by any other name

Hi folks,

Names are important to me - especially when it comes to hunters and their pets.

Fooddude was originally a food mule back in the days where I had many gold-related alts and a couple of mains.  When I shifted from Thaurissan to Frostmourne I couldn't believe that the name Fooddude was taken (true fact - there are 54 Fooddudes across Blizz servers - go figure right?).  What this did though was to finally open up the opportunity for me to set up some great naming opportunities between my hunter and his pets.

Step 1 then - Hunter name... Sidetrack!  Available - I  c o u l d  n o t  believe it.  Snapped it up - Hi Sidetrack, nice gear, bit retro but shiny!

The double-barrel name was important as I can now double-barrel my pets.

Step 2 - name appropriately.  Below is a short listing of my rogues gallery.  : )

and of course...

Stay liquid folks,

Mogul.

708,000G and DCDS

A couple of things.  Firstly I made some gold (sold a mount and a huge number of pets) and popped up and over the 1 million mark again.  Then I spent a bunch of coin on keeping my warrior uber kitted as she climbed the PVP ladder.  Yes, it is an enormous amount of fun in the 80-84 and 85-89 brackets when you're wearing very expensive MOP blues.  ; )  Having a quarter of a million hits when those around you have 70K is, if not actually cheating, got to be extremely close - but after ploughing through about five horde defending a flag do you know what I discovered?  I don't care!  : )

All this conspicuous consumption has seen my fortune fall below 800K but honestly at between 2 and 8k a purchase I have a way to go before I'm destitute.

I have been giving some though to the gating of crafting recipes and have decided that next xpac I'll grind to unlock these.  I've always found the stready stream of small incomes to be rewarding and the gold I'm making atm from irregular large flips is strangely less fun.  Add to this the fact that without a full stable of fully equipped crafters I don't feel as Mogulish as I should.

While I'm here can I put a vote in for DCDS?  It was a crazy little idea put forth by Scott Andrews in a piece for WoW Insider back in early August.  In pondering this I can't help but travel back in time to tabletop days and a much loved dual-classed half-elf.  I pretty certain that this idea is the LAST thing that'll be finding it's way into the next xpac but with Blizz sticking to it's decision to only allow limited numbers of toons on servers (except for those soon to be merged servers) the thought of taking my gnome lock and rerolling a baby warrior makes me think that should this be actioned it really would be one of the coolest things in the xpac.

Stay liquid folks,

Mogul.

timeless

Olla folks,

I've been out on the Timeless Isle and can report that it's not that timeless... in fact, I have a very accurate way of telling the time whilst there. That being there's roughly 5 minutes between each ganking my lock receives from the horde.

I'm not against the process (although that's not to say I find it fun) and were I on the isle with a friend I'd be right in there for some respectful ganking; I'm on a pvp server afterall.  So fair warning, should you not wish your "game experience to change during online play" my suggestion at this stage is to play a stealthy toon. My durid and rouge are both sub 90 so for now I'll let this be.

One thing though - the rumours are true, 496 gear does pretty much fall out of the sky. In just a couple of journeys to the isle I've got my hands on about 7 epics and once I'm carrying the appropriate slot item for my class I then tend to get items for other classes for that slot, all BOA. It's great should you be gearing an alt and once I've got my warrior to 90 this will be the first place I come.

: )

M.

clowning around

It's a boomy post! Just pipped 87 and now have to find a spot for Symbiosis.  I found a good

page

here and put together a shock list for who I'll target - at the getgo it's warlock for Unending Resolve, Rogue for Cloak of Shadows and then DK for Anti-Magic Shell. I'm very temped just for giggles though to go with mage for the Mirror Image and respec to treants - popping all those puppies at the same time would be most amusing!!

