Happy Birthday Cheesi

Today is Cheesi's RL birthday. If you see her online and you're on Bloodhoof, wish her a happy birthday. If you try and ask how old she is, though, you'll probably be met with an ambush or a backstab or something. Your pockets will likely be picked as well.

You've been warned.

Question from Mactire the Death Knight

So...umm...does this whole "pandemic thing" mean I have to wash my hands every time I kill a helboar? This is gonna kill my questing efficiency.

WTB purified draenic hand sanitizer. pst.

Loreriffic

On Saturday I was knocking out my Hodir dailies in my Fury spec with a couple of pieces of dps gear but mostly prot stuff. Helped me get a feel for how a fury warrior works and also helped me get some 2h weapon skills up. Besides all of that, it was fun to try something different.

After I polished the helm and blew the horn and what-not but before I ventured over to start the Argent Tournament stuff, I finished up my Storm Peaks quests - including the big Yorg Stormheart "reveal."

I've gotta say, I really enjoy the lore in this expansion: the Frostmourne Cavern quest, the Stormheart/Bronzebeard quest, the return of Varian Wrynn, the Wrathgate, etc. All of these things make you feel like you're a part of something bigger, as silly as that sounds when you're referring to a video game. You just didn't get that kind of "epic" feel from the Burning Crusade while you were questing.

Kudos, Blizz.

Out Of Megs

The WoW Blogosphere has lost another of its finest.

Take care of yourself, Megs. Hope to run into you on Bloodhoof once in a while.

The Power of Words

Jessika over at Pretty in Plate posted today about 3 words that she feels are thrown around too casually in the WoW world. I agree with her, and I think it's worth a read. Go check it out.

Not only does casually tossing around a potentially offensive word reflect poorly on you, but it also has an impact on your guild (whose name, in case you've forgotten, is floating above your head). I'd rather not have one of my guildies being a jerk in trade channel because of the negative implications for the good people in our guild.

Moral of the story: be aware of what you're saying and be respectful. Even if you didn't mean it that way, it doesn't mean that someone wasn't hurt or offended by it.

Fury? I Haz It.

So thanks to some much-appreciated input from Darraxus (thanks, man) and some minor research on my own, I took advantage of my talent point refund and went with the cookie-cutter Deep-Wounds Prot spec as my primary spec. I also forked up the gold to pick up a cookie-cutter Fury spec as my secondary.

My RL Avatar (apologies to Ratshag for stealing his term) rolled Bard, so I spent most of the weekend doing quests (aka gigs) and didn't have much of an opportunity to play with either of my new specs. I did, however, do my dailies on Saturday with my primary spec and kept Omen up to see what kind of threat I was producing in a very low rage, unbuffed situation. I also monkeyed around with my action bar to help improve my rotation. Overall, even though it was nowhere near a raid scenario, I was impressed. I'm really looking forward to having the opportunity to tank a raid or heroic and see the spec in action. I see some Recount analysis in my future.

As far as the Fury spec goes, I didn't play with it at all. I don't have much in the way of dps gear, and my two-handed weapon skills are stupid low anyway (hadn't even trained in two-handed maces.../headdesk). I'll take some time to save up the mats for the Charged Titanium Specs, snag some dps gear along the way, and work on my 2h skills before I wander into a heroic as a dpser.

Dual Specs? I'm Still Working On My First!

So I'm conflicted.

What else is new?

I've been kicking around what I'd like to do in the way of dual-speccing ever since they announced it. Obviously, I'm going to still keep Prot as my "main" spec, but I don't know what to do with spec #2.

I rarely PvP, so I don't see much of a point in going Arms. I wouldn't mind trying Fury, but I have exactly no dps gear. The other option would be going with a relatively conservative Prot spec as the "main" and trying out a more aggressive, threat-oriented spec as an offspec.

My other source of inner turmoil is the Deep Wounds spec. I've heard good things about it, but is it still a viable spec after 3.1? I'd research it myself, but work Big-Brothers all gaming sites and when I'm on my home computer I'm playing WoW.

I haven't even been online since the patch dropped. The prospect of having to deal with crashing servers and screwed up addons doesn't do much for me. I try to wait things like this out so I don't end up cursing and throwing my keyboard and/or mouse at whichever cat is closest.

