition, someone who was not a BG leader was trying to change our strat in a Warsong Gulch, which I won't give away what our strat is.

Sometimes nerd raging is helpful. Sometimes, it is not. I'm sure we have all heard the audio with a raid leader just berating everybody in a level 60 Onyxia raid which has the famous phrase "More DoTs". Just berating the whole raid usually does not get the results you are looking for. That usually brings down the morale of the group. A better technique would be to rage against one or two people who are not doing their jobs correctly. That way, you may change the behavior of those one to two people instead of bringing down the entire group.

Also, the language of how you say it is important. I'm not saying don't curse. I said "fuck" at least once last night during my nerd rage. However, endless cursing without content is useless. If you are just cursing endlessly and not providing any help to people, you are just endlessly cursing for no reason and people don't know why, which tends to piss people off more than help them.

Also, nerd raging is for during matches only. After matches are for constructive criticism. Don't continue raging after matches. People accept nerd raging during a match because of the time constaint of the match. People don't want to berated after the match. After the matchs where I did nerd rage, I brought up issues that occurred during the match in a critical way, but not in a rageful way. In high pressure situations, nerd raging is usually accepted. However, nerd raging should not occur after a match. After a match is a time to calm down and look at the situation as a whole. Sometimes, you may even find that your nerd rage was over the line after calming down a little.

Final thing that is needed to properly nerd rage is balance. It is okay to point out faults during nerd rages. In real life, I work with a boss who routinely picks out faults, sometimes even faults that are not there at all. However, something my boss doesn't do is make compliments when good stuff occurs. If your team is doing a good job, tell them they are doing a great job. Nobody likes constant nerd raging at them without any compliments on what they are doing right. If you return a flag that is very difficult, compliment your part of the team. If you have balance, your team will accept your nerd rages knowing that they will get complimented when they do stuff properly.

Site News: New Blogs, Drunken Podcasts, and New Update Schedule

2011-03-30T14:20:00.000-04:00

I have not done a general site update in quite some time, so I decided it was time to give an update as to what is going on with the site.

First off, I want to say the biggest thanks to everybody who comes to the site. In 2011, we have already had over 10,000 visits in the first three months of this year, something that almost took the entire 2010 to achieve, so thank you very much for your continued support. I know blog posts have been a little slower coming around than usual, down from the every day schedule I was keeping, but I am glad you still come regularly.

Second, I want to announce that I was on the Leet Sauced podcast for episode 20, Redhawks Strikes Back. I really would encourage you to check them out, not just my episode, but all 20 of them so far. These guys are quickly becoming some of the most popular people in the WoW community and I'm glad to call them friends and guildmates of mine. Pick it up and I gurantee you will laugh your ass off and learn something too.

Third, during the podcast, you will hear me mention my new Rift blog, Redhawks Ascension. I know a lot of WoW players are very interested in Rift as well. If you are interested in even learning a little bit about Rift from someone who has played WoW, you will enjoy this blog.

With a new blog, it also has brought into attention my updating schedule. As I mentioned earlier, I have been trying to update this blog every single day and Redhawks Ascension when I have something to say. However, to consolidate my time in a little more orderly fashion and to provide enough content for two blogs, this blog will be updated twice a week on Monday and Thursday. Redhawks Ascension will be updated on Tuesday and Friday. This will also give me a little break during the week. Of course, if big news breaks (patches, major WoW news, etc.), this will get thrown out immediately and I will update whichever one it is more pertinent to update during that time.

So again, I want to say, thank you very much, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site and keep coming.

How to Fix Feral Druids in Rated BGs

2011-03-24T16:02:00.001-04:00

I know a lot of the PvP feral druids have complained about their state in Rated BGs. In 4.0.6, they lost the ability to shapeshift out of snares. In 4.1, they are nerfing Lifebloom, one of the few healing spells that feral druids can use that was somewhat helpful. They used to be the ideal flag carriers due to the fact that they had travel form, which could help them move across the map quicker, and bear form, to help mitigate damage by increasing their stamina and armor. However, they have been religated to about 4th line, behind protection warriors, protection paladins, and blood death knights.

So looking at, there could be some ways to save the Feral Druid in rated BGs. Here are a few non-game breaking things that could be done to fix it. I'm not suggesting do all of these, because that would break the game. I'm saying maybe do one or two of them.

1) Make Shapeshift Useful Again - This used to be their biggest advantage. Even as a moonkin, I routinely practice changing in and out of moonkin form to break snares. (Mainly because I still can.) Giving them this back would give the advantage needed for them to become competent flag carriers again.

2) Kitty Heroic Leap - While a giant bear jumping the distance that a warrior can is absolutely ridiculous, the idea that a cat could do it is much less so. Feral kitties already get Feral Charge, which is basically a jump behind an opponent, just use the same animation for heroic kitty leap.

3) Fear - This is likely not gonna happen, but couldn't a bear have a roar that scares everybody off of him for a few seconds. I don't think it is completely unreasonable to have. Call it Terrifying Roar and make all enemies fear for 8 seconds.

4) Nerf Lifebloom Only For Casters - In other words, the game can already recognize if you have spellpower gear on and what your spellpower is. Make it that if your total spellpower is above 6500, your Lifebloom is nerfed appropriately. Again, very unlikely to happen, but would give some benefit.

5) Make Barkskin Protect From CC. - Barskin is the ability that decreases the amount of damage you take. Why not have the added benefit to have it free you out of snares, traps, etc. for its 8 second duration? Paladins have Hand of Freedom, which removes movement impairing effects. It would act very similarly to that but would also have the damage mitigation. Either that, or make it a glyph that would decrease the amount of mitigation, but give you the CC protection. Heck, if they make it a glyph, I would consider getting it for my moonkin/resto.

I'm sure there are other ways to get bears back up to the flag carrying positions they have held prior to 4.0.6. I'm also sure that Blizzard is working on a way to balance it out so that all the tank classes can be reasonable flag carriers in rated BGs. Hopefully, sooner rather than later.

Money for Virtual Goods - Intrinsic Value versus Personal Value

2011-03-22T13:14:00.000-04:00

This past weekend, my fiance and myself were discussing things that we do in games that cost money. We both play Smurfs Village on the iPad, which is a cross between a party game and Farmville with adorable Smurfs as the workers. We both have probably spent around $25 buying Smurfberries in the game to help us along. The game doesn't require it, but it makes it easier to play. With some of the players in game, that is probably nothing. I'm sure some people have put hundreds of dollars into their Smurf village.

During the course of this discussion, we came up to the fact that it is kind of weird to pay for things which have no intrensic value. I brought up that in the course of playing World of Warcraft, which she does not play, I have bought two virtual pets for myself, a mount, and pay monthly to watch an AH that doesn't really exist. That is outside of the normal fee just to play the game. However, these items have personal value for me. I still use my sparkle pony in my rotation of mounts since I use Gogo Mount to randomly pick a mount. I also still pull out my little moonkin and my pandaren monk every so often. And of course, I use my remote AH all the time. Add in all the time getting gear that just helps me play the game better, and I have probably spent as much as people who put hundreds of dollars into Smurf Village.

The reason I bring this up is we have the newest mount that can be bought in game soon, the Winged Lion. A lot of people are going to complain again that they are having to spend money to get a mount. To those people, I say that it may not hold any intrinsic value to you, but to some, it may hold a personal value. If they want to spend their money on a flying lion, it is their money and not of importance to you. You both have different values. In addition, some people may not get achievements like "Glory of the Cataclysm Raider" where they can get mounts and this is their way to get something new. Basically, whether or not you pay for a mount, it is your decision. You must determine the value for you, not for everybody else.

Will I be getting a winged lion? It depends. I will be honest, from the datamined pictures on MMO - Champion, he kind of looks ugly, so I'm thinking no. However, new pictures may come out where it looks incredible and I may change my mind. But the value for me is how cool the mount looks? The Sparkle Pony looked awesome, almost like something out of Ulduar. Unfortunately, I can't say the same thing for the winged lion. Maybe seeing it in action will change my mind about this one.

The point is to all the people QQing about another mount, just let go of it. It is not your money, it is not required, and it does not give an unfair advantage to someone. It is a mount. And if you do buy one when they come out and are on the Ner'zhul server, fly around the dwarven district in Stormwind so I can take a look at it. You may sway my decision.

Vivid Dream Emerald - Useful for Moonkins?

2011-03-18T13:50:00.000-04:00

When patch 4.0.6 came out, there was one new green gem added to the game that is centered around PvP, the Vivid Dream Emerald. The Vivid Dream Emerald provides + 20 resilience and + 20 spell penetration. In PvE, our blue gemmed slots will be gemmed with the Purified Demonseye, which is +20 Intellect and + 20 Spirit. So the major question, would this gem be more useful than Purified Demonseye for PvP. The answer is possibly depending on your situation. I'm gonna break this into two different categories: moonkins with offspec other than restoration and moonkins with a resto offspec.

In addition, if you are going for spell penetration cap, the cap is 228. There is an enchant that will get you 70 spell penetration for your cloak. There is also a PvP cloak, Vicious Gladiator's Drape of Diffusion that has 201 spell penetration. It makes it look like you could hit the cap with just these two items, but you don't want to sacrifice hit for spell penetration, which depending on your gear, you might be doing.

Moonkins with Other Offspec - Looking at the moonkin's vicious 5 pieces for PvP, this is the slot breakdown.

1 Meta Socket - Meta Gem of Your Choice (See prior blogs for my PvP choice)

3 Red Sockets - Use Brilliant Inferno Ruby

2 Blue Sockets - Usually Purified Demonseyes

2 Yellow Sockets - Usually Reckless Ember Topazs

If using PvE gemming strategy, you would end up with + 200 Intellect, + 40 Spirit, + 40 Haste. If you take out all the blue and yellow sockets and replace them with Vivid Dream Emerald, you give up 40 Spirit and 40 Haste for + 80 Spell Penetration. Even with the enchant on a cloak, you still wouldn't hit the spell penetration cap. To hit the cap, you would also have gem with the Vivid Dream Emerald in your pristmatic slot in your relic, in your belt buckle slot, and in 2 red sockets, which means now you are giving up 80 intellect (assuming you would have used Brilliant Inferno Rubies for all those slots) as well to hit the spell penetration cap.

All this math comes down to a single fact. If you are just building a moonkin PvP set, you will need to get the Vicious Gladiator's Cloak of Diffusion. Once you do that, you won't need to gem with the Vivid anyway. If you need the Vicious Gladiator's Cloak of Meditation for being hit capped (since it has Spirit on it), you will need to gem with the Vivid Dream Emerald to hit the spell penetration cap, but be prepared to give up a lot of helpful DPS stats to get it.

Moonkins with Resto Offspec - First thing that is necessary is knowing spell penetration does nothing for heals at all. It has no benefit. A few blog post ago, I mentioned that you can switch out 2 of our moonkin 5 piece to get the resilience bonus for your restoration spec and pick up more spirit. The two pieces in particular were the shoulders and the chest. The two blue gem sockets and one of the yellow gem sockets are still around. So now, you have 60 spell penetration in a restoraton set that doesn't matter about it.

If you are a moonkin with a restoration offspec, you should never gem spell penetration in your gear, which means you can forget about the Vivid Dream Emerald. You can save up your Conquest points and get the Vicious Gladiator's Cloak of Diffusion to use just for moonkin alone and get the spell penetration enchant. But have it as a seperate equipment set, not as a part of the shared set.

So all in all, the biggest advice I could give is go for the Vicious Gladiator's Cloak of Diffusion and forget about using Vivid Dream Emeralds entirely. However, remember, don't sacrifice hit for spell penetration. It is useful, but not more useful than hit.

How to Get a Rated BG Group from Trade Chat

2011-03-10T11:27:00.000-05:00

Last night, I did something that I thought was a little bold on my part. I tried building a PUG rated BG group. I mostly did it just for fun to see how it would go. Here is the thought process behind building a rated BG comp from PUGs that I developed during the night.

1) Lay Down the Requirements - I had a lot of people message me when I posted I was looking for more for rated BGs saying they had 1k to 2k resielience. The fact of the matter is most people I have run into in rated BGs have at least the Bloodthirsty Gladiator set and quite a few have the full Vicious Gladiator set for their class/spec. If you are coming in with less than 3k resilience, you are gonna get smacked around a bit. I made it crystal clear that everybody had to have at least 3k resilience. The other requirement I had was that everybody needed to download Mumble for communication sakes. Believe or not, some people have problems downloading Mumble. I had people refuse to come to a pretty good rated BG group because they didn't want to download Mumble.

2) Setting Up an Ideal Composition - Knowing that 2 of the current 3 rated BGs involved capture the flag, I built the PUG rated BG group around this. Here is the composition I decided to go with:

One flag runner (Prot Warrior, Feral Druid with Tank Gemming/Enchanting, Blood DK, Prot Pally)

Three main heals (Any healing class would be fine, but prefer three different healing classes.)

One DPS/Heals - Somebody willing to DPS in Gilneas but heal in the other two. (Moonkin/Resto druid is excellent for this.)

Five DPS split into three categories: Three heavy CC ranged classes (Mage, Warlock, etc.), one heavy CC melee class (Subtelty Rogue usually), and one high DPS (any class)

3) Questions to Ask - Of course, if you meet the class and resilience requirement, it doesn't mean you would get in necessarily. I asked each person about their rated BG experience. First question I usually asked is what is your current rated BG rating. Having a low rating did not necessarily exclude you from coming, but I was going to keep more of an eye on you and if you started failing, you would be replaced. In addition, some people with really high resilience has just had problems finding rated BG groups, so I was willing to give people a chance. I also asked about their arena rating to get an idea of how much they PvP, etc. This is all important.

4) Breaking Hearts - Sometimes, you have to let people down easy. For example, I got about 5 mages asking to come. However, we were already full on mages. So I would whisper them back and tell them that we are full on mages, but hang around and if something happens, I could bring them in.

5) Set Up Expectations - Once everybody gets in your communication device of choice, you should set up expectations. I told them up front that I would explain strats as we got to the BGs. I also told them to make sure they are communicating and calling their CC. It is important to tell them what you are expecting from them as a rated BG team up front. Find the problems early and correct as soon as possible.

As one of the leaders of my guild's rated BG group, I also have additional important roles. I need to watch these PUGs to see who I would and would not want to bring back if we needed people again. There may even be people we want to encourage to come join our guild and our rated BG group.

Final thing I can say is give yourself some time. It took about an hour and a half to build a group I was comfortable with, we went into one Gilneas BG, won, and then had two people drop. We replaced one but could never find a healer to replace the other, so after about 30 minutes of going through trade chat, we had to call it. The lesson I learned last night is to get on early to start finding people if you think you may need to PUG some people for your normal rated BG group.

Blizzard's New Patching Strategy - A Great Deal

2011-03-08T10:27:00.000-05:00

Last week, Blizzard mentioned that the new Firelands raid would not appear until patch 4.2, skipping patch 4.1 entirely. This is a huge shift from their strategy in Wrath of the Lich King. In Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard released 3.1, which was Ulduar; 3.2, which was the Argent Tournament; and 3.3 which was Icecrown. Yes, they did add Ruby Sanctum in 3.3.5, but that was just a small addition like the VoA bosses. However, in Wrath patches, they only added 4 more 5 mans with 3 of those coming in the Icecrown patch and 1 additional BG, Isle of Conquest, in 3.2.

If more frequent patching means more stuff for everybody, I am all for it. Look at what we know we are getting in 4.1. We are getting two 5 man dungeons with epic gear and rare mounts in them. And we know for a fact that Abyssal Maw is coming in 4.2 with the Firelands raid. And they still likely have 2 tiers of content after that. With going back to old world content, they are opening up the ability to have all the dungeons tuned to level 85 heroics. We could easily see 5 - 7 more 5 mans and at least 3 more raids. If they add in a few more BGs then it will be absolutely perfect. We know for a fact that we are getting 3 15 man BGs retuned for rated BGs.

In addition to expected content, they are going to be adding in guild quest, new questing area for Firelands raid, and new achievements. Who knows what else they are going to have for patches 4.2 and beyond. Path of the Titans may make a comeback. They might fix archaeology to not make it more boring than fishing. The more they can push our in smaller patches, the happier everybody will be.

The main reason I think the are doing this is because of what I'm calling the great drought of 2010. In December 2009, they released Icecrown. From December 2009 until December 2010, there was only one minor content patch and no major content patches at all. As much as I loved Icecrown as a raid, by the time July rolled around, it was getting kind of stale. Hopefully, this new strategy from Blizzard will prevent another content drought from occuring. In fact, Blizzard can't have another drought like that. Rift has already come out and is garnering a lot of attention. Star Wars: The Old Republic comes out this year and will garner a lot of attention as well. If they have even a 6 month drought this year, there are two viable MMOs ready to take their place this time.

So bravo Blizzard for doing smaller content patches to help keep the game fresh. Hopefully, this strategy will pay off for you in this year where you may have the hardest competition yet.

Resto Druid PvP - The Major Gear Question

2011-03-07T11:04:00.001-05:00

Just wait and see how much you will be freaked out when it turns back into a person or a dog.

Yes, this old moonkin has decided to try out being a resto druid in PvP for a bit. My main spec is still moonkin. However, the PvP gear does not have any hit on it which makes it nice to also use it for resto druid spec for PvP.

I have said mutliple times that the balance 4 set PvP bonus is incredible and every moonkin should have it if you are PvPing. However, if you are building a resto set, should you go for the 4 piece bonus or get the additional resilience?

My suggestion is to go 2 and 3 on the resto PvP set with the balance set in order to get the 400 additional resilience. (Note: This will hold true until 4.1 at least. With the resilience change, this answer may or may not change.)

Let us take a quick look at the restoration 4 piece set bonuses. The 4 piece set restoration bonus for PvP is:

4 Piece: Reduces the Cooldown on your Swiftmend ability by 2 seconds.

4 Piece: Increases Intellect by 180.

Swiftmend is currently on a 15 second cooldown. It also should be glyphed anyway so that you can keep HoTs up while using Swiftmend. In addition, if you have talented into Efforvesence, which I have, then you have another HoT being used. The difference between 13 seconds and 15 seconds is neglibile if I'm not alive though.

As for the 2 piece + 400 resilience bonus for the restoration set, it decreases damage by 6.87% going from a full resto set to breaking it up between 2 restoration and 3 piece balance set or vice versa. 6.87% is alot of damage mitigation. If someone hits you for a 30k hit in the 4 piece restoration set, you will decrease the hit to 28k hit with a 2 and 3 setup. The 2k difference could be the difference between saving yourself or a flag carrier and dieing.

So, the next question is if you are like me and have the full balance PvP set, what two pieces of restoration gear do you pick up for honor. Looking at the difference betwen balance and restoration, here are the importance of stats as of right now.

Moonkin: Spirit (to 5% hit cap) > Hit (to 5% hit cap) > Intellect > Haste > Resilience > Critical Strike > Mastery

Restoration: Intellect > Spirit > Haste > Resilience > Mastery > Critical Strike

Some explanation. In the moonkin order of importance, spirit is only useful to the PvP hit cap (which is 5%). Hit can be used but none of the PvP gear for moonkins I have seen has hit on it anyway. Then as a DPS, you want the things that will increase your DPS, mainly intellect and haste. From there, you want to stay alive, so you get resilience (although you would never gem for resilience anyway). From there, critical strike rating and mastery. However, for healers, this changes up slightly. The purpose of the healers is to stay alive and to keep their target alive. To keep their people alive, you need the strongest heals you can get. You will get this from Intellect, Spirit, and Haste. Spirit also helps with in combat mana restoration. From there, resilience is the next most important stat in order to keep yourself alive. Again, I wouldn't gem or enchant for resilience, but you can if you want. From there, mastery and critical strike rating with mastery being ahead of critical strike for restoration.

Since spirit is the second most valuable stat to a restoration PvPers, it should go without saying that you want to pick up the PvP pieces with spirit. With the spirit PvP set, there are only two pieces with spirit, while the moonkin set has no Spirit on it. The Bloody/Vicious Gladiator's Kodohide Spaulders and Robes (links are for the Vicious set) would be my choice. Combined, they give you and additional 311 spirit in the Bloody set and 360 with the Vicious set. In addition, you should have picked up some other gear with spirit already to hit your hit cap as a moonkin so you should have a good amount of spirit.

So, if you are doing both balance and restoration in PvP, you shouldn't have to change up your gear alot. You may however, want to get the resilience bonus from not going with your 4 piece restoration set by splitting up your moonkin set into a 3 balance and 2 restoration piece set.

My Hopes for Rated BGs for 4.1

2011-03-03T09:49:00.000-05:00

Earlier this week, I talked about the current PTR patch notes for patch 4.1. While there were a few battleground changes, there was not a lot of talk about something that I have been looking for since they moved all rated BGs to 10 vs. 10. Reworking the 15 man BGs into 10 man BGs.

Nothing against the current 10 vs. 10 battlegrounds, but they are starting to get a little stale. Two of them are played exactly the same while Gilneas is actually a different BG, which may be why I'm enjoying it a little more right now. Here are some ideas I have on making the 15 man BGs into new 10 man rated BGs.

Arathi Basin - Considering defense is gonna be harder spread out over 5 nodes, they need to make flag caps shorter in Arathi Basin, maybe 30 seconds to change faction. That way, it punishes the team that zergs and rewards the team that coordinates. In that case, each node becomes a little 4 vs. 4 or 3 vs. 3 arena match. Playing smart defense would also be necessary. There would be very little incentive to push a 4th node so it would come down to straight PvP.

Strand of the Ancients - Of all the BGs, this would be the hardest to change. (And truth be told, I personally wouldn't be hurt if they didn't change it.) However, since we are dealing with fewer people, the battlefield needs to be shorted slightly. Maybe you only have to break the blue or green gate, then have a wide PvP area leading up to the yellow gate and the relic chamber. In addition, I would take away the time limit for the 1st offense team or at least make it longer since you are dealing with less people. In addition, make the explosive charges do more damage and the demolishers do less or make the demolishers squishy. As of right now, the focus on Strand of the Ancients isn't PvP, it is kill the demolishers. If they upped the damage of the explosive charges, it would be more incentive to PvP, especially if they made it where you drop the charges if you die.

Eye of the Storm - Of all the 15 man BGs, this is the one where they can probably get away with making no changes. Area caps are based on number of alive people. The flag is still in the middle. I can't see any reliable zerg strat that would work. It would probably go into a 2 node vs. 2 node situation with PvP right in the middle for the flag, which means flag caps would likely decide the winner. My one big request in all of this is for Blizzard to do what they do in Tol Barad. Put Slowfall automatically on the players at the start of the game so they don't take fall damage. I know they did not do it at one time, but they set a precedent with Tol Barad for the defense team.

So, I'm hoping, sooner rather than later, that we get the redone 15 man BGs into 10 man rated BGs. I would be happy with even new BGs. (An underwater Vashj'ir BG would be awesome.) If I had to design one, it would be a one flag capture the flag. Each team has a base with multiple entrances. There is a flag in the middle that everyone is going for. You get 100 points per cap, first team to 1000 wins. It would literally be a 10 man versus 10 man arena fight for the flag every time.

And Now for Something Completely Different

2011-03-02T12:35:00.000-05:00

From a British Shorthair, this quote is not surprising.

Notice: If you come here for moonkin/druid/PvP/WoW talk, you can come back tomorrow for your regularly scheduled WoW blog post. I just wanted to take one blog post to talk about the new MMORPG, Rift.

