No Pets in the House

Break out the Pooper Scooper

2009-05-02T10:25:00.000-07:00

Well, I decided to respec. I have dual specs, and actually I decided to respec both of my specs. Here's how it all started: In my pvp spec, I dueled another warlock who had basically the same gear that I did. I lost really badly. After that I decided to try a destro spec for pvp, since that's what he was using. I went from my strange demonology spec that I made up to a destruction spec that I made up and then found out that it matched pretty closely the standard warlock pvp specs. On a side note, making up your own spec is something I really only approve of in pvp. Play styles vary so much that if conventional wisdom dictates that you should take a talent that you're never going to use because of the way you play, then you should ignore conventional wisdom. In pve on the other hand, your job is to put out as much damage as possible. By all means, pick a spec that you like, but learn to use that play style as effectively as possible to benefit your group.

Anyway, I messed around with the destro pvp and really liked it. I decided that I was having so much fun that I'd try out a destro pve. I hated it. The rotation felt awkward and my dps plummeted. Since I was still in the respec mood, I did it again, this time going for affliction for pve. I haven't been affliction since around lvl 50 or so, but after trying it, I started to really enjoy the affliction playstyle, and my dps was higher than it had been when I was Demo. Ding Ding! We have a winner! So that's where it stands. I'm now Destro for pvp and Aff for pve. Of course, it won't stay that way. Next time I get bored, I'm sure I'll be experimenting with something else. :^)

One last thing about my affliction spec. I said that I don't support making up your own spec. That is true. What I do support is tweaking your spec for your own needs, and this is a perfect example. The standard affliction spec uses 69 of your 71 talent points. According to the simulator, the succubus is the highest dps pet for affliction warlocks (excluding the special temporarily summoned pets). Most people therefore put the points into improved succubus and use her for dps. I on the other hand put the points into improved felhunter and use him. Here's why: the simulator assumes the ideal make-up in a 25-man raiding situation. That means that they either don't model pet mana, or they assume that pet mana is always full based on having mana regen buffs and replenishment. In my case however, I tend to run more 10-mans than 25-mans, and my raid make-up is anything but ideal (often something like 3 dks, two holy pallys, two hunters (neither sv), a rogue, me, and a tree druid). With those facts in mind, I decided to go with improved felhunter because then my puppy is almost self-sufficient.

So, in conclusion:
Making up a strange spec for pvp based on your play style. /win

Making up a strange spec for pve based on your play style. /fail

Adjusting an existing pve spec to fit your specific circumstances. /win

-Savallus

Raiding does something to people

2009-04-29T21:36:00.001-07:00

Quote of the evening:

"Guys, I'm going to be away from headset for awhile, gotta go enjoy my Reese's Pieces Cappuccino"

Stunned Silence

"Dude, that sounds completely awful."

Pet Control - How to not be a noob.

2009-04-21T13:50:00.001-07:00

So, you're playing one of those classes that uses a pet. There seem to be a lot more of them now than there were in vanilla WoW, so I'm going to discuss some of the do's and don't of pet control. To start, I have a little quiz. Does everyone have a fresh No. 2 pencil? Good. You have five minutes. Begin.

1. In what stance should your pet spend the majority of its time?

2. Are there times when you might want to use the other stances?

3. How do you tell when a pet ability is on auto-cast?

4. How do you switch a pet ability from auto-cast to manual?

5. In most pve situations, who should hit a mob (or boss) first, you or your pet?

When you're finished, put your pencils on your desk and sit quietly while the rest of the class finishes.

Good. Here are the answers:

1. Passive
2. Yes (more detail on that later)
3. There's a little glowing border around the ability on your pet action bar.
4. Right click on the ability that you want to change.
5. Your pet (unless you're a tank).

How did you do? If you scored less than 3, you need some serious work. Now, let's explore the answers a little more.

If you don't know what the situation calls for, put your pet on passive. It will prevent a gazillion mistakes before you ever make them. There are so many times that you will need to attack something without sending your pet, the only safe way to do it is to keep the pet on passive. Here are a couple of examples where having the pet on passive will save you:

Let's say you're running the Nexus. You get to that part with all the energy beings and portals. Usually, groups will kill the portals before they aggro the trash mob, and that duty will likely fall to you. If your pet is on passive, you can pew pew that thing down in no time and get to killing things. But what if you had your pet on defensive and forgot to switch him? Well then, you've just pulled the whole pack of mobs and your group is now scrambling to pick them all up and stay alive. Way to go hotshot.

