Waldonnis

*wishes the Snowmaster 9000 had a pitching arm attachment*

It looks like this is the case. The shards themselves are not class restricted (unlike the Fragment of Val'anyr), are BoP (unlike prior legendary pieces in MC), and are required for a later quest in the chain, so I don't see why they would drop in any other circumstance. Honestly, Shadowmourne itself is likely to be the best weapon for any of us and nobody will get "more" use out of it than anyone else since it can be gemmed to provide different benefits depending on role/spec (stam x3 for me, strength/whatever for others). There is still one unanswered question regarding the shards that nobody knows quite yet: are they lootable by more than one person like some quest items (e.g. by everyone on the quest). If so, then the shards aren't the gating factor.

I saw this as well and was really hoping this wouldn't carry into live from PTR...but it did. You'll likely start seeing the ammo itself on the AH soon, worst case, but I'm sure the usual price gouging will be in full effect for a long while. I actually have one of each engineering specialty (V is Gnomish, Romala is Goblin), but neither is likely to ever get the rep until it no longer matters. If you really disagree with this rather ridiculous restriction, please please PLEASE post in the Suggestion forum about it (I plan to as well when I get around to it). Engineers need to be at least honoured with The Ashen Verdict as well before they can learn these patterns (just a note), but that shouldn't take too long for folks raiding there. Also, be aware that since primordial saronite is needed to buy these, it's likely to be looked upon as a "raid investment/purchase" (since that same primordial saronite can be used for other things as well), so be prepared to combine for free at the hunters' whim! *cackles semi-seriously*

Everyone is (or at least most were). Realms are being cycled again now, likely to fix this and other issues.

In before noticing that 19 people don't know any of the encounters, but know every loot drop in the instance... /sadness /anger

One of the faults of any "points system" is that people will hoard points for various reasons. Some want the best shot at the best items when they first drop, others just don't see a beneficial drop for a bit so it accrues without being spent, and yes, there are even some people that just like seeing their names at the top of a list or a big number (welcome to human psychology). NO AMOUNT OF POLICING WILL FIX THIS. Unless you force everyone to spend their DKP on items, any policing will be lopsided and prone to problems....and if you went that far, why use points at all...just hand the loot out for free? DKP is there for a reason. Loot systems solve many problems and no system is perfect, and yet the benefits still outweigh the negatives OR ELSE NOBODY WOULD USE IT. If you dislike that someone else got a nice item over you because they "hoarded DKP" or whatever reason, well I'm sorry, but my sympathy is about all there is to give. If you use a system, you can't just ignore it because it worked against you that time. Think of how many items you HAVE gotten before complaining about that one item that you didn't get. In the end, it's the system that we're given to work with and it's the system that determines who gets what. End. Of. Discussion. Yes, there are always going to be ways to manipulate the system to your advantage (hoarding being the obvious one), but folks sitting around near-full BiS complaining about one item is ridiculous. You've picked up a crapload of stuff, so relax and be happy that someone else who was lacking got to get something too that will only strengthen the entire raid. In short, IT'S NOT, NOR SHOULD IT BE, ABOUT ONLY YOU FFS. I look around and see a severely lopsided tier distribution right now in this raid and can't help but think "is this helping or hurting the raid?". Put ego and greed aside and try answering that question when you're bidding on that fifth trophy against someone who might have two tier pieces...let me know what you come up with. Not all of us run 10-mans too, so our emblem acquisition rate is VASTLY below yours....bear that in mind when you're complaining while sitting around in more gear than someone like me could even remotely afford even before the trophy. I look around this thread and see more whining and focus on loot or DKP than on the encounters. Seriously, go back and count the posts about loot vs. difficult bosses or hard modes. No excitement about the bosses and mechanics we'll face in Icecrown Citadel, no talk about strategy (other than from maybe 2-3 people here and there, and always the same people), no interest in killing stuff just to kill it. If there is no reward, NOBODY CARES (even if there's a challenge to be overcome). People show up, but looking at the performance arc, it becomes very apparent that the interest just isn't there when there's nothing tangible to be gained. Whether many people in this raid want to accept it or not, behaviour speaks very loudly here...loot has become the most important thing, even above relations with other raid members or besting a challenge together. It's disappointing, but that's just a fact at this point. It's sad that it's come to this...seriously. /endrant

