Friday, June 23, 2006

My little soap-opera

Some parts of guild life are very much like watching a soap-opera. Due to my time-zone, I'm hardly ever online when any dramatic event unfolds, I'm usually told about it after the fact.

Let me illustrate with an example from last night.

One of the problems with being in a raiding guild is that everyone wants to proceed at their own pace. Another is that not everyone brings the same level of dedication to conquering new content.

This, of course, raises conflicts. Battle-lines are drawn between the two factions. We have the "Lets just farm MC, ZG & Onyxia", and the "Come-on! If we don't beat BWL, how are we going to get into AQ40 & Naxxramas? MC is boring!"

Now, I'm all for conquering new content. If I was going to pick a faction it would be "Lets do BWL tonight". Cynics would say that's because I'm a warlock, and I picked up my felheart set in the first month raiding MC, so I have nothing left. Maybe they're right. It does however put me in with the majority of the guild.

How do you resolve this inherent conflict of interests? I'm guessing a little better than our guild management did last night. 3 people were "asked to leave" last night. A lot of the reasons given were a little spurious, but basically it boiled down to these people were not contributing enough. That's fine, I guess, if you're a hard-core raiding guild. I was under the impression we were not.

The matter in the way this was handled has left more than a few of my guild-mates a little hot under the collar. We've already had one person /gquit and I'm guessing she won't be the last.

One of the problems with the way the matter was handled was that it was decided in a closed meeting between the guild officers & Class Leaders. We've been told that the issues will be discussed in an upcoming guild meeting, but this is coming off as "Kick first, justify later".

I'm guessing that these particular people were asked to leave, as opposed to some others guilty of some of the same problems, is due to these people not being well liked by the upper echelon of the guild.

It will be interesting to see how things turn out. Whether the guild meeting will have any effect at all. Will these people be invited back? What will they do if even more people leave over this?

As usual, I will only be able to find out the results of the meeting as I will still be at work due to my time-zone.

My little soap-opera.

Thursday, June 22, 2006

OMG - I love frost

So I respeced my mage to 31/20 (frost/arcane). Well, thats what she will be in 7 levels. Just missing the remaining ranks in clear-casting, magic absorbtion & improved CS/AE.

Mage Talents
Minimum Required Level: 60
Required Talent Points: 51

Arcane Talents - 20 point(s)
  • Arcane Subtlety - rank 2/2
  • Improved Arcane Missiles - rank 3/5
  • Magic Absorption - rank 5/5
  • Arcane Concentration - rank 5/5
  • Improved Arcane Explosion - rank 3/3
  • Improved Counterspell - rank 2/2
Frost Talents - 31 point(s)
  • Frost Warding - rank 2/2
  • Elemental Precision - rank 3/3
  • Ice Shards - rank 5/5
  • Frostbite - rank 3/3
  • Improved Frost Nova - rank 2/2
  • Piercing Ice - rank 3/3
  • Improved Blizzard - rank 2/3
  • Arctic Reach - rank 2/2
  • Shatter - rank 5/5
  • Ice Block - rank 1/1
  • Winter's Chill - rank 2/5
  • Ice Barrier - rank 1/1
Must say I'm a fan of the new mage changes. It looks like I'm a much more viable soloer & I've noticed a significant increase in overall DPS.

Ice barrier is such a nice spell, I don't know what I did without it before. Previously, I was PoM/Frost. Put Ice barrier, PW:S & mana shield together and thats a significant amount of damage absorbtion. Together with the new frost ward functionality, pity the mob frost casters!

Winters chill is also turning out to be extremely nice. Admittedly I only have 2 ranks, so it doesn't proc as often for me, but when I was running around with another frost mage (level 60) who did have all 5 ranks, it was very much becoming a crit-fest.

We were also a becomming fans of the magic absorbtion proc. Basically, you have a chance to regain some mana when you resist offensive spells cast upon you. Mo (the other mage) was regaining upwards of 360+ mana per proc.