No man can live by bread alone. As much fun as WoW is, there are times you have to try playing some other games. For some, it may be Call of Duty: Black Ops or Halo: Reach. For others, it may be Starcraft II. I recently have been trying to diversify my game playing a little. I first started with DC Universe Online. While I'm sure I will return to it sometime, it just wasn't enough to hold my interest. This could mainly be because I have never been a huge fan of comics. However, when I heard the discussion about Rift, it sounded incredibly interesting. From the description I initially heard, it was WoW plus prettier graphics. I thought I would try it out some. What I found when I started playing Rift in the Head Start was something more incredible than I could have come up with.

I first started off playing Guardian. Nothing against the Guardian starting area, but it seemed to be same old, same old. It starts off in the current game time with you trying to defend the world against Regulos. (God, I'm hoping I spell that correctly.) I got my Guardian character up to level 6. However, some of my Twitter followers said they were joining a group on Emberlord as Defiants.

Sorry DK and Worgen starting zones in WoW (I haven't played Goblin yet so I won't judge you), but the Defiant starting area kicks your ass. As a defiant, you start in the future being brought back to life. The world has collapsed under Regulos' terror. Their goal is to send you back in time to prevent the future from happening. There are explosions all around you and it feels like the final stand in a war. And the area ends with your first boss fight, which is incredible. After that, you go through the time machine portal back to current game time.

As soon as you leave the starting area, you will likely encounter your first Rift. Remember all the fun you had with the elemental world events and closing the rifts there. Now imagine it on a zone wide scale. It is a nice interruption from the questing. You quest a little, then the sky turns black and you know you have a Rift to deal with. It makes for incredible pacing that I have not experienced in an MMO in a long time. As soon as a Rift happens, it gives you the option to join a public raid to help take down the Rift which gives you a good amount of experience. Also, the game auto hands out the loot and what you get is in your quest log.

Everything I have talked about is pure gameplay. I have not even gotten to the deep class customization where you get to choose your main calling (warrior, cleric, mage, or rogue). Then instead of being consolidated to one of three trees, you get to pick what three trees you want in the first place. For my defiant, I'm wanting to experience some of the dungeons, so I decided to roll a tank build of paladin, void knight, warlord. But you can buy other souls (their fancy terms for specs) to have multiple roles. I'm thinking of doing a leveling spec of some sort with beastmaster and maybe some other things. In addition, if you are used to WoW mechanics, you will feel at home. In game quest helper, check. Auto-loot option, check. UI customization, not only check, but kicks WoW's ass at it for the default UI. Unfotunately, you can't have addons yet, but the interface is so good, you really don't need them.

However, I'm not gonna go without bringing up a few of the games faults. First off, there are only 3 races per faction and to be perfectly honest, I couldn't really tell the difference between any of the 3 defiant races. One has pointy ears, one looks more human, and the other looks like a human and a draenei from WoW hooked up and made a human baby with weird markings on their face. Now, there is loads of personal customization you can do, but having a few more race options would have been nice. Also, rifts maybe happen a little too frequently at times. I'm trying to complete quest in the level 9 area, then a rift opens up and I have to struggle to find what targets I was looking for in the first place. Thankfully, the rift events are really fun. If they weren't, this would be a bigger issue.

I'm only level 9 so far, but I have enjoyed the hell out of Rift. I'm still gonna play WoW as my main game. However, this will be a nice distraction from WoW. I encourage you to look me up in Rift. I am Redhawks - Defiant Warrior on the Emberlord US server. I'm going to be joining the Dregcast guild soon on that server, Negative Zero.

Also, I'm sure I'm gonna have a lot more to say about Rift in the future. So as to not turn this blog in a WoW/Rift blog, I am please to announce Redhawks Ascension, my new Rift blog. Starting off, I will be talking about my experiences leveling up in Rift. Once I hit max level, which I intend to do, I will talk about theorycrafting, raiding, etc. I'm going to be updating it twice a week which I will be intending to update this every day that I can, which is usually weekdays.

So, final conclusion, if you love WoW, I would really recommend checking our Rift. There is a whole lot to love in there.

Patch 4.1 - Druid and PvP Perspective

2011-03-01T10:31:00.000-05:00

Well, 4.1 has finally hit the PTR and combing through the patch notes, there are several intersting things that need to be pointed out related to both druids and PvP. Here are some of the interesting things I have found so far.

1) Zul'Aman is Back - Ok, I know this has nothing to do with PvP, but Zul'Aman is a druid dream. Every boss from the 10 man raid during BC had to do with druids. From the bear boss to the lightning boss, all of them were druid related. I can't wait to get in there and go crazy. I mean Zul'Garab is cool, but Zul'Aman was my second raid instance ever cleared. Of course, I wonder if they are going to kill off Harrison Jones again.

2) DKs get a Battle Rez - I will be honest, I never would have seen this. First of all, they have had Raise Ally for quite some time, but it made you into a ghoul. Now, it actually brings you back to life. It is the first time a melee has a rez (Yes, I know feral druids and enhancement shaman melee, but it is the first time a dedicated melee get it.) and it is only the second class to get a battle rez. After mages got Time Warp, which was equivalent to Heroism/Bloodlust, I guess we should have seen some class was gonna get a battle rez. I just thought it might be priest or shaman, I never could have guessed DKs would get it.

3) Resilience Scaling - Now, just reading through what they say about resilience scaling, it could be a little confusing. What is the reason behind this change? You know that Blizzard said they wanted to stop people from doing the 2 and 2 on dps/healing caster gear to get the additional resilience. This is partly an answer to that. Once you get above 32.5% damage mitigation, the effect decreases. What does this mean? Assuming season 10 starts around the time of patch 4.1, we are going to want to get our 4 piece bonuses. In addition, since our resilience will be higher, we may actually want 1 or 2 PvE pieces to allow for more damage. For healing classes, they will likely want to stick with full PvP gear however since they tend to get focused a little more than DPS.

4) Cyclone Duration Decreased - In 4.0.6, it increased up to 8 seconds. Then, they hotfixed it back down to 6 seconds. Now, they are going to decrease it again down to 5. I'm not really surprised since cyclone is an incredibly powerful spell, but a lot of other traps last 8 seconds. There should be some way whether a glyph or something to make it longer for PvP use.

5) Starsurge Nerf - As much as I hate to say it and as much as I love 40k hits on players in full PvP gear, this was needed. Starsurge was incredibly powerful in PvP, maybe overpowered to be exact. I mean, it is still 32k hits, but at least it is not half of their health bars.

6) Lifebloom Nerf - Having been playing some resto in PvP as my secondary spec, this was unfortunately needed as well. If the bloom critted, it was returning anywhere from 35k to 50k health to a player in PvP. I have been protecting the flag carrier with 2 of the healers down, had a bloom hit, and the flag carrier stayed alive even while they were focused on him. Now, if I can just remember not to refresh Lifebloom by stupidly hitting buttons until it blooms.

7) Swipe Cooldown Reduced - I don't tank anymore, but I'm sure I speak for all feral druid tanks when I say, Thank the frickin' Lord. Having to rotate Swipe and Thrash on almost perfect 3 second intervals is tougher than it looks.

8) Solar Beam More Responsive - My favorite CC tool in BGs just got a little better. I'm hoping that when the notes say "more responsive", it is if any part of the player is in the Solar Beam, it will silence them.

9) Flag Carrying Debuff Changes - I may have been the only person to do this, but as someone who routinely is on offense trying to get our flag back, I smiled a little when I saw the changes to the flag carrier debuff. It starts off at increased damage of 10%, then stacks 10% per minute. Plus, they can't run anymore as they are limited to 100% run speed after 7 minutes. Yes, even druids and their travel form.

10) Battleground Changes - This BG was typically determined in the first few minutes, but not anymore. They are setting it up now where you get transported to another graveyard instead of the same graveyard where you die. This means capturing nodes will be a whole lot easier. However, this also means that defending nodes will be a lot harder and will take a lot more coordination. In addition, in Twin Peaks, if you die in the enemy base, you will spawn back at your base. This will give the defending team some time to breathe and get caught up before another assault comes in against their flag carrier. This is also likely going to change some strategy since you will want to wipe groups coming in at your flag carrier.

I know these are preliminary notes and I'm 100% sure there are going to be changes along the way. However, this should give you some idea of what they are planning for 4.1.

Arenas and Rated BG Experience - A Healthy Relationship

2011-02-28T13:32:00.000-05:00

This is what Mr. Bigglesworth Got for Doing Arenas

In our rated BGs, we have started requiring an arena requirement in 3 vs. 3 or 5 vs. 5 of 1100 for all our rated BG members. (Yes, we are recruiting for the rest of this season and next season. See sidebar for more.) The reason we are requiring this rating is because all of the BG leaders, myself included, see the value of having arena experience in rated BGs. However, I also see the value of having rated BG experience in arenas. Here are the links that I personally see between arena and rated BGs.

Arena Experience in Rated BGs

1) CC - Playing in arena gets you used to your different forms of CC. For druids, we only have 2 plus one ability we can combine with roots. However, it gives the experience of when to use the CC and when not to. Having experience with this in arenas will directly translate to being able to do it in a rated BG setting.

2) Focus Firing - A major part of arena is learning to focus fire. Not only focus firing, but also being able to CC while focus firing. This takes a lot of using focus frames, finding targets quickly, and changing targets quickly. All of this experience in arena will help in rated BGs where you have to do many of the same things.

3) LOS - While learning how to use line of sight is vital in arenas, there are not a lot of times you can use it in rated BGs. When you can though, it helps out. Let me give an example from our rated BGs. We were in a Twin Peaks. We had the enemy flag and they had ours. Our flag carrier had 3 healers with him. In each of the bases of Twin Peaks, there are several places you can use line of site. You can go upstairs, around the walls, around the outside, etc. This was vital in keeping our flag carrier up. Being able to line of sight in arenas is critical and comes in handy occassionally during rated BGs.

4) Cooldown Management - The difference between a win and a loss in a closely contested arena match could be when a trinket is ready to proc and how it is utilized. If you are busy applying CC, you may want to wait a few seconds before popping your trinket while you control the enemy. However, there are more than trinket cooldowns. You also have to think about healer cooldowns. For example, if you are a resto druid, if you see another healer go down in a rated BG, that may be the time to pop Tree of Life to keep your flag carrier up until the other healer can come back in. When to use cooldowns is something you learn initially in the small scale arenas and then apply it to the large scale rated BGs.

5) Calling Targets - If you see a priest, a mage, and a rogue, do you know who you should kill first? Well, if you do arenas, you should.  First, you look at their HP. Is anybody a little less than the others? If they are, that may indicate some PvE gear on that person which means their resilience is less. Are they controllable? A priest would probably be the easiest to CC since mages can blink out of snares and rogues can get out of combat and go invisible. What do you have available to you? If you have lots of CC, you may want to CC the mage and rogue while you burn the priest. If you don't, you may want to CC the priest and kill the mage. While this is a typical arena setting, there are many times where you run into identical situtions in rated BGs.  Doing arena helps with target calling.

Rated BG Experience In Arenas

1) Saving Fights - In arenas, you usually have a designated healer. In BGs, there may be times that you don't have a healer in your group. If that is the case, you better know what abilities can save yourself. Do you have a melee on you, pop Thorns and pop Nature's Grasp and root him while you heal yourself. Are you running with a group and you are all in trouble? Pop Tranquility and heal them. While you see more of this in rated BGs, this knowledge can come in handy in arenas.

2) Different Comps - While in arena, you see some popular comps like mage, rogue, priest. In rated BGs, you see comps that you wouldn't normally see anywhere in arena. However, this is when you can practice against those odd comps. For example, you never usually see a 4 healer, 1 DPS comp in arenas. However, if you are trying to get the flag back in Warsong or Twin Peaks, you may run into that exact comp. This will give you a broader experience on what different classes can bring to the table, classes that you may only see once in a while in arenas. This experience can help you in arenas when you face similar compositions.

3) Field Awareness - Arenas are smaller scale.  Usually, you can see what is going on pretty easily. However, in rated BGs, you may need to know what is going on at the other side of the field. For example, if you are in the middle trying to control the enemy from getting to your flag and you see people break off towards your flag carrier, you may need to go assist your flag carrier. You are not doing anybody any good if you are in the middle and just keep killing things while your flag carrier is going down. This translates to arena since you may need to get people off of your healer or give yourself some extra time or heal somebody while a healer is CCed.

So as you can see, doing arenas in addition with rated BGs can give you a lot of benefits for both. I would encourage you to do both to become a well rounded PvPer.

Also, for winners of the Header contest. I have not forgotten you. I have had a lot of stuff going on lately, but I should be sending them out by the end of this week.

Sunday Humor: Must Read Web Comics

2011-02-20T10:52:00.000-05:00

I have been thinking about this one for a while, but here is a list of 5 gaming comics that every WoW player should be reading regularly.

1) NPC (Non Player Character) - A comic about a woman, her husband/boyfriend (They never really say which, but I'm thinking husband), and her 2 cats who all play WoW. It is cute and funny. You will fall in love with Chloe and Bink from the first time you read it. She also talks about life outside of WoW including Dungeons and Dragons, their neighbors, their coworkers, and a lot of Nintendo DS talk early in the comic life. They also just celebrated their 2 year anniversery yesterday. Highly recommend you check them out. Here is a personal favorite from the comic. (Mainly because my cats come and lick my face all the time.)

2) Dark Legacy - This comic, which has been around for about 4 years, is almost exclusively about characters in WoW. They have pretty much every stereotype in WoW player that you can think of. There is the overbearing raid leader (Krom), the lackey you bring along because you need people (Donald), gnomes bent on world domination, and regular players. Really one of the funniest WoW comics around. Here is their latest comic.

3) Extra Life - By Scott Johnson of The Instance, this is a general geek comic covering some WoW stuff, but mostly gaming in general as well as some situational comedy stuck in there. Here is a personal favorite from the collection.

4) Penny Arcade - The granddaddy of web comics, this comic covers the opinions of Gabe and Tycho, fascimilies of the real life owners of Penny Arcade. And thankfully, Gabe plays World of Warcraft regularly so they do cover WoW topics. It is mostly general gaming topics, but WoW is covered.

5) The Daily Blink - This comic is another comic completely about WoW, however, it is not a comic in the traditional sense. It is usually a one block comic that is satiring something in WoW, whether it is gameplay, lore, opposing factions, and even patch notes. Here is a fine example of their work.

So please support these comics by going to their sites. They are some of the funniest comics around the net right now.

7 Habits of Highly Effective PvPers

2011-02-19T12:54:00.000-05:00

In the very early days of this blog, I had a post called "Seven Habits of Highly Effective Raiders". Well since that original post, I have moved from a raider to a PvP BG leader. Given this change, I decided it was time to rework those habits into being effective PvPers. And not suprisingly, the main title of each of the seven habits are going to be identical. The only difference is what you do with each of the habits.

1) Prepare - In rated BGs, this is probably the most different than PvE. You can't use flask. You can't use the Goblin Barbeque or the Seafood Magnifique. But you still have to prepare yourself. Be in full PvP gear. Be gemmed, enchanted, etc. with the best possible enchants for PvP. Some enchants are different. Some enchants are the same. Make sure you are in a proper spec for PvP. All these things are things that should be done before stepping into PvP.

2) Readiness - Make sure you are on time and are prepared to come in. With the elimination of 15 vs. 15 rated BGs, there may be a chance you will have to sit. If you do, be on standby. Be in Vent or Mumble if your leaders need someone.

3) Optimize - While it is still important to make sure your computer is in top shape and won't disconnect during fights, the strain is a little less in BGs compared to 25 man rating because the BGs are spread out. If you had 20 people in an arena BG, I'm sure that it would lag like anything. Also, as I mentioned earlier, you should optimize your gear. Buy the blue honor gear to get started and go from there by using Conquest points to buy the epic PvP gear.

4) Research - While PvP is alot more fluid than a PvE setting where bosses have certain mechanics, you can still research. First, and the most important, is to know your class inside and out. You should know what CCs you have, who they are the most effective against, what things can maximize your DPS output in BGs. Also, know the BGs inside and out. Know where the power ups, like Beserker and Heals, are since they can turn the tide of battle.

5) Learn - As I mentioned in the original post, learning comes from education and experience. If you find a PvPer of the same class who is doing better than you, ask them to help you out and figure out what you are doing wrong. However, experience is the biggest teacher in BGs. You will find out which targets are the healers or are the most dangerous. You will figure out kill orders. You will figure out what strategies work and which ones don't. Best way to get experience is to run random BGs and arenas. BGs will help you understand your DPS rotation. Arenas will help you learn coordination and CCing.

In addition, there is two type of experienced learning in BGs. Short term experienced learning is something you need to learn in this BG for this BG only. For example, if you have Mage X who is CCing your healers and killing your DPS, you know that he is a high priority target so you will need to CC healers to kill the mage first. The other type of experienced learning is long term experienced learning. This would be overarching principles such as kill or CC healers first, how not to allow ninja caps, how to tell if someone is squishy by looking at HP, etc. The only way you get that type of experience is doing BGs and arena.

6) Observe - I thought that PvE raid awareness was something you had to get used to and it took a while. Awareness in BGs takes it to a whole other level. Let me give an example. We typically have 3 healers on the flag carriers in Warsong Gulch or Twin Peaks. If all 4 healers are around our flag carrier, I can back off and use CC to get melee off of our flag carrier. There are many instances where this can occur. If you see a healer healing your target, kill them or CC them to kill your target. Sometimes, you really almost need eyes in the back of your head to have PvP awareness.

7) Communicate - If I was going to reorder my list from the original list, I would have put this as number 1 easily. Communication is the single biggest key in PvP. The team that does not communicate loses. What should you communicate? Let me count the ways: kill targets, CCed targets, nodes being attacked, flag carriers being attacked, healers protecting flag carriers die, flag carrier dies, enemy flag carrier dies, enemy flag carrier's location, our flag carrier's location, strategy, and reporting what is occuring at nodes. And this is just with the 3 BGs currently available for 10 vs. 10 rated BGs. The place this is best learned at is in arenas. Learning this type of communication is vital in arenas and it translates very well over to rated BGs. The more comfortable you can get with communicating, the better your team will be. This also means that if you are on a rated BG team, you have to get comfortable with Ventrilo or Mumble and speaking because you talk a whole lot more in BGs than you do in raids.

PvE vs. PvP Moonkin Rotations - Yes, There is a Difference

2011-02-17T12:26:00.000-05:00

I just recently got promoted to a rated BG leader in my guild, Conquest. (Yes, usual disclaimer. We are recruiting for both our PvP division and PvE division.) Another BG leader and myself were talking after rated BGs last night and we were talking about DPS and how to increase it in a BG setting. When you hear DPS rotations, you mostly think about PvE enviroments where you stand, cast spells in a certain order, and then accomadate movement. However, when it comes to PvP enviroments, there may or may not be rotations based on the situation. There are some things that are similar, but there are a lot different. Here are just a few things that I thought of that are different between a PvE and PvP rotation for moonkins.

1) Most DPS Does Not Come From Nukes - In rated BGs, you don't have the luxury of standing there and just endlessly casting your usual moonkin rotation. That is why good DPS in PvE are around 15k DPS, but good DPS in PvP are usually around 3-5k. There are several factors behind this. One of the biggest is resilience lessens any damage that occurs anyway. However, the second is that no opposing player is going to let you stand there while you cast away killing their teammates. We also shouldn't be standing in stuff like Death and Decay, Consecration, Ring of Frost, etc. while PvPing. This means being able to do DPS while mobile is more important. While I haven't done in depth analysis, I'm almost certain most of my DPS in BGs come from 4 spells. Those spells are Moonfire/Sunfire, Insect Swarm, Starfall, and Starsurge on Shooting Star procs. Now don't get me wrong. If the opposing team is cool with me just standing there and casting my usual moonkin rotation to kill their players, I will do it all day long until they stop me.

2) Wild Mushrooms Are Much More Useful - Since I haven't done any PvE after patch 4.0.6, I don't know how reliable they have become in PvE, however, in PvP they are useful. However, it is not necessarily for damage. It is more useful if you have Fungal Growth and can slow their players down.

3) Thorns: The Silent Killer - I cannot tell you how many times I have seen rogues, warriors, and DKs kill themselves because I popped Thorns on myself. It is incredible to see them just continue to hit you and whack at you while you are not dying but they are slowly losing health.

4) Typhoon is Not for Damage - Typhoon has never been meant to do enough damage to kill a player. It is meant to either keep players off of flags or get melee off of you so you can root them and kill them. In addition, if you see an enemy Efforvescence or Healing Rain or Healing Circle, you can use Typhoon to knock them out of it so you can kill them as well. Of course, if you can knock players off of ledges with Typhoon, it is kind of fun.

5) Treants: A Minor Annoyance - Treants should be used on cooldown, but for two different reasons than in PvE. One, they are affected by Fungal Growth, which will still slow people down. Second, they are almost like a gnat. They won't hurt anything, (unless you use them during a Solar Eclipse) but they will be annoying as hell. Also, it is just additional damage they may help take something down.

6) Our 4S9 Bonus - Yes, I'm trying to set up a new nomenclature to match PvE's 4T11. Our 4 piece bonus for Season 9 is almost necessary for moonkins. While 400 more resilience would be great for PvP by doing 2 piece balance, 2 piece resto, the ability to gain Solar and Lunar Energy from people attacking us is incredible. This also plays a role if we actually get to do our moonkin rotation because it determines which nuke to actually cast.

7) Moonfire/Sunfire Do More Damage When Moving - This is the major reason why it is in my top 4 damage causing spells in PvP. If I have to move, they will do more damage if they are on a target or if I'm spamming it while moving. Plus, having that and Insect Swarm increases the chances for Shooting Stars. If it is in an Eclipse, even better since its damage is increased by Eclipse.

8) PvP Rotation - Although technically a misnomer, I do have a certain rotation I like to use when going against opponents in PvP. Usually, if there is a caster, I will try to roots and solar beam them, especially if they are the kill target. Why? Because other casters can be controlled by Cyclone better. With the new 8 second duration, we can kill a healer while a caster is just watching us. If it is melee, typhoon then roots. Also, if my Solar Beam is on cooldown, I will try to DoT up anybody in the area. The main reason is that if the healer is focused on healing everybody else, he might just forget to heal himself which will lead to his death. Starfall does a very similar process. Starfall alone won't kill anybody, but it will hit everybody and put them in a panic. If Shooting Stars procs, use the instant Starsurge on the kill target. If everybody is controlled or left with just a few targets, I will start my PvE moonkin rotation. (DoTs, Starsurge, move towards the closest Eclipse with Wrath or Starfire, re-DoT, move back towards the other eclipse.)

9) Reasons and Counters for Why You Are Not DPSing - There are just a few reasons why you shouldn't be DPSing targets and there is a counter for each of them. The most obvious is that you are silenced. If you are in Solar Beam, move out of it. If it is a spell, ask for a cleanse. Also, you may be locked downed with CC. You may want to invest in the trinket for your faction to help you get out of movement impairing effects. Also, cleanses may work as well depending on what it is. Snares can be shapeshifted out of because you are a moonkin. The only other reason you shouldn't be on a kill target is you are CCing something. This is where having good timer mods comes in handy. I personally recommend Forte Exorcist because you can set it up to list the player's name and tells you how long you have left on the cyclone. That way, you can DPS the kill target and keep him CCed. Using some sort of focus frames helps a lot with this too so you can switch targets quickly. Set your focus on your kill target and switch to the CC target when CC is up. Also, when you hit diminishing returns, call for another CC unless your CC target is now the kill target.

10) Remember Your Goal - Your goal is to win the BG. If you are DPSing when you should be protecting a node or carrying a flag, then you are failing. There is a time to DPS, but it is not all the time. Sometimes, it is just a matter of keeping people off of a flag carrier so they can get to your base and be protected or even cap it.