Eliminating negative dkp won't help much in the absence of other changes to the existing zero-sum dkp gain/bid philosophy...in fact, it may make things worse. The assumption in wanting the baseline to be 0 instead of negative is that everyone else is always 9 zillion dkp above you, but that's rarely the case and people go from "near top" down to the basement rather quickly (I'm living proof: from #2 to the basement in one week). Sure, setting a hard floor of 0 means you can climb back up a bit more quickly, but when new content comes around, you'll end up having nearly the entire raid sitting at or near 0 for awhile as upgrades start dropping....and as the progression through said content matures, you'll see the same type of distribution we see now. Also, what happens when you're at 0 and nobody else above you wants said loot? You'd either have to get it at no cost (bad system), you go negative (against the philosophy), or...the item gets disenchanted. I posted a few ideas before, most of which lend themselves well to "floor=0" type systems (percentage bid, dkp bid, percentage cost, etc.), so I won't go over those again, but flat item costs don't work well if you can't go negative...at least not without "special cases" (which invalidates the system's philosophy). As for loot council... It's not my favourite system in the world, but I'm frankly unable to think of anything that would work better for ensuring the raid is upgraded as evenly as possible. Whether or not it's the right system for this raid, I'm not sure, but I've seen items go to people for whom they were minor upgrades over those who were still sporting a 200/213 item so far, and I've seen best in slots go to brand new folks. Both situations can be fine, but that's not often the case. There are problems with the system, but nothing that can't be overcome. I won't get into specifics here, but as long as it's fair and transparent, a loot council can work out better for the raid's overall improvement. Additionally, offspecs don't count in most dkp systems for a reason. The option to buy an offspec item (for gold or dkp) can and will hurt the raid, period (especially when it comes to the more contested "dps role" items; tanks/healers shift roles to dps more than the other way around, for the benefit of the raid). My opinion on offspec gear distribution system? Put it on the players to not roll on gear they'll never use in the raid unless absolutely nobody in the raid that will use it for that raid rolls. If it's tanking plate, for instance, there's no reason why Ascoli should have to roll against Kadi for the same piece, considering that he does tank in the raid (just hypothetical, but it illustrates the point well enough). Same goes for dps or healing gear. In short, don't be a *insert expletive here* when rolling on offspec gear should a dkp system remain.

Me too *looks at the paladins and snickers* Bubble hearthers!

