aurik_ffxi

A Video Diary: Resto Druid in Ulduar

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:41:20 GMT

Well, our tour of 10-man ulduar is nearing completion. The second boss of the 3.2 raid unlocks this week, and we'll soon be phasing out our 3.1 efforts as the loot becomes irrelevant. I'm proud of our efforts. We managed to beat most of the bosses in the zone before major nerfs, even if it took us a lot of learning and a lot of repair costs. We took down Algalon for the first time just hours before the 3.2 patch hit.

I managed to capture every hardmode fight at least once on video. So, without further ado: a video diary of a resto druid in Ulduar.

Flame Leviathan!

XT 002!

Iron Council!

Hodir!

Thorim!

Freya!

Mimiron!

Vezax!

Yogg!

Algalon!

Boom!

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 04:28:13 GMT

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:08:12 GMT

25-man Hard Mode Loot
For reference

FL

239	Plate	Melee.DPS	Legs	Plated Leggings of Ruination
239	Cloth	Spell	Feet	Boots of Fiery Resolution
239	Leather	Spell	Shoulder	Shoulderpads of Dormant Energies
239	Fist Weap.	Phys.DPS	Main Hand	Golden Saronite Dragon
239	Neck	Spell Hit	Neck	Pendant of Fiery Havoc

XT-002

239	1H Maces	Tank	One-Hand	Sorthalis, Hammer of the Watchers
239	Mail	Phys.DPS	Hands	Gloves of the Steady Hand
239	Neck	Spell MP5	Neck	Charm of Meticulous Timing
239	Plate	Spell	Chest	Breastplate of the Devoted
239	Cloth	Spell	Wrist	Grasps of Reason

239	Leather	Phys.DPS	Shoulder	Shoulderpads of the Intruder
239	Plate	Melee.DPS	Waist	Belt of Colossal Rage
239	Daggers	Phys.DPS	One-Hand	Fang of Oblivion
239	Neck	Spell	Neck	Sapphire Amulet of Renewal
239	Mail	Phys.DPS	Feet	Greaves of Swift Vengeance
239	Cloak	Spell Hit	Back	Drape of Mortal Downfall

Hodir

239	Mail	Spell	Wrist	Bindings of Winter Gale
239	Neck	Melee.DPS	Neck	Frigid Strength of Hodir
239	Staves	Spell	Two-Hand	Staff of Endless Winter
239	Cloak	Phys.DPS	Back	Drape of Icy Intent
239	Leather	Spell	Hands	Gloves of the Frozen Glade
239	1H Maces	Spell MP5	Main Hand	Constellus

Thorim

239	Mail	Spell MP5	Shoulder	Pauldrons of the Combatant
239	Shields	Spell	Off Hand	Wisdom's Hold
239	Finger	Tank	Finger	Fate's Clutch
239	Plate	Phys.DPS	Head	Warhelm of the Champion
239	Leather	Phys.DPS	Chest	Embrace of the Gladiator
239	Crossbows	Phys.DPS	Ranged	Skyforge Crossbow

Freya

239	Plate	Tank	Hands	Handguards of Revitalization
239	Staves	Phys.DPS	Two-Hand	Dreambinder
239	Neck	Tank	Neck	Bronze Pendant of the Vanir
239	Cloak	Spell MP5	Back	Drape of the Sullen Goddess
239	Cloth	Spell Hit	Legs	Leggings of the Enslaved Idol
239	Daggers	Phys.DPS	One-Hand	Bladetwister

Mimiron

239	Fist Weap.	Phys.DPS	Off Hand	Delirium's Touch
239	Finger	Spell	Finger	Conductive Seal
239	Cloak	Tank	Back	Titanskin Cloak
239	Plate	Melee.DPS	Wrist	Armbands of Bedlam
239	Cloth	Spell	Head	Crown of Luminescence
239	Daggers	Spell Hit	Main Hand	Starshard Edge

Vezax

239	Neck	Phys.DPS	Neck	Pendulum of Infinity
239	Cloth	Spell	Hands	Handwraps of the Vigilant
239	Leather	Spell	Chest	Vestments of the Blind Denizen
239	Trinket	Spell DPS	Trinket	Flare of the Heavens
239	2H Swords	Melee.DPS	Two-Hand	Voldrethar, Dark Blade of Oblivion

Yogg

239	Finger	Melee.DPS	Finger	Seal of the Betrayed King
239	Cloth	Spell	Feet	Treads of the False Oracle
239	Trinket	Spell	Trinket	Show of Faith
239	Leather	Phys.DPS	Legs	Legguards of Cunning Deception
239	Polearms	Phys.DPS	Two-Hand	Dark Edge of Depravity

Bring on the Consumer of Tears

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 23:25:56 GMT

We made a bit of progress with our hour on Algalon, but we haven't nailed a full cycle through his gimmicks just yet--best was like 68%. Tough fight.

In other news, got my second set of Runed Orbs so shortly I will have my BiS belt. Just a few more items to max out pre-239:
IC10Hard neck
Freya10Hard ring
Hodir10Hard staff
Thorim10Hard trinket
Yogg10Hard ring
Kologarn25 offhand
Vezax25 hands

I also got my last non-grind WSG achievement last night (Frenzied Defender). Now I just need to grind out rep and along the way win ~35 more games and return 36 more flags!

brain dump

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 22:38:20 GMT

For Shue, 10m Uld cliffsnotes

FL:
This fight uses vehicles. Vehicle HP and damage based on gear ilvl: use your "best" items even if they don't make sense from a dps perspective.
5 distinct roles: demolisher driver, demolisher gunner, siege driver, siege gunner, choppa driver

Siege gunner is the easiest role: shoot down pyrite from the sky, light tar on fire with AA rockets, and use the catapult to damage the boss. If the vehicle looks like it will take damage, use the shield to prevent damage for a short time. Shield has a long cooldown.

Siege driver should stay 20-30 yards away from the boss and use the interrupt ability to stop the boss from casting Flame Vents. When chased, turn around and speed boost away. It's important not to hump the boss because you will need time to get away if he starts chasing you, plus you want your gunner to have a clear view for shooting pyrite and stuff.

Demolisher drivers need to keep a stacking DoT on the boss by consuming pyrite ammunition. They are also in charge of launching Demo passengers when the passenger is loaded and the boss is unstunned.

Demo passengers are in charge of shooting down and collecting pyrite for their vehicle. They can also consume some ammo for a speed boost if FL is chasing them. Once the vehicle is topped up on pyrite, they should climb into the catapult and prepare to be launched on top of FL. Once on top, their task is to kill the turrets (2 of them in 10-man) and then dismount the boss before being launched. Find a nearby bike and hop in before the overload finishes, return to demolisher, and repeat the cycle.

Choppers drop tar for extra damage on the boss. They also have a key role during the overload (stun phase)--they need to drive to the people that were killing turrets who get knocked off the boss when overload happens. The turret dps will hop in the sidecar. Then, the bike must heal their passenger and ferry them to an unoccupied demolisher.