Monitoring eclipse state is getting better but I'm missing (eventhough I never used it) a clever addon that's no longer supported that would, in print, flash up helpful words under your toon indicating preciecely which spell you should be using, eg, WRATH. Tbh it could be that the better "monitoring" may be down to the crit build I'm now running proccing Starsurge more often and simply pushing me back and forth at a faster rate regardless of whether I'm pushing the right buttons. ; )

I'm finding Displacer Beast to be a really great escape for PVP - gotta use it early before you get trained. At the first sign of trouble pop it in a random direction NOT along your opponents current direction of travel (ie, out of his sight line) then straight back to boomy for the damage reduction - sitting in cat for too long is a disaster.

I've settled on a levelling process which is to complete all quests in Karasang Wilds whilst waiting for AV to pop.  I did this on my DK with Kun-Lai Summit, it's a fun way to go.

M.

tastes like laser chicken

Ollo folks,

Here's an update on where this Mogul has got to.

Mage
Levelled Majestus 85 to 90. Got a kickass UI organised - I've enjoyed levelling on my original main so much that it was a near thing to start grinding honour once I got to 90. I transmogged him to Big Blue Dress standards and got a particularly natty black Fedora to finish his look.

Gold
Nothing special - little bits here and there. As I'm not willing to grind rep for Blizzard I'm gated as to the better recipes for tend to resort to flipping. Most recent flip was a 15K Skullflame shield for 22.5K.  It's a living...  I'm very slowly moving below 750K liquid gold.

Laser Chicken
I've decided to try my druid Stormbear on balance (so now stormy but not so bearish). Honestly I can't say that I'm ever going to get the eclipse state thing down. I'm firmly PVPing again and am almost always missing these buffs. I'm very happy with my chicken's survivability - Displacer Beast is great! - and I've certainly got the ergs when it counts (ie, I burn cooldowns) but even though raiding was a long time ago I still feel the urge to min/max and not using everything my chicken has is annoying me. I will persist. One answer possibly lies in my stacking of haste over crit (damn you Icy-Veins). I'll reverse this and see if critting dots proccing Starsurges makes me a more efficient killing machine.

Pets
Focussing on chickening atm (one thing at a time) but this is still a lot of fun.

Talking of time I have precious little of it to devote to this game. Work has caught up with me and I'm having to change my up-late ways to keep everything moving. I'm also focussing on levelling my fitness at the moment (ahh - bad analogies are bad) and have found this site to be cool.

5.3
This 'will' be interesting. The PVP changes represent some of the biggest ones we've had for a while. The move to abolish resilience will supposedly open the playing field to PVE folk who want to get involved. Personally I think we'll get some day-trippers before things settle back to their original state. I'm more interesting in comments I've read (but not been able to substantiate) that the crap balancing Blizzard engaged for the levelling tiers which saw out-of-BG abilities savagely nerfed once you got in for a largely useless increase in hits will be turned around. I'll be keen to see just what happens to my level 85 laser chicken tonight - can I finally reduce my 28% out-of-BG hit to a reasonable level and put my stats into something else?

Stay liquid,

M.

DKs

So easy to make friends...

... so hard to keep them.

patch 5.2

Olla folks,

Below is a personal take on what stands out for me on the 5.2 patch notes:

Players that have grown attached to working the land at Sunsong Ranch can now purchase the land from Farmer Yoon. Once the farm is owned by a player, it becomes a rest point like an Inn, where the player can bind and instantly log out. Work orders will pour into the farm from factions across Pandaria, and completing a work order will earn a reputation boost with the issuing faction.

This is nice - I'm wondering how many dailies a work order will represent. Probably 2 - gotta say rep equal to 4 dailies is probably what it'll take to get me across the line as we're also talking about lost earnings (I assume one gives up the produce on the work order).

A number of new pets can be found on the Isle of Lightning, including rare spawn drops, wild pets, and raid boss drops.

Liking the sound of the isle - harking back in my memory to many a fun PVP experience on the previous isle.