I agree with Kalea on several points. Things were out of control in the last hour on Tuesday, which just made the last attempts even more chaotic and painful than they needed to be. For those who haven't been a raid lead, getting 24 other people (or for some of us, 39 other people in the past) can be more problematic than one would expect. Things go wrong, misunderstandings happen, and sometimes people "tune out" during any explanations. In this case, we had a tank that was learning the fight, and several who had never seen it before, so mistakes were bound to happen. This is part of the learning process and, as distasteful or frustrating as wiping can be for some, it's a fact of raiding...and one that people need to get used to again. I've seen more QQ after a couple of wipes or folks asking to do something else/quit early after sometimes as little as two wipes. Two attempts does not mean we've learned anything, nor does it necessarily mean we have the tactics down. Most people learn through repetition most easily, so it can often take a number of tries to get things right (even moreso if they're in an unfamiliar role). In short, wipes happen, so suck it up and keep trying. I also see a TON of "finger pointing" going on after a failed attempt on anything, and lots of smack talk both within the raid and outside of it. I've made my share of mistakes in the raid and I know for a fact that everyone else has too, whether they want to admit it or not. Again, mistakes happen, so be an adult about it instead of donning the Teflon bodysuit and blaming others first. Like it or not, the raid's failure to down a boss is ALL of our faults, since it takes the raid's efforts to succeed. You can jibe each other about screw-ups here and there (hell, I popped Vampiric Blood accidentally during P3 of Anub...and felt like a moron), but talking smack about how "dps fails" or the like as if any of us are saints is undermining progress period. The sooner people get it through their skulls that the raid succeeds when the raid works together (rather than tearing at each other), the better we'd be. There are fights where healing matters most, there are fights were dps matters most, there are fights where tank swaps matter most, and there are fights where it's all about coordination and teamwork. It's never as black-and-white as people have been making it out to be, and it's rare that all of the above matter in a given fight (healing-check bosses are rarely dps, tank, and coordination checks as well: Vashj and Archimonde were NOT dps, tank, or healing checks, for example). Kalea has a point here, and one that I've been thinking about recently. While I'm relatively unaffected (not many tanks, so there's not much competition for gear), damage-dealers are often jockeying for the same gear drops, and some slots are harder to fill than others for certain classes. I see a lot of "me" thinking and not a lot of "us" thinking in how people are working out their looting strategies...and definitely not a lot of forethought from some of the newer people. While I understand that they often have the most gear to replace to get "up to snuff", we also need to be considerate of those people who have stuck with the raid for a longer time and may be in the hole dkp-wise from getting Ulduar (or even Naxx) gear that is now potentially being replaced. Unfortunately, the downside to zero-sum is that newer folks can walk in and, given our presence in T9 content, practically walk away with best-in-slot items on their first couple nights. I've rarely been an advocate of preferential loot systems, but this seems to be a flaw that's hurting the raid to a certain extent. We may be upping the output of a new person, but our longer-time folks don't improve at all until they have sufficient dkp to overtake a newer person AND an appropriate drop happens...which then often sinks them below the new person again immediately. Personally, I would rather not see a best-in-slot item go to someone we're "trying out" as a replacement right away, unless of course the longer-time folks have the item in question already, but that's a policy decision that I can't make. While I doubt we'll see a change in how the system works, I can ask that the newer people at least have some consideration instead of blindly going for every shiny purple they see. The same goes for the regulars as well: if it's minor for you, but big for a new person, it won't kill you to pass (best-in-slots, of course, are special exceptions). Fact is, loot is a means to an end, not the sole purpose of raiding. We get more powerful items to kill more powerful bosses, which give us even more powerful items when they die. It doesn't matter if you're personally equipping 100% best you can get gear, if the raid is lagging behind you, downing bosses is still going to be problematic. It's a tough balance, since you want to keep your top people doing well, but also want to shore up those whose output is lower, but I would like to think that it's something that people in the raid are adult enough to work out amongst themselves. After all, the goal is to kill the next big bad boss, not "OMGMYSHOULDERS"...or at least it shouldn't be. TLDR Ug version: You're not a special and unique snowflake, nor a divine gift to the raid - it's a team effort, so failure of the raid is your failure too Mistakes happen, as do wipes - suck it up (and accept that none of us are perfect) We don't need critiques after one attempt; it often takes several tries for people to learn a fight, especially in new roles Stop being greedy about loot and work together more

I keep a personal collection of Darkmoon cards, but I've only completed one (I keep trying to finish them slowly, though). Some of the completed decks aren't of interest to me, but I hate leaving stuff like that unfinished If I manage to complete one, I'll mail it over so you can turn it in. I'm actively working on finishing one deck now (one friggin card left), so I may have one soon. As for herbs, I sadly used my entire stash for inscription and glyphs, but if I end up with more for some reason, I'll mail them over.

On a single boss, that should be sufficient, but there are MANY fights with adds/multi-targets (p3 Yogg, p3 Mimiron, Freya, most fights in ToC-25, etc), a demo shout/roar covers things better. Tab-curse spam works too, but is prohibitive on DPS races and really cuts into a warlock's ramp-up. In many add fights, melee is often just sticking to the boss anyway and I'm eating full-AP hits from those adds. I'm less concerned with single-target fights, since I will never get to tank those anyway. Again, though, this is just one thing that's been overlooked or gone "unassigned, therefore not done". Just saying that everyone should take a look at what they can do to help make things smoother instead of just mashing the "dps/heal harder" button mindlessly.

