My feed may be all a-Twitter (/wrists) with debate, discussion and fury about the Cataclysm beta, but I’m not particularly interested in Cataclysm. Call me a luddite, but the massive overhaul of the talent system and the merging of a lot of stats is a little too… Cataclysmic (I’m just full of them, aren’t I?) for my tastes.

Instead, my beta attentions have been focused on FFXIV, having managed to get in the last few days of closed beta, and poke around the open beta.. I’ve been rather looking forward to FFXIV since it was announced last year, hoping that SE would have learned from the mistakes of FFXI – namely, the crippling difficulty in doing anything without a party, the iffy controls and the clunky UI – and produce an MMO that would be fun and easy to play. I’m not sure why I got my hopes up.  I’m not saying it’s a total trainwreck, but it’s far from great. Let’s look at each area, and score it out of 10.

Story

Pros

I’ve finished the intro section of story for each of the three City States, and found all the stories to be pretty intriguing, enough that if I do pick up the final release, I’m no longer sure just which city I’ll start in. Also of interest is that it seems the storylines of the three city states will come together at some point – each intro involves at least one character with a strange pair of tattoos on their neck, suggesting there’s some sort of overarching plot to the game.

Cons

Emote quests. As the intro story basically serves as a tutorial to the game, there’s a small bit in each city state where you have to emote at an NPC. In Limsa-Lominsa, this quests was merely a bit boring and time consuming – it was pretty clear which emote you had to use. In Ul’dah, it was significantly less clear which emote you had to use, and, critically, in what order. In Gridania, you seriously begin to wonder if it’d be possible to repeal child cruelty laws, because there is very little explanation given of what emotes to use, and the Children don’t even use the right actions. It’s just fortunate you only have to do that once.

Score: 8

Aesthetics

Pros

Character models are excellent – if I looked half as good as my character, I’d be gettin’ all the girls (I’m just sayin’!) Plenty of options for customisation, and very detailed. Monster models are also pretty detailed – assuming you’re fighting something that isn’t basically a balloon animal, a la the mole a bit below.

The cities each have their own distinct feel, and look pretty good.

Cons

The starting areas are pretty large expanses of… sameness. They look kinda pretty, but they aren’t all that detailed in actual fact, and they seem the drag on and on forever.

Score: 7

Combat System

Pros

The combat system in FFXIV is pretty good – when compared to FFXI, at any rate. In FFXI, most melee classes were simply about auto-attacking enemies until you had enough TP to fire off a weaponskill, repeated ad nauseum. If you were a lucky class like THF, you might have had an ability or two you could use every minute, which was highly exciting in comparison.

Firstly, there’s no auto-attack option in FFXIV – you instead have to press a key for your basic attack. This has recieved some criticism, but I don’t see it as a particularly bad thing – it makes it seem (very slightly) more like an Action RPG than your usual MMO. In addition, while the level of additional abilities in no way approaches the level of WoW for melee classes, you do get a good few buttons to press, and TP is far easier to generate than in FFXI (and is not all used up in one attack), so if you have multiple weaponskills equipped you can often fire two or three in quick succession for massive damage.

The ability to fuse abilities from one class with another is effectively a much improved subjob system, and allows for at least a degree of customisation on your character.

Cons

Occasional difficulty in targeting an enemy – more than once I’ve targeted an enemy right in front of me, only to be told “you are not facing the target.” This has cost me a couple of battles against aggressive mobs. Likewise, you cannot attack enemies that are, say, on a small ledge (less than a couple of feet high) above you, even if you happen to be an Archer, which is pretty pathetic.

Score: 8

Synthesis System

Pros

Cool animations during crafting – if you are a blacksmith, you do it at a little anvil, a carpenter has a workbench, a weaver has… that… circular thingy with cloth on it that people use for embroidery. It’s a nice little touch. Synthesis actually involves active pressing of options – allowing (in theory) you to chose between making high quality items, at significant risk of failure, or making them quickly and efficiently, but the resulting goods being of poor quality.

Cons

You’re told to watch what your synthesis is doing to determine what actions to use, but that’s rather cryptic. The only way to find recipes in game seems to be to be told them after local guildleves, of which you are lucky to get three in a two day period. There’s community involvement, then there is forcing people to use time they want to be playing the game to use that time to find recipes.

