sarasvati

Dear PuGgers:

If you're too low to be summoned by the meeting stone, you're too low to run the fucking instance. I'm sick of you entitled little shits who somehow think the introduction of BC has made everything Azeroth EZMODE. This is not true. You cannot run Zul'Farrak at level 38. You cannot run Gnomeregan at 25. There is a point where you move from dead weight to total liability. JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN QUEUE UP FOR AN INSTANCE DOESN'T FUCKING MEAN IT'S A GOOD GODDAMN IDEA TO RUN IT. Yes, you can queue up for Maraudon by level 43. Does it mean you can do a full run at 43? Fuck no, and you're stupid if you say yes.

Think for two seconds. I know this is a total brainbreaking activity, but bear with me. Just think. The next time you queue up for an instance, ask yourself, "If the entire party consisted of people my level, would we make it?" IF THE ANSWER IS NO, GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE QUEUE AND OUT OF MY PARTY.

If you're not willing to wait fifteen minutes to put a party together, don't queue up. I don't know what it is about the LFG system that's given rise to this particular brand of douchebaggery, but I'm fucking sick of it. I'm sorry that everyone's not ready to summon you at that very second, and I'm sorry that it's taking ten minutes to find a tank. Not everything gets to move at the speed you want it to, fruitball. There's this thing called "party dedication," and it's the nagging little voice in your head that says "hey, I want to finish the instance, I guess I better stick with it." OH NOEZ FINDING A PARTY IS TOO HARD I'M GOING TO DROP OUT OF THE PARTY AND MAKE IT THAT MUCH HARDER TO GET A GROUP TOGETHER =/= party dedication. It's being a selfish asshat.

I don't know how this sudden disconnect between people and the parties they run with happened, but it's fucking insane and makes it impossible to find a decent group. My paladin started looking for a ZF group at level 44 and hasn't stopped for five levels; though many parties have been put together, not a single one of them has lasted past the Witchdoctor. Ninjalogging and dropping from the party to do other shit are at record highs. I know this shit existed long before the LFG tool came into existence, but it was a hell of a lot rarer. Maybe because only the people who wanted to instance joined the LFG channel or put effort into finding a party. Now, with such a tool of convenience at our hands, people have become lazy fucks who think they can find a party anytime and there's no reason to stick with one that's taking too long.

This is bullshit. For all the insane retardation and fine examples of prokaryotic intelligence that happened in the global LFG channel, I'd rather have it back in an instant if it meant the return of decent PuGs.

I love how people always have to somehow justify playing Alliance. It's never just "I play Alliance because I want to play Alliance," it's always, "Oh, I wanted to play a paladin but Horde didn't have them pre-BC," or, "Alliance is filled with immature noobs but I rolled because of my significant other/friends."

It's okay to like Alliance, guys. I promise.

When you equip your sword and board, there are a few things that need to be taken into consideration for effective tanking. As a healer, having a dedicated, good tank is key to both my and the party's survival. When aggro is going nuts and I have to heal five different people instead of one or two, my mana pool goes dry and I inevitably draw aggro of my own. When I die, you die. Remember this important concept as we take a trip into the land of Being a Good Tank.

Step one: Taunt shit off of me. I realize that one can get into the habit of standing in a single spot for the duration of the fight. I would know; I'm a priest. It's what I do. If I'm running around like a retard instead of healing, something's wrong. But you're a warrior. Mobs move around. That means you have to move around too! It also means you have to pay attention to where the mobs are. If the mobs are eating the priest's face and you didn't even know they were there, you have failed.

Step two: When the DPS is actually concentrated on a single targets, it becomes painfully, painfully obvious how hard you're trying to tank. When the DPS is on one mob and the healer doesn't start healing until someone's at or around 70%, it doesn't take much to get the attention of the other mobs. If I get three mobs rocketing at me after a fucking flash heal, you have failed.

Step three: When it comes down to a warrior five levels lower than you to peel the mobs off of me because you don't even try to do it and ends up tanking more mobs than you, you have failed.