Elite Battle Pets have been added to the game world. These rare pets will spawn alone against an entire team. The Beasts of Fable taming quest will now become available from Gentle San or Sara Finkleswitch once Aki the Chosen has been defeated. Defeating all of the fabled beasts will award the new Red Panda pet, while completing the associated daily quest has a chance to award the rare brown, white, and orange variants.

New pet quest is win.

The chance of getting personal loot in Raid Finder and the chance of a successful bonus roll in Raid Finder have been greatly increased for the 5.0 raids.

Alts need the shinies - very good Blizzard.

Mists of Pandaria Season 12 Malevolent Gladiator’s PvP gear can now be purchased with Honor Points instead of Conquest Points, including weapons.

I'm interested to see the new weapons rules. I couldn't get PVP weapons last season due to the points requirements (and the play style I prefer). It would be nice this season to equip something with resilience on it.

Transmogrification rules have been broadened for several weapon types:

• Two-handed axes, maces, and swords can be Transmogrified to each other.
• One-handed axes, maces, and swords can be Transmogrified to each other.
• Staves and polearms can be transmogrified to each other.

Excellent - I'm not sure about maces but I'm thinking a warlock with an axe would be boss! I'm hoping that tranmog won't be restricted to the normal class restrictions... warrior should not have more fun than locks.

Seed bags have been added that allow planting of crops 4 plots at a time.

About time.

Kil'jaeden's Cunning is now a passive talent, and its activated ability has been removed.

This talent change has just made the tier 75s useful to me.

Dark Intent now increases Stamina in addition to Spell Power.

Win for the lock soloing old content.

New Level 60 Talent: Cloak and Dagger - Ambush, Garrote, and Cheap Shot now have a 30 yard range, and will cause the Rogue to teleport behind the target.

Did my sub rogue just get her second shadowstep back?

Stay liquid folks,


M.

a little social pressure please

I think Blizz is missing an opportunity with the way they're playing the LFR loot drops. There's fairly large amount of dissatisfaction over loot which I believe could be solved with a little visibility.

I don't raid now, but when I did raid I did so with a competitive 10-man guild. An extreme minority of items were loot councilled as we were a progression guild but everything else was rolled on and later we used a points system which tbh I never truly understood but seemed to do quite nicely from. On the nights where I didn't win any rolls or simply no loot for my bear dropped I was able to come to terms with the process as I could still see the loot dropping. I got a certain amount of vicarious pleasure from seeing loot drop for my guildies as well as the reinforcement that loot did in fact drop.

Now in the current system, as described by Ghostcrawler, they've worked hard to remove social pressure from the conglomeration of strangers that is LFR. That is no one will beg you to pass them to loot you've just won. The boss dies, each player rolls their small chance to get loot, if they win Blizz selects an appropriate piece for them and they walk away anonymously happy.

Outcome: sunshine, lollipops, rainbows.

Only what if no loot drops for you? Or more to the point as the plethora of forum posts have been shouting: what if you've been at this for a while and you've not seen "any" loot drop. Might I present a hypothetical case in point: consider a highly charismatic gnomish warlock who, for argument's sake, let's call... Shortgame. Shortgame has run through 16 Cata bosses and used 6 bonus rolls and got precicely zero loot. I'm not saying that this is unfair to poor Shortgame (... although it certainly feels unfair) but rather that this run of unfortunate chance highlights Blizzard's approach to this issue - they're treating LFR rules as a memoryless process which raid loot in fact never was. People would slowly built their gear over time and if you missed out you knew that you'd get it eventually as others in the raid already ‘had’ that piece. Your raid contained the social memory upon which you relied to get loot in a fair (and timely) manner.

How can we gain back the social memory that was lost as Blizzard dealt with their social pressure problem? Two ways:

Turn off the secrecy
Those who nurse conspiracies feel that the secrecy about drops is purely a Blizzard tool to stop players from seeing what the actual percentage on drops really is (the view being that a lower drop percentage = longer playing time and longer subscriptions). Not our hypothetical warlock of course, he trusts Blizzard and their assertion (could not verify this – only forum traffic available) that the drop chance is 15%.

