Wisp's Ramblings

Been a while!

2011-08-12T14:26:00.001+01:00

Been a while since I last made a post! Pretty much because I'm not playing wow any more, and haven't done much in the way of playing any games either!

So this, like most are, pointless post is a reminder to myself to actually get on and write about something! So hopefully that's what I'll do.

Wisp

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Dollhouse

2010-11-03T15:25:00.001Z

Ok last night I finished season two of Joss Whedon's f doll house. And wow. I had thought the first season was brilliant with some really interesting ideas and concepts, but this one surpasses it by far!

A lot of the twists I didn't see coming, for example the senator. And in the run up too the end with the identity of the co-founder of Rossum, had so many little misleading clues it took me longer than normal to work out who it was.

At the end I was left thinking wow, plus I got to see my current favourite red headed actress, Felicia Day, in the last episode. (Hair colour is a requirement to qualify as current favourite actress btw). To me I thing that the second season of dollhouse is the best of Joss Whedon's work I've seen. Better than buffy and angel, even better than firefly!

Wisp

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Bubble Gums Journal - Entries 5 to 7

2010-10-25T16:25:00.001+01:00

Day 5, Entry 5.
So today we had a red BPN, Some intruders had broken into a reactor substation and needed to be removed. Not the best of jobs for our team but no one else seemed to be around. We got needles to inject ourselves every ten minutes. That took some courage to do! Inside we where attacked by tank breed dogs, they died but we got a few bites! Searching the place we found some bombs and a black pool of energy between for pyramids, Arny or Luna said it was ebb related. Then the bombs started beeping rapidly so it was die or jump into the energy so I jumped.
We landed in a cave! Down a tunnel was a pool of blue ebb stuff dripping upwards so I touched it with my finger tip! My finger and death suit turned blue, permanently! Arny reckons it's a good thing which can't be good a he refuses to acknowledge Brainwaster's are a step up on the evolutionary chain from Ebons. Why else would we breed true? Any way it appears that the flow of ebb in the tip of my right index now flows differently. Then we all passed out probably from the radiation which is not a good thing as my flux has been impaired by it a bit.

Day ??, Entry 6.
We woke up sometime later still in the cave but our uni's had been taken by someone. Outside the cave was a sky with three planets floating above! No rain so we weren't on Mort anymore. Arny found tracks which we followed across a barren desert wasteland. Arriving in another cave the others got attacked by flying things that drained their flux. In this cave was a red pool of ebb stuff. Opposite to the blue so I touched it with my left index finger and got blown across the cover and all my flux went! Ouch is all I can say. Bit further in we found a SLA orbit to surface shuttle.
Nearby was a room with a starmap and another with a red pool of energy between triangle black pyramids bigger than in the reactor room. So after eating the food in the landing bay we called the void ship on the shuttles's com. The pilot seemed to be really fascinated with the word - interesting - as he said it repeatedly. Any way we are to tell no one about this place as it was classified. He said to put a little 1 inch black pyramid on our suits, go touch the black pyramid to make the pool black and jump in to get back to Mort. It was a bit more complicated but I worked it out first and left this strange world.

Day 42, Entry 7.
We woke up in a room belonging to the department if ebb. How we got there was classified and all our electronic gear was gone. But the end of my index fingers where still blue and red and the pyramid is still attached to the back of my right hand. After we left we got pulled in by cloak division they wanted to know what happened in the reactor and how we appeared over a month later! I won't lie to 'em so I told them every thing that had happened except what had been classified. Still feel a bit sick from the dog bites...

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The PATCH!

2010-10-14T16:10:00.001+01:00

And so the pre-cataclysm patch has arrived and it did come to pass that the nutter (that's me by the way!) Returned once more to Azeroth.

I spent several hours yesterday sorting out my interface. Pretty much rebuilding it up from scratch, changing where I put my bars and ui elements on the screen. Rewriting my power auras procs. Still not happy but a few heroics should help me tidy up better!

