Free mount! Anybody want to send me a Scroll of Resurrection?

I'm not sure how many regular readers I have -- seems most of the traffic comes from Google searches, and often for images.

But if you are a reader and want a free mount, give me a yell at jal in drine at gmail (no spaces). Jal's ready to drop back in. I did email Lissanna at Restokin first, but haven't heard back in, what, probably all of 18 hours before it hit me I had a blog too. ;)

[Rogue-OT] Sandy's 14 and I'm rogue bitten

Sandy turned 14 without me even noticing. I'm in the middle of some "whack trolls and collect x jujus" quest and WHAM, the sparkly colors are flying. Leveling combat rogues is, after your third point in Sinister Strike, E-Z.

I know some of this is simply because I want to start playing "for real" again, but I've got to say, Sandy finally got me hooked on Combat Rogues. The DPS is insane. After dropping a third point into improved sinister strike, she's hemorrhaging DPS. Greens have started dropping like crazy too. Before, I had trouble with yellow mobs, now oranges and yellow elites are no problem. And, as I read later is common, she doesn't even really have to rest or stealth any more with all this DPS and recuperate. She just waxes one mob after another, leveling like mad.

But though I'm not wasting any time researching quest rewards or items, I am taking a few seconds to maximize stats with what I've got (duh). One thing that was weird -- my 9.1 DPS green sword is in her off-hand, and 5.8 DPS grey is in the main. Huh? When I tried to swap, I was told I wasn't a high enough level to swap hands. But I could drop the green in the main. I just couldn't get the grey into the off. ARGH.

And I'm WoWHeading and WoWWikiing (hello, out of date). Amazing the simple stuff you don't have to know playing different classes. As any n00b rogue (or any n00b dual weilder) knows, there are main hand, off-hand, and one-hand weapons. The first only goes in the main, etc etc.

The formula for DPS is apparently...

Dual Wield: Effective DPS =
0.76 x ( [Main Hand Weapon's DPS] +
( 0.5 x [Off-Hand Weapon's DPS] ) )

Also important: The power of Ambidexterity. It looks like that gives you 87.5% of normal DPS with your off hand. I'm missing something there, though, b/c that gives you more DPS with your off-hand (87.5) than your main (76)?

Anyway, BAM, rogue theorycrafting. Nothing boggling, but I have hit WoWHead and friends pretty hard. I'm looking at lists of twink weapons (not too useful), quests with decent rewards I can use in either hand, searching good drops, finding craftables, and performing weapon searches, you know, just to see what's out there, like this one that I'll never get, or this one that I could grab if I wax enough murlocs.

And at level 22, heeeeello Slice and Dice. No wonder folks love to play these guys. Though I have to remind myself that Mists kills talents. /sigh I hardly knew ye.

These spells and abilities will be trained in the field, appearing immediately in players' spellbooks once they reach the appropriate level. As a result, there will no longer be a need to visit class trainers save to re-spec or purchase Dual Specialization, keeping players engaged and doing what they enjoy.

The more things change, the more crufty old players like have to complain about.

She reminds me of Jal now -- a character I started playing just to see what things were like, no real time spent investigating playstyles, no time wasted (particularly with Sandy) comparing items or figuring out builds. Just grabbing what seemed to make the most sense until, surprise!, you turn the corner and are addicted. I even spent time leveling her cooking. We've bonded.

And finally, I won't keep posting this stuff any more, but here's one final "Sandy's vanishing wardrobe" post. Perhaps I'll follow up with a more sustained post later, but let's just say I didn't really notice Jal's clothes being quite as annoyingly bare.

Before and after...

Who designed this stuff? If you don't want your daughter wearing it, it shouldn't be something a game for kids is using as an easily achieved, low level item either. I'd say it shouldn't be a higher level item either, but I'm betting the number of under fifteen year-olds with tiered armor is much lower than the general WoW population. If you must be crass, do it responsibly [as if that wasn't oxymoronic].

Ding! Sandy's 13 [Rogue OT]

Absolutely zero to report from 12 to 13. Less than half an hour of play. Lots of DPS. Recuperate seems an interesting skill, but I haven't started theorycrafting to see how best to use it.

The only bit of note in this 27 minutes of play is that I'm becoming ever more conscious of how quickly she'll be 20, how I'd probably rather be playing Jalyndrine the Death Knight if I'm going to be alting, and that I think it's time to start re-learning what I have to do to get flaming treants.

Sandy is 12/You're wearing that where? [Rogue OT]

Welp, Sandy's 12. Big ding. Lots of dying. I'm going after too many oranges, lulled into thinking she can take them with her insane DPS. Only problem? Where Jal could turn travel form and run, Sandy is toast when she aggros more than one mob. Man, I miss my travel form.

Played:


In other news, Sandy both got her first green -- a Gypsy Tunic of the Monkeyand has the first bit of gear I'm embarrassed to have her wear.


Spinks had a short and popular thread on some MMO she was playing with female models looking ready for the stripping pole, and it's not much different here. Was also showing emotes to a smaller someone who asked to see Sandy talk, and "No. No. I won't do that. ...But my sister will!" was impossible to explain. Next time I won't go further than /silly, /chicken, and /train. Look, the blood elf zones were cool to look at, and I'm glad I played them, but 1.) There's no way any self-respecting guy can play a blood elf guy and 2.) There's no way any self-respecting feminist can play a blood elf woman. It's sexual dimorphism at its worst with a heaping of solid misogyny. Though now six episodes into the second season of Game of Thrones, I know WoW's not alone in the fantasy misogynist department.


