Dear Lodur, Answering Azeroth’s Questions

Another year has come and gone and still you can feel that Love is in the air! It is around this time I receive a plethora of mail asking for my Shamanic advice and so I present to you this year’s Dear Lodur!

Dear Lodur,

I have been studying the Draenei for months and have come to no clear conclusion, so I turn to you for help.

We of the Shieldwall family of Gnomes have been attempting to quantify the relationship between Draenei tails and bizarre behaviour of members of various races when exposed to these otherwise innocent-looking appendages. We have yet to be able to get our hands on one for proper diagnosis, but have come to the following hypothesi:

1. Draenei tails emit radiation that renders observers helpless and causes them to drool.

2. Draenei are really robots bent on brainwashing and enslaving the races of Azeroth (and only Gnomes are immune and can stop them). The tail is their most fearsome weapon.

3. Draenei themselves are radioactive and the reaction to their tails is simply a warning sign of radiation poisoning in the observer, thus, Draenei could be very useful in warfare against the enemies of Gnomekind.

4. Draenei emit radio frequencies at such a pitch that only Night Elves, Humans and the occasional Dwarf and Troll can hear.

I thank you for your insight, it is truly valuable to all of Gnomekind.

Scientifically Yours,

Studious in Ironforge

Dear Studious,

I… well…hmm. I can assure you we are not robots bent on brainwashing and enslaving the races of Azeroth and I’m pretty sure we’re not radioactive. I’ve seen Gnomeregan and we are most certainly not glowing green! I have however observed the same behavior though and have come to the conclusion that it is a hypnotic effect caused by the rhythmic swaying of our tails. We can’t help it we just like to shake the junk in our trunk as we walk!  I hope that answers your question!

Sincerely,

Lodur

Dear Lodur,

Lately I have been feeling a bit down, looks like my guild is slowly but surely falling apart. I raid late, so it is difficult at best to find a guild to call home. This has given me a surplus of time to do some soul searching, and get back to who and what I am. Lately I have begun to think that being a blue space goat shaman is not all its cracked up to be, and I have heard about this new procedure that has been tested, where a blue space goat shaman can undergo an operation to become a dwarven shaman. I have always felt like I have an inner dwarf, and it is time to set my inner dwarf free, but I wanted to see what a highly respected shaman like yourself thinks about this idea.

As a Shaman, what are the risks of losing contact with the elements by undergoing such a transformation? Will I still be able to heal just as effectively, and occasionally hurl lightning bolts at any whim?

Since space goats are so much bigger than dwarves, what happens with all that extra “left over” material after the transformation?

Since as a blue space goat I already enjoy my fair share of dwarven stout, and teasing the serving wenches, how much worse could this get after freeing my inner dwarf?

Respectfully,

“Touching my Inner Dwarf, in Dalaran”

Dear Inner Dwarf,

I understand your plight all too well my friend! There is actually a support group that meets weekly in Ironforge’s Mystic District. We discuss our desire to live among and be accepted by the hearty mountain folk. During this time we encourage members to participate in Dwarf customs and holidays as well as participate in their daily lives. To see if it is the life you really want! The procedure is painful, but it does leave you able to communicate with the spirits. Healing waves and Lightning will flow from your fingers just like before! I’ve heard stories though of some who have undergone the transformation being dubbed too rowdy for the ale houses! It’s not widely available and still highly experimental but those that have undergone the change speak fondly of the end results.

As far as what happens with all the left over bits… Have you heard of the Paper Street Soap company in Stormwind? They’ve expressed a lot of interest in disposing of our… leftovers.

Sincerely,

Lodur

Dear Lodur,

I have been seeing my girlfriend  for a little more than a year. We’ve both just hit 80 and have started gathering gear and badges from heroics with the intention of casual raiding. The problem is we are both in different guilds.

We’ve been having problems because I’m not willing to join her guild to raid. I’ve told her that I’m concerned about getting lost in the shuffle of her guild’s focus on raiding. I’ve seen many friends of mine leave guilds to join with their significant other only to be separated by different goals. Conversely she has friends who joined guilds together and raid happily ever after.

I admit, I’d like to take things slow (call me old-fashioned), but she doesn’t know if she can wait until I feel ready to take this step.