Even early, basic component recipes often need full crystals, rather than the shards which you will obtain easily from killing mobs. I had plenty of materials on blacksmith to make a few bronze nuggets, and from the nuggets, some other items – but I needed Fire Crystals to make said nuggets. There had better be an auction house in the final release, otherwise obtaining crystals and materials is going to be ridiculously difficult.

Score: 6

Gathering System

Pros

I haven’t tried Fishing or Harvesting, but I did give mining a shot for a good while, to gather some materials for smithing. Gathering at a point starts a simple mini game, so that the gathering process is a bit more involved than “find node, auto hit node, find next node.” Gathering is never likely to be exciting, but it is, at the very least, not boring.

Cons

Only real con is a small niggle with the gathering interface, which is simply one problem within the gigantic problem that is the UI. Basically, why do I have to press the menu button labelled “Strike” when they could either make it automatically start the minigame, or the first click in the minigame wheel would start it.

Gathering: 7

Levelling

Pros

Guildleves are relatively easy, able to tailor them to group size if solo isn’t your thing, and provide a source of gil and the occasional piece of gear.

Cons

Hoo boy. Here’s the first big criticism section.

There simply aren’t enough Guildleves. People were optimistic during closed Beta on this score – “Oh, well, there may not be many Guildleves, but they won’t be the only way of leveling, who knows what other aspects of the game will be revealed in Open Beta!”

The answer, of course, was absolutely bugger all. When you are out of Guildleves, suddenly you are back in FFXI and you have to grind mobs for EXP. In a modern MMO, that is just ridiculous. You are able to get through the first five Battlecraft leves in the space of about half an hour, and after that… you’re somewhat at a loss. Their stated aim with FFXIV is to attract more casual players – but it seems, to me, that this has went so far past “casual” they are almost approaching “hardcore” from the opposite end. Honestly, how little time are we meant to be playing a day? Fifteen minutes? Yeah, right.

Grinding mobs, quite aside from not really being any fun, is also highly inefficient due to the absolutely stupid way you level up. You have your “Physical Level” which affects your stats (STR, DEX etc) and elemental resistances, and then you have your “Rank” which is effectively your level for whatever class your playing. Mobs give far too much Physical experience relative to Rank experience. Given that we are being encouraged to play multiple classes to mix and match their abilities, the fact your Physical level goes up far quicker than your Rank is ridiculous.

The reason it goes up so much faster than your rank is that mobs give set physical EXP. However, to rank up, you are reliant on getting class skill increases during combat, which are then awarded at the end of combat. With guildleve mobs, the contrast is stark – you may be fighting a bug that takes two or three hits to kill, thus providing little opportunity for skillups, but it then gives you something ridiculous like 900 Physical Exp. Even in longer fights, sometimes you get a good run of them, other times you are lucky to get one skillup of 40 in an entire battle.

The speed of Physical levelling itself is not a problem to me – it’s just a problem when compared to how much your rank lags behind, given you are encouraged to rank up multiple classes. It’s disheartening to be 3-4 Physical levels above your Rank when you haven’t even tried other classes yet.

Score: 4

Controls

Pros

Uhhh… If you played FFXI you might not have a huge amount of bother? That’s not really a pro, is it? No, FFXIV loyalist community, it most certainly is not. Movement isn’t too bad, as it’s standard WASD. That’s not really a pro either, it’s only a pro when compared to FFXI.

Cons

Mouse controls still pretty awful. No actual hardware mouse, so movement is laggy, targeting sometimes iffy, and there’s a distinct lack of hotkeys. There is a map hotkey, praise be, but no hotkeys for anything else – given how absolutely dire the UI is, some hotkeys to go straight to menus would be appreciated.

Score: 2

UI

Pros

Nothing.

Cons

Everything.

The UI is absolutely god awful. It makes me want to cry bitter, bitter tears. Absolutely nothing learned from FFXI in this department, it seems. First of all, takes way too many menus to do anything. For example, let’s take changing your weapon. You need to go through the following shenanigans;

1. Open main menu, either via Home Key or clicking menu button.
2. Open the Attributes and Gear submenu.
3. Click the main hand slot.
4. Find the weapon you want to equip, click it.
5. Press the “equip” button.

