Waldonnis

Everyone needs a break and/or a change of pace sometimes and it sounds like you're suffering from classic "raider burnout". I have avoided it for so long by establishing small goals that I can accomplish on my own, whether it be pet collecting, reps, or even spur-of-the-moment RP sessions. If all else fails, I just make an alt and have fun without worrying about dealing with the usual raiding crap and associated gear grind. Mostly, it's about finding things that you enjoy, but don't have to rely on others to accomplish. If you're entirely focused on group activities, it makes for a very dull life when you have no group around you (which is most of the time) and interest/enjoyment naturally wanes. Sounds like you're enjoying a playstyle change, which is good news. It's part of why I have so many characters: I enjoy having options as to roles available to me and, more importantly, options of how I accomplish those roles. Right now, for instance, I have 2 dedicated healers, but each has their own way of going about it. Some days, I enjoy Adranna's versality, but other days, I prefer the efficiency and raw single-target healing that Jaryndis provides. Same goes for DPS and even tanking. Having only specs to change between for role shifts doesn't compare to having entirely different mechanics available to you when it comes to challenging yourself and "shaking it up". As I realised many MMOs ago: you can have the best gear, spec, more money than anyone on the server, etc...but none of it really matters if you're not having fun, and it's not like you can take it with you if the game vanished tomorrow. New gear gets replaced, monetary gains go up with expansions, and so forth, but at the end of the day, we only walk away with memories and the friendships we've made along the way. Make the most of those and enjoy the people around you and it makes for a much more enjoyable experience than if you just buy into the "gear treadmill" concept.

^^ This. I had forgotten about his taunt immunity until I tried it during our last few attempts while exploring a ping-pong strategy's feasibility. Everything that I've read indicates that it does work, but post-3.2, he won't completely stop on application any longer (no stutter-stepping; movement command doesn't need to be reissued to start moving again once the patch hits). I hadn't even thought about chains, since it hadn't worked on any other boss that I've tried it on. I'll swap to the keybinds that I use for Ignis to make this a bit quicker and easier on my fingers. Should only need one of us to apply it and since my damage output isn't going to be as high as Taiden's, I'm the best choice for chains to free up his runes for actual damage (assuming I'm not also interrupting on the run). Curious, though, if Chains works, judging Justice might also...may want to try it and see if you haven't already. Pursuit should buy you plenty of room if he behaves properly during Surges. I'm pretty sure it doesn't stack with Body and Soul, though, so there shouldn't be a need to "prioritise" which priest casts PW:S on you (not 100% of this, but I can't imagine it would; worth double-checking). This would probably make Bralor's shield a bit more desirable for the extra absorption.

It has benefits and detriments, along with a big "3.2 incoming" caveat. The biggest benefit for a DK tank on this fight currently is that we could avoid kiting altogether with proper timing on IBF/Bone Shield/etc, which of course, means the raid doesn't have to move around as much. The downside is that it's more mana spent on healing damage that wouldn't be taken if Vezax were being kited. So it ends up being a "more dps time at the expence of healing mana" tradeoff. On a side note, it does eliminate the kiting bug problem that we ran into a couple times, which is handy. The 3.2 caveat is this, though, and probably is a good reason not to get used to this strategy: IBF's cooldown is being significantly lengthened to match that of Shield Wall, making it so that it will not be available every time once the patch hits and forcing either some kiting or some raid cooldown assistance to bolster Bone Shield and AMS/4pc T8 bonus. Also, DKs are losing a decent amount of stam, avoidance, and armour, so we'll be taking more damage than previously and have 500-2k less health in frost presence (mine worked out to be around 1.5k health and 850 armour lost) to soak damage. DR is being increased on dodge as well, so all tanks will likely feel some impact. If we were only looking for one kill, I'd say let's try it, but 3.2 is getting very close and we may as well try to get used to our current strategy in light of that.

