Rotface and stuff

Healing Rotface last night, taken when things were going well enough for me to start snapping pictures. Naturally, we wiped soon after Clicky for biggy.

Firstly, the stuff: I’m taking a step back from blogging for a few weeks while I focus on a heady combination of important assignment + immanent deadline.  Not a total moratorium, just a step back.  In the meanwhile, Liz of Monstarkin has very kindly agreed to do a couple of “guest posts” here.  This is especially kind of her as she’s presently working on an epic comparison of the four healing classes for her own blog – she has one of each at level 80, y’see – and presumably posting here will take time away from that.  So my humble gratitude indeed!

Now: I have prepared an extremely scientific post about the relative difficulty of raid encounters, complete with extremely scientific graphs.  The occasion for such a post is the opening of Icecrown Citadel’s Plagueworks wing: yesterday, my guild went along to see what it was like.  We didn’t rush to get there or anything as we didn’t expect it to be much harder than what we’d previously faced in Icecrown Citadel.

Then we wiped on the trash.  Lots.  The first time Precious cast decimate I think the healers were laughing too hard to actually respond, and then I actually had to swap to my resto spec for Stinky because Decimate combined with a ~2.5k pulsing nature AoE is harsh.  Harsh because 15% of most of our caster’s health pools is not enough to survive two ticks of the AoE, so when decimate coincided with a tick of that AoE it was… well, pretty interesting.

Then we reached Rotface!  We had a vague idea of what to expect, and were a little wary after the trash, but we went in with our normal two-healers-and-two-tanks line up and we wiped.

Then we made some changes and we wiped again.

And again.

Then I swapped to healing and we took a little longer to wipe.  And so it went.

I mean, we were expecting Rotface to be hard-er than, say, Saurfang, but not quite that hard.  Kiting Oozes seemed suspiciously like Illidan phase 2, only with the proviso that you can’t actually get hit by the slimes as they hit like trucks strapped to the front of rocketships.  And for our warrior tank, half the mission was just generating threat on something that he effectively couldn’t hit.

(I was responsible for his health bar and was thus witness to the poor lad getting two-shotted within the space of a Nature’s Swiftness macro on several occasions; on one of these I was chatting to Rahana in whisper and the extremely harsh capitalised invective I had intended to spew forth into healer chat accidentally went his way instead.  He forgave me.)

I won’t really discuss strategy here – if you’re interested in that, check out the comments on this post at Falling Leaves and Wings (edit: and I see Kae’s posted tictacs over at Dreambound, yay!).  But I will pick up on the main issue that Beruthiel discusses (well, rants about) in that post.  And I will illustrate this issue by means of graphs.  And these graphs will show raid boss difficulty as compared to the relative difficulty of removing candy from various people or things.

Resolutions

I have a confession to make: I’m not really keen on the whole cultural New Year’s Resolutions thing.  I think waiting until New Year’s Day to try and change things that need changing is silly, and I know that resolutions made on the first of January will usually have been guiltily forgotten by the next week!  But on the other hand, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with looking at the year ahead, retrospecting on the year behind, and trying to improve the former with regard to the latter.  That’s scientific, that is.

Anyway, so Tahas says I should do a resolutions post on the theme “New Year’s Resolutions: In-Game and Out“, so here it is in the format of neither of the types of resolution I just talked about.

In-game resolutions

The more I use the Dungeon Finder, the more I’m encountering total and utter silence stretching from the nervous “hi” or two at the beginning to the relieved “thx bye”s at the end.  Between these dim and sputtering torches of actual gen-you-ine humanity lies a grim and dank expanse of pure awkwardness and fear: nobody dares to break this silence for fear of what these mysterious unknowns they are grouped with might do!  And I think this fear can be justified, given how much nastiness, inconsiderateness, and petty bullying I come across in WoW situations – especially in the dungeon finder PUGs and on forums on which the game is discussed.  It’s so unnecessary and recklessly harmful.

So, because that’s in my mind at the moment, here are some “resolutions” that I would like to stick to:

WoWRes #1: I want to try to be always appropriately sociable and talkative in PUGs, and will make the effort to engage in meaningful communication where it is beneficial to the group (especially when I’m the arbitrarily designated cat herder).

WoWRes #2: I want to always be considerate and friendly towards people I come into contact with, whether in-game or on the forums – or at very least, polite and civil in my disagreements with them.  I’ll take PUGers “as-is” and won’t try to change them to fit my ideals.

