I’ll come right out and admit it.  PTD is in a little bit of flux right now.  There is a chance, I won’t say how big, that I won’t keep playing a Restoration Druid when Wrath hits.  That throws off the whole blog title and all, but hey, it’s my blog!  Again, it’s only a chance, but it’s there.  You see, way back when I switched Pummra over to a healy Druid, my guild was struggling a little bit in terms of healing numbers.  The team player I am, I offered to help fill the gap by changing my talent spec from Feral to Resto.

Now, with Wrath coming, things are a lot different in my guild.  Healers have popped up everywhere, and now we are positively awash in healers.  Paladins, Priests, Shaman, Druids, we have them all.

So I’ve been asking myself, “will I actually be better off leveling a DPS class, given my part-time tendencies?”

I don’t know yet.  I do have a fairly well-equipped and well-traveled level 70 hunter sitting around.  And I’ll admit, I’m a lot more excited by the Hunter changes than the Resto Druid changes.  (Yeah, an OOC rez is awesome, a group heal is great, but come on…I can tame a COREHOUND??)  Heck, this is strange to say, but there is more than a decent chance that if I DO elect to level my Hunter, he’ll go Survival.  That talent tree in Wrath actually looks…REALLY….good!

If you really get down to brass tacks and think about it, isn’t the release of a “vertical” (ie, more levels to grind) expansion the perfect time to switch around your focus?

Yes, yes it is.  I’ll tell you why.

No Gear Reset, But Still Some Nice Gear

Wrath isn’t like BC where you’ll drop your T6 gloves for a pair of green gloves off the first mob you kill, but if you have a character who’s only recently 70, and hasn’t gone through the epic equipment grind, you’ll find some nice gear quickly.  My take on the early quest rewards is that you can largely ignore them if you’re wearing Kara or T4 equivalent gear, but they are nice upgrades if you are wearing anything less.  Hell, I took a look at the ranged weapon quest reward, and almost took it.  My hunter has epically bad luck when it comes to ranged weapon drops, and he’s still using the Wrathtide Longbow from Heroic SV, even though he’s seen Kara many, many times.

Heck, even your T6 will someday go the way of the dodo, so don’t let the purply glow suck you in.  Sure, T6 should last a good while for leveling, but at some point you’ll get rid of it.  In the not too distant future you’ll be decked out in your T7 on your NEW main, and you’ll wonder why you hesitated to make the switch.

Anyhow, if it turns out you have a BRAND NEW level 70, Wrath is the perfect time, gear-wise, to make them your new main!  You’ll actually get some real nice benefit from early quest rewards AND early crafted items.  Which brings me to my next point.

Finally Level That Tradeskill

Let’s face it, it can be fantastically painful to max out some tradeskills right now.  Heck, outside of gathering and cooking, it’s downright horrible to level most past 350.  Well, you don’t have to do it now.  Hold off and wait for Wrath.  The tradeskills that I have looked at are all giving new patterns that start at 350 skill.  These new recipes/patterns also require MUCH easier to obtain mats, and you should be able to finish off that Leather working or Tailoring skill without much trouble while you level.

I know I’m ecstatic to finish off Tailoring and Enchanting without breaking the bank, so to speak.

Talent Trees are A’Changin Anyway

I’ll admit it.  I haven’t even looked closely at the Resto Druid talent tree in Wrath.  If the other trees I have looked at are any indication, though, there are a lot of changes.  I know Feral and Balance have a lot of changes, and the Hunter talent trees are totally reworked, and of course there are the new PET trees to learn.  The point of all this is that you are going to have to relearn a lot of stuff anyhow.  Why not do it with that other class that you’ve always WANTED to play, but couldn’t stomach abandoning your shinily epiced out Main to the Nether.

Conclusion

There is no better time than now.  You aren’t going to be left behind due to gear, as everyone will be busy leveling.  Even seasoned players will have to learn new tricks and new encounters.  Sure, if you want to continue to be the best healer or Warrior or whatever you can be, you are more than welcome to continue on your present path.  But if you’ve always wanted to ditch the Priest for a Fire Ballin’ Mage, don’t hesitate.  Now is the time.  Heck, I might do it, and I have a blog and it’s title to worry about!

This post comes to you courtesy of the mailbag.

I read your excellent posts in http://parttimedruid.com/category/casual-play/ and I really enjoyed them.
I’d like to look at it from a slightly different angle though. What advice would you give to someone looking to form a Casual Raiding Guild.
For this discussion, let us assume our CRG is a 9 hour a week guild.

This is something that I’ve kinda sorta covered before, though not in terms of guild formation.  Well, it got PTD’s old gears humming, and I’ll do my best to share my thoughts on building a casual raiding guild.  I initially planned to do a “how-to” kind of post, detailing it step by step, but I soon realized that what would really help were a few key points to focus on.  Without further adieu, here they are.