Looking over the logs, did we suddenly start forgetting about attack power debuffs lately? No curse of weakness or demo shout, despite having a warlock and two warriors...ummm. Some of these bosses hit like a building was dropped on the tanks, which all has to be healed by what amounts to less healers than we had before (with the roster rotation in effect). Whether or not we're killing the bosses in question is irrelevent, as those bosses are hardly the hardest-hitting bosses in the game so far. I know it's a bit more of an impact to a warlock to swap curses than it is for a warrior to use demo shout, but it's better than nobody doing it (or if both warriors die early). Seriously, folks, lately it seems like people are only doing what they're told instead of using their brains and paying attention. If nobody tells you to do something or it's not your normal assignment, but you know it'll help or the other person isn't there, then you probably should...or at least ask about it. If there are others there that can apply the same debuff that you can, TALK TO THEM AND WORK IT OUT instead of just not doing it. To let things slip through the cracks because nobody's talking about debuff/cooldown rotations or assignments is just hindering us overall (and this isn't the only example I can name either). It's not someone else's job to let you know what you need to do, so use your heads and do research if you need to. There are always going to be times when the debuffs don't matter, but "never" isn't the right answer. Question from me: Are the group arrangements fixed or is it just "however we end up" these days? There aren't many party-only auras left (sadly, shaman seem to have the most), but there are still a few that we are hopefully taking maximum advantage of. I can look it all over if needed, since I have a nearly-complete list somewhere. It's not a huge necessity in most cases, but some are more important than others for certain fights (cleansing totems, tremor, mana tide, etc).

WTF???!!! when did you get out of your cage? Better question: How did you sneak into my place??? Happy Birthday! Happy Birthday! We seriously need dancing banana icons...

^^ This Honestly, why all of the drama? It's not like we're blistering along here and on the verge of Icecrown Citadel (we can't even do a hardmode in Ulduar). We'll see enough trophies drop to get a few for everyone, so why not just lob one out to each person to shore up their weakest slot, then keep going down the list (likely sorted by attendance)? This would ensure that the regulars at least are working towards their new sets. Replacements or non-regulars can continue to bid on other drops and Ulduar tier tokens and could be given consideration for trophies once a round of trophies are obtained by the regular roster. Simple is better. Making the system overly complex or trying to shoehorn it to fit into the existing DKP system just won't work well since there are external factors at play (emblem acquisition rate varies by person). As for emblems and loot in general... /rant on I'll be the first to admit, I don't do the heroic daily even once per week most of the time, so my acquisition of emblems is slow. People can say this is hurting the raid all they want. The same could be said for anyone not raiding 10-man Ulduar or anything else, but that's not anyone in the raid's business how I or anyone else spend our time away from the raid. To be blunt: shut your f-ing trap about what I or anyone else chooses to do in their non-raid time. We have people that don't even do their research on boss fights and you're concerned with whether or not someone does the daily heroic every day of the week? All of this concern about "amassing trophies"...what's the point of doing that anyway? If you can't buy the tier piece due to lack of emblems, what are you going to do, stare at the friggin trophy in your bank saying "My precioussss"? Seriously, people, if it's done by DKP and you can't be mature enough to pass on something like this if you already have one that you can't use... Too much lootwhoring and not enough working together lately is part of what's holding us back. I see more concerned talk about loot distribution and who gets what than how to beat the fights like Yogg or the Faction Champs. News flash: this raid isn't the cutting edge of progression (NOT EVEN CLOSE), so get past the BS and focus on things that matter. More dead bosses means more trophies or whatever, so focus more on non-gear-related improvement than loot. /end rant

The audience could've definitely used more energy...but in all fairness, we were all REALLY F-ING EXHAUSTED. So much standing and walking over the couple days had at least me trying to use the chair in front of me for support so I could stay standing The closing ceremony was fun, though, and although Ozzy has definitely lost some of his "presence" over the years, he put on a good show. The Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftan (er...now TAFKAL80ETC ) was great too and got a lot of laughs from the audience (they were the opening act for Ozzy).