Also different in this build is the number of +hit, -mob resist talents I have. Anecdotally, I'm already experiencing a much lower resist rate to my spells.

The only real complaint I have now is that my mana pool doesn't seem to last as long as it used to. Yay for 8 minute evo, I suppose =)

Hugs
~Mel~

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Its patch day!

Guess I should go check out the talent calculator and see what my new build is going to look like. I'm probably going for a heavy elementalist build, as I don't see much utility in the Arcane tree for a <60 mage.

My warlock will really be looking forward to key-rings, no more runs out to DM only to find I've left the key behind in my bank.

The scourge event looks really exciting, I'll probably be logging my warlock in as soon as I get home from work & have downloaded the patch.

Monday, June 19, 2006

From Warlock to Mage

Over the weekend I spent a bit of time levelling my mage. Shes almost 53 now, I had forgotten just how long the 50-60 levelling process can be.

Thankfully I'm still levelling with my RL friend (she's playing a priest), so its not nearly so painful as grinding those levels was previously with my hunter and warlock.

I love my mage, she's got some really nice abilities. I especially love being able to create my own water! Oh, and teleport. Once hearthed in Gadget, the world is yours as you have your foot in 4 major cities and can get to almost anywhere in a single FP. That and you never have to wait for a boat again.

The difference in skillset for a mage to a warlock is dependent on what type of warlock you play, I suppose. My warlock is currently NF/Conflag, which is very similar to a fire-mage. Lots of instants. Lots & lots. If I'm criting and NF is procing, I can push 500-600dps. Only +300 or so dmg too.

My mage is currently PoM/Frost. Just picked up IB. Have finally learned the AoE grind tactic, after much trial & error. Melee + AE to pick up aggro, bunch em up, nova, run (blink), blizzard, CoC as they get into melee range, AE a bit, repeat. Depending on the number of mobs, and how many adds you get, you should find they all die around the same time, except for the one guy (there is always one guy) who either resisted you or didnt get crit on, for which a handy fire-blast will sort out.

Hugs
~Mel~

Friday, June 16, 2006

Introduction

Hi

My WoW alter-ego is Mel, named after my first real main character, Melancholy, an alliance warlock.

I've been playing WoW pretty much fulltime since just after the release, although I did bother to download the beta and play for a couple of days.

As I sure many of you do, I have numerous alternate characters, or alts. Most of them are confined to a single server, 7/8 of them being alliance.

Over the coming weeks I'll introduce them, but for my introductory post I'll talk about my main, Melancholy.

I've been off and on with my warlock. Initially it took me a while to find a character I empathised with. I actually started out with an undead warlock, but I found her very hard to play in those days. I still have her on my character roster, a miniscule level 14.

So after trying many different classes I settled back on the warlock class, this time as a Human. After a couple of months I left her at level 45 or so and switched mains to a Hunter, this time a Night-elf. I levelled the hunter to level 60, endured many guild splits/mergers before finally landing in my current guild who I have been with for about a year now.

Now as I'm sure you can imagine, a new level 60 hunter isn't all that useful, nor required as it seems that almost every Alliance player has a hunter alt or even main. The guild found out I had a warlock, so I was encouraged to level her up. By this time I had dragged a RL friend into WoW and we were both part of this guild, so the rest of the levelling process from 45-60 didn't take very long at all, given she was a level 60 rogue, having levelled up with my hunter.

Enter the raiding mindset. I've now taken my warlock through every end-game (now) 5-man instance and into ZG, MC & BWL. I personally hate ZG with a passion and have only done enough to gain a friendly rep with the Zandalar faction. We're currently taking Vael down 66% of our attempts, but have yet to attempt Broodlord.

I enjoy the raiding experience, especially the new content in BWL. I used to think as I was levelling up that BWL would be out of reach, but my guild has turned out to be a god-send. For the most part they're extremely helpful and compassionate, with a committed GM & Officers.

Bleh, that's probably enough for now. As it is, props to anyone still reading =)

Hugs
~Mel~