Yes, it definitely would help, especially since we don't have a demo shout available now. Boss AP is significantly higher than the average player, so it's scaling is much better on bosses. I've been toying around with suggesting this as well. As for whether or not it interferes with Faerie Fire, they both provide different effects, so there's no reason why it wouldn't stack (demo roar and demo shout are the only things that share a debuff type with Curse of Weakness). For any boss that hits like a building or healing is limited, I highly recommend Curse of Weakness use to reduce incoming damage to the tank (and subsequently, reduce healing required).

It's a toss-up with spell hit for DKs. Ideally, we should always gear/gem/enchant for it until we're full capped, but other stats often give much better benefit (stam/avoidance in my case, and str/AP/crit/ArPen for dps depending on spec). What matters most is melee hit and expertise, which I'm sure we're both very good on. I know it's not in contention, but just wanted to clarify that 99% of DKs aren't overly concerned with spell hit cap unless they can easily attain it without sacrificing in other departments (again, melee hit and expertise caps aside). The crit makes Icewalker more attractive currently (I have it on Jary's second pair of boots). I'm sure Vitality will be a better option when we get smacked with the Illumination nerfbat. I'm working on fixing up my dps gear enchants now and have already added a non-tanking spec as my secondary. It won't all be ideal, but it should be a significant improvement over what I was facing before (mostly because I'm not gaining pieces very often). On that note, if I'm going to stick to dps on fights like XT, we might need to position Heiliger a bit better to pick up adds from either of the back two junk piles. I sometimes run back there to pick up a bot and drag it to him because it ends up out of his taunt range, so I often wear some tank gear on that fight even when dealing damage (I usually just swap weapons). If it's a problem, I could tank the adds instead and he can go ret on fights like that, though...either way works and I'm flexible.

To those who don't understand the logic behind at least starting to attempt hard-modes, let's look at the bigger picture for a second and also look back at recent history. We're on the brink of 3.2 already, which introduces new content...and will undoubtedly add pressure within the raid to enter the new content. Assuming we kill Y-S a few times before then (unlikely, but it's possible), what then? Do we move entirely into the new raid tier never having seen Algalon at all or even attempting hard modes in Ulduar? Also, consider how interest will wane to do anything in Ulduar once the first few Y-S kills are done and we have the opportunity to go into the Colisseum. Doubt that'll happen? Tell me, then, did we ever finish Sarth3D...or even try it once Ulduar came out? No, and mostly because nobody wanted to "backtrack" any longer. This will not change simply because "Ulduar is not Sartharion". I'm sure some would still like to get Sarth3D deadified (myself included), but by and large, nobody cares because it's "yesterday's content" and there's nothing really to gain. Fact is, people get bored/complacent rather rapidly without any challenges or changes to the status quo. I'd love a Y-S kill just as much as anyone else in the raid, if not moreso, but it's not a true "full clear" without at least some tries on Algalon...and we're A LONG WAY from that EVER happening if we don't at least start to try some of these hard modes and get used to them. This really comes down asking yourself why you raid: if it's for the challenge or to experience content fully, then hard modes should be a welcome addition, as each presents unique challenges that can alter encounter dynamics significantly (and you won't be able to see all of the content without them). If you want easy modes and a loot train, well, I don't know what to tell you other than the fact that you're missing out on some extra loot opportunities by passing them up. Either way, a kick in our complacency is warranted and I agree with Zu: this is a good way to do exactly that. Not long ago in this thread, I saw people groaning about Ulduar nerfs and how they felt it might make the instance "easy"...if we want a challenge, we should stop avoiding those challenges and at least see how much we can push ourselves as a raid to overcome some of the ones that are available to us right now. Given some of the hard mode encounters, attempting several of them will undoubtedly force us to improve our coordination and awareness anyway if we hope to beat them...and that will just make Y-S and other future encounters that much easier to deal with. FL and XT are "warmups" and there to measure preparedness...the rest are significantly rougher (and some involve a certain amount of RNG). May as well sharpen our teeth on those for starters and see what comes of it. As for me, I want a challenge, not easy-mode content forever...