We acknowledge that we love each other. Our guilds are not exactly rooting for us, so we’re taking another break from things. I suggested that we both find our own places for the time being. Hillary has never raided by herself. We don’t know what to do, and I’d like some advice from someone who doesn’t have a stake in this

Forever in your debt,

Reluctant Raider

Dear RR,

This is a very sticky situation to be in for sure. The best answer I can give you is this. Sit and talk to her. Find out what you both want and try to reach a mutual understanding. There are guilds where couples are part of and one will go of to foray into the halls of death itself while the other part maintains the hearth flames. Guilds do exist that will take both partners and allow them to thrive. See if this is something you both might like, maybe find another guild entirely to join together that will suit both of your needs. Again I urge you to talk to her about it, while it may not sound great with losing the friends you have now in your respective guilds, it might be best in the long run. Your real friends will keep in touch! I hope that helps!

Sincerely,

Lodur

Dear Lodur,

I am in desperate need of advice. I think my boyfriend has been cheating on me! You see, he’s always trying to “raid” Silvermoon city. Every other night he shifts into cat form and prowls off. The other night while we were in Arathi Basin, I swear I saw him sneak off behind the blacksmith with some Blood Elf hussy! He came back and I swear I saw lip marks on his collar. He told me it was nothing just smudges from battle! Lodur, how can I confront him on this? How can I bring it up to him?  What if I’m wrong and it’s nothing? I love him so much but enough is enough, I need to know! PLEASE HELP!

Sincerely,

Distressed in Dragonblight.

Dear Distressed,

There is no easy way to go about this. It’s a tricky situation to be sure. My suggestion is to be completely upfront about it, confront the problem head on. Tell him what you suspect and tell him you’ve had enough. Let him know your limits and set those limits in stone! The only way you can survive this is to try and communicate. It’s better to know now than thirty levels down the line that you are with someone who betrayed you so much, if he did even betray you. If he tells you he did cheat on you, leave. You’ll find someone else I hear there is 11.8 million people in the world out there to choose from.

Sincerely,

Lodur

 

That’s it for this years Valentines edition of Dear Lodur. Hope everyone enjoys the day!

Until next time!

 

It Came From The P.U.G.: GearScore Edition.

For those who might not know yet, my gluttony for abuse knows no bounds. As a result I find myself in a rather large number of P.U.G. groups. At the end of the day I bring you, my readers, the stories of my travels in the random grouping of Azerothian adventure!

This week I’m going to focus on a mod that’s been getting a lot of attention for a while now, (both good and bad) Gearscore. The irony of this event is it comes right after listening to a podcast (no not mine) but the resident gentleman Dorf himself Brigwn over at The Hunting Lodge podcast. They had the creator of the addon as a guest and asked him all sorts of questions about the mod. Why it was created, if this was it’s intended use and where it’s going from here. Gearscore is a quick comparison of gear assigning a number based roughly on stat allocation per class / role on the item. It does not, in any way shape or form reflect skill. Simply put it tracks maximum potential for a role, the higher the number the better potential healing, dps or tankage you can do. You’re probably why I’m bringing this up. Well here’s why…

Last weekend I got bored and didn’t feel like doing heroics on my Shaman, and my Hunter needed a night off. So I did something I haven’t done since Naxx was THE place to be, I broke out my Death Knight Tank. She was the bomb when Naxx was the raid zone of choice and as a result has Naxx level tanking gear. Not the best, but not the worst. More than enough for heroics, which I can then convert the badges into T9 tanking gear. So I put on my tanking gear, change my specs, and hop into the queue to tank. 20 seconds later I find myself in AN with similarly geared people, everyone sitting there in Naxx (25) level gear, and seemingly good attitudes. So we buff, and I head down and start making pulls. First pull, no problem. Second pull, no problem. Then we get to the watchers. I pull the first group and pull them wayyyy back. I Deathgrip the caster onto me and drop Death and Decay. All of a sudden the healer leaves group! Not a word, not a disconnect, not lag and no vote kicking. Just up and leaves. One of the people in the P.U.G. Happened to be on the same realm as the person, so he shot them a tell asking what happened. The response he got back sort of shocked me.