All drivers need to stay away from environmental hazards that fall from the sky (fire, ice beams, lightning balls), and need to make sure that they are not in range of FL when he switches targets.

Razorscale: DPS adds, stay out of blue fire. Stay away from the tall adds. Ranged damage should focus on the tall adds when they are up, as melee dps cannot be in range. When Razorscale is chained to the ground, leave the adds alone and DPS him (from behind, of course). Once he hits 50%, he is "permanently grounded". At this point, make sure you aren't standing in front of the boss and DPS him. Keep staying out of the fire.

Ignis: Depending on DPS, we will either use a zerg strategy or do the fight the normal way. If we zerg, all DPS on boss. We aim to kill him before the adds stack up too much. If we do it normal, then we will have 1 person assigned to shatter Brittle Golems--after the Golems are superheated and then cooled, they will stop moving. A critical hit for 5k or more will cause them to explode: stay away from Brittle Golems.

During the fight, watch out for Flame Jets--if you are casting when this happens, you will be locked out of casting for a number of seconds. If you get thrown in the slag pot, you will take periodic damage for a little while, and then you will be given a large haste buff--if you are close to dying, you can iceblock out of slag pot but you won't get the buff.

XT: Damage the boss. If marked with Light Bomb or Gravity Bomb, run away from the raid but not so far that healers can't heal you. At 75, 50, and 25% life the boss will take a break, and his heart will become vulnerable: attack it hard, as you get double damage for the 30 seconds it is out. If you kill the heart, hard mode is triggered--make sure you don't accidentally trigger hard mode if the raid isn't prepared. During the break phase, adds will spawn from corners in the room. Don't attack large bots (pummelers). Kill the smaller bots and bomb bots, making sure to stay away from bombs because they explode when they get to 50%.

IC: Likely order is Steelbreaker-Molgeim-Brundir. Steelbreaker is tank-n-spank. Stay spread out a bit to prevent chain lightning jumps. Brundir does an aoe overload, so make sure not to stand too close to him. If you can, hop in a blue rune on the ground for extra dps.

Once steelbreaker dies, fight Molgeim. Molgeim will start casting rune of death, a big green mark on the ground. Don't stand in it. If you can, try to spellsteal the shield he casts on himself. Brundir will continue to overload periodically.

Once Molgeim dies, fight Brundir. Occasionally he will fly around the room and zap nearby people with lightning. Make sure you're not close to him when he's flying.

Kologarn: stand at range and attack the Right Arm until it dies. AoE kill the rubble. Then, attack the boss until the right arm respawns. Repeat. If he aims eyebeams at you, run away as the eyebeams follow you. Try not to run the eyebeams into other casters.

Auraiya: Hide behind the wall on the pull. Kill the 2 sentries first. Then, attack the boss until the defender spawns. Be sure to stand in the front side of her. Kill the defender when it spawns. Don't stand in the void zone it leaves when it dies. When the guardian swarm spawns, drop an aoe on them and they'll die fast.

Hodir: Don't stand still unless you're next to a cozy fire--there's a stacking cold debuff called "Biting Cold" that works like the last boss in Nexus. If you can, stand in light beams for massive haste. Watch out for falling ice; it is preceded by a blue circle on the ground. When he casts Flash Freeze, look for the 2 large blue circles on the ground. Wait for ice to fall and cover the runes with snow, then stand on the snow until the Flash Freeze is finished casting. DPS priority is adds or teammates encased on Flash Freeze, then the boss.

Thorim: Mages usually pull hallway duty. There's a mechanic in the hallway that is like the Skadi gauntlet from UP heroic: stand on the side of the hallway that isn't getting nuked. For the first mini boss in the hallway, stand on his ass to prevent him from charging you. For the second mini boss, spread out at ranged a bit. Someone will get a debuff that roots them and explodes after a few seconds, so watch who gets marked and make sure you aren't next to them. After the second miniboss, skirt the edge of the tunnel towards Thorim and jump down into the arena.

For Thorim phase 2, make sure that ranged is spread apart to reduce chain lightning jumps. During the fight he will draw lightning from a pillar in the room and after a few seconds, emit a wave of lightning in that direction. Don't stand in the lightning wave. DPS boss, win.

Freya: There' no point in dpsing freya until phase 2. In phase 1, she slowly spawns 6 waves of adds. There are 3 different types of waves, she will summon 2 of each type in a random order with some restrictions.

Wave type 1: Detonating Lashers. These guys reset aggro often, and when killed they explode for fire damage. AoE them down to about 40-50%, then kill them one by one so that the raid isn't overwhelmed by explosion damage.
Wave type 2: Ancient Conservator. This guy has an aura that pacifies you unless you stand under mushrooms that grow on the ground. He also casts Nature's Fury on a random player, causing them to deal nature damage to any nearby players: when you get this, make sure you're not standing next to anyone.
Wave type 3: Elemental trio. These 3 need to die at the same time, and have varying attributes. The snaplasher gets a stacking buff each time it is attacked, so what we typically do is burst it to 50% and then stop attacking it to let the buff fall off. DPS the other two down to about 15%, interrupting their spells when possible. Then, switch back to the snaplasher and kill it, then kill the other 2 quickly.

Once 6 waves are defeated, you can start DPS on the boss. During phase 2 she will scatter seedlings under players' feet. Move away from these seedlings, as they explode for moderate damage.

Mimiron: 4-phase fight
Phase 1: Don't stand on top of anyone. Don't stand close to the boss, as he has an overload. Don't run over mines. DPS boss.
Phase 2: Don't stand in red beams, as a rocket will strike the beam. Occasionally, the boss will face a direction and cast Laser Barrage in that direction and slowly sweep clockwise. Don't get caught in the Laser Barrage.
Phase 3: DPS the flying boss head.
Phase 4: All 3 segments of the boss must die at the same time. He casts Laser Barrage and shoots rockets from phase 2. He throws prox mines and uses overload from phase 1. DPS the head primarily, switching to torso or tank if the head gets too low. Kill all 3 segments at the same time to win.

Vezax: There is no natural mana regen in this fight. Stand at range and wait for the boss to cast Shadow Crash; a missile will arc nicely and land, causing damage to anyone close to the point of impact. So, avoid getting hit by this. After the missile lands, it leaves a residue for 20 seconds that reduce mana costs by 70% and increases haste significantly--stand in this to DPS without spending much mana. When your mana dips low, stand in green puddles to recover mana at an accelerating rate--the buff stacks and returns 100, 200, 400, 800 mana etc. It also does damage equal to twice the mana gained, so be sure not to take more than 7 consecutive stacks (6400 mana / 12800 damage on the tick, 12700 mana / 25500 damage total) and probably not more than 6 if you don't have healing.

He also casts "mark of the faceless" on random players. Make sure you do not stand close to anyone with mark of the faceless, as it does significant damage and heals the boss.

Yogg: 3 phase fight.
Phase 1: be absolutely sure not to touch any clouds. DPS the adds when they are in range of Sara; stay out of range of the adds when they die, as they explode. After 9 adds die on top of Sara, phase 3 begins.