We ended up with a lot of cancellations, including some last-minute ones that couldn't be helped. It was unfortunate, but the thought of finding replacements for 25% of the raid at the last minute for one more night was just not going to make for a good time for anyone The usual summertime real life commitments, people dropping out for other raids, and a healthy heap of just bad timing has made roster management into a full time job and one that has taken its toll on both Maube and I. I know it's disappointing to see a raid dissolve for participants, but it's doubly so for raid leaders (always feels like you failed somehow)...and constantly scrambling for a hefty amount of replacements per week was just too stressful to continue dealing with. Sorry for the "fizzled out" ending, but again, seeing a calendar event with 18-19 accepted out of 25+ invited didn't bode well for scraping the run together for one more night and I don't think either of us had it in us to play the "ask around for replacements" game one more time (especially since we'd be asking replacements to ID themselves for the week to a run that may not ever be completed).

See the quote in my sig...

I'm torn on WWS vs. WMO (and why I may try a third option for my personal logs). Both have their strengths and weaknesses. I do like WMO's presentation and navigation a bit better, but stability and upload time can be ugly at peak times (much more so than WWS). The one thing that I like about WWS is being able to see a list of abilities per fight (then who used them) rather than having to browse by actor individually. Comparisons by class are also significantly easier on WWS, and have helped me to find some problems in my other raids. Personally, I upload all of my logs to both, then use each to see the things they're good at presenting...and have been known to use a local parser to see things that neither show

Average dps is lower for single-target; AoE would increase the numbers on the report, but that's apples to oranges. Evokers isn't really an "if left up long enough"...there is no cooldown (initial or otherwise) on Runic Mending. They may not chain cast it, but they also aren't standing around for 10-15secs before trying (and are also lobbing out Runic Shield casts - both spells can be stolen/dispelled/purged, at least). The theoretical damage you provided also don't take into account that we need some constant damage on the champions as well. I can tank 2-3 of them without too much trouble, but their charge ability can wreck the group if they're left up too long...and it's even worse with celerity stacks (isn't everything? ). As for spawn rate, it appears to be a wave set every 10secs (possibly 12secs, it's hard to tell), with 2-3 different "sets" of add types available (one set has a champion, two do not). They don't really "spawn", but rather they jump down from the observation area along the outside edges, which makes targeting macros problematic. I haven't had time to notice exactly which set contains an evoker, but it's probably the second, meaning you'll get an evoker at least every third wave after that. Warbringers appear to be in the first wave from what I can tell, which makes some sense given the rate at which their celerity buff is stacking. It's possible that there is some RNG to the wave composition (there definitely isn't any when it comes to champions, which only appear every third wave), so it's possible we're seeing more than one of each per 30sec interval, but I can't tell from my vantage point and is conjecture. If there isn't any RNG and the wave composition is fixed, we should only see one of each type of non-commoner mob every 30secs. We're not going to be able to burn down everything and completely keep up, given the rate at which the waves come out and assuming no healing reduction. It's a good goal to start with and will work for a couple of waves, but as things progress, it's inevitable that we're going to fall behind at the current pace/dps averages for single targets and with little-to-no AoE. We're going to have to find a way to make at least some AoE work on this fight, in my opinion, even if it's limited to caster-sourced. We also may want to tighten up a little, with Holyssa (or whomever is tanking in there) moving a tad closer to the main group...should reduce the amount of time before the adds reach him and make it a little easier to regain aggro on strays. You don't have to be directly under Thorim anyway; standing just barely outside of the circle closest to him is fine as long as nobody is closer to Thorim than that. One thing I've noticed is healers running around more than they probably should be, due to the orbs shocking them. If I get a little too close to one of the orbs and get shocked, I just take a couple of steps towards the centre of the room and it always stops. You don't need to run across the room to get away from it, just inch forward a bit and you should be fine. There are also a couple of spots near the two gates where the orbs are seperated a bit more and are a bit "safer". I stand in one spot, but can relocate if we're having problems finding a good spot for a healer or two to stand safely.

No prob, Gord. I've noted it on the calendar event (since I'm tinkering with my calendar add-on anyway). Hope things are okay!