I know people like to say, oh, it's harder for warriors to keep aggro on multiple targets, etc, etc. That's all well and good. I realize that warriors don't have a lot of abilities that let them grab AoE aggro. I'VE ALSO GROUPED WITH A LOT OF WARRIORS WHO COULD KEEP AGGRO ON MULTIPLE TARGETS. Just because you're a warrior doesn't mean you're totally fucking incapable of keeping aggro on more than one mob. Is it harder? Yes. Does it mean you have to know what you're doing? Yes. Unfortunately, by level 70, knowing what the fuck you're doing is sort of expected. Do the fucking job expected of you.

Theoretically, I could reduce the aggro I generate if I just stop healing altogether. We'll see how that goes next time. Maybe then you could get frustrated at someone else not doing their job.

News from the 70 front:

--Hit 70 forever ago, but I'm a lazy poster. Wanted my flying mount badly. Got flying mount, am unsatisfied with the speed, and wish desperately that Blizzard would hurry up and implement the quest line required to get a Netherdrake.

--Slowly but surely working on getting keyed for various places, including Heroic mode. I'm sitting on Honored for most factions, but it's just getting through Honored and into Revered that make me want to punch myself in the face. Karazhan is just a Steamvaults and Arcatraz run away. These runs may or may not be difficult to accomplish, depending.

--Very annoyed by the speccing issues I'm having. I'm still Shadow and will probably remain Shadow for awhile, but I'm starting to feel the pressure to spec Disc or Holy. While Disc would probably better suit my playing style overall (rarely will you ever find me in shadowform in BGs), I'm spoiled and I want to stay shadow. Shadow priests receive much group love, but my instancing group already has a shadow priest who isn't looking to respec anytime, ever, so I'm stuck in the healing role. (I don't mind the healing role at all, by the way, and my speccing troubles would be a nonissue if my guild wasn't heavy into PvP.) I desperately wish I could have the spot as the sole shadow priest, but it just isn't going to happen. Whether I can stay shadow and still heal some of the later instances is questionable, but the more I see, the more I'm thinking I can't.

--I am enamoured with the assbuckles that come with the three Dungeon Set 3 cloth sets, though I am terribly sad that any further Oblivion pieces will be useless to me.

I've accrued a lot of screenshots over the two years I've been playing this game, but it's occurred to me that I don't do shit with any of them.

( TODAY, THAT CHANGES. )

Okay, gooey mushy "AH MAH GAWD IT'S BURNIN' CRUSADE" fangirling is now to be swept aside: I am here first and foremost as a beta tester and, of course, as the eyes and ears for my not-so-lucky friends. I will provide you with ample amounts of RAW AWESOME, as well as TOTAL SHIT, because no game can escape having shit at some point.

Draenei get the most interesting quests ever, I swear to god.
While the Blood Elf lands are prettier, they are, at heart, your usual "go here, collect this, kill [x] of these guys, go find my tools, where's my sammich bitch, why isn't that shit dead yet, do you know what time it is young lady" questing fare. Draenei, on the other hand. DRAENEI. They get your usual questing shit, and then you have a quest that actually gives you a reason to pick up fishing (i.e. "the trainer is right there, gives you a quest to get some redfin snappers, and rewards you with a fishing pole RIGHT FREAKIN' THERE at the water's edge"). There's also a quest where you unofficially learn a language by tracking down a series of Furbolg totems with words, the last stage of which actually LAUNCHES YOU INTO A FUCKING INVISIBLE WORLD AS A SHADOW CAT, which completely blew any Blood Elf quest I'd done to that point out of the fucking water. My fledgling mage is only level 11, but I am soon to embark on a quest called "The Kessel Run" (LOLZ STAR WARS REFERENCE, THAT SHIT NEVER GETS OLD BLIZZ LET ME TELL YOU AHAHA DIE IN A FIRE), where I'm equipped with an epic mount for like fifteen minutes. I have never looked forward to a quest in my entire life, but now I am.

The only comparable quest in the Blood Elf lands is disciplining two errant magic students by turning them into animals. Boring.

Blizz is actually doing crazy shit like "integrating popular add-ons into the default UI," and "listening to what people say."
Soon, my need for CT mod will be all but gone: Blizz has implemented the ability to see your target's target, to automatically cast a beneficial spell on yourself if no one else is targetted, and to set a hotkey to cast a spell on yourself without losing your current target (alt or ctrl, your choice). They've also included the ever-popular scrolling battle text where you can see what happens to you right on your character instead of just seeing what you do to your enemy.

