Survey Says....

This NEW server is /win.

After being here for a week, I can honestly say its been one of the best decisions we've all made as a guild.
Some observations:

A. No basement virgins trolling in trade chat
B. No spamming of "LF non-fail...."
C. Players seem to be more mature, friendly, and generally of a higher caliber
D. Even at midnight on a Monday night I was able to get into 25-VoA and the weekly Raid...
E. And, if that isn't enough, even when we PuG we have players coming back for a 2nd night of raiding...

We're still looking for some ranged DPS, but we've acquired some great people since we've been here.
Last week, Haz, Cozz and I healed in a 25-ICC that someone set up, and Di dps'd. Topped the charts. We got Sated's name out there, and players are wanting to come over more and more each day. It won't be long till the guilds rockin' a few Shadowmourne's.....

9 Manning Festergut

Before I delve into the awesomeness that it this post, I gotta give a quick shoutout.


Whoapaw, the big, loveable Boomchicken that he is, will be taking an undisclosed amount of time away from the game--and he will be missed. I could reminisce about the good times that we've had, but that really wouldn't be my style. Mostly I'm upset cause now Haz and I will have to find some poor, new sap to be the ass of our jokes.  /sigh


But in all seriousness, I hope the break treats you well, my friend.


Now on to SRZ Bidness...


We 9 manned festergut last night.


Lemme explain...


We had 8 log on to raid (told you I kicked everyone), so I just decided to pick up a couple in trade. I didn't gearcheck. Ended up with a Ret Pally and a DK (I healed, so it was cool). The 2 had never downed saurfang, and the DK was in pretty much ilvl 200 gear.
We one-shot everything up to putricide. He took 3 attempts.


But the amazing part was Fester. We ready-checked it up, I explained the fights, told the DK's to army, and started the pull.


I guess I forgot to mention that the door closes.


The pug DK got locked out.


We 9 manned Fester, and didn't even come close to enrage.


/motherfuckinunstoppable


Taking Putricide down with pugs was a nice feeling too.


Man I can't wait to get back into 25's....

When it's time to go...

For a short time, Sated was among the most sought after guilds on Blood Furnace; our players are knowledgable, friendly, willing to help with gems/chants/etc--they're just good...

For a short time, Sated was raiding 25 ICC (pre buff) and making it look easy...

For a short time, Sated had players in the top 3 of their respective classes (still do)...

But things change.

In an epic downturn of events, I ended up pissing off 8 people, and we've lost the majority of our raiders to real life issues (work, school, economic hardship). I've since been trying to recruit to fill core spots, but raiding late, and being on a low pop. realm really don't help the cause. At this point, its pretty much a wipe.

I've kicked all the non-active players from the guild.

Don't be sad for me, though.

I've got 10-12 of Sated's finest (including all of my Officers) in queue to transfer to a new, medium pop. server, where Sated will start anew.

We've run our course with trials and tribulations. We've developed and ameneded guild policy, found out what works for us, and now, we can implement it from the very beginning. We will hand pick our raiders, and cultivate a tightly woven 25 man team, forsaking all others. We're not looking to be the biggest guild on the realm, only the best =)

We're taking this week to get things in order and sell off the junk we really don't need to take.

Next week, Sated will have a new home...

WoW: Why We Play

The breakfast topic over at wow.com the other day, was about late night wow sessions.
It got me reminiscing about all nighters, fun times, and the ingredients that keep me logging into the game over and over again...


My most memorable nights started after I made my DK at 55. I had started playing WoW with my friend Ant, but by the time we hit 55, he had found other means to occupy his time. From the DK forward, I flew solo; spending each night questing through a different zone, learning the game, and seeing new, beautiful landscapes for the first time.


But once the questing was over, the game started to change.


I found myself actually looking at the green text chat, and engaging in conversations.


I downloaded vent.


And thats when I fell in love with the game.

I've always had an inherent need to storm the last castle and save the princess--but WoW's story is always changing. Each and every penultimate challenge merely one more chapter in the tale. So, unlike other games that get played, and beat, and then rest upon the shelf until a feeling of nostalgia persuades me to rediscover the story-- this game, and its characters, interweave themselves in a very complex way. Characters are not defined by the events that happen in-game, but are intrinsically developed by the people behind them: their wants, desires, emotions, frustrations--all interwoven between earth and azeroth, dynamically change the way people and gameplay intersect.

People enter and exit from the story; some quietly, others dramatically. And as relationships among characters develop and evolve, we find ourselves (I find myself) logging on, not to rescue a princess, but rather to see how the other story unfolds...