SKAH! Guess this means they'll have to put up with me Unrelated note, I've had some folks ask where I post the logs from our outings. I post both to WoW Web Stats and WoW Meter Online (each shows things that the other doesn't), and have been thinking about trying WorldOfLogs lately as well for a few reasons. At any rate, here are the links: My WWS Reports My WMO Reports PLEASE use these logs to learn from and not as some epeen tool or to use like a club against others in the raid (that's my job Happy Birthday! KIDDING!). Reports like these can be very informative, but they also only show part of the picture, as any discipline priest can tell you, so don't take them at face value. If you want some help on how to evaluate performance with posted reports, feel free to ask me what I look at when going through these. It's never as easy as just looking at the charts, since roles change and spec strengths/weaknesses come into play...if you dig into the information beyond those charts, you'll learn a lot more. Also, if you want to know how how to analyse an entire raid's performance and plan to ask me, set aside a few hours first (it can take awhile to do a proper job and even longer to describe) FYI, I also never want to hear about someone in the raid whispering or telling someone else that their performance isn't up to par. If you have concerns about what you see with another raider, talk to Maube or I...don't take it upon yourself to deal with it. We're here to have fun and kill stuff, not try to outdo each other. Keep any interactions about those types of things positive and constructive. If you want to improve your own performance and see someone else doing better than you at the same role and with your spec, we're all friends here, so I would hope that it's okay to ask for advice. I've had a couple of healers ask for tips from me and I welcomed the questions (and asked a few in return about things that I felt that I could improve on that others did better). Sharing that kind of knowledge only benefits the raid as a whole.

Purge (shaman) and mass dispel (priest; very effective on groups, but also a mana hog) are the others available to us, given our raid composition. One thing we were obviously really missing last night was Elrikk's FoK spreading wound poison around. Healing reduction is already exceedingly rare in this raid composition, so we would have to make up for the excessive healing with heavier damage, HoT removal, and interrupts. Curse of Tongues would likely be helpful on them as well, since it will buy even more time for a potential interrupt or at least allow for more damage to be done before they can complete a cast. We have quite a few interrupts available, but hardly anyone uses them...and I wish I could figure out why (and not just on this fight). Counterspell, mind freeze, kick, earth/wind shocks, and quite a few others. These mobs aren't bosses, which opens up even more opportunities (strangulate, SP silence, and silencing shot, notably). DPS is certainly important here, but if they're getting to cast heals as often as I've seen in the logs, a big chunk of that DPS gets nullified. If even a few get interrupted or locked down, it's likely to make a big difference. Basically, I would say don't get interrupt-happy, but it's something that should be done if you're already focusing on an evoker anyway. Those suckers are healing for ~20k up front and that HoT just makes it worse (see: Runic Mending) and when you get more than one out there, it compounds the problem. Reminds me of facing three holy paladins at a node in AB...it never ends unless you can stop/slow down at least some of that healing output.

In your case, Rhoach, it's a requirement that you keep them on

Faking email headers is an old practice for hoaxes/scammers, and Blizzard almost makes it easier by maintaining their "noreply"-style bit bucket address. For the truly curious, you can look at the SMTP routing information in the full header in most email programs/sites to be sure. On the hoaxes I've seen, the originating server is almost always foreign and definitely not Blizzard. And yep, most of that artwork was either recoloured BC logo mockup graphics or Stratholme-sourced. QFT. Blizzard alpha tests have been exclusively "friends and family" for years now, and this practice won't change. Past alpha invitees are often included as well (even if their ties to Blizzard are dissolved), but it's no guarantee. RAR? *laughs* Given how recent the trademark application (NOT patent) was, the possibility of an alpha this early is laughable...especially with how much of their resources are still dedicated to Wrath content. Again, QFT. Report it to Blizzard if you get one of these, but don't be fooled by it. My usual strategy when receiving anything via email that's game related and unprompted: assume it's a scam/hoax by default. I've participated in several beta tests for Blizzard (and other companies/games) and every single time, I always knew I would be receiving the invites before I got them. Use your heads and practice safe computing (no, that doesn't mean put condoms on your fingers).