WoWRes #3: I will never let a desire for expediency of character furtherment take precedence over the really important and worthwhile aspects of the game-space – fun and friendship.

Of course, the challenge for “resolutions” like those is in keeping them when you really don’t feel like it – when you’re tired and just want to get your emblems of frost for the day, or when someone writes obnoxious invective in response to your forum post that was trying to be helpful.

Out-game resolutions

RLRes #1: I want to start writing fiction again.  It’s fun and can really tighten up one’s use of the language.

RLRes #2: I want to give more time to music.  It’s in danger of becoming simply a soundtrack to other things I do instead of something I simply appreciate for itself.

And finally:

RLRes #3: I will remember, with every cup of tea that I drink, what a special privilege it is to be able to regularly and easily partake in such a magnificently normal and humble pleasure.

So there.

I won’t “tag” anyone to do this (and several bloggers that I read have already done similar things anyway), but if you like the idea then go ahead!  What kind of “resolutions” do you have, or should you have, for the coming months?

2009: Tidal Waves and Lightning

The last day of our calendar year is upon us, and for me the last day of the first full year of playing my shaman in a full expansion’s worth of raid content.  This seems an appropriate time to take a glance back at where the year has taken us as elemental and restoration shamans, and me as a player of both.

Elemental

It was indeed a bleak midwinter for elemental when 2009 began.  Though not quite as bad as some had predicted – our damage was at least significantly above the tanks! – the beta testers had been right: elemental DPS was far lower than everyone else.  The developers had been adamant that this would not be the case, so I almost wonder if they were counting on elemental being played in a different way to how it ended up.  But at any rate – credit to them – they took note and intervened.

Icecrown: The last suit you’ll ever wear

Let’s talk about best-in-slot lists!  Anyone who knows me will know how cynical I can be about these lists, so may be surprised to find me posting about them.  I’d better explain.

Best-in-slot lists are the result of people trying to come up with the best possible combination of gear options that together give the best possible DPS output (which usually means a need to be hit-capped).  And by “best possible” I mean “the absolute bestest of the best possible”: no matter how hard the items are to get, if they’re the best then they’re the best; no matter how small the DPS difference between using items A, B and C over using items X, Y and Z, the best combination will be chosen.

Another ZAP! update

I don’t like to post about each and every update I make to the spreadsheet, especially having posted about updates just a couple of days ago.  However the latest update is quite important to bring to the attention of anyone who’s going to use it.

Changes – Version 1.1.5:

• Trinkets can now be “equipped” using the menu below the Item Sets area: selecting a trinket will add its proc and only its proc to the user’s stats/damage. Static bonuses should already be accounted for in the character sheet/armory displays.
• Slightly changed the way Reign of the Unliving/Dead proc frequency is calculated again. Refer to this discussion on EJ for the reasoning.
• Swapped the “DEP (hit)” and “DEP (no hit)” labels in the Compare Things Thingy (they were the wrong way around!).

The reason the change is important is because of the new Trinket selection menu.  I’ve already updated the user guide to explain how it works, but let me just spell it out a bit more clearly:

In the past, if you wanted to account for an equipped trinket, you had to manually add its averaged-out stats to your own.  So for example I would have taken the spellpower figure that the armory shows me and then looked up the trinket DEP list for the average spellpower values of Dying Curse and Eye of the Broodmother, my two equipped trinkets, and added them on to my spellpower total.

Now instead of doing that, you can just select which trinkets you have equipped and it will be done automatically.  This works for all the trinkets in the trinket list.  If you’re using a trinket which isn’t in the list, you can select “(None)” and add the values manually as before.

It’s also important to note that static bonuses are not added by the trinket selection menu because they should already be accounted for in your character sheet stats.  So for example the trinket Dying Curse gives 71 hit rating and has a chance to proc 765 spellpower for 10 seconds.  The spellpower proc would be added if you selected the trinket but the hit rating would not.

All types of trinket procs – whether spellpower, haste, crit or even special damage type procs should be properly accounted for.

I hope that’s clear!

Download ZAP!

Download ZAP! compatibility version

If you download the new version you must at least look at the trinket selection menu, because it will be filled in with my own trinkets.  You need to either select your own or select “(None)” before you use it, unless you happen to be using the same trinkets as me!

ZAP! updates

Christmas is over and it’s back to theorycrafting!  Well, not quite.  But I have been continuing to read and post on EJ over the last few days and this has led to some changes to the spreadsheet.

