Ding! 86

Long time, no ding.  Nearly two years and five months since Jalindrine's gone up a level!  Wow.  I've been playing this game too long.  Heck, this blog is over six years old, and it started when Jal was already level 62 and over two years old himself.  I've been playing over eight years?  Sheesh.

Moving along...  ;^D

I fell into some after-work time this week and finally feel off of the wagon.  I received the collector's edition of Mists as a gift months ago, so I figured I'd finally put in my unlock code, slap down my $15, and play for a few hours rather than grift more under 20 free time.

It's been fun.  I'm starting to re-realize why I liked this game so much.  Even though it's still been pretty grindy, I've enjoyed soloing and running a few old Cat instances.  Justice points have appreciated quite a bit since last I played, so it's a no-brainer to run a Cat regular dungeon once a day, where my rust isn't a big hindrance.  When you're with some 84s who haven't gotten to Mists, even poorly managed DPS is insanely good.

There's still lots of folks dropping from LFG groups as soon as you hit the instance, however, much like there was shortly before I signed Jal off last time.  I don't get it.  If you want a specific instance, queue just for that instance.  If you want the daily bonus, what about the Lost City (the zone I hit today) isn't to like? It's fast, and you're quickly in the points.  Even so, we had our tank drop the second we got in.

I mean, I guess I do get it, but it's sad there are so many virtual-life flakes.  Maybe there are just a few instances you don't want, and you think you want to get in asap figuring one of those won't come up (though with the number of drops I see almost before your free round of buffs, that's probably not it).  Or you'd kinda like to instance, but you decide you've got something more important to do (watch TV, finish your quest, whatever) when your number's called.  But goodness, bad manners.  ;^)

So we sat around for a while.  I was tempted to get back to leveling and rejoin LFG.  It's great to have healz, as that's half the limiting reagents, and we all obviously didn't want to get in the back of the LFG line, but we sat around for probably a good five minutes before we figured we'd give Jal a shot off-tanking a four-person group.

Enjoyably, it worked!  If you bring up that image, above, original size, you can see another dps say, "if we can get past the general, you're hired."  And though I ended up going panzerkin mid-way through the General (wait, what?  The first panzerkin appearance since BC?!!), we did make it through that first sub-boss.  Luckily, a tank joined us at the end of or immediately after we took the General down, and we quickly finished the instance.  And yes, I did roar the loose mob in the picture back shortly after hitting PrtScn.  Ooops.

Now look, being able to tank a regular Cat instance is not impressive.  I'm a 85+ level, partially Mists-geared druid running a Cat regular, but with good healz, it was no problem.  Shoot, you could probably throw a well-equipped squishy in and do what I did.  But it was fun.  I even remembered how to swipe and roar mobs who lose threat back to me.

At some point, I need to learn another spec and become competent at it.  I keep thinking that should be resto, but it seemed like tanks were becoming pretty scarce too at the end of my last run.

Anyhow, there you go.  Pandaria's okay.  It helped to have taken a six-month break, I'm sure, as when I took my free ten days of Mist back in December, I really didn't play too much at all.  The typical expansion inflation has happened, and it's hard to think they aren't going to re-calibrate experience points at some point.  Really, 8.7 million for level 86?  Getting a little ludicrous.

I have noticed that the level took a while.  I played two good sessions before leveling, even though patch 5.3 apparently made each level 33% quicker to achieve (how do they do that?  Is 8.7 XPs only 2/3rds of what folks used to get, or are mobs, etc, worth 33% more?  Guessing the former -- wow, 13 million?!!  It's time to take off a few zeroes).  The expansion has given me a pretty good bit of soloing so far, and the level design is less stodgy and slapped together than, say, Vashj'ir felt.  Though, admittedly, Lorewalker Cho is probably the only really memorable character yet.  Well, him, Sully, Gizmo and Socks.

Poor Socks.  Oh, that might be a small spoiler.

I may try a monk later, and do want to get back to my Death Knight in Outland a little, but we'll see how long my latest Azeroth visit lasts.  I'll probably cancel now and ride out the month rather than "accidentally" let it renew, which has been known to happen.

Fun to be back, even if I'm ultimately just visiting.

Panzerkin finally D-E-D

I found out reading Restokin:

Moonkin Form now grants 15% damage reduction instead of increased armor.