Just trying to get my life together.. which hasn't been panning out too well... ah well.. such is life, right? Miss you guys!!!! *ticklehugs, then runs*

FYI, there may be a bug with death knight tanks and mitigation. I've reviewed some parses both before and after 3.2 and certain instant boss abilities are totally bypassing my mitigation (and explaining quite a few of my recent deaths). I still take less damage than a non-tank, but the difference isn't nearly as high as before and yet is often 200% of what I took before. I'll keep a close eye out for the same tonight, but if it continues, I may have to withdraw from tanking until it's fixed or I have more data to figure out what's going on. To give you an idea, abilities that hit me for 10-11k before are now hitting for over 20k, and the nerfs alone can't explain that kind of differential. Without the same health scaling as I had previously, I just can't soak hits like that.

Edit: Bah, already mentioned re: hard modes and the planetarium key.

Hey, at least the Bacon change will have lasted more than 18 hours on live servers if they do nerf it

One of the mage changes has been reverted already...Living Bomb tick crits will no longer proc Hot Streak. It apparently "was determined to be too powerful" in discussions. God forbid mage damage actually comes close to warlocks/hunters (yes, I'm bitter; *feels "Sunwelled" again*).

Servers were shutdown today with a minor maintenance performed on them. Apparently, the hotfix was supposedly applied yesterday, but wouldn't take effect until a server was restarted (don't think AD was restarted yesterday).

Too late. You already said you weren't coming, so we already replaced you with one of these:

FYI, I'll be out of town on 20 August...already altered my invite status on the calendar entry.

My to-do list starts with getting the "I wrote it" add-ons fixed, since it's not like anyone else is going to fix them for me (and get the new SkillMonitor version tagged/uploaded to WoWI). I'm mostly going to avoid the new stuff during prime-time, personally. The new instance and raid will be PACKED and I'm sure we'll be hearing gripes and groans about the new Wintergrasp queuing system, WSG changes, and the Isle. Un'goro Crater will also be mobbed. I'm in no rush and don't like crowds, so I'll be keeping a low profile. Between prospecting/jewelcrafting, idle pet farming, and playing code monkey, I'm sure I'll have enough to keep me busy and out of the "suddenly overpopulated" areas for a bit (or at least while 95% of the server population is online). Oh, add-on note: If you use Fubar, it's likely to break when you log in due to a problem with Rock. Last I checked, ckk hasn't posted any plans to fix it (he might, he might not), so you may want to look into moving over to DockingStation (or any of the other Broker bars) and LDB equivalents of your Fubar add-ons. Worst case, if you can't find a LDB equivalent for your favourite Fubar add-ons, you can probably use Fubar2Broker (it's on Curse) until you do. Other add-on categories that might not work quite as expected, so keep your eyes out for updates if you use them heavily: Loot trackers and emblem/token counters (including DKP add-ons that don't know about the new emblem itemIDs) Battleground info/stats (WSG changes and addition of the Isle) RaidID trackers (API change to reflect extended lockouts and heroic/non types of new 10/25 raids) Action Bar add-ons (shaman totem bar) It's still early, and authors are already posting releases of most of the popular stuff, but I wanted to give a heads-up just in case (and especially about Fubar, in case ckk doesn't post an update...I'd rather let people know about possible alternatives in advance).

Quite a few UI code changes in this patch as well, so expect some issues if you're raiding over the next day or two and use more than a few add-ons (you don't want to know how many I have loaded). Anyone who plays a shaman will want to visit their trainer to learn the new Call spells (and check out the new keybindings for them). You may also want to keep your totem macros handy until you get used to the new totem bar and learn it's limitations. It's likely that you'll use one of your "old" macros at times, especially if you have more than three frequently-used totem sets to think about (the totem bar's limited to only saving three sets). In time, authors will likely extend the new totem bar to handle more sets or macros will get posted on how to alter the existing ones on the fly, but better to have some way to still handle those cases in the meantime than wrestle with manually changing them in a pinch. The bar itself is a bit clunky, but you should get used to it pretty quickly.