For me, friendship is the backbone of the game's success. While I enjoy raiding, and PvP, the pixels on the screen aren't what keeps me attached to the game. It's the people.

It's Darth-- who is a wealth of both useful and useless information. That remembers fight mechanics photographically, and has knowledge of every spec and every class.

It's Whoa--who I still remember running around as a little boom-chicken when I levelled my fishing, whispering me about EZ- E and Snoop Dogg, and partyin' in the barrio.

It's Haz--just cause he's old and I miss my Great Great Great Grandpa--just kidding.

It's Di--who's single handedly reintroduced me to PvP, and who has stood by me since Sated's conception. Whose become a really close friend, and is one of my absolute, favorite people...


If it weren't for these people, the game wouldn't mean nearly as much as it has. It's been these people (along with others--not forgetting you, Bu and Stink) that create the opportunities for memorable moments; a late night vezax kill, dueling in dresses in front of Org, soloing the pit at 70, levelling to the wee hours of the morning--chatting over vent and really getting to know someone....

Hunting Corncob...

Meet Corncob.

As you can see, he's not very well geared.

Still a number of 226 pieces, and no real raid gear.

Regardless, there is one item in Corncob's arsenal that makes him annoying as shit: Time.

Corncob (and lackies) appear to be unemployed--because the majority of the day they're hanging out in Wintergrasp, waiting to prey on innocent horde passerby's in line for VoA or parusing the quartermaster.

Corncob's MO: Stealthily attack from above, he'll drop flight form, hit insect swarm and moonfire, or if you're mounted, he'll blast you off in hopes to get a falling kill. He likes to drop onto the steeples of the towers, where he can attack and somewhat blend-in. He can easily be 2-shot (at least by my DK), but getting to that point can be tricky. He has an engineers cloak for slowfall, and is fairly quick to run and hide when someone catches up to him (like all alli).

Yesterday, Darth and I went Corncob hunting.

I ran into WG to vendor some stonekeeper shards, and happened upon Corncob and friend killing a fellow horde. This was ultra rare, as both were just chillin on the ground--so I ran up, heartstriked a couple of times which killed the friend, but was just shy of cob. He flew away, and I quickly began getting pelted without so much of a chance to see where he went.

The hunt began.

Usually, we just let him be.

Yesterday, I think we were just bored.

We flew around, trapping him in various places.

I think he killed me as many times as I was able to kill one of them.

If you're looking for something to do on Blood Furnace, I emplore you to hunt for the evasive owl known as Corncob. I promise it to be an entertaining experience.

The State of DPS in 3.3.3

The gang over at elitistjerks has sim'd all the specs for 3.3.3, and the reports are surprising...

DW Frost seems to have taken the lead for DK DPS Specs, followed by Unholy/Frost.

Always wanting to be the best possible DPS for our raids, I went DW again to check it out for myself. I have a couple of ilvl 251 axes I've accumulated from the gunship--so I respec'd, re-glyphed, equipped the axes and went to work in ICC. I'm at 11% hit with a trink equipped, and have played DW before (pre-nerf), so the semi rotation/priority system is still familiar with me.

In T10/ 251 gear, Rime and Killing Machine proc a shit ton. It makes trash epic fun, but with no threat reduction, definitely makes you pop CD's and death pact to survive. On single targets, though, I was less than impressed. Hit and expertise capped, I expected more damage. ToT didn't seem to be procc'ing nearly as much as it should be, and frost strike didn't seem to be critting very often with KM up--so it felt kinda wasted. As DW I'm at 34% crit unbuffed--so I don't know if something was wrong with the way things were working out, or if it was just a bad RNG night.

*** I've since respec'd and gone into ICC as Unholy, and the same goofy mechanics seem to be happening; on some attempts I'm critting a ton, and others none at all. It's almost as if there's something screwy with close quarter combat. I'm gonna keep looking into this...***

After a night playing DW Frost, I had to go back to Unholy-- So I spec'd into the reapingless Unholy/Frost
build that elitist has deemed to be the most bang for the buck. And it is.

On the Subject of Getting Hacked

In the wee small hours of the morning (Sinatra anyone?) I was forced to  /gkick Hazl and his alts from the Sated roster.

I watched as he she depleted the GBank of epic gems, chanting materials, and pygmy oil.

I followed him her out to the Tournament grounds in Icecrown.

I watched as she stripped herself of her T10.

And then, as she stood there, naked, I watched as she proceeded to DE everything in her bag.

At first I thought to myself, "damn. Haz is DEing his shit again." It's nothing new. He's DE'd his current legs, gloves, chest. The GM's probably know him by name, he calls in so frequently.