In this day and age, that’s far too much in the way of buttons. I really could not care a fig they are releasing this for PS3 at somepoint, and that’s the kind of menu a console game is limited to. This is the frickin’ PC version, I expect a UI tailored for a PC gamer. Seriously.

Interacting with objects is also a huge pain in the butt. You approach an object, a bouncing ! sign appears on your screen. You press this button and, rather than take you straight to a list of interactions for that object, it takes you to the main menu. Where you then click the button with the ! next to it, and then you are taken to the interaction list. What? That is just totally uneccessary. Skip the main menu, take me straight to the action list. In fact, skip the having to click the ! button that’s in the corner of the screen – allow me to click the damn object. Why does it have to be so hard?

The Synthesis interface is fine once you actually start the crafting process, but getting to that point requires much clicking and picking. Much to my amusement, people on FFXIV community forums have been deriding the “recipe list” of WoW crafting, but given the extremely clunky UI and control system, I’d much rather press “synthesis” and then pick an item to make from a list, rather than pressing synthesis, then choosing which hand to use, then picking ingredients (one at a frickin’ time) to use for crafting, then that brings up a list of what can be made with those items, then you have to confirm the item you are making, and finally you are told what crystals it needs to be made. Too. Many. Fricking. Hoops.

Score: 0

Other Stuff that’s probably terrible but I haven’t experienced

Repair system; requires that players do it if you want repairs anything past 50%, which is pretty sucky. Better than an EXP loss system, but why do NPCs only do it to 50%? That’s penalising people for either not having that craft themselves, or for not seeking crafters out. Instead of a 50% durability penalty, how about a bonus for people who DO get a player to do it? Maybe their gear can be repaired to 120% durability?

“Surplus” system; I may think you get too much Physical experience right now, but a system of gradually reducing EXP is not cool. It’s also not the answer to balancing “casual” and “hardcore” players – it’s just gonna piss people off. Again, like the repair thing, this is punishing people for the sake of balance. Why not give players who don’t play often some sort of EXP bonus, rather than inflict an EXP penalty on those that do? You should never punish players for playing.

Overall

Averaging out the scores I allocated above, FFXIV gets a score of  5.25/10. Yikes.

I really, really want to enjoy FFXIV, as in many ways it is a much improved version of FFXI, which I played for many years,  and there are large parts of the game I do like – but the problems with controls, the UI and levelling are so fundamental to playing the game that unless those are resolved for release, I’m not going to be playing FFXIV. If I’m feeling faithful in SE in a weeks time, I will leave me pre-order, get the game, and give it at least a good go for a month. If, by then, these issues haven’t been resolved to my satisfaction, SE won’t be recieving a subscription from me, unless someone comes to me in a few months and tells me that everything has been fixed and the game is wonderful.

Yeah, right.

Joining a party – Get invited as a healer, despite your preference for DPS. Proceed to stare extremely hard at the screen until the Rogue and competing Enhancement Shaman who are both after your mace leave the party.

First Boss – Scream at your thick tank to “PICK UP THE DAMN [Insert race of ranged opponent here]”, because you can’t heal them when you are dead. Twice now that has happened, twice being the sum and total of the times I have healed this instance. Pick.Up.The.Damn.Troll.

Second Boss – Gnash your teeth at your DPS because you don’t give a damn if you can heal through the flashy light, it’s the principle of the thing. Don’t look at the blinding exploding guy is on the same tier as don’t stand in the frickin’ fire.

Third Boss – Cry to [deity/enlightened being of your choice] because why the hell does the final form of the last boss have to be so much of a bitch to heal and OMG DEATH LASERS I just died again rage.

After you win – Mutter to yourself because despite the numerous upgrades that you could have got for your main spec, none of them dropped, indeed, no upgrades for anyone else dropped, and all you got was some flashy healer belt, further putting your off spec gear ahead of your main spec gear in terms of quality.

I don’t like Trial of the Champion. It’s an evil place. Whilst Kazura waltzes around in her nice new gear earned from there, I get my face blown up by the ridiculously difficult to heal final phase of the Black Knight and mourn my lack of shiny maces.

Disclaimer: Screaming and crying not advised. Gnashing and Muttering certainly advised.

I believe my last update was Ilthiran reaching level 55. He’s now 61, making him my third “proper” character in Outlands – Death Knights don’t count, since they near enough start in the damn place. And, thanks to the mount changes in 3.2, he can fly!