Why the Funny Should be Saved for GChat

I would give my left arm to have had this interchange with the lovely Cheesi over guild chat so I could screenshot it and post it here (Yes, when we're both playing at the same time we type to one another rather than talk in RL. Don't judge us).

Instead, it happened during a text message conversation wherein I was asking her to convince me not to spend money on a new electronic toy that I don't really need.

Me: I'm thinking about doing something stupid. Talk me down.
Cheesi: Uh oh. I don't know how many times I have to tell you. Keep your penis out of the coffee pot.

This is why I married this woman.

Sons of Oh Dear - Part 2

So I spent my Saturday polishing Hodir's helm, blowing Hodir's horn, and thrusting Hodir's spear.

Afterwards, I needed a scalding hot shower.

And counseling.

Where's Mis?

Passed out in the Pig and Whistle, no doubt.

Haven't had time to play WoW hardly at all this week. The sole exception being a period of about an hour and a half in the middle of the night Monday. I couldn't fall back asleep because of a nasty sore throat, so I had to give the meds a chance to kick in.

I was chatting with Millea about maybe throwing in a couple of RP posts on here. I've developed backstories for most of my characters in my brain, so maybe I'll explore that a bit and flex some creative writing muscles at the same time.

Mark 'em All and Let Elune Sort 'em Out

I promised in my first post that I wouldn't do much theorycrafting or anything of the sort here, but I wanted to touch on something that Millea said in the comments of my last post. Specifically, I wanted to talk about marking targets.

WotLK made it easier for warriors to tank more than one mob at a time...easier by a long shot. The thing is, though, that we're still not "AoE" tanks in the purest sense of the term. We just tank more than one mob at a time better than we used to.

Because the perception seems to be that all of a sudden warriors are on par with pallies as far as AoE tanking goes has led to a number of people thinking that marking groups isn't necessary anymore. I contend that it is.

First of all, because warriors aren't really AoE tanks powerful AoE classes (mages, warlocks, I'm looking at you) can very easily pull aggro off of a warrior when he or she is tanking 4 mobs and the dps is in AoE mode. We can thunderclap, shockwave, and tab-target all we want, but a well-geared lock or mage can and will pull aggro off of us if they're lighting up circles on the floor.

Second of all, chances are that one of the mobs in the group has an ability that makes them a problem if they're left alive too long (healing comes to mind first, but it's certainly not the only problematic ability). If the group is marked and focus-fired down, you can single out that troublemaker in the pack and get them out of the fight as soon as possible. On the other hand, if your group is AoEing the pack that mob has the potential to wreak havoc on your group (in the case of something like a mana burn) or make the pull last longer than necessary (in the case of a healer).

Marking makes the pull cleaner and helps the tank out quite a bit. If the dps is focused on one mob at a time, the tank only has to worry about keeping the rest of the mobs from running off because of global heal aggro. He or she can maximize threat on one target, giving the dps room to work, and t-clap/shockwave to keep the additional mobs off of the healers.

There's no real need to mark the whole group, either, unless you're using some form of crowd control. Just throw a skull up on each target when the previous target falls. I've got my raid marks bound to the number pad on my keyboard, which makes it even easier to throw up a mark or change it if necessary.

Just something to think about when you run your next instance.

Thanks, Millea, for making me break a promise on my blog 7 posts in.

No Naxx for Mis

This past weekend I had to bow out of our guild's Naxxramas run.

/sigh

Saturday I had to make an epic five hour journey to reacquire the kids, then make the five hour journey back. I got home before invites went out, but there was just enough chaos in the house that there was no chance I could be a productive member of the team.

Sunday night they were going to go back in, but again I was unable to attend for similar reasons (house full of kids, splitting migraine from living in a house full of kids, etc). It's really starting to get frustrating.

I don't like to go off on "the way things used to be" tangents, but in the BC days I was the guild's main tank and raid leader. I spent so much time in Kara I had a tab running with a couple of the concubines. For a period of about six or seven months, I was in there every week taking as many guildies as I could and helping them get geared.

Now, thanks to my hiatus, I've lost my MT spot and I'm barely geared to run heroic anything. I can't seem to find the time to do much to improve that, either.