Phase 2: group up with the other ranged and attack tentacles. Priority is constrictors, followed by crushers. Don't stand close to crushers. If you are brain linked with someone, stand close to them if possible. Cleanse curse of doom if it is convenient (or if there are no other decursers available). Burn the shit out of the crushers when everything is stunned. Avoid green laser beams. Make sure you keep your sanity up; sanity "wells" spawn along the edges of the room, they will restore 20% sanity per tick and cut your damage in half while you stand in them. When brain hits 30% (3 or 4 portal cycles probably) phase 3 begins.

Phase 3: Stand at the north side of yogg. Face away from the boss and focus-dps the add after the tank has picked them up. DO NOT ATTACK TOO EARLY! DO NOT PULL THREAT! The tank has no taunts to spare if you pull an add off you, and you will cause someone to die if you screw this up. Adds need to die before empowering shadows is cast on them. If you have a moment or two to spare, toss some damage or debuffs on yogg. At about 5-8%, you will be told to leave the adds alone and switch to yogg but make sure you kill any add that you have already started to damage first. Don't look at the boss when he cackles and zaps people with purple shit.

Hey not bad!

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 23:07:58 GMT

Pretty solid weekend here. I finally knuckled down and spent some time/money on my PvP set, to very clear results--we rose from 1658 to 1802. Come Tuesday I'll be sporting the Furious body, should be a really big upgrade.

I worked on a bunch of progress meters as well, mostly various TBC reps. It should only be a few more days of running TBC heroics to cap them out. As well, I need to continue making daily trips to Netherwing Ledge.

Thinking of starting up work on my vertical shooter game again. It's that time of year, I guess.

Loot dump

Fri, 29 May 2009 21:30:07 GMT

FL Hard

226	Finger	Spell Hit	Finger	Shimmering Seal
226	Thrown	Phys.DPS	Thrown	Twirling Blades
226	Leather	Spell	Hands	Handguards of Potent Cures
226	Wands	Spell Hit	Ranged	Petrified Ivy Sprig
226	Mail	Phys.DPS	Shoulder	Mantle of Fiery Vengeance
226	Plate	Tank	Legs	Gilded Steel Legplates

XT Hard

226	Leather	Phys.DPS	Wrist	Fluxing Energy Coils
226	Guns	Phys.DPS	Ranged	Magnetized Projectile Emitter
226	Mail	Spell	Chest	Breastplate of the Stoneshaper
226	2H Swords	Melee.DPS	Two-Hand	Aesir's Edge

IC Hard

226	Finger	Phys.DPS	Finger	Loop of the Agile
226	Daggers	Phys.DPS	One-Hand	Perilous Bite
226	Leather	Spell	Waist	Belt of the Crystal Tree
226	Fist Weap.	Phys.DPS	Main Hand	The Masticator
226	Neck	Spell	Neck	Watchful Eye

Thorim Hard

226	Trinket	Spell	Trinket	Sif's Remembrance
226	Trinket	Phys.DPS	Trinket	Mjolnir Runestone
226	Neck	Spell	Neck	Pendant of the Shallow Grave
226	Plate	Spell	Hands	Gauntlets of the Thunder God
226	Daggers	Phys.DPS	One-Hand	Combatant's Bootblade

Hodir Hard

226	Shields	Tank	Off Hand	The Boreal Guard
226	Staves	Spell	Two-Hand	Icecore Staff
226	Shields	Spell MP5	Off Hand	Ice Layered Barrier
226	Plate	Melee.DPS	Wrist	Bitter Cold Armguards
226	1H Maces	Tank	One-Hand	Shiver

Freya Hard

226	Mail	Spell	Hands	Gloves of Whispering Winds
226	Neck	Phys.DPS	Neck	Seed of Budding Carnage
226	Finger	Spell MP5	Finger	Fire Orchid Signet
226	1H Swords	Melee.DPS	One-Hand	Serilas, Blood Blade of Invar One-Arm

Mimiron Hard

226	Mail	Phys.DPS	Feet	Tempered Mercury Greaves
226	Plate	Tank	Feet	Greaves of the Iron Army
226	Plate	Melee.DPS	Legs	Fused Alloy Legplates
226	Leather	Phys.DPS	Head	Mimiron's Flight Goggles
226	1H Swords	Spell Hit	Main Hand	Fusion Blade

Vezax Hard

226	Cloak	Phys.DPS	Back	Drape of the Faceless General
226	Cloth	Spell	Legs	Leggings of Profound Darkness
226	Staves	Phys.DPS	Two-Hand	Tortured Earth
226	1H Maces	Spell	Main Hand	Aesuga, Hand of the Ardent Champion
226	1H Swords	Phys.DPS	One-Hand	Void Sabre

Yogg Hard

226	Finger	Spell	Finger	Signet of Soft Lament
226	Cloth	Spell	Shoulder	Amice of Inconceivable Horror
226	2H Maces	Melee.DPS	Two-Hand	Hammer of Crushing Whispers
226	Leather	Phys.DPS	Waist	Soul-Devouring Cinch
226	1H Maces	Phys.DPS	One-Hand	Caress of Insanity

It seems likely that one of FL's drops is actually from Freya (perhaps the wand?) so that each hard boss has 5 drops.

Almost meta~

Tue, 26 May 2009 21:56:03 GMT

10-man group kicking ass, we're only a few achievements from the 10-man glory meta. I'm pretty sure we'll be scoring fast drakes at some point this season, just gotta keep pushing on those last few achievements.

This week we did:
3-tower FL
Heartbreaker (post-nerf this was stupidly easy)
IC10 hard (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMTvbzMeWW0)
Kologarn With Open Arms
Thorim, Hodir, Freya hard modes
Vezax-hard
and we ended up doing 3-watcher Yogg, after activating Freya by mistake.

This leaves Mimiron, Orbit-uary, and one-light Yogg...and of course roasting a bunch of Iron Dwarves. Next week I expect that we'll be sinking time into Mimiron and one- or two-light Yogg.

Vezax-hard was an amazing fight to heal. We used Paladin + Druid, which is possibly the worst combination of healers for this, as Priest and Shaman both get amazing utility from their shielding spells. Fooling with shadow crash for triple LB pops works too, but it's not nearly as effective. It took us probably about 3 hours total attempt time to get this guy down, but by the end every attempt was getting to the Animus. I'm sure we'll be able to reproduce our success next week. I got Aesuga, the 232 mace from this guy; a 550 SP + a gem socket is a huge upgrade over my 219 weapon.

Freya-3 was easy once you realize that when 2-healing it is NOT dps sensitive and use HP builds to reduce the chance of instant gibs. With a scroll of stam + stoneblood flask, I was close to 26k hp. During our winning attempt, I actually died at the end of the 6th pack of adds (sunbeam + multiple lashers blowing up) and our paladin solo-healed all of phase 2. Only took about 7 or 8 pulls to get this; looking forward to doing this one again next week.

Hodir and Thorim hard modes are now pretty much a joke, especially since they changed unbalancing strike to be an on-next-attack ability, which means Thorim doesn't double-swing the tank for 40k+ damage.