Next came the playing with the target dummies and the full impact of the fundamental change to my class now hits home! Its going to take some time to get used managing focus rather than mana, a task made harder by having to learn new hot key sequences. It amazes me that after all this down time from the game I still remember what my old hot keys did! This problem will be helped out with a judicious use of heroics over the next few weeks.

So what else has happened and what are my plans upto the 7th of December, well thanks for asking me that me as it's a question I can answer!

1) I plan to hit the five man heroics pretty hard, just because I can build up on the justice points to improve my a but and to hit the hard cap going into cata, I'm pretty sure that there is a cap.

2) Relearn how to play my class obviously.

3) Pick up one of each pet useful for raiding and dungeons.

4) Get my guild sorted out, in our private channel we are thinking of just putting together for ten man raiding, which is actually fine by me.

5) See what events there atte running up to release date! I have already noticed the earth rumbling in Ironforge.

And that's about it for now!

Wisp

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Civ 5

2010-10-08T10:58:00.001+01:00

Installed the game on sunday at 11:30, bad mistake as it meant I didn't get any sleep that night! Fortunately my decision to cut down on caffeine a few months ago paid off, two cans of redbull kept me awake all day at work.

Not really played a civ game since three, largely due to my wow obsession! And I actually am enjoying this version. The city states are a cool addition and won me my first game, as it turns out they get to vote on diplomatic victory! I was expecting the vote between the only remaining two sides to be pointless.

Now we move on to the problems. The game had to be installed via steam. Barely noticed the first time but as I had to reinstall it once this was painful due to stupidly slow download speed. Then it turns out the game is seriously unstable on my machine, hence the reinstall. Too get it working almost reliably I have to play in windows mode using the direct-x 9 version rather than 11.

So many hours into my current game as the English on a archipelago map (almost feels like cheating) I am still enjoying the game, and hex grid rather than squares is another cool improvement.

As this is my first entry from my new phone I am really curious how it's going to format!

Wisp

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Woot - Winterspring Frostsabre!

2010-10-05T06:56:00.000+01:00

An hour and a half this morning from 5ish and the last vanilla rep I could complete pre-cataclysm is cleared :)

So I got to buy the Frostsabre, which came with an unexpected bonus!

Wisp

Bubble Gums Journal – Entries 2 - 4

2010-10-04T18:28:00.000+01:00

Day 2, Entry 2.
Our First BPN was to go clean some trains. The maintenance staff had been eaten by something. Cool! For some reason the others seemed to think that cleaning trains for 50 credits, split four ways, is beneath them. Morons don’t they understand we have to proof our worth to the great SLA Industries before we start getting better jobs. Well the eaters turned out to be baby carrion, now carrion jigsaw pieces. A nut job frother threw a grenade at the carrion while we were in combat, so Luna shot him – she really hates frothers! He hurt the healer so had to die! Looks like we were allowed to kill this one...

Day 3, Entry 3.
Today we got a job to protect some guy for 4 hours. So he starts a few fights by being a jerk and then a group come along and shot him! Even in ebb beast form I couldn’t do more than scratch em! They left and then Arny fixed him. He had a phone call and then all hell broke loose two people entered the club and opened up with the assault rifles. We got the jerk out and a car turned up with Black Night Opps, The jerks escort turned out to be an ebb user and killed him, we killed the scum. That’s all there was to it. BPN failed but 5 dead Black Night scum, so I can live with that!

Day 4, Entry 4.
I was on telly!!!! We got an execution warrant for a Stormer who’d done something bad to the company. In a downtown waste land we crossed paths, with barney blasting him and Luna shooting him, and me performing a perfect “Bubble Pirouette” for the killing blow live on TV! Afterwards Barny invited us all around for dinner. He’s weird, while my rage bubbles just beneath my bubbly attitude, his is buried deep beneath an ice-cold surface. So once we’d eaten I had to get out of there leaving him with the two ebons who were talking crap. After all I hadn’t been laid for almost 24 hours!

A HORRIFIC Realisation!