Key #1: Strong Leadership

The first thing you’ll need for a casual raiding guild is strength at the top.  Casual players have a whole host of wants and needs, and you’re going to need a Mother Brain that can keep everyone fed and happy.  “Casual Raiding” can be a bit of a contradiction in terms.  The raiding environment is more naturally suited to the hardcore player, but that doesn’t mean casual raiding can’t work.  In order to MAKE it work, however, you need determined leadership.

The leader of a casual raiding guild must be flexible.  You are basically living in two separate worlds, one focusing on raid progression with the other focused on alts and keeping things fun for the non-raiding contingent.  Let’s face it, even in a casual raiding guild you will HAVE to have a portion of your membership that doesn’t really raid, at least not much.  How else will you gear up new toons, if there is nobody willing to run Heroic Mechanar while the guild at large is busy in SSC?

This is important because as a casual raiding guild, you might need a larger overall membership to make sure you can fill those 25 man runs.  Hardcore raiding guilds can recruit to fill specific class slots in specific time periods, you most likely will not be able to function that way.  You will have to continually reinforce your raiding contingent from within.  Having a guild that can focus both on raiding progression and leveling new toons is ideal.

Key #2: A Reliable Core

In a casual raiding guild, your raiding roster will no doubt be fairly fluid.  People will be attracted to your guild because they want to raid without being “required” to be there 4 nights a week.  You will attract a lot of people that can only raid one night a week.  Don’t turn them down.  You need all the help you can get.  You might end up with 4 Resto Druids, for instance, but they all can only attend a different night.

So what do I mean by a reliable core?  Well, you’ll still need a STARTING point for all your raids.  You’ll need, for 25 mans at least, a dozen or so dedicated players who DO make most or all of your raiding nights.  This reliable core will also ideally encompass many “key” classes.  A couple of tanks, a couple strong healers, some of your best DPSers.  And, of course at least a couple of people to lead those raids.  Raids don’t lead themselves, you know.  You’ll want a main raid leader and probably an assistant who helps call out orders throughout the night.  You could also employ healing leads, DPS leads, or a variety of other things, but you can get by with two strong raid leaders.

Most importantly, you want to start with a good amount of reliable members.  You don’t want to start any raid night saying, “Need 18 more for SSC.”

Key #3: A Narrow Focus

You will have your share of challenges raiding casually.  The last thing you want to do is try to go in too many directions at once.  Keep a narrow focus, at least at the beginning.  What this means is, don’t run TK for 3 hours one night, SSC for 3 hours the next, then ZA for 3 hours.  My specific recommendation, at least at the beginning, is do one 3-hour run in Kara, and then spend the other 2 nights on ONE 25 man instance.  You could start with SSC, depending on the strength of your raiders, but it might help to start with Gruul’s Lair, as it is short and gives you a good primer on 25 man coordination.  If you clear Gruul’s in one night, try Magtheridon the next.

Another element of focus that could help is make sure the guild at LARGE is focused.  By that I mean post and discuss strategies for the bosses you plan to attempt in the near future.  Because at least some of your raid will be fairly fluid, you need to make sure everyone is on the same page.  Set up some message boards and USE them to be sure this is the case.  If you plan to work on Lurker in the coming weeks, make a post about it on your boards in advance.  Make sure everyone takes a look at videos and reads the strategies.  You need your members to be OVER prepared for boss encounters.

Key #4: Flexible Scheduling

Hopefully, you already realize this.  You have to set your raiding schedule a little differently than a more serious raiding guild.  You can’t raid every Thursday, Friday and Tuesday from 7-10.  A schedule set in stone will likely lock out too many people.  You’ll need a greater degree of scheduling variance to give the majority of your guild access to raiding.  Perhaps a 2 week rotation would work.  Raid Tues, Thurs nights and Saturday during the day one week, then Wednesday, Friday night and Sunday day the next.  You have to give your members options.  If you find you can set up a hard schedule, chances are you aren’t really a casual raiding guild.  Be aware when setting up your schedule when the various raid instances reset, of course.  (You could also use this to your advantage early on, setting up Kara on successive nights.)

Key #5: A Casual Loot System

This could be the most difficult decision you have to make.  People raid for fun, but they also raid for loot.  If you have members that don’t see any shot at getting drops, they won’t bother signing up.  A DKP system, for instance, could favor the members that can make most raid nights over those that can only come once a week.  This is not acceptable in a casual raiding environment.  You need a system that will NOT punish people who can only get there once a week.

Now, I can already hear the arguments from those who think constant raid attendance means they deserve more.  In my experience, there is one element that contingent always seems to forget.  If you’re making every raid, your chances at loot are already MUCH MUCH better than those who only come once a week.  Honest.  In a month you might see SSC 12 times to the more casual player’s 4 times.  That’s a huge advantage already.

The system that has worked well for my casual raiding alliance is Suicide Kings.  It’s simple, constant attendance does HELP, but erratic attendance doesn’t kill you either.  I’m sure there are other systems out there, but I frankly don’t know much about them.    We have always used SK, dating back to Molten Core, and have never had any real issues.