It's just poor link construction/verification on the part of WebDKP's site; as long as the cost info is accurate, displaying the proper link is an issue I can overlook. I run into similar things with my blog's item tooltip/link generator and had to modify how it did the query a few times now. It still messes up, but only because WoWHead doesn't give much in the way of searching for exact matches for item names and I don't have the itemIDs to work from. The only way they (WebDKP) could work around it reliably is by using the itemID and just construct the link manually, which is what they really should be doing since they have itemIDs already (may want to submit feedback to WebDKP if this matters to you). On a side note, I don't really blame Blizzard for duplicate names these days. With so many itemIDs in the game files and historical alpha/beta/PTR builds, name/description duplication is bound to happen. We now return you to the regularly scheduled raid-related thread, already in progress...

My remaining wishlist items start with Hodir/Thorim at this point, so I'm game for skipping anything possible prior to that. Personally, I think we should start considering doing three tries on a hard mode per night on one boss, though (just pick one per night to try). I know we could use a little more gear, but we should at least see how we're stacking up at this stage against those. I would much rather think about stuff like that than the cosmetic achievements. The sooner we can get those down, the sooner we can just start doing them on hard mode every time and the less time we'll need to commit to backtracking for them. If we don't do it or even come close after three attempts, so be it, but at least we'll have something to measure against in future attempts and we can come back and try again a week or two later after more gear gets distributed. This means, though, that we need to cycle through attempts quickly, so rapid rebuffing/prepping is key for not wasting more time than needed.

I think the big problem with Arena seasons lately is that 2's teams were stupidly numerous, while 3's and 5's were becoming extinct. Part of this is because some of the more popular classes are strong in 2's, but weaker in 3's and 5's, so doing 2's exclusively was becoming the norm (especially for burst classes DPS-wise and paladins on the healing front). I'm not fond of that change, since it seems like it's another band-aid to fix a larger participation and balance problem, but it could've been worse. Thinking about the emblem changes more, it makes some sense to go in the direction that they're going in. In the past, we've seen several different approaches that weren't really ideal and introduced new problems. The Isle vendor was one such approach and worked out better for some classes than others, introduced high-quality items that were purchased with a single badge type that was incredibly quick to build up, and caused many guilds to just entirely skip tiers entirely. I'd venture to guess that wasn't good in their eyes and I would have to agree. Unlike the overly simplistic Badge of Justice system, the current system is overcomplicated. Heroisms can be redeemed for loot that is comparable to or worse than items found where you can obtain the emblems, Valors are in largely the same boat from a "what can I get with these?" standpoint, but can only be obtained in a combo of 10/25-man raids and makes any real gathering of them into a disjointed venture (e.g. PuG 25's and try for an organised 10-man Ulduar). Conquest items continue to be strange (some classes have maybe one item that's even close to worthwhile) and the gathering rate is comparatively slow, with so few ways to obtain them. The entire system currently does not encourage "gaming with friends" at all, which is a stated goal at this stage of the game. In all, the badge/emblem vendors were always supposed to supplement raid loot rather than supercede or replace it. It allowed for alternate means to gather a couple of tier pieces, and provide another avenue to introduce items at raiding tiers without adding to existing loot tables or require another instance introduction. I like the idea, but the implementations so far haven't been received as planned from what I can tell, so they keep trying different things. Streamlining the emblems is a good start to this and may lead to widening the offerings on the vendors (*cough* DK pants and a tanking belt that isn't worse than the Valor one *cough*). I'd like to see where this idea goes and, if things work out better this time around, we might finally see a badge/emblem system that helps players move to new tier levels rather than offering things comparable to (or worse than) their current tier level. As for the cries for vanilla servers, those will never go away and the ability to turn off experience gains won't help things that way. The introduction of experience from battelgrounds doesn't appear to be a solution for the oft-claimed "twink problem", but rather seems to be an alternative to questing for PvP-focused players. It's a popular concept in other games (Warhammer, notably) and has been a gap in WoW for quite some time. If you wanted to level, you had to quest or run instances...and some people just don't enjoy that kind of thing. This gives them alternatives. The "vanilla WoW NOW" crowd wants EVERYTHING from vanilla, including talents and so forth, not just a stop to experience gains (many who twink at 60 or 70 AV transferred their twinks to accounts that aren't BC/Wrath-enabled, which halts their experience regardless). I hate the idea of vanilla servers, personally. The spec choices were much narrower than they are now and many classes were forced into roles that weren't even remotely fun. A good example of this were druids, which were forced into resto 99% of the time. This wasn't done because of their healing abilities (common misconception), but rather because innervate was a resto talent. Paladins likewise were forced to heal and, more often than not, were even relegated to "stay out of combat so you can rez during the fight" duty (protection was awful and ret was even worse). There were many other classes in the same boat and, really, every class suffered from "only one halfway-decent spec" syndrome. I certainly would not want to go back to those days and I think many of the proponents of doing so are wearing their Gnomish Rose-Coloured Goggles when looking backwards in time.

