2009 Blog Posts

I have had.... a very bad run of bad groups recently. Groups where the protadin pulls 800 dps on a 6-mob pack. Groups where we wipe on the first three-pull because the tank can't hold more than one and the healer dies.

But tonight I had easily my worst experience:

We queued for a 5-man and when we got in the paladin announced "oh shit, apparently I queued as a healer." (it tells you this when you accept the dungeon, dear.)

It turns out he only had ret and prot specs. What should the paladin do?

(a) Apologize and drop group so they can get a healer
(b) Sit around for 5+ minutes talking about how annoyed you are
(c) Insist you heal, as ret spec, in your ret gear
(d) Train the group with trash mobs because you're annoyed the tank doesn't want you healing as ret, or
(e) Refuse to drop group, sit in dal, in group, for 15 minutes, making everyone else wait so they can vote-kick you

Our special child did everything except (a).

I don't really quite know how he thought a good response to "I screwed up and queued as a spec I don't have" was to train the group and then refuse to drop, forcing everyone else to wait the full 15 minute timeout for votekick, but you're a special child.

Igøtbling-Norgannon of Five Finger Death Punch, you're now on my ignore list so I never have to group with you again.

Surely you all have some tales of woe.

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Landsoul, owner of the warrior DPS spreadsheet, posted some interesting data on the WoW forums.

If you want to follow the discussion to watch for potential GC responses, his original post is:

Warcraft Forums: Testing Reveals New Melee Hit Table Behavior

Testing Reveals New Melee Hit Table Behavior

The melee hit table is a complicated mechanic that dictates, with rolls, which type of attack will land on a melee hit. Its values differ between players and NPCs, between bosses and same-level mobs, between melee and special attacks, and has hidden nuances which take in-depth knowledge to understand fully and how it affects your damage. It has gone through many generations of changes and subsequent assumptions across all the expansions and players have tested and retested it's mechanics using differing combinations of hit, crit, and expertise rates to try and figure out exactly how it works on different targets.

With Heroic TOC gear and recently with the unveiling of ICC gear, it will be much easier to obtain gearsets with very high crit rate. This raises the concern of reaching the "crit cap" for melee attacks. The "crit cap" is an occurrence where other type of rolls (miss, glancing, dodge, etc) sum up to only allow a certain crit rate to occur. This is called a cap because your crit rate cannot surpass this amount.

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http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=21723843880&sid=1:

Listed below are recent fixes we have applied to the game. Keep in mind that some of these changes may not be active until after the realm has been restarted.

To review previous in-game fixes, please visit: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=20677858456&sid=1

12/9/09

• Onyxia has settled down and is once again killable and flying in the proper areas during phase 2.
  
• Icetouched Earthragers casting Avalanche now deals appropriate damage.
  
• The quest “Keeping the Enemy at Bay” is now completable.
  
• Totems are no longer targeted by chain effects as intended.
  
• The Death Knight chest piece, Scourgelord Chestguard, has been updated to reflect appropriate tanking statistics.
  
• Emblem of Triumph quartermasters now exchanges one Emblem of Conquest for one Emblem of Triumph.
  
• The NPC Usuri Brightcoin in Dalaran now exchanges one Emblem of Triumph for one Emblem of Frost.
  
• Bosses no longer respawn in the new Frozen Halls 5 player dungeon after being defeated.
  
• Scourgelord Tyrannus now heals to full when the encounter begins.

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The 3.3 live strategies and videos are starting to come in -- soon we can retire the PTR entries to the dustbin!

I can't offer much tonight, but we do have two selections for our European friends (hoping their servers come up more smoothly than ours do.)

First, Bluedeep of Cuties Only has created an excellent strategy for Deathbringer Saurfang, who is slightly harder than the other bosses in the first four:

• Deathbringer Saurfang (Live)

Secondly, Fusion's Lord Marrowgar kill video. This is a bit unusual, but the video description will explain it:

• StratFu: Lord Marrowgar (first kill)

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The next gate is in 28 days:

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Well, we one-shot everything, except Deathwhisper who we'd never seen before and knew nothing about -- and we two-shot her. 10's was a one-shot on everything. It's not a hard instance.

That said, it's harder than ToC I think. Not due to DPS checks, but due to requiring things like target switching, and healers keeping people up while they themselves move out of fire. And moving out of fire.

As a mage, it was definitely frustrating that so much of the fights are situations where JoW will not be up on your target. Not an issue for Fire, but as Arcane I felt the loss.

It's good to get back to something that feels like a real instance. I liked having trash again, I liked moving, I liked having variety in the places we fought and what we did.

A special thanks to Kody over at World of Raids for giving our streams some front page space -- we really appreciate it!

As far as the site goes, we handled over ten times the normal traffic throughout the course of the day and it only slowed down a little bit. And now I have some performance data so hopefully the next time the impact will be less!

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In the next day or two I'll be announcing the winner of our "Guess the date of 3.3!" contest from the pool of people who voted for December 8th (which was the most popular choice, with December 15th a close second.)

And with 3.3 officially launching on 12/8, the pages of strats and videos we put together will finally be useful:

• Lord Marrowgar
• Lady Deathwhisper
• Deathbringer Saurfang
• Gunship Battle

Also, Tuesday starting at 7:30 EST (4:30 PST, 00:30 GMT) we will be streaming our Icecrown raid (and we should be on the front page of World of Raids too -- thanks, Kody!)

Live Raid Streaming, which also has a chat client embedded on the page. (it's the same one you can get to clicking 'Chat' at the top of any page here.)

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There's a lot of things to spend badges on in 3.3. Your tier pieces cost 60 badges for shoulders/gloves and 95 for helm/legs/chest.

Saronite was 23 badges on the PTR -- and crafted gear is 5 and 8 to craft. Plus you need to spend saronite to get the patterns.

Not to mention, you'll want to start the shadowmourne line if Shadow's Edge is an upgrade for you -- so that's 25 saronite (575 badges just for that, at 23 badges/saronite.)

It can seem pretty overwhelming -- but don't discount the power of your alts in this equation: Badges aren't droppable but saronite is.

Running the daily on your alts produces 14 badges per week: or 60% of a Primordial Saronite per alt per week. If you add in the raid weekly (which is the first boss of dungeons and eminently puggable) that goes up to 82% of a Saronite per alt per week.

And of course, if you aren't in a raiding guild and can delay getting your own gear: you have a great source of income for the first few weeks!

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3.3 may be as early as Tuesday.

What have you and your guild done to get ready?

My list is:

• Make sure your UI is working
While the PTR is still up, take the time to double check that everything works as you expect.
• Have consumables ready
Frost Lotus prices will go up.
• Be ready for the new craftables.
That means using every cooldown on Spellweave, Ebonweave, Titansteel, and buying up Arctic Fur (or farming)
• Be ready for the first set of bosses
Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, Deathbringer Saurfang and the Gunship Battle
• Be ready for unstable servers
Always go into Tuesdays being pessimistic -- who knows, maybe for once they'll be up!
• Familiarize yourself with WoWProgress's Icecrown rankings plan
Kernel is asking for feedback too.

Speak up in the comments with other ideas for 3.3 prep!

If your server is down, but ours is up watch our Live Raid Streams (complete with vent!)

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In what I think is an excellent move, Kernel is posting his proposal for Icecrown rankings and asking for feedback from the community.

I think the more input he gets the better, so here's a bit of screen real estate encouraging people to read his proposal and respond if they have comments:

Icecrown Citadel rankings discussion

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