Conclusion

Admittedly, I wasn’t even really aware of how and when our “casual raiding” alliance was formed.  At the time I didn’t see myself running Molten Core anytime soon, so I didn’t think much of it or pay attention.  I don’t know what decisions were made, or how every thing was hashed out.  I do know, however, the ways in which what we do, well, works.  My raiding alliance has been around a LONG time, and we were never in any real danger of it dissolving.  We got it done before Burning Crusade in Onyxia’s Lair, Molten Core, and Blackwing Lair.  Now we’ve accomplished quite a bit in every 25 man short of Sunwell.  I know that technically my alliance is not a casual raiding “guild” per se, but I think its philosophies can be easily translated to a single guild.

I hope this article didn’t ramble too much for you, but its a rather large topic to try to tackle.  If I had to try to sum it up in very few words, I would say this:  a successful casual raiding guild needs strong leadership along with great flexibility.  Remember that, and you’ll do just fine.  Thanks for reading!

I’ve gotten a fair amount of feedback regarding my post on this boss fight.  Some people agreed with me that that fight is just plain wrong, others enjoyed the challenge and found it reasonable. 

One of the arguments was that this is the Black Temple, which at one time was the very last and presumably toughest 25 man raid in the game.  I can see that argument, I really can.  I can understand the necessity to make the Black Temple difficult. 

It’s not the difficulty that gets me.

It’s the way that this type of encounter doesn’t make sense in the broader game environment.

World of Warcraft is a tactical game.  Not a shooter.  Not a twitchy adventure game.  WoW is a game of numbers and strategy. 

Think about some other difficult encounters in the game. 

To take down the Lurker in SSC, for instance, you have to learn how to avoid the spout, and how to deal with the adds.  To do so you need a strategy, not a fast ping time. 

To take down Hydross, you need to manage the phase changes from Poison to Frost.  This has nothing to do with how fast you can click your mouse.

The encounter that closest resembles the Teron fight comes in the form of Leotheras the Blind.  Individual raid members MUST be able to defeat their inner demons.  But even this event is NOT about twitch, it’s about proper gearing and proper strategy.  Prot warriors might need to have some DPS gear.  Healers have to know which offensive spells do the most damage.

Teron, on the other hand, is all about twitch and targeting.  Blizzard may has well have put you in first person mode with a gun and cross-hairs.  You can’t gear for it.  The strategy for taking down the constructs is simple at best. 

So why is there First Person shooting in my tactical role playing game? 

Would Mario fans be miffed if the last stage of the game required you to ditch your platforming skills in lieu of a jimmied together strategy RPG mini game?

Would GTA fans lose it if progression in the game depended on building a base and deploying troops strategy game style?

The answer to the last two questions is yes.  So why are we so accepting of the FPS injection in WoW?

At this point in the beta, I’ve been through most of the starter quests in the Howling Fjord.  I’m now at the point that it’s starting to direct me further out, to the next quest hub.  My exact plans for the beta are unclear at this point.  I certainly don’t plan to do any intense leveling, as I’d rather save that for when my levels will stick around, rather than do it now and have to do it all over again.  I do plan to play around with different specs as well as mess around in the early 5 man dungeons that are available.

The other night, I decided to try out the Death Knight.  I had no intentions of rolling a DK when Wrath hits.  Will my experimentation with the class change my mind?  Let’s take a look.

The DK Intro Events

I’m not sure exactly what to call this, but what I’m referring to is the set of quests that introduces you to the class.  This isn’t like starting out in Northshire Abbey as a human, with a few scattered quests and the option to leave for greener pastures whenever you like.  This is a very specific, lore heavy quest chain that introduces you to how the class plays.

The story arc that you play through to begin your life as a Death Knight is very, very well done.  Some have suggested that Blizzard stole this idea from the first 20 levels in Age of Conan.  I never played AoC, thankfully, so I can’t comment on whether or not I see it as "theft."  Regardless, I was very happy with what Blizzard put together.  The storyline is both robust and interesting, and kept me playing well past my allotted time for the evening.  I don’t believe they have set this up to challenge the player, but rather to hold their hand a little while so they can get a hang of the new class.

On a side note, though I took many screen shots, I am electing not to share them with you.  In this case, I really don’t want to ruin anything for any of my readers, as I really think that this Death Knight starter chain is something everyone should try — whether you plan to play a DK long term or not.  Trust me, it’s well worth it.

The quest chain also gives you an opportunity to explore your dark side a bit.  You’ll be stealing, plundering, bombing and outright wreaking havoc on innocent villagers left and right.  The quests range from the standard "Kill X of X" to more interesting bombing runs and stealthy, devious type quests.  If the DK quests are any indication of the future of WoW questing, I can’t wait to see where we go from here.

Overall, the little intro story arc is some of the most fun I’ve had in the game in four years.  Some of this may be due to its newness, but just as much is probably related to quality design.