Probably the most frustrating thing is people (in my own guild, no less) saying things like, "you'll grow into your role eventually" or "you'll learn how to tank if you do it more." How quickly we are forgotten.

Anyway, if you've made it this far thanks for letting me vent. I didn't intend this to be a "feel sorry for me" post. Just a little something that I had to get off of my chest.

/rant over

Tanking Stats

One of my favorite purveyors of tank info is Veneretio, who I've been following for quite a while. Today, he wrote a great post regarding tanking stats that's worth a read, especially if you're relatively new to warrior tanking. Go check it out!

Cheesi

As I mentioned earlier, my wife is a gnome rogue named Cheesi. As promised, here is the origin of that name:

When I started playing WoW, she was determined to not become a WoW Widow and created a druid on my account to try it out. She enjoyed playing the game and decided to get her own account so that we could play together.

Around that time, her grandfather's health was fading. She travelled to Tennessee to visit him and met his dog, Chiisai, which is (romanized) Japanese for small. This carried with it a bit of irony, as Chiisai was a Great Pyrenees who was the size of a riding lawnmower.

Upon her return, while she was waiting for her druid to get transferred over to her new account, she created a little gnome rogue and named her after the dog. She played with the spelling a bit and came up with Cheesi (pronounced with a long i). Even after her druid made it to her account, Cheesi eventually became her main.

She's quite good at the rogue class, causing all sorts of havoc in battlegrounds and, in the BC days, giving me fits trying to keep my threat high enough for her to not pull aggro.

Cheesi's been on hiatus as well and is still on the road to 80, but she's getting there.

PS: Women of Bloodhoof, before you decide to

• /target Misneach
• /flirt

watch your back.

Literally.

Sons of Oh Dear

As in "Oh Dear, another rep grind."

Last night our guild went to VoA. I received an invite, but was forced to decline because I was babysitting the Baby Tank and our neighbors' kids.

Our other three kids are out of town for spring break. Had that not been the case I would have drafted our oldest (who plays WoW once in a great while and understands that purple loot is wicked cool) to help out while we ran the instance. Now the Baby Tank is surprisingly low maintenance for a 2 year-old, but our neighbors have a 3 year-old son who, by contrast, is not.

When I used to lead raids I had a macro on one of my action bars that said "AFK...kid stuff" and flagged me as AFK. When you're the raid leader you can get away with that once or twice, but when you're the lowly OT you're asking to get kicked out of the raid.

So, as a result, I decided to work on opening up the Sons of Hodir rep. It's much easier questing when there are small children running around than trying to hold aggro on something.

It's not a terribly bad quest chain to get to the point where you're earning rep with them, but I know after doing the dailies for a while (and being repeatedly called "little one") it's going to get really annoying.

WTB Sons of Hodir tabard. Of course it would probably be way too big for me.

Tanks and Healers

Keredria posted a blog today from a healer's perspective that got me thinking about the whole tank/healer synergy thing.

I've started running heroics with my guildie Jazharra, a crazy little gnome mage. We're often low on guild personnel, so we usually just pug to fill any empty spots.

Last night, we were running Heroic Violet Hold. We started off the run with a pugged hunter and two former guildies. The run kinda fell apart when we wiped on the second boss, who happened to be Zuramat (one of the "oh crap, not this one" fights). This left Jaz and myself sitting there trying to decide if we should try to pug the other three spots or just call it.

In the meantime, Briele, a holy priest logged on. Bri and I have worked together many, many times but we've both been out of commission for a while dealing with real life stuff. As a result, we're not necessarily the best-geared healer/tank combo out there at the moment.

We pugged the other two dps slots and got started. Aside from one death that was quickly handled by a rez before portal 17, the run was incredibly smooth. It almost felt like it wasn't even set to heroic.

The healer(s) and the tank(s) are the "battery" of the group, and, while gear certainly matters, chemistry and experience working together can often make up for any gear deficiencies. I know when Bri's gonna bail me out or if I need to do something drastic, and she knows when I'm in trouble and she needs to take emergency action.

On a side note, Cyanigosa was kind enough to provide Briele with the Azure Cloth Bindings. Gratz, Bri!