See, what the armor bonus did was allow you to put together mitigation gear, just like any other tank or off-tank. Now, the benefit is flat. I'll have to double check the mathes, since I really am mostly a non-mathes player, but I don't think 15% is going to be as good as max leather armor with the proper enchantments, etc.

This is really another watering down of the game, "Dungeons are hard" aside. Not only does the quest reward gear look exactly the same with small changes during upgrades, saying that you're essentially marching your way through a pre-defined route of gearing when questing, now, just as with the switch from +healing gear to just generic spellpower and the elimination of spell type specific bonuses, every Boomkin is marching along, playing just like every other.

The character of the game is taking a hit. Playstyles are becoming more standardized by the standardization of gear and gear bonuses.

Update and panzerkin staff

The great DPS staff I grabbed was the Staff of the Sorrowful Chieftan. Insanely good DPS for me, but it really brings to light how bad damage mit is for 'kin since the LK nerf. I really miss Braxxis armor x 360%. The staff was a cinch to get with three in the group, and takes about a minute after landing at Zul'Drak. Get it.

In other news, I'm behind on posts, have dinged 76 which I'll backfill, and have been running the Nessingwary questline now that I'm 76. Also bagged my first rep reward, dropping back in with the walruses to grab the Whale-Skin Vest. I think I might also grab the Whale-Skin Breastplate (not on Laser Chicken's list; this is panzerkin only, folks) next time I log in, as that'd be a good upgrade for when I'm panzering solo with the Staff.

(Update: Argh, now that I do some wowheading, it looks like going after the Dark Iceborne Chestguard gives me both a better piece plus gives me the iceborne set bonus back, which I recently lost putting in a few new pieces. Argh. See what I mean about theorycrafting ruining your playtime?)

And Nessingwary's is danged busy. I didn't realize how many achievements were available in that zone -- mostly hunting -- until an 80 was nice enough to link a few for me.

Finally, let me reiterate how important it is to ignore theorycrafting pre-80. Not spending much of any time figuring out exactly what to wear or what rep to grab, etc, has paid off in much faster leveling. About all I did was leave Zul'Drak for the Dragonblight storyline, as those rep rewards will eventually be better. For now, the Kalu'ak rewards (76 & 78 level usables) are doing just fine. There'll be time enough to count points when the dealin's done.

PS -- Paid for my dual spec. Now I just need to find the time to pick a set of resto talents.

Panzerkin rules

I'll admit it's been a while since I've panzered, in part because it's so danged hard to pitch yourself as a PUG as an owltank. Still, there are a few easy to rules to ensure you're ready if you accidentally get the chance to step up.

1. No cloth armor
2. No Nature's Reach (keep threat high)
3. Keep a weapon that gives armor and attack bonus (list to lvl 70) in your sack

That's enough for starters. I'm tempted to rid myself of Manimal's Cinch, etc, and not backfill as I go LK and just keep good leather balance sets, but I could change my mind. Now that Blizzard's killed RPing wrt healer gear, you've got extra spots in your bags, right?

The bottom line is that, as panzer, you can keep aggro. It's then just up to your healer. Even with inferior armor, most priests can keep up with you, if my BC experience. If you've got a tree healing and another innervate to toss around between you, that can be all the better.

Panzerkins NERFED! It was nice while it lasted

It was nice while it lasted. No, this isn't the standard, "I just got married/a job/a new baby and can't play WoW anymore. Sorry things got so slow, but I have to move on."

No, this is WORSE. The panzerkin experience, as of 3.0.2, seems to be over. Imagine my surprise reading the patch notes when I see this...

Moonkin Form (Balance) no longer increases your attack power or causes you to regenerate mana off melee attacks, but now has a chance to cause you to instantly regenerate 2% of your total mana every time you critically hit with a spell.

No more attack power or mana regen? Wtf? FTW!!!! TWF!!!!!!. (That's right. I said it. THE WHAT FREAK!!!!)

Panzerkin, I hardly knew ye. Sheesh. Wonder what caused them to smash that old playstyle. Seriously, why not just keep both? What would it hurt to have panzer and oomkin out there? If anything, wading in with a staff to regen mana was a boost to role-playing. It made moonkin more memorable, and also gave me an excuse to prove I was worth something during melee time. How the freak am I supposed to mana up if I'M OUT OF MANA AND MY ONLY MANA REGEN IS BY CRITING WITH A FREAKIN SPELL?!!

