Ooh! Ooh! Dual specs! Gimme a break

Wow, 2 posts in the same day? What's that all about? Well, I'll make this short so it doesn't really count.

So yeah, we've all heard by now that Blizz are finally giving us dual-specs. Yay! We're all very happy. Really, me too. But really - pretty much all the interesting insights regarding this can be summed up in one paragraph:

Some people will have PvP/PvE combos, some will have solo/PvE (or solo/PvP) combos, and some will have PvE/PvE combos. For certain classes and combos, you'll have to have 2 different armor sets. And... That about does it.

But no, the people at WoW Insider* apparently found it worth their and their readers' time to write a whole article in each and every one of their class columns. Uhmm, really? Is there really such a big difference between the effect it will have on rogues or on mages? Is there really a point in starting to go over all the specs we all know for the class that work for different situation and spell out what combining them will achieve? (If you combine a Feral 0/256/39 tanking spec with a Resto -2/74/8 healing spec, you'll be able to tank and heal. Amazing, I bet no one would have thought of that).

Seriously, what a waste of bits...

* Which I like reading, don't get me wrong. I wouldn't have noticed this whole thing, otherwise.

Heroics... Finally

Wanna hear a secret? I've never done heroics before... Not in WotLK and not in BC. But that's now changed. Over the weekend I finished running all the Northrend regular instances, and between quest rewards, drops and a few rep items I managed to get AlierahDK is finally uncrittable in heroics.

So to celebrate, I tried getting a group for the daily heroic (Oculus), but instead got invited to HoS. Yeah, why not? Heroics are heroics, even if I don't get the 2 extra badges from the daily quest. So in we go, and it started pretty well - we downed Maiden and the big rock thingy boss, and cleared everything for the event. The event itself, however, we just couldn't finish - too many mobs for me to hold aggro on at the same time, and we just didn't burn them down fast enough. After 3 or 4 tries we gave it up and called it a day. Too bad...

After that, I managed to get into an Oculus run. The whole run was fairly smooth, until the last boss. In the last boss, you fight riding drakes. No matter how well geared you are, or how good you are with your class, the drakes always have the same stats and same skills. No matter how many times we tried, how we changed drakes around, what strategy we tried - he just wouldn't go down. At least I remembered to take off my armor before trying him, so my repair bill wasn't that bad.

So where does that leave me? 0/2 on my first day tanking heroics. Kinda sucks... I can make excuses for it - Eregos wasn't about how well I tanked, and in HoS we didn't burn the mobs fast enough. But it feels like making excuses.

There is one thing I would like to complain about - DPS in heroics. While tanks have to gear up, to at least be uncrittable and have enough health that they don't get 1-shotted by bosses, and healers have to have enough spell power and mana to manage to heal the tanks, it seems like most of the DPS classes ding 80 and head straight for heroics. I don't use Recount, or any other addon to check DPS, but from what I've seen on Omen I constantly had 3 times more threat than the top DPS. I'm not that good a tank, so the only explanation is that the DPS were underperforming. And no, it's not just the Omen info I'm basing it on - a lot of them had never been to these instances (regular or heroic). How, then, did they gear up without instancing? Without access to regular instance drops and quest rewards, that would leave them with crafted items and grinding reps, but somehow I doubt they actually made the effort to do that. So, I don't know... The whole thing is kind of disheartening - if that's what I have to look forward to in heroics, then I'm gonna be giving up on it and retiring my DK pretty soon. Let's hope this was just bad luck, and that things will go smoother this week.

Here we go again

I've been having a lot of fun lately playing Cawti, but I'm getting that itch again... I need to make a new alt, but I don't want to give Cawti up* just yet. I've invested quite a bit in Cawti - leveling BS isn't cheap, and I think Pally skills are more expensive too. Another problem is that, for some reason, I want it to be a priest - but I know that I don't like leveling priests**.

And with all that, knowing myself, that isn't going to stop me. I'll probably have a new priest up and running around Azeroth by the weekend. But actually, maybe the fact that I don't like leveling priests will work in my favor here - if I get sick of him/her/it quickly enough there's a good chance I'll come back to Cawti. Decisions, decisions, everywhere I look...

Oh, and a mini-rant. Just something I have to get off my chest. What's up with the Mithril Order quests? I mean, practically all the other Blacksmithing quests have you make stuff and give you a pattern in return. They're a waste of money, but at least you get to level up your BS while you're at it. But no, these quests just have you dump obscene amounts of Mithril (along with some other materials, but let's say that's negligible) for the patterns. Back before TBC, that quest line was required for anyone wanting to specialize in Armorsmithing, but now that there is no Armorsmithing it becomes even less justified. Now, I know what you're going to say - "so skip 'em". But that's the thing, I just can't. For some reason, I just can't seem to be able to skip class or profession quests. And with Mithril going at 30g a stack on my server right now, it'll easily cost 300g (along with the other materials) to do these quests. So bummer. Hey, maybe that's why I want to start another alt...

Well, guess that's it for today. Now we just wait and see what happens.