How about if you're a dork-knight tank with your ghoul out. The mobs are over there, but you want them over here so you decide to line-of-sight pull them. (You might be wondering why the dk doesn't just face-yank them over...I don't know. Maybe there's two casters or something. Don't ask questions). Now if your pet is happily on passive, you can throw down your Death and Decay, run behind the corner, and laugh to yourself as the mobs run right up to you. What about if you forget and have your pet on defensive? Well now, your ghoul just leaped through the air with reckless abandon and gnawed the arm off one of the casters. They aggro the ghoul and now you've ruined your beautiful pull. Smooth move genius.

There are about a million other examples that I could give. Do I even have to say anything about aggressive for instancing? Just don't do it. Now, there are people who put their pets on defensive and do just fine, but in a normal situation, passive is the way to go. The only time that I use defensive in an instance are when there are a lot of low-health mobs (i.e. something that I'm about to aoe) and I don't want to keep sending my pet after them as they die.

Now with all my talk about pets on passive, you might be asking, "Gee Sav, how do I get my pet to attack without him being on defensive? Am I supposed to click the little button every time?"

Of course not. The right way to handle sending your pet in is to make a macro to do it for you. Have you ever made a macro? I'll probably write a post for that sometime, but for now just open the macro window by typing /m. Now you'll have to tell it whether you want it to be a macro for all your characters or just for the toon that you're on. After that, tell it to make a new macro and pick a name and an icon (if you pick the question mark, it will just fill in the picture for the first spell that you're using in the macro. I recommend that one). After you've picked those, you can actually write the macro. Here's a simple one:

/petattack

This is just a simple slash command that will send your pet to go attack whatever you're selected on. Really though, who needs another button to push? That's why I recommend binding your pet attack to something that you use a lot. I bind mine to demonic empowerment (warlock bestial wrath), so that when I send my pet in, I also remember to use my cooldown for the pet. It looks something like this:

#showtooltip
/cast demonic empowerment
/petattack

The first line makes it so that the macro will show the tooltip for demonic empowerment, the second casts the spell, and the third sends my pet to attack. Now when I start fights, I hit one button and it uses my cooldown and sends my pet to attack. Nifty, huh?

Here's a variation that Liralia uses. She prefers to save bestial wrath for when she wants it, so she binds her pet attack to Hunter's mark (since basically all hunters open fights with that). Her macro looks like this:

#showtooltip
/cast hunter's mark
/petattack

You can use any spell or ability that you want. This way, you can keep your pet on passive, and still play basically the same way that you've been playing. Only now, you're in control of your pet, not the other way around. I've still got a few of the quiz questions to go over, so I'll hit that in my next post. Have fun, and try not to give a bad name to those of us who use pets.

- Savallus

3.1 Baby!

2009-04-15T09:57:00.000-07:00

I apologize ahead of time for the massive wall of text which you now see. Well, it looks like the patch we've all been waiting for has finally come out. As far as I'm concerned, that is a very good thing. Since there are a million and a half sites that are going to re-post the patch notes, I'm not going to do that. You can find them if you want. What I am going to do is take out the things that I consider the most important parts (meaning, the parts that directly affect me). Since the patch notes are lengthy, and to keep this post to a manageable length, I'm going to stick to the changes to demonology warlocks. I may hit the other specs up at sometime in the future. Or maybe not. As a side note, the changes will be ranked according to my feelings about whether the change is positive, negative, or neutral, using the yay, boo, or meh scale. The scale attains a higher degree of precision based on the accompanying punctuation. :^)

- The Argent Tournament begins!

I guess this is okay. There might be some nice gear that you can get, and the jousting system seems entertaining. It's not exactly mounted combat the way we want (i.e. you can't use your normal character abilities), but at least it's something. Yay.

- All Ground Mounts may now swim without dismounting the rider.