On your character's equipment menu (you can see I have a picture of it in my screenshot gallery, I'm just too lazy to go and find it for you), there's the option to see whatever stats are important to you in two different windows. This is not the only part. It also automatically calculates everything for you: your health from stamina, mana and spell crit from int, AP from strength, AP, dodge, crit, and armor from agility, your regeneration from spirit, your damage reduction from armor (as always). Throughout the various menus, you'll see your chance to hit, dodge, parry, block, crit, spell crit, weapon damage, speed, DPS, in addition to adding up and displaying your total AP, +spell damage, and +healing. This is fantastic news for someone like me, who absolutely cannot remember calculation formulae for shit.

Your quest log's maximum capacity has been increased to 25.

The new LFG interface is pretty much crap.
This may be beta, but no one uses it at all, preferring, instead, to piece together groups by announcing over general chat in a given region, as it always has been. It's a pity, because it's truly a fantastic idea, but the only way Blizz will ever get people to use it is to take away the /who function and any ability to talk on a regional chat. You can also only look for a maximum of three possible groups at a time, which is silly when you're sitting at level 70 and you're willing to do anything, goddamnit, just give me a freaking group I don't even care if it's filled with child rapists and Bible-thumping grandmothers, just give me a group oh my god. It's also fond of doing silly things, like clumping together two rogues and three hunters, and I don't care what instance you're doing, but that group will not fly too far, especially if it's just a bunch of random strangers.

But frankly, for all its quirks and bugs, I'd so much rather see the new LFG interface see use because I do NOT miss the LFG channel at all.

If you're planning on making a Jewelcrafter, start stocking shit up NOW.
Introducing the third goddamn profession to use mining as a fueler, Jewelcrafting will completely ensure that there will never be a free node again in the entirety of Azeroth. For the first few months, know that you will be competing against level 60+ characters on epic mounts for copper nodes in Durotar, Dun Morogh, Elwynn Forest, or really anywhere where copper has even a remote chance to spawn. Know well that the prices of simple gems like Tigerseye and Malachite will go off the fucking charts. Be prepared for a whole new market for raw ore to absolutely explode.

It will be like the Ahn'Qiraj War Effort, but worse.

That said, if you don't want a jewelcrafting character, go ahead and start stockpiling shit anyway so you can be one of the thousands of jackass capitalists who thinks it's totally awesome to play on the game of supply and demand and charge scalper's prices for a stack of 10 copper ore. There will be people who will buy it.

Besides spawning what will soon be the biggest bitchfight over ore World of Warcraft has ever seen, Jewelcrafting is a pretty nifty profession.
In the Native American tradition of using every piece of the corpse for something useful, you will terrorize helpless ore nodes and use every single bit of their succulently rocky flesh. Stones go towards carving up statuettes that basically act like a HoT potion, which is pretty awesome considering it doesn't share the same timer as a potion. (The Rough Stone Statue heals you for about 75 damage, around the same as a basic minor healing potion.) Most rings and amulets do require some basic kind of gem to make, but there are pieces that only require metal bars/components made purely from metal bars. Even if you don't have the gems you need, you can still make use of your Prospecting skill and crack open 5 pieces of any kind of ore and reap the gem(s) you find. You can start equipping your rings and amulets as early as level 10--impressive, considering that many characters now don't start finding rings until the late teens/early 20s.

More to come later as I play. My screenshot gallery as been updated with a billion pictures as well.

Edit: Arcane Missiles is STILL broken, but in a completely new way. I think I liked it better the old broken way.

After waiting and waiting and downloading and waiting some more, I finally got the opportunity to play BC at like three in the morning.

( Short because I have to start outlining for my nanowrimo novel which officially starts in like an hour. )

Link to my screenshot gallery is here; some things which seem "blah" in the screenshot department will be used later as examples in writing to mechanical points that I'll be making. The gallery will probably get updated more often than this journal will, so check periodically.