I wouldn't argue for a reversion of the new process to pre-MoP LFR, the new process is good and it certainly minimises drama. What showing the drops does do is to lift the veil and folks who are putting their time into this pursuit can again see that items are dropping and though they personally are not having luck at least someone is.

Give the process some memory
Simple - provide to players a low percentage chance but raise it by 10% for each unsuccessful boss kill, using tokens progresses the percentage by 10% as well. Reset it when they get a drop. Under this process players know that in 10 boss kills they will certainly get a drop, five boss kills and they’re over 50%. It’s a very small carrot to toss but the forums are reporting people seeing 30+ bosses without a drop.

So while the easier process for Blizzard would be to simply turn off the secrecy my preferred approach would be to add a layer to the process and sequentially increase the drop chance. No more complaints could be levelled knowing that running two three-boss raids would put you over the 50% chance.

5.2 will see the existing raids have their percentages upped according to Blizzard. I’ll try LFR again then.

Stay liquid folks,


Mogul.

pets and raids

Olla folks,

Yes, I'm back from the holidays with news from WoW.

PETS
I've got back into Pets in a big way - I always had a thing for pets but still am surprised to tell you that I now have over 400 pets and have just steamed past 400 achievement points in pets (ahh tentacle, now you are mine... ) What can I say - Blizz got this right. I'm working on some dailies for items atm and on the way from here to there I'm levelling up a few pets as I go. It's fun, easy, and interesting and only very rarely feels like a grind, which is saying something in this game.

OLD RAIDS

I've been moving on with my soloing of old world raids having recently got Vashj down in order to complete one of the best gnome warlock tier sets imo. You can see locks and other classes bringing her down on youtube and it does look a little tricky. In actuality I have to say I found it near impossible. Call it tenacity, call it RNG rage, call it sheer bloody mindedness but after getting to 1% somewhere around wipe seven or eight I finally screen shotted my warlock standing over a crumpled thing that smelt of old fish after 27 wipes. 27! After a wipe in the early 20s I crumpled myself and flew off to Area 52 to "buy" the honour helm only to find that it's colour was subtly different. Back to the grindstone. I am most pleased with the result though and now have a story to tell my grandchildren (who will likely assume it's the drugs talking).

NEW RAIDS
Not too worried about these but I've had a few tries and it was enjoyable after a fashion; locks are well set-up for self preservation. Which is to say that I can mitigate PUG healers and know not stand in fire which equals surviving to the end of the fight. On the loot side though I think something is wrong. I recieved no loot after about 16 boss kills and 6 extra rolls... nada... niente! Forums suggest I'm not alone. I've heard that in 5.2 drops will be increased in order to get people ready for the newer raids. Maybe I'll have another look then.

GOLD
Ha haa. What can I say spending comfortably and am still up around the 870K mark. Towards the end of this expansion I may have toons at cap with sufficiently levelled reps to get at some of the gated recipes. For now though I'm making a few things but mostly buy what I need. A part of me misses the thrill of opening a mailbox bulging with gold but the reward for effort is no longer sufficient to hold me to it... perhaps when I'm a little poorer. ; )

ALTS
No thanks. I definitely have a 'main' this expansion and that's my lock. I'll get to the other classes eventually but at this stage over three months' since launch I can advise that I still haven't levelled a panda monk or that shammy or pally that I thought I'd be working my way through.

PVP
A slow down here. I know the next season is coming out and felt I'd gotten as far as I could without changing the way I played. I find it hard to schedule regular time so RBGs are out and am not interested in arena for any other reason apart from gear (which means I should steer clear). Also 1500 honour for a very minor upgrade to my existing pieces really annoyed me.  The next season should be up soon - when it arrives I'll likely BG until I have a full kit of gear then go back to soloing raids with my stat increase.

That's it for the moment folks. I'm still enjoying the game for the mindless challenges it provides me (= Mogul downtime after a day at work) and hope you are too.

: )

M.