I don't use my ground mount too much, but when I do, I hate running across rivers, dismounting, and remounting. Finally, we don't have to. Yay!

- Players level 40 and higher will now be able to visit their trainer to pay a one-time fee and access the dual talent specialization feature.

The phrase woot comes to mind. I've been running with this disgusting mostly-pve-with-a-few-pvp-talents build for a while, and the ability to finally run a pure pve and a pure pvp build at the same time is liberating. My dps jumped up in the 300-400 range just from the respec and new talents. Liralia's went up almost 800. There might be a few problems with loot distribution, but for me the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks. YAAAAAYYYYY!!!!

- Players will now be able to queue for battlegrounds from any location. Leaving a battleground will return you to the location from which you entered.

While I won't be able to go to Dalaran just by having a group member queue me for bg's anymore (at least I think I won't...this requires testing), this is a terrific change. I can't wait to go out questing while queued for the bg's. Before, your only option was to stick yourself in lfg, which got...um..."mixed" results. Yay.

- The damage threshold for Fear, Psychic Scream, Hex, Intimidating Shout, and Turn Evil to break early has been significantly reduced.

Being a warlock, this hurts me inside, but since I'm not affliction it's not a death-blow. Although since I pvp as demonology, it's obvious that I'm not totally serious about pvp either. I'm happy that those other abilities won't be as big of a problem for me, but that hurts a pretty core warlock ability. Meh.

- Mana Regeneration: The amount of mana regeneration derived from intellect and spirit has been reduced by 40%; however, talents that allow for mana regeneration while in combat have been increased. As a result, in-combat regeneration for classes with those talents will stay the same, while out-of-combat regeneration will be lower.

I use life-tap for mana, so I don't care that much about regen, but my healers need it, so that could be a problem. Blizz says that this will allow more flexibility in designing raid encounters, and I consider that a good thing. Yay.

- Banish: Now has a 6-second PvP duration.

Fie upon thee tree druids in bg's and arenas. How I loathe thee. This is a substantial nerf to warlock pvp, which wasn't all that great to begin with. I suppose that this brings it in line with cyclone, but I always felt that longer duration made up for its situational usefulness. Boo.

- Curse of the Elements (Rank 5): Increased to 13% spell damage, up from 10%

More damage is good. I never use COE though (I'm always the only offensive spell caster in our raids). Meh.

- Drain Soul: Each time Drain Soul deals damage to a target which can grant experience, it now has a chance to generate a Soul Shard.

Less shard farming equals happy warlocks. Yay.

- Fire Shield (Imp): You can now cast this ability on raid members, rather than party members.

For the rare times when I have the imp out, this is nice I suppose, but who really cares that much? Meh.

- Ritual of Summoning: The summoning of the initial portal is now instant cast, down from 5 seconds.

I know, we're just walking summoning stone to all of you. Well at least I can get you out of my hair more quickly this way. Meh!

- Voidwalker: The health bonus on this pet has been reduced from 60% to 10%.

A POX UPON BLIZZ AND THEIR ACCURSED NERFS! NOW MY DREAMS OF TANKING SARTH 3D ARE NO MORE! BOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

- Demonic Empathy has been removed.

When I read this, I couldn't remember what this did, so obviously it isn't that important. Actually the other buffs we got more that make up for this being gone. Meh.

- Demonic Empowerment: This talent now has a unique spell effect.

Oooh. Aaah. Whatever, this isn't a change that anyone particularly cares about. Meh.

- Demonic Sacrifice: This talent has been removed.

There are almost no fights that are that pet unfriendly. Meh.

- Fel Synergy has been moved to tier-1. No longer increases intellect, stamina and damage of your summoned demon.

So you nerf it and then give it to other specs? They don't deserve it. They haven't worked for it. Boo.

- Improved Enslave Demon talent removed.

The improvements that this talent gave are now just innate. Sweet...but I hardly use enslave demon anyway. Meh!

- Mana Feed: This talent is now a 1-point talent, down from 3 points. Now is the 21-point talent in Demonology, granting 100% mana return to your pet, up from 33/66/100%.

Huzzah! Now my FG will never, ever be out of mana. Yay!