While all of these tips are more moonkin specific, there are things for every DPS that can help improve your DPS in BGs. You just have to find the differences between how you play your class in PvP and PvE. The best way to do that is to do some random BGs to get used to your PvP rotation in a setting where it won't hurt your rated team.

An Auction House Failure Story - A Personal Experience

2011-02-15T11:08:00.000-05:00

I'm sure you have heard the phrase, "The best laid plans of mice and men." Yeah, I thought my plan to make buttloads of gold was genius. Let me tell you how this little escapade cost me about 3k gold.

It was the Tuesday of 4.0.6. I was personally excited because the Chaotic Shadowspirit Diamond was finally being fixed to make it actually usable. What I thought would occur is that the demand for this meta would be initially high, at least until the new meta gem recipes hit the market. I decided on the day that the patch hit as soon as the servers opened up, I would get on my remote AH app on my phone, buy out all the Chaotics and relist them for about 10x their initial price. When I bought them, there were about 15 for about 120 gold a piece. I bought all of them and relisted them for approximately 1000 gold a piece.

No sooner than 15 minutes after reposting all these gems, someone comes in and puts 3 up for 400 gold a piece. It amazed me that I was undercut that quickly. So I did the only reasonable thing, I bought him out. I thought I still would make 600 gold profit and there is no way he could have anymore.

So help me God, no more than 5 minutes later, the same player posted 3 more at the same price. In addition, someone had already came in and undercut him even further. At this point, I decided to pull about 5 of my original auctions to try to undercut them. I thought with all the Chaotics I bought at 120 gold, I still would make triple profit off of them.

Again, no more than 5 minutes from there, somebody undercut me again. (I did sell one of them though before I was undercut again.) At this point, I decided that I would leave my gems up until they expired. The way I thought it would work out would be that as players logged on, they would be changing their metas out to the Chaotics and I would still make profit at the rate people bought them. However, here is the catch. A lot of people preferred to hold on to their current meta gems until the new pattern dropped. Why spend 350 gold to just turn around and buy one of the new meta gems when they become available?

So, where am I today? Starting off, I have 3k gold less on my bank character, though I have made some of it back from other sales. I also have approximately 25 Chaotic meta gems that I don't know if they are going to sell or not. Also, the lowest prices for Chaotics on my server are back to the 120 gold per gem, so even if they sell, I will be making even money back.

So let this be a lesson. Never overestimate a market after a patch, especially if there is going to be something that will replace what you are trying to control anyway. If I would have posted them for about 300 gold a piece, I would have turned a profit and likely have had less loss. Also, be careful when trying to predict player's expectations. They may not be thinking the way you are thinking.

Sharing the Love - WoW Style

2011-02-14T12:43:00.000-05:00

With today being Valentine's Day, I thought about the things that we could do as players to share the love to our guildmates and other players on this day of love. (And I don't mean doing the stupid holiday stuff) Here are a few things that I have thought of that would be great ways to share the love.

1) Help a Lower Level Alt - If you have a player that you know or who is within a reasonable level of your main or alt, help get them through a dungeon or two to get some gear or help them level up. This would especially help level 82-85 players since they need gear to be able to do heroics. Also, this could include helping a lower level player who is getting ganked. Go there and kick some ass for them.

2) Buy Some Extra Consumables For Your Raid - Maybe get a couple extra consumables for players in your raid and help them save some gold for other things, like enchants or gems.

3) Farm Mats for Guild Items - If you need food for raid or herbs, just take an hour or two and go farm some mats to help your guild bank out a little bit.

4) Help Level Professions - If you know somebody who is a lower level jewelcrafter and you don't need your uncut green quality gems, send the items to them to help them level up. You can do something like this with any profession in the game.

5) Offer Chaos Orbs for Free - Since only a certain number of professions can even roll on them right now, go ahead and hit trade chat and say you are willing to make some gear using your chaos orbs for free or at the very least, a very reduced price. I have seen people saying they will use their chaos orbs for 500 gold + per orb.

6) /Hug a Gnome - Gnomes need love too. Besides, we all know that short people got nobody.

7) Don't Be a Douche in LFG - You have 364 other days to be a douche to PUGs in LFG. Just take today off.

8) Comfort a Night Elf Druid - Just because they are now the minority doesn't mean they are bad, they are just different.

9) Donate Gold to a Level 1 - Yes, even the beggers. Then give them a /hug and say today only.

10) Give a Friend a Non-Combat Companion - I mean something cheap, like a cat. Not a $10 pet store pet.

Meta Druid Gemming in a 4.0.6 World

2011-02-09T09:53:00.000-05:00

With all the new meta gems that are out, you may be asking yourself which gems should I use for which situation. This is especially true of druids since there are so many roles they can take. Let me go through different roles and tell you what I feel is the best meta for each.

Feral Bear Tank - If you are a feral druid tank, your meta gem did not change in the patch. You will still be using the Austere Shadowspirit Diamond as your preferred meta gem. Since your tank set should be different from a feral kitty DPS set, there should be no sharing options due to the increased armor percentage.

Feral Kitty DPS - You get a new meta gem with 4.0.6, which is the Agile Shadowspirit Diamond, which gives Agility and a Critical Damage Increase. Unfotunately, it may not have dropped yet for anybody on your server. If that is the case, you can go with the Relentless Earthsiege Diamond until the new one drops.

PvP Feral Druid - This is gonna be a tough call and usually will be personal choice, but I would stick with the metas you use for PvE for PvP. The point of feral bears in PvP is to be unkillable so you will need more armor and health. For PvP kitties, you will want to do as much damage as quickly as possible.

PvE Moonkin without a Healing Offspec - The one you will ultimately want is the Burning Shadowspirit Diamond, which is Intellect plus Critical Strike Damage. Until then, you will want to use the newly redesigned Chaotic Shadowspirit Diamond.

PvE Resto without a Balance Offspec - The one thing with restoration druids is that if you don't run out of mana, you can heal people. That is why the preferred meta gem for restoration druids is the Ember Shadowspirit Diamond. (Intellect + 2% More Mana)

PvE Moonkin/Resto with a Healing/Balance Offspec But Different Helms - If you are not using the same helm for both balance and restoration, then you just follow the normal PvE guidelines for moonkins and resto druids.

PvE Moonkin/Resto with a Healing/Balance Offspec and Shared Helm - If you are using the same helm for both healing and balance, you will want the meta gem with the most bang for the buck. In this case, I prefer the Ember Shadowspirit Diamond. The Ember Shadowspirit Diamond. This will give you what you need in both specs.

PvP Caster (Balance or Resto) - This is probably the toughest call of all of them. A lot of them have things that can help in PvP, between reduced snares to reduced silences. As a caster, I chose to go with the one thing I cannot shapeshift out of, silences. I went with the Forlorn Shadowspirit Diamond, which is spellpower plus reduces silence duration.

Hopefully, this guide will help you in deciding what meta gems you would like. You are probably wondering why I covered restoration druids when I have never covered restoration druids on this blog. I just recently have changed my offspec from feral tank to restoration druid. Since I have a set of gear for moonkin, I thought it would be great to try out doing some restoration healing. I really only had to replace a ring and a trinket with hit on it. The most I can say so far is that I'm learning. Not perfect by any means, but learning.

The Best Parts of 4.0.6

2011-02-08T10:57:00.000-05:00

Every blog out there is going to take a fine tooth comb to the patch notes. While I may do that in my own time, I'm not gonna bore you with that. Let me tell you the things I'm most excited about for in this patch.

1) More than any spell, change, or anything else, the biggest thing I'm personally excited for is the moonkin can mount normally now. It has been annoying since patch 4.0.1 that I have not been able to mount correctly. I have to either shift out of form and then mount or I have to move and then mount to get flight form. Speaking of flight form...

2) Worgens get their own swift flight form to differentiate us from those dirty, dirty night elfs.

3) Moonkins have become the primary druid flag carriers in PvP. We can break roots and snares by shapeshifting in and out of moonkin form. It will primarily go druid travel form, snared or rooted, moonkin form, back to druid travel form, continue running.

4) This is huge for PvE, but Starfall only affects targets that are in combat. This means I can use Starfall all the time on trash, bosses, anytime.

5) All our CC last longer now, up to 8 seconds. This should make our CC more viable in dungeons, but it will really shine in PvP when trying to control a melee or caster. I also get to laugh at resto druids having to get out of caster form to break roots while they are stuck in a Solar Beam.

6) Moonkins get a 15% damage reduction automatically. Good luck trying to kill us if we have a healer on us. This is more valuable than armor.

7) Wild Mushroom is usable finally. Instant cast, which means we can cast it on the move. It also has more damage behind it and a wider range. Add in the buffs to Fungal Growth and it makes it incredible.

8) Our other spells we used on the move cost less mana. If we are running from something, our Typhoon and Moonfire/Sunfire are significantly less mana. This is good since the one thing that seems to deplete my mana faster than anything is Moonfire/Sunfire spam while on the move.

9) Our 4 piece PvP bonus got a buff. I love the 4 piece PvP bonus in the first place because it moves you towards one of the Eclipses when you don't have an Eclipse. Considering our three main nukes normally have cast times, this helps us to hit Eclipses quicker and then maximize our PvP damage.

10) Chaotic Shadowspirit Diamond is finally fixed. Not that it will be our BiS for either PvP or PvE, but the fact that it is correct is much better.

No More 15 vs. 15 Rated BGs - My Rant...I Mean, Opinion

2011-02-07T09:28:00.000-05:00

WTF Blizzard? Seriously...you wanted to start this great thing with finally making battlegrounds matter in Cataclysm and then you go and pull this shit. 10 vs. 10 rated BGs is just another frickin arena bracket at this point with Twin Peaks, Warsong Gulch, and Battle of Gilneas as the arenas. It is basically objective based arenas.

On top of that, your explanation as to why you are doing this is shit. "People don't play 15 vs. 15 brackets." Yeah, it is the same reason why most guilds don't run 25 man PvE content anymore. What's the point of it? You get the same rewards for running 10 mans so whats the point. If you were smart, you could do 10 vs. 10 or 15 vs. 15 rated battlegrounds every week. It will be just like some guilds that prefer to run 25 man PvE content. Some rated BGs groups will run 15 vs. 15 all the time if given the chance. However, you just took that chance away. Hell, throw 25 vs. 25 back in the mix and give us some Alterac Valley and Isle of Conquest rated BGs. I know my guild would do it in a heartbeat.

This has pretty much destroyed any desire to do rated BGs anymore. Yes, they are going to modify Alterac Valley, Eye of the Storm, and Strands of the Ancients to fit 10 mans. I will continue doing it to improve my rating, but I just want to let you know that this is bullshit. And every major content patch in Cataclysm better include a new BG. I personally wouldn't mind an underwater BG in Vashj'ir. It would be an interesting mechanic at least.

But for the love of God, open up 15 vs. 15 to an every week option. That way, on nights were we are having trouble getting 15 people on to run rated, we can run 10's, just like the PvE raiders can do now. I thought when the announcements for Cataclysm came across, they were finally taking PvP seriously. Unfotunately, right now, I see that is not the case at all.

Header Contest Results - Better Late Than Never

2011-01-28T09:45:00.000-05:00

The winner has been posted on the site for a while now, but I wanted to make sure that I formally announced the winner. Thanks to everybody who voted. When the voting closed, we had 103 votes, which was a great turnout for the voting. And now, the formal results.

Grand Prize Winner

Prize - Header for Redhawk's Gaze for Full Length of Cataclysm, Sidebar Credit to Site, Two 3-Month Game Cards and Two Vanity Pets (No mounts or plushies) of your choice. ($80 value)

Kevin (I'm not giving out full names here.)

Second Place Winner

Prize - One 3-Month Game Card and One Vanity Pet (No mounts or plushies) of your choice ($40 value)

Jason from the WoWPhiles Podcast

Third Place Winner

Prize - The Shattering Novel and One Vanity Pet (No Mounts or Plushies) of your choice ($25 value)

Matthew (Again, No Last Names)

Congrats to the winners. You will be contacted soon at the e-mails you provided in order to get your prizes. And thanks for all the entries and the votes given during this contest. I'm sure I will be doing another contest in the near future again so keep coming back to the site.

Moonkin PvP Tricks in Isle of Conquest

2011-01-27T10:02:00.000-05:00

In the final part of my PvP series, I go through the last of the battlegrounds, Isle of Conquest. While it is a mix of Arathi Basin and Alterac Valley, there are some specific things you can do as a moonkin.

1) Starfall At Docks Is Win - One of the most commonly used strats in Isle of Conquest is to have stealther go over to Docks, let the other team purposely take it, then destroy the catapults and glaives that come up. Then once you kill them, you kill the other team and then capture the node. Starfall allows you to hit all the catapults and glaives at once which makes it much easier to destroy stuff.

2) Typhoon at Hanger - Since Hanger has a nice drop off right near the flag, you can use your Typhoon to knock people off. It may or may not kill them, but you can keep them away.

3) Wall Strategy - The big question is where should you be as a moonkin when it comes to taking down the wall. My personal preference is to be inside the keep and running bombs. This is for a few reasons. One, you can be the bomb protector and prevent the enemy from disarming the bombs, usually by using Typhoon. Two, you can graveyard camp and have a chance to get some extra honor. Three, once the wall goes down, you are right there to help kill the boss. The most ideal way to get in is the hanger and parachuting into the keep. However, if you are at the docks, just get a catapult and catapult yourself over the wall.

4) PvE Gear Once Enemy General is Open - You can change gear in the middle of a BG. Once the bosses room is open, if you have PvE moonkin gear, you might want to use it here. Main reason is that a lot of Isle of Conquest becomes who can kill the other general quicker, something that is not even true in Alterac Valley. Seconds may determine the winner and the loser. In that case, you want to maximize your damage. This is even regardless of the enemy being around because the enemy is going to focus on tanks and healers to try to wipe the group.

5) Typhoon Down the Stairs - If the enemy decides to rush your team in their general's room, you can give your team a few extra seconds by Typhoon down the stairs. This will knock them back down and give you a few seconds to possibly finish off the boss. Wild Mushrooms on the stairs also works incredibly well, especially when combined with Fungal Growth.

And that is is. If you noticed trroughout this series, I very rarely talked about how to PvP, but just things we can do as moonkins. Unfotunately, there is no blog post I can write to tell you how to PvP. I can give you tips and tricks to use, but you have to just practice PvPing and honing your skills. Just like you don't know every boss mechanic until you step into the raid, you won't recognize situations until you PvP.

Moonkin PvP Tricks in Alterac Valley

2011-01-25T11:35:00.000-05:00

Part 6 of the moonkin PvP tactics takes us into the first 40 man battleground, Alterac Valley. There are a lot of tactics you can use here to help you win in terms of protecting flags, capturing flags, etc. that have been covered already, but there are a few things moonkins can excel in with this battleground.

1) Remember Your a Druid - You can stealth all the way to the other base and capture the closest graveyard. In fact, if you are in pre-made AV groups, you will be told to stealth all the way and take the closest graveyard to the enemy general.

2) AV Rezzing - AV may be the one battleground where you can get away with rezzing a teammate. Especially if you are on the opposite end of the battleground. If you see people go down, tell them not to release and you can rez them right there. The only case where you couldn't is if somebody takes their insignia which despawns their body.

3) Choose Your Role Before Hand - If your group needs a tank or healer, you can't change specs when the BG starts so you have to do it before hand. You can change your gear out at any time though.

4) Typhoon in Towers - It may not kill the enemy, but it will keep them away long enough to either capture or recapture a tower. The best way to do it is to go into the flag room and stand with your back against the wall so you can see people coming in. This is also one of the best places to use Wild Mushrooms + Fungal Growth.

5) If You Are a Recaller, Recall in Cat Form - Main reason is that you may need to stealth as soon as you recall in order to go get your bunkers back. If you protect the bunkers/towers, your general is stronger and will take more people to kill.

However, the biggest piece of advice I can offer is find a good pre-made. This BG is the equivalent of trying to herd cats unless you have a great pre-made group. On AV weekends, I usually try to run with a group called QueueQ, which runs pre-made BGs across servers which helps to get 40 people doing the same thing. I don't know what their win percentage is, but it has to be in the high 90%.

Also, I have not forgotten about the prizes for the header winners. Hopefully, by the end of this week, I will have it at least announced.

Moonkin PvP Tricks for Battle of Gilneas

2011-01-24T10:23:00.000-05:00

In part 5 of my moonkin PvP series, I talk about some of the tricks for Battle of Gilneas 10 man battleground, which is my favorite 10 man BG of all of them for some of the same reasons that Arathi Basin is my favorite 15 man BG. Unfortunately, there are not as many tricks for Battle of Gilneas as there are for Arathi Basin, but I have a few tips.

1) Keep Them In the Water in Waterworks - Seeing the enemy coming trough the water at Waterworks is basically watching your enemy and loling at them. Unless they have waterwalking, they are not going to cross that stream quickly. Typhoon them backwards if you can. Since Waterworks is set up on a slight incline, you can attack without them attacking you.

2) Stealth Is Your Friend - The difference between a loss and a win in Battle of Gilneas may be a ninja cap. I have been behind by 500 points in Battle of Gilneas and have come back to win by capping two nodes and holding them. Use the fact that you are a druid to ninja cap. And heaven help the enemy who is by himself holding a node. If he is melee, I'm going to stealth behind him, Typhoon him away from the flag, entangling roots him, and then capture the node. If caster, add a Solar Beam in. From there, I will proceed to kill him.

3) Roots and Cyclone on the Road - In most BGs, you are told to explicitly not fight on the roads. Battle of Gilneas may be the exception to that rule. If the group is using a zerg strategy, they can easily capture a node. This is where roots can help you lessen their zerg numbers. If you see them moving as a group, try to roots a few members. Their delay in showing up may be the difference between keeping the node and losing it.

And that is it for Battle of Gilneas. This BG is alot more about coordination of your group. The more coordinated you can be on kill targets, etc., the easier this BG is. Tomorrow, I will be talking about tips on Alterac Valley and on Wednesday will be talking about Isle of Conquest.

I Don't Work on My Birthday (So I Give You A Secret Santa Guest Blog Post by Leafshine)

2011-01-21T09:30:00.000-05:00

You know when people have their birthdays around Christmas time and you occassionally get a gift that they tell you is for both Christmas and your birthday. This kind of thing happened today. I got a Blog Azeroth Secret Santa blog post yesterday, which is both a Christmas and a birthday present. Today's Guest Blog post is by Leafshine of Lust for Flower. I hope you enjoy the blog post.

You know how at every Christmas party, there’s someone who turns up late, brings a rubbish Secret Santa present, and generally embarrasses everyone?

Hello, sorry I’m late, sorry this is late and so shoddy. Where’s the dancefloor?

*ahem*

In fact, I’m so very late with this that it barely counts as a Christmas present at all does it? It’s more of a New Year’s gift. And that gives me an idea…

Best in Slot Healer Resolutions for 2010

As told by a slightly drunk Leafy to that pretty woman from accounts in the inappropriate dress…

1. Take a while to sit back and enjoy the lore - this expansion is just chock full of the crunchy, lovely lores. Each new zone is much more a geographical representation of a storyline that a place where you quest. And, if you’re into the healz, as so many of us are, there’s so much world-healing to be done. Have you seen my newly-erected world pillar? Feel free to touch it. It’s rock hard. Literally.

2. Learn to Love Ultimate Triage - remember that dreadful quest in Theramore, back in the day? Where you had to triage patients to get the next level of First Aid? That’s our new playstyle, that is. And there’s only one way to prepare. You’re going to need wit, humour and an eye for damage. So, rent entire series of M*A*S*H, and get to grips with life in wartime…

3. This space to let. Apply Leafshine t. Druid, that inn in the Dwarven section of Stormwind, Eastern Kingdoms. Reasonable rates.

4. Come to Terms with Your Inner Healer - This is clearly an expansion where Blizzard expects - nay, demands, that we are altaholics. The 80 to 85 content is barely going to cover an average weekend holed up in a dingy motel while the heat with the cops dies down after the last time you… Oh. So other people don’t spend time like that? Never mind. The 80 to 85 content isn’t going to last very long at all, so you’re going to be levelling alts. And you’re going to end up dual-speccing to healing. Face it. You’re too used to not queueing for randoms. However attractive standing at the back and pewpewing might seem, given a 20 minute wait for some hardcore Stonecore, you’re be back in bandages as soon as you can say “dual-spec me harder, baby”.

5. Don’t Leave Your Staff in the Ground - you just know a Worgen will urinate on it to territory mark. Bad dog!

6. Make http://www.leafshine.net your homepage. You KNOW it makes sense.

7. Don’t Hit On The Stonemother. She’s Ratters’ Girl Now. (Link: http://needmorerage.blogspot.com/2010/12/across-cavern-our-eyes-met.html)

8. Make a Point of Admiring Druid Healers’ Gear. It ain’t going to make them feel any better about what’s been done to tree form, but you have an outside chance of scoring, so it’s got to be worth a go, right? “Hey, darlin’, that Tier 11 you’re wearing would look great on my floor…”

9. Race and Name Change - You’ll need this to keep raiding if you’ve followed New Years’ Resolution #8 closely enough.

10. Don’t Stand In The Fire. Unless you really need that Feat of Strength.

Now, fetch your coat, and let’s blow this place…

Moonkin PvP Tricks in Warsong Gulch and Twin Peaks

2011-01-18T09:35:00.000-05:00

In the 4th part of my moonkin PvP series, I'm going to cover both Warsong Gulch and Twin Peaks together since they are very similar. The main difference is location and number of entrances into the base, with Twin Peaks having more entrances into the base including a water entrance a lot like Team Fortress 2.

1) Most Powerful Weapon - Entangling Roots - The use when trying to get your flag back is obvious. You use it to slow down the enemy flag carrier. However, if you have melee that is annoying your flag carrier, roots can help your flag runner get ahead and not be snared, slowed, etc. by melee.

2) Think of Your Flag Runner As A Demolisher from Strand of the Ancients - Your Remove Corruption does wonders here. It can keep your flag carrier alive with constant decurses. If you are tasked with staying with your flag carrier, be ready to decurse. Also, you can use your Typhoon to keep people away from your flag carrier like you would a demolisher.

3) Druids Are Great Flag Runners - When you get adequate resilience (3k +), druids are great as flag runners. We can carry the flag in travel form which means we are the fastest flag carrier. In addition, we can switch to bear form during heavy damage times or we can switch to moonkin form to get pesky attackers off of our backs.

4) Cycloning Flag Runners - If a flag runner has a great healer, you might think it is easier to cyclone the healer and go after the flag runner. However, the opposite is more likely true. Let me explain. If you cyclone the healer, that gives the flag runner time to retreat. They key is you want to kill the flag runner and him not to run. If you can cyclone the flag runner then kill the healer, you can then kill the flag carrier with no problem since he can't run. The one exception to this trick is if the timer has already weakened the flag carrier. In that case, kill the flag carrier and cyclone the healer.

5) Aquatic Form - As I mentioned, there is a water entrance into the flag rooms at Twin Peaks. (At least for the Alliance attacking the Horde. I'm assuming that is true for the Horde as well.) Since you can travel faster in Aquatic Form, this is likely the druid's best route of attack and the best route to leaving their base.

As you may have noticed, there is a new header on the top. That is the winner of the Header contest. I will be making a formal blog post in the next couple of days to announce the full list of winners. Thanks to everybody who voted.

Moonkin PvP Tricks in Strand of the Ancients

2011-01-14T12:46:00.000-05:00

For the third part of my moonkin PvP tricks, I round out the 15 v. 15 battlegrounds with Strand of the Ancients.