2010-10-03T19:42:00.001+01:00

Ok while doing stuff on Thursday I started thinking about wow and the pressure I'm getting to hop over to the horde side. Something that’s highly unlikely to happen because on the one hand I have no intention of creating a new main, having put way to much time, effort, heart and soul into Wispcat to replace her. And I have no idea what horror a faction move will do to my reputations and alliance only things like my mounts!

Anyway (I start way to many paragraphs and sentences with that word! I wonder why?) I was thinking about what I would lose by degenerating Wispcat from a night elf into a blood elf. In fact a double degeneration cus high elves are a degenerated night elf as well... And it hit me I would not be able to get my Wintersabre mount... SHIT! My Wintersabre mount, with the mass vanilla wow changes due in cataclysm, some of which may even happen in the upcoming patch, means Blizzard might remove the faction from the game...

So rather than wait till the patch I'm back to playing wow early! My interface is a mess as a lot of my mods no longer work, being a good 6 month out of date, I can't remember most of my skills but I'm back. Doing almost nothing but running from Wintersabre Trainer -> White Furball Village -> Chasm full of Giants -> Wintersabre Trainer. I don't need to fix anything in order to do that! Just another 27 more trips to go at an average of 3-4 an hour (depending on other people being around).

As a distraction from this farming a friend who is hunting northrend rares for the Achievement Frostbitten did locate the spirit bear which I went and tamed. Adding GhostBubbles to my stable.

To finish off the patch with NO MORE MANA is likely to hit 6th or 13th of October and I'll be back posting stuff about the game then. Because I know all my imaginary readers have missed me talking about wow :p

Wisp

Bubble Gums Journal – Entry 1

2010-09-16T08:00:00.000+01:00

Day 1, Entry 1.
Finished training and now an operative! Gauss train to Mort got derailed by mancheens. We killed some then checked cabins found 3 wraithraiders and 2 stormers. More mancheens came and we killed stealthy ones while raiders snipped others. In the end they retreated. Luna had to hit Barnaby and Arny with kickstart as flux sort of ran out with them. Medkit belonged to dead frother and Arny accidently got hit with Rush. He’s a little bit pissed off. We got debriefed and it turns out that we shouldn’t have killed the insane frother. Made 20c and 150c team bounty.

SLA Industries

2010-09-15T19:24:00.000+01:00

Last weekend, that’s not the one that ended yesterday but the one the week before, just felt the strange need to clarify! But if this sits in a word document for more than a day that statement is now a load of rubbish.

Any way the last gaming weekend (I won’t be so slack this also becomes false) we did, we started a new campaign of SLA. A very interesting game, all happiness and fun! (If you’re off you head on drugs, a very real possibility in this setting). It’s a very dark and gritty game with strong elements of horror and desperation. More info can be found here . The game is also quite old btw.

So my new character is a Brainwaster called Bubble Gum. Her cheerful name, the addition of neon pink highlights to her black hair, her toned figure, amazing good looks, and neon pink colours to her equipment belie a media seeking, bloodthirsty psychopath.

My character is the melee combat specialist of our group with a customised chain axe, and enhancement as one of her primary ebon skills. She will gradually improve her ranged combat skills as well for when you just can’t or really shouldn’t get close to your target.

The rest of the team is another Brainwaster called Barnaby who specialises in the Blast power. Bubble Gum has given him the designation of Ranged Support (AOE Capable). Then there is an Ebon called Luna who has investigative based skills along with a good rifle skill. Her designation is therefore Ranged Support. Finally there is a second Ebon called Arny whose areas of expertise are scouting and Ebb Healing. Bubble Gum’s designation for him is obviously Healer!

For those who know the system this is a bit of an unusual group! As Ebon’s and Brainwasters really don’t like each other. But from Bubble Gum’s point of view Luna and Arny may be a couple of wimpy fairies but they’re her wimpy fairies! And if any one dares to hurt the healer they can expect to be meeting her chain axe very shortly!

This should be an interesting game and I’m even writing a journal for bubble gum in the game. The first entry will be copied to a subsequent post.