Look, Storm Crow Form. GET IT? AHAHAHAHA… /wrists.

But there’s something rotten in the World of Warcraft. Right now, Instance servers are totally stuffed full of people, I imagine a large part of that is to do with the changes to Emblems – I see many people looking for groups to run through multiple HCs for Emblems.

So, in an break from the usual path, Ilthiran hasn’t actually set foot inside Hellfire Ramparts, though not for lack of trying. Twice. For half an hour each time. With full parties. Ugh. This is especially annoying, because the Ramps quest gives a pair of Blue boots as a reward, which would be a great improvement over my 40-something Greens, and the follow up Q’s in the Blood Furnace give a great cloak – one that I’ve made sure to grab on both previous trips through.

I have, however, finished Blood Furnace. And I did it as a tank! My first time properly tanking. It was a bit iffy at times, partly due to my awful gear, lack of an actual tanky spec, and general newbishness. Oh, and those @#!?*% technician mobs, that bomb the crap out of you. Hatehatehate. But we managed to complete the instance, and I got valuable EXP as a tank.

No loot though. Sigh. Shouldn’t be that concerned with it, since it’s going to get replaced in Northrend, if not before. I just like having good gear. Clown look doesn’t bother me, since I spend all my time in forms.

When back in Darnassus learning my level 61 abilities, I remembered how pretty some of the places in WoW can be. Nowhere near as lovely as such a scene would be in real life, but still pretty damn nice.

(Kind of a “faux glow” there, had to edit pic a bit, since for some reason screen cap ignored the shiny glow!)

I actually had the “Full screen glow” effect off since I first started playing the game, as a matter of performance, but I didn’t even think to keep it on when I got this new computer back in November… I think the difference in NE areas is quite drastic.

Anyway, WTB gargantuan tree with pretty Elven city in it’s boughs IRL, PST. Just make sure it doesn’t have any of those Elves as tenants. They are creepy.

Go build a time machine to a couple years ago, and level a DPS class in FFXI if you want levelling to be a challenge. I’d normally say “Go play FFXI it’s ridiculously hard,” but apparently Level Sync has made levelling relatively easy.

Me, I’m going to revel in the fact I can actually play other classes beyond my Shaman, Hunter and Druid without getting so very frustrated at how slow levelling in “Old Azeroth” is. I’ve seen about 98% of the content there by now, when I level an alt, I want to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible.

This change will make that so much easier. Standard mount at 20? Hah! Fuck you, Ashenvale! Epic Ground at 40? Kiss my ass, Tanaris! Flying at 60, with a significant increase to flying speed? Suck it, Hellfire!

Assuming they make sure to drop Druid Flight Form to 58/60 (partly because I want to save the cash, but mostly because I don’t want to ride a Gryphon), patch 3.2 is going to be the best thing ever for my little druid – some fantastic new Feral Forms* and speedier flight will make things that much more awesome.

*On the subject of the new Feral Forms… I likes ‘em. No, they still don’t scale with gear – a level 10 White Bear will be identical to level 80 White Bear – but these are such a huge improvement over the old models. Bring on 3.2!

…and business is good!

My WoW goal for this week is to get Ilthiran, my Feral Druid, to Outland. Thanks to that Zul’Farrak group a few days ago, I got a nice jump start to levelling again. I hit level 50 today, which means… Mangle!

With Mangle, I’m now taking great delight in making enemies bleed to death. Pounce –> Mangle –> Shred –> Rake –> Rip –> Cackle evilly. Probably not the most efficient levelling rotation, but it’s fun!

At 60, I’m considering shifting over to a bear-heavy build – tanking is what I want to do on this character, but I’m not sure if Outlands has enough population these days that I’ll do much in the way of instancing there. Might be worth it to keep with a totally Kitty DPS build till 68, in that case. Hmmm. Thoughts, anyone? Oh, and no – I’m not dual speccing at this stage.

-

Shammy news:

Work struck, and gave me a shift for Wednesday coming. The guild usually does FL (and Razorscale now, probably) on Wednesdays, so I’ll miss that – and guaranteed that the Pyrite Infuser will drop. Tomorrow we should be continuing Ulduar – hopefully we’ll finally get at least XT down, maybe Ignis and one of the Antechamber bosses too?