“I looked at the Gearscore for the tank, too low I can’t heal that.”

I had a good chuckle at that. My DK might not be ready to storm into ICC at all, but she tanked Naxx 25 and is more than adequately geared to handle some measly heroics. So as me and the rogue are laughing about this the Warrior of the group drops, for the same reason as the priest. So what remains is a rogue and a mage and myself, all laughing about it. You would think that the story would end there, but it doesn’t. People joined and dropped the group 4 or 5 times before eventually a healer and a dps stuck. The kicker? The healer was in full tier 9, the DPS was another DK, in full heroic ToGC / ICC gear. I jokingly asked

“I have a low gear score you guys sure you want to stick around? already lost a handful of healers an dps”

Healer looks me over says

“Nope you’re fine, just keep shit off me”

the new DK pipes up.

“If I can’t manage my aggro on you, then that’s on me, no worries let get some badges”

Finally, after waiting for nearly 30 minutes we start really pulling, and blow through the instance, I don’t lose any mobs to the healer, there are no close calls there. And the DK ganked once, stopped attacking so I could taunt and then didn’t gank again. The run was smooth, and quick. With my badges in hand I hearthed back to Dala and logged for the night.

The funny thing is that was my first hands on experience with Gearscore ever, and I do mean ever.  I heard about it when it was created at the beginning of wrath and wrote it off as something I didn’t need. Eventually as people kept talking about it and how it ranked gear and assigned a value, I pushed it aside from my thoughts. When I started seeing requirement levels in gear score for easy content, I got a little bit angry at it’s creation, but I had never run across it in all my travels in Azeroth.

Thanks to The Hunting Lodge, I now know the mod was created at the release of Wrath and it’s original goal was to show that the heroic blues (ilvl 200) were on par with the 70 purples (ilvl 154ish) so that people weren’t excluded from Naxx runs. It has since become this oddity that has people calling for 5k Gearscore for heroic runs. Without listening to that I probably would have looked on the above chain of events with a much heavier heart, and some abject hatred to the mod.

To put this in perspective, I installed the mod and had a look-see at all my characters and even the members of my raid. Lodur, my main who is decked out in T9.5 and Tier 10 / 10.5 only ranks about 5795 on gear score. My alt hunter Abigail, in T9 with heroic level trinkets ranks 4900. My tank, in Naxx gear is somewhere around 3799. Most of my raiders are in the 5500 – 5700 score mark and we’re clearing ICC25. It just seems odd to me to cling so hard to a scoring system that only appraises gear, and not skill or personality.

In other P.U.G. related news, I hit a random up last night with my main Lodur, wound up getting Gundrak. I’ve done this place a million times, yet somehow never managed to get Less Rabi achievement . We stacked a group from guild one day to try for it but for some reason it just fell out of reach each time. So we get to Moorabi and the tank pulls I instinctively wind shear the first transformation, and I notice his health is dropping like a rock. I wind shear the second and pop heroism and drop my elemental. he goes for the third transformation, the DK pounds him with a mind freeze and he dies. I see the achievement pop up and I’m one happppppppy Shaman. The hate tells roll in from some of the guildies yet to get it and I log off to go to bed one contented man.

So, how about you guys? Any interesting stories from the P.U.G.-Verse? Have any run ins with Gearscore? Good or bad?

Until next time, Happy Healing

Winter Veil Poetry!

Here’s some inspired Poetry for your Winter Veil holiday!

Stormwind’s Bells

Adapted from Christmas Bells by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

I heard the bells on Winter Veil Day

Their old, familiar carols play,

And wild and sweet

The words repeat

Of peace on Azeroth, good-will to all!

 

And thought how, as the day had come,

The belfries of all Light’s Chapels

Had rolled along

The unbroken song

Of peace on Azeroth, good-will to all!

 

Till, ringing, singing on its way

The world revolved from night to day,

A voice, a chime,

A chant sublime

Of peace on Azeroth, good-will to all!

 

Then from each black, accursed mouth

The cannon thundered in the North,

And with the sound

The Carols drowned

Of peace on Azeroth, good-will to all!

 

And in despair I bowed my head;

‘There is no peace on Azeroth,’ I said;

‘For hate is strong,

And mocks the song

Of peace on Azeroth, good-will to all!’