Bubble Gum’s starting character sheet can be found here – we used 350 rather than 300 points for initial character creation. And where cruelly limited to a maximum starting Protect skill of 4!

Wisp

Midgard at War - DAY1 Report

2010-09-15T18:59:00.002+01:00

Logged onto Castle of Heroes last night before going to bed with the intention of just making sure something was happening in each of my castles only to discover we are at war.

Looks like Narayan from Harem got fed up with some of us refusing to either join his guild – with a name like that??? As if!, Or become a training guild for harem! So he went to war with us instead!

Then I noticed I was down 3 castles which got me a little bit annoyed (at the same time it restored some of my interest in the game!) So I went on a quick scout and attack run to reclaim what is mine! After which I cashed in every resource outside of my home castle and brought about 9 combat scrolls including a cheaper one I’ll never use just to empty the castle of gold!

I can’t remember how many forces I had in those other castle but it was approximately 1000 elite archers in the elven one and 2000 direwolfs in the orcish castle. The undead castle had no troops as it was just a castellian training facility. Serves me right for not shifting them back to the capital I suppose!

In re-claiming my castles I perma-lost 74 Fairy Dragons and 4 Elite Archers, while members of Harem perma-lost – 421 Unicorns, 229 Elite Archers, 92 Elven Archers, 600 Lichkings, 720 Ghost Dragons.

This morning I was going to log in an throw down an 8 hour diplomacy card to cover my time at work but I had a really bad night and was running late! So my plan of making raiding attacks may be delayed as I once again retake 1-4 of my secondary castles!

O and the blackie’s also declared on us as well...

Wisp

In the weirdest Places

2010-09-11T20:25:00.000+01:00

Why wandering around Newgrounds today I came across a game called Alice is Dead and its following two parts. Was actually really impressed with these :)

But what I was really really impressed with was the song "Alice is Dead" in part three, and unknown to me - cus I'm more interested in games I suppose - it turns out Newgrounds has music on it too!!!! And the song was by an aussie called hania. And there is tonnes of it - I know I like two songs but its time to see what else their is.

Wisp

WOW and Stuff

2010-09-11T03:44:00.002+01:00

Before I begin, I will admit I am currenly very very drunk!!!
I am a gamer, a roleplayer, hey a nerd, a geek and proud of it!
Tonight I have been thinking about my time playing world or warcraft! And I have some things to say!
I miss the friends I made years ago! Vagar who was on my first ever instance in blackthathom deaps - we 3 man'd it with a rogue over several hours and many many deaths, and then Tsuabasa and Taylar who I see screen shots of in my archive when we where leveling upto 60 so long ago! I always regret leaving our guild Twilight Talons for a startup raiding guild while you where on holiday Taylar. I love you hon and always will even tho you will probably never read this!
Moving on I found a couple of weeks ago my Drunken Dragons T-Shirt!!!! And it reminds me that of every guild since twilight talon I have ever been in this is the one that most felt like home! I so regret the disband and recreate where I was asked to sit in judgement of who should be allowed back in.
From my DD days I miss so many people! Especially Oona (Isabella) I remember our runs in Strat and Scholomance where my comment on teamspeak of "opps" was always handled with humour and fun! I also miss you babe and tho I'm crap at sending messages I really hope you are doing well! Of course from then I missed loads of other people :)
So since Eylisum and Eureka where murdered - no other word is justified - I've only really been on the game to finally get my "insane in the membrane" achievement!!! 6month overdue when I got it but I got it :)
Now I'm waiting for patch 3.9 when hunter ditch mana! Something which would make Kersenka soooo happy if he was still around! WHere did you go my friend??? I miss you too! Then I shall be back to WoW again - my addiction, my pleasure. my fun! And I have to decide what to do!!!! Will my friends Avid (where did you go you dwarfen twat!), Akuru (the priest of wiping!), Dhark (who has had so many chars since the rogure) and Avin - (whose name I have forgotten in my very drunken stat- real id don't show char names.....) All come back to the Alliance or will Drunken Dragons be willing to take back a huner who left years ago? Addy? what do you say??
While checking stuff on wow - I saw a message for Kers a week ago :D :D makes me smile :)

Ok now enough about wow - despite it once being my life and come cataclysm will possible again! I have one final drunken though to say - WHY O WHY do I constantly obsese about an ex who I will never hold again?