- Master Conjuror: Increased from 15/30% up to 150/300%.

It's about time that that talent actually became worthwhile. 300% increase to spell and firestones? Yes, I'll take that thank you very much. Yay!

- New Talent: Decimation: When you Shadowbolt or Incinerate a target that is at or below 35% health, your next Soulfire cast time is reduced by 30/60% and costs no shard. Lasts 10 seconds.

This one requires a little more commentary. Soulfire hits really, really hard, but it has a really long cast time and it requires a shard (obviously from the description). That meant that I, as demo, never touched it except for fun once in a while. This talent will completely change a warlock's rotation when the boss is below 35% health. Now I have to learn to weave. Basically, a rotation will go like this (EJ's has a slight variation, but honestly theirs may work in a simulator, but if you have any lag at all, you have to modify it): SB>SB>SF>SB>fill>SF>SB>fill>SF... On EJ's they'll tell you to remove the fill, but based on the time that SB spends in the air, that doesn't work if you're at all laggy. The reason for the two shadowbolts at the beginning and the fill in the middle is that the decimation effect isn't applied until the shadowbolt actually hits the target. You don't want to just stand there, so you do something while the shadowbolt is in the air and then cast the soulfire as soon as you can. Anyway, this will increase dps (I think), make rotations more interesting, and keep me more engaged in boss fights All are good things. Yay!

- New Talent: Nemesis: Reduces the cooldown of your Demonic Empowerment, Metamorphosis, Soulstone and Fel Domination spells by 10/20/30%.

I get my cooldowns more often? Well, if you insist. Yay!

- Suppression: Now increases spell hit for all of your spells.

No more stacking ridiculous amounts of hit? Huzzah! No more purples sitting in my bank because I need the hit that I get on a blue? Huzzah! No more splitting of hit talent between different talent trees? Huzzah! One equally accessible hit talent to rule them all? HUZZAH! If you didn't catch it, this one is YAY!!

- Improved Shadow Bolt: Now increases the damage done by your Shadow Bolt spell by 1/2/3/4/5%, and causes your target to be vulnerable to spell damage, increasing spell critical strike chance against that target by 1/2/3/4/5%. Effect lasts 30 seconds.

Basically we've now taken scorch from the mages. Whatever. Like I said, I'm the only offensive spellcaster in the group I usually run with. Meh!

- Molten Core: This talent has been moved to Demonology (tier-8).

This is one of those head-scratchers. Why would they put a core Destro talent waaaaay down in the demo tree? The world may never know, but I'll take the boost to my immolate and my soulfire. Yay.

Glyph of Life Tap: When you use Life Tap, you gain 20% of your spirit as spell power for 20 seconds.

This rocks. Combine that with Fel Armor and you have some awesomness for Warlocks who stack spirit (which we're apparently supposed to do based on the itemization of Ulduar gear). Now we'll all be life-tapping even when we don't need to. Yay!

Well, I'm sure that I missed a bunch of things, but those are the major ones that I noticed when perusing the patch notes. Now, on to Ulduar!

-Savallus

Raidin' Lovin'

2009-04-08T06:42:00.000-07:00

Savallus and I were lucky enough to stumble upon a great guild, Way of the Bandits. Apparently we didn't disgrace ourselves in reg HoS back before the big push to 80, and got invited to join one of the group member's guilds. Up to this point, we had never really enjoyed any of the guilds we had joined on a whim, and had /gquit after a few days. WotB, however, seems to fit us well. They're relatively small, with enough to consistently get competent 10 mans together, but on 25s we pug anywhere from 8-15 people. Needless to say, we have not yet even attempted Naxx 25. The old-timers, however, have Naxx 10 down to a science. Because of their relative smallness, Sav and I were able to jump right in. Again, we managed to not disgrace ourselves on the first Naxx run (no dying on Frogger! Huzzah! Oh, wait, Sav got eaten by the slimes. Correction: I didn't die on Frogger! Huzzah!) and somehow weasled our way into the inner circle of the guild. Apparently they had some core dpsers take some time off from WoW right around the time we hit 80, and we fill the dpsers niche nicely. It helps that we're not morons. Unlike some head-scratch-inducing members of the guild, we gem and enchant our gear, have correct stats and relatively un-idiotic builds. Sav, in particular, has made himself a bit indispensable. Apparently the last warlock they took to Naxx had some issues (like life-tapping himself to death and never SSing the healers) and the differences were startling. To make a long story short, we've been raiding Naxx consistently for the last 3 weeks.