Ooh, and I need to tell you my idiot PUG story. So, I’m looking for HC Nexus, since I still need that damn mace for my resto set. Get an invite from a Paladin, and we end up just needing a tank. Nothing in LFG, so I ask the guild, and a guildie agrees to come. Paladin is totally oblivious to the other three party members saying “Hawl, you, invite this guy, ffs.” Guildie tank understandably decides he has better things to do with his time than not get invites. This was the first sign that the Paladin was an idiot.

Finally, we get the Paladins attention, and another DPS’ guildie comes to tank. We’re doing OK – DPS isn’t great, around 1.6k average, but it’s not horrible for a Heroic. The Paladin starts saying how the DPS is crap, and picks out the mage especially. I point out he’s hardly doing much better, to which he replies “Yes, I am” – at this point he’s doing 1.7k DPS. Ooh, so strong. –eyeroll-

So, we’re fighting Telestra, and the idiot Paladin immediately draws aggro on her first split and dies. We manage to keep her splits under control, whilst the Paladin, clearly not content just to eat dirt like a good idiot DPS, informs us (and I quote)

ul will wipe coz im not aliv not enuf dps wivout me

At this point, I’m healing like absolute crazy – Riptides and Lesser Healing Waves are zipping about the place every GCD, barely managing to keep everyone alive – so yes, it’s looking close, but I was determined that we’d survive, just to prove that fool wrong.

Then, he asks “no1 got battle res?” The remaining party members were Shaman, Death Knight, Rogue and Mage. Tired of his idiocy, I reply “No, because we have no Druid you blithering idiot. ” –facepalm-

We manage to down her without anyone else dying, and I reluctantly res the idiot. The rest of us move onto the floating platforms with the dragons – skipping the trash pull just past Telestra. I dunno about you, but every single party on my server skips that. Guess what idiot Paladin does? He aggros them, and drags them to us, wiping the party. Needless to say, people were furious. Fortunately, he left the party (I hadn’t healed him, in the hopes this would mean the mobs would leave us alone) and we were rid of him. Calling in another paladin (amusingly, from the same guild, though he wasn’t an absolute cretin like the other) we made it through the rest of the instance without a hiccup, unless you count the mace not dropping, as usual.

I think that has to rank as one of my worst PUG experiences ever – even worse than groups that just wiped endlessly… at least in those groups people were silently stupid.

Friday and Monday, I’m signed up for raids. So are lots of other people. Not enough people turn up to raid, so, we can’t raid.

Wednesday I’m at Cinema with friends. Is good times.

Whilst I’m at cinema, the one raid night I’ve not been able to make for the past couple weeks, the guild actually does more than Flame Leviathan in Ulduar.

That… that’s just not fair.

I mean, it’s perfectly fair in the sense that the guild has to progress, and we have more members than can be there every raid. But goddamnit, it just had to be the one night I couldn’t raid. The one night, I, one of the few people that bothers to turn up for every raid I sign up for, can’t make it. I knew they were probably going to do Ulduar, and real life -> WoW (hence going to Cinema), but… damnit! The one night I couldn’t raid! Arglebargle!

-

Also, Malygos tonight. Half my guild, half another guild. The other guild wasn’t quite able to grasp “If Malygos fires big laser of nastiness at you, please to be using shield, kthx.” – on our final attempt, we actually had three and a half minutes left when we got to phase 3, which would have been more than enough to kill him, if people weren’t dropping out of the sky like flies.

Then again, we should have had even more time than that, but, y’know, let’s bring three hunters to a ten man, instead of taking a DK to help with Spark control. It’s cool though, I let the ranged take all the sparks since I was the only melee, and I usually still out DPS’d two of the Hunters.

Argh. I have rotten luck.

-

Other news, in bitesize.

I’m going to aim for this achievement on Ellaria, to tide me over with a decent title until Midsummer. Wish I had decided this a few days ago, as I had been skipping valiant Sword daily, significantly extending time I now have to do Argent Tournament for.

Level 20 on Flailsey. I am now officially The Undead Crushinator. Make sure I have Seal of Command active. Pull Undead mob with Exorcism – guaranteed crit. Hammer of Justice the mob. Judge the seal, guaranteed crit. Gather loot from the fine powder that remains. Laugh heartily (Paladins can’t cackle – that’s too evil.)