God I need help! Some one to get me out of my rut! - So looking for a slightly bossy women (red hair a major plus!!! - see Looking back at women in tv I've fancies their is a trend - Gillian Anderson, Alison Hanagan [willow], Leta Alexandra [babylon 5], and rencently Felicia Day - Red heads all (even if died in the shows that was the colour!!!!) - And fun, gamer a bonus, into rock, metal, synphonic rock, nu metal ect also a plus!!!

Going to shut up now as I may be sobering up!!!!!!

Wisp

The Guild - Game On

2010-08-24T00:27:00.000+01:00

Latest music video from the guild - absolutly awsome.

Wisp

Mass Effect

2010-06-13T14:22:00.000+01:00

Just finished my second run through of Mass Effect - and have to say its an AMAZING game. I'm not in the mood for a review but take my word for it the game is just awsome, a deep story with some amazing cut scenes. I was going to run through the main story twice more on Hardcore and then Insanity mode but Mass Effect 2 arrived in the post yesterday so its currently being installed.

So I'm just going to show the screen shot I took at the end of the game, which is now my new wallpaper :) And finally my character (you can customise appearence) Juliet Shepard is HOT! Must be the rich red hair :)

Wisp

Theme Tune

2010-05-31T20:00:00.001+01:00

I had a go at settlers 7 a month or so back and while I enjoyed the game I did think the campaign part was a bit short! Appears to be aimed largely at multiplayer games.

Despite this the theme tune just blew me away! So a bit of looking and here is a version of it I found on You Tube.

And also a link to the artists MySpace page > Here

Wisp

So the results are almost complete....

2010-05-07T13:11:00.001+01:00

A jump into real life this afternoon, seeing as I've just got up (my result came in at about 5:02). The election shows to me how unfair and undemocratic a first past the post system is. With about 24 more seats to be declared the number of seats is:-

Conservative - 294
Labour - 252
Liberal Democrates - 53
Over - 27

But at the same time the percentages of the actual vote go as follows:-

Conservative - 36.1%
Labour - 29.3%
Liberal Democrates - 22.9%

So at the time of writing this the conservatives have 47% of the seats with 36.1% of the vote and labour have 40% of the seats with 29.3% of the vote. Both parties have a greater percentage of seats than votes.
Now next down you have the Liberal Democrates with only 8% of the seats but with 22.9% of the public vote!

To me that is unfair. Our system is in desperate need of reform. So before I escape this stupid thing called real life here is a very important link- Electorial Reform Society

Wisp

New Look

2010-04-07T17:28:00.000+01:00

Well at work I've been learning loads of web technologies because we are finally shifting all our reporting databases to an intranet platform, and will also be moving the in house databases from access (yes... I know but I work in a college... which explains it all) to web based applications.

So on messing with the wonder that is JQuery I began thinking can I tidy up my blog with it, make section hide and grow with mouse overs etc. I tried it but the widgets would not co-operate so instead I remembered an email about blogger in draft. Looked at it and redesigned my blog using that instead. With a bit of my own CSS thrown in to get fine details how I wanted them. (The Firebug plugin for fire fox helped wonders for locating the actual ID's and Classes of the stuff I wanted to style).

The result is my new look blog :)

Wisp

I am INSANE!!!

2010-04-05T16:07:00.004+01:00

At long last, 5-6 months later than it should have happened; this did!
And so I have my nice new title of "the Insane" not sure if anything will come up that'll make Wispcat ever use a different title now!.

Also within 30 mins of getting the achivement I ordered a custom mousemat from PrintWarcraft.

The funnyest think about all this is that once I sell my left over cards for making decks as well as the darkmoon cards I have actually made, I would have made a profit on the whole DMF rep part of the achivement!!!