1) Strand of the Ancients Isn't About PvP - This is a general rule, but it relates to specifically what we can do as moonkins. Your focus should very rarely be on players in Strand of the Ancients. If on defense, your focus should be on killing the demolishers. If on offense, you should focus on keeping players off of your demolishers. This means more than nukes, moonkins should be using slowing and controlling players and demolishers.

2) The Moonkin Typhoon Demolisher Weapon - On offense, one of my favorite tricks is to get on a demolisher and turn backwards. Given the speed of the demolishers, the defense will always be chasing you. This means the more you can keep them off of you, the better it is. Typhoon is perfect for this. The demolisher is shooting forward, I'm typhooning backwards.

3) Entangling Roots + Solar Beam = Control - Melee is fairly easy to keep off of demolishers when you are offense. You Typhoon plus Entangling Roots and you can keep them controlled. Casters are a little more difficult. If you see a caster just destroying your demolishers, you can still Typhoon them for a snare and may push them out of cast range. However, you can Roots plus Solar Beam to keep them silenced. And since Roots won't break until damaged, you don't have to damage them and keep them there.

4) Fungal Growth Helps - When you are trying to slow demolishers on defense, you will need all your tools that can slow. You can roots the demolisher. Typhoon can add a snare effect. However, having the talent Fungal Growth helps a lot. One, you can send your treants on the demolisher and when they go away, they create an area that snares. Two, you can use your Wild Mushrooms to cause damage and create and area of snares.

5) Remove Corruption - There is a spell that is in your spellbook that you may not use to often, especially as moonkin. However, if can be used to help your demolishers. Of course the defense is going to throw up DoTs on the demolishers to kill them. Remove Corruption can remove a poison and a curse from the demolisher. It is not as powerful as what resto druids can do since it will also remove magic effects, but it may be the difference maker.

And with that, we are done with the 15 vs. 15 battlegrounds. Next week, hopefully I will get to the 10 vs. 10 battlegrounds and the 40 vs. 40 battlegrounds.

Today is the final day for voting for the Header contest. The winners will be announced over this weekend or Monday.

Moonkin PvP Tricks in Eye of the Storm

2011-01-13T12:14:00.000-05:00

Continuing the series in tricks and tips for moonkins, we move to what is probably my second favorite battleground, Eye of the Storm. While alot like Arathi Basin, there are a few particulars you can do here to give yourself an advantage.

1) Create Line of Sight Issues - One of the first things you may notice in Eye of the Storm is the nodes you are capturing have a few areas to create line of sight issues. From each of the nodes being elevated slightly to a lot of pillars, blocks, etc. The best way to think of each of the nodes as each one is a little arena. As moonkins, we have several ways to do this. My personal favorite is to use Typhoon to knock them off the elevated platform. However, there are several tactics you can use from Cycloning to get around a line of sight to Entangling melee. The more you can create this issues, the better is will be for you.

2) The 5 Locations of Typhoon - Yes, there are 5 different locations you can Typhoon someone and kill them in Eye of the Storm. The most obvious is easy, which is the center. However, do you know about the other 4?

A lot of times, especially with opponents who zerg nodes, they will all be piling into an area. Sometimes when you are attacking them, they will move to the back area of nodes. When they do that, you can Typhoon them off the node completely to their deaths. That is why it is important to never go around to the backside of a node. Let them go back there when you are fighting them and then you have an easy honorable kill.

3) Flag Defense > Flag Running - Any druid can be an effective flag runner. However, if you have a feral or resto druid, you may want them to carry the flag over you. Since you are one of a few classes that have a knockback, you would be more effective in maintaining control over the middle if the battle comes down to a 2 node versus 2 node battle for the flag. The preferred route is to capture 3 or 4 nodes though so you don't have to worry about flags at all and play defense at the nodes.

4) Protect the Flag Runner - This is more of a general moonkin trick with any battleground that involves flags, but you have several different ways to protect the flag runner. First, you can Roots the melee giving the flag carrier time to run. Second, you can get close to the flag runner, turn around towards the attackers and push them back with Typhoon. This tactic is great in this battleground. Third, you can use the 1-2 punch of Roots plus Solar Beam to control the casters.

5) Don't Fall off the Base - Yes, for some reason, it is really easy to do (or maybe it is just me), especially if you don't have Slow Fall. However, if you do, just switch to cat form to mitigate some of the damage and then remount on the ground after throwing some HoTs on yourself.

Final reminder: The voting for the Header contest closes tomorrow. Please get in your final votes now. We are 4 votes away from 100 votes.

Moonkin PvP Tricks in Arathi Basin

2011-01-11T13:19:00.000-05:00

This week and likely into next, I'm gonna do a series of tips and tricks for moonkins in each of the PvP zones. Today, I'm gonna be starting with what I think is the pinnacle of 15 vs. 15 PvP, Arathi Basin. It is a very fluid battleground where the difference between a win and a loss is coordination, focus-firing, and moving quickly. While I'm smart enough not to give out my guild's strategy for Arathi Basin, there are a few tricks you can use as a moonkin when PvPing in that area.

1) Typhoon Off of Lumber Mill - Woe to the healer or caster who is standing away from the flag and near the edge. Usually, the very next move will be for me to come up and Typhoon you off the edge. If you have taken any damage before that, you will likely be dead unless you can heal yourself or a priest life-grips you back.

2) Moonfire/Sunfire Is Your Friend When Defending - Arathi Basin is the main battleground where you may be defending nodes, although the new Battle for Gilneas also has you defending nodes. (My personal favorite node to defend - Lumber Mill. See Trick 1.) Even if it is not the main battle you are fighting, you can use Moonfire/Sunfire to your advantage. One, it is an immediate strike which will interrupt anybody taking the node. Second, it is a DoT which will further prevent tha person from capping the node. When I'm defending a node, the very first thing I try to do is to Moonfire/Sunfire everybody so they can't cap it until it wears off. I will also add in that Typhoon works well for keeping people off nodes as well. Not a DoT, but at least it will blow everybody the opposite direction and snare them on the way back.

3) Cat Form Saves Lives - If you happen to be on the unfortunate end of a moonkin or an elemental shaman and are flying off of lumber mill yourself, remember that you take less damage in cat form. Nine times out of ten, you will survive a fall from lumber mill as a cat. This goes to a bigger issue with moonkins that I have talked about before, and this is to keybind your forms. You should do this anyway for a bigger PvP trick for druids which is to shapeshift often to get out of Frost Traps, Stuns, Snares, etc.

4) Get to Blacksmith Before Anybody With Aquatic Form - There are not a lot of times where we get to use Aquatic Form as druids, but Arathi Basin is one of them. If you do not have Water Walking, you can swim faster in Aquatic Form from your base to Blacksmith to help defend or pick up the node. This is one of two druid shortcuts in Arathi Basin, with the other being...

5) Cat Form Drop to Gold Mine - You take very little damage from the fall and can assist in a battle at Gold Mine, which may be the difference in taking or defending the node.

There are a lot of general PvP tactics I could throw out and I will hopefully cover some of those as time goes on, but these are some cool tricks you could do to help you win Arathi Basin.

Just a reminder about voting for the Header Contest. Friday will be the last day to vote for the winner so please go and support your favorite.

When To Decide To Change Your Role

2011-01-06T10:34:00.001-05:00

Last night, I had a conversation with my GM about changing my role in raids. For most of ICC, I was one of the core raiding team. I enjoyed it and I still enjoy raiding when I can at level 85. However, there have been several things in my life that made me purposely asked to be put as a backup to our other moonkin. Many guilds are getting to the point now where they are deciding and settling their core raid team. Here are some things you have to look at when deciding whether it is time to change your role on a raiding team/guild.

1) Look At Your Personal Life - I'm gonna be moving and getting a new job probably within the next month. I don't know how these things will affect my playing time in game. The more uncertainty there is in the short term, the more that you should be willing to move to a backup role.

2) Look At the Future - If you think there is a reasonable chance that you will not be able to raid consistently during Cataclysm, then it is better to step aside. Having served as an officer in a guild before, there is nothing more annoying than gearing somebody up who isn't able to come regularly. That is gear that somebody else can use regularly. I am getting married this year to the love of my life. As much as I hope that I could play 3.5 hours a night for 3 days of a week, it is likely not going to happen. I still will be able to play, but maybe not a hardcore raider's schedule. It would be unfair for me to get geared up in raids before other moonkins in the raid if I may not be able to put it to good use for the guild.

3) Look At New Opporunities - My guild just started our PvP division, Vanguard. I have been trying to do both rated and unrated battlegrounds as much as possible. What I'm finding is that I'm really enjoying it. I even wanted to be one of the battleground leaders. Since this is an opportunity to step up and be a leader in my guild's PvP division, I decided that my role has to change in order to be the best PvPer I can be. It is not that I will never raid, but when you are leading battlegrounds, you don't need PvE gear which means I have to finish getting the PvP set done to be effective at PvP.

So basically, I'm going to be moving in my guild from the PvE to the PvP division. This probably means more than likely, you are going to see a few more PvP articles in this blog. You may have noticed this already this year anyway since 3 of my first 4 blog post in 2011 (not counting the Header Contest voting and site statistics) are PvP related. I'm still gonna cover PvE raiding as well as general WoW talk, but you may notice an increase in PvP moonkin talk from what it was before.

Also, just a reminder to keep voting in the Header Contest. We have over 80 votes already and would love to see it jump to over 100 at least. Voting will close on January 14th.

Playing Too Conservatively

2011-01-05T11:05:00.000-05:00

Last night was a frustrating night of raiding for me. I don't know what was going on, but I was constantly behind our other moonkin in DPS. When I have issues, I always go back and review my spec, spend some time on the target dummy, and make sure my gear is enchanted, gemmed properly, etc. I noticed two big things. One, I really need to finish grinding out Hyjal and Therazane rep to get those enchants. Second thing I figured out took a little bit of thinking.

When we are trying to find DPS problems, we check the spec, rotation, etc. to make sure it is all correct. I thought the spec I had was good to keep mana mangement better. I had both Moonglow and Dreamstate, two major mana saving capabilities. However, looking at the other moonkins spec, I noticed one major thing. He had neither. He was going with a more damage oriented raid spec, I was going towards a mana conservation spec, and he was winning.

I mentioned a few blog post ago that I figured out in 25 mans that mana doesn't seem to be as big of an issue as in 5 mans or questing. This is where I started putting the pieces together. Why would I take a mana conservation talent over damage talents like Owlkin Frenzy and Master Shapeshifter? I haven't had mana issues. The reason I took it initially was obvious. I specced this way right when I hit 85 when I was having serious mana issues. Now, most of my gear is 246 with a few epics from Wildhammer Clan. (Yes, despite my advice, I loved the Wildhammer questline, so I was almost revered with them before hitting 85.) and the mana issues seems to have resolved a lot, especially with going with spirit for hit. The reason I had kept the spec for so long was I was playing on the safe side of mana while ignoring what the main role of moonkin is in the first place, damage. I was playing too conservatively.

After changing my spec, I decided to go whack on the target dummies for a while. (No comments from the LeetSauced group. I know you want to, but no.) I found it was a DPS increase despite not being able to proc Owlkin Frenzy since nothing is hitting me. I'm sure in a raid enviroment with some fights have raid wide damage, it will proc to give more DPS increase. In addition, I was playing too conservatively with my trinket. I have the Figurine - Jeweled Serpent, which is an awesome caster trinket and a reward for being a jewelcrafter. Besides having a little snake follow me around for a bit, which is cool, it is a huge DPS boost. However, I had it macroed to each of my nukes. This would have been the conservative route. The better route was to not macro it and hit it when I proc the next Eclipse after it comes off cooldown. Again, doing this lead to a DPS increase.

When you are diagnosing problems with your damage or whatever your role is, look at all the normal stuff. However, also look to see if you are playing too conservatively. If you had your spec when you hit 85 and did not account for new gear, you likely are playing as a new 85 versus a geared level 85. If you can change it, you can take away the conservative choices you made early and make you more effective in the job you are doing.

Also, just a reminder, please vote for the winner of the Header Contest. I'm sure the makers of all 3 headers would greatly appreciate it.

P.S. After posting this blog post to Twitter, I got the natural question of what is my current spec. For my new moonkin spec, I would refer you to Quieth's Quips Guide to Moonkin. He has a damage focused spec and a mana focused spec. I went with his damage focused spec. This only goes to level 79, so you will want to pick up the two talents in Resto to get to Master Shapeshifter. I also put the last point in Solar Beam. He also has an in-depth guide to moonkins that go into more details than my quick and dirty moonkin guide.

Get Your Honor For Nothing, Your PvP Gear For Free (Until Yesterday)

2011-01-04T11:24:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Outlandish Podcast for this Awesome Parody Song

I am not one to use exploits to further myself in the game. I may take advantage of people who put cut green gems on the AH for less than 9 gold or take Jeweler's Settings for Jewelcrafting, turn them around, and sell them on the AH for 5 times their vendor price, but I don't try to mess with game mechanics.

That was until last week. When Blizzard, for some reason beyond me, set the honor for winning Tol Barad on offense at 1800. The problem when Blizzard raised the honor for winning a Tol Barad to that level was their was no reason to defend it. This in turn lead to less Horde being in Tol Barad for defense, which means everybody who queued on the Alliance side did not get in. It also provided no incentive for Alliance to queue for defense which lead to a similar problem for the Horde. This lead to what became known as the "bridge exploit". In between the Tol Barad battleground and the Tol Barad dailies section, there is a bridge connecting the two areas. Someone found that if you crossed the bridge into the battleground at the very last second even if you weren't actually queued for the fight, you would get the 1800 honor. I tried it once to see if it would work and it actually did. I did it on a Saturday morning when the server was light. (It was like 4 AM server time, but 7 AM on the East Coast.) I tried to do it again, but between gankers (mages with their Ring of Frost or Frost Nova and people not calling out the time to move, I was not able to get it again.

Yesterday, Blizzard came back from their Christmas/New Year vacation and they decided this was the very first thing they were going to fix. They decided to lower the honor to 360 for a win and less for a successful defense. The bridge exploit is not fixed, but they are working on it. I have a simple way they can fix the bridge exploit once and for all. Make the honor for a successful defense and offense the same. This way, everybody will try to queue to win in. It may be harder to win on offense, which the developers wanted after the steamrolling people did to Wintergrasp, but it will prevent people from gaming the system. A defense in Tol Barad is easier than it was in Wintergrasp, but it still takes coordination. Plus, I'm sure they are using the same balancing system they used in Wintergrasp to even out the sides so eventually, the other faction will win. I'm okay with 360 honor for an offensive win, although I did love the 1800 honor I got one time. But a successful defensive win should offer the same thing to incentivize people coming in and playing and not making the opposite faction resort to exploits to get their honor.

Just a reminder, please vote for the winner of the Header Contest. One of the few elections where your vote actually does matter in determining the winner. Show your support for your favorite.

My First (Real) Arena Experience

2011-01-03T10:34:00.000-05:00

This past week, I finally started an arena team as part of the requirements to be on the rated battleground team in Conquest. (Yes, we are recruiting for Legion, our PvE section, and Vanguard, our PvP section. See site on sidebar for details.) My 3 vs. 3 team, Poker in the Front, consist of a Holy Pally, Rogue, and myself as moonkin. We did pretty good the first week going 7 - 6 and when I actually get some noticable resilience gear instead of going off a pseudo-glass cannon principle, I'm sure that will improve even more. If you are a moonkin looking to get into some arenas, here is some of the things I have learned that will hopefully help you out.

1) Don't Forget You Can Stealth - Some classes don't have this luxury in arenas, but druids can start off a match stealthed. In fact, two members of my 3 vs. 3 team can stealth, and most teams aren't insane enough to rush a holy pally with two members not showing. This gives you time to map out your strategy, especially if you know who you are up against.

2) Check Their Buffs - One of the things that I had to pick up pretty quickly is to tell if we had a druid or a rogue we were against since both can stealth. The easy way to do it besides waiting for them to show is to check their buffs. If they have Mark of the Wild and no druid showing, it is a druid. If they don't have Mark of the Wild, it is a rogue. If everybody starts off a match stealthed, assume it is a 2 rogue, 1 druid comp.

3) Healer First - Our team's first goal in any match was to find out who the healer was. Not all comps have a healer. (Three feral cat druid team, I hate you with a passion.) From there, we would either start off sapping the healer or entangling roots and Solar Beam the healer. If the healer can't heal himself, he is as good as dead. Once the healer is dead, you have probably about 80% chance of winning the match from there.

4) Protect Your Healer - If I saw people grouping up on my healer, I would do what I could to help out. That typically means the first thing I would do is Typhoon the other team to get them away. From there, I can Entangling Roots, Cyclone, etc. to give my healer some time to recover. Sometimes he can, sometimes he can't, especially if he has DoTs on him.

5) License to Starfall - Starfall is incredible in arenas. It can damage their entire team at once. Plus, since it is automatically multiple mobs, you get the 20 star upper limit. I wouldn't use it to start until you have controlled the healer, but then, bust it out.

6) Heal - Remember as a caster druid, you don't have all the heals that resto druids do, but your heals you do have still hit pretty hard due to your intellect. Don't be afraid to throw some HoTs on you or your teammates. Tranquility is also awesome to keep up the team if you are not the focus.

7) Try to Proc an Eclipse - Eclipsed nukes can take anything down relatively quickly. You are talking upwards of 30k Starfires and 20k Wraths in people with resilience and much more if they don't have any.

8) More Resilience, The Better (To a Point) - Many blog post ago, I mentioned that when choosing between PvE and PvP gear, you will always want to go with PvE gear for PvE content and PvP gear for PvP content. This holds true 95% of the time. However, there is a point where you have high resilience, but you have sacrificed damage. You have to find a balance. This means that it may be okay to have your resilience set with maybe a weapon that is PvE that is more powerful. In Wrath, I was using Neiblung as my PvP staff due to the valkyr proc. I haven't found anything like that in Cataclysm yet, but I'm sure I will find something like it.

9) Have Fun - When first starting arenas, you are going to lose. Just count on it. You will get better over time. Just like PvE, it takes practice to get your rotation and dynamics down. The difference is PvP tends to be more jerk reaction. The quicker you can react, the better. But it takes time to learn this.

10) Communication Is Key - If you can't be in a Vent or Mumble server with your teammates, down join their team. The key to arena is constant communication. The more you communicate, the faster you can react, the more successful you will be.

As I said, these are things that I'm still learning. I'm not great in arenas by any stretch of the imagination. But I had fun and I look forward to doing this weekly with my team members.

Just a reminder, please vote for the winner of the Header contest. We have had 31 voters so far and all of them have gotten votes as the favorite. If you want to choose what the Header for the blog will be for the rest of Cataclysm, please go and vote.

Site News: 2010 Retrospective of Redhawk's Gaze

2011-01-02T12:47:00.000-05:00

For the first time on Redhawk's Gaze, my actual cat. Meet Abby.

This is the time of the month where I thank everybody for coming by the site and I will start off no different this time. In December, we went over 6,000 pageviews and had approximately 5,000 visits, both increasing over the previous month drastically. All I can say is thank you for your continued support of this site. I will continue to bring you the best in moonkin theory and the World of Warcraft.

However, this was also the end of 2010 and I wanted to look back over the past year and see where we were to where we are now. Here are some interesting statistics about the blog for 2010.

From June 2010, the first time I collected data through Google Analytics, we have had the monthly visits increase by 736% and pageviews increase by 665%.

From June 2010 until December 2010, we have had over 18,000 visits with over 13,000 unique visits.

From June 2010 until December 2010, we have had almost 25,000 pageviews.

The day with the highest number of visits was October 13th, which was the day after both the LeetSauced Podcast and the Raid Warning Druid Roundtable was released.

The top 5 countries that visited the site were the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Sweden. The first South American country is number 16 with Brazil. The first Asian country is Singapore at number 21.

The top 5 cities in the world that visited the site were London, New York, Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne.

The top 5 blog post for 2010 by visits were the following:
1) Recommendations for Cataclysm Guild Reputation (Blog Azeroth Shared Topic)
2) Cataclsym Druid Changes - My Possible Moonkin Build
3) Moonkin DPS Rotation - Present and Likely Future
4) Hey Moonkins, Check Your Gear (So You Don't Get Screwed on 4.0.1)
5) Level 85 Pre-Raid Gear Recommendations for Moonkins

The top 5 most commented on blog post for 2010 (minus contests) were the following:
1) Thinking Without Portals
2) Operation Gnomergan: How It Should Have Been Handled
3) Signs of a Bad Moonkin Player
4) WoW As A Scapegoat
5) 3 Way Tie: 3 Week Gameplan: Final Things To Do In Wrath That Every Raider/PvPer Should Do; Sickness and WoW: When to Sign Out for the Night; and To Starfall or Not To Starfall (Actually, That Is Not a Question, I'm Going to Use Starfall)

I hope you enjoyed this retrospective of the site. As great as 2010 was, I'm sure that 2011 will be even better. Thanks for all your continued support, reading, commenting, etc. and I hope you continue to come.

Also, please remember to vote in the Header Contest Results. One of the 3 finalist will get to be the header for the rest of Cataclysm, so I hope you give them all the support you can.

Header Contest - The Final Three

2011-01-01T09:13:00.000-05:00

Thanks to everybody who entered the Header Contest for the site. As promised, I am going to announce the top 3 place finishers for the Header Contest and will tell you how to vote for the winner.

Finalist #1

Click Through To See Full Size

Finalist #2

Click Through To See Full Size

Finalist #3

Click Through To See Full Size

There are your three finalist for the contest. Here is how the voting will occur. Thanks to MicroPoll, I have set up an online poll on the bottom of the page. I have set it up to only vote once per IP address to not allow multiple votings by a few people. I'm also not listing who made which one to avoid any popularity contest until after the winner is chosen. I want it to be based solely on the work they did. So to the finalist, good luck. May the best header win. Voting wil close 2 weeks from today.

Moonkin Meta Conundrum (a.k.a What To Do Until 4.1?)

2010-12-30T09:53:00.000-05:00

Last night, I finally picked up enough JPs after a couple instance runs to pick up the Cluster of Stars, my leather helm of choice pre-raid. However, it also was the first helm in Cataclysm that has a meta gem slot. However, this is where a situation arose.

There is no doubt that the Chaotic Shadowspirit Diamond is the preferred meta gem. It is a 54 critical strike rating plus 3% increased damage with critical strikes. The math, which if you would like to see it, I would recommend going to Graylo's site, finds this to be true. However, it is going to be broken until 4.1 where they will return to requiring two blue gems like the old Chaotic Skyflare Diamond. The current meta requires more blue gems than red gems, which as moonkins should never happen in the first place.

From there, we have three different choices to go to. Each is dependant on what you may need.

Bracing Shadowspirit Diamond - 54 Intellect + 2% Decreased Threat

This is a very attractive meta for me specifically. One, it has a blue gem requirement so that when 4.1 fixes Chaotic, it is going to be easier to transition over in terms of regemming. Second, it has an intellect boost, which is our most important stat behind being hit capped. Third, it has decreased threat which means it is Starfalls for everybody. (Not really, but you get my point.)

Ember Shadowspirit Diamond - 54 Intellect + 2% Maximum Mana

Originally, I thought this would be the one of choice depending on your mana issues. However, it appears that at least in 25 man raiding, mana doesn't seem to be as big of a deal as first thought. (See post from yesterday.) This means that having more mana may not be as good as having some sort of threat reduction.

Fleet Shadowspirit Diamond - 54 Mastery + Minor Run Speed Increase

If you remember the reasoning behind why Tuskarr's Vitality was the boot enchant for choice in Wrath, then you know what the Fleet diamond is on the list. The faster you move, the sooner you can DPS. However, this gem has two major problems with it. One, it has Mastery, which is our worst stat. Second, there will be an enchant for a run speed increase for boots that will stil be preferred. The reason this is bad is because the speed run enchants don't cumulatively add up. In addition, looking at the math, this is the furtherest behind the Chaotic in terms of DPS by a good deal.