 

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

‘The Light is not dead; nor doth it sleep!

The Wrong shall fail,

The Right prevail,

With peace on Azeroth, good-will to all!’

Let us not forget or Horde brothers and sisters

It Came From Within Orgrimmar Clear

Adapted from It Came Upon a Midnight Clear by Edmund Sears

 

It Came from within Orgrimmar  clear,

That glorious song of old,

From ancestors bending near the earth,

To touch their helms of gold:

“Peace on the azeroth, goodwill to all,

From the Warchiefs past.”

The world in solemn stillness lay,

To hear the ancestor’s sing.

 

Still through the cloven skies they come,

With peaceful wings unfurled,

And still their peaceful music floats

O’er all the weary world;

Above Mulgore and it’s plains,

They bend on hovering wing,

And ever o’er its Thunderbluff sounds,

The glorious ancestors sing.

 

Yet with the woes of sin and strife

The world has suffered long;

Beneath the ancestor-strain have rolled

Too many years of wrong;

And Orc, at war with man, hears not

The love-song which they bring;

O hush the noise, ye men of strife,

And hear the ancestors sing.

 

And ye, beneath life’s crushing load,

Whose forms are bending low,

Who toil along the climbing way

With painful steps and slow,

Look now! for glad and golden hours

come swiftly on the wing.

O rest beside the weary road,

And hear the ancestors sing!

 

For lo!, the days are hastening on,

By all the Shamans foretold,

When with the ever-circling years

Comes round the age of gold

When peace shall over all of Azeroth

Its ancient splendors fling,

And the whole world give back the song

Which now the ancestors sing.

 

Happy holidays to all of Azeroth from your friendly neighborhood Shaman!

I Will Not Carry You

My good buddy Matt just wrote an article likening himself to “Samwise the Brave”.  The noble friend, no matter the circumstances, who is willing to swallow his pride to bring up the team.  It’s admirable.  It’s considerate.  It’s exactly what I would do…

…for certain people.

A friend, alt or no alt, who needs some help getting geared.  Maybe it’s his/her first 80.  It’s all good, because I know this person.  I understand that he/she is not trying to take advantage of the time and effort that I’ve put into the game for selfish benefit.  I’m more than willing to lend my knowledge to help make them a better player.  Because let’s be honest, you’re training a new class of raider/gamer when you do this.  I, myself, have 2 friends that I’m leveling alts with.  I teach them about kill orders, focus-firing, and CCing.  My hope is to get them ready for hitting 80 so they can come into raids with us.

Likewise, a new 80 who lays it all out up front.  Totally honest about their gear or their skill, and isn’t a jackass about it.  Someone who is looking to the veterans for guidance.  An under-cap tank that wants me to heal them through the early heroics to get some basic gear.  A dps or two that may need the fight to go on longer than usual because they can’t quite pull their weight yet.  I have no problem taking longer on a fight because they’re working on their rotation and getting numbers up (though that’s also what Target Dummies are for).

However, I can’t heal stupidity. 

I’m serious.  I may try to throw heals, but my finger goes numb and can’t press the hotkey.  I could try to shield, but the mouse button turns to stone.  It’s immovable.  I won’t hear that “click”.

Flash Heal won’t work on a tank that tells me he’s Defense-capped, but admits later that he’s only at 510 Defense while trying to tank the upper-level heroics.  “I needed a healer to carry me through so I can get PhAT lEwtZ”, they may say.

Prayer of Mending just refuses to bounce to that one DPS player that ignores the “Targeting You!” over the mob’s head, or dismisses Omen because it’s too distracting.  With all of the “aggro drop” skills that are available, utilizing them might break the healing immunity that seems to have plagued my heal targets.  Assisting the tank takes 1.5 seconds.

My new battle is trying to Shield the player that constantly hollers out “GO” while the tank is marking targets, or while the healer is drinking, or the other DPS are figuring out any CC that may be needed.  It’s especially difficult when that player has the “Patient” title next to their name.  Apprently that’s just a front, like a pub is a front for the Dwarven Mafia.  My PW:Shield is simply answered with “Invalid Target”.