DK Talents and Play Style

When you start out you have no talent points.  Zilch.  Zero.  Basically, you are awarded anywhere between 1 and 5 or so talent points for most quests.  Rather than overwhelm you with 40 some talent points to spend out of the gate, Blizzard has elected to leak them to you a little at a time.  I am personally thankful for this decision, as I was overwhelmed by the new DRUID trees, and I’ve been playing a druid for a LONG time.  This way I was able to focus on one talent tier at a time.  I really have no clue about Death Knight talents, but from what I understand the Blood tree is the steady DPS tree, so that’s the way I went.

In all honesty, I was generally a little confused by the DK and how it played.  A lot of the skills and talents you get function differently or are more powerful depending on how many diseases were on the target.  I only saw one attack that inflicted a disease, so I basically led off most combat cycles with that.  Then I went through my other fancy little tricks that relied on the target being diseased or whatnot. 

I did NOT get a good grasp at all about how a DK should be played.  My first impression of the class is that it is VERY complex.  You have a number of different attacks to use, and I found myself a little lost as to how best to use them.  I think part of the problem is that the starting quests are overall very easy.  I think I only died perhaps once the entire time, and even that was a little fluky, as I got a few too many wandering adds hammering on me.  For the most part I just plowed through the quest mobs I had to deal with.  My guess is that I wouldn’t really get a feel for the class until the Outlands.

DK Gear

Fortunately, you get a nice leg up gear wise as well.  I’m sure you’ve heard by now, but you start with a set of matching green gear, and every few quests or so award you with a blue upgrade.  By the time you complete the quests and find yourself in regular old Azeroth, you have a complete set of matching Blue gear and a nice blue two handed sword or axe.  It’s almost like getting a full set of Tier 0.5 armor for free.  Nice!  I’m sure glad new DKs won’t be forced to compete on the AH for any plate they can find, that’s stuff already overpriced!

In addition to the nice gear and weapons, you’ll also get a leg up with a nice looking Death Charger for a mount.  The quest for it comes fairly quickly in the chain, and like the other quests it is quite easy but also quite dark.  I’ve always wanted a pally/lock style mount, and I finally got to see just how cool they were.

Conclusion

It’s hard to say how I feel about the CLASS overall at this point, as I think it will take some more time to explore how they play in the more difficult Outlands areas.  I am excited to take a look at the different trees, and see how the class actually pans out as a tank.  I will say that after playing through the DK starting arc, I am much more inclined to give them a try at release.  I have always wanted a dedicated tank, and starting an alt at 55 is very, very nice.  Also, by the time I finished the starting arc, I hit level 58 and was ready for Hellfire Peninsula, with a nice set of gear, a mount and a fair amount of gold. Not bad at all!  In the end, I’ll give the story arc a big A+, but give the class an incomplete.  I had fun playing it, to be sure, but I have no idea how it will play long term. 

I now have a few play sessions in the Wrath beta under my belt, so I thought I’d give some impressions. Keep in mind these are very early impressions, and I’ve only seen the two starting areas in Northrend.  I should also note that I am about as biased as you can be.  I love World of Warcraft, and my guess is that if you’re reading this you do as well.  I’ve played it for four years now, and I see no end in sight.

Wrath, as I’ve seen it, looks like it will keep me playing.

The very first thing I noticed upon logging in was the changes in the graphics.  No, there isn’t any big graphics overhaul, but it does look like they did some tweaking and optimization to the graphics engine.  Everything looks a little crisper, a little cleaner, and the contrasts are better.  It looks to me like WoW is getting a fresh coat of pain in Wrath.

The graphics in WoW have never been about pushing a billion polygons, but they have always focused on one thing:  art direction.  Blizzard is not letting me down in regards to the art direction based on what I’ve seen so far.  In my opinion, though the graphics are cartoony, WoW has always been one of the most immersive games of its type.  The reason for that is rock solid art direction, and a certain cohesiveness to the game world that other titles have lacked.  WoW always felt like a world  to me, and not just a game. 

As far as the starting zones in Northrend, I was a bit underwhelmed with the Borean Tundra when I first landed.  I suppose that part of the issue is that it is the Borean Tundra which doesn’t exactly make for a dynamic, beautiful zone.  Much like the Barrens, there is only so much you can do to make a Tundra interesting. 

The Howling Fjord, on the other hand, is absolutely beautiful.  Right from the boat ride in and the first reveal of the zone, I was blown away.  Here is a pic of the Fjord as it opens up before you.

Awesome, huh?  I love the waterfalls, and in the background you can see Utgarde Keep, the big stone structure with the skulls.  Very, very nice.  I was excited immediately.  There is also a very cool suspended burning ship that you float under before getting to the above shot.  I didn’t get a good shot of it on the boat, but I did manage to get a good view later.  Here it is, from a flying machine taxi I was on.

Just great stuff from Blizzard, though I can’t say I’m surprised.  Here are a couple more scenic pics for your enjoyment.  The first is a closer view of Utgarde, and the second is an excavation site you get to a bit later.