This sucks. Please kill my desire to solo MORE. SUX0RZ!!!1!

I'm upset. This is what I get for thinking I should come back for a while. Which I will. Soon, now that I'm over the superfun "World of Warcraft could not be found. Please make sure the game is properly installed" jive. My free ten days should start up tonight, followed by a period of work, followed by my 60 day game card. I need a vacation, and don't have a solid week to travel, and that means Northrend, here I [finally] come.

(Note the extreme disconnect between, "They've ruined the game!" and "I'm going to start playing again tonight." I don't get it either. Maybe I'll play a lot of death knight stuff. Take THAT, Blizzard.)

Yay, Druidic Helmet of Second Sight

Welp, finally went for the Gorefiend quests and bagged my Druidic Helm Tuesday. It's a nice enough helm, with decent heal/dmg bonus and three gem sockets. I'm not sold that it's better than my Stylin' Jungle Hat for Panzer nor my Nature's Wrath for Boom, but it made it into my farming outfit. First head armor item I've had with those danged antlers. And why does Jal's facial hair go away when he puts it on (see far left in pics below)? Must be related to the Second Sight.


The most fun part was when the 5 man all got to the mountain top to wait on Vel'khur and someone remarks, "We don't have a tank." I said, "I'll do it," the same way I said I could heal when we had four, and went bear -- but only to build confidence. When Vel'khur came back around, I swapped to Moonkin. Okay okay, the first time I missed him because I forgot the goggles, but the second time, I got on panzerkin gear, pulled with Starfire, and started wailing.

It's incredibly easy to tank a single mob as a moonkin, of course. Very easy to out-DPS everyone by Wrath spamming, Starfiring, and proc'ing a few trinkets. The shammy, iirc, kept me at 90+% health (I didn't realize shammies healed, honestly. Casual gamer, folks) and we knocked down the undead dragon easily, as in the picture, above.

Course it was hard to see jack with five folks, totems, and a summoned demon all sitting on the pinnacle of a small mountain.

Interesting on the Gorefiend quests is that my treants couldn't see the dead things, as they weren't wearing the goggles. That stunk, and I almost got myself into trouble aggroing too many mobs. Barely soloed the horsemen, and only got two down, which was embarrassing, but the trunch dropped and all was well.

Tanking Panzerkins, a Guide, a Movie, and Thoughts on the Death Knight

I'm still RL fishing as far as WoW's concerned, but thought I'd put out this guide for tanking as a Moonkin. I don't think it's nearly as controversial to consider the moonkin as a tank for relatively major encounters as it used to be even a few months ago, as this WoW Insider post helps confirm. For fun, here's the movie.



The guide linked to, above, still doesn't give us the proverbial mathes for bear vs. panzerkin threat, which I still need to get around to doing, but let's just say that unscientifically, moonkin can step in there and keep the squishies from going dry. Of course, as all of us PUG junkies know, it's just as much knowing how to tank as having the gear, talent, etc. Man, how a good tank makes PUGging more fun -- though admittedly it's not as important as lucking into a good Priest. I'm going to pause for some silent reflection. Phew, good Priests are nice.

I'll put a hard-copy of the moonkin tank guide here just because the Blizzard forum posts, even some sticky ones, disappear every so often.

Totally randomly, I'll append that the Death Knight seemed to make a lot of sense until I figured out that it could be either Horde or Alliance. I'm not totally on top of the late breaking info on the next expansion, but initially I thought having a flood of new high level Horde characters on Proudmoore would help balance out the numbers in the battlegrounds a bit and shorten waits. I will say that I'm much more likely to put some serious time into a higher level alt than a brand-spanking new Blood Elf. They're fun, and I've leveled a draenei hunter a bit, but I still don't have anyone over 10 but my main. I'm more confident now that's all the Death Knight is: An attempt to get those of us who don't want more lowbie alts but would pour in a few more months' of gameplay if the alt was as interesting as our main.

Now even after saying that a high-level alt would be attractive, note that the Death Knight seems to be a hybrid that's a lot like the Panzerkin. This is a magic using class that can tank. The difference? Well, instead of inserting an extremely round peg (those moonkin are pretty healthy, ain't they?) into a very square hole, these guys get to toss mana and rage entirely for that rune jive. Probably a smart move. Maybe something similar can happen with 'kin down the road?

