Waldonnis

Meh, sometimes it's nice not to do the same set of quests for the 14th time. Besides, it's not nearly as bad as you might think. I read more IQ-lowering chatter Horde-side in the Barrens than I do in many of the Alliance zones on other servers. Incidentally, if AD goes down in flames again tonight and anyone hops over to Sisters, join the ArgentDown channel and pester me about signing my guild charter

I didn't expect it to be alive, so I'm still at work and won't make it home by 7:15 (fyi)...figured I'd use the time to reduce how much work I have to do on Saturday night

Pretty much all of my relatively active Alliance characters are on Sisters, including the one I transferred from AD and a new space goat warrior I've been playing around with. I don't think I've been on Sentinels in a few months at this point, so I have no idea of what state those are, but my druid on Sisters does have a charter that could use some signatures

QFT Excellent suggestion, Vendes.

I still say that Gruul needs serious dental work, although it's hard to tell in the screenshot. Congrats on the repeat performance

DC-Metro New Jersey Philly...hmm...could go either way

Aletia is correct. As you may recall when I spoke with you that morning, I let you know that it was likely that you would be booted solely because of the account transfer. As I also explained, we accept people rather than characters, classes, or "slots", so any account transfer introduces someone that we don't know into the Clan...someone who has not gone through the traditional application process and interaction with elders nor gotten to know their Clanmates. This is something that we are very wary about, especially since the new owner has no concept of what we stand for nor can we be sure that they understand and will abide by the Clan ideals and rules. Rest assured that removing you from the guild was not personal nor a reflection on your abilities...it was simply an enforcement of a very common rule of not only the Clan, but of many other guilds as well. I'm sorry that you felt the need to express your displeasure so crudely and wish you well in your gaming time.

Pics were great and the spawn of Katak remains adorable (although I'm still trying to find evidence of retouching to remove the horns) Glad to hear all is well, though! Getting away from town is very difficult right now for a number of reasons, but I'll see what I can do before the summer is up. I need to get the fun car out anyway soon and stretch her legs a bit, so a short road trip may be perfect

Remind me later to check my banker...I probably have a few stashed away

*card-carrying member of the No-Life Club*

*hugs Gwen* It was fun!

Ah, the Zins...it's been awhile since I saw those names (thankfully ).

Hehehe, Scholo was one of my favourite places to go at 60 with extremely strange group composition. The best was when we went in with an elemental shaman, three frost mages, and a hunter...using the hunter's pet to tank. The only fight that we couldn't do with the hunter pet was the Alexei Barov fight (we called in a warrior...the hunter had to go anyway), but it went very quickly otherwise and was a blast The old UBRS raids (before they scaled down the group size) were fun too...all kinds of crazy stories from there, including me mage-kiting Drakk a few times As to how any group of 60s could wipe in the old places? It honestly wasn't too hard to wipe if you were freshly 60 with little gear. Since those instances were designed, nearly every class has had a talent review, additional abilities added, and the raising of the level cap has seen some classes more than double their damage output. I recently solo'ed almost all of DM East for my doomguard quest (and general stupid-fun) and, having attempted it at 60 as well (and gotten fairly far back then), it's almost staggering how much easier it is now at 70. Ten levels may not seem like much, but so much has been added that it trivialises just how difficult some of those instances were before for the under- or moderately-geared party. On a side note, one of my favourite things to do now is run through ZF or ST with fist weapons on Kelani and just beat everything up. The level difference is so large that I barely take damage anyway and it just reminds me of playing "Punch Out!". I even jokingly make Batman sound effects sometimes

I'm actually stashing my spellcloth to make some Spellstrike (or at least have it made, since the patterns never drop for me), so I can't help For those willing, we should probably try to coordinate who has unused timers/cloth and see if we can work out some trades, since I know quite a few of us have no real use for some of the cloth types at this point (I still make shadowcloth, but have no further need for it, for instance).

*huggles Maube* *also misses Katak's "your salty tears" comments*

They have tried something like this recently and ended up disqualifying quite a few teams for account sharing. I'm not even sure they had enough at the end of the disqualifications to even do a reasonable tournament...what I was reading was filled with conflicting information, but even some the teams that weren't fully disqualified had their class balance torn apart from bans and weren't able to compete. I'm curious to see if they're more successful this time around, especially since the stakes look to have been raised.

I prefer the pit boss... *plans a trip to Vegas* You're all set to create raids on the signup page now, Jasena.