So, everything looks good, how about the actual content?  Well, I’m fairly happy on that account as well.  I’ve only done a whole bunch of the starter quests in the Fjord so far, but I have a pretty fair idea of the direction.  In honesty, it’s mostly more of the same.  Kill X of these guys, collect X of this.  There are some definite improvements, however. 

For one, I seemed to run into extra quest givers all over the place.  I’d be off finishing up one quest to find another nearby that was related.  I will say there have also been a few quests that are trying to shake up the formula at least a little.  One quest has you fighting one big guy after another in a gladiator-like setting.  Another quest had me saving prisoners, but the minor twist here was the prisoners actually stuck around to fight a little.  Not in an escort quest way, but just because they felt like turning on their former captors a bit for some payback.

Another nifty little quest had me retrieving an artifact from within a crypt teeming with undead.  We’re talking a LOT of undead.

If you notice in that shot I have a gold colored shield around me.  That was a buff put on me by the NPC that gave the quest, and it literally roasted any undead I came in contact with.  I was like a pinball of death, it was fun. 

The last thing I’ll touch on right now is the Achievement system.  I love this system.  Really.  This thing is right up my alley.  I played Lord of the Rings for all of the first free month, and the one thing that I REALLY liked about that game was their achievement system.  Sure, they are ultimately kind of pointless, but it gives me another little thing to do in my short play stints.  I started out with a handful completed dealing with Classic WoW and BC stuff.  I also quickly picked up a couple for training GrandMaster in a few tradeskills. 

Then I saw the "Friend or Fowl" achievement, and I had to have it.

At that point, a turkey killing rampage ensued. The funny thing is I spec’d Moonkin since it worked well with my resto gear. (I think I’m going to like the stat consolidation they are doing, by the way. Bye bye "healing" gear.) Turkey on Turkey violence, when will it end?

The above shot is me shortly after successfully killing 15 turkeys in 3 minutes.  Once you do that, you get a turkey hit called on you, and turkeys materialize from everywhere to take you down.  It’s a lot like the little Easter Egg in The Legend of Zelda:  A Link to the Past.  They didn’t post a real threat, as my Starfall spell made quick work of them.

So that should get us up and running on beta info.  There are about 2.5 trillion things I could talk about right now, but I’ll try to pace myself.  I’m presently collecting shots of the early quest rewards, and I’ll try to do a post real soon on them.  The devs have said that it isn’t a huge "gear reset" like in BC, and that does indeed look true.  Still, there are some interesting things about the rewards we’ll get to later. 

Be sure to let me know if there’s anything else in particular you’d like me to cover about the beta.

Teron Gorefiend.  How I have learned to loathe thee…

I’m all for a challenge, I really am.  If you look at my list of Top 5 Five Man Boss Fights, you’ll see I have a preference for challenging fights.  I like to have to work to succeed.  Honestly, I do.

But Teron Gorefiend?  This encounter is just flat out frustrating, and not necessarily because it is honestly challenging.

For the uninitiated, I’ll give a brief rundown of how this encounter works.  Basically, a random raid member is targeted with a debuff called Shadow of Death every 30 seconds.  The affected player will die in 55 seconds, and when he dies four shadowy constructs will spawn around him.  The affected player will also become a ghost when they die that has special abilities controlled through the pet bar.  The Shadowy Constructs that spawn CANNOT be harmed by live players, only by the ghost.  You must kill all four before they reach the raid.  The Shadowy Constructs can and will wipe the raid should too many of them make it there.

In a nutshell, if you can’t kill your constructs in time, there is a VERY GOOD chance the whole raid will wipe.

Now, killing your constructs before they get to the raid is not impossible, but it can be quite hard.  You have to be quick and you have to be able to target the four constructs efficiently.

Basically how it pans out is that some people have a fairly easy time doing it, while others find it nearly impossible.  If you play a lot of First Person Shooters, this event would probably be cake for you.  The problem is, people who play WoW aren’t necessarily the types that play First Person Shooters. There will undoubtedly be at least a couple people in the raid that just can’t get the job done.  You’ll find yourself hoping that Player X does not get the debuff.

This is bad for raiding.  Raiding is already fairly stressful, what with gear requirements and learning all the different and difficult encounters.  Raiders already have a tendency to single people out for under-performing.  The last thing we need is an encounter that makes it blatantly obvious.

The Teron Gorefiend fight does just that.  It can drive a wedge into the raid as frustration sets in.  "Why can’t Hunter X kill his stupid constructs?"  It can very easily devolve into a bout of finger pointing and hurt feelings.  I can’t imagine how many guilds have been driven apart by this one stupid fight. 

If you’re lucky, you raid with good people who won’t point fingers and understand that this encounter is just plain stupid.

And I am telling you that it is.

As a disclaimer, this is not sour grapes.  I can and have successfully killed my constructs when given the opportunity.  I had trouble my first try, but after that I started to get the hang of it and am no longer intimidated. 