I know that change is a very scary thing. When I am confronted with change, I often find myself running away, ducking under a table clutching my very favorite stuffed animal, Mr. Teddykins, and crying. I am told that this is a common reaction among people when they too find themselves face-to-face with the cold-blooded, ruthless killer known as change. It is a completely frightening and morally wrong concept. Anything that changes CAN and WILL be going to hell, where the devil will sodomize it for all eternity.

Yes, Burning Crusade will be bringing in masses and masses of changes. The "nerf" you just heard about coming in, where your spells will receive a penalty to +healing/+damage the lower rank they are compared to your level, is one such example. Yes, it renders your +healing gear useless when BC hits. I'M GUESSING THAT'S WHY THEY'RE PUTTING IN NEW FUCKING GEAR FOR YOU TO GET.

The game is evolving and changing. Deal with it. When you rolled your priest, did you think everything would stay the same for as many years as you played it? Did you think the level cap would stay at 60 and they'd just keep introducing new 40-man raids and new Tier gear? Did you think that all your months of grinding would matter for shit at the end of it? Shit gets outdated. It happens in real life, and it happens in games that mimic real life. You can't keep the same computer for five years and expect it to out-perform top-of-the-line models. You can't keep a TV for two decades and expect it to sound and look as good as a new one. Believe it or not, these real life true stories based entirely in truth and reality and not lying have some application in the game: GEAR YOU GET AT EARLIER LEVELS DOES NOT SCALE TO HIGHER LEVELS. You don't still wear the Robes of Arugal when you're main-healing Scholomance. You don't ditch Benediction in favor of the Illusion Rod.

New gear and new strategies will always come up through the woodwork. Stop acting like you'll have the same fucking gear and same fucking stats and same fucking spells at level 70 as you're healing your team through Karazhan. LEARN TO CHANGE, OR THE GAME WILL LEAVE YOU BEHIND. DEAL. If you don't like it, quit the fucking game. I'd be glad to take your place.

The plural of "shaman" is "shaman."

Let me say it again:

The plural of "shaman" is "shaman."

I went along on a Scarlet Monastery run as Blackbird (37 droooood) yesterday, the only non-Annexation of Sylvanas guild member there, as they needed a healer. I asked if we could do the Library, but it was shot down and all we ended up doing was an Armory run (the sole piece of SM where nothing I need drops).

(By the way, Annexation of Sylvanas is like the crux of dumbassery on the Horde side. Almost every single instance I run seems to have a member in it, and they're always frighteningly stupid. The fact that there were four on this run means three times the idiocy, because the mage was incredibly competent and nice and I felt sorry for her.)

What proceeded can only be described as ( WHAT? )

On the upside, I walked out with some BoE blue robes. I guess that makes up for the screaming retardation and sexual harrassment.

I'm going to have to yell this one, since no one can seem to hear anything over all the Hunters crying:

HEY GUYS, SHUT THE FUCK UP AND STOP BITCHING. NORMALIZING PET SPEED DOES NOT MAKE YOUR PET USELESS, NOR DOES IT BREAK YOUR CLASS, NOR DOES IT RUIN YOU COMPLETELY. IF YOUR PET NOT CATCHING "JACK SHIT" MEANS THAT YOU CAN BARELY PLAY ANYMORE, THEN I THINK SOMEONE NEEDS TO QUIT PLAYING THE GAME, BECAUSE YOU'RE A FUCKING HUNTER AND YOU CAN STILL KILL EVERYTHING.

Yeah, wow, your wolf can't chase down a fucking elite mount anymore! You know what? No other class in the game has ever had the ability to chase down an elite mount before. Your pets get Dash. Your pets can still run faster than other players. And if your pet can't catch something in PvE? Then clearly you don't even know how to shoot your weapon.

Call the wahmbulance and learn2play, or get the fuck out of my class. You're an embarrassment to us all.

Had a great Arathi Basin run last night as Jun with four or five straight games before the Horde decided to call it quits. Nothing special from my end; it was a pretty bad night for me, ending up in the middle of the pack on HKs, deaths, and killing blows each time. In my defense, I had a certain troll hunter three levels higher than I was killing me at every turn when I was content to ignore her. A 49 Undead Rogue named Creature seemed to have taken a liking to me too.