These guys are hilarious. The guild freaking rocks. They're witty, friendly, funny, and probably drunk. Sav and I crack up at vent all the time.

"Pat incoming. Dictated, but not read"
"You don't seem like a short-busser"

Another thing we like about the guild that we wouldn't have been able to pick if we'd tried is the fact that they haven't yet downed Malygos. Apparently people got sick of banging their heads against the wall (dragon). You can only take so many wipes. I've heard rumors that the problem was low dps (dpsers here! Pick me!). In the last couple weeks, the guild hasn't even attempted Maly, but it's looking like tonight's the night. Sav can barely contain himself, so excited is he. We've watched movies and done the dragon daily, so hopefully we'll down him. Maybe.

Hopefully.

Maybe.

Can I say probably?

No, okay.

Maybe.

It would be oh so nice to get that done before Ulduar comes out (on another note - we're hoping we'll be in the initial Ulduar push). We'll keep you posted.

P.S. Remind me to take screen shots when I'm laughing out loud at something. These posts are boring w/o any applicable pictures. And I'm trying to figure out how to write up an account of our guild achievement run, but it somehow isn't as funny without direct quotes from party chat. Like I said, remind me.

Leading the Raid, part 2

2009-03-31T12:24:00.000-07:00

After the release of Wrath, I took to levelling my rogue, Pakillar. Savallus was still stuck somewhere in in the mid-50's I think, so when I wanted to play by myself, out came Pak. At that point, there was one achievement for which people were constantly advertising for groups: For the Horde. Sometime in the mid-70's, I joined a raid and we downed all four Alliance leaders in one night. It was eye-opening for me and Liralia (she was watching). I had never raided before, so I never knew how fun it could be. And running around Dalaran after that with everyone on their bear mounts at 3am is one of my favorite WoW memories.

Fast forward to now. I'm a little apathetic about achievements. It's fun to see that little thing pop up (who doesn't like a little pat on the back), but I don't go out actively seeking achievements on any of my toons. Liralia, on the other hand, has been dreaming of doing For the Horde since she stayed up and watched me do it that night. We were going to log off the other night, but saw a group advertising for a few more people so that we could get that achievement. We decided to join, and after five minutes, I could have told you that it wasn't going to go well for one reason: The raid leader hardly said anything. People asked where we were meeting and three different answers came up. People asked what the strategy was and again were given different answers from different people. With any question that was asked, multiple people would answer, and the raid leader basiclaly said nothing.

Does anyone see a problem here?

A big group of forty people needs a leader to create some sort of cohesion and effectiveness. Without that, it's just a chaotic mob. We wiped at the first boss (Stormwind), and instead of coming up with a plan, our raid leader said nothing while several competing raid members offered different plans. One druid had the majority of the raid get together and then gave a long countdown so that we would all rez together. The problem is that no one trusted anyone in the void of leadership, so everyone waited just a few extra seconds to rez, with the result that instead of a massive coordinated attack, the alliance who were camping our bodies met with several waves of 3-5 hordies each, which were quickly slaughtered. We left the raid and logged after that. In conclusion, if you're the leader, take control.

- Savallus

The Best of us is Calling it Quits

2009-03-30T13:17:00.000-07:00

BRK is taking a break from WoW to spend more time with his family. I don't think Liralia knows about this yet, but she'll be sad when she finds out. I'm sure you'll hear more from her. If you don't know who BRK is, then you have missed out on the best WoW blog in the entire WoW community. BRK not only helped Liralia be a better hunter, but helped me be a better warlock, rogue, and any other class that I dabble in (mage, hunter, dk, warrior, druid, priest, basically anything but shaman). He will be greatly missed, but has once again set an example for all of the WoW community. I was just contemplating making a BRK tribute post too. Oh well. This will have to do. As a relatively new blogger to the WoW world, I can only hope that this blog becomes even a fraction as helpful and entertaining as BRK.