In terms of what I would recommend until 4.1, it is all dependant on what you want. If you have lots of gold to regem your gear when 4.1 and you want the maximum DPS, go with the Chaotic. (I would also look at Graylo's site for how to gem in this circumstance because it is not easy.) If you want to put our solid damage, decrease threat, and make it easier to regem after 4.1, go with the Bracing. If you are having mana issues in raids and 5 mans, go with the Ember. If you want to get a small run increase prior to getting your boots enchanted, go with the Fleet.

As I said, there is no doubt after 4.1, you will want to go with the Chaotic meta gem. It simply is the best output in DPS. Until then, we will just have to make due with the other gems out there.

Last reminder for this. Tomorrow is the last day for the Header Contest. I will close entries at midnight tomorrow night so if you want a chance to win some great prizes, this is your shot.

Lessons From First Night of Raiding

2010-12-29T09:56:00.000-05:00

Last night was the first night I got to step into a 25 man raid with my guild, Conquest. (Which we are recruiting quite a few classes so I would recommend checking them out with the link on the sidebar.) I was only in for one boss, Halfus, since they had been wiping to the second boss all last week and wanted the experienced people in there for that fight. Here are a few things that I found out while raiding:

1) Moonkin mana may not be as big of an issue in 25 man raids. - It may have just been the mechanics of the first fight, but I was never below half mana thanks to Eclipses, etc. As I start to get some actual raid gear, I may see this improve over time. I'm not gonna change my spec based off of one single boss kill, but if this continues, I may take points out of Moonglow and move them into Owlkin Frenzy.

2) Raid bosses are fun - Halfus is not the most involved fight in the game, but it sure is a lot of fun. Between the dragon breathing fire on you all the time to activating the drakes and whelps, it is a hectic fight, but a lot of fun. Which brings me to the next point.

3) Threat has changed - In 25 mans in Wrath, for the most part, I could open up on a boss almost immediately due to MDs, Tricks of the Trade, etc. to give the tank aggro. Not the case anymore. If I am popping Treants, Starfall, Wild Mushroom, adding DoTs, and start casting my nukes, I can pull aggro easy. It even lead to our second wipe. Now, it is better to delay slightly and let all the tanks pick up what they are going to pick up, then start bombing.

4) DPS standards have gone up - At the end of Wrath, I was pulling 13k - 15k DPS on most boss fights with highs of around 17k. Last night, I pulled 18k on the Halfus kill. It would have been great if the tank hadn't pulled 18k as well. (Admittingly, there are a lot of adds in that fight which add to tanks DPS) Most of the other DPS was above 20k + DPS. This shows mainly one thing, if you think you are gonna step into a raid with any green pieces and do great, it is not gonna happen. I still have a green 318 head that needs to be replaced in my moonkin set. Also, I really need something with a meta to get increased damage percentage. (Once they fix the Chaotic meta gem) I'm at 1700 JPs approximately, so I'm sure the head will now be my next purchase.

5) Trash Is Tough - Going back to trash like we saw in Ruby Sanctum, I think we had at least 6 - 7 different types of CC at one time on trash and we wiped more on trash then on bosses. The trash it tight and tough and is easy to pull extra groups. It requires special awareness to know that you are not pulling stuff you shouldn't. Also, goes without saying, Starfall is a no-no on this trash.

So overall, I enjoyed the first night of raiding. It was good to get back in the swing of things and am looking forward to more raiding with my guild.

Also, just a reminder about the Header Contest. The last day for entries is this Friday. After that, I will post the nominees the week after and will let the readers vote on the next header for the blog. Also, next Monday, I will have some major announcements on the new blog projects I talked about yesterday.

Best Cataclysm Factions for Moonkins

2010-12-28T09:38:00.000-05:00

In Wrath of the Lich King, they found easy ways to raise your reputation with factions whether it was tabards or relics of Ulduar. And, thank God they did. Remembering back from Burning Crusade where you had to run heroic in Zangarmarsh over and over and over again to raise Cenarion Expedition rep to get the best pre-raid feral tanking staff was insane.

In Cataclysm, they have expanded it to include every faction in the game including your major capital cities. (Which I personally appreciate after having got Crusader on my main and had to raise my city rep by either cloth or questing. A level 80 druid doing level 1 gnome/dwarf quest just didn't seem right.) However, determining which factions to do first can be a little tricky. Let me go through each of the major factions and break down what goodies you can get as a moonkin.

Wildhammer Clan - The Alliance faction found out in Twilight Highlands, the Wildhammer Clan has some of the most interesting quest to open up its faction. Also, there are several great rewards for moonkins as you raise your rep. At honored, you get leather caster shoulders. At revered, you get a nice caster ring. However, at exalted, you get a couple of nice epics. You get an epic caster neck and an incredibly nice caster waist. Also, there is a bonus if you are a feral tank because the leather gloves at exalted may end up being BiS until you get into heroic raids. Priority: High

Guardians of Hyjal - The single biggest thing you want from this faction is the head enchant at revered, the Arcanum of Hyjal, which will be your standard enchant for all your head pieces of gear as a moonkin. Beyond that, there is not a lot of great moonkin gear from here. There is a 333 cloak at honored and 346 leather caster gloves at revered. Unless you are a feral tank, there is nothing for you at exalted. However, solely due to the head enchant, you should get this faction to revered early.  Priority: High

Earthen Ring - Yes, Thrall may be there, but that doesn't mean as a moonkin, you should be. At least not at first. Both the caster pieces at honored and revered you could use have critical strike (Yuck!) and mastery (I just threw up in my mouth a little.) In addition, there is nothing at exalted for moonkins. Again, depending on your offspec, you may want to hit this early if you are a tank due to the head enchant. However, if you are focused on moonkin, stay away from Earthen Ring to begin with. Priority: Low

Therazane - Cataclysm's Sons of Hodir in more ways than one. First off, you start off as hated. Through about 5 quest, you quickly become friendly. However, the difference is they have a tabard this time instead of relics to up your reputation. In addition, they are also the faction with your shoulder enchants starting at honored. While the 346 rings are nothing special (unless you are a feral tank), you really want to get your shoulder enchants quickly, at least the honored ones to start.  Priority: High

Ramkahen - Come on. Do you expect a race of cat people to have anything for moonkins? Besides a 333 caster ring at honored, there is not a lot here except for a camel mount, which is gonna be awesome. However, in terms of priority, it is not gonna be the highest. They don't even have a lot of good feral druid stuff here. Priority:  Low

Baradin's Warden - The Tol Barad faction. There are a lot of interesting rewards, but nothing that really jumps out for moonkins though, although reforging the Slump of Time's hit into a massive amount of haste might be awesome. Also, there are a couple of cool mounts. However, this faction has no tabard and can only be raised by doing Tol Barad, which personally, I love more than Wintergrasp. Priority: Low

So if I was going to rate the order in which I would do factions based solely on moonkin, here is the order I personally would go in:

1) Therazane to Honored
2) Guardians of Hyjal to Revered
3) Wildhammer Clan to Exalted
4) Therazane to Exalted
5) Guardians of Hjyal to Exalted
6) Ramkahen to Exalted
7) Earthen Ring to Exalted
8) Baradin's Warden to Exalted (Through Every Tol Barad)

Of course, taking into account the tanking offspec, I might get Earthen Ring to Revered before Guardians of Hyjal to Exalted for the head tanking enchant.

Just a reminder, you have until Friday to get in your entries for the Header Contest. I still only have two entries so if you enter, you have an incredibly good chance of winning one of the main prizes.

Finally, I'm going to start working on a couple new blog projects. I don't want to give anything away yet because I'm not certain about what I'm doing yet, but I have a few ideas. One is likely going to be a personal blog for stuff outside of gaming in general, like the fact that I got engaged this weekend.  I'm also thinking about resurrecting a general video game blog.   Just keep an eye out here for what may be coming up next.

Merry Christmas From Redhawk's Gaze

2010-12-23T14:37:00.000-05:00

To you and yours, a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. May all your presents be epic and your feast be legendary. To celebrate, my favorite Christmas song of all time. Combining my favorite classic Christmas singer and one of my favorite classic rockers.

Level 85 Moonkin PvP Spec Necessities

2010-12-23T11:21:00.000-05:00

In our PvP division of my guild, Conquest (And yes, we are still recruiting for both our PvE and PvP divisions.), we had a new moonkin apply. As someone who enjoys PvPing and tries to as much as possible and reviewing his spec, I thought that I would try to develop my very own PvP spec with what I thought were the major components needed for a PvP player.

Looking through our talent tree, here are the things that I found different from the PvE moonkin spec that are necessary in PvP.

Gale Winds - Increasing the damage of your Hurricane does not do a lot in PvP, but increasing the damage of your Typhoon is huge and necessary. Also, being able to Cyclone at a distance is incredibly important.

Solar Beam - While it may be situational/CC use in PvE, Solar Beam is a life saver in PvP with the ability to silence casters in a huge area.

Fungal Growth - Since we have Wild Mushrooms now, we can set it up to slow people down in PvP besides cause damage. Also, it helps with Treants as well, but in PvP, we would likely use Wild Mushrooms more.

Perserverance - Regardless of which spec you use in PvP, you should always go for this talent. Having 6% less magical damage is huge in PvP, especially when combined with PvP gear.

Of course, these aren't the only talents you will take. You still want to focus on spellpower/intellect and haste talents wherever possible and of course you want to pick up Typhoon and Starfall for PvP. One of the more interesting talents that may look interesting is Owlkin Frenzy. In fact, when making my list, I was left with a choice between Perserverance and Owlkin Frenzy. While a 15% chance of increased damage is nice and no pushback from spells, taking 6% less damage in PvP is more necessary in my opinion.

The other major question of concern is mana. In PvE, mana can be drained pretty quickly depending on your spec. From what I found in PvP, mana seems to be less of an issue. This will also require a few small changes, mainly, the elimination of Moonglow.

So without any further ado, let me give you my custom moonkin PvP spec:

Balance
Nature's Grace (2/2)
Starlight Wrath (3/3)
Nature's Majesty (2/2)
Genesis (3/3)
Balance of Power (2/2)
Euphoria (2/2)
Moonkin Form (1/1)
Typhoon (1/1)
Shooting Stars (2/2)
Gale Winds (2/2)
Solar Beam (1/1)
Dreamstate (2/2)
Force of Nature (1/1)
Sunfire (1/1)
Earth and Moon (1/1)
Fungal Growth (2/2)
Lunar Shower (3/3)
Starfall (1/1)

Total Points: 33

Feral
(None)

Restoration
Blessing of the Grove (2/2)
Heart of the Wild (3/3)
Perserverance (3/3)

Total Points: 8

As I mentioned, there are a couple customizations you can make. If you are really not having any problems with mana, you can go for Owlkin Frenzy, but until gear and mana pools get better, I would hold off on getting that one in favor of more mana return from Innervate.

In terms of glyphs, there are a lot of choices for glyphs, but it probably won't change a lot from PvE to PvP. The one in particular that you may want to change out for your PvP spec is adding Entangling Roots, which makes it an instant cast and may make it useful to set up and keep a caster in Solar Beam.

Hopefully, this will get you started on your way to doing moonkin PvP. It is a lot of fun, from pushing opponents off ledges in AB to keeping a healer under control while you are killing him.

Finally, just a reminder about the Header Contest. This contest will close next Friday so I encourage you to get in your headers as soon as possible.

I Have Spirit. Yes, I Do. I Have Spirit. You Should Too.

2010-12-17T11:31:00.000-05:00

When I made my pre-raid gear list, I mentioned the priority of stats for me. One of the things that I mentioned was that spirit was preferred over hit for boomkins now since Balance of Power converts all of spirit to hit. This was all before Cataclysm came out. Now having played for over a week, I can definitely and without question say that spirit is preferred over hit. Here are the reasons why you should use spirit to get to hit cap (1742) instead of hit itself:

1) Makes Duel Speccing So Easy - I'm not a healer. I prefer playing a tank. However, if you are healer, having as much spirit as possible will help you be a great healer as well. If you take out any hit gear and keep just spirit gear, you could literally use one set of gear (At least until you get to T11 tier sets) for both specs.

2) Hit Provides 1 Stat While Spirit Provides 3 Stats - Hit only provides one stat, which is hit. Spirit provides 3 stats, all that are important now. Of course, with Balance of Power, we get our hit from the spirit. We also get two types of mana regeneration, in combat and out of combat mana regeneration. If you have done any heroics, you may notice that you go OOM a little quicker than you should. Spirit doesn't completely solve this, but it improves it drastically. You still have to be smart with your mana and smart with your Innervate use. However, this will help you retain mana better.

3) Increases Your DPS Indirectly - This is an indirect benefit secondary to mana regeneration. If you are OOM, you are providing approximately 0 DPS. You are as effective as if you were dead. Since spirit can help you from going OOM, it can provide a DPS increase since it will take longer for you to go OOM.

4) Gives You More Of A Reason To Hit the Hit Cap (And Maybe Go a Little Over) - While 1742 is the hit cap, a little extra spirit couldn't hurt you. You shouldn't go way over though since some things that have spirit sacrifice intellect or haste for it. If you are way over, you can reforge it into a stat that will provide more DPS like haste. I'm currently at 1782 with 1488 of it as spirit (minus whatever the natural spirit is since it doesn't count in it). I would say if you are above 1800 hit, reforge your hit or spirt. If you are not, it is probably okay to keep it. If a piece of gear has hit and spirit on it, you should take out the hit.

5) Saves Your Innervate - If you are not having to use your Innervate because you are not close to OOMing, you may be able to use your Innervate on your healer, which in turn may save a 5 man or a raid. I have not had a chance to step into a raid yet with replenishment to see what my mana would do in a raid enviroment, but if a healer is OOM before I hit about 50% mana, I will let them get the Innervate so they can finish healing. Plus, depending on how you are glyphed, you get 10% mana back anyway.

As you can see, spirit has become a moonkin's best friend in terms of stats for all the additional benefits it provides. Once above the hit cap, the important stats become intellect/spellpower and haste. However, if most of our hit is spirit, it will provide us more of an ability to use that intellect and haste.

Just a reminder, the Header Contest closes on 12/31/10 so if you have an idea for a header, you will want to get it in as soon as possible.

Heroic Tanking With Minimal Headaches

2010-12-16T11:15:00.000-05:00

None of us like the queues for LFD for DPS, which the last time I checked was about 35 minutes for level 85s. This means that the hybrid classes are trying to tank or heal. This could lead to some very good tanks, but more likely than not, there are people who have no clue how to tank.  If you are a feral tank and need some advice on how to tank, I would direct you to this prior post I made about tanking post 4.0.1.   The only thing I did not talk about is that you should be adding Thrash in your rotation as well as Swipe to help hold threat. Beyond that, everything is the same.

Prior to being a boomkin, I was a feral tank and got very used to tanking in LFD. However, these heroics are not the Wrath heroics. Mechanics such as CC and LoS pulls are now needed to be able to tank effectively, something we really haven't seen since Magister's Terrace in BC.  With the new heroics, someone in the group needs to step up and take the lead on pulls, marking, etc. Usually, people look to the tanks to mark mobs and set the pace of the instance. In fact, I usually expect the tank to mark, instruct, and set the pace of pulling. So if you are a new tank in Cataclysm, let me give you a few rules to help you be a more effective tank in LFD and cause at least a few less issues when you are tanking.

1) Set the Pace - As the tank, you alone are the person who controls the flow of the instance. You will get DPS who want you to pull faster. However, you are the one who says if it goes faster or slower. If they don't like it, they can drop group and wait for 35 minutes for a LFD queue.

2) Mark Mobs - This is a skill that takes a little bit of learning. In terms of marking a mob, it is easy in terms of how to mark mobs. However, marking correctly is something that takes time to learn. You have to look at your group composition and decide what CC you have possible, then mark according to what you have. I usually mark all the CC targets and then the first kill target. One of the addons that can help with marking is an addon called Lucky Charms. Lucky Charms gives you a bar with all the different icons so you can click the mob then click the icon for the icon you want.

3) CC Casters First Then Melee - There is a specific reason why you choose casters first over melee and it is fairly simple. I mentioned yesterday that you want to CC pull as much as possible.  If you CC melee instead of casters, you are gonna have CCed melee mobs in the middle of the casters you are trying to tank and kill. If you CC casters and CC pull, melee will run right towards the person who CCed, which means you can pick them up and tank them.  However, this is also dependent on what type of CC you have. If you only have an Entangling Roots, you CC melee first. The other major question is how do you know who is the casters. I would hover over the mobs with your mouse. The ones that have mana bars are the casters. If they don't, they are either melee or hunters.

4) Instruct on Your CC Marks - This is much easier if you are in vent with your group, but even if it is a PUG, the tank should explain where each person should be in terms of CC. Skull is pretty much the universal sign for kill target. Also, once you assign a CC to an icon, do not change it unless it is absolutely necessary.

5) CC Pull When Possible - It makes getting non-CCed targets away from the CCed mobs because you are not gonna be rushing in and they are going to be coming to you, or more specifically, the person who cast the CC.

6) Be Situationally Aware - This is just a general dungeon rule for all players. Look under you, above you and around you. If you see something you aren't suppose to be around, move quickly. Also, every tanking class has an interrupt now. If you see a cast bar moving under his name bar, interrupt it just to be safe. Also, tanks should notice patrols, commonly called PATs. You have one of two options with PATs. You can either move back away from the PAT or be ready to tank it.   If you notice it pre-pull, it is easier to just wait and not pull until they are gone. Also, notice times where you have a wall around you to use to your advantage to create a line of sight (LoS) issue for the mobs. You can have a CCer run around a corner towards you to create a LoS. LoS should really be used when you have more casters than you have CC because this will draw them closer away from the CC. All these things are learned in time as you get used to tanking.

7) Know Boss Fights - Trash is one thing. I have had very few problems with tanking trash. However, the boss mechanics are very different from normal to heroic. Make sure you at least know the basic strat and then you can variate the strategy to make it fit for your group. If you do know the strat, you can explain the boss mechanics to everybody else and direct people where they need to be.

Tanking is not easy and at times is a thankless job. However, being a good tank well help you get through each heroic instance assuming that everybody else is competent. Take it slow and steady and you will do just fine.

Also, just a reminder, the Header Contest is still going on. If you have any artistic talent, you have a great opportunity to win some great prizes.

Moonkins Make Life Easier in Heroics

2010-12-15T11:20:00.000-05:00

Most of my time in this expansion so far has been tanking dungeons/heroics, not DPSing. I occassionally get in a guild run where someone wants to tank so I can DPS a little. What I have seen from myself and other moonkins that we bring a metric ton of stuff that can help make heroics go a little smoother.

First off, moonkins should be using CC constantly. We have some of the most versitile crowd control (CC) in the game. We have 2 forms of CC and 1 ability that when combined with a CC makes it usable for caster CC. The first one, Hibernate, is really only usable against animals and dragonkin. But it does make Grim Batol go a lot easier with being able to Hibernate a mob. Our second CC ability is Entangling Roots. In and of itself, it can CC melee mobs. However, you combine Entangling Roots with Solar Beam (also, this is one of my favorite combinations in PvP as well.) and you can CC casters.

Second, we should bring a good amount of DPS right now. With mostly 333 - 346 blues, I'm finding that my DPS is almost equivalent to where it was at the end of ICC with only self buffs. And this is with ICC trinkets, legs, and chest. A lot of classes are finding that their DPS has actually decreased from ICC. In time, I'm sure they we will all be doing 20k + on normal boss fights, but right now, we are bring a fair amount of damage.

Third, and probably a big advantage right now among casters right now, is that we can cause have more constant DPS because our mana is very hard to deplete. It is incredibly hard to run out of mana if you are doing things right. How do you make sure you do not run out of mana? There are two ways. One is through your talents. The second is through smart innervate use. If you are properly specced (I personally would recommend Graylo's spec for level 85 raiding), you will have three major mana saving talents being used. Those talents would be Moonglow, Dreamstate, and Euphoria. Moonglow just reduces the mana cost of all your balance spells. Dreamstate causes you to gain 30% more mana instead of 10% of your mana when you cast Innervate on yourself. Euphroia is the interesting one in all of this since it gives you 12% of your total mana back when you hit either Eclipse. Also, if you remember during my pre-raid gear recommendations, I mentioned that spirit was preferred over hit due to the out of combat mana regen you get with spirit as well. That will help keep you up in between pulls. The other thing that is important is smartly using your Innervate. You should not wait until your mana is used up to use your Innervate. You should be using your Innervate at approximately 50% of your mana depleted. First, you will get 30% back because of Dreamstate. Second, that should be enough to get you to your next Eclipse to get 12% of your mana back. As our gear gets better, I'm sure that we will take away those mana saving talents (At least Moonglow and Dreamstate) to change for better DPS talents, but the way mana is now, you need it.

Fourth, we finally have great interrupts. For interrupting casters, we have Solar Beam. For interrupting melee, we have Typhoon and Cyclone. I wouldn't Typhoon on trash, but when interrupting bosses, it would be effective. I would use Cyclone on trash (Which is technically a 4th CC, but I would use the other 3 first) and use Typhoon on bosses where you can't knock them back anyway.

Count in Moonkin Aura, Earth and Moon, and Battle Rez (I have actually came out of bear form while tanking to throw a healer an Innervate or Battle Rez a player) and we are really a complete package for both heroic dungeons and raids.

However, this is one thing that I must stress that will make people hate you in heroic dungeons. Unless you are in a boss room with no other mobs around, don't Starfall. Starfall can get you in a lot of trouble in Cataclysm. The need for CC and not pulling extra groups is more important than ever. I have had other moonkins wipe groups because of using Starfall inappropriately. Just as a general rule, don't Starfall unless it is a boss and even then, check around you and assess the situation.

Just following these simple rules as a moonkin will make it incredibly easy for you while handling the new heroics. Tomorrow, I'm gonna go a little into tank theory and talk about why and how you pick which mobs to CC and about an addon I'm starting to use again since we actually have to mark targets.

Just a reminder, the Header Contest will close on 12/31/10. If you want your art to be the new header for this blog, please get your entries in by then.

Handling Cataclysm Heroics

2010-12-14T13:06:00.000-05:00

Now that I have started running heroics trying to get gear so that I can get into raids, I have noticed a few things that really help the heroic experience. These tips will make it incredibly easy to get through heroic dungeons.

1) Don't PUG Them - Find a group of friends or guildmates to run them with. Also, having some sort of vent communication will save you worlds of trouble when doing heroics. If desperate, you can PUG. Just be ready for the common douchebaggery that occurs. For example, I tried to PUG heroic Throne of the Tides with one other guild mate of mine. We got a shadow priest who the first words in party chat was, "Can we hurry this up?" I promptly told him that this was not Wrath of the Lich King and if he doesn't like my pulling speed, he can leave group. He then proceeded to wipe the group two times before we vote kicked him.

2) Get some CC - I can't think of a class that doesn't have some form of CC, even if it is weak. Druids have entangling roots and solar beam, great for casters or melee DPS. Mages and Shaman have sheep. Shadow Priest can Mind Control, which is great for mobs that heal. Rogues have sap. If you do PUG and you are the tank, look to see what CC is possible in your group.

3) Mark Everything - On your first pull, mark some targets. Also, keep the targets the same for the entire instance run. For example, I will almost always give Polymorph the moon target. I don't know why, but it is the one I associate with moon.