My problem with it is that WoW is not a first person shooter, nor a twitch game.  If I wanted that kind of challenge, I’d be playing Call of Duty 4.  I play WoW because I DON’T like twitch based challenges.  I had my fill of those in the old NES and SNES days.  (And, in the interest in full disclosure, I was damn good in my day.  People all around feared me when I selected Ryu in Super Street Fighter.  Hell, I even mastered Zangief just to embarrass my friends!)

I feel bad for the people that have never played twitch games, and might not be equipped to handle the speed and targeting necessary to get the job done.  Hell, I know quite a few people who never played anything prior to World of Warcraft. 

In a way it’s like the Magtheridon fight.  Sure, that necessitates quick reflexes and clicking the cubes at just the right time, but you have control over who should click the cubes.  In the Teron fight, it is completely and utterly random.

Boo.

So maybe you convinced  your wife to give WoW a try.  And as wives are wont to do, she rolled a healer.  Over time, she grew into a fantastic and reliable raid healer, and you invite her without hesitation to the raids.  But then you get to Teron, and she has to become a DPSer with abilities she’s never seen before.  And to top it all off, if she fails, the raid dies.

That is just plain idiotic.  How did Blizz come up with this stupid encounter anyway?  I have a theory.

One day, a dev was getting a root canal.  While he was getting this painful and tedious procedure, he also had to do his taxes at the same time, as it was April 15th.  So he thought to himself:

What could be worse than this?  If only I could come up with a boss fight that is the equivalent of this hell I have subjected myself to!

And so Teron Gorefiend and his Shadowy Constructs were born.  The WoW equivalent of a root canal and doing your taxes rolled into one.

Yeah, that’s fun.

This will be a short post, I’m still not quite clear to get back to a regular schedule. A 3 day old baby wreaks havoc on your schedule.  Anyhow, Mom and the little guy are home, and everyone is doing just great.  Thanks to everyone who sent their well wishes!

From here on out, Beta alert!  There are no spoilers really, but just so you know it’s beta talk.

As far as WoW goes, I haven’t had a whole lot of time for the game.  I did get in a BT run on Wednesday night, and saw the Najentus fight for the first time.  Sadly, he didn’t drop the helm I was hoping for.  Anyhow, we also took down Supremus and the Shade, and took a couple quick attempts at Gorefiend.  I’m hoping we take him down Saturday.

In other news, and the reason for the title, is that PTD is now in the Beta for Wrath.  A VERY gracious reader sent me an email the other day and asked if I would like his beta key.  He didn’t have any time for the game, and thought I would put it to good use.  I replied in the affirmative about 1.5 seconds later.  I was going to name said reader, but then I thought that perhaps that would cause some breach of some thing or other, and get either his or my accounts in trouble.  So we’ll leave it at this:  you know who you are, and I’m very, VERY thankful. 

I spent a good 3-4 hours downloading the client and getting it patched up.  I also need to thank Phaelia for pointing out a place to find workable mods for the beta.  I couldn’t live without ArkInventory at this point!  Around 11:30 or so last night I finally had everything up and running, and logged into the beta server.

Who the heck took Pummra?  I know Phae and Valenna had a hard time with their usual names as well.  This must be stopped! 

Anyhow, it gave me the chance to rename Pummra anyhow, as I haven’t felt like Pummra in a long time.  Now I get to go by PTD!  I just hope blizz doesn’t suspect me for a gold seller due to my lack of vowels!

Anyhow, I didn’t have a lot of time, but I spec’d him feral, and grabbed my kitty gear.  I hear respecs are real cheap, so I’ll probably try out a few different builds.  I did manage to remember to take a screeny or two, so here is a shot of Stormwind Harbor.

So I took the boat to Northrend, and ran around town a little. I  didn’t have time for anything serious, but I at least wanted to look around.  I quickly realized I made a silly mistake when copying Pummra over.  He was broke at the time, down to 7 gold.  Basically, I couldn’t train skinning or leatherworking for lack of cash!  Oh well.  I wonder if I can recopy him after loading him up with cash.

So that’s it.  I’m in beta, and I’m thrilled.  The server is down right now or I might not be writing this.  Now I have a question for you.  Is there anything you’d like me to cover regarding the beta?  A particular build for a druid perhaps?  Maybe something about tradeskills?  I’m wide open at this point.  If there’s something you’d like to hear about, go ahead and let me know in the comments. 

Ok, so maybe obligatory is too strong.  Not EVERY blogger posts or talks about their UI, but many do.  Anyhow, I checked the old PTD inbox the other day to find this:

I love your blog; it is incredibly entertaining and informative.

Could you please give me an idea of what add-ons you use? I am particularly interested in your UI adds. I like the simplicity of your UI.

John P. Bacon

First of all, John made the right move by buttering me up first.  If you have a question, it’s best to compliment me first.    Anyhow, it’s not the first time someone has asked about my UI, so let’s get to it.