Yogg, I think we could have done with 2 watchers even though we had the relatively useless Freya. We were just getting tired by the time we got there--out of maybe 15 pulls, we had 2 attempts get into P3 while healthy, but that was like the 4th and 6th pulls. We ended up calling it and coming back the next day with 3 watchers and a couple of fresh / suboptimal players and killed in 3 attempts, np np. I think the main thing we need to do to become better is to map out the various brain rooms and assign people to tentacles--as long as you get the stun in under 40 seconds, you don't get an extra crusher up top. I think we'll try going with Hodir/Thorim next time, so that we can figure out how to stay sane without Freya, and also to remove the instagibs in phase 1, allowing us to get to P2 more often.

Does anyone know of maps of Yogg's visions showing skull and tentacle locations?

Anyway, almost done with loot until we are getting 239s. Here's what I still need:

Head-none
Neck-Watchful Eye -- Council 10 hard
Shoulders-none
Body-none
Back-Shawl -- Yogg 25, extremely minor upgrade
Wrist-Unsullied Cuffs (Sarth2D heroic), minor upgrade
Hands-Grips of the Unbroken -- Vezax 25
Waist-Belt of Arctic Life -- crafted from orbs
Legs-none
Feet-none
Rings-Fire Orchid Signet -- Freya 10 hard
Trinkets-pretty much got them all now
MH Weapon-none!
2H Weapon-Icecore Staff -- Hodir 10 hard
Offhand-3 upgrades to my ilvl 200 badge item, best being Ironmender from Kolo 25

Time to start thinking about Moonkin I guess.

Resto druid loots

Mon, 18 May 2009 22:29:06 GMT

Assuming no access to 25-hard yet.

Head:
1) T8.25 (Emblems of CQ or Thorim 25)
2) T8.10 (Mimiron 10)
- You absolutely want the tier piece here due to the overwhelmingly awesome 4t8 bonus and the spi/haste itemization.

Neck:
1) Watchful Eye (Council-10 Hard)
2) Evoker's Charm (Emblems of CQ)
- The socket in the Eye puts this piece over the top.

Shoulders:
1) T8.25 (Yogg 25)
2) T8.10 (Thorim 10)
3) Malleable Steelweave Mantle (Mimiron 25)
4) Underworld Mantle (Vezax 10)
5) Mantle of Unknowing (Vezax 25)
- You absolutely want the tier piece here due to the overwhelmingly awesome 4t8 bonus and the spi/haste itemization. The haste on Underworld Mantle edges out the Mantle of Unknowing unless you already have too much haste.

Back:
1) Shawl of Haunted Memories (Yogg 25)
2) Cape of the Unworthy Wizard (KT 25)
3) Shroud of Alteration (Ulduar 25 Trash)
4) Asimov's Drape
- The shawl is only better by a razor-thin margin because it trades 6 relatively useless crit for 4 less-useless int. Shroud is possibly better because of the haste budget if you are short on haste, but otherwise mp5 instead of spirit hurts this choice a bit.

Body:
1) T8.25 (Emblems of CQ or Hodir 25)
2) T8.10 (Yogg 10)
3) Raiments of the Iron Council (IC 25)
4) Phaelia's Vestments of the Sprouting Seed (IC 25)
5) Blanketing Robes of Snow (Maly 25)
- You absolutely want the tier piece here due to the overwhelmingly awesome 4t8 bonus. Phaelia's Vestments, due to the crit budget, fall behind the Raiments. Blanketing Robes are also decent, but have a very strange double-regen itemization with both MP5 and spirit--use this only if mana constraints arise.

Wrists:
1) Unsullied Cuffs (Sarth25 +2)
2) Bracers of the Broodmother (Razorscale 25)
3) Shackles of the Odalisque (Razorscale 25)
- The socket pushes the 3.0 BiS option significantly above any Normal Mode Ulduar drops. Sad. Fortunately, Razorscale is very early in Ulduar, so that Bracers should be readily accessible.

Hands:
1) Grips of the Unbroken (Vezax 25)
2) Handguards of Potent Cures (FL 10 Hard)
3) T8.25 (Mimiron 25)
4) T8.10 (Freya 10)
- The gloves are arguably one of the weakest of the tier set, with a crit budget. The Handguards of Potent Cures seem curiously overbudget, but can be difficult to get and are beaten by Vezax 25's normal drop.

Belt:
1) Belt of Arctic Life (Crafted)
2) Cord of the White Dawn (Crafted)
3) Embrace of the Leviathan (FL 25)
4) Belt of the Sleeper (Uld 25 Trash)
5) Unraveling Strands of Sanity (Maly 25)
- Go with a crafted belt once you can. Otherwise, Embrace is an easily obtained alternative. The Malygos belt is still reasonably good, but has the same strange double-regen itemization that the Blanketing Robes have, so should only be used if mana constraints are a bigger issue than throughput.

Legs:
1) Leggings of Lost Love (Thorim 25)
2) Leggings of the Lifetender (Freya 25)
3) T8.25 (Freya 25)
4) T8.10 (Hodir 10)
- The haste budget on the non-tier pieces make them superior if you don't need this piece for 4t8.

Feet:
1) Spellslinger's Slippers (Crafted)
2) Savior's Slippers (Crafted)
3) Boots of Wintry Endurance (Crafted)
4) Boots of Hasty Revival (XT 25)
5) Boots of the Servant (Freya 25)
- Go with crafted boots once you can. Otherwise, Boots of Hasty Revival should be taken over the cloth alternative from Freya, despite the crit budget, due to the large raw stat disparity.

Rings:
1) Fire Orchid Signet (Freya 10 Hard)
2) Glowing Ring of Reclamation (FL 25)
3) Lady Maye's Sapphire Ring (IC 10)
4) Sanity's Bond (Yogg 25)
- The Orchid Signet can be hard to obtain. The Glowing Ring is an excellent choice if you aren't low on haste. Avoid the Dalaran Ring due to double-regen stats unless mana constraints are an issue.

Trinkets:
Unordered, since "best" varies wildly depending on fight. I tend to use IDS / MDF or IDS / Bravery; I don't yet have Spark.
* Spark of Hope (Kologarn 10)
* Illustration of Dragon Soul (Sarth 25)
* Sif's Remembrance (Thorim 25)
* Majestic Dragon Figurine (Sarth 10)
* Battlemaster's Bravery (Honor)
* Embrace of the Spider (Maexxna 10) / Egg of Mortal Essence (Emblems of H)
- You should generally not use Pandora's Plea or Forethought Talisman. My trinket choice varies a lot from fight to fight, depending on mana constraints, casting patterns, and so forth.

Staves:
1) Icecore Staff (Hodir 10 Hard)
2) Rapture (IC 25)
3) The Lifebinder (Freya 25)
- Use Lifebinder if you are low on haste, otherwise the extra 40 spirit makes up for the crit budget. Post 3.1.2, Icecore staff will be incredibly impressive and may actually beat out 232/226 one-hand-off-hand combos.