I always try to be a great player to run with.  I’m always willing to help, if needed.  If you need a fight explained, sure.  If you need some advice on a talent or gear choice, no problem.  However, if you find yourself a version of any of the latter three examples, then I have to apologize for the ineffectiveness of my heals.  I can’t control them!  =D

Cheers,

It Came From The P.U.G. 3.3 Edition!

Well on the off chance you missed it patch 3.3 is live! and with it comes the next installment of it came from the P.U.G., a column where I throw myself into random groups and the report the end results.

With the patch last night we got three new heroics, The forge of Souls, Pit of Saron, and Halls of Reflection. After much server raid instance stability issues, my guild decided to call it an early night, breaking off into heroic groups to knock out the three new heroics. I have things to take care of administration side so I bow out and take care of some behind the scenes guild maintenance. When I was done all the guildies had gone for the day, so it was time to open up the brand new LFG tool and get my rear in The Forge of Souls.

I open up the tool and put my check mark in The Forge of Souls and then sit and wait. After about 10 minutes the group fills up and I’m delighted to try to use the new port to instance function. I hit my button and the zone loads and one by one everyone pops into the instance. I myself am on the Zul’jin server, I get two people from Arthas a Gnome Warrior and a hunter, and then a rogue and a mage. Everyone is fitzing with their UI’s so we give them a few minutes and while we’re waiting around the Gnome Warrior notices I have a Val’anyr.

“well shit, guess I don’t have to worry about this pugging tool, that or I hit the konami code before I went in, this should be sweeeeeeeettttttt”

we go through and we do our pulls and things are going smoothly, then my earth shield tracking mod goes on the fritz. I type out in party that I need a minute to reload my UI and then hit the /RL to get it going. When I come back, all of the party is nearly dead! Apparently they missed my message and pulled not one, not two, but three groups. Before I can catch up to them the mage and the rogue explode. The hunter follows as soon as his deterrence drops, so it’s just me and the Gnome versus about 5 mobs. I’m dispelling curses and refreshing earth shield and dpsing when I can and eventually we stave off a wipe and down the mobs. I res up the dead, and the hunter asks

I point out that I had to reload my ui and we  carry on. The group goes on to finish the zone before the server explodes and dumps us all back in Dalaran. All in all a good run.

I decide to give the random tool another go and this time leave it completely on random. I wind up in a group with a mage, a warrior, a paladin and a DK. We wind up in heroic gundrak. First question I ask

“Ok, who’s the tank!?”

The paladin pipes up

“the one that’s got 45k health”

I look over the party list and see that the paladin, warrior, and dk all have roughly the same health and the paladin and war are in prot spec.

“well.. I’m just asking cause all of you are pretty much prot spec. That’s cool though at least we’ll never die!”

The paladin tries to reply but then must have looked and saw in face all three plate classes were in prot spec. We all have a good laugh about it and go on. The run goes smooth and we complete it and go our separate ways.

I dare say the smoothest pugs I’ve had in a while. Everyone was good natured and equally geared, and now that we can pull from other servers finding groups is much easier. There is no waiting to get to the instance you can just click on the tool and port in, and then when you’re done you can port out. It’s handy and I’ll be honest this was the highlight for me on the first day of patch 3.3. The tool works and works really well. Everyone in my groups was of comparable gear levels, the groups were actually fairly balanced and well… quite honestly it made me a little giddy. I know I’ve been eagerly awaiting this tool since I heard about it at Blizzcon and it was nice to see how it worked in a live environment. Good job Blizz I think you hit this one out of the park!

So have you guys gotten to try the new LFG tool? Any good stories to share? Any horrible stories to share?

Next time maybe I’ll have more drama to share but until then, happy healing!

A Friday Geek Moment

I’ve come into the habit of walking into work, sitting down at my desk and getting ready for the day.  The trick is, how I get ready for my day. 

I go through my morning routine: some coffee, a bagel or muffin.  I wipe down my desk from the overnight guy’s late-night snack.  I shoot the sh** with my co-workers about random stuff.  After making sure the database is updated, I open up my browser, and I type www.mmo-champion.com.

I find some good stuff there.  I like laughing at the Blue responses to all the forum QQ.  I see how we’re all getting nerfed or buffed.  I’m “in the know” about which guild got the newest World First. 