I think they just removed the aura display element for it, or at least that's how I read it. From a programming perspective, we'll likely still be able to detect it, which means we can still add indicators to Grid or such for it. Edit: The increased range and reversion to the more beta-ish version of Bacon is good, at least. I'm sure the Arena QQ will be endless if that goes live, though.

The Bad Bleh, the unholy blight "redesign" is awful. UB was great for extra or even snap AoE threat without burning a bunch of runes. Post-change, it's largely pointless from a tanking perspective and means it's back to a 3-GCD cycle for establishing initial AoE threat outside of DnD's large rune cost. Combine that with yet another armour reduction and a stamina scaling reduction, yeah. Honestly, I'm wondering when we'll get shields, since we seem to lose mitigation, avoidance, and stamina with each patch. We have no way outside of armour and a cooldown (which just got longer too) to reduce or normalise incoming damage that does hit, and yet we keep moving closer and closer to the other tanking classes in terms of mitigation, avoidance, and stamina. I do like that they're doing something with block finally, but I get the feeling we're being moved more in-line with "yesterday's paladin/warrior" instead of tomorrow's. I'm also not fond of the Illumination change, which was an obvious move to make mp5 more valuable than crit for holy paladins. Watching Illumination go from 100% to 50% then to 60% and now to 30% is making my head hurt and might be too much of a hit given current itemisation (and will definitely affect any holy paladin that's raiding already, as they're likely geared for int/SP/crit). 40% may have been a better reduction if they wanted to go in that direction and would've at least allowed for a less substantial clobbering to any paladin that geared with 3.1.x's Illumination in mind (all). The Good Judgment of Light/Wisdom look good now and finally it's no longer an issue with overwriting or making sure the "right people" judge (at least for Light). Of course, it may/may not end up being as good as some top-end paladins' current Light judgments, but at least it's not a freaky AP/SP combo scaling deal now. Rogues getting the ability to use axes is long overdue (although shaman vs. swords is still outstanding) and the orc racial change is welcome as well. Overall, the shaman changes are a good start, although it won't fix things entirely. Chain heal needed the range boost, given all of the "spread out" fights in Ulduar, but I still doubt it's a big enough range boost. Since most of the debuffs that require spreading out are 10yds minimum, that doesn't leave any distance buffer, so you may not get a hop if someone else is just slightly farther. I also don't think the changes overall will boost shaman healing output significantly enough to motivate truly min/max guilds to bring resto into Ulduar, but that remains to be seen. Either way, the totem system change is nice and will be very helpful and some of the other stuff looks neat too. Elemental still needs some love, so I hope they're not done yet. Mage changes are minimal, but good generally. Fire needed a little more in terms of mana gaining, and arcane needed a way to not be such a mana hog...both of which happened. Ravasaur mount??? They finally finished this??? IT'S ABOUT TIME! Staring at that inactive trainer for years and years, knowing that my old paladin had started (and quit) the wintersaber mount grind years ago always irritated me. The So-So and Not-Well-Thought-Out Potion stacking is great...but removes entirely the already-tiny market for injectors that engineers had. In fact, all of the engineering changes leave something to be desired, considering the state of the profession. They keep making tiny steps in odd directions when a really big step needs to be made before engineering becomes fun and interesting again. I particularly laughed at the dragonling changes, since the best ones we can make are still awful, so they would hardly be tide-turners in Arena. Altering bombs that never get made/used won't help much either, since the materials are so costly to make them that many of the remaining engineers don't bother (including me). I do appreciate adding a glyph for younger druids as well....but what about the other classes that don't have defining abilities available at lower levels and with no glyphs to shore them up in some roles? Should we expect more glyphs to come? *insert yet another "shaman vs. swords" comment here* Enhance and elemental would benefit greatly if they could gain the ability to use some of the swords out there, as has always been the case. Rogues getting the ability to use axes is nice and overdue, but it's only half of a long-standing gripe regarding weapon restrictions. Of course, this also begs the question of why every class can't use two fist weapons (especially those that can use a single one, but not two)...but that's another argument. Maybe Some Day... Some of the PvP/BG changes look...okay, but not great. After being in lower-bracket AV a bit recently, I've come to think fondly of the idea of raising the queue minimums. Almost every match was so horribly imbalanced that it wasn't worth playing (40 vs. 11-14) and ended up with Alliance inside the Horde cave farming kills without a care in the world (*cough* buff cave guards *cough*). This has been a constant irritation for many, but I've never seen it so pronounced and "the norm" before in our battlegroup. It's a difficult problem to solve, though, since numbers can change quickly. Maybe a "difference/locking" system would work, where the difference in numbers couldn't exceed a certain percentage...but would require a bit of tinkering for those times where there aren't enough numbers to complete the objectives (mostly AV). Who knows, but if they're finally getting around to putting experience gains in battlegrounds, it may be time to look at making the matches more evenly matched that way.