One-hand:
1) Guiding Star (Razorscale 25)
2) The Soulscribe (Yogg 25)
3) Torch of Holy Fire (KT 25)
4) Aesuga (Vezax 10 Hard)
5) Plasma Foil (XT 10)
6) Stormtip (IC 10)
- Presumably post-3.1.2, Aesuga will be very good and possibly BiS for one-handers under 239. This of course assumes you won't be getting the Legendary, which is true for a non-paladins due to the initial "paladin weapon" discrimination.

Offhand:
1) Ironmender (Kologarn 25)
2) Matriarch's Spawn (Maexxna 25)
3) Igniter Rod (Ignis 10)
4) Handbook of Obscure Remedies (Emblem of H)
- Again, the best offhands are ones with haste itemization.

3/5 teir 8 resto

Fri, 08 May 2009 00:40:15 GMT

Here's hoping I can score a 4th piece this week in 10-man.
Head from 10 man Mimiron
Legs from 10 man Emalon
Hands from 25 man Mimiron

I was outbid on both the 25man legs (Thorim) and the 25man body (Hodir) yesterday, so that will have to wait until next week. Just Yogg left for us this week in 25man, but I don't know if we'll down him. So far we haven't been too successful, but there were favorable signs at the end of last night.

Ulduar~

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 13:48:29 GMT

Woop woop!

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 21:14:55 GMT

Note to self: take

pics.

3.1 this way comes...

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 23:02:03 GMT

WoW 3.1 -- Ulduar in all its glory -- will probably be landing this Tuesday. Time to re-evaluate goals and accomplishments.

First, I have come surprisingly close to Glory of the Raider. I managed all the Naxx Achievements on the Meta with the exception of the 3 min Patchwerk. However, due to my lack of a stable 10-man group, I never managed to get Sarth+3 nor the 8-man or 6-min Malygos. Such is life. I'm going to regret not having the proto-drakes, but not because they fast...rather, because I like collecting, and I'll never be able to collect them now.

It's too bad they don't add 280% versions of those mounts to the meta post-3.1...but then, I'll never have a chance to get Amani War Bear, or the Tenris pet, or the 2008 Olympics pet/tabard. Coming from a game where the design was explicitly to allow you to get everything with only a very few exceptions, it's a bitter brew to get used to, but que sera sera, this is the design of the game and I'm sure there will be more limited availability items that I can strive for later.

Actually, I'm super excited about Ulduar, and I'm hopeful that I can get the Uld-10 drake during the 3.1 PvE season. I'm the caliber of healer that people would want to bring to do Hard Stuff, so I'm very hopeful. And, knowing well in advance that Ulduar drakes will be limited availability as well, people will probably be much more willing to push for the achievements. I'm also hoping for less bullshit design and more like Sarth+3 so that people will genuinely want to do the achievements, even after they've got theirs done. Under-manning, volcano-style-suck-or-get-lucky and whoops-comcast-fucked-you-all-over-again achievements can suck a rotten egg, especially the ones that give you nothing for your trouble.

I did manage to get undying on my druid, which I am proud of. I almost scored a second undying and did patch in 3:04 on my shaman alt, which is pretty incredible considering it's my terrible alt which I am terrible at playing and wearing terrible gear.

I'm up to 5750 achievement points now. I've slowed down a fair amount since getting into the 5k range--many of the easy achievements I have knocked off. I'm now working on EK loremaster (the last of the 4 loremaster regions for me) and I'm just 200 short. I have pretty much completed WPL/EPL and Booty Bay, as well as mostly done the 1-20 zones, but I haven't touched Burning Steppes / Searing Gorge, so the pace shouldn't be too bad for the last stretch like it was in Kalimdor. I have still:
- a couple more quests in Strat
- 2 quests in SM (plus run SFK for the achievement--no Alliance quests there though)
- most of southshore / arathi
- half of Badlands, all of Searing Gorge / Burning Steppes
- a few quests in Elwynn and Dun Morogh

I really hope that someday they include a "quests completed in this zone" screen, so that I could go and make sure that my tallies match up. Even though I will have loremaster, I know there are a few quests here and there that I must have missed. For example, I only went halfway through the centaur line in Desolace, and I haven't done any Dire Maul quests. I think there are also a couple of caravan escort quests I'm missing there? I'm only part of the way through the AQ scepter line. I am only part of the way through the Hydraxian line in Azshara. There's at least 1 Netherstorm quest I know I haven't done, and I'm only partway through the BT questline. It goes on and on. Would be nice if they would at least give us a counter for each category, even if they didn't give us a list.

Still got a bunch of grinds I'd like to do, but I'm waiting for dual spec to land first. Mass-killing stuff as tree is terrible, and I generally need to be tree several times a week, so it's tough to find the opportunity to switch to owl for long periods of time. Once dual spec hits, I'll probably keep 1 spec for pve healing and respec the second on a whim from pvp to owl to whatever else I need.

Rep grinds I'd like to do once I can easily switch spec to owl:
-Timbermaw
-Kurenai
-TBC heroic dungeon factions
-Oracles
-Netherwing

I've also been doing a lot of PVP lately, both BGs and Arenas. I've gotten a LOT better recently. I've finally gotten some things to click; I'm now starting to use trinket and barkskin intelligently, I've collected a bunch of better PVP gear. Post 3.1, resto druids should also be a lot tougher--6k more defense, improved pvp talents, the ability to grasp and thorns in treeform, and of course the lifebloom change which may actually turn out to be a buff. And, of course, plague strike NERFED, thank god. Already I'm a super survivable druid, I just look at what they are giving us for 3.1 and drool. It takes a very well tuned dps to take me out quickly (though most can and will wear me down eventually in 1v1), and I'll be way harder to take out after the patch.

Last night we knocked out all of the EotS battlemaster achievements, save the 100 wins--(and I'm 9/10 dominations and still need the bloodthirsty one, but that will come in time) but I'm only at 18 wins so, a ways to go there still. We've also won a ton of WSG recently, so I'm overflowing with WSG marks for the first time ever. I got another PVP mount, so I just need 90 more of the 3 classic BG marks to finish my BG mount collection.

In Arenas, my PR is over 1500 for the first time ever--ret+rdruid is working out quite well in the scrubs bracket. We're going to try to push a bunch of games this weekend, a last push to see if we can nab Challenger for the season. The cutoff for Challenger is probably going to be ~1555 by my reckoning; AJ says ~1560 but their metric always underestimates as far as I can tell. We're currently 1365, but have gone 1092 to 1365 in 2 weeks since I switched from enh.shaman to rdruid--in the process raising my PR from ~1450 to 1528. Our record is something like 15-7, which includes a few games we practically threw due to not entering with trinket on, or having the wrong bar set-up. We've also gotten much better gear and tactics since we started as well. My resil and hp this weekend ought to be 350 and 22.5k, pretty solid for a healer. The next cutoff is ~1830 for rival. Really doubt we'll make that this season, but hey maybe next one.

red proto get

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 21:48:07 GMT

Finally finished off Glory of the Hero last night. Red proto-drake is mine!

more bad news for resto druids

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 00:16:42 GMT

GC: "Rolling Lifeblooms on 2-3 tanks is just hands down one of the most -- probably the most -- efficient heals in the game."