Changes (since version 1.1.2) – Version 1.1.4:

• Reign of the Unliving/Dead trinkets are no longer treated as if they were affected by Elemental Fury.
• Changed the way Reign of the Unliving/Dead proc frequency is calculated as per this discussion. The trinket should now be ranked slightly lower.
• The Dislodged Foreign Objects trinkets’ procs are now correctly showing their DEP values rather than just their spellpower values (thanks for noticing this, Skajin!)
• Added DEP for Enchant Weapon – Black Magic, as measured against Mighty Spellpower.

These changes are mostly of interest to those people trying to figure out best-in-slot lists for when the entirety of Icecrown Citadel is available and in heroic difficulty, and shouldn’t affect anyone’s current gear or trinket choices.

The Black Magic DEP thing measures it against Mighty Spellpower (that is, it subtracts 63 spellpower from its rotation calculations) so it will almost always be negative.  It’s basically just an awkward display of the maths I did for the earlier post on Black Magic and there’s presently no way to “equip” the enchant.  I might tidy it up a bit for a later version.

Download ZAP!

Download ZAP! compatibility version

Merry Christmas!

Happy Christmas everyone!  Hope it’s a great day for us all whether we observe it or not

Snowy sunset

Entirely apropos of nothing, here are some pictures I took at sunset this afternoon just before the old and tired camera I found ran out of batteries.  The snow fell on Sunday and Monday and has frozen into a sort of soft, frosty, crunchy floor that swallows your feet if you try to step in it (protip: don’t try that in slippers).

Looking towards true west: the streetlights have been on for half an hour or so already. The sun is invisible way over behind the houses on the left (south), setting at 3:30 in the afternoon. The snow on that car has been frozen there all week.

The garden on the other side of the house looking south. West is on the right. The area beyond the fence is the local golf course.

Looking directly at where the sun should be, facing south-west: actually the sun has already dipped below the horizon. It's now a fairly brisk minus seven degrees Celsius.

Update: Found two more on the camera’s memory card that I somehow missed!  Excitement!!!

The blob on the left is the thin crescent moon, and you can just barely see a star near it. This is looking south-east over snow-covered trees.

If you look closely you can see the pinprick blobs of a few stars right in the middle of the sky above the trees. The shutter speed was much faster on this and the one above due to having the flash on, so the scene looks darker.

We very rarely get snow in December in this part of the world – this is the first time in at least a decade.  And it doesn’t usually lie long enough and cold enough to get into this odd frozen pristine-ness.  Very pretty, very magical, very very cold!

(Pretence at relevance: Boy it sure would be nice to be able to drop some fire totems about now huh.)

Has anyone else been having a snowy December?  I know the eastern US seaboard and western Europe has been seeing some pretty crazy snow storms.  I wonder if they’ve been able to be enjoyed despite the chaos they’ve caused.

Black Magic: Stay away from da voodoo

Patch 3.3 changed the Black Magic weapon enchant to a haste proc effect: 35% chance to proc 250 haste rating for 10 seconds, with a 35 second internal cooldown.  When the change first appeared on the PTR and at intervals since as more information has emerged, various Elemental Shaman folks at Elitist Jerks have done the maths and concluded that it’s not worth using over the Mighty Spellpower option.

Despite this, a lot of other folks are suddenly suggesting all over the interwebs that it’s “best in slot” and that Elementals should be using it instead of Mighty Spellpower.  Argh!  Which is it?!

To the testmobile Batman!  Let’s see both (a) how we can check the equivalent potency of each enchant and (b) which actually comes out on top.

‘Tis the season to be alting

I can’t deny it, I’ve seen it happen too many years in a row now: Christmas is the season when I do stuff.  Random stuff.  The first time I tried blogging – something I’d never had any interest in whatsoever until that point – it was in the Christmas season, and though the blog (it was just a personal place for rambling to friends and was entirely unrelated to WoW, by the way) got abandoned as work picked up again in January it did lead to me noticing and beginning to appreciate many of the blogs which I now follow regularly.

Another thing I first tried over Christmas which I’d never had any interest in until that point was alting.  Is that a verb?  Probably not, but I’m going to use it as one anyway.  I was very disciplined about having only one character when I first started World of Warcraft, and I did not so much as glance at the character creation screen until this one character was level 60 and fully kitted out with an epic mount and stuffed birds on his shoulders.  But then quite suddenly, during mid December, I got the urge.  I had seen a rogue doing amazing combinations of sapping and pulling in Scholomance (back when the place was a nightmare to five-man) and wanted to try it myself, so I rolled my first ever alt.