Waldonnis

How about....NOW! CLICKY

Not sure, since I've never tried it, but we'll need a rogue or someone with a key. The only hairy parts are going to be getting by the fire elementals towards the end and by the golems.

We can do a stealth run for attunement one night. Shouldn't take too long

I saw this yesterday after Liquidfyre mentioned it in the AC channel....great pic of Raeda! Congrats on being famous! Also featured in there were Ghonne and a nice shot of Bloodmire.

I'll comment from three perspectives, which may help a bit... From Verissi's perspective as a mage, the toughest warriors to beat are the ones that juggle their intercept cooldown the best (after the initial charge) and also have a decent amount of rage built up before engaging me. Basically, if you give me the opportunity to get distance and kite you, one of us will be dead and it won't be me. Hamstring is also key...try to get it on a mage as fast as you can (or any cloth-wearer, actually). The longer we stay in melee range, the greater your chances of winning the fight. Against trinket mages, things get a bit rougher for you, but if you force them to blow their cooldowns early (and assuming you can still find them in the area once they have), your survival chances go up radically. Only problem with this is, even a healer may not save you from the trinketed cast sequence (you'll get hit HARD). Keep cool, keep track of them, and beat the snot out of them once you rez and all will be well (best case: have the rest of your group killing them while they're killing you...or hope for a perfectly-timed counterspell on them from a mage on your side). From Waldonnis' perspective as a warlock, it's much different. Stance-dancing is the only chance you have at avoiding the fear-chain that leads to death, but it doesn't stop there...warlocks are VERY dangerous foes due to their versatility. Ultimately, the warlock's spec and style will determine the best way to kill them, but there is no way to tell any of that until you fight them (and even then, many of us alter our tactics frequently). Be ready to be frustrated by seduce or fear chains, massive amounts of damage in a short amount of time (shadowburn and serious crits), and what may appear to be an unbelievable amount of damage soaked up by the warlock. Learn your opponents, their styles, their tactics, and anticipate their next move. From Hoofie's point of view as a druid, you're probably looking at the simplest complex fight of them all. Try to avoid focusing on their current form selection (cat, bear, moonkin, caster) and instead look at their abilities. They can demoralize you and reduce your attack power substantially, have burst damage similar to rogues, often can have more armour and health than you do, can shift out of any form of snare, can run faster than you can by far, and, as if that weren't enough, they can heal themselves very efficiently. Can every druid do all of these things at once? Nope, but you won't know what you're facing right off and it's best to focus on dishing out damage and trying to control the fight. Honestly, you should feel lucky if you manage to kill a druid, since many warriors end up seeing the back end of a cheetah more than they see a dead tauren or night elf druid on the ground....druids are masters at escaping, so don't get frustrated if they run away frequently (either way, you've removed them from the fight for a short time). Personally, I shift very often in PvP and it's not uncommon for me to go from cat to bear to travel (cheetah) then back to caster, heal, then to bear...all in one fight. If you anticipate their heals (many bash->heal or stomp->heal at around half or slightly less), you may have the upper hand. If they wait too long to heal, you're golden and will likely kill them...and if they start healing early, you're probably not going to win unless you're getting healed (you may not lose, but you won't win). Long and the short of druid combat: outlast their mana pool and/or try to get them into caster form and unload on them then....if you can't do either, be sure to /wave at them as they run. Oh, one more thing...if you can get a rend on them, do it...often...and sunder the bears...it'll help a ton and increase your success chances.

Mmm...barbequed Huato. What side dishes come with that?

Quite a moving scene and the pics are wonderful...thanks to Belaru for posting these. Like others, I wish I could've been there for the event.

The Sons are a good group indeed and I'm happy to see that the alliance with them was formalised. From my experiences with them, they're a fun-loving, helpful group of people and I look forward to working with them more in the future Incidentally, Bludbeerd can be a laugh-riot when he gets going

Mmmm....ZHC....GIMME! Congrats!

I'd wait and see how swiftmend works out before doing another respec. From what I can tell, it will be a bit better than it appears to be in the description. I don't know about other druids, but when I had NS, I used it primarily for a big, emergency healing touch then tossed a rejuv on as well (followed by a rank 4 HT or lower-rank regrowth if needed...mostly because the target wouldn't be alive long enough for the regrowth to work fully if I went that route first). From what I've read about swiftmend so far, it seems like I would be able to do a rapid-fire healing barrage, complete with two HoTs (one consumed for a second instant big heal), a large HT, and a smaller HT within seconds. I think the bigger uproar amongst the restoration druids on the forums is that many of them considered innervate to be their only defining characteristic that guaranteed their spot in a raid. With it becoming a trainable spell, they're losing their "identity" and are afraid that the ferals and balance druids will take their spots in raids. Sounds silly, I know, but many of them were elitist jerks on the forums about resto being the only "viable spec for end-game" because of innervate....and now, the rest of us become just as "viable" using their arguments. In the end, a restoration druid is still a superiour healer compared to a balance or feral druid...don't think that the points that previously spent en-route to innervate are wasted at all. To the other ferals and balance druids, this is really good news. While I've never been a fan of innervate (I shun anything that's considered "required"), I do think it's a very, very valuable skill to have and am glad it's becoming a druid skill rather than a talent.