That's their story, and they're sticking with it. Lifebloom on the PTR has now doubled in cost per application. The compensation? Bloom values now scale based on the number of stacks (PvP change) and, upon bloom, LB kicks back half of the mana cost per bloomed stack. That means in the long-term, the 4th and subsequent applications of lifebloom will now cost 100% more mana. Unfortunately, we aren't exactly privy to their calculations which show how they're calculating Lifebloom to be so powerful.

So here's what I'm seeing now for 3.1 Druid healing:

Considering

1) 33% or more of the ticks on a main tank are entirely skipped or partially clipped due to overheal
2) the bloom, when it comes, is generally entirely overheal, or never happens whatsoever.

Using my character as an example, in 3.1, a 10-man 3stack of LB is generally about 1100HPS, at a cost of 782 mana. I have the talent and glyph to extend this to 10 seconds. Thus, assuming I refresh after 9 seconds so that I have a comfortable time buffer to refresh the stack, the maintenance cost is 81.3 MP/S. Assuming a 33% overheal/clip rate, the overall mana efficiency of this is ~8.9.

Nourish, as 3.1 currently looks, will be costing 683 mana before MP reducing talents, such as Moonglow (3% per point, 3 points max) and Tranquil Spirit (2% per point, 5 points max). In order to match the HPM of lifebloom, then, nourish needs to restore on average 8.9 * 683 = 6078. Fully talented, nourish eclipses lifebloom for efficiency when its average heal is 683*.81*8.9 = 4921.

Nourish output on the tank in 3.1 will look like this:

(Nourish base) * (1 + crit / 2) * 1.53 [nourish base + glyph + 4t7, assuming 3 hots and these all stack]

Coef = 0.671 * 1.1 * 1.06 * 1.04 =
Nourish base = 2035 + SP * coef = 2035 + .814 * SP

With 2000 SP, 35% crit -- which what I will be at without raid buffs as 3.1 looks today,

3662 * 1.175 * 1.53 = 6853

So pretty much, HPM-wise, Lifebloom rolling will be inferior to keeping a stack of 1-3 lifeblooms on the tank for the HoT synergy and spamming Flash of Light...er, Flash Heal...wait, it's called Nourish for druids. Flash Nourish? Flourish? OH I GET IT NOW

The main plan for healing thus will be:
Tank will get rolled with RJ, RG, and LB. We will allow every 3rd LB to expire for the full mana refund. During this time, we will top up the tank with Nourish. For light raid damage, we will use either RJ or LB, depending on how steady the damage is. For slow, steady damage, RJ is superior. For predictable future damage (Grob, Loatheb, Gluth, Maexxna), a single LB timed to bloom will be best. For large damage hits (ie, Maly Phase 1), RG will do the job and leave a very long HoT for followup. For splash damage, Wild Growth. For AoE damage healing, WG + Nourishes on the affected cluster.

I also want to disagree with GC on his assertion, especially in light of other claims they've made recently. Particularly, they are nerfing OOFSR regeneration because they don't want to have to keep healers within the FSR the entire fight to dampen healer endurance. They want fights to be less spammy on the healing front, and that means more FSR time. So, LB is going to be even less valuable, due to the high maintenance cost, and the likelihood that even more ticks are going to be clipped or skipped.

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 00:25:31 GMT

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/27/14990765234-i-dont-get-the-regen-nerfs.html

"""
Out of casting regen can be a significant source of mana, but this is complicated by the fact that it can also be really random due to clearcast procs and the nature of the fight itself. Something like Loatheb can be easier than intended because the fight asks you to pause a lot.

Now I remember the long ago healing strat guides and how clever they can make it sound to try and delay a heal to earn more mana. It sounds cool on paper. But the reality was things like stopcasting macros because you couldn't afford to wait a couple of seconds to see if the heal was needed.

We actually want for healing to be less spammy and more about decisions and coordination. But if we did that sans other changes, everyone would be out of fsr even more and the content would be too easy. Make sense? Making regen more consistent is also the key to making healing more tactical and less monotonous and frenetic.
"""

I'm not sure if I totally buy into his reasoning here. The purpose to stop-casting was to have long-cast large-throughput spells ready to land instantly. Stopping the cast was simply a way to save the mana-cost of the spell when it was clear that the heal would be mostly wasted. Getting out of the five-second dampened mana recovery window was a happy side-effect of this practice, not the primary goal.

Sure, reducing the benefit of sitting outside of FSR will mean they can design encounters where healers can be outside the FSR for significant amounts of time without completely regenerating their mana. But it's not going to stop people from using stop-casting to queue large heals at zero mana expense.

3.1 is coming

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 23:42:54 GMT

Savage Defense – this is a new passive ability. When a druid in Dire Bear form deals a melee critical strike, the druid gains a damage shield equal to 25% of their attack power. The next hit completely removes the shield regardless of how much damage was done.
Survival of the Fittest has had its bonus armor reduced to compensate for the above increase in damage mitigation.
Faerie Fire (and similar debuffs) now reduces armor by 5%. See Sunder Armor in the warrior update below for additional details.
Thorns and Nature’s Grasp can be cast in Tree of Life form.
Survival Instincts now works in Moonkin form.
Replenish – to avoid confusion, this talent has been renamed “Revitalize.” It now also works with Wild Growth.
We are also looking at increasing the sustained (not burst) damage of feral druids in cat form.

My thoughts on the announced: druid changes

Feral change, don't care
Feral change, don't care
Feral change, don't care
Thorns and Nature’s Grasp can be cast in Tree of Life form. Hooray?
Survival Instincts now works in Moonkin form. You'd have to be a moron to spec this way.
Replenish – to avoid confusion, this talent has been renamed “Revitalize.” It now also works with Wild Growth. This may or may not, in combination with a glyph, make it worth 3 talent points. I'm leaning to not, but we'll see how the glyph looks.
Feral change, don't care.

IOW, pretty unimpressed.

Further announcements regarding mana regeneration:

===
As we have suggested, we have become concerned that mana regeneration is currently too powerful, especially for healers. We want players to have to keep an eye on mana. We don’t want you to go out of mana every fight, but running out of mana should be a very real risk for sloppy playing or attempting content that you aren’t yet ready for. When mana regeneration is trivial then certain parts of the game break down – classes that offer Replenishment are devalued, stats that offer mana regeneration are devalued, and spells that are efficient are neglected in preference to spells with high throughput.

Here are a list of changes you are likely to see in 3.1. They will be available to try out on the PTR. Mana regeneration is somewhat technical, so please bear with us.

