Guestpost by Garrosh Hellscream for Furtive Father Winter

GREETINGS, Typhoon Andrew.

And GREETINGS, all you blog readers of blogs that aren’t mine. Not sure why you
bother, what with mine being your one-stop destination for Ground Zero Awesome, but
whatever, there’s no accounting for poor taste and stupidity. WHAT UP?

Holiday greetings from the great and awesome Garrosh Hellscream, Warchief of the
Horde, chieftain of the Warsong clan, hero of Northrend, champion of the Mag’har, and
all-around cool guy.

So for some reason I CAN’T IMAGINE WHY, I let Eitrigg talk me into signing up for
this Furtive Father Winter gift exchange with other bloggers. And I had this whole batch
of ideas for what I was going to do for mine, and then I went and looked into the name I
got…and…turns out, this Mortigen guy, or Typhoon Andrew, or whatever alias he’s using
these days…is freaking ALLIANCE?

So, okay, revision to the gift plan.

How about this – for starters, as my gift to you, I will NOT use this address they gave
me to COME HUNT YOU DOWN and slaughter you. Not even after I take into account
that you’re apparently a freaking DRAENEI, which means I owe you a little something
extra for the gift your people hand-delivered to the orcs – you know, when you LED THE
BURNING LEGION TO DRAENOR. Thanks a bunch for that, by the way. That was
the gift that kept on giving, let me just tell you.

But since “no vicious albeit totally justified evisceration” doesn’t really wrap nicely to
put under the tree, I suppose I should include something else. So here, how about this,
courtesy of what I do best (other than, you know, slaying Alliance and being generally
awesome):

’Twas the feast of Great Winter and in Grommash Hold
Not a goblin was counting up goods bought and sold.
The eggnog was drunk and the cookies were eaten,
All dailies were done, and the Greench had been beaten.

The Warchief was nestled all snug in his bed
While spiked-eggnog hangovers grew in his head.
And Garrosh, in no mood to take any crap,
Was just drifting off to a Winter’s Veil nap.

When outside the Hold there arose such a clatter,
Garrosh heroic leapt to see what was the matter.
He raced up the stairs in his footie pajamas,
His gloves from Firelands, and his belt from Naxxramas.

He climbed to the attic and peeked through the blinds,

Expecting another fail raid he would find.
When what should he see, racing quick as a sprinter,
But a sleigh holding – you guessed it – Greatfather Winter.

He flew ’round the Hold and he circled the roof
As he brought the sleigh down with a clatter of hoof.
For eight reindeer pulled on his sled as it came,
And he whistled and shouted and called them by name:

“Now Arkham! Now Raze!” he cried, “Now Mortigen!
Now Quandalon!” And he whistled once again.
(And yeah, that’s not eight – but, not to be a jerk,
Finding rhymes for this crap is just way too much work.)

He landed the sleigh and he said nothing more,
Then he slid through the chimney and to the top floor.
The Warchief he turned, and much to his surprise,
Greatfather Winter appeared ’fore his eyes.

He landed inside with a bounce and a bump;
Garrosh groaned, “Man, security’s lax in this dump.”
But the old man just smiled and he said nothing back
Save “Hush, Garrosh!”, and turned, and he opened his sack.

He went to his work, full of smiles, energetic,
And filled up the attic with old welfare epics.
Garrosh scanned through the gifts, and he said, “Yeah, that’s fine,
But WTF, old man, what about mine?”

And Greatfather Winter, with hardly a care,
Pointed to the fireplace; a stuffed stocking hung there.
The Warchief ran over and yanked it right down;
But when he reached in, his smile turned to a frown.

“Oh no, old man,” he said, “you’re gonna be hurtin’,”
Then dumped out the stocking, just to be certain:
And onto the floor, tumbling out as a whole,
There piled out a heaping black mountain of coal.

The old man just shrugged and said, “Them’s the dice, sir;
Maybe next year you will try to be nicer.”
He closed up his pack and he started to turn,
While Garrosh’s anger worked up to a burn.