I knew this was a special case though, when after he DE'd his shit, he put on crap PvP gear. Haz doesn't PvP on the Paladin.

At this point, I knew he had been hacked. I tried calling him. No response. I opened a GM ticket. They couldn't do anything for me. So I screenshotted his WoW-Heroes pages just in case.

And then I tried talking to the hacker.

Just a warning...

The conversation will probably offend many of you. It was early, and my anti-semitic/racist/obesist/cursing was really not on par.

Now that the disclosure's out of the way, Convo after the Break.

Fail Pugs are Fail

Ari said that it was national whiny blogger day--so I'm coming through in the clutch. All this shit happened in the last 2 days, mind you.

Three. 3. Tres.

The number of times we wiped in PoS when 2 fail heals joined our group. The first, a failadin who didn't quite understand how the rock mechanics worked on the first boss, and who definitely didn't know what bacon was...I watched his stacks grow and grow till they reset. I watched as everyones health dwindled to nothing. I watched as...well...you get the picture. Oh, did I mention I was dead prior? Apparently, the fantastic melee shaman had found a way to aggro on one of those big skeletons in the zone, just as our tank pulled. I gripped it off the healer in time to save him, but paid the ultimate price...

Enter fail Priest (healer numero dos). Doesn't quite grasp the concept of tank damage on the ramp...twice.
At this point, I'm just appreciating the fact that the healers are taking the initiative to leave group themselves so we don't have to kick. Luckily, our guildie bear tank is main spec'd resto. He went heals, I went tank, and somehow, we made it look easy.

Forge of Souls: I'm healing. Pally tank is rushing through everything--everything's going really well...then...at the first boss pull...he drops group. Dick. No warning. No DCing. He pulled the boss and left group. /Wipe.
Enter Warrior tank in 213/226 gear-- he's slow, but we get through it.

DTK-- yes, dtk. How can someone be fail in DTK, you ask? Lemme tell ya. Di's tanking on her Drood,  and I'm healing on the Pally. We get in, I buff, and theres a warrior a little slow to come in. He meets us at the pull, and the first thing he says is: "Pally. Crusader."
Now...do I really give shit about my Aura in a 5 man? No. You wanna know why? Cause as long as someone doesn't do something stupid, I can heal the whole fuckin place with holy shock. No lie. I've done it even in HoS.

Anyway, I respond with "No. I like to go fast."
Thinking this would be funny...I then start to be lectured on how fail I am, and yada yada yada...and that he's got a 5k scored Holy Pally himself, and I'm fail cause I'm in PvP gear....
Fuck.
He got me there. I forgot to switch back.
I thank him for noticing.
I switch my spec, then change into my PvE set.
He immediately shuts the fuck up.
Since I changed spec, I need a new Aura.
"Hey Monster (the warrior), this one's for you."
Crusader Aura activated.

[Silence]

I hate goblins...

Once upon a time, Shyste was a young DK somewhere around level 70ish...
As a young DK, Shyste was also very foolish--some would even say an ass-backwards ruh-tard.

One day, a fellow guildmate had a great idea, and asked help of a few members to achieve his Bloodsail Admiral title...

It was the worst thing I've ever done.

And I didn't even get the title.

I didn't see it all the way through--just to the point where I was extrememly hated by all the goblin cartels.
At that time, I was really still learning the game, what reputation was, and the consequences of getting myself into shit like this.

All in all, it really hasn't been too bad, save for Holiday events and anytime a guildie needs help in a goblin region.

There was a silver lining this weekend...

My Pally and Di's Druid got to 80 a while back, and one of the things she was reaaaaaally looking forward to, was farming the Ravenlord mount in Sethek Halls. Yesterday, I convinced her to get it going. Well, it didn't really take much convincing--it was more like asking myself if I wanted another chocolate chip cookie (no brainer). So we stroll into Shadow Labs, Crypts, and Sethek for a bit of rep grinding to get her to honored: it doesn't take much--maybe 5 or 6 clears. Labs gives the best bang for the buck, btw.

Anyway, so we're running through, I'm pulling mobs by the room full, and Di is scavenging all the loot she could...and we end up with a shit ton of netherweave =)

So I get to thinking...

Maybe I'll just take all this netherweave and run my happy ass to gadgetzan, and turn it in for some rep, right?

/Denied

Fuckin goblins want mageweave.

End of story.

The KISS Guide to the Blood Princes

We're nubs.

I'm gonna preface this post by saying, I understand that quite a few of you may be farther along than we are, and when you read this, you'll probably say to yourself, "well duh..." To that, I don't care. Just bare with me...