Regeneration while not casting (outside of the “five second rule”) will be decreased. We think that (1) the ability to cast heal over time spells and then sit back and (2) benefitting from a clearcasting proc that also gets you out of the five second rule both provide too much mana regeneration, even over short time periods.
To make this change, we are reducing mana regeneration granted by Spirit across the board. However we are also boosting the effects of talents such as Meditation that increase regeneration while casting. The net result should be that your regeneration while casting will stay about the same, but your not-casting regeneration will be reduced. This change will have little impact on dps casters, since they are basically always casting.
The specific talents and abilities being boosted are: Arcane Meditation, Improved Spirit Tap, Intensity, Mage Armor, Meditation, Pyromaniac and Spirit Tap. Yes this makes these “mandatory” talents even more mandatory, if such a thing is possible.
Since paladins rely less on Spirit as a mana-regeneration stat, we have to address them in other ways. We don’t want to change Illumination or Replenishment. However, we are going to increase the healing penalty on Divine Plea from 20% to 50%. Divine Plea was originally intended to help Protection and Retribution paladins stay full on mana. It should be a decision for Holy paladins, not something that is automatically used every cooldown.
In addition, we are also changing the way Spiritual Attunement works. In situations with a large amount of outgoing raid damage, as well as in PvP, this passive ability was responsible for more mana regeneration than we would like. We want to keep the necessary benefit it grants to tanking Protection paladins, while making it less powerful for Holy paladins in PvP or raid encounters with a lot of group damage.
We are also taking a close look at clearcasting procs themselves. One likely outcome is to change them to an Innervate-like surge of mana so that the net benefit is the same, but healers won’t shift to out-of-casting regeneration so often.
We balance around the assumption that even 10-player groups have someone offering Replenishment. To make this even easier on players we are likely to offer this ability to additional classes, as well as make sure that existing sources of Replenishment are more equitable.
These changes are ultimately being done to bring the different healing classes more in line with each other as well as to give the encounter team more leeway when designing encounters, who can balance with these new mana regeneration numbers in mind. In a world with infinite healer mana, the only way to challenge healers is with increasingly insane amount of raid damage, so that global cooldowns become the limiting factor since mana fails to be. An example is the Eredar Twins in late Sunwell. We weren’t necessarily happy with that model, and this change hopefully allows us to move towards giving healing a more deliberate and thoughtful pace rather than frenetic spam.

====

Regarding the clearcasting issue, there's a really easy fix. Make clearcasted spells cost 1 mana. No more free spell means no more OOFSR tricks and OOC still remains a very powerful mechanic when used properly to get big raid heals for free. That said, using OOC to get OOFSR mana regen wasn't all that effective if a druid healer has to do more than just keep a LB stack on the tank. The only time I really abused this was when I solo-healed the Omen fight, because the damage was low enough I could keep the group up with just WG and the occasional outside hot.

On the whole, I'm not too enamored with these plans. They seem, at best, poorly thought through. Blizzard has recently been championing "bring the player, not the class", but then they deliberately and immediately disavow this mission statement by stating that they will balance around the assumption that even 10-man groups will have replenishment.

Right now, one of 3 DPS specs must be present in the raid to make that true: Ret Pally, Shadow Priest, or Survival Hunter. In 3.1, they claim further specs will offer replenishment as well.

I believe this mindset is just indicative of just how broken-strong the mechanic of replenishment is. To put it in terms of MP5, it's 1.25% of maximum mana per 5 seconds, regardless of the FSR with respect to casting. Solid healers in a 10-man Ulduar-level raid will be carrying at least 18k mana and the low end--my druid sports about 18-19k with 10man raid buffs, and I have very little in the way of 213 gear, and I've seen other healing types (paladin, shaman) with over 24k in 10-man.

Replenishment, thus, brings the equivalent of between 225-300 MP5 currently. Once people start gearing up with Tier8-quality items, and with plentiful buffs from a 25-man raid, this will probably scale up so even low-pool healers like druids will be drawing 300, and high-pool healers will be getting closer to 400. To put this into perspective, my 3/3 intensity resto druid, with a full stack of MDF procs, has about 350 MP5 while casting. I also have a very abundant amount of spirit, as virtually every piece of gear in my arsenal adds a hefty amount--I think I'm topping 1300 spirit under raid conditions. So basically, bringing a single replenishment class to the raid gives all healers the equivalent benefit as a maximized mana-endurance geared resto druid.
At that point, if your raid is missing one of these replenish specs, you're probably better off dual-boxing a replenish mule than bringing an extra healer or dps class in the slot.

Let's illustrate using an example.

A single lifebloom costs around 350 mana. We'll use this as a standard unit of work-- You can also value other spells in terms of lifebloom cost: nourish and regrowth are a bit under/over 2 units. Rejuv is one and a half. Tank maintenance with LB w/ 10 second duration x6 and 3 RJ per minute costs about 10 units of work once you consider the overhead of timing LB

To put it in perspective, let's consider a 10 minute boss fight. 10 minutes, to me, seems to be a very long boss fight in WoW. In this time, a druid will have his initial mana pool, 20k, plus an innervated pool, another 20k. I'll ignore the fact that you could burn mana early and innervate twice. Replenishment over 10 minutes will return 150% of max mana, 30k. Round the total mana to spend up to 70k, 7k mana per minute, or 20 units of work to burn. This is before considering any MP5, mind you: just replenishment, innervate, and a pile of int gear.

Now if you think that FSR regeneration is gonna stay the same, ~350, this gives the druid another 1 unit of resources per 5 seconds spent casting. Stepping outside the FSR bumps this up to a little over 1050, so we'll say 3.5 units per 5 seconds OOFSR. Under the assumption that it's very hard to go more than 10 seconds without casting (especially using a best-trinket like MDF or IDS whose stacking buff requires constant refreshing), 10 seconds of not casting generates 4.5 units of resources instead of 2. MP recovery during the first 5 seconds of the casting hiatus only generates 1 unit of resources, of course.

Right now, that means if a druid is able to sneak in 5 seconds of OOFSR every minute, you accumulate 14.5 units, giving the druid a total of 34.5 units to burn. AT MOST he will have 50 seconds to spend those 34.5 units, if he managed to get all 5 OOFSR seconds in one block. If it takes him on average 1.5 seconds (1 unhasted GCD) to spend 1 unit of resources, it will take him...52 seconds to spend them all. So, no shit, mana regeneration is too easy.

So, let's consider a post-3.1 world where OOFSR regeneration is nerfed so hard that it returns 1.5 units instead of 3.5 units per 5 seconds OOFSR. This would be the case if intensity is raise ~75%, and spirit regen is cut accordingly. Instead of having a total of 34.5 units to burn, a druid will have 32.5, and his time-cost to spend them all will be 49 seconds instead!

In other words, how is a hard nerf to OOFSR going to significantly affect the problem of infinite healer mana?

This all smacks of a completely broken mechanic. Replenishment needs to be nerfed. If it were nerfed, then Blizzard could balance around replenishment being present, with the assumption that groups that choose not to bring replenishment will need to bring more mana-efficient healers, or perhaps instead of filling the replenishment slot with a best-in-slot DPS, the group would be forced to take an additional healing slot. I believe they should go farther than that, and actually change the buff to scale off of stats that weren't already king-of-the-hill for most casters like Intellect. Make it scale off of crit, haste, or spirit. Give people a reason to want something other than int, int and more int.