Savallus bows before BRK.

- Savallus

Triumph

2009-03-29T23:18:00.000-07:00

Today, I downed Loken. This may not seem like much of an accomplishment. In order to understand the true joy of the moment when the achievement popped up on my screen you have to know one thing.

I'm a key-turner.

Now, I've said it. Don't judge me, and please, please, don't write me off or /ignore me. I've tried to quit, but as of yet, no one has developed a 5-step program for ridding myself of this destructive addiction. All I can do is tell myself over and over that it's a noobie thing, that huntardism is rearing its ugly head, and that if I want to be good, I have to quit cold-turkey.

Problem solved, yes?

All seems well until I encounter a stressful situation, possibly involving a fire wall in Obsidian Sanctum or a rogue stun-locking me in an arena, and then I revert to my old ways. I use the keyboard to run and to turn around and to function at all.

Enter Heroic Loken, with his crazy aoe Lightning Nova that requires you to run away from him - FAST. This might be called stressful for me. And, you guessed it, I key-turn to cope with it. As such, I can't get away from him fast enough and then I die, and then the raid wipes and then, and then, and then...

This has been somewhat of a stumbling block for me. Sav and I pugged H HOL a couple weeks ago, and, to put it lightly, it did not go well. After eighteen and a half (or so) wipes, the group fell apart, along with my WoWing self-image.

Since then, I've been avoiding Halls of Lightning like the plague (or blight). And then, today, unbeknownst to me, Sav got us in a group for the dreaded instance. After killing him with my bare hands, I started taking deep breaths, which became faster and faster as the instance went on and I could sense Loken's aura bearing down on me.

And then, surprisingly, it wasn't so bad. Sav showed me a trick which made the whole thing bearable (and possible) for me. We wiped a couple times, but the time we downed him, I topped the damage meters! True, I died about 5 seconds before he did, but THAT DOESN'T MATTER! I succeeded! And now I never have to run that instance again! /cheer!

Leading the Raid, part 1

2009-03-28T17:45:00.000-07:00

/angry rant on

Okay, here's the deal. If you're a raid leader, lead the raid. Actually be in charge. That's all I ask. You can run things however you want, you can pick what plan we use and what way we do things, and as long as we don't wipe too often that's fine, but lead the stupid raid. Be in charge.

Liralia and I have had two recent experiences pugging with bad raid leaders. We try to do guild runs of all the 10-mans, but we seem to end up pugging most of the 25-mans because our guild is a little small for those. The first bad experience came with a 25-man Naxx group. We logged on with not much to do and saw that a partially completed Naxx group was looking for more dps. They had two quarters down and were hoping to finish that night. Since a partially completed Naxx is better than no Naxx at all, we volunteered and were summoned. We stepped into the instance knowthing that we would be saved immediately, but expecting that we might be able to get something for our efforts.

That did not happen.

They posted their vent info in chat, so we got on, and almost immediately heard this conversation:

"Hey man, is your sister getting on to play tonight?"

"Well, she was only going to get on if we needed her."

"Tell her to get on. We've got two pugs and I'd like to be able to kick them."

"Okay."

The conversation continued in that vein, and the raid leader (who didn't want to be the one to kick us) passed the raid to another person who said that they would do it. At that point we just left the raid. Since we were still in vent, we got to hear them complain to each other that we ruined their fun by not letting them kick us.

So what does this have to do with the raid leader? Simple. One of the guys in the raid whispered Liralia apologizing. She told him he was a jerk (obviously), he said that they weren't all jerks, and used the excuse, "The raid leader was getting bothered by the guys in the group because there were some guildies who just got on and wanted in". Oh, well, if that's the case excuse me. You poor widdle baby. How will da widdle baby wive if da mean guiwdies don't wike him? Heaven forbid that we upset your guild when you asked for our help, we accepted, and then you decided you didn't want it. Thanks for getting us saved to an instance we can't do now. Mr. loser raid leader, you need this. If people are bothering you, tell them to be quiet or to leave. You're the leader. Act like one. And if the raid leader is the one who's setting the example to treat people like that, get a new leader.