Westfall and the Defias really suck. It may surprise you to learn that this was my first character through Westfall. It’s also my last. Hatehatehate.

Brigwyn is on TNB tonight. Oh, such heckling he shall recieve!

As you can see, I’ve not done anything really interesting recently.

I wish I could see more Ulduar, and get to go a bit more in depth about Enhancement DPS. Malygos is a terrible gague, due to sparks and vehicles.

Today is not a good day. Not a good day at all.

Firstly, raiding. Some people who signed up but didn’t bother to show up for Friday’s Naxx10 raid were doing The Dedicated Few today. Nice, guys. Jeez, is it too much to ask to have a guild where I can do Naxx10 just once – just once!- a week in the hopes of getting gear so I can finally see Ulduar? –sigh-

Second – Dual Spec. Blizzard, please to be fixing it. I do not like having one of my specs totally reset on me for no reason, especially given I had been using that spec just fine 10 minutes before. It was my Resto Spec, so I was left with three points I had no idea where they were before and was flailseying. Not fun.

Third – I like VH. I do not like running VH twice in one day because of idiot healers. Tank died on last bit of Trash. Boss spawns very quickly. Healer rezzes tank, and the boss aggros. Then the healer casts their AOE buffs. The tank had like 10% health, and you decide to waste 2 GCDs on buffs instead of fucking healing them? You, sir, are a bloody idiot. So we wiped and had to do the whole thing again. Eugh!

Oh, and a minor gripe – the War Mace of Unrequited Love does not exist when I am Resto Spec. I have seen it drop as Enhancement, before I had dual spec, and always with a healer who needed it. Now I am healing and hoping to get it, nothing. S’not fair! D:

Something that cheered me up though was seeing one of today’s search terms. I’m not sure how this found my blog, but it did, and it is hilarious.

I am curious to know, if the ass battle searcher returns – what is an ass battle? … Do I want to know what an ass battle is?

I think the Argent Tournament is very well done.

At Valiant level. The quests aren’t easy, but they aren’t ridiculously difficult either. The jousting (at any level, in fact) is fun to do, as is trampling Scourge under your hooves.

Champion is utterly fucking crap, in my opinion, simply due to the presence of a 3-man daily. Sure, with all the post-patch hubub, it should be easy to group for it… but what about in the future? People are going to be missing out on two Champion’s Seals a day, which will make the glacier-pace grind even worse.  Eugh.

I’ve decided that as much as I want a Hippogryph I’m going to give the Tournament a miss on Faulsey (after I’ve put in another 5 days of Valiant questing for Darny!)… mostly because I absolutely loathe dailies. That’s not really Blizzard’s fault, daily quests just aren’t for me, and the idea of doing 20 days of double-grind followed by 30 days of single-grind, which would include doing the group quest 70 times, makes me die inside.

Instead, I’m going to try* and do the three other Champion Dailies on Ellaria, as it should only take 30 days to get her Turbostrider, because it has flames. Mechanostrider with flames is the perfect mount for an Engineering Shaman, especially given that’s the element I most associate with Ellaria.

Want.

In other news, I have got a sort of casual raiding guild at the moment… unfortunately work chose this week to give me a nice Wednesday shift, which is when the servers reset, and when people like to raid. So I might not even get to do Naxx this week, joy! /wrists

*The key word here is try – I believe I’ve mentioned I hate dailies, yes?
Edit: Oh, and yes, I subscribe to the Lady Jess school of Achieving. Anyone who saw me on BA chat or Twitter earlier would have seen raw Faulsey Fury about how the Argent Tournament in general could gtfo and burn for all I cared. But then I decided I still want my Turbostrider.

Ellaria rocks gently back and forth in a corner, weeping

Three wipes on Anub’Rekhan… three wipes! /Flailsey*

Fail PUG is really fail. I should have learned my lesson by now, but I’m clearly a glutton for punishment. With the release of Ulduar, I’ve not seen any guilds recruiting for Naxx25, nevermind Naxx10, so I figured I’d try and PUG it. How bad could it be?

Wipe three times on Anub’Rekhan bad. I don’t know what my problem with this guy is – he’s the second easiest boss in Naxx, apparently… yet, even on my whopping two clears, we always wipe on him. The wipes this time were a combination of “tank eating locust swarm” and “idiot Paladin who could barely remember to bless people stood in the swarm and thus couldn’t heal.”