Today, however, I saw something that significantly raised my geek factor.  I love movie trailers.  Big epic scenes with climactic music underneath.  Awesome voiceovers and sweet editing.  I gotta hand it to Kinaesthesia from the Vodka guild (US-Alterac Mountains) for some awesome work.  Enjoy!!

WARNING!! SPOILERS ARE IN THIS VIDEO!!!

Coming soon!!  =)

A Prescription for Raid Morale

Raiding can always be stressful.  Although the content has been called “too easy”, some of us still struggle with certain encounters.  We’ve cut our teeth on Normal Modes, and make the step up to the Heroic.  Haunting are the nights of banging our heads against Icehowl cause one raid member is just a little slow on getting out of the way.  We shake our heads in disgrace because a DPS class is too used to “being carried” when we try Yogg+Anything.  Raid nights get called early, curses ensue, and it’s just not a pretty sight.

Whether it’s in raid or out of raid, I firmly believe it’s essential to insert breaks and morale boosters.  And by breaks, I don’t mean “Take 5 for bio and beer.”  I mean something active.  A couple examples:

In-Raid

Trivia Games

Kalheim, a feisty paladin in my guild, holds trivia games during downtimes in the raid.  While waiting for invites to go out or waiting for that last member to come back from an AFK or bio break, he puts up topic-centered questions for us to compete for the fastest answer.  These quizzes will encompass a variety of topics, usually gaming-based.  He pulls out Classic WoW Lore, the names of BC Boss spells, Super Mario trivia, and even gaming company trivia.

You can reward your raiders with anything you want.  A gem, some gold, free flask/food, whatever you want.  The key is simply to make the questions challenging but not impossible.  A topic or genre you and your guild talk about often; you can include everyone.

The Whipping Boy

First off, this is pretty much a voluntary position.  In no way do you want to ostracize one of your raiders who cannot take the brunt of it.  In our guild, this whipping post has a name, and that name is Zabos.  He’s an incredibly likeable guy, but he’s really easy to tease.  He can take it, because as a player, he’s really good at what he does.  He’s one of our officers, and talks a lot of smack, so the guild will lay it on pretty thick.  The guild has built up a tradition (before my arrival) of /gkick’ing Zabos out of the guild when a new boss goes down.  It adds an extra level of fun to progression and cohesiveness of a guild.  The phrase “Shut up Zabos!” gets passed around a lot.  It just makes me laugh.

Random, Off-the-wall “Attempt”

This should explain itself.  After a long night of progression, you need a break.  Something to make you laugh or wake you up.  We specifically have a Morale Officer in our guild, Shenweh, who is responsible for making sure everyone is in good spirits.  When things are getting tense or tired, it’s her job to create little fun events like this:

Out of Raid

Actual Alt Dungeons

I have several alts at a variety of levels, and I have some real life friends that all stick together.  They play super casually–usually only once each week, if at all.  Although I have two 80s, their level 45 character is their highest.  The other night, we managed to get all five of us on together to do a run of Uldaman.  There was no run-through, there was no level 80 to accompany us.  Because the healer and our hunter were lower than the rest of us, we really had a chance to take advantage of crowd control and focus-firing.  Since they’re all new to the game, it was a great chance for me to be able to show them a fragment of what makes this game so great for me.  I hope that at some point they may be able to step into a weekend/off-night raid with me.  Here, I lay the groundwork. =)

If you have friends that are trying to learn the game, take the time to actually play it with them.  I know how much that means to both people.  It also gives you a little break, and a little time to relax.

Arenas/Battlegrounds

In my opinion, always have at least one person you know well to go on this adventure with.  Arenas can sometimes be a great way to get out some frustration (if they go well).  If you turn off the Battleground Chat in a Warsong Gulch or Arathi Basin, they can actually be pretty fun with a group of your friends.

Achievements/Holidays

Blizzard has given us this interesting little outlet to occupy our time when we’re not raiding.  Even little mindless ones involving pets or an Azeroth raid can be entertaining enough to ease your mind.  See if any of your guildmates have never seen AQ40 (I just had my first encounter before writing this).  If there’s a slew that have never been inside, show them around!  Especially if you’re in a leadership position, this shows your raiders that you’re invested in how much everyone’s enjoying the game.  Gotten all the achievements you want/need? Then just tag along for your friends’ benefit.  Share funny stories.  Reminisce about things that happened in those old raids.