First Fragment Down

I'll plan to follow-up with a more in-depth set of notes on taking down the bosses in Shadow Labs, but this is a quick note to say I've gotten over my whining from last night and have my first key fragment on my way to Kara attunement. Another fun night overall, which is, if you've been reading, sarcastic. Had a guy bail because his parents made him go to bed, if you believe all you're told, then had another drop briefly because his traps were being tripped. Pretty sure it wasn't me, but heck, I don't know a hunter trap from a hole in the ground. Also couldn't convince the remaining party members that I could heal the instance (have over +600 healing with healing gear on and healed the group for a while last night when the pally had trouble), and we sat for quite a while before scaring up a resto (whatever the equiv is) priest, making this the second marathon SL run in as many days for me.

Did I panzer much? Not really. It's a hard sale to get a slot in a SL group when you're balance spec'd as anything other than DPS, in my very limited experience. My gear gives well over +650 nature damage now, so I was usually dealing 1k with 2k crits again, with Moonfire and Insect Swarm doing DoT in parallel. Overall, pretty good tanking tonight, so I was only able to pull aggro a time or two. I'm currently using a cloth chest piece for a little more DPS, and felt a little squishie.

So SL panzering was all stealth tonight. I did quite a bit of swapping from my +dmg weapon and off-hand to Braxxis to get mana reg and to proc Omen of Clarity. Elune's touch is actually a heck of a lot more useful than most make it out to be, and I was never oom for long. When I wanted to try out panzer-ige, I'd put on the feral dmg mitigation gear and simply try my best to pull. Again, the tank was good enough to grab back aggro with, as mera has mentioned, his (later her) snap aggro skills. I only pulled aggro away from squishies a few times with wrath-spams, mostly seeing the tank grab aggro first. If two trash mobs broke towards our squishies, I was useful pulling the threat away, however, feral gear on or no.

Quick comment on snap aggro: In my experience, panzering requires starting up as a panzer; it's not a good role to take mid-way through a fight. When I think someone really needs help (like they're running from the tank -- *sigh*) and I need to grab aggro, I do swap from 'kin to bear to use the snap skills. Panzerking takes some serious planning, not to mention a good starfire lead.

And man, let me say that, with that +nature dmg, Jal is pretty danged powerful. I'll need to find the app that keeps track of who does how much damage in a party, and I do have to give the proverbial props to the warlock and mages for sheeping and CC'ing the mobs in general rather than just DPSing, but even with the poor moonkin's DPS gear "of Nature's Wrath", I was piling it on. Nice that balance specs give you the flexibility to run panzer or DPS.

Kind of a pain to be doing this all on the iBook G4 rather than the new overclocked GeForce 8500GT. Was looking at 4 fps for a while, aka "most of", today. Nice slideshow.

Ah, and finally, for a while we had a feral, resto, and balance druid in the party. Was fun to collect the whole set for a while.

Ding! 64

Missed the fancy gold spinning effects from leveling in the ding-screenshot this time, as I hit 64 with some experience for discovering Veil Lashh, and it caught me off-guard.

Still, 64 is an important level, if only because it lets me use the Braxxis' Staff of Slumber I bagged for 50g a while back in what was a pretty suspicious deal. This staff is, if you believe the Bear Tanking Gear List, a site destined to become any Panzerkin's best friend, the 22nd best two-handed weapon for providing damage mitigation, and the absolute best a druid can get until level 67 in the game. It provides 550 armor, and the 400% moonkin armor bonus works with it as well, giving me over 12k in moonkin form now. Not too shabby.

To celebrate, I finally decided to get the infamous Carrot on a Stick from ZF solo. Was enjoyable overall. Getting the Mallet of Zul'Farrak was a cakewalk, quite unlike trying around level 45. In Zul'Farrak proper, most mobs ignored me as I walked right up to the gong that summons Gahz'rilla. After clearing out the front half of that room, I let him have it.



Of course it would appear quite a number of mobs spawn once you're done whacking the boss. As any good level 64 druid would, I went to travel form, turned tail, and ran like mad all the way to the instance entrance. Then, remembering I hadn't yet looted Gahz'rilla (actually, I'd tried, but my bags were full of troll sweat. Smart), I popped back into travel form, past about 20 mobs waiting at the entrace for my return (most behind me or unfortunately blocked by my bags, below), and ran on back for the looting. It was a classic episode of Benny Hill.