The Warchief then charged, grabbing Greatfather Winter,
Cracked his head to the mantle so hard that it splintered.
He yanked on his beard and he flung him around,

Then picked him up and threw him hard to the ground.

Garrosh yelled, “Stupid old man! So vain and so haughty!
You’ll see what you get for saying I was naughty!”
He pounced the old man and he bloodied his face,
While Greatfather cried, “You’re not helping your case!”

The beating went on, without mercy or pity;
I’ll spare you the details; ’twas not at all pretty.
But when the next morning arrived, all would see
A new gift for Garrosh was under the tree:

A shiny new sled was wrapped up with joy,
And it looked just like one Garrosh had as a boy.
On its back read “Mageroyal”; ’twas tied with a bow;
And a small, tidily written note sat below.

“Excuse the delay,” it read; “Clerical error” –
Fast corrected amid the wild rampage of terror.
There’s much here to learn, but let this suffice:
When you’re the Warchief, you don’t have to be nice.

EPIC VERSE!

So there you go. Don’t let anybody ever say I didn’t give you Alliance types anything.
Other than a world of hurt, but, you know. Anyway, see you soon, unless you see me
first, because if you do, that’s your one chance to run like hell.

Happy Winter Veil, and all that kind of crap,

Garrosh Hellscream

Howdy to old mates in random dungeons

I was running an instance of Stormstout and trucking along well when the Shammy introduced himself… well he actually pointed out that we know each other and are mates from when I lived in Adelaide.

Holy crap – That is Random. Big shout out to Divako and Jez.

mates-in-random

Happy holidays, Typhoonandrew

Exalted with the Lorewakers

I didn’t want to be exalted with the Lorewalkers for the Red Disc, although that is a nice bonus. The real goal was the Archy tools to spin up the Archy nodes in Pandaria, and to teleport to a random active site. Such good function needs to be acquired.
Lorewalkers-Exalted-Red-DiscI do like the fact I can fly around like the trash mobs in the Malygos fight though. Very cool.

We tried Heroic Guardians, ahem.

A little while back we tried doing the Heroic Guardians fight in Mogu’shun Vaults. I died. In celebration of the holiday season here are some screenshot of Mortigen fighting from the floor.

I really like the mechanic of lighting up the floor, it reminds me of an 80s pop song, and it really highlights the grey pallor of Mortigen’s dead body.

Happy Killing, TyphoonAndrew.

T14 2set 483 vs 489 Chest, set bonus wins

Aside

After noobing through the SimulationCraft panels, stuffing around with Mr Robot and Wow Heroes, and a few other sites – SimCraft confirmed that dropping from a 489 Chest (King’s) to the T14 chest from LFR at 483 is still an approx 2k DPS increase.

I didn’t think it would be but don’t think the simCraft tools should be ignored now that I’ve gone to this effort. Upgrades, love them for the Dps, hate them for the gold sink. Continue reading

Viewable Commendations rep on Rep Screen in WoW?

repsWith the commendations added in 5.1 it would be cool to see which we have and which we still can acquire. Akin to a check or a note on the Rep screen on your character’s attributes.

This way you know where you might focus rep questing, and also if you are missing a bonus you could have for an Alt character.

Perhaps it might also save people buying the commendations more than once too. I paused before buying the Golden Lotus one, as I realised that I already had it.

Just a quick thought. Happy killing, TyphoonAndrew

Grand-Commendation-Shieldwall

Mathy question on DK set bonuses and gear item levels

dk-symbolOn first drop I was stoked – the tier gear is something that I crave due to the old days when the BiS gear was almost always Tier only, and all the rest of the gear was a poor shadowy reflection of the Tier gear. And the Tier generally was a great looking matched set and transmog was still a gleam in the lead dev’s eye.

I had the pleasure of getting a few Tier tokens from kills (four items in two weeks – DPS LFR Chest and Normal Gloves, and also LFR Chest and Gloves) and now have a ponder-some issue for DPS gear is due to a difference in item level between my current Chest item (489), and the Raid Finder DK set Chest (483).