If I can find some time this weekend, I'll drag Wald out to fish up some essences for you. I've found the gathering rate to be comparable or better than the water elementals (and less wear and tear on the gear) since I already know the spots to fish at. Once I get Verissi's fishing worked up, it should go even faster (blink makes moving around so much faster when you're swimming...hehehe). I need to get some fishing done anyway since Hoofie keeps stealing Wald's food stash

Better bring the mud...and popcorn for the audience

Damage for mages doesn't scale with gear aside from crit, it's a flat additive increase based upon cast time. I hate to be picky, but it's the crux of my issue with damage and the class. Sure, if you're throwing fireballs all day, you think damage gear is working wonderfully, but start looking at the +dmg penalty you take on frostbolts or instants and you'll notice that damage doesn't actually scale at all. Changing the way +dmg is applied to be a percentage of base spell damage rather than upon cast time would pretty much fix core spell damage scaling problems from a gear perspective, in my opinion. Doing so, however, wouldn't fix scaling relative to stat increases, however, which all melee classes enjoy (the +crit per int point is horrid in comparison to how str/agi works for AP/crit for melee). I won't even really comment on damage meters, as they are flawed by design. Some are better than others (the ones that synch between multiple players), but they still generally show total damage rather than a situational breakdown. In the absence of AoE, I suspect that you'd be pretty far behind most of the classes that you beat... The issues with mage survivability go WAY beyond spec and playstyle...they're entangled with gear and downtime as well. I don't care how good the best PvP mages are across servers, they still need to drink, rely on every cooldown being up more often than not, and...let's be honest...most only "own" once per three minutes (after which they run away). This is not so for most other classes, including warlocks, hunters, rogues, warriors.... Also, we're not just talking PvP here, but also in PvE...if I have a frost nova resisted even once, I'm often DEAD in solo situations. Compare that to the other ranged damage dealer classes: hunters can feign or use pets, warlocks can often fear or use talent curses or pets, priests can shield and fear then heal, mages can...blink backwards and get beat to death. I don't care what your playstyle is, find a way for me to recover from 3-4 spells per fight being resisted and I *might* think we're fine...or explain to me why a class that's working well can have four rank 10 frostbolts in a row resisted by a level 5 cow. Bugs in mage, since we're so "fine": * Blinking and terrain (acknowledge by Blizzard, solution is to "not blink on questionable terrain") * Frostbolt is a binary spell due to bugged resist code dealing with the snare, raising the resist rate from 4% base spell resist to over 10% total (acknowledged by Blizzard, solution is +hit and -resist gear...rofl) * Coldsnap cooldown bug (acknowledged by Blizzard, no workaround) * Delay in snare processing (not acknowledged by Blizzard, but not lag-related...tested extensively and appears to be related to the double-resist check) * Apparent bug in resist/crit code against odd-level mobs, resulting in abnormally high resist and/or crit rates (not acknowledged by Blizzard, but appears to be a flaw in the casting system level checks in general) * Aiming problems with cone of cold (acknowledged somewhat by Blizzard, solution is to "make sure you're not facing away from your enemy"...duh, but that doesn't explain why my cast just went straight down) Deficiencies: * More downtime than any other class in the game * Least likely to live through an "oh crap" moment while solo * Mana replenishment inherent to the class are lacking (mana gems were great in the "Tier 0 only" world, but...) * Lackluster (dare I say "really not useful") set bonuses on everything shy of Netherwind. Better gear is obtained in DM and the new loot tables in "lower instances" compared to our tier 0/1 set pieces. * Ranged class that needs to be in melee range to use critical crowd control then get back out of melee range to cast before the effect breaks (nova, cone of cold..poly could use another five yards) * "Masters of magic"...that can't even resist magical spells that well or get rid of negative magic effects * Mana shield is horribly inefficient to be a viable defence, and that's not even commenting on it being used as a preventative measure (since it takes away our ability to fight)...not true of priest shields... * Melee can resist our damage but we can do nothing against their damage. Warlocks' inherent stamina stat bonuses mitigate this for them quite a bit, priests can shield and heal, mages can...blink backwards and get brained.... * Total immunity to crowd control is entirely too prevalent. I'm ok with some mobs being unable to be polymorphed, but too many are also immune to nova AND the frost spell snares. As I mentioned before, I literally lost count of how many mobs have this total immunity...and I don't even bother fighting them since there's no way that I can win. * As you mentioned, not all specs are viable from any one perspective. PvP, PvE, high-end instances, etc...each requires certain talent selections or complimentary classes. * See my notes above for others