Oh well. Now I'm level 64, have one of the best staves in the game for a panzer, and I'm 3% faster on my mount. Woohoo.

What is a Panzerkin?

+

==?

What's a Panzerkin?
A panzerkin is exactly what the name says -- a moonkin-spec'd druid who can tank. Put another way, panzerkin are about balancing out two competing drives, damage per second (DPS) vs. damage mitigation. Though often panzerkin only perform as an off-tank, picking up those mobs that stray from the group's main tank before they hit the true squishies (mages, warlocks -- even priests to a certain degree, though they don't wilt like real clothies when attacked), in most instances, they make quite capable main tanks.

Why can moonkin tank?

There's no better spec for pulling than the panzerkin, who can grab with starfires for about 1k damage even at my current level (63) and crit for 2k. It's very easy to moonfire a number of mobs quickly, keeping their attention on you, or to toss in some Wraths as they approach, all while in your high-armor form.

With pointblank wrath-spams, it's very hard to find a tank that can match a panzer's DPS, which helps with keeping up the threat level. Worst case for me is, give or take, 450 damage per 3.5 seconds with Wrath and my feral gear on, which means 900 damage in 3 seconds when I crit on top of moonfire's damage over time (turns into 650 & 1300 with DPS gear; beat that, prot warriors).

With the right gear - Ursol's Claw is an early example -- panzers can also dish out good DPS during melee combat as well. Feral-geared moonkin can dish out better damage in melee as kin than bear.

Elune's touch gives melee an added benefit of regenerating some Wrath mana while you're at it.

It's also here that druids' area of effect (AoE) damage spells make more sense. Casting barkskin and hurricane mean that quite a few mobs will concentrate mainly on you, and is a good way of pulling aggro, as the form doesn't have talents that do that artificially.

So why not call them Abramskin? Well, the World War II panzers were known in conjunction with blitzkriegs, or "lightning war". Moonkin have the damage mitigation to tank fairly well, but have a much more difficult time keeping up their damage per second (DPS), if only because they run out of mana. There's no way to beat Wrath-spamming your opponent for DPS, except that, eventually, without a ton of Elune's Touches and a great shadowpriest, you'll run out of the mana to conjure Wrath up. This takes some good gameplay skills, as well-timed mana potions become especially important.

Clothing a Kin:
You may have heard the term "clothkin." These seem less prevalent in The Burning Crusade because there's a lot more +spell damage leather gear, but clothkins are those who sacrifice armor to pile on cloth equipment. The bonuses of cloth gear targets the classes that usually wear it, mages & warlocks, and have a great deal more +spell damage for Wrath, making DPS go through the roof.

This is great when you're soloing, and can use roots for crowd control, and helps a balance druid fill a DPS slot in a group, but loses two-thirds of the bonuses the moonkin form gives -- extra attack power and the armor multiplier. I'd also suggest that "of Nature's Wrath" gear, which I'll blog more on later, is a better way to pick up some more DPS and damage mitigation than cloth gear for very little gold.

Striking a good balance between DPS and damage mitigation gear is pretty difficult. I've found I tend to wear nearly pure feral gear while panzering, with just a few extra pieces to add DPS to my Wrath.

Why the Armor Bonus if not Tanking?
Taken another way, let's answer the question, "Why does moonkin have as much armor as bear?" from the Blizzard forums. From the OP:

There is just no way that a caster form should have the same amount of armor bonus as a tanking form. Ever. Period.

Perhaps because moonkin is a tanking form? From the first reply...

In a nutshell, the Moonkin armor level is to give you a measure of survivability if you pull aggro from trash in an instance - allowing you a limited ability to offtank.

2nd...

The way I see it, they got a bump in armor in order to promote some measure of scalability now that the game has extended 10 additional levels. Playing a heavy hitting caster that neither has an aggro dump, nor any aggro reduction talents is a wee bit dangerous. Armor helps them.

The point of these two posts is certainly true... As I've said a few times, being a druid means you've been the main healer quite a bit, like it or not. I've healed long enough to know that when a tank loses aggro and a mob rushes a clothie, the health bars drop like the bottom fell out. It's a real pain healing mages who draw aggro before they go down and the chance for wiping begins.

But healing standard DPS moonkin who draw aggro? No problem. If a moonkin can't finish off one loose mob, well, they aren't worth their Deeprock Salt. Even then, the healer has a lot larger window for timing the heal than with a mage. The armor is a good bonus, even when just DPSing.