Newsflash: Feign Death when I was almost dead actually tricked a Druid, who ran off into the fray immediately. True story.

This all brings me to my original point:

The Horde on my server are pussies.

My friend Slade is a rogue, and quite possibly the best rogue I know. He's currently ranked number one on the server in PvP and for good reason. He organizes people like no one else, knows strategy, and is damn good at his class. In Warsong Gulch, he runs the flag. When he gets hit with movement impairing effects, he just hits Vanish and picks the flag up again.

The Horde claims that he's cheating.

Because of this, the Horde refuses to queue up for Battlegrounds because they're "taking the moral high ground" and we're "cheap." Instead of considering viable counters to Slade's Vanish-pickup tactic, they're bitching and crying on the forums. BECAUSE CLEARLY THAT WILL SOLVE EVERYTHING. They say they're all for PvP, except for WSG--despite the fact that Slade isn't online and PvPing 24-7, and even then, he doesn't always run the flag. They don't mention that the only games they're able to win are when Alliance is outnumbered six to ten. Yeah.

So Arathi Basin. No "cheating" with flags; just straight-up strategy mixed with asskicking, and Alliance delivered in full force. We won every single game we played. After the last sound beating, the Horde just stopped queueing. I'm waiting for the topic on the message boards about what kind of exploits we're using next.

It's fine, guys.

THIS MESSAGE BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE WORDS "LEARN," "PLAY," AND THE NUMBER TWO.

I'm going to create a character--female, probably night elf, probably rogue or hunter--with a Chinese name, and see how people treat me in comparison to others. With my Night Elf Hunter, Jun, I already get people thinking I'm a farmer until I speak English.

Equipping myself with basic Chinese phrases, I'm going to throw myself headlong into the life of a farmer--if only for a day. I think it just might give me a little bit of perspective.

Qing wei wo zao 300 ping shui.

I've done my fair share of Arathi Basin by now, and I must say that I've been in so many truly awful groups, I could write the comprehensive guide on how to lose here.

So I did.

( And now I present to you in a pleasing book-like format, The Comprehensive Guide to Losing in Arathi Basin. )

After having a nice discussion with Camielle and Kethard last night about the guild, I've come to this conclusion:

I am a control freak.

I will not be happy until this guild has centralized power. If that centralized power does not end up being me, I will quit the guild. I am a control freak.

*The problem is that I'm still doing an asston of work in the guild, and without Solaris, I'm the only non-"wishy-washy" councilmember left. I'm not afraid to say no; apparently everyone else is.

*The problem is that quality control is foreign to us. Half of the councilmembers bring in idiots. I can say no or abstain my vote, but what's the point when I just get outvoted?

*The problem is that respect is difficult to obtain. Why should anyone respect me and my decisions when they can just wander off to another councilmember who favors them to have my decision overturned? That means no one will listen to me, and therefore, less order and more chaos. Chaos, while good in small doses, is not the friend to structured institutions. For the most part, if I say something, people will listen to me, but sometimes it takes a lot of profanity, death threats, and capital letters. Please don't make Sarasvati "CAPSLOCK" Vikalpa strike again.

As these problems likely won't ever be solved, I will never be happy with my guild. But that's okay, because I'm a contrarian, and that alone is enough to keep me working on it. Silthar said that the guild would never work. Well, it's stumbling and I'm pissed and stressed about it, but I'm sticking with it, because he is not going to win this one. My guild will have to go down in a fantastic blaze of glory before I jump ship.












In other news, I got my epic mount, BITCHES:

There are things that I read in WoW that make me giggle, chuckle, grin like an idiot, or almost shoot some kind of painful liquid out my nose.

( These are those things. )

So Camielle said she expected a nice post today, so here we go. A nice post. No profanity, no screaming at idiots, nothing that may be constituted as mean.

I got a new computer with a snazzy graphics card and a processor that's roughly double the power of my old processor, so I can finally play World of Warcraft with all of the video settings on high and I still don't lag as much as I used to. Happy day! I mentioned this in my guild OOC channel, was asked if I'd seen Darnassus yet with teh prettay grafix lolz and said no, but I wanted to. The guild meeting proceeded as normal.