4) CC Pull 95% of the Time - Now, this seems weird, but there are only a few times you shouldn't CC pull. One would be if your only CC is a rogue who can sap because he is not going to pull. (Not without getting his ass handed to him in the first place.) The other would be single mobs/bosses. If there is only one mob, just tank and spank him.

5) Healers Don't CC - Yes, you may have a restoration shaman in your group. However, it is more important for them to heal the group than CC with hex. That is why I never assign a CC to a healer unless there is no other choice but to. I may ask them to do it only with the initial pull. But once the pull happens, they need to keep healing, not CC.

6) Tanks Should Generally Not CC - They are going to be too busy tanking the mobs to throw out a CC. The one exception would be is if they can throw out a CC as the first pull. For example, as a bear tank, I would gladly throw Entangling Roots on a mob as my pull. However, once he breaks, I tank him or someone else has to CC him.

7) Know Boss Strats (Especially Differences Between Heroic and Normal) - I'm sure that we all ran the instances while leveling for the quest in each of the dungeons. It seems like that every boss I have seen in heroic version picks up new abilities from normal. This is good since the Wrath heroics tended to be the same boss with more health and hits harder. When I PUGed heroic Throne of the Tides, none of us were really certain on the strategy so we wiped a couple times on each boss. Knowing the difference between normal and heroic will help out greatly.

Hopefully, taking these simple rules, you should be able to tackle any heroic in the game. Some are easier than others, but all of them are similar in mechanics needed to get through them. Hopefully, throughout the rest of this week, I will start posting what moonkins can specifically do to help their group through heroics, both trash and bosses.

Also, just a reminder about the Header Contest. I'm a worgen now so I need a new header for the site. If you have any artistic talent, unlike I do, go ahead and enter.

Cataclysm First Week Review

2010-12-13T11:08:00.000-05:00

First week has been incredible in Cataclysm for me. I got to level 85. My druid is now a worgen. (Reminder: Header Contest still going on. I have two entries now.) I got to the point I can start doing heroics. I have run every 5 man instance.   I got to have my bear ride a camel in HoO in a weird interspecies sex act while singing "Hungry Like the Wolf" by Duran Duran. (Yes, pic incoming but no video. Have to respect the camel.)

So after the first week in Cataclysm, I found I love a lot of things, like the camel. I also found that I could already kill a few things, like when the camel tries to go indoors. (True bug, you go inside, the camel just dies.)   Here is my list of loves and hates after one week in Cataclysm.

My Cataclysm Loves

1) The 5 Man Instances - I'm sure I will be singing a different tune by the next expansion, but these 5 mans are the most fun 5 mans I have done in WoW. They are challenging and it requires coordination and CC. Yes, I said CC. And even when you think your group is going to fall apart miserably, like I did with my last Grim Batol run where our only CC was entangling roots from a boomkin while I was tanking, it came together beautifully with me marking the targets and us getting through each pull carefully. If the raids are anything like these 5 mans, we are in for some treats.

2) All the Tabards - Yes, pretty much every faction in game has a tabard to gain rep with. Even the new equivalent to Sons of Hodir, which is going to make rep grinding so fast since I'm going to be running heroics now to get all geared up for raids.

3) My Server - Yes, although we are a PvP server, the people in the questing areas for the most part have been respectful and letting people finish quest instead of killing each other. Of course, the first few hours of release, I just went and ran LFD, so the areas were down a little when I went back to questing.

4) Uldum - I like all the new zones with one notable exception, but there is something about Uldum that I just love. I don't know if it is all the Indiana Jones references, the pretty cool quests, or the best 3 5 mans in the game in my opinion, but it was incredible. I was honored with the main faction in Uldum, which is Ramkahen, before leaving the area and really close to revered already.

5) Prices for BoE drops on the AH - If you get an iLevel 315+ piece of gear, you can easily sell it for 300+ gold. The higher iLevel, the higher you can charge for it.

6) Leveling Fishing and Cooking - They made it easy now. I am not going out to farm fishing to get it up or make a single cooking recipe, I'm just gonna do the daily quests everyday. It is a good amount of gold, plus you can make some good gold with the meats from cooking. I hit 450 fishing before Cataclysm thanks to those dailies.

7) Leveling Multiple Skillpoints at Once - I love the fact that new recipes for leveling professions can give you up to 5 skillpoints at once. Yes, I'm looking at your Enchant Weapon - Avalanche. Gives you 5 profession points for making one.

8) Flying - Something about even flying around in Stormwind to get stuff makes it so much easier now. This is especially true when you are flying at 310% speed. Oh wait, make that 341% speed because ...

9) Guild Rewards - I'm friendly with the guild currently and we are at guild level 2 as of last night. The XP increase is awesome and the 10% faster mount speeds are incredible.

10) Portals - Yes, we don't have portals to major cities, but we have portals to all the new areas. You really don't need much else. Plus, you have to complete a series of quest to open the portals. You just don't automatically get them.

11) Spirit Linked Quest - Nothing is as awesome as doing a quest and once you complete it, you see the complete quest thing comes up with your reward and many times, has your next quest.

12) In Game QuestHelper - I have grown to love the in game QuestHelper. 95% of the time, I find it immediately. Other 5% of the time, I actually have to look at the quest text to find out what I need to do.

13) Worgen Druids - Good God, the night elfs are lame compared to the worgen. These guys are awesome. I love the animation for Running Wild where you run at 100% speed in worgen form. The new forms are awesome with the exception of one, Swift Flight Form.

My Cataclysm Hates

1) Vashj'ir - What part of the Vashj'ir area do I hate? Let's start with what I don't hate. The boat ride going out is pretty awesome when you get attacked by a giant octopus. Throne of the Tides is not a bad instance either. Beyond those two things, I pretty much hate everything else about it. I hate doing quest underwater. I don't care about a seahorse mount since I'm a druid and have aquatic form and the speed buff. But my biggest complaint is the complete and total headache it is to find the Earthen Ring Quartermaster to get the tabard. First off, in Deepholm, right where you come out of the portal, there is a giant Earthen Ring center with everybody from Earthen Ring right there. Thrall is right outside Deepholm controlling the Malestrom, damn it. Why is the quartermaster not there and is instead in a cave you can barely find without circling the area for about 15 minutes?

2) PUGs - I really am not looking forward to running heroics with PUGs. I have a feeling it is going to make me want to pull my hair out tanking them. I have started marking everything in anticipation of heroics, but it still doesn't stop an overzealous DPS from hitting X first instead of skull. Hopefully, I will find some guild mates to run heroics and decrease the number of PUGs I have to deal with.

3) Varian Wrynn's Son - I mentioned above that to get to certain areas, you have to unlock them through a quest chain. To get to Twighlight Highlands, you have to do a series of quest in Stormwind. Not only do you have to do these quest, but you have to drag along Varian Wrynn's son with you. Just one small problem though. The little bastard keeps getting lost. I'm walking around the ship intimidating people to get info on Twilight's Hammer and he just disappears. This means I have to go all the way back to the the castle, pick him up again, then go back. Then he is bugging me about taking him to the Twilight Highlands. I wish you could take him into a BG and get him killed by the Horde. Horde, next time you come into Stormwind to invade and kill our leader, could you kill his son while you are at it? It would be great.

4) Worgen Swift Flight Form - This is the smallest of complaints, but the worgen swift flight form looks exactly like the night elf druid swift flight form. It would have been nice for a little change to make them more worgen like. Especially considering the trolls got a bat.

There are so many things I haven't done yet, like Tol Barad, the new Wintergrasp-esqe zone in Cataclysm. I have not done heroic Deadmines or Shadowfang Keep, both of which I have heard are incredibly difficult now.   I have not stepped into my first raid yet with my guild. (Although if I can get some heroics under my belt, I may be able to go tonight.) So overall, I love Cataclysm and can't wait to continue to play it and get into some raids, battlegrounds, and heroics.

Cataclysm LFD's Dirty Little Secret

2010-12-09T09:20:00.000-05:00

If you are using the LFD tool frequently and have looked at what specific dungeons you can queue for at any point, you have probably seen the blocks not allowing you to get into some instances without a certain average iLevel of gear. However, there is a secret about this. It was incredible when I looked at it and finally noticed it and I'm sure you will flip out when you figure it out as well. Ready to learn the secret of the LFD tool in Cataclysm.

You Don't Have To Have The Gear On

That is right. Looking at the character pane, I noticed that while in my moonkin set, which is still mostly iLevel 277 gear from ICC (with about 25% left to go until 84 and not a lot of good replacements still) that my average iLevel number kept going up, despite me not replacing any pieces. The character pane iLevel is what determines what dungeons you can get into to. Reading the tooltip for the iLevel, it states that the average iLevel is determined by only your best combination of gear that you currently have. Not necessarily gear you have on.

So what does this mean. If you are a clothie, your average iLevel is only determined by your cloth gear. However, the higher up in armor you go (leather, mail, plate), you can use any lower armor type to count for it, not necessarily your armor type. However, the bigger thing is that it helps you determine what gear to disenchant/sell. Look at your average iLevel on the character pane. If the gear iLevel is less than that of the average iLevel number, disenchant/sell it (with the obvious exception of if you are actually using it). If it is higher than the number and is not an usuable armor (like for druids, mail and plate can be disenchanted or sold), hold on to it to keep your iLevel going up.

The more interesting thing in all this goes back to yesterday's blog post. I mentioned that GearScore is getting more specific with the ability to look at spec to determine the quality of an upgrade for you. While GearScore is going forward with looking at spec, Blizzard stepped backwards and made it non-specific to your spec and made it just about the gear.

So the take home message in all of this is hold on to your higher iLevel gear even if you don't actually use it. It will make it much much easier to get into the 5 man dungeons down the road.

First Post-Cataclysm Blog Post Will Be About.....

2010-12-08T09:58:00.000-05:00

I originally thought that I wouldn't be able to take any time off for Cataclysm. Looking at my sick leave, I found that I could take one day. And a very productive day it was. I was able to get to level 83 by midnight and have run 4 of the 7 dungeons already. There are so many different things that I'm sure I will talk about in the days to come, from my love of the new 5 mans, the hatred I have for Vashj'ir, my love of the new spirit links and quest progression, my love for the new dungeon bosses, my love for flying at 310% speed in Azeroth, the fun of doing new dungeons blind with my guildmates to figure out mechanics, how I was wrong about leveling only through LFD (fastest way, quest and queue as DPS), and how Raz the Crazed may be my new favorite NPC in WoW. However, my very first post-Cataclysm blog post will be about GearScore.

Now, I'm sure you are asking yourself right now, why the hell would I talk about GearScore on day 1 after Cataclysm? There is a very good reason for it. But to start off, you have to understand the history of GearScore to understand why it is pertinent now, maybe more so than before.

GearScore was an addon created shortly after Wrath. It's original purpose was not to judge characters by their gear and decide whether they can get into raids, etc. The reason it was originally created was to see when characters could replace their BC gear with Wrath gear. While doing this, they found an interesting fact. Players who were fully Tier 6 would really not need to change their gear out until Naxxaramas.  There might have been a piece here or there that might have been better, but they really didn't need to.

Now, in the beginning of Cataclysm, they changed GearScore to make it even better than before. The major update that I'm loving is that it judges a new piece of gear based on its stats AND your current spec. In other words, if I'm tanking a LFD and a piece of leather gear with agility and stamina on it, I can immediately tell if it is an upgrade or not by looking at the individual gear score number against my equipped piece.  However, if a piece of leather gear drops that has intellect, spirit, etc. on it for a boomkin piece, I have to change specs and equipment to check about the status of an upgrade.

In other words, GearScore finally addressed it's major complaint. Before, it didn't care about your spec, it only cared about the GearScore of the individual pieces, which lead to a collective GearScore. Now, it judges it based on your current gear and spec.

What I'm currently finding is that if you are in ICC iLevel 277 mostly gear, like my moonkin set, you are gonna have a hard time finding an upgrade, at least up to level 83. Now, hopefully, regular Grim Batol, Halls of Origination, and the Lost City of Tol'Avir and the quest around those areas will. Heroic Dungeons at level 85 certainly will. My tanking set, which was mostly 251/264 has found quite a few good upgrades to them already, especially in dungeons.

So, in the end, Cataclysm saved GearScore, at least for the time being, and finally made it useful for what it was meant to be used for in the first place, looking how to improve your gear along the way while you are leveling.  I'm sure when 4.1 comes out, people will once again require GearScores of x amount to get into raids, but at least right now, I can enjoy it for what it was meant to be used for in the first place.

Just remember also, the Header Contest is going on still. I have only received one entry so far, so there is a good chance that your work will be seen by everybody on the site.  The contest will close on 12/31/10.

The Night Before Cataclysm

2010-12-06T11:23:00.000-05:00

I'm not a poet, but I decided that I would try to parody one of the greatest Christmas poems ever for Cataclysm tonight.

'Twas the night before Cataclysm, when all through the house

I was a-stirring and moving my mouse;

The banks were empty and sat there bare,

Knowing that Deathwing soon would be there;

The cats were cuddled up in their beds,

While visions of tuna danced in their heads;

And me still dressed, not wearing a cap,

Had just settled down for a long gaming night,

When out on the clock there arose such a clatter,

I sat up in my seat to see what was the matter.

I saw the time and ran really fast,

It was 11:15 PM and I needed my cash.

The moon at the Gamestop with no falling snow

Shown on the geeks sitting below,

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,

But an open Gamestop, and 3 ready cashiers,

While still in my ride, a Lexus, so quick,

I knew in a moment it would be time to get it.

More rapid than eagles the cashiers they came,

And we whistled and shouted and called them by name;

"Now Deathwing! now, Thrall! now, Alliance and Horde!

On, Hunters! on druids! on, goblins and worg!

To the front of the cashier at the top of the mall!

Now come in! come in! come on in y'all!"

I knew really soon that I see my Hurricane fly,

And Typhooning people mounted up in the sky,

So up to the front the gamers they flew,

Where the boxes with games were waiting there too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard the cashiers did say

"Collector's Editions can line up this way."

As I moved into that line and jumped in with a bound

Soon, in the line everybody came 'round.

People was dressed all in fur from their heads to their foots,

And some clothes were all tarnished with drink and some food;

A box of games they held on their laps,

And they looked very scared while opening their packs.

Our eyes -- how they twinkled! and boy, were we merry!

We wanted to really get our games in a hurry!

Our mouths were open, we were ready to go,

And our hands were nervous and white as the snow;

The crowd gatherer round as we clenched our teeth,

And we encircled the cashiers just like a wreath;

Many gamers had broad faces and big round bellys,

That really needed to stay away from the jelly.

I could not wait to get home to play my night elf,

And I laughed when I thought he would be a worgen himself;

A wink of the cashier's eyes and a twist of his heads,

We knew that soon we would get it in our hands;

They spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,

And filled all our hands and we ran off in a jerk,

And getting in my car and driving on home,

And speeding so fast, I knew it was close;

I sprang through the door and I gave a whistle,

And opened my box while my computer did whistle

But I then exclaimed, driving my cats out of sight,

"DAMN, I'M EAST COAST, IT WON'T BE ON UNTIL 3 AM TONIGHT."

The Final Bucket List Analysis

2010-12-03T09:46:00.000-05:00

With only a few days left before Cataclysm, I decided to take one last look at the list I have set up not to long ago for the list of things left to do in Wrath, a.k.a The Bucket List. If you remember from the prior post, I set up an initial one, then revisited it based on what my guild was going to try to accomplish. So, for one last time before Cataclysm, here is the final bucket list and what progress was made towards it.

Redhawks

Portal Jockey (25 Player) - Done

Neck Deep in Vile (25 Player) - Done

Glory of the Icecrown Raider (25 Player) - Done

A Tribute to Insanity (25 Player) - Did not get to do it again.

Call of the Grand Crusader (25 Player) - Did not get to do it again.

Tailoring to 450 - Done

Jewelcrafting to 450 - Expensive, but Done

Honor capped - Done

High amount of Justice Points - Currently 2500 JPs with 2 days of LFDs

Redrobin

310% Mount Without Paying 5k Gold - No. I have the gold, but would rather save it.

Honor capped - Focused on Redhawks

High Amount of Justice Points - Focused on Redhawks

Redider

Level 78 - Close. I'm level 72.

Skinning to 450 - Currently above 400.

Herbalism to 450 - Currently above 400.

Redvulture

Level 78 - I'm level 65.

Mining to 450 - Changed to Inscription due to Glyphmas after 4.0.1. Currently 432.

Start Leveling Blacksmithing - It is my second profession.

Overall, I feel that I definitely put a dent in my list prior to Cataclysm and have set myself up nicely for the expansion. And while I definitely wish I could have finished TotGC with the Insanity achievement, I feel that getting the 25 man ICC drake was probably the highlight of this expansion.

So I hope you did everything you wanted to do in Wrath. And even if you didn't, there will be new achievements and accomplishments in the next expansion to shoot for. But now, the past is behind us. Arthas is dead and now we have to kill a huge dragon who destroyed the world.

Also, just a reminder about the Redhawk's Header Contest. We have our first entry already and I'm hoping to get a bunch more for the header. There are some great prizes involved so if you have any interest in drawing, go ahead and give it a shot.

Site News and New Header Contest

2010-12-02T11:05:00.000-05:00

November was a great month. My Gamecocks won the SEC East. I celebrated the 6 month anniversary with my wonderful girlfriend. And this site has continued to grow. November was the biggest month on record yet. It was the first month where I had over 5,000 pageviews for the month, something that was not even done in October when I was on Leet Sauced and Raid Warning. I am humbled and grateful and thankful for each person who comes daily to read to the ramblings of a WoW player. When I started it last April, I could have never imagined this blog would have become what it is. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you. I will continue to bring you all the pertinent moonkin, druid, and Warcraft information into Cataclysm.

Speaking of Cataclysm, I'm going to be making a little bit of a change. My night elf druid will be becoming a worgen druid. What this means is that my banner may become a little outdated after I become a worgen. Since I have no skill in the arts, I decided it was time for another contest.

The Redhawk's Gaze New Header Contest

Rules: To enter this contest, all you have to do is draw a header for the blog. It can be anything you want, but it must meet the following 3 requirements.

1) Must have a picture of a worgen moonkin.

2) Must have the title "Redhawk's Gaze" in the picture.

3) Must have a Solar or Lunar Eclipse in it.

From there, it is up to you. Do you want to have me riding a mount? Sure. Do you want Starfall to be hitting around me? Awesome. Everything else is up to you.

Once you have completed your entry, I would ask that you e-mail the picture in a normal format (JPEG, GIF, BMP, etc.) to bigdog1862@yahoo.com. After I have received the entries, I will post my 3 favorite on the site and let the readers vote on the winner. Now, from the Christmas in July contest, you know that I give out great prizes for the contest and this time is no exception.

Grand Prize: Featured as the header logo on this blog for the entire Cataclysm expansion and a sidebar credit to your site. Also, you will get two 3 month game cards and two vanity pets (minus Plushies or Mounts) of your choice.

($80 value)

Second Place: One 3 month game card and one vanity pet (minus Plushies or Mounts) of your choice.

($40 value)

Third Place: The Shattering Novel and one vanity pet (minus Plushies or Mounts) of your choice.

($25 value)

So to all the artist and designers out there, good luck. I will be closing entries on January 1st, 2011 so you have a few weeks to work on it.

Level 85 Pre-Raid Gear Recommendations for Moonkins

2010-12-01T10:52:00.000-05:00

Last night, I hit the halfway point in my goal of becoming Justice Points capped prior to Cataclysm. Just a few more LFG dungeons and I will at least be close to my goal. However, when I do get capped, I have to start thinking about what my purchases will be.

I started off by looking at some gear list of what you can get with Justice Points and I started to build my list of what I wanted. Unfortunately, considering the choices available for us, our decisions are relatively straightforward for Justice Points. Also, there are a lot of slots that are not covered by Justice Points. To fill those slots, I looked at the heroic dungeons to find what gear would be the best to fill in those slots.

In terms of what I was looking for in gear, my priorities changed slightly from my level 80 stats. Here are my current level 85 priorities in gear.

Spirit > Hit > Intellect = Spellpower > Haste > Mastery = Critical Strike

A little explanation. The reason I chose spirit over hit is for one major reason. Spirit is automatically converted to hit so it is at the very least equal to hit. However, given the issues that may occur with mana in Cataclysm, we will need to have better mana regeneration out of combat. In this vein, I chose spirit over hit. This also shows the initial priority should be our hit cap, which at level 85 will be *prepare to catch your breath* 1742 to have 17% spell hit. Also, I chose haste over mastery/crit due to the way haste effects the speed our spells are cast and DoTs tick. Mastery and Critical Strike are relatively close in importance. We will want to get plenty of both, but haste is our major stat. What I tended to find with our gear is that haste and mastery were together or crit and mastery were together. When there was a question, I took the haste/mastery. Also, remember that reforging can help to get the gear to where we want it. Finally, and it should go without saying, but leather only to get the leather specialization bonus.

So with all that in mind, here is my ideal level 85 pre-raid gear. I tried to only use Justice Points or gear from heroic 5-mans. Also, I got all this information from Wowpedia, since it is the only one I can access from my job. It doesn't have all the heroic 5-mans bosses' loot, so some heroic 5-man loot may be better than this, however, it has enough info to at least make a starter list.

Head: Cluster of Stars - 2200 Justice Points

Neck: Celadon Pendant - 1650 Justice Points

Shoulder: Somber Shawl - 1650 Justice Points

Back: Solar Wind Cloak (Heroic) - Halls of Origination (H) - Rajh

Chest: Robes of Forgetfullness - 2200 Justice Points

Wrist: Armbands of Change (Heroic) - Blackrock Caverns (H) - Corla

Hands: Blessed Hands of Elune - 1650 Justice Points

Waist: Thatch Eave Vines - 1650 Justice Points

Legs: Leggings of Late Blooms - 2200 Justice Points

Feet: Awakening Footfalls (Heroic) - Halls of Origination (H) - Temple Guardian

Ring 1: Lavishly Jeweled Ring (Heroic) - Deadmines (H) - Admiral Ripsnarl

Ring 2: Rose Quartz Band (Heroic) - Stonecore (H) - Slabhide

Trinket 1: Witching Hourglass (Heroic) - Blackrock Caverns (H) - Ascendant Lord Obsidius

Trinket 2: Tendrils of Burrowing Dark (Heroic) - Stonecore (H) - Ozruk

Main Hand: Scepter of Power (Heroic) - Halls of Origination (H) - Setesh

Off Hand: Apple Bent Bough - Justice Points 950

Idol: Book of Dark Prophecies (Heroic) - Stonecore (H) - High Priestess Azil

So, for only 13,750 Justice Points (Don't worry, this won't be that hard when we are getting 75 justice points for downing heroic 5-man bosses) and a few instance runs, here are the stats that you get.

Spirit/Hit: 1436

Intellect: 3068

Haste: 1158

Mastery: 1001

Critical Strike: 533

Since you are not at the hit cap, you will need to reforge slightly and maybe even gem for a little hit until you get some raiding gear under your belt. If you are going to reforge for your hit, I would work backwards on the list of stats. 40% of the mastery and critical strike numbers come up to 613, so you should be able to find your hit in just those two stats to get to 1742 and still have a good amount of mastery and critical strike.

Finally, if you want to save some Justice Points and go for a sweet staff instead, I would recommend getting Staff of Isolation (Heroic) from Lord Godfrey in Heroic Shadowfang Keep. However, I think the stats would be overall better going with an offhand and main hand due to the increased spellpower of using a main hand/off hand combo.

Of course, when you start raiding, you will want to go for your tier sets and then get the next level gear from there. And you don't need all these pieces to start raiding. From what I have heard, an average iLevel of 340 would be enough to get into starting raids.