Last night we're attempting the Princes.

One, two, princes kneel before you. That's what I said now =P

Anyway-- we're on the princes, and we're wiping everytime we hit Keleseth. Fucker. Everything up until that point is fine; we're keeping the beach balls up in the air, DPS is target switching and staying away from eachother on the rifts...but those damn black orbs are fuckin us up. We wiped maybe a dozen times. I tried tanking them, and was still losing em when I needed them most.

We were theorycrafting sons-o-bitches; trying to figure out different ways for the OT (me) to grab em fast and furious like when Keleseth became empowered. It worked, somewhat--but still failed. We couldn't figure it out. Some were claiming bad luck (RNG), some were convinced that dps was mis-targeting--at the end, I just knew we were doing something wrong.

Now-- I'm a huge fan of simplification. I like to take a step back, look at the problem, and think of the easiest possible way of solving it.

I couldn't think of shit last night.

Sometimes, my guys (and gals) are sooo in tune with their toons and the game mechanics that we tend to view things very microscopically; tearing down minute details as opposed to taking a step back and looking at the big picture.

Today, I consulted my RL friend that has a tight Alli raiding guild on Cenarius (don't hold the alli thing against him, he's good peeps).

Anyway....Here's the solution......




DRUMROLL PLEEEEEEASE

Move the fuck away.

Yeah--thats it.

The OT builds a shit ton of aggro, then right before Keleseth gets empowered, he picks up orbs and moves out of the way of the rest of the raid (Keleseth won't move); that way no one can cleave or accidentally AoE the orbs on him, and as long as dps watches their threat, everything is mother-F'n peachy.

/sigh

I'm ready to one-shot the shit out of these asshats.

/Screenies incoming

The Healadin's UI

For the past few days I've been thinking quite a bit about my UI, and ways to improve on its appearance and functionality. I'm constantly catching glimpses of UI's that are so put together and clean, that it makes me want to try something new to mine.

Now, I'm a minimalist at heart. I enjoy the real estate on my screen, so anything that deters from that openness is no good. I do like some players minimal use of kgpanels, covering the action bars and chat frames, while still leaving open spaces--although I'm not exactly sure how to go about constructing panels...

Here's a picture of my Pally's UI. As you can see it's pretty basic; I only have out whats absolutely necessary.And, I've since removed my bags and repositioned the Aura bar a little more out of the way.

Unit Frames
After a few weeks using xperl again, I decided to go back to pitbull. While I do like Xperls functionality, using it for party and raid frames is a bit overwhelming for me--its too busy. I like pitbull because it allows me to add or delete modules in-game; so I've deactivated most. I keep my frame and target frame centered so that I can see everything at a glance. I keep up player, pet, target, target of target, and tank frames, and forsake all others. The one thing I did miss about xperl, was the castbar latency function--but Quartz is a nice replacement for that.

For the party and raid frames, I just can't get away from grid. It shows me only the important things; HP, curses, and things that need to be cleansed. While I did enjoy seeing buffs on xperls frames, Grid is just a much neater package and easier on the eyes, for my taste. 

For my action bars, I'm most definitely in love with bartender. Its fast, and super simple to configure. I've got my main spells macro'd in with my CD's and placed in the number row-cause everything's pretty much keybound to my Naga (which I absolutely adore).

Buffs/Debuffs
I've got a list of buffs on the right of the screen (via Elkano's Buff Bars), just under my sexymap. I keep 'em fairly transluscent so I don't notice them as much-- But the debuffs fairly large and much more prominent. That allows me to see via periferal vision when I'm hit with something important (even though it shows up on Grid also).

Tracking
In-between my frame and grid, I keep track of all my important Pally specific stuff: Sacred Shield, Bacon, JotP. I think the addon's called CLPT--and it's very nice. And, what UI is complete without Recount... it generally sits in a small area to the right of the screen. For boss timers I've been using Deus Vox--its light weight, easy to configure, and I think the announcements work better than DBM.

I've been running this setup for quite some time on my DK--but I'm completely open to suggestions. What addons do YOU have that you can't live without? Holler...

Photos of things I never posted.

In my constant search for credible topics....well...who am  I kidding? I only post whatevers usually on my mind...


At any rate--I was sifting through my screenshot folder and found a bunch of stuff I had thought about writing about...but never did. So here's some fun for you....


Di's Proto =)

After a few weeks of mishaps and failed attempts, we finally got Di her Glory of the Hero for the red proto drake. I think I asked begged her for days to write a little something...I've yet to see it =p
I dunno why, but I still love the way these proto's look...


More after the BREAK...