———-

You can decide to do these on raid nights or outside of your standard schedule.  Think of it this way.  Although this game as fun, you want to avoid having progression start to kill your soul after a while.

What sort of things do you do in order to keep your raid’s morale high?  What do you do, as a player, to detox in-game?

Ask Lodur!

It’s been a while since we’ve had enough questions for me to do this but today happens to be one of the days I DO have enough! For those of you who don’t know about this I take questions over Twitter you can find me at the LodurZJ user name or you can use the hash tag #asklodur. Ask lodur is where I take the serious and the silly questions from our readers and give them an answer. Think of it as a Dear Abbey WoM style   So without further ado, here’s today’s Ask Lodur!

Dear Lodur,

Will the new pet store cause the fall of WoW civilization as several WoW-”experts” have suggested?

Sincerely

The Zet

Dear Zet,

I can honestly say I don’t think so. Not unless they decide to let you buy say…Onyxia as a pet that you can unleash in PvP! Honestly though the addition of a pet store is nothing more then cutting out the middle man in the quest for more shinny non combat items for us in game. I hardly think that this break the game, and it is a FAR cry from being the Micro transaction model that other games such as Dungeons and Dragons Online and various other MMO’s have employed. This is no different then buying the cards for the collectible card game and getting an in came code.

Dear Lodur

Do you condone breaking and entering? Would you be ok someone broke into Blilz HQ for the supersecret t10 Shaman gear?

Kirby

Dear Kirby,

Well I personally don’t condone breaking and entering, I feel that the fact that Blizzard has not released the Shaman tier 10 to be as good a reason as any to look the other way >.> While I myself wouldn’t do it… if it happened to find it’s way across my desk I wouldn’t ask where it came from ….
Dear Lodur,

In the absence of trustworthy feedback, how do you evaluate your healing performance? Especially as a rsham?

Sincerely,

Herselftherogue

Dear The Rogue

An honest judgement of how you evaluate your healing performance can be done a few ways for a Resto Shaman. The first thing to look as is… Did the raid wipe? If the answer is no, then you’re pretty good to go. If the answer is yes then you need to look a little bit deeper. Was the cause of the wipe the target you were assigned to heal? Was it caused by a “stupid” death that you couldn’t heal through? Honestly it’s very hard to judge your performance individually. Basically if no one died or it isn’t a wipe, count it as a win

Dear Lodur,

boxers, briefs, none or “other”?

Sincerely,

Shamanfan

Dear Shamanfan,

um… I don’t really know how to answer that one. Honestly though, it depends on the gear. If I’m in a kilt, there’s no reason not to go full dress! If I’m in actual chain maille pants well… that’s another story.

Dear Lodur

I have this thing were I feel the need to only cast PW:S on everyone. Do I have a problem?

Sincerely,

BubbleBoi

Dear BubbleBoi,

YES! seek help immediately! There is more to life then bubbles alone! If you continue down this path you will develop Bubbleitis! This is a very serious problem that results in tunnel vision, blurry awareness and can escalate as far as deadraidsyndrome! Get help before it’s too late!

That’s it for todays Ask Lodur, be sure to use the contact form on this site, or pop on twitter and ask away!

Until next time, Stay Classy Azeroth

Exclusive Shaman Tier 10 Preview!!!!!!!!

So I’m sure many of you are on the edge of your seats, wondering with baited breath what our armor is going to look like. Well I have exciting news for you!! Here at WoM we have the exclusive on the new armor graphics for the tier 10 shaman set

Are you ready?

Truly?

Honestly?

Are you sure?

It’s pretty epic!

Here it comes!

CARDBOARD SAMURAI!!!!!

Made you look!

Honestly there still is no news on the tier 10 armor set models for Shaman and it’s a little disheartening. We’ve seen the sets for everyone else (good or bad) but not for ours.