*hugs Adranna's Dark War Talbuk* The more people you get for this, the better and quicker it will be. Rez timers were always the biggest pain at Halaa, and I'd bet it's worse when trading kills, so get as big of a group as you can get on both sides. I had fun getting mine when it was still active out there, but I hear it's awful these days without some kind of cooperation. Good luck!

From the pictures, the odd scaling may be more of a rendering/perspective problem. Without a spacial reference, even the old cat looks strange and stretched. If they're using lions as a reference (looks to be), then the larger head proportions are actually fairly accurate (wouldn't be very good hunters otherwise; they need a strong jaw/muzzle and a larger nasal cavity). They do look to have borrowed a bit too much from the Tauren model facially, which is a bit disappointing. I would really like to see these on something other than a black background and with in-game lighting to get a better idea of how the colours will look. Guess I'll have to wait for PTR that way. Is it obvious that I've done some work on 3D animal meshes before? Happy Birthday! In all, it's a good series. If the manes "flow" a bit better and don't look "solid", then the animations should look good. I'm curious to see how the Night Elf cat models turn out by comparison. If past experience is worth anything, they'll stick with the panther model style and spice it up a bit, which will probably look quite good. Now if we could only get them to introduce male and female models instead of forcing all Tauren cats to appear as male lions and all Night Elves to look like non-gendered panthers...

I posted this here because as we get better gear, some of our raiding JCers will want to stick to Prismatics in order to keep helmet meta-gems working. Spend those daily tokens wisely, and pray this doesn't go live. /RAGE Meh, jewelcrafters already get a significant bonus above most of the small socket bonuses with just being able to socket Dragon's Eye cuts. Yes, it affects meta activation, but the rest of us have to deal with the same thing already, but with lesser-quality (and often non-ideal) cuts in a few sockets. So...welcome to the rest of the world's problems, but you still get better gains regardless, so I wouldn't rage too hard. Besides, it's still the single-best profession in Wrath across the board even if/when this goes live. I'm sure the inevitable mountain of QQ will cause reconsideration, though, and some compromise will end up happening before this idea goes anywhere near the live servers.

Just realised that the only belt in Ulduar for me is...well, there isn't one (and the emblem one is just meh), so put me down for the Indestructible Plate Girdle as well.