So, in closing, if you ever roll a character on Shattered Halls, don't pug with Calamitous Intent.

/angry rant off

- Savallus

10 Commandments of Arena-ing

2009-03-27T11:47:00.000-07:00

Both Liralia and I have mentioned that we have an arena team. We're probably one of the only Warlock/Hunter combos in the arenas, and if you have much experience with arenas, you know what that means: we're really, really bad. As of posting this our arena rating is 1178, and we're pretty proud of it, considering what it's been in the past.

When we hit 80, the arenas were one part of WoW that I had no experience with. We formed our team soon after we reached the level cap and stepped into the arena wearing mostly quest/dungeon blues and a few crafted epics. In the first week we played 50 or 60 matches and won around 15, but we got some points, and slowly started to build up a set of pvp gear. The next week we played about the same number of matches, and won like 20. At this point our rating bottomed out around 890 or so, and we started trying to figure out how we could improve. The next week we played 95 games and won 48 (woohoo! over 50%). This last week we again won more than 50% of our games, and our rating is slowly going up (1200 here we come...).

With that in mind, here are the 10 commandments of arena-ing that I've come up with to help other beginners have a smoother transition into arena fighting than we did:

1. Thou shalt not sigh and pain thyself when thy face is smashed in, yea, smashed with a great smashing.

2. Thou shalt not play in arenas as thou dost in the grounds of battle, nor as thou dost in dungeons with other adventurers. Nor shalt thou play as thou dost when seeking adventure on thy own, but thou shalt learn new tactics and styles of play.

3. Thou shalt clothe thyself in the vestments of the arena, yea, first that of the savage, then those of the hateful. And if thou doest well, thou shalt gain the reward of the deadly. At all times thou shalt have thy trinket.

4. Thou shalt often cast those spells of instant casting. Of the spells of short and medium casting, thou shalt when thou canst, but of the spells of the long casting thou shalt not cast, no not at all, save when thy body is not set upon by others, lest thou shalt die and be dead.

5. Thou shalt speak to thy brethren who battle by thy side at all times, speaking of all things in all cases as thou dost battle.

6. Thou shalt use those spells of thy class that annoy the players of other classes, that they may be harried on all sides by thy great annoyingness. Then shall they weep and wail and gnash their teeth, and accuse thee of being OP. Then thy soul shall have peace.

7. Thou shalt not forget thy racials, but shall use them at all times, and in all things, and in all situations that they are needful.

8. Thou shalt not take arenas too seriously if thou art not specced for them.

9. Thou shalt not accuse thy brethren of poor play when thou art beaten, but shall look to the beam in thine own eye, showing forth always compassion for thy brethren.

10. Thou shalt use the terrain of the arenas to thine advantage, both pillars and fire, platforms and bridges, all to the destruction and chagrin of thine adversaries.

- Savallus

Was that the best you could come up with?

2009-03-26T18:30:00.000-07:00

"I would think a WoW blog would acknowledge the fact that it's a WoW blog in the title."

"Clearly, you thought wrong."

"Oh.... /pout...But seriously, what's with the title?"

"Although Savallus and Liralia love and dote on their pets (maybe not Sav so much - enslave and beat down), IRL my husband and I are not animal people. We hope and pray that when we have kids they will not beg for puppies, adopt stray kittens, or ask Santa for a bird. Our unofficial motto is No Pets, so we're slightly hypocritical when it comes to WoW. Those pets are awesome, so awesome, in fact, that we named our joke-of-an arena team, "Our Pets Will Eat You." "

-Liralia

Isn't that just like a man

2009-03-26T17:17:00.000-07:00

Liralia here, aiming to set the record straight. My dear husband seems to have rewritten the beginnings of our WoW journey. I'm not saying there wasn't some truth to his story, but he glosses over some important parts of the story.

To be honest, I was pretty opposed to the game. I have known friends who lived for WoW, whom I didn't see for months because they were holed up with their imaginary reality, spending hundreds of hours (including the ones that should have been spent showering) leveling their warriors and druids. So when I found out that my then boyfriend played (even enjoyed!) WoW, I was trepidatious at best. The anxiety increased when he found a fellow WoWer in my brother-in-law. But I really didn't think it would affect our lives that much. Oh, how wrong I was.