TLDR = To get the Tier 14 2 set bonus I have to drop the chest item level down 6 item levels. Is the set bonus of +10% damage to key dps abilities better than 6 item levels of stats other stats?

I’m really not sure. It is likely an overall dps loss, but if so by how much? Does that DPS loss become mitigated by the 4 set bonus if I can get those drops instead? Hmm.

In thinking through the solution I compared the 489 Tier 14 with the 489 Breastplate I was using and they are almost on par, with the current one (King’s Guard) a smidge ahead. This however does not include the benefit of adding either of the Tier bonuses themselves, which I’d argue makes the Tier Breastplate at 489 better.

By comparison the items show a clear difference, which is to be expected with 6 ilevels.

questionT14-1

Left is the LFR T14 Chest, and the right column shows the 489 King’s Guard chest.

Overall gains of 62 Str, 590 Mastery, and 186 Haste vs the 694 Crit is the point of differentiation, as the Stamina and Armor is moot.

So then I thought to apply the stat weightings for  Frost DKs via Wowhead. The goal was to see what difference for teh item alone was, in terms of marginal upgrade or significant upgrade.

This showed the combined weighting value of 156,784 pts for the T14 LFR Chest, and 161,280 for the 489 Chest; meaning a difference of only approx 3% in the two items. Ignoring that this is probably not the way to use item weightings (?) it shows that the LFR item is only a minor downgrade.

It also made me realise that even if I know what the weighting is for the items themselves, I do not have a dps value to compare too, as I cannot ratify a specific DPS figure increase against items level without a set of repeated simulations (like SimCraft).  I don’t know a way to settle what the difference is. Fark. Continue reading

Portal seeds? Almost pointless

Aside

The new seeds (Unstable Portal Shards) which allow planting of portals are pretty much pointless, but the overall idea is ok.

I’ve created one which went to Darnassas and can’t for the life of me think why that is useful. A few posts out there too seem to concur.

Here is what I’d change.

  • Make then allow selection of the destination city on use. In the same way as the Engineering teleporter for Northrend.
  • Consider making them usable by any character on that realm. So that folks will give flexibility to their alts.
  • At the moment they are only usable at the Farm. Perhaps (and this might be too overpowered for the novelty they are offering) allow them to be used in other places – say at any location where you qualify for the Rested buff; like Inns.

Mages must think they are a quaint idea. And Shamans. And Inscriptors.

Happy killing, Typhoonandrew

SunsongRanch

Frosty dps tip

Aside

dk-symbolQuick note – Recently the 2-hander dps cycle for Frost started to make more sense, and the extra bit that “clicked” was sometimes needing to wait rather than mash buttons (I love mashing buttons). When KM procs and the next Obliterate or Frost Strike will be a crit, but due to resource cooldowns and various random things the Obliterate ability is often not usable, but Frost Strike is. Generally I would hit Frost Strike if OB was more than 3 seconds away.

What made this frustrating is that sometimes the FS would trigger OB to come up, or the OB might seem it was 4-6 seconds away, and then snap to ready a second later. Meaning maybe I should have waited. Recently I said “stuff it” and started waiting. It has made a small difference, I think a slight DPS increase.

What is really hard is altering the “muscle memory” of the frost style to not snap that FS button. My finger literally hesitates over the button now, and I’m trying to re-train my fingers so that I’m mashing OB first, or better yet – not mashing at all. Some folks will say dps is easy, but not all Dps is easy; sometimes the hardest thing is not doing what you’ve trained yourself to do. Unlearn.

So it was worth it – the advice from EJ and such as always been to do this, just that its easier to read than actually implement.

Happy Killing

cropped-mortigen-tank-banner.jpg

Mortigen, back in the old days in Dalaran. When Naxx v2.0 gear was awesome, no transmogs were around, and we walked to school in the snow, uphill, etc.