* It's just what inevitably happens. I mean, when was the last time I played Mokla or Enara? And I'm not even talking about alts on other realms.

** Not that there's anything wrong with them. It's just that whenever I try it inevitably comes down to soloing or healing instances. I don't like face-melting soloing (at least as far as I got down the tree, which isn't that far), and doing instances is a whole other bag of problems.

Second-class Customer

There was a shared topic suggestion on the Blog Azeroth forums, suggesting we should post something regarding Blizzard's new "Recruit-A-Friend" so I'll be taking a shot at it, and rant a bit on how I feel about it.

As some people have seemed to figure out by now, this is really suited better for multi-boxers than for bringing in new players. With that, and the fact that I should be getting a new PC today (still have to put it together, so I don't know when I'll actually get to play on it), I figured I'd give it a shot. Even if I don't end up dual-boxing to level, having 2 accounts can be pretty convenient (for example, I can start a guild and invite my own alts into it).

Obiously, the next step is clicking the "Recruit-A-Friend" link and registering. Ha! I wish it were that easy. I log in, to receive an error message saying "not all accounts are eligible to recruit a friend", and includes an address for an FAQ (you would think Blizzard would figure out how to use hyperlinks on their website, but maybe not). One of the questions in the FAQ mentions that only people living in certain countries can recruit friends, and Israel is not one of those countries.

While, at first, I was just a little disappointed with that, the more I think about it the angrier it makes me. Why should I get treated differently from other customers? It would be a different matter if Blizzard had said "we don't want Israeli customers" to begin with, but that's hardly true. WoW (European English version) is officially distributed and sold in Israel. Blizzard accepts Israel as the country of residence, and accepts Israeli credit-cards. At no point do they say "you live in Israel, so you may get worse service than people in other countries" (hmm, I should probably go over the EULA and see if it mentions anything about that). And it's not like there's any real reason for this ridiculous limitation - I mean, it's easier not to check where the user is from, and this only cuts off part of their income (however minute). So that just leaves discrimination. What's next? Make dungeons unaccessible based on your country of residence? A lower level cap?

Just in case you're wondering, I tried to change my country in the personal information on the site - except that that's one of the few things you can't change. Also, Japan is not eligible either, so even if I could change it, I would have to lie (for a good cause, but still) which would be bannable.

So where does that leave me? Angry and disappointed with a game developer that I've been a huge fan of for almost 15 years. I have sent an inquiry to customer support, but they haven't answered yet and even when they do I don't expect them to be able to (or willing to) do anything about this. I was actually considering canceling my account, until I realized I just paid for 6 months at the end of July... I don't know, maybe I should cancel the subscription anyway - there's a much better chance of them taking note of my comments on why I left than a random ticket to customer support, and I can always renew it. Blah, That's all I have to say...


On a different note, I've had a comment in the past by Hulan asking about the Nostromo. I've also noticed that out of the 6 search engine referrals to my site so far, 2 were regarding Nostromo mappings (specifically, for rogues). So I'm thinking maybe I should make a series of posts, starting from basic Nostsromo introduction, on to my key mappings and finish with the specific action bar settings I use for different classes. What do you think? Would that be interesting to anyone?

Where's my gear?

Another semi-rant. Again, about Lilanis. Doesn't really feel like a blog about alts, does it? Oh, well. I guess I just have to get it out of my system.

So Lilanis is at a very interesting place in her life, being in her early 40s. I like hitting 40, it usually allows access to some interesting talents (assuming you've been focusing on 1 specific tree), new skills and, of course the mount. At least until Blizz make the mounts level 30. It gets even more interesting when you're a warrior, pally, shaman or... You guessed it - hunter. Good bye icky-smelling leather. Hello cold hard metal. Now, obviously, having access to more armor is good thing. But it also means I now have to replace everything I'm wearing, and with the number of alts I have I can't actually afford buying armor off the AH. So I make do with the occasional lucky drop or, more importantly, quest rewards. And this is where I start ranting...

One expects quest rewards to be useful. In all the time I've been playing the game, I have not once seen a Cloth item with +str on it as a quest rewars. Why? Because it's useless. It's vendor trash by definition. But when you hit 40 you run into a strange situation: rewards are obviously geared towards characters who are in their 40+ (as evidenced by the abundance of plate armor you can get), except that I've not yet received 1 decent piece of hunter mail armor. Practically everything I get has +str on it, and even the few items that do have +agi simply aren't as good as the leather items I can get. Just as an example, I was really happy to get my Golden Helm, only to replace it 5 minutes later with the Skirmisher's Cover*. I mean, seriously, at this level there are 2 classes that should be using mail - hunters and shaman. Considering that alliance didn't actually have shaman when these quests were designed, I would have expected a lot more hunter oriented gear.

I hereby issue an ultimatum to Blizzard - fix my loot, or else... Uhmm... Or else I reroll again. Yeah, that'll show 'em. *sigh*

* That was actually a pretty tough call. I like the stat bonuses on the cover a lot better, but the armor bonus is, obviously, much smaller. But even being on a PvP server, most of my fighting is solo with my pet tanking so the stats ended up deciding it for me.