The true culprit here is the fact that with a reasonable mana pool, replenishment accounts for nearly a third of available mana over a long duration fight. Reduce this drastically, and all of a sudden healers will feel the pinch when they spam easy-but-expensive heals rather than the proper choice.

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 07:32:47 GMT

kee hee hee

Solo onyxia~

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 22:14:48 GMT

It's been a tremendously busy week for me, both in game and out.

A week ago, I spent a couple of days running around doing all sorts of retro content with a couple of guys from my guild. ZG, Onyxia, AQ20, all pretty easy with 3. I was planning on doing it again this past weekend, but they weren't on. So, after hearing it was doable, I decided to give solo Onyxia a shot.

A couple of things:
1) It is crucial to have maxed out brambles, because yes indeed thorns will be a big portion of the damage done.
2) Keep 3 stacks of LB on self the entire fight, and tank in human form. Switching forms is a waste of MP
3) Innervate on the timer.
4) In phase 1/3, use starfall/trees freely. In phase 2, save starfall/trees for whelps. Typhoon is also useful for whelps.
5) Don't forget to reapply MotW / Thorns when they expire
6) Have at least 45 minutes to burn!

Ended up looting 171 gold and about 30g in vendorables, and an 18 slot bag. Will be doing this again, for sure!

Been a while~

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 20:05:42 GMT

Yep, I did indeed quit ffxi. Canceled my subscription, gave my accounts away, the whole bit. Almost five years of play, and it ends just like that.

In reality, I pretty much quit the game last January anyway, when I finally finished my Usukane armor. While I did log in and continue to do stuff, the drive to play just wasn't there for the most part. Square didn't help that any with the total dearth of quality content in WotG, something that I understand hasn't been remedied yet, over a year since the release of the expansion.

The hardest part was definitely letting go of all the friends and good people that I met along the way in FFXI. Funny, that was always the strongest point of the game: not the game itself, but the community it fostered.

Anyway, so I gave it up. Activity you see on my characters are not me, but my friends to whom I gave everything. I hope they're doing well. Instead, after a short foray into diablo 2 which saw my HC sin rise to about 93~ (proving yet again how easy D2HC is -- 7th or so character to 90+) I picked up WoW at the urging of old old old friends.

Bit of an old screenshot now, my gear has improved a fair bit.

I'm loving the whole tree druid scene. I'm Alliance on Kel'Thuzad, home of The Goon Squad on the alliance. I'm not much of a goon, but I do what I can.

We will see how my guild goes...there's a bit of internal discontent, probably a bit of WotLK hangover now that the honeymoon period is over. Also, they tend to raid at incompatible times for me, so the progression on my druid has all but stopped--I'm sitting on ~150 emblems of heroism with literally nothing left to buy for resto, just off-spec pieces for the moonkin I rarely play. It's too bad that other recent ffxi->wow converts seem to all roll horde, I'd love to get in with some other expats, as most of my guild are older than dirt when it comes to WoW.

The main thing that's keeping me from rerolling is the 0-80 grind; I was never one for leveling. When they allow me to roll directly to 55 on DK, I'll be more tempted. But...is it sad that I love my tree so much I might still reroll horde druid? (Though, I'll miss shadowmeld terribly, that racial is sick OP)

If it comes down to it, I may roll with both: play completionist on my K'T druid and raid elsewhere. Without raiding, I'm not sure how much more content there is left in WoW for me.

In case you didn't notice

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 19:23:16 GMT

http://www.ffxiah.com/player.php?id=17230&sid=28

I quitted.

stg progress...

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 21:54:21 GMT

Following up on my Imperishable Night success, a few days ago I finally 1CC'd Mountain of Faith on Normal. Been trying for a while, as I can beat most the spellcards fairly reliably, it was just a matter of putting it all together. Score was shitty, like 139m--didn't even get the 150m life. Very epic finish, 0 lives and 0 energy, dodging like a maniac on Kanako's final spell.

I tried MoF Extra a few times, but haven't really started practicing it. I'll probably go back to it soon.

Shocked myself yesterday by 1CC'ing Imperishable Night on Hard, via FinalB. This was actually my first run of FinalB on Hard. I used ReimuA. One thing is that the Border in IN is fucking huge compared to EoSD / MoF which I have been playing more often. So I abused the heck out of deathbombing to sustain my life stock for longer.

Today I credit-fed my way through IN on Lunatic, FinalA. Was actually the first time I've made it to FinalA on Luna; if not enough time is on the clock, then the game ends after Reisen. However today I was able to get past Reisen using only 1 credit right at the end, and I also managed to collect enough Time items to trigger 1 or 2 Final Spells, giving me breathing room to enter FinalA. I managed to ace some surprising attacks while playing through, particularly Marissa's non-spellcard attacks which are very chaotic on Luna.

Cleared it all on the continue credit, so now I've faced all the spells in FinalA, unlocking them for Spell Practice. This weekend I'll probably take a crack at clearing them. I missed a few deathbomb opportunities, and I'm not very familiar with the attack patterns during the stage proper, so I'm sure with some practice on Luna I'll be able to get to FinalB. And if I break out Youmu solo I can probably unlock the missing Final Spells for Luna. 154 of 222 cards captured so far.

Last night I rewrote all the frontend UI for my project. It was a lot of work! The entire source package is now close to 300kb uncompressed. Thats a lot >:O This weekend I'll continue to work on it, and hopefully come up with everything but the graphics for the frontend UI. Working towards building a 1-level demo, maybe August?

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 22:46:29 GMT

I want this album...
http://www.mefeedia.com/entry/sync-arts-sympacy-dolls/10090741/

more work...

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:09:07 GMT

Graphical cut-ins work -- they're pretty simplistic atm but the infrastructure is there now, so easy to do whatever I can dream up now, just a matter of implementation.
Python glue for a functional multi-phase boss attack working well.
Every time I make a boss pattern, I fix a half dozen bugs and introduce a half dozen more!
Tomorrow, time to do conditional anims for enemies / players.
Soon, time for more frontent / UI work, so that it become an actual game.
Still need to find a sound / music person. Code-wise, music and sound are ready. I can probably find sfx, but music is a lot more of an imposing task.

All work an no play makes jack a dull boy; I finally cleared Imperishable Night on normal modo today on a single credit. Only made it through 3 of 5 final tests though. Just over 150 spellcards captured total. I can now get to the 3rd-last phase of Huziwara no Mokou, Fujiyama Volcano. I've nailed Flaw of Forgiving Shrine and Xu Fu's Dimension, and now I am starting to hit Honest Man's Death without miss. Just need a bit more practice to hit Fire Bird reliably, and then I need to practice the hell out of Keine's 2 history cards D: Then I can probably bombfest my way to a victory.

shmup stuff!

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 04:10:00 GMT

Lots of progress :D

In-engine dialog GET. (the art is some rough sketches Elcura did -- no way I could do anything as good as those lol)
2D background effects GET.
Bullet spawn animations GET.

Back to revise some old features, then pushing on ahead!