Post-Cataclysm Release Plans - A Timeline

2010-11-30T09:52:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, even good things can come back and bite you right in the ass. Here is my example. I had vertical gastric sleeve surgery in October, a surgery that I desperately needed. (Lost about 85 lbs already) However, to have this surgery, I had to take two weeks off during October. This left me with barely any leave at all. This in turn means that I won't be able to take off the week after Cataclysm to level my druid to 85. This also means that I have to be a little more careful about how I plan to level.

Here are the facts that I think are going to hold true when trying to level in Cataclysm. Fact 1: LFD will be the quickest way to level if you get instant queues. Fact 2: If you do not have instant queues, questing while waiting on LFD will be the quickest way to level. Fact 3: Expect wipes in LFD due to overzealous DPS who can't define what a CC is much less how to use it.

So, with these facts in mind, here is my timeline for leveling after Cataclysm is released.

Day Before - I have the Argent Tourney tabard and did all the Argent Tourney dailies right there, which equals about 9 quests. I'm going to log out in the inn there so when I get back in game, I can immediately turn those quest in.

Day of Release- Assuming that we are not getting "World Server is Down" every 5 minutes, turn in all the Argent Tourney quest, then hearth to Stormwind and start flying. My first goal is to find all the dungeons in Cataclysm. There are several guides on how to find all the dungeons. The guide I personally would recommend is http://bit.ly/gtdHos. Here are the pics from the site as well for you to look at.

I would recommend this for everybody, DPS, tanks, or healers, because you will want to queue for those while you are questing according to fact 2. Once I find all the dungeons, it is time to decide which one I want to do. Since my second leveled character is my mage, I will get to do the quest with her since I will be waiting for queues. For my druid, I can tank and will tank LFDs to get the instant queues since it will be the fastest way to level per fact 1. I will play from 5:30 EST until Midnight EST stopping only for dinner and talking to my girlfriend. Log out in an inn or just stay in Stormwind anyway and put up needed goods on the AH. Send greens to my mage for disenchanting. Day 1 Goal: 81.

Day After Release - Work, then playing from 5:30 EST until Midnight EST with same stops. Day 2 Goal: 82, halfway to 83.

2 Days After Release - Work, then playing from 5:30 EST until Midnight EST with same stops. Day 3 Goal: 84.

3 Days After Release - Work, then playing from 5:30 EST until Midnight EST with same stops. Day 4 Goal: 85.

Now, I have not seen the leveling curve in Cataclysm so this may not even be possible. However, I'm think that one level a day should be reasonable doing LFD. Worst case this would be doubled to a level every 2 days. Again, with fact 3, I'm not accounting for wipes due to stupid DPS who thinks that this is still Wrath of the Lich King.

4 Days After Release - Weekend so I will spend a lot of time playing. (Under the assumption that I'm not hanging out with my girlfriend. She comes before WoW.) I need to make my first Justice Point's purchases before I start doing heroics. I may even do this ahead of time since I plan to be Justice Points capped prior to Cataclysm. Later this week, I will put out a list of what my purchases with Justice Points will be. Random heroics to try to gear up. Also, I need to level my professions during this time. I will do Leatherworking first since it will give me gear I actually need for PvE and PvP then I will hit Jewelcrafting.

5 Days After Release - More Weekend. More Heroics. More Gearing Up for Raiding. More leveling professions.

6 Days After Release - Work, then heroics, justice points spending, getting raiding gear, and leveling professions.

1 Week After Release - Stepping into the first raids with at least 10 members of our guild.

As I said, this may not even be possible, but this would be the ideal I would like to happen. I'm sure my plans will get shattered to pieces once I figure out how long it takes to get a level. But this is what I'm hoping. It may not even be possible. However, I see some advantages to doing it this way. The main advantage is that the LFD will have some of the best possible gear anyway. So while I'm leveling (levels 80-83) I'm gonna be going for tank gear to make me a better tank. The last two levels, I'm gonna be going for moonkin gear to start gearing up for raids at least. Also, it will help me learn the LFD instances when I step into the heroics. A lot of people questing up to level 85 won't have a chance to run those instances until they start heroics. It will give me a knowledge of those mechanics and will be able to help the heroic LFD groups I get in.

I know everybody is going to have different plans for when Cataclysm releases in one week, however, for my druid, I think this is going to end up being the best way for me to level.

Also, just a reminder. The moonkin hatchling is out in the pet store. If you want the most adorable pet in game right now, go get it.

Deathwing Caused .......

2010-11-29T09:44:00.000-05:00

This was one of the running jokes that I saw around patch 4.0.3a that Deathwing caused certain things, which was mostly bugs in the game. So since we are one week past patch 4.0.3a, let me go through some things Deathwing caused.

1) Moonkins to Forget How To Automatically Shapeshift When Mounting - Somehow, I can mount in bear form and cat form. However, if I try to mount up in moonkin form, I have to shapeshift out manually then mount up.

2) Major Cities To Get Lag - Have you been to Stormwind lately? I would have thought that since Horde and Alliance are once again split up that we would see lag improve. I am getting the same FPS that I got in Dalaran in Stormwind. Maybe only slightly better.

3) Wrynn to Become a Douchebag Again - Seriously. A dragon comes by and destroys your city and one of the first things you do is built a monument to yourself. You are a douchebag. And I'm even Alliance and I'm calling you a douchebag. But at least we don't have Garrosh.

4) Northrend to Empty Out - Unless you are leveling (and why are you leveling right now anyway), there is nobody in Northrend right now. It didn't ever really happen in Outland because they had DKs who went there immediately.

5) Getting to Current Raids a Little More Difficult - No portals equals no hearthstones set in Dalaran which means you either need a summon or a mage portal. That is why I'm glad I got my Argent Tourney tabard to at least get to Northtrend without having to set my hearth there.

6) Everything to Get Prettier - Ok, this is more Blizzard and not so much Deathwing, but everything looks better. The graphics engine has been improved drastically. Even with heavier lag like in Stormwind, it just looks really good.

7) Leslie Nelson's Death - I can only assume that the sudden death of the greatest spoof comedy actor of all time was caused by Deathwing. OJ Simpson couldn't cause his death and he is an (alleged) murderer. Only the evil of Deathwing was able to bring down Leslie Nelson.

8) Beattles Being on iTunes - Nobody could convince Yoko Ono to let the Beattles music be on iTunes but Deathwing himself. I'm sure every company has been trying to get their music for year, but Steve Jobs unleashed Deathwing to "convince" Yoko on letting the music come to iTunes.

9) Kenny vs. Spenny Ending - Yes, this has hit me the most hard until Leslie Nelson died. My favorite Canadian TV show, Kenny vs. Spenny, is ending its run after 6 seasons and 87 episodes. Although I live in the US, I have all 6 seasons on DVD and will find a way to get the Christmas special in the US. Good luck to both of them.

10) A Whole New World, A New Fantastic Point of View - Don't believe me, check out the NPC comic from last Friday.

Also, why can't tailors have two person carpets? That would be awesome. You could literally recreate Aladin in game.

I'm sure there were a bunch of other things that Deathwing caused, but most of them are annoying bugs. (Hello purple walls in Isle of Conquest) But now, we have 1 week until the release of Cataclysm. I'm Honor capped. I'm going to get Justice capped this week or at least close since the first normal dungeon each day gives 75 justice points. Hopefully, this week, I will give you my Justice Points level 85 spending list for my moonkin before next week.

What Next For the WoW Mobile App? I Have Some Ideas

2010-11-26T09:58:00.000-05:00

With the WoW mobile app, we already have 3D armory access, auction house, and probably guild chat coming in the very near future. So what should be the next feature that I think would be a great feature for the app. I have a few ideas.

1) Out of Game Mail Management - Now, admittingly, 95% of my mail is from the AH so it is a non-issue. However, people would communicate more through the mail system if people could get their mail out of game. Need someone extra for a raid who is away from the computer, just in mail game them or guild chat them.

2) Crafting - Do you get tired of just having your character make X number of items while the bar is slowly moving across? I know I do with my professions. Since the mobile AH part of the app already looks in your bags, they should find a way to open your professioins and know what you can craft and you just make it with a press of a button. Then, you can even post it in the AH immediately.

3) Battle.Net Integration - Why should I have to be logged into a game to see what my friends are doing? In fact, I'm surprised this hasn't happened yet. Show your RealID friends in game and you can message them from the app.

4) Account Management - Want to rename your character? Or go ahead and set up a faction change for when you get home? How about send an e-mail to yourself for a recruit a friend account? All of these things should be possible on the mobile app? Even if it just redirects you to the main site, this should be possible.

5) Guild Bank Access - Running late for a raid and need to get your flask, food, etc. No problem. You could just use the mobile app to pull out your flask and mail them to yourself to pick up. Saves a little time.

6) Beastiary - This could be a feature that the mobile app could be used for even in game. They already produce bestiaries to sell in book form. Why not build it into the mobile app?

I'm sure there are probably a lot more features that would be great to have in the WoW Mobile App in order to make it seem more like our worth to pay the $2.99 for the monthly access.

Happy Thanksgiving From Redhawk's Gaze

2010-11-25T10:29:00.000-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving from Redhawk's Gaze. May your feast be delicious and your after dinner drops be legendary.

The Documented and Undocumented Changes of the Shattering

2010-11-24T10:02:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Asros for this caption.

Yes, the Shattering did occured yesterday and did it ever bring some changes. Here are a few of the changes that I personally have noticed, some that were in the patch notes and some that were not in the patch notes.

1) I Loled at Noobs in Dalaran - If you were looking for a little bit of entertainment last night, the only place you had to be was in Dalaran. Oh the bitching and the moaning about the portals being gone. I even heard one person threaten to go set the Blizzard HQ on fire. (Note: This is not a threat from me, I'm just repeating what someone else said.) Oh poor noobs, if only you would do something as simple as read. The patch notes all along have been saying the portals would be gone. I talked about it last month on this very blog. If you can't bother to read the patch notes ahead of time, you deserve to QQ.

2) Flying Anywhere in Dalaran - Did you notice that you can fly anywhere in Dalaran now. It was kind of nice just being able to take off and fly anywhere in there. It will be even nicer when we can do it in our home cities.

3) Faction City Tabards - Are you planning on leveling a new toon in Cataclysm? (And let's be honest, who isn't) Well, now you can raise your reputation with your home cities with the new faction city tabards. Thankfully, my main is already exalted with all the current cities but it may help my alts. Also, this will only work for level 1-60 dungeons, not above that.

4) New Fishing and Cooking Dailies - This was kind of exciting. In Stormwind, there are new fishing and cooking dailies that offer some great rewards. For doing the fishing daily, you get +1 skillpoint in fishing, some gold, and a bag of treasures. For doing the cooking daily, you get +1 skillpoint if you are not 450 cooking, some gold, and the new cooking award. You can look at some of the new rewards for those cooking awards. There are new level 450 cooking recipes plus you can preview up to 525 cooking rewards. I did not see the new equivalent of the fish feast yet, but I'm sure there will be some cooking recipe for it.

5) Damn You, Chaotic Skyflare Diamond - If you are a DPSer, you may have noticed a very cruel thing happened to you yesterday. Your meta bonus did not change but how you activate it certainly did. The new activation is "You must have more blue gems then red gems." Now, it seems easy enough. Just use Purified Dreadstones until you have more blue gems then red gems present. Hold on. It is not that simple. Mix colored gems count for both colors. So in this case, purple diamonds count for both red and blue. So if you thought about changing to Purified Dreadstones, you better be ready to make one of your red gems a straight blue gem and make all your other red gems Purified, because that is the only way you activate your bonus. For moonkins, this is especially terrible because the only blue gems are + Spirit or + Hit, which for us are the same damn thing. So what did I do. After wasting gold buying Titanium Powder to get the Purified Dreadstone recipe since I'm 450 jewelcrafting, I decided to use the Tireless Skyflare Diamond, which is +21 intellect plus a minor run speed increase. Since I'm mainly PvPing with my moonkin, having a little extra speed never hurt anybody. Plus, it is a much easier meta to activate. Also, get ready for metas in Cataclysm, because they are just as complicated.

6) PvP Grouping - If you have been running organized 10/15 man battlegrounds in anticipation of Cataclysm's rated battlegrounds, prepare to be disappointed. Apparently on non-rated BGs, you can only group up in groups of 5. So if you were hoping to get practice with your guild for 10/15 man PvP, sorry. It is kind of hard to tell if this was a bug or intended, but I have a feeling it was intended.

7) Hunter's Pets Remember How to Dash - In what may be in my top two pieces of humor from the patch notes, Blizzard noted that hunter's pets won't forget how to dash anymore. I could just see before this that a pet was just sitting there being very lazy. Then the hunter says go get him and the pet just walks over leisurely, says "O Hai" to the mob, and starts biting it.

8) Warlocks Get Shattered, but Only for 12% - I can't take credit for the title, but I found it funny. If you looked at the warlocks notes in the patch notes, they probably took the brunt of the nerf bat. Ever single one of their abilites was reduced by 12%. I have a warlock alt in the 60s and I'm not happy about it either. It is just funny that it was 12% across the board.

9) Seige Vehicles Move Really Fast - The gnomes and goblins must be competing who can come up with the fastest seige vehicles because the speed on these things have been pumped up. Another premade group I was running with won Strand of the Ancients in less than 2 minutes. Yes, we were better coordinated than most, but even that is ridiculous.

10) Can't Mount in Druid Forms - Apparently, druids can only mount up if you are in caster form. Not moonkin form. Not bear form. Not even cat form. I really hope this is a bug that will be fixed but if not, this sucks.

11) Wintergrasp is Kind of Boring Now - I don't know if it was just everybody so excited to go see the new areas or what, but we didn't even field a group of 40 last night for Wintergrasp. We defended the keep still, but it was really disappointing.

12) Mages Are Being Too Nice - The mages on my server were giving portals for tips. I wanted to take every single one of them, shake them, slap them once, and then tell them what mistake they are making. Mages could be charging 20 gold per portal per person right now because people can't fly there yet. Plus, people leveling professions still need to get to Dalaran as well. Count in the fact that Pilgram's Bounty is going on and you could make loads of money with portals right now.

13) Stormwind = New Barren's Chat - Now that everybody is in Stormwind, I heard discussions in regular chat that I never want to hear again. If you are in Stormwind, please for the love of God, stop.

14) New Cultural References - Near the new fishing daily, you can hear the conversation of people talking about fishing. Someone said their dad could catch more fish than this other person's dad. The girl who spoke said, "He would have to cross streams to fish. I have heard crossing streams isn't good." Great Ghostbuster's reference.

15) Hearthstones - This may have been a bug for me only, but check where your hearthstone is set. I set all my current character's hearths in Stormwind Trade District. I logged on to my druid and found my hearth had been changed to Teldrassil. Again, may have been a bug, but it wasn't game breaking.

It's the End of Azeroth As We Know It

2010-11-23T11:00:00.000-05:00

Note: I'm not an RPer. I am not an RP writer. However, with this momentous occassion of the Shattering happening today, I'm going to try to be an RP writer. Plus, I have this awesome picture I took in game and immediately started thinking of a story to go with it. Don't expect this often or possibly ever again.

Redhawks contemplating what tomorrow holds.

As I rode my gnome made rocket around Darkshore looking to take the precious eggs from the crazed moonkins, I thought of the irony. A stronger moonkin killing his breathern for something as simple as an egg. Eggs that may become valuable in the near future. I knew the Feast of Winter Veil was coming and the demand for this eggs would be high, as always. However, something different drove me this time. Something was not as it seemed.

I have seen the cultist in Stormwind, proclaiming the end of the world. And while I joined with the King of Stormwind, Varian Wrynn, to silence these dissenters, something about their message rang true. Being a druid, I have an inant connection to the earth and something was not sitting right. I could feel the elements around me even starting to turn against me. Every Typhoon I cast seemed it was seconds away from returning to me. I knew it wouldn't since I have long been able to control this ability, but it didn't seem right. The earth under me seemed to be breaking. Quakes all over Azeroth have been occurring and have been getting stronger and stronger as the days went on.

Then, the elements started invading the cities. Fire, Wind, Water, and Earth. No major city seemed safe from there terror. We held them at bay, but we lost many while fighting those elements. My gnome, dwarf, and human breathern, slain in the streets. My beloved Darnassus had been spared, thankfully. With ever element I killed, I could almost hear the name of their master, Deathwing.

We have suspected Deathwing was planning something for a while. In Northrend, we helped the Wyrmrest Accord defeat the evil Halion and Sartharion. Halion mentioned in his defeat that what we have done would not change the master's return. It was the first we have heard of this master. We wondered who this master was. In my mind, there was no question. It was Deathwing.

If the cultist rumors were true. If Halion was correct. If even the elements seemed to speak his name, Deathwing would return. As I gazed over the ocean, looking at the sunset in Darkshore, I thought if this would be the last sunset many in Azeroth would see. I knew he was close. Maybe even that night, Deathwing would rise and shatter Azeroth completely.

For myself, I was not concerned about my safety or the safety of my friends. We have brought about the Lich King's demise. We had beaten an Old God. We have proven ourselves strong adventurers. I knew not what tomorrow held, but I did know that my friends and my brothers in arms would see this mighty dragon destroyed. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon. Just as he has shattered Azeroth, we in turn will shatter him.

Boss Mechanics I Wouldn't Mind Seeing Again

2010-11-22T10:39:00.000-05:00

As we get ready to see Azeroth torn up tomorrow, according to MMO Champion, I feel like going back in my almost 3 years of playing WoW and go through what were some of my favorite boss mechanics that I would like to see again. There are some mechanics I never hope to see again. (Defile, I'm looking at you.) However, there are some very interesting mechanics I would like to see in some boss fights again. Here are a few of my favorites.

1) No Aggro Table - Not so much in the style of Faction Champions in Trial of the Crusader, but more like the mechnanics in Karazhan with Shade of Aran. There was a lot of raid wide damage going out, everybody had to be able to protect themselves somehow, and everybody had to be on their toes. It was a lot of fun to try and DPS that boss as cat and would love to do something as moonkin with it.

2) Lasers - Netherspite in Karazhan may be my favorite raid boss of all time. Why you ask? His mechanics with lasers were absolutely awesome. You had to split your 10 man raid with 6 members standing in the laser as specific times. Also, people like tanks couldn't stand in a laser too long without killing themselves so they had to weave in and out. It was so much fun to play with.

3) Water - Although I did not ever get a chance to fight The Lurker, I have looked at videos and it seems like an incredibly fun fight where diving under the water is actually a mechanic in a fight. It makes it better than just moving out of the way of exploding floors, etc.

4) Malygos-Like Fights - Pretty much any element from the Malygos fight, I would love to see again. Whether it is taking his buffs to running under shields to flying around on disks to air combat done correctly, any mechanic in that fight could easily be repeatable and would be fun.

5) Random Raid Bosses - Although this was kind of done in Violet Hold and Trial of the Champion, I'm thinking more in line with the Opera Event in Karazhan (Notice a pattern of my favorite raid mechanics?). 3 different bosses with 3 different mechanics. And while the mechanics of the individual fights were nothing really different, the fact that you didn't know which one you would have until it announces it made it a lot of fun.

6) Healing Raid Bosses - As weird as it seems, the most unique fight in ICC was Dreamwalker. I would definitely not mind seeing bosses where you either heal a friendly mob or the only way to damage the boss would be to heal it.

7) Time Limit - Done really well with the Blood Quarter weekly in ICC and in Zul'Aman, I would love to see extra bonuses for doing something in a certain time limit. In Zul'aman, it was a cool exclusive mount. In ICC, it was JPs with a chance of gems or gear. If you make the reward worth it, time limits are awesome. Plus, it doesn't fail the raid, you just miss out on getting a cool reward.

8) Ulduar-Like Hard Modes - Please, let us get away from switching it in a menu. Let the players do something to actually make it harder. Push a button. Don't kill the other drakes. Clear a channel in a certain time limit. Don't use helpers. Something that makes a hard mode feel like a hard mode.

4.0.1 Feral Tanking and Threat Building

2010-11-18T10:26:00.000-05:00

It has been a while since I have done a feral tanking blog post, but I have been trying to tank a little more in anticipation of leveling in Cataclysm and getting used to the 4.0.1 changes. And unfortunately, swipe spam does not work anymore. Neither does putting Maul with all of your abilities. They have actually done this with all the tanking classes to make it harder to just AoE tank. (Consecration has a long cooldown. So does Death and Decay) So since you have lost two major spammable threat builders, what do you do now? Here is what I have been doing to hold aggro in 5 mans as well as a rundown of stats important for bears right now.

AOE Trash

If Feral Charge is up, I will charge into a group if possible. Some groups aren't possible so with those, I pull with Faerie Fire. While I'm charging in, I will Faerie Fire the first target. From there, if the group is around me, I will Swipe. From there, I will Tab target the next target and hit Mangle. I will then Tab target the next target and hit 3 Lacerate. By then, Swipe should be up again. I repeat this until every target has Mangle and 3 Lacerate on them, although if DPS is sufficient, I get nowhere close.

Bosses

I Feral Charge in and put up Faerie Fire. Then I hit Mangle. Then I stack my Lacerate up to 3. Then I use Pulverize, which clears my 3 stack of Lacerate. I reapply my Lacerate up to 3. If Pulverize drops off, I reapply Pulverize. If Beserk procs, I hit Mangle. Mangle is still a great threat builder and should be used on cooldown. Swipe should be used if adds spawn, like Prince Keleseth in Utgarde Keep. Maul should only be used if you have a lot of rage. If you have low rage, use Faerie Fire to help with a little bit of threat.

You still will get overzealous DPS who want to try to win Omen. If that is the case, you still have Taunt and Challanging Roar as aggro capturers as well.

Stats

Most of this information, I have gotten from Kalon at Think Tank (see blog list). Since all extra armor is gone from leather pieces now, we basically want to use the highest armor, highest stamina, and highest agility pieces we can. All 3 of these things all come as we get better armor. A 4T10 277 bear is going to have more stamina, armor, and agility than a 4T10 264 bear. The major stats that we are looking for are in this order.

1) Hit/Expertise - We need to make sure that we are hit capped so that we are not missing our abilities. A missed ability could make the difference between your DPS pulling or you holding aggro. Expertise is along the same line. It makes sure that your attacks do not miss. If you are hit capped but not expertised capped, I would reforge hit into expertise if possible. Vice versa is true as well if you are expertised capped but not hit capped.

2) Stamina - Stamina is still the king of tanking. While agility does help with dodge rating, critical strike chance, etc, there is diminishing returns and you will eventually get hit by something. That is where having high enough stamina becomes important. This is still the major thing you gem for in 4.0.1.

3) Agility - Agility helps critical strike chance, which helps with Savage Defense procs, and dodge rating, which increases our effective health. While we should gem stamina, there are a few enchants that have agility, for example, cloaks. Agility is now a much better stat, especially when combined with mastery.

4) Mastery - With reforging, we could do a lot of fun stuff with mastery. The bear's mastery is that increases the size of your Savage Defense by 4% per mastery point. If you have excess hit and excess expertise, I would highly recommend changing some of that hit/expertise to mastery (since you can't reforge it into stamina, agility, or armor anyway).

5) Armor - The only reason it is down this far is because armor gets better as we get better gear. I would not gem or enchant for armor though.

So hopefully, this will get you started tanking post 4.0.1. and into Cataclysm, because I'm fairly certain the quick level way will be through the LFD, especially with them putting the quest givers right at the entrance of the instance.

Redhawk's 1st Twitter Chat

2010-11-17T10:37:00.000-05:00

Much like Blizzard has done in the past, I have put out the call for questions over Twitter. They could be about WoW, druids, or even personal questions. And, boy, did people come through on this one. So, sit back, relax, and get ready Redhawk's Twitter Chat. (F.Y.I. This is not my normal blogging. Come back tomorrow if you want normal Redhawk's Gaze material. This is a lot of sarcasm and can be very explicit. Very, very explicit actually.)