Mage is a mixed bag...very powerful in some respects, but in others we're just...lacking. I lost count of how many mobs are totally immune to crowd control (polymorph, frost nova, and even the snare from frost spells), meaning we have no options at all against them. Also, if we're not touched, we SEEM to do gobs of damage, but don't believe the damage meters...mages are not doing the damage that people think and definitely not as much as we should be doing considering our lack of survivability. For every mage that has the trinkets of doom, I can name 20 that run around with under +50 dmg gear, so not many can do the huge damage that you see in PvP or screenshots (and even most of those are staged *just* to inflate that number for a screenshot). And AoE damage, supposedly our "crown jewel" is pathetic damage-wise and only really useful in solo situations if you invest talent points for the snare. At 990 mana per pop, I expect to do a bit more damage than 150-170/tick (that's after +250dmg gear) since it only takes two ticks before it's interrupted by the one mob that resisted frost nova.... For sustained damage, the kings of ranged damage are hunters now (more steady, uninterruptible dps that scales with stat increases...add in pets, traps that work in more situations than mage CC, and an aggro dump...tada, hunter = the new mage). Also, more experienced raiders are starting to not even include mages if they don't need AoE...at least one raid this past week on AD ended up DE'ing a really nice purple mage weapon because they didn't have any in the raid....that says something. "Glass cannon" is no longer our description...it's now "glass slingshot". And I haven't even brought up warlocks (which are more like iron howitzers than glass cannons). As for the review and shamans, I get the feeling that we're both going to be screwed by this. If so, I guess I'll level up my hunter like many former mages that I know did....

Hehehe, wish this worked for me, but I switch targets too often...just a bad habit of mine, I guess Tons of speculation about the review. I'm trying not to read any of it, since it's all baseless conjecture and Tseric's playing the "it's pretty much done, but all of it's subject to get tossed out, so I'm not telling you a thing" card. Tseric translation: I'm 100% positive that the review may or may not be done and changes might or might not have been made...and it's fine, L2P.

Just prior to Geddon tonight, I'm going to do a FR check through CTRA and see what classes are having some problems with FR gear. I suspect that our rogues, druids, and clothies will generally have lower FR than shaman or warriors due to availability of craftable gear and/or drops (good luck finding FR leather, in my experience). I already know people that can make FR plate, but don't really know who can handle FR leather goods (Maube has the Wizardweave stuff for clothies already, so that's being addressed). If anyone knows who can make the leather stuff, please let me know and I'll add it to my notes and (eventually) transcribe it into a post that can be stickied. I just hate seeing people paying for something to be crafted when we probably know some generous soul within the guild or amongst our friends that would happily make the stuff for free (if mats are supplied, of course). Would there be any interest in putting together a "rare patterns" crafting list within the guild as a start and extend it to include our friends as well? I have a few rares myself (Hide of the Wild, Crusader and Fiery enchants, etc.) and would be happy to craft or enchant these for free if a Crusher (or anyone in a guild friendly with us) needs them Personally, I'd love to find someone that can do the +30 spell power enchant, but have no idea where to begin looking for someone to do it aside from the Trade channel...bleh.

The pattern drops in LBRS from the mobs in the same spot that the Robe of the Archmage pattern drops. I haven't seen it yet personally, but if someone can get ahold of it, Hoofstomper would be happy to learn it and make them (the pattern is a green pattern). On a related note, do we have a leatherworker with enough Thorium Brotherhood rep to get the patterns from them? Our rogues and druids would probably enjoy having some of that gear.

I'm still using the "dime bag" version (12-slotter) on Tobalaya, but Waldonnis is 120 rep from being able to make them as well, so I'll hold off until then...just wanted to get my cheesy "herb bag" joke in the thread

Really? I thought the blood was considered like most other quest items and available to any who have progressed that far. *shrug*

I'd be happy to help with world dragons and UBRS tonight for whomever needs them. I'll park Hoofie in Desolace so I can pin Rexxar in place in the interest of time (Hoofie can track humanoids in cat form if needed, but I know his travel path very well and usually find him within a few minutes anyway). If we can, let's try to get as many possible into the UBRS run(s) that need Drakk's blood. I'd hate to be in the middle of an UBRS run only to see 3-4 people looking to start another group...

Happy Birthday and Happy Easter too!!!!

Well, being not only the King of Cheese but also the King of Head Injury (four concussions), I'm not in favour of taking a bride at the moment. Thus "Concussion Queen" may be a bit ambitious. Yes, I know it's disappointing for the ladies, but I'm sure they would prefer someone who can remember his own name more often than not I hear the Czar of Aching Noggins is looking for a Czarina, though

Argh! I was wondering what happened to keep you out-of-game last night...sorry to hear the news Don't push yourself too hard...concussions can be difficult to deal with (I've had quite a few). *hugs*

I've got a black diamond that I'd happily donate for the libram thing

The more that at least get started on this, the better...so we're better prepared for future MC progression. I'm on Hands of the Enemy now (I think Gordan and Taurrior are as well...Maube just finished killing Emberseer) and I'm 3k or so into honored with the Hydraxians, so I'll be trying to clear even more bank space for storing hands until we can down Shazz Let me know if you need another for UBRS runs to continue this chain, though.