What could be taking so long? Maybe they are really trying to figure out what it should look like. Maybe they have something in mind but want to spring it on us like a nice holiday surprise. Maybe they are just embarrassed by what they slapped together and are scrapping it to start over. I wasn’t very impressed with the Tier 9 Alliance set, it looked decent on the male models and it looked good on Dwarves but on Female Elves and Draenei it just looked misshapen. It also didn’t seem very shamanistic to me, especially since Hunters got the same armor graphic. I need something with at least a little bit in the way of elements to make me happy. Hell I’ll settle for a dead bird hat Druid style at this point. Here’s hoping we’ll get to see their model for it soon, but until then I have a challenge to lay at your feet.

If you want to try your hand at making a mock up of what you want Shaman tier 10 to look like or what you think would look cool, post it here! Break out the photoshop and MS Paint and let’s see what you got!

Image courtesy of http://www.rosepolenzani.com

Circle of Healers

For some reason, I hardly seem to get tagged for these anymore. My friends tell me it’s because I’m supposedly all big and popular.

Hogwash I say. I’m not sure how many of you remember when I was but a young blogger still struggling to make a mark in the WoW community. I was once a small time blogger too, you know. Even though my time has diminished, my interest has not. I’ll do my best to respond to them if I feel they’re fun to do (or if I’m dodging a really important paper that’s due on Tuesday).

• What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer? Mallet, Discipline Priest. I’m ambi-spec-trous and will go Holy if the situation calls for it.
• What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans) Primarily raiding environments.
• What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why? Power Word: Shield. Sometimes I think Protego to myself when I cast it. There’s nothing more satisfying to me than a field of bubbles.
• What healing spell do you use least for your class and why? Renew. That’s only when I’m Discipline though. I usually have better spells to respond with. If I’m idling, then I’ll use a Renew. But I’m rarely idle.
• What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why? The ability to protect and to extend the health buffer of a player is the difference between life and death.
• What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why? Weak raid healing. All we have is Prayer of Healing and Holy Nova. But then again, that’s not supposed to be our jurisdiction. We can raid heal, just not very well.
• In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you? Anything that enables me to watch playoffs. Generally, I prefer covering the raid. I’m a twitch healer.
• What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why? Priest. It’s the oldest healer I have and I have a diverse array of spells to use.
• What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why? Paladins. I once nodded off in the middle of a 5-man. It was a truly boring experience.
• What is your worst habit as a healer? Not staying on target. I’ll sometimes cheat and heal a different player than my assigned target if I feel I can get away with it. About 1 in 25 of those situations will result in the death of my assigned target. It’s like base stealing. Sometimes it pays off, sometimes it bites you in the rear.
• What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing? Dying to avoidable deaths. Healing is not a cure for stupidity. There’s only so many chances we will offer.
• Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing? Yes I do. Discipline has come a long way.
• What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer? I rely heavily on Recount, Obituary, and World of Logs or WoW Meter Online. I mainly look at the cause of death the most to determine whether or not it was something that I could have prevented.
• What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class? That Disc sucks for healing in raids (not raid healing, I mean having the spec in raids).
• What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn? How to do things in addition to healing. Many new healers are caught staring at their bars when a fire lights up on their character. Try moving your head back a few inches to get a larger perspective on the entire screen. Move your camera back too. Awareness of bad stuff will get you far in this game.
• If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)? Lack of healing because they don’t have the Recount Absorbs addon installed.
• Haste or Crit and why? Haste. Speed is life. The faster the spells, the faster you can cycle to different targets and cast them again.
• What healing class do you feel you understand least? Druids.
• What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing? I rely on Vuhdo for all my healing needs.
• Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why? On my Priest, I’ll stack a ton of intellect via gems and break socket bonuses if necessary. It’s not uncommon for me to reach over 35000 mana with full raid buffs. This adds to Replenishment, Shadowfiend and Hymn of Hope. The more mana I have, the more options I’ll have at my disposal. That and spellpower are stats that are universal to Disc and Holy Priests. There’s no sense in grabbing Spirit as it’s not going to do much for my Disc side anyway.

Thanks to Sushicookie for reaching out and tagging me (as well as sending me a direct tweet about it since I usually miss these things). Of course, this was the brain child of Miss Medicina. You can find the rest of the responses from other bloggers here too.

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