But, as I've already suggested, it would seem there's another message from Blizzard. They could have left moonkin at 360% for their armor multiplier after the bear nerf, and nobody would have complained. At 400%, matching bear armor for armor, the message seems to be, "You can both tank, fools!"

Why not?

(I'll try to edit this post a bit later, but thought I'd get this much out now.)

Youtube: Five Moonkin in BG == 15 Treants

Cute, at the very least. There's a quick snippet where all five moonkin shawdowmeld, and break with moonfires and treants galore to gank a pally in the battlegrounds around 3:20 in. Sometimes I can't tell what the heck the guys are running for, where the wrath is, and why nobody drops out to heal, but still fun to watch. (Note: I'm no BG expert.)

Ding! 63

Last Saturday, I finally made it on the 63. Exciting times, I know. I wasn't paying attention as the Fen Strider patrolled behind me, and, well, welcome to the next level.

I recently bagged [Ursol's Claw] during a PUG in Hellfire Ramparts, and it's changed my solo style a bit. Here's a quick list of my solo, one-on-one, PvE modus operandi through the levels, give or take.

Before 40
Starfire to pull
Moonfire for DoT
Faerie fire
Weapon/self-heal
(re-up moonfire every ten seconds)

Moonkin #1 (Discovered roots in a big way...)
Starfire to pull
Moonfire for DoT
Entangling roots
Wrath-spam
(reupping roots and moonfire as necessary)

I'd begun to feel as Amanna says, "Not sure how many of you still actually fight with your weapons, but if that’s your gig, then here ya go."

Ursol's Claw (still in moonkin form)
Starfire to pull
Wraths until mob is on me (Nature's Grace pays off here)
Moonfire (followed by Wrath on criticals)
Insect Swam
Faerie Fire
Wail with Ursol's Claw
(re-up moonfire every ten seconds)

With Ursol's Claw's bonus, I'm up to about 270 per hit, which makes it worth using weapons again, even when balance/DPS geared.

Enough. This was mainly a Ding! post, but seems to have gotten a bit carried away.

Ding!

Panzerkin Introductions

As this is a first post, introductions are in order. This blog will focus on one type of World of Warcraft gamer, but will hopefully be interesting -- at times! -- for anyone that overlaps at all with the following description:

I'm a casual WoW gamer, trying to ramp my balance druid up from mostly soloing quests to a diet rich in instancing and raiding.

That's it -- the Confessions of a Part-Time Panzerkin.

Confessions: Not the most experienced player here. Solid, but not a know-it-all. Heck, I just main-tanked for the first time in a level-appropriate instance last night. TONS of solo questing, I do have. A good deal of Scarlet Monastry experience and a time share in Blackrock Depths? Got 'em. Key to Scholomance? Yeah boy. But I'll be confessing a lot of naivety here.

Part-time: I don't play ten hours a week. In fact, I've been playing the same main for just over two years, if you'll excuse (but count) the six-month layoff to "get some work done." Over those 18 months to 60, I averaged less than an hour's play a day. My gear has almost always been made up of greens with a few blues. I didn't buy the expansion the month it was released, and waited until March to join in. I've been in two guilds, both social. Until now, I've played for structureless fun. How do you move from casual gamer to raider? Aside from a ton of play time, I don't know. Let's find out.

Panzerkin: I'll relate some of the best, easily found balance gear that has quickly moved me from a decent level 58 to a much more powerful 62; boy, the Burning Crusade has great stuff. If I think I've learned a trick for casual druid moonkins (in that order) I'll share. (They're rare, but if you're below 60 and haven't soloed Lord Roccor, or if you're a balance druid and haven't purchased something "of Nature's Wrath" from the Auction House, you're missing out.)

Critical Thought?
Occasionally, I'll also wax nearly academic, I'm afraid, like when I discuss how Blizzard's incredible political correctness means that half the humanoid mobs are female, that there's no difference between the powers of males and females, and that this means that half the time Blizzard's got you beating the crap out of a woman before taking her money. Luckily, the blogger "key words" should make those "academic" posts pretty obvious.

So that's about it. The only people reading this post, since nobody but me will know about the blog when I post it, will likely be those interested enough to know its quick history. That either means the blog's a partial success, or one heck of a joke. Either way, thanks for dropping by and reading. I hope a few of the posts will be useful, and am eager to hear your replies.