You can say that's not too bad, but if this lady was asking you for directions, your reaction would be...? Seriously, shouldn't the default have her with a grey-level cloak/tabard on? If you want to be cartoonishly lewd, fine, but why is it the implicitly encouraged default?

Remember D&D modules? Which one reminds you of Mists' Plot?

Reading through the "Zones & Dungeons - Game Guide" for MoP today, I was strangely reminded of my days playing AD&D.  The progression seems very linear.  Levels 85-86, Jade Forest wilderness and, after enough wandering, the Temple of the Jade Serpent.  Finish this (or gain enough XP to continue), and you're over to the Valley of the Four Winds and Stormstout Brewery.  A few more levels and you find yourself pushed by your DM into the Krasarang Wilds...

I don't beta, so I could be completely off, but whenever we played AD&D, I always got the feeling that we were being pushed to the end by our Dungeon Master -- except when I was DM, in which case there certainly were times I was pushing folks closer to the fancy end-module showdowns.  If a party spends too long on the throw-away portions, they'll 1.) likely miss the end game because you've played all night and the sun's coming back up and 2.) they'll eventually be too powerful to have fun at the end by gaining too much XP.  I guess 2.) is why we have level caps.

There were a few times I'd really slow things down, like in In The Dungeons of the Slave Lords, where folks started with nothing, had to make slings from small strips from their loincloths, and I didn't want them to miss the magic sword in the cloudy pool (iirc) that turned them invisible (and made the balance of the escape much easier).  "Are you sure you've searched everywhere?"

But for something like Ravenloft, perhaps the best (or more accurately, arguably, the most over-engineered) module created for the game, there was so much well-planned branching and random action that you eventually had to push your party to finish up or they'd play forever.  In fact, the module recognized that it had too much content, and was designed with instructions on how to slowly force them to do so. But its replayability was remarkable.

Mists sounds more Slave Lords than Ravenloft.  I'm not sure either is necessarily better, but I would bet, after Wrath's somewhat stiltedly painful double tracked level progressions, the first is much much easier to create.

Rogue Ding 11

Back-dating this one to the date Sandy dinged.

Welp, in the interest of completeness, Sandy dinged a few weeks ago to hit 11. I picked the Combat tree, and so far, so good. The DPS these guys can do is incredible. I'm not sure how close I would get with cat form at 11, but I'm mowing guys down so quickly I barely have to heal up before I'm after the next "kill x of y" mob. That's not all bad. In fact, I've come to enjoy the x of y quests a little more recently as Sandy's started cutting through them like butter.



(I know, it's the worst Paint hack ever, but I couldn't stand Sarah staring at me like that.)

Though I still think the leveling is a little too easy, and though I'd much rather be playing Jal, I have to admit playing a rogue is a lot more fun at this point than it was before. Before, I was sort of going through the paces, checking out the blood elf starting zone and enjoying the eye candy. Now, I have moments of, "Hey, going rogue is a lot of fun."

Folks that have read this blog off and on for a few years know that my favorite part of being a balance druid, now that I can't pretend to tank any more, is when things get out of hand and I'm forced to off-heal. The rogue seems to offer a much different approach to gaming. I enjoy DPSing as balance, but the rotation mastery has, in my experience, been a little too methodical. I'm sure there are rotations for rogues that I'd need to learn at end game too, but just the melee factor makes me wonder if it wouldn't be a little more fun.

I mean, as a boomkin, I'm just shifting from one target to another and spamming wrath/moonfire/starfire/etc etc. It's not quite like healing, which feels a little bit more like a mini-game (watch the life meters! Watch the debuff icons! Healz healz healz!), but there are still times, particularly in my flirtation with raiding, that make balance feel a little disconnected from the game. You're almost playing a bit trip version of WoW rather than engaging with a true Multi-User Shared Hallucination. The fantasy, in-the-story feel breaks down considerably. I think there's at least a chance that rogue dps promotes a more connected game experience, if only because you're forced to move next to your next target before whacking it.

I did enjoy soloing Lord Roccor in cat form, but this is a different ball of wax completely.

In other news, sheesh, stop opening the Pandaria beta to more schmoes! I mean, honestly, by the time I get to it, everyone else is going to be freakin' masters. If you don't beta test, you're hamstrung in the worst way when new expansions are released. I complain about this enough that you'd think it was a stump speech, but the overly broad beta test really does bother me. Heck, folks in my blog roll are already getting our rotation for Mists down. That really kills much of the fun of the expansions for me.

Finally, I've recently been getting the Jal itch back. Pretty sure I'll reactivate for a month -- at least long enough to grab my flaming treants before Mists comes. There's something about that armor bonus that's highly motivating. Part of me wants to spend the month finally getting my, what, 14 or 15 year-old Ultima Online character's music skill to 100% first, but I'll probably skip poor Thopas again to get Jal his shoulders.

Spinks on the strip^H^H^H^H^H female demon hunters in Diablo 3.

[D3] In which I warm to Diablo 3, but not to the demon hunter stilettos � Welcome to Spinksville!:

That [heel wearing Diablo 3 female] character in the top right looks as though she’s going to strip, or go to a BDSM party, or pose for a pin up. I wanted a female version of the male dude.

Hilarious.