Wisp

So playing wow again

2010-03-22T18:17:00.002Z

Since just after the new year I've been back playing wow again. Not raiding just playing casual working on my alts and of course catching up on all that time I've not spent working on "The Insane"

So what can I say - my gear is about as good as it can get outside of raiding, with maybe an extra frost emblem peice every month or two! I started off hitting the random dungeon finder pretty hard to the point that I have heirloom shoulders and chests for leveling all my alts current and planned! along with heirloom weapons as well.

For the last month I've slowed down again to just doing the cooking daily - well until I got my chef hat! - the fishing and JC'er ones and all 9 Argent Crusade quests, they are my easy, if slow route to 99 out of 100 mounts.

So thats about it for wow for now. Not got a huge amount to say until I get "The Insane" or join a new raiding guild (which will be when I've finished building the new PC).

Wisp

PRINCE2

2010-01-29T18:06:00.001Z

On a life issue, after 3 days of some serious hard work I got 80% on the exam for PRINCE2 Foundation so I'm seriously happy :D

Wisp

Bye Bye Aion

2010-01-26T15:57:00.002Z

Well despite this being a very good game, i gave it up. It was just missing the social side that I'd built up with friends from WoW!

Not posted in ages and this one is about 4 sentences!!! Will get back to posting properly soonish I hope!

Wisp

Another year and decade!

2010-01-01T20:01:00.000Z

Happy new year my imaginary readers!

And from the Onion

2009-10-02T00:50:00.000+01:00

While wandering around the onion news network site at work I came across this article
And I completely understand where the guy is coming from, cus as a friend said years ago “Even dressed as a geeky nerd She’s Hot”. A sentiment I completely agree with!

Wisp

Onyxia is Back but

2009-10-01T22:08:00.002+01:00

patch last week contained the revamped, upped to lvl 80 Onyxia boss fight! And… I only have a small bit of disappointment that I’m not in a raid guild that’s going to go kill her. Maybe the guild wreckers broke my love of the game or maybe it’s just another temporary downward spiral of wow apathy? Who knows? Only time can tell.

Wisp

Shopping Outfits…

2009-10-01T21:58:00.002+01:00

And for something just plain funny was a link from The Anorak to a blog called People of Walmart. Pictures people have taken of walmart customers, and cars in the carpark, in the states. Makes me feel less bad about walking around to sainsburys in a pair of baggy tracksuit bottoms and a t-shirt!

And as ASDA has been owned by walmart for a few years now maybe I could go on a hunting trip and see if anyone here can be THAT BAD!

Wisp

Aion

2009-10-01T21:55:00.001+01:00

This post was written a week ago! I was didn’t get around to posting it.

Pre-ordered this game on Sunday. Not really paid much attention to this or other upcoming MMO’s but with the untimely death of Elysium and some friends who had been doing the beta’s for this game I decided to try it out. Official UK launch isn’t till Friday but due to pre-ordering I’m in on a head start code.

Made my first character on the server we had decided on and played around for a couple of hours on Monday night, and the early levels are pretty much average MMO faire.

The Tuesday after work I logged in and discovered a 7hour 20mins queue to log in! This prompted me to make another char on a different server. Which I took through to level 10 (got my wings).

Skilling up crafting skills is interesting. You get work orders to make items that get handed in, most of the materials for which are supplied to you. Crafting doesn’t seem to be a fast process but you aren’t dumped with tonnes of junk items no-one needs. We will see how this progresses.

Tonight after work if there is no queue on the first server that’s where I’ll go! If on the other hand there isn’t I’ll start a new char on the second server. The reason is I don’t want to commit too much time to a char until I know where we will be settling for the long haul!

Wisp

Such is the way of WoW!

2009-09-15T17:27:00.003+01:00

Its taken two weeks for me to get my current thoughts into words, and those who think mmo's are just games won't understand but tough!

Thursdays raid we went through and killed the just opened last boss in Trial of the Crusade and started onto the hard mode versions. Plus I got the first peice of the new set of tiered armour.

Friday I missed the raid because of a friends birthday.