My UI, like most of yours I’m sure, is a mish mash of different elements tailored to my liking.  The evolution of my UI took place over time.  In the beginning I used Cosmos, which if you’ve never used it is basically an all-inclusive UI mod.  In the early days of WoW, it was one of the only major “mods” out there.  It’s been a long time since I used it, so I’m sure it’s changed a lot over the years.

After I played with Cosmos for a long time, I realized I wanted more flexibility, so I started using CTMod.  It gave me a lot of the things I wanted as far as improving my UI, and it was still fairly close to the default Blizzard UI.

I soon got irritated with CTMod as it never worked right after patches, and not too long ago I heard about Ace Mods, and started using them.  That’s when I started getting serious about modding my UI.  Before that, I had just used bits and pieces to enhance the existing UI, but once I moved to Ace I began to tear the whole thing down and tweak everything.

Here is a shot of my UI as it stands today:

It’s not the most heavily modded UI out there, but it is fairly far from the default UI.  No, I didn’t do any fancy graphics work to tie it all together, I wouldn’t know where to start with that.  I did, however, overhaul it completely.

The Elements of My UI

Red Box:  eePanels

The area in the red box is the background for the bottom of my UI.  I decided I wanted most of the “big” stuff to sit at the bottom of my screen.  eePanels is a mod that I use to create the background box.  I don’t do anything fancy with it, but it helps tie the UI together.

Orange Circles:  Bartender3

Bartender3 is one of the most important parts of my UI.  It’s the mod I use to tweak, nip and tuck all of my action bars.  It’s a very robust addon, and does everything I want it to do.  You’ll notice a box of action bar buttons in the middle left of my screen, that’s where I store most raid/group usable items.  You’ll see drums, pots, my Prayer Book, and other stuff.  I keep it there because I spend so much time clicking on party members in Grid, so it’s easy to hit a pot or whatever when I need it.

Blue Circle:  Elk Buff Bars

Elk Buff Bars is a recent addition to my UI.  It replaces the default buff icons with a list of bars with exact timers.  I like the way it cleans up the look and feel of my UI.

Pink Circle:  PitBull

I use PitBull for a few different unit frames, though not the main party and raid frames.  (I use Grid for that, but more on Grid later.)  I use PitBull for my frame, my target, target of target, pet and other “secondary” unit frames.

Purple Circle:  Quest Helper

Everyone uses Quest Helper by now, right?  Go get it.  It gives me that cool arrow to show me where to find stuff, and gives a better on screen quest tracker.  The only thing I don’t like about it is I sometimes have trouble getting rid of the arrow if I want to.  I don’t need quest waypoints while in a raid for Pete’s sake!

Light Blue Square:  Recount

I use Recount to track my mad DPS (yes, DPS!!), and it fits nicely in that corner of my UI.

Yellow Circle (Yes, I know this isn’t yellow, but I don’t want to make anyone’s eyes bleed, including my own!): XPBar

I mostly put this in because I couldn’t adjust the Bartender3 EXP bar to my liking.  I wanted something more compact yet readable, and XPBar was the ticket.

Map Mod:  Simple Mini Map

I didn’t circle it, as it was already getting too busy down there.  I changed the size, shape and moved my Map with SimpleMiniMap

Green Circle:  Grid

Grid is another mod that I couldn’t live without.  It’s a very compact yet customizable set of raid frames.  I’ve tried Pitbull and others, but nothing beats Grid IMO.  It takes some work to get it set up, but once you do it’s golden.  In this shot I am not in a group, but below is a shot that shows Grid in a 25 man setting.  Keep in mind I have made some tweaks to my UI since this shot, but I haven’t gotten a shot from a 25 man since then.

One other important mod to note that is not in the other shot is HOTCandy.  It’s the set of green bars just below my Grid setup.  This is what I use to keep track of my HOTs on various targets.  You can also see a couple other mods that I use in this shot, like Prat that handles my chat and Omen that I use to monitor threat.  I also use a whole bucket load of FuBar addons that you can see here.  I still use them all, I’ve just now made it so they auto-hide unless I mouse to the top of the screen.  I couldn’t live without all the little things FuBar does for me.  I used to use Titan Panel for this, but like the customizability that FuBar gives me with a smaller memory footprint.

Anyhow, that about does it I think.  I could probably spend another four pages just talking about the different mods I use, but this was more about the mods that make up my UI.  It’s not the fanciest UI out there, but I feel like I accomplished what I wanted to with it.  I wanted to streamline things a bit and open up the viewable area, and I’ve done that.  I hope you like it, and keep those emails coming!

Would Blizzard hear me?  Probably not.  I suppose I thought I could buy my way into beta by writing about the game, but I was wrong.  Anyhow, I don’t really have anything to say, and I thought it was time I wrote a really short post to give people a rest.

My only other thought for now?

Will the mentioned pre-release of some Wrath content kill raiding?