1) Why Are You So Adorable? - Look at your moonkin, now at me, now back at your moonkin, now back at me. Your moonkin is not me, but he could smell like me with Old Northrend Spice. Look down, now back up, Old Northrend Spice has turned into gold coins. Look again, and it has become an epic two handed staff. I'm on a 310% flying mount. (Whistling)

2) Why Do These Entertaining People Never Apply to My Guild? - Small guide. How to get psychos to apply to your guild. Step 1: Make sure your GM is a well known priest blogger. Step 2: Have him put calls out for PvPers and PvEers. Step 3: Hope they are heavy alcoholics or massive drug users. Step 4: ????? Step 5: Profit

3) Cats or Dogs? - Come on. What do I use on my site all the time. Cats obviously. You feed them, change their litter, and pet them every so often and they love you. Or, at the very least, tolerate you while they plan world domination.

4) Mages or Warlocks? - Mages. I like my lock alot and drain tanking is a lot of fun, but mages are getting heroism with Time Warp. They win. Plus, I'm gonna find a way to do a machinima version of Rocky Horror Picture Show with all gnome mages.

5) Why is there no cow level? - Play Tauren. Trust me, there is a cow level. Or just be Alliance and go and kill their leader. Then it really is a cow level.

6) Why don't druids have a cow form? - Well, first of all, the forms have to have distinguishing features, like breast. There are no breast on moonkin form, cat form, or bear form. So, they can't make cows because cows have utters and they couldn't show those without getting an M rating.

7) What is your quest? - To rescue the princess from a pig like creature by getting the Triforce. Unfortunately, WoW does not have princesses, pig like creatures, or a Triforce, so it will be a while before I can do that. So, in the meantime, I guess it would be too get as many pretty purple pieces of gear as I can and be a general badass moonkin in both PvE and PvP.

8) Why are night elfs bad? - Because Avatar came out after WoW. If James Cameron got his hands on the night elfs first, everybody would want to be a night elf.

9) How many points would a hunter get for mounting a moonkin's antlers? - Two. One up his ass and one in his crotch. And count your blessings you only got two. That means we didn't push it in far enough.

10) How do you know you are "doing it right"? - Moaning from her is usually a good start. In all seriousness though, if bosses are dieing, people are living, and we are progressing, I am doing it right.

11) Was that in fact "what she said"? - No, her mouth was full so it was more like afjlkafjlfjalkfjalkf;ja;fjf.

12) It's almost a wipe, you & 1 other raid member are trying to kill the boss. Who's by your side? - I'm hoping and praying it is a tank. Unfotunately, that is not usually the way it works so I'm gonna go with Viktory, one of our healers.

13) How bad IS @bruherd's beard? - Here is a pic if you don't remember Bruherd:

Bruherd is the non-moonkin in the pic highlighting the lack of privates. On a scale of badness, I rate it a 3. Compared to some of the people at Blizzcon, that beard is nowhere near terrible.

14) When will we have guild housing? How much closet space will there be? Once we have it, is it inappropriate to still run Closet Gnome? - Guild housing will come out in patch 3000.0.1 when the player base has dropped below 5,000 players. Closet space is dependent on the model of guild house you have. The models will be dungeon, castle, mansion, and San Francisco loft. I will let you determine how much closet space is in each. And yes, you will still need Closet Gnome. Just find one that likes being in the closet to begin with. I personally would name my closet gnome Tom Cruise. That way, I could say, "Tom Cruise, you need to come out of the closet."

15) Boxers, briefs, commando? - Normal day, boxers. Unless it is laundry day, then it may be briefs. However, when sleeping at night, it is all commando.

16) What is your favorite holiday moment? - I don't really do WoW holidays although I do get a kick out of killing the Headless Horsemen every day. My favorite holiday moment in real life is probably when we are putting up the Christmas tree as a family and playing Christmas music. Just as long as it is not the NSYNC Christmas Album that my sister had at one time.

17) Do you believe achievements need to go account wide? No. I might have sang a different tune if my main didn't get Glory of the Icecrown Raider on 10 and 25 man. However, I think Blizzard should add something in the achievements menu that lets you see and link the achievements from other characters on that account.

18) Duel-speccing in arenas in Diablo 3? - Probably not. They mentioned during Blizzcon that they don't care about balance in arenas. I am sure, just like in WoW, some theorycrafter will come up with the best arena spec for the demon hunter, but it won't mean anything.

19) Diablo 3 arenas as an esport? - No. Since Blizzard said they won't balance it, they can't make it an esport. I'm sure someone could come up with a mod for Diablo 3 that would balance it, but it just doesn't seem interesting enough to become an esport. Plus, they already have WoW arenas which is a great esport.

20) What is your favorite color? - Garnet as in my alma mater's colors garnet and black. Did I mention that the SC Gamecocks are SEC East champions this year. Also, let me show you the coolest moonkin in the world.

If they allow different moonkin colors, I'm making my moonkin red just like Cocky.

21) Why are you not putting duel speccing in Diablo 3? - Because I'm not a producer of the game.

22) Are they going to focus on PvP in Diablo 3? - No, it is an addon on the side, not a major part of the game.

23) You understand they made me sit through the Diablo 3 Q & A, right? - Yes, Bruherd, I understand. 95% of the people who get up and ask questions at those Blizzcon Q & A's are morons.

24) Do you think Vince Vaugn is hilarious? - I like Wedding Crashers and Dodgeball, so I would have to say I like some of his movies and he is funny. He has also made some stinkers though. (Hello Fred Claus)

25) What is your favorite cut of steak and what part of the cow druid can I get it from? - I love a nicely done medium rare Prime Rib, which is right below the chest armor on a Tauren, at least according to Yahoo Answers.

26) Favorite yellow fruit? - I can only think of one and it is a banana, but to be honest, I'm not too wild about bananas.

27) What would you name your succubus? - Veronica. And props if you know what this is a reference too. I will give you a hint, it is one of my favorite TV shows. The only way you could kill her is you have to sing "There's Got to Be a Morning After" backwards.

28) If I was tamable, would I be cunning, ferocity, or tenacity? - I would probably be cunning due to the fact that moonkins are adorable (see question 1) and we are not really tenacious. But as LeetSauced pointed out, my GF does already have me tamed and in her stable.

29) Is your mom an account wide achievement or do I need to do it on each toon? - My mom is a rare elite. You would have a better chance of finding the Time Lost Protodrake than my mom. And, yes, you have to do her on each toon? Plus she takes 10,000 gold from your character or permadeletes them if you don't have enough, so enter at your own risk.

30) When will Diablo 4 be released? - Given 11 years between Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 plus add on 5 years for the new IP, you are looking at 2026. Of course, that is assuming we all survive 2012. My opinion on 2012. Don't be in Mexico that day.

31) Favorite podcast you have not been a drunken fool on? - Probably Raid Warning since I was on their roundtable. I also want to take this time to say if there are any podcast that would like me on, I'm pretty much open.

32) What hot chick do you wish raided with us? - My girlfriend would be the obvious answer, but I wouldn't mind if Felicia Day raided with our team. But she has to wear the outfit from the "Do You Want to Date My Avatar?" video.

33) Beiber? Yes/No/Murloc? - No, although attacked by a group of murlocs would be awesome. Or Cthulhu to pop his head off.

34) If I name my moonkin hatchling Red, will it defile my leg? - No, baby moonkins do not have sex drives. They just try to fly and look cute. I would be more concerned about you trying to defile the moonkin hatchling. But watch out when he becomes a teen moonkin. He will defile anything that moves. FYI. Blizzard, make a lil' LK that cast defile on small critters. Either that or does the shadow thing that tosses them sky high. It will be flying critters.

And that is all folks. Thanks for the people who submitted questions. It was a lot of fun to answer them and maybe a few months into Cataclysm, I will do one again.

Rapid WoW News - Prelude to the Shattering

2010-11-16T10:21:00.000-05:00

Today's post is just gonna be WoW news and opinion as we get close to the release of Cataclysm:

1) Elemental Invasion Starts - With what little time I played around on the PTR, this is where the fun starts in Phase 4. Elementals attack the cities and you will need everybody around to be able to kill them. It starts off easy with non-elities. Then you get the elite level 80 mobs. Finally, once everything is calmed down, you get to fight the 4 bosses in 5 man groups. Apparently gear is 251, so if you just hit 80, probably not a bad thing to do.

2) Patch 4.0.3 - God, I hope the background downloader did its job and has downloaded majority of the patch. If not, I'm gonna go to Filefront and get the 1GB file. Anyway, this sets up for the true Cataclysm, which is 4.0.3a. (Which is basically where they flip the switch and the entire world gets broken apart, a.k.a The Shattering.) If there is any pertinent druid changes, you will see a second post from me today. The only thing I saw was they are making Sunfire scale correctly with haste now.

3) Murloc Steins - Looks cool, but I don't drink out of steins. Especially ones that look more like decorative pieces.

4) Dial In Authenticator - For cheap bastards without smart phones who think $6.99 is just a tad too expensive. Now, there really is no excuse. Authenticate your stuff.

5) Blizzcon Pre-Sale Items Not Shipped - While I personally did not get anything from the Blizzcon pre-sale online, a lot of people I follow on Twitter did. Blizzard, get your shit together. It has been almost a month past Blizzcon. People need their stuff.

6) Russian Gets All WoW Achievements - Good for you. Now, you can spend 3 weeks away from your mother.

7) Cataclysm Race Changes Day 1 - As much as I would love to start with a level 80 worgen, I'm gonna wait because you know when Cataclysm hits, their will be hundreds of thousands of people who want to race change with the new race/class combinations. Plus, I want to see Worgen racials before I decide to change or not.

8) 25 vs. 25 Rated Bracket Gone - Too bad, I was looking forward to rated AV and IoC with 25 guildies.

9) Diablo 3 Possibly to Consoles - Not so much WoW news, but cool for PS3 and Xbox 360 owners. Sorry, Wii owners, I don't think Diablo 3 will run on your console.

10) Moonkin Hatchling - Ain't it the most adorable thing you ever seen. Just look at it. LOOK AT IT SO THAT YOUR HEAD WILL EXPLODE FROM THE CUTE. They even try to fly. Silly moonkins, moonkins can't fly. All of us adult moonkins have tried to at least once. This is definitely a day one purchase from the Blizzard store for me. Maybe both of them if you can.

3 Week Gameplan - Final Things to Do In Wrath That Every Raider/PvPer Should Do

2010-11-15T09:48:00.000-05:00

Looking at the calendar, tomorrow will be three weeks away from Cataclysm. Our guild has ceased raiding until after the expansion to allow us to focus on getting ready for Cataclysm. So what should you do if you are raider to get ready for the next expansion that is possible in the next 3 weeks? Here is my list of things:

1) Justice Points Capped - I would run heroics/PUG raids until you get up to 4k Justice Points. Doing that will allow you to get at least two pieces of gear when you hit 85. This should be easy for tanks and healers with relatively quick queues. DPS, try to find yourself a pocket tank or healer from your guild.

2) Honor Points Capped - Now that I have been accepted into our rated battleground team, I would really like to be honor capped before the expansion, which is also 4k. We are running premades with mostly guildies and a few PUGs to advertise our rated battleground group.

3) Level Professions Up to 425 At Least - My moonkin's professions (Jewelcrafting and Leatherworking) are both at 450, but I have a few alts that at least need to be at 425 going into the expansion. This will allow you to level up your profession while you are questing or LFDing. Also, armor makers should know that they will be able to build the first set of level 85 PvP gear, which will help you as well going into rated battlegrounds.

4) Start Collecting Raw Profession Materials - After expansions, you generally see the price of raw materials from the previous expansion, like uncut green and blue gems, enchanting dust or essences, cloth, leather, ore, etc., go up in price substantially. Unless you can make something you know without a shadow of a doubt that will sell in the next 3 weeks, don't make it. I will direct you to Just My Two Copper for a much bigger list of what to hold and sell.

5) Get Pertinent Alts to Level 75 (Preferably Level 78) - After getting my moonkin honor and justice points capped, I need to level my DK up 3 levels to level 75 and my paladin 10 levels up to level 75. Main reason is because my DK is my skinner/herbalist and my paladin is my inscriptionist. They are what I would call pertinent alts. If they will be able to assist your main's professions, for example my DKs skinning helping my moonkin's leatherworking, then they need to be in a place to get professions as soon as possible. If you can get them to level 78 before that, it will be even better since they can step into Cataclysm content immediately.

6) Get Other Max Level Alts Justice/Honor Capped - This will be the if I have time thing to do before Cataclysm. If I have time, I would like to make sure my mage is Justice and Honor Points capped.

7) Close Achievements That Are Possible - I have my Glory of the Icecrown Raider for both 10 and 25 mans, so I have no real incentive to step foot back in ICC. However, if I see a group doing 10 man HMs Ulduar and I can get Ignis, Mimiron, and General, you bet your ass I would jump on it to get another drake. Don't chase ones that you are far away from since you could use your time much more efficiently right now.

I'm sure that every person has some individual goals that they would love to accomplish prior to Cataclysm. However, these are the things that I feel every raider or rated battleground PvPer should be doing up to Cataclysm.

Sunday Humor: Ghostcrawler Tamable Beast

2010-11-14T08:54:00.000-05:00

I woke up this morning and checking my Facebook after the University of South Carolina's big win last night against Florida and saw the MMO-Champion feed this morning where they apparently have a new beast at level 85 you can tame.

Yes, the one, the only, the greatest community manager ever (25 year game card please), Ghostcrawler is a rare, elite level 85 mob that is tamable by hunters. The funniest of Ghostcrawler's abilities is the "Nerfbat" which reduces your abilities "to the ground". However, I thought of some other awesome abilities that would be awesome for this mob to have.

- Summon Moose: When below 20% health, he summons a moose to aid him in his attacking. After taming, he can summon a moose mount for the hunter. All other classes scream "HUNTERS ARE OP" when you pass them on the moose mount.

- Away, Unwashed Masses: Can fear your character. Silences, stuns, and snares all at the same time.

- On a Boat: When below 5% health, Ghostcrawler heads to the closest boat, jumps in, and starts leaving. Must kill/tame him before he gets to the boat.

- Pally Debuff: Immune to any paladin abilities.

- Ban Hammer: He uses this at 1%. If this ability is not interrupted, you will immediately be disconnected and will not be able to sign on for 3 hours on that account.

- QQ More: Makes you blind and you start emoting crying emotions. Last 5 seconds unless you are a paladin and it last 30 minutes, but you can't hit him anyway.

What Moonkins Bring to PvP

2010-11-13T13:12:00.000-05:00

Kitty PvP At Its Best

Blog Azeroth is doing a shared topic this week about what your class brings to raids. I hope by reading this blog, you have seen all the benefits of bringing a moonkin to raids means in terms of crit buffs, armor debuffs with Faerie Fire, damage output, etc.

This past week on the last day of raiding for this expansion, I got my 25 man Glory of the Icecrown Raider drake, which I hope to have a pic up in the screenshots section soon. This means up until Cataclysm I have two goals. Max out Justice Points and max out Honor Points. My guild has started doing organized 15 man BGs to get ready for rated BGs in Cataclysm. While I haven't decided whether I'm going to apply to the rated BG group, I have found out what moonkins can bring to a rated battleground PvP setting.

1) Pseudo-Glass Cannon - The term "glass cannon" usually refers to clothies, like mages, who can bring incredible amount of damage but can be killed relatively easily. Moonkins are a different class that I like to call a pseudo-glass cannon. We can pump out a lot of damage with Starfall, Starsurge, DoTs, Wrath, and Starfire. However, we can also heal ourselves, have more armor than clothies, and have a mechanic that damages melee if they hit us with Thorns. That is why I'm using my PvE gear in our PvP battleground matches. I can survive so that I don't need resilience but I can still pump out the damage.

2) Typhoon - A situational spell in PvE becomes an incredible spell in PvP, especially with the fun things you can do with it. I love being at Lumber Mill in AB and just waiting for someone to start capping the flag.   A second later, they haven't capped it and they are flying off the cliff praying to their diety of choice that they survive the fall. In addition, to the knockback, it also has a snare effect that slows them down incredibly.

3) Entangling Roots + Solar Beam = Dead Casters - Ideally, this would be used against healers, but would work with any casters.  One of the things I have loved doing is finding the healer in a group, casting Entangling Roots followed by Solar Beam and you have a useless healer that will die quickly.

4) Solar Beam In General - This has so many great uses. If you see one of your melee guys against a caster, cast Solar Beam on their opponent and they are dead. You can also use it on choke points. My favorite was the path leading down in Isle of Conquest to the Docks. You set it up right before the end of the road and meet the enemy before they get down and they go down easily. Although a guildie would disagree with me, Solar Beam has very situational use in a PvE setting. At level 85, it may be a better tool with a couple more points to work with, but I would much rather get higher damage boosting talents in PvE. That is why I have dropped my feral tank for the time being for a moonkin PvP talent spec. I may drop my moonkin PvE set for a while so I can tank some heroics for Justice Points and for leveling, but we will see about that.

5) The Potential of Wild Mushrooms - While I don't know how they will finally work, I can imagine some awesome potential in PvP for Wild Mushrooms. Imagine you are in Warsong Gulch. You set up three mushrooms by the tunnel entrance to your base. The flag carrier uses a different path to get in, but they try running out the tunnel. Detonate those mushrooms plus add in the talent that makes the mushrooms create a area of slow and you have an incredible PvP tool. Think about the possibilites in AV, the road to LM or GM in AB, by the gates in SotA. So many awesome possibilites.

And this is not including all our normal PvE benefits including MotW, critical strike bonuses, DoTs, Faerie Fire, and even Rebirth in rated battlegrounds. So I encourage you in the last few days of this expansion to try out BGs. If you are on Ner'zhul, you can come in on the Conquest BG pre-mades, where we are owning the 15 man BGs. If you really love our premades, I would recommend applying for the rated BGs team in Cataclysm.

Finding The Right Guild For You

2010-11-10T10:06:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I talked about the pitfalls that can occur when filling out guild applications. But guilds work both ways. Not only does the guild have to find out if you are right for them, but you have to find a guild right for you. So you may be asking what questions should I ask myself when looking for a guild. Here is a list of questions you need to think about?

1) What times can I raid? - This is extremely important. If you know that you prefer to raid in the evening, you have to find a guild that runs on your schedule. If you can only raid two days a week, you have to find a guild that only raids two days a week. You have to set aside what times during the week you can raid. Some of the most hardcore guilds I have seen raid 3 hours a night, 6 nights a week. I would never apply to such a guild because I don't want to raid that much. I like our current 3 night a week schedule for 3 - 3.5 hours per night.

2) What style of raiding do you like? - It is just a fact of life that some people cannot handle the rigors of hardcore progression raiding, which is fine. I like to seperate guilds into three types. Hardcore, semi-hardcore, and casual. Hardcore guilds are guilds that optimize performance and ability. If you are not doing your job, you don't raid. Period. If you get butthurt about being told to sit for a progression raid, hardcore raiding is likely not for you. Semi-hardcore is people who are focused on progression but also focus a little more on the people. If you earned your raid spot, you have earned it and it is yours. The only way you would lose it is if you stop showing up altogether. These guilds tend to get all the content done but may never progress into things like hardmodes, etc.    Casual is just as it sounds. It is extremely laid back and they focus more on being a group of people/friends over progression. You may be given advice here but you will probably not be told to sit out on fights. They will teach you or drag you a long, but you will be there. I have tried all of them and I can seriously say that I love hardcore raiding. We don't raid all the time but when we do, we are focused on getting down content.

3) What type of people do you like? - This goes a little in hand with the style of raiding, but it is also different enough to make you think about it. If you prefer G to PG-13 humor/language, some guilds are not gonna be for you. Some guilds will advertise that they are family friendly, which is great if you have children who want to raid/play with you. Other guilds will drop "fuck" like there is no tomorrow and they will shout and yell at people in raids, etc. If you do not prefer that type of humor/language, some guilds won't be for you.

4) What do you want to focus on? - There are a lot of PvP guilds and a whole lot more PvE guilds. If you want to focus on PvP, a strict PvE guild is likely not for you. If you want to focus on PvE, PvP guilds won't provide what you are looking for. What I think you are going to see going into Cataclysm is that more guilds will start doing both organized PvE and PvP, which our guild is starting to do to get gear, achievements, guild bonuses, etc. especially with the rated battlegrounds starting.

5) Where are you with your gear? - I put this down far on the list for a couple reasons. One, you can always get better gear. Two, depending on the type of guild, this may be less of an issue. If you just hit 80 today and you have quest/dungeon blues and greens, it probably wouldn't be a good idea to apply to a "Light of Dawn" guild who has cleared out all the hardmodes. They are going to tell you to get better gear and comeback. Even some guilds are more strict and unless you are mostly in 264 gear, they won't let you into their guild. Find out where their guild requirements are. Some guilds do use GearScore (Why? I don't know.). Others will at least want you to be in somewhat current gear and then test you in a raid setting, which is the better way to do it.

6) Where is your life currently and in the near future? - Seems weird to ask this, but it is important. If you are going to be starting a job in a month, you need to find out what your hours are going to be to see if it matches your set raid times. If you just had a child, you probably want to break from raiding for a while to help take care of the child, who may be up during your raid hours. Progression raiding is not just about the current, it is about the future. Most progression guilds consider new members an investment. They may not be the best geared or the highest DPS at the time, but they put time in downing bosses, getting you gear, etc. to make it so that you will be a benefit to them. If you know your life is about to change and it may take you away from raiding, just wait and see where you are.

7) How do you handle criticism? - Again, this is far down on the list because I hope this is an answer you already know from your friends, family, and work. If you can't handle criticism, even harsh at times, hardcore progression raiding may not be for you. As I mentioned before, hardcore guilds try to maximize everything. If you don't like being told you have the wrong spec or are gemmed incorrectly or are not using your spells/abilities properly, you may want to find a semi-hardcore/casual guild.

8) How is your computer? - It seems silly, but it is important. Is your computer build to handle 25 man raiding? If not, there are still hardcore progression oriented 10 man guilds you can join. But a lot of older computers have problems with frequent disconnects, lag, slow frames per second, etc. that actually affect performance. I try to aim with my computer to run at ~ 20-30 FPS with a latency between 200 - 300 ms. If it is not in that range, I may say I have to sit because of lag. Nothing worse then wiping a raid because you disconnect or you are lagging severely.

9) Are you willing to research? - The more hardcore a guild is, the more they expect you to know your class inside and out. In addition, a lot of guilds do not give explanations of fights. They say watch this video, read this thread on TankSpot, and come prepared. If you are not willing to research fights and your class, you are probably not suited for hardcore progression raiding.

10) Are you willing to farm? - Are you willing to get gold, flask, enchants, gems, etc. as quickly as possible when needed? Some guilds provide some of these things. My guild provides flasks, enchants, and uncut epic gems. We have to provide money for our own repairs.    However, some guilds tell you to bring your own stuff. As a note, you should always be prepared to bring your own stuff regardless of what type of guild you are in. It is just proper and polite. If you aren't willing to do enough farming to get your own flask, enchants, gems, repairs, etc., then that guild may not be for you. I'm not saying find a guild that provides all that stuff for you since you should get it yourself, but if you want to find a guild that has perks for raiders, you can. Even more so with the guild leveling system coming out in Cataclysm.

These are my top questions to ask yourself when looking for a guild. It has provided a lot of guidance to me over the years of playing this game and are questions that I ask constantly when I have been looking for a guild.