The PUG to raid gap grows

From Lissanna's Some thoughts on the Dungeon Journal:

To prepare for raids, I read the spell abilities on wowpedia, and THEN I read strategies there. Then, I hop over to watch a Tankspot video on youtube and read the comments on tankspot.

Boy, that sounds like fun, doesn't it?

For raids, okay, I'll allow the point. This isn't that crazy a set of research prereqs. But for heroic dungeons? I really still think the gap between PUGging normals and hitting heroics is too large, from the gear needed to the amount of gaming knowledge before the fact (see "spoiler" comment from Lissanna below). Making a stupid Dungeon Journal is a real coward's fix and, if what Restokin says is true, only a partially successful way to get players up to speed.

Third party sites and addons did the same thing, but better and with more detail.

That's just a sad state of affairs. The game should prepare you for bosses. There should be preparation quests. NPCs helping teach you what's going to go down.

That you're in a state of affairs where...

Most raid groups “spoiler” bosses before they step foot in a raid dungeon

... tells me Blizzard really hasn't finished the game. And with 4.1 only bringing serious new content for those done with heroics (the mini quest line was fun, but really only a distraction. And much MUCH too easy. It was like a 4th grade in-class worksheet), the gap isn't closing and the game isn't approaching finished at all.

I wish we knew why subscription numbers are down. I've seen hard core bloggers say it's because hard core players have finished the content. But you know, I really don't think 10% of the player population is necessarily hard-core, end game finished players. The drop is from the casual player too. It's really no surprise. If I hadn't accidentally forgotten to cancel my autopay, I would probably be taking a week or two break this month myself. I barely have time for Tol Barad (where I've painfully found that I won't yet have the rep to buy Stump of Time when I have the commendations), often squeeze in a few minutes on my underpowered laptop without the Razer Naga (really hurts the DPS), and often just log in for another frostsaber cub whisker. Dude is getting big though. ;^) Watch him shoot up around 0:14...

A UI worth considering

I usually just glance over the WoW Insider UI of the week, but this week's caught my eye. At first glance, without reading anything, I thought it was a good, clean, likely DPS UI. I liked it. Little did I know...

Hi! I have been reading the UI of the week column for a while, and since I just redid my UI for Cata, I thought I would try and share it. I started with what was essentially a blank slate, a need for simplicity and clean lines, and a desire for a functional and fairly minimalistic UI. I play a resto/boomkin druid as well as a ret/holy pally, so versatility is also very important. I need to be able to switch specs and have my UI be usable for healing as well as DPSing.

I try to stay as UI free as possible to minimize the impact of client upgrades, with only Auctioneer running as a general practice. I'm adding Recount now, but this one looks functional enough I might be induced to try it on my gaming tower.


In other news, I'm behind on posting. I hit level 84 a while back. Ding! post to follow when I'm back at home. For a second, I missed that the Tanaris quest was a breadcrumb (thought it was just for an archeology intro) and was stuck going to Vash'jr, which still, for whatever reason, doesn't do it for me. Finally got the Tanaris quest, enjoyed returning there and the start of that area, and then lucked into 84 and the mission board's move to Twilight Highlands. Things are enjoyable again. And the new headpiece for the Ulysses siren quest was both a nice upgrade and a good break from the standard quest gear sets.

Pretty high sys reqs in Highlands. I'm consistently getting 20 fps at everything set to Fair except draw distance at Ultra. Still, I'm loving the new tower's power. Anybody got $200 I could sink into a new video card to go with it?!

And, finally, I listened through all of the first podcast from Team Waffle. Not bad. A little overly hardcore for me. Talk about getting to 85 in 36 hours is, obviously, not what this blog (or my gameplay) is about. I was surprised how little time they spent on leveling -- most of it is about 45 minutes in.

It's worth listening to if you're a druid with a commute. I'll probably submit a question or two from your friendly-neighborhood part-timer. Support your local druids, d00dz. You know it takes three times as long to put together as you'd initially expect.

Recount Addon, Cleft-Edged Hammers, and WoWHead Compare

Grabbed Recount, a DPS gauge add-on a day or two ago.

Recount is a graphical damage meter written by Cryect. Recount (Preservation) is an attempt to preserve it through the 2.4 patch and fix up some minor things along the way. If Cryect returns the project really should be wholely his and he can keep or abandon any changes I've made here.

Kinda neat. I've used a few over the years, and this seems as good as any, and even has some neat graphing functions, if you believe all the screenshots you see. Already neat to see Jal's breakdown for damage when PvEing (shown below) versus instancing. In the latter, as you might guess, Wrath accounts for a higher percentage of damage done.



Did manage to dredge up a Cleft-Edged Hammer of the invoker while questing this morning. Seems to want to skip the AH and compete with my Cragthumper. The Cleft-Edged has better caster stats combined with slightly better attack stats (DPS, crit, and attack power), but without the 600 hp increase Crag has. Tough call. Cleft-Edged seems a better boomkin PUG weapon for when I go /oom and start wailing, with the slight bonus when the mana creeps back up long enough to throw in Moonfire -- though I guess I should have a macro to swap back to the caster weapons when I do that. /shrug

For now, it's sitting, unbound, in my pack.

Fwiw, the compare function at WoWHead ist mas cool.

	Windhawk	Iceborne	Wyrmhide
Level	120	150	115
Required level	70	74	70
Intellect	65	140	88
Stamina	67	178	142
Spirit	56	56
Mana regeneration			25
Armor	743	1861	1357
Resilience rating			85
Critical strike rating	47	92
Spell power	101	376	141
Sockets	3  3		1  3 3
Number of sockets	6		7
Gains	56 Spi 47 Crit 6 Sockets	75 Int 111 Sta 56 Spi 1118 Armor 92 Crit 275 Spell Power	23 Int 75 Sta 25 MP5 614 Armor 85 Resilience 40 Spell Power 7 Sockets

No more phone booths required

Getting close to ramping it back up, I think, so I figured I'd leave this note to self:

Outfitter Add-on at Curse.com:

Outfitter allows you to create multiple outfits and equip them with a click of your mouse. You can layer outfits, create outfits optimized for a particular attribute (ie, fire resist or maximum defense), and have outfits which automatically equip based on events like mounting up, stealthing or changing stances and forms.

I use a fire suit, a wrath-centric suit for cheap-o DPS, a healing set, and a typical raiding set. This could save insane time once I crank Jal back up.