Oh, sorry…that’s supposed to be Shade of Akama.  Well, anyway, we hit BT again this Saturday, and started with this guy.  We waxed him like a level 25 in STV on a PvP server.  It was nasty.  Ok, maybe it wasn’t THAT bad, because it did in fact take two attempts.  Anyhow, this is how it went down.

We used three tanks.  One on each door to handle adds, and one Bear in the middle of the room to handle those other whatchamacallit guys.  My job was to roll HOTs on both the Druid tank and the Tank on one wall.  There is an easy place to stand where this wasn’t a problem. 

So we start the fight up, and the healing is surprisingly pretty easy, especially compared to the Supremus fight before that.  As it turns out, wires of communication got crossed in some way, and the tank on the other side wasn’t getting enough healing and he went down.  So the RL called a wipe and we all gathered by the Bear tank to corpse up. 

If you are ever in a wipe situation on that fight, it takes a LONG time.  The fight revolves around the real Akama trying to kill the Shade of Akama.  Akama is one bad mofo, as it took a good 2 minutes for all the mobs to beat him down after we were all dead.  I sent him a guild invite afterwards, but he turned me down.  I’d like to have him as a tank.

Anyhow, we figured out the whole in our strategy and rejiggered it a little.  It turned into one of those situations where I was surprised that things were going so well.  I kept listening to the reports from the DPSers on the progress against the channelers that hold the Shade in place.  (If you’ve seen the Leo fight in SSC, it’s basically like that.  The boss, in this case the Shade of Akama, is being banished or held by a group of casters.) 

Before I knew it, all the channelers were dead and the Shade was on his way to engage with Akama.  The whole point is that Akama is there to take down the Shade and restore some sense of balance to his people.  Or something. 

Once the Shade is free and engages Akama, everything is out the window.  No threat to worry about, and not a lot of damage to heal.  So I pulled out my trump card, my Ace in the hole, my golden ticket…mad Resto Druid DPESSSSSSS.  You’ve seen it before.  Here it is again.

Oh yeah, baby.  You see those numbers.  All Wrath, All the Time.  In this case, I was actually expected to contribute, as you have to get the Marshmallow down REALLY fast or he does something bad.  I don’t know what it is, but I’m sure it involves a massive wipe of the raid.  

With my 1k Wrath hits flowing, the Marshmallow met his end.  I must say, I’d rank him as probably the easiest boss I’ve seen since Attumen.  And it’s nice that he drops T6 loot.  I thought the Void Reaver was the loot Pinata, I’ve gotta nominate the Shade of Akama for that title.  Anyhow, once he goes down, there is a nifty little cut-scene wherein Akama does some magic HooHa and turns all the red mobs that were in his area green.  It certainly helped later when we were wiping on Gorefiend.

Here we are celebrating over his corpse.

There was loot, including a decent pair of cloth healing shoulders. I would have considered them, but there were a couple priests above me on the SK list. No biggie, real healers wear leather.

That was the fun part.

Correction, that was the end of the fun part.

After that we headed on to Teron Gorefiend.  Before we really get into this, let’s see some pretty pictures, shall we? 

Now, I was prepared.  I had heard many times that Gorefiend is the first real "idiot" check in BT.  The reason is that EVERY raider must be prepared to handle the whole weird constructs thing.  I won’t get into details, but basically you get a debuff that kills you in 1 minute or something.  When you die, you spawn as a banshee/ghost thing and are surrounded by these construct mobs.  You have to kill them with special abilities you only get when a ghost.  Nobody can kill these constructs EXCEPT ghosts. 

They, however, can certainly kill the other members of the raid.

Anyhow, it’s like a mini-game, you against them, and if you can’t take them down, they get into the raid and start tearing people apart. 

It’s bad.

Hell, someone even came up with a FLASH game so you can practice killing your constructs.  If you need out of game training, it must be tough. 

And it is.  Basically 2 people get this debuff every, I don’t know, 30 seconds or so.  They have to go die in a specific location that makes it easier for them to try to hold off their constructs.  In our 5 or 6 attempts, some people were able to do it, some weren’t.  I never got a real chance to try, as every time I got the debuff we were already pretty much stewed.

However, from a positive prospective we did notice we got him down to about 40% without successfully holding off a single wave of constructs!  By my math that means we only need to hold off 2 or maybe 3 waves to kill him and take his T6 tokens.  (Ooooohhh….T6 armor….can you hear me salivating?)

So, we didn’t get it done, but I think we can.  A lot of people got a look at the whole construct thing, and that should help us next time we go in.  I think there’s a good chance that the Wednesday night crew will start taking down the first 3 bosses, and then we’ll start every Saturday at Teron.  We’ll see.

So PTD’s adventures in the Black Temple continue.  So far, so good.  I’ve seen a lot of wipes, but I’ve also been there for 2 of our "first kills," Supremus and the Shade of Akama.  In two weeks time (since ’tis MH this week) hopefully I’ll have another one or two "first kills" under my belt.  Until next time!