Saturday I logged on to discover what had happened.

Most of the officers and a large group of the guilds raiders had split to form a new guild with some of the raiders from Eureka. So two guilds those 2nd & 3rd on the server alliance side die.

And now the bit that may not make sense to those who don't understand, I currently feel like a group of people, including some I would have considered friends, have effectivly said "sorry you can't play this game any more". Yup I could join another raiding guild, and probably will. But I will have to move backwards and I've done that before and is pissed me off totally.

At the moment just logging into wow makes me depressed as hell, I'll get over it eventually but for the moment I am just fed up.

Wisp

Blizzcon

2009-08-22T02:13:00.002+01:00

Just watched the class & professions panel and...

NO MORE MANA!!!

At long last hunters are losing mana for focus :D

Link Tooltips

2009-08-04T22:48:00.003+01:00

Hopefully the link at the end of this sentence should have a tool tip! Siren's Cry.

And this is me on WoW Armoury Light - Wispcat.

Wisp

Argent Tournament Dailies

2009-08-04T21:52:00.001+01:00

I’ve become a champion of Ironforge today completing all 5 alliance factions. Which means no more stupid Jousting. At least till patch 3.2 - Tomorrow.....

The reason it’s stupid? Well to start with I thought it was a cool idea and once I got over the idiosyncrasies it is also easy. But coming back after a long break from doing it I have been reminded of the bits that bug me.

1. The NPC’s do not appear to suffer from GCD. This means they can throw a lance and then instantly charge.
2. The NPC’s can do instant 180 degree turns, I have to turn in a circle unless I jump turn but even that is slow.

Now if the above two points didn’t happen it would probably be slightly easier, but it would be more fun if trying to out manoeuvre your opponents had a point.

Wisp

The Butterfly Effect

2009-07-29T17:46:00.001+01:00

On Monday night, technically it was Tuesday morning, I watched an awesome film as per the name of this post. A kid grows up with quite a violent childhood but suffers from black outs where he can’t remember anything that has happened, usually at traumatic times.

He grows up and goes to college (that’s American college so in reality its University!), and his thesis is on memory. Well since an incident a long time ago he has been keeping a journal of his life and while reading a bit he finds himself reliving a blacked out memory.

The kids dad was a nut case, and one of the scenes of his growing up was going to see his dad. There is a black out in the middle of this scene which jumped to his dad trying to kill him. After his flash back the kid (can you tell I’ve forgotten his name yet?) talks to his mum about his memories and it turns out his dad had found a way to…???

It turns he can go back in time to these black outs and change the past. The result is the rewriting of the future, and huge nose bleeds as his brain struggles to store years of new memories in a few seconds. But each time he goes back to try and fix some of the horrific parts of his childhood other new bad experiences happen to him or his childhood friends.

In time each of the blackouts from the earlier part of the movie get played out in his time travelling stunts, sometimes more than once and he ends up in a future where he didn’t make his journals, the reading of which is what sends him backwards, and in a mental institution.

The main focus of his attempts to fix things was his best friend as a child who had suffered from her sick fathers attentions. It turns out that when her parents split up she decided to stay with the dad who she hated because if her & her brother had gone with their mother she would never have seen the main character again.

So to the end of the film, where he has to watch an old home movie of when he met this girl, no journals in this reality, and he goes back in time again and rather than being nice so they become friends he tells her to never come near him or he will kill her mother. She then chooses to go with her mother when the parent split and time moves forwards where they didn’t know each other.

Years later they walk past each other in the street and both stop, he of course has memories of the various histories from 8 years ago, she only met him as a child. She turns to look at him and then turns away just before he looks back. Both then walk away.

The film was one of those that left me wheeling just sort of thinking WOW at the end, it is now very much on the list of films I need to have in my collection.

Wisp

Temporary Outage – Posts End Marker

2009-07-28T20:05:00.000+01:00

The preceding three posts where written a week or so ago, but I’ve had a few internet connectivity issues and couldn’t be bothered to rewrite them!