Just two weeks after our wedding, my husband and brother-in-law concocted a plan to get their wives into WoWing: We would WoW together. Trepidation again. Serious trepidativity. The first characters we rolled were not hordies (gasp), but a quartet of allies. The guys disagreed about which faction was superior. My bro-in-law had been an allie for a long time and hadn't yet seen the light, while my husband was adamant that being in the service of the Horde was the only true way. It was probably the fact that there are few good-looking horde women that swayed the balance. I'd consent to giving the game a try, but not if I had be hideous.

Druid tank, priest heals, with a rogue and pally providing the dps, we ran around Bloodmist Isle and Ashenvale, slaughtering everything in our path. Okay, that might be a slight exagerration. In reality, although my sister and I were the deeps (give the important roles to the ones who knew what the heck they were doing), we were pretty helpless. I would see a copper node and run off into the woods, only realizing once I ran into a mangy wolf that I had absolutely no idea what to do with all the buttons in front of me. "Help!" I'd wail, popping my pally bubble and running away, only to be saved by my priest husband and his mad skillz. Oh, how far I've come. How far we've come.

To make a long story short ("Too late!"), I enjoyed WoW. I really enjoyed it. I liked Ilixi, my pretty draenei, with her exotic-sounding name and big ol' hammer. I liked seeing big numbers (Oooh, 500! That's really high!) and killing things. But mostly, I liked spending time with my husband, sister, and brother-in-law. The rest is history. We leveled that group to 38, but were never quite satisfied with being Alliance (Our guild name was "Shoulda Rolled Horde"). When the other couple canceled their accounts to focus on school, we seized the opportunity to reroll. That was 7 months ago. We hit level 80 less than a month ago. It's been a blast, running around as a cute redhead with a dinosaur at her command, ganking allies and two-manning 5-man quests. And now, at level 80, I'm realizing that the game has so much more to it than leveling. We've joined a great guild, we've started an arena team (don't even ask), we play the auctionhouse, and I'm glad I gave the game a chance.

-Liralia

Welcome

2009-03-26T11:58:00.000-07:00

Hi. I write this blog because I'm a person who spends entirely too much brain power thinking about WoW. I'm also one of those lucky people who got their significant other to be interested in WoW. I'm not sure why she wants to write this blog, but I'm sure that she'll explain it sometime. Before I started playing with my wife, I had another main named Pakillar, a troll rogue. Unfortunately, it's not very fun to play your high level character if the person with whom you spend the bulk of your playing time is still running around the barrens killing plainstriders. That's why Pakillar is now a glorified auction house alt and leatherworker. Honestly, it's not a huge loss to the WoW world. I was a pretty mediocre rogue.

My wife and I decided to start brand new characters a few months ago so that we could level together. I was adamant about being Horde, she was adamant about not being ugly, so we ended up as Blood Elves (she decided that it was better for me to be nice looking and slightly effeminate than ugly and totally manly... I hope she's not saying something about me). I also wanted her to have an easier time of playing and give her a bit of a buffer for mistakes, so she rolled that class that strikes fear into the hearts every PUG: a hunter. There was a small caveat to this choice. I promised to help her through the game and explain the ins and outs of everything if she promised to do everything in her power to avoid huntardism. As for me, I thought it would be fun to try a pet class as well. Thus the warlock/hunter team of Savallus and Liralia was born. She's been BM from the beginning, while I levelled as Affliction until the mid-60's when I respecced Demo for a change of pace and haven't looked back since then.

I'll pretty much talk about anything that strikes my fancy, since I spend at least some time doing every aspect of the game: levelling (I have mild altism), professions, raiding, battlegrounds and world pvp, arenas (I'm horrific), making money, pugging (two dps lf any H...

somebody?...

anybody?...

please take two dps...) , questing, maybe a little theorycrafting (stolen shamelessly from others), and just having fun playing WoW. So come on in, take your shoes off, relax and enjoy. But leave the pets outside. Last time Liralia let one of her pets loose in the house, we had to replace all of the carpets, to say nothing of my favorite slippers (the black ones with the skulls). Never touch my slippers.

- Savallus