Afterwards, I tagged along with Kethard as he sort of led me around to all the pretty places and ended with Darnassus, simply because I said I'd wanted to visit it and see teh prettay grafix lolz. Isn't that nice? He used up his entire night to do that for me.

I'll post some screenshots and stuff later once I get another cracked version of Photoshop.

To my guild, with love:

CAN WE PLEASE EXERCISE A LITTLE BIT OF FUCKING QUALITY CONTROL?

I know that we're pretty loose about our standards. I know that 3/4 of our members can't spell or construct a grammatically correct sentence to save their lives. BUT FOR FUCK'S SAKE, WHAT DUMPSTER ARE YOU DRAGGING THESE RECRUITS FROM? I am sick of looking at people who don't even KNOW WHAT PUNCTU-FUCKING-ATION IS! When you END A SENTENCE, you put a PERIOD, a QUESTION MARK, or an EXCLAMATION MARK. How do you tell when to use what punctuation? I'LL LET YOU DECIDE! When you PAUSE IN A SENTENCE, you insert a COMMA. IS THAT SO FUCKING HARD?! Did third grade eat you and SPIT YOU BACK OUT as a mangled mash of pseudo-intelligent proteins with the GRAMMATICAL CAPACITY of a PROKARYOTIC ORGANISM? I mean...JESUS RIVERDANCING CHRIST! I know that language isn't the thing for some people, but if that's the case, GET THE FUCK OFF OF A SERVER WHERE LANGUAGE IS THE PRIMARY MEDIUM OF COMMUNICATION! Go to a server where you communicate through emotes, chest-beating, and SERIES OF GIBBERISH AND TONGUE-CLICKING.

And for the record, it's MASQUERADE not MASQUERAID. If the word is already taken, come up with a new name instead of a different goddamn spelling.

WHERE IS MY GUN.

Sarasvati is officially my first level 60 character.

To instance groups, with love: I realize that it's hard to work with a healer. I mean, someone who restores your health and keeps you from dying? How valuable can they be to the party? Yes, I know, you're only taking me along because I'm so cute, but really! A healer has its perks!

That being said, you're all fucking retarded, and here's why.

As a Druid, I don't have "Fade" or any sort of fancy Priest way of getting aggro off my ass. I could switch to Cat form and use Cower, but that's wasting about five hundred mana that I could use for other things, like healing your dumbfuck selves. Therefore, when I say "On me," or even more specific, "Get them off me," you don't STAND AROUND LIKE A BUNCH OF BRAINDEAD PARAPLEGIC VEGETABLES. You proceed to do what I say, which is GET THEM OFF ME, because when the healer dies, you're all in deep shit.

Furthermore--and this is even smarter--how is it that when the Hunter yells "mana break" for herself, you all come to a dead halt, but when I call for a mana break, you all run head-fucking-long into the next batch of mobs? Do you like making my job difficult? Do you enjoy ingraining your complete and utter ineptitude in my head? Because you've just rolled a 20 on both counts, which in this case, is the equivalent of FAILING AT LIFE.

To the Hunter I grouped with, with love: I'd like to take some time out to give you a little advice. And that advice is that the middle of the instance is not the correct time and place for any of the following:

--Playing dead simply to get aggro off of you, which proceeds to go to me. Riddle me this: which goes down faster, the Druid at level 30 with 900 HP playing healer, or the Hunter at level 35 with 1500+ HP playing what a Hunter is supposed to do?

--Stopping randomly to make everyone sort their spoils out, which you proceed to claim as your own because you're an enchanter. Let me tell you something. Once I got to Gnomeregan, NO DISPOSABLE GREENS WERE EVER GIVEN TO ME FROM THAT POINT FORWARD. What I WON is what I GOT. You do not have claim over everything simply because you're an enchanter. If you really want it so fucking bad, buy it from us, because I'm 99% sure you wouldn't enchant the group's stuff for free if we gave you our vendor trash.

--Don't ask the Paladin to resurrect your pet. Your pet is your own responsibility. You can even resurrect it during battle. Trust me, darling--your stings and shots aren't as valuable as your pet. So when your own pet goes down, you use your own time and mana to resurrect it. It's no one else's job but your own.

Please refrain from engaging in any of those activities in the future. Thank you, the management.