For those interested in the run, could you post an update on your key status? Here's what I know of so far... Aletia (holy paladin) - keyed Rhoach (backstabbing rogue) - keyed Adranna (shadow priest) - Needs BM Gordantell (hunter) - unknown Oriahtundrah - Needs BM Jasena (holy paladin) - unknown Reyox (arms warrior) - unknown Zurash (priesty type) - unknown Tonac (hunter) - unknown Smedlock (warrior) - keyed

Agreed! And every boss is a tank-n-spank...no tactics required There, the matter is settled...we now return you to the regularly scheduled program

Waldonnis' shadowy magic is at your disposal.

Interesting news, and something I hoped for, but didn't think they'd ever consider seriously. Many, MANY guilds were having logistical issues with getting everyone attuned to the 25-mans while supporting several 10-man raids and it was literally ripping guilds and raids apart. For smaller or more casual guilds, this is fantastic news and should allow them to at least attempt SSC/The Eye encounters...at least for fun and the experience. It's always been a fact that some of the most interesting encounter designs were applied to the larger raid bosses...this should make it easier for many to experience them (I find the heroics to be "cheesy" from a design perspective) and hopefully progress beyond that.

I think that is what I keep coming back to in my own mind, and is very reminiscent of my experiences as a paladin...people LOVE to tell buffing classes how to play because what you do affects them directly. Back then, if you were a rogue, you didn't get Might unless our tanks were fantastic and better geared than everyone else (and the rogues weren't stupid about aggro)...no, you got Salvation to keep you alive longer The people didn't like it at first, but the results spoke for themselves...rogues stayed up longer, dealt more damage overall, and could push harder because they didn't have to feint as often or scale back on their attack timing quite as much. Aggro mitigation is expencive compared to pre-applied buffs, both in terms of GCD and energy/mana/rage use, so in any discussion about this type of thing, those factors MUST be considered. In the end, it boils down to "big picture" thinking vs. "me" thinking (in a non-offencive way). If I only care about maximising my personal damage, of course I would want to advocate that any external factors work in my favour....and who doesn't like to see big numbers in their combat logs? But, from a bigger picture standpoint (and we'll focus on rogues for a second here, but the logic applies to other classes as well), the proper totem or buff selection may end up being different when you take the math and factor in DPE (damage per energy used...yeah, I'm making up new acronyms) and healing required. In some cases, it may very well be simple and support traditional thinking (e.g. WF being the default), but I suspect that would only really apply to a minority of encounters post-BC. Brutal honesty, if any arguments ensue about buffing selection in a raid, my long-standing rule is this: if the person vehemently telling me how to play/buff does not have every elixir/flask possible up and every one of the best enchants on the best gear available to them to that point, then they aren't doing their part to maximise their own damage BEFORE my buff is applied...and I evaluate it all from that perspective. Yeah, it's not the nicest way to look at things, but things like enchants and elixirs do far more than a totem would on its own. Buffs are and always have been a way to make encounters easier...they are not required for any of them (insert obvious lack of fear ward reference here).

Adranna and Waldy also needs to finish BM for the key, so if anyone else needs that step (or previous to it, really), I'd be happy to heal or add some damage to the group Waldy is also available in place of Adranna for Karazhan, if needed (as is Kelani, who is already keyed). For times, I'd prefer early afternoon. I frequently don't sleep at all on Saturday night, but if I do, I'm not the best at waking up early Arms or fury warriors are fine (as are feral druids, obviously) for OT in there, in my experience and from what I'm hearing from friends on other servers (who love to brag ), just as a general note.

The roster lists who can make what...but we need people to upload themselves first!

This is great info, thanks for taking the time to do the math, Kailand! Definitely saved me many napkins for my ordinary napkin math I really need to do some research one day to establish a similar set of formulae for spell damage vs. spell crit vs. spell penetration vs. spell hit...*head asplode just thinking about it* Incidentally, from a marskman point of view, my general "working rule" has been that any real results from RAP gains from gems/enchants are marginal starting around 1.9k RAP. From my experiences, it seems that crit becomes far more valuable at that point, which appears to be supported handily by the math you've posted. Since agility helps with both, increasing both RAP and crit using agility gems/enchants ends up being superiour to straight crit boost gems or gear (barring exceptionally-high values), agility has been what I've seen garner the most "win" for the investment. I have since swapped out some of my RAP gems for lower values of agility for that reason and am enjoying some good results so far. I'm sure even 1.9k RAP for marksman is too high of a baseline, but I haven't stripped off enough gear to do testing below that value as of yet to be sure. I hadn't considered a base dps value as a better baseline, but only because my spec and weapon have remained unchanged for awhile and I didn't have the knowledge of other specs to further round out the understanding. Again, excellent work on the math and thanks for helping me understand a bit more about how equivalence can be established between the specs mathematically when it comes to stuff like this