It was incredibly painful. We had beaten Grobbulus (was a save where Patchwerk was down – that should have been my first warning, that someone had a save with only one boss down, suggesting a group that couldn’t do the next boss) after one wipe, and then we wiped on Gluth, too – I can’t kite, at least not myself. Earthbind only covers a small area, I have no speed boosts, and Frost Shock is only 20 yards range. I’ll take the blame for that wipe.

It’s just so disheartening… and even if I do get a group that can clear, I need to have extreme loot luck – stuff I want needs to drop, then I need to win the roll. Yesterdays wipes wouldn’t have been such a bother if Grobbulus had dropped the bracers I wanted.

I’ve narrowed myself down to a few “must haves” – my tier Shoulders, Cloak of Mastery and Bands of Anxiety to get rid of some of the blues I have. I’ll still have blue boots (superior to naxx 10 epics because of two delicious red gem slots), and a blue trinket/ring, with much needed Hit Rating. If I get my Tier Legs/Helmet (Goodbye, Goggles. -tear-) and the fist weapon from KT I’d also be happy. But if I can get those three things I’ll consider myself set for 10 man Ulduar. I cheated and spent 625g (550g plus an expertise gem) on Rusted-Link Spiked Gauntlets to remove some of the randomness in my gearing up. No doubt those will drop from Faerlina/Gluth next time I run Naxx, just to spite me.

But the problem is running Naxx. I really should just look for a proper guild, but as I’ve mentioned umpteen times before, job messes things up – and it’s only two shifts a week! Best case scenario (for raiding, that is.) is that I work Thursday (Pub Quiz night) and I always work Saturday, so I’ve got 5 nights open for raids that week. However, because that one shift is random, I can’t make set raid days. I can’t join a guild that expects me to raid on, say, both Wednesday and Friday – because I could have shifts those days! -grumble-

So I need a “casual” guild that doesn’t expect me to raid 3-5 nights a week, doesn’t expect me to make set raid days, and is content for me to do 10 mans, but is still capable of beating the content. -sigh- Specific needs are specific.

-fistdesk- I can do this, damnit!

Me and Kazura also spent some time wiping on the new boss in VoA last night – he’s a lot harder than Archavon, which is both refreshing yet annoying. I could do with my tier 7 legs, but people aren’t so keen on joining PUGs that might save them to Archavon without Emalon down. On the upside, it’s totally awesome being a sapper.

Ready to Strike (Across the oceans, in the dead of the night)

I don’t see much effect on the walls from my charges, but it’s still fun to parachute down and explode in the middle of a huge battle.

-

Some minor blog tweaky news – Sylly hooked me up with a snazzy armory Plugin, so you should be able to see both Ellaria’s and Faulsey’s armory profiles on the right sidebar. Faulsey seems to be a bit broken atm, but Ellaria is working fine.

-

* You didn’t think it ended at /Faulsey, did you? Oh no no. We have /Failsey (Self explanatory), /Flailsey (panic.), /Flatsey (being chased by a giant titan guy and falling to my flat pancakey death) and, most recently, /Wailsey (Waaaaaaaail!)

Rilgon's probably gonna kill me for this, but... I like my flying machine more. -cower-

But she is pretty! I’m sort of wishing I’d said to the party “BRB as Hunter” – given we made time with five minutes to spare, we should still have been able to make it even though my DPS would have been lower. Plus, I was only rolling against one other person. Alas, I didn’t think that far ahead.

Speaking of DPS, I was rather pleased with my performance that run. Overall, I was doing nearly 2.8k DPS – the fact I can now afford to use Magma Totems all the time helped greatly, contributing about 700DPS! On bosses, I was doing around 3k without Heroism, and almost 4k with, which is slightly more than last patch.

-

On a more unlucky note, elitist idiots make me laugh. “LFM Naxx10, need full epics link achiev.” Uhhh, what? Ok, link achievement I kinda get – you want people who know what they are doing. Full epics? For the entry level raid? Given Heroic items and Naxx10 items are the same iLevel, anyone who is in full epics doesn’t need upgrades from Naxx, except perhaps a couple tier pieces. As you can guess, I didn’t get an invite to the group, because I’m not full epics.

This is gonna be a long road to Ulduar for me, it seems.