Wisp

Two very useful rings…

2009-07-28T20:00:00.000+01:00

In my experience of playing Elder Scroll games there are two very useful magical effects to have in items. Water breathing & Night Eyes. So a ring to cover each of these where my first creations.

Must admit the blue vision of night eyes is really weird, especially outside. And when hunting for dropped weapons I often take it off and cast a light spell!

On the other side my water breathing ring allowed me to clear out a largely underwater cavern of Argonian Tribesmen without having to worry about casting a spell every 2 mins! The number of Glass, & Ebony daggers I collected paid for a silly house in the imperial city and all its upgrades, plus a load of new enchantments on my elven & glass armour :)

Wisp

Oblivion

2009-07-28T19:00:00.000+01:00

Well, it has been years since I played Morrowind and even longer since Daggerfall! Both awesome games. And Oblivion doesn’t fail to impress either. Most of my weekend just disappeared it really has been a while now since I’ve played a game that totally immerses me – Wow stopped doing that a long time ago!

So I may only be 3 years behind on getting this game but hey who cares now. My first character is a custom class I’ve called Blade Mage. Concept is simple Up close and personal it fights with a one handed weapon and shield using touch magic attacks. At range it uses magic to fight.

This time around I also decided to avoid the trap I fell in with Morrowind and that was Mods. You see After doing that game once I went looking for mods to improve the experience with new stuff. Unfortunatly in my hunting I founds tons of cool looking mods and I spent weeks trying to get them all talking together! Which being honest failed and a new game came along to play. So even though there will be loads of awesome player made mods for the game I have just installed the official Bethesda ones, along with the “Unofficial patch for the official mods”.

Well that’s about if for now I’ve just got into the arcane university and magic item making time has arrived :)

Wisp

Only Raiding ATM But…

2009-07-28T17:39:00.005+01:00

I finally got my weapon upgrade from Auraya last Thursday - Siren's Cry.

And on Friday I picked up my T7.5 gloves giving me this nice little set bonus.

Maybe, I can dream you know :p, with the bonus proccing from steady shot, and the large amount of Armour Penetration from my Lotrafen, Beast Mastery may work. The primary attack is Steady which is physical and benefits from both. I think I’ll have to put some time into finishing levelling up Paper Cut then I will do some live tests!!!

Wisp

Temporary Outage – Posts Begin Marker

2009-07-28T17:36:00.000+01:00

The following three posts where written a week or so ago, but I’ve had a few internet connectivity issues and can’t be bothered to rewrite them!

Wisp

Think it’s another burnout phase!

2009-07-16T22:46:00.000+01:00

Over the last few weeks I’ve only really logged into wow for raids. This is because I’ve once again hit a stage of not really being interested in the game. Unfortunately this is putting a damper on my farming plans for “The Insane” but until I feel ready to hit the game properly again there is not much I can do about that!

So what have I been doing during this time? Well I brought a replacement copy of Starcraft and have reached the last Protos Mission, tonight I get to start on Brood War.

I’ve watched Seasons 1&2 of Supernatural with only 6 episodes left of season three. I have to admit that’s an awesome series. Also season one of Bloodlines, the final season of Battlestar Galactica and season 5 of Charmed are all waiting to be watched.

Well when I think of anything worth writing about I’ll add it here!

Wisp

I could be poet laureate…

2009-07-02T20:00:00.000+01:00

At lunch in the heat I came up with the future* award winning poem, in lines of 8.

Suicides Storm
A shout that cuts across the air,
Voice as ever shrill and fickle,
The words a knife in my despair,
Blood now slowing to a trickle.

These twisting dreams of time and space,
The call of shadows echoing loud,
I fell them rip me from this place,
Beneath the thund’ring lightning cloud.

What truly lies beyond the veil,
A journey of eons seconds long,
But if I slip my heart may fail,
My tortured soul must learn the song.

*If you are unaware I live with my head in the clouds of my own little world.

Wisp

A Comment and a Plea

2009-07-02T17:11:00.002+01:00

It has been way too hot for me this week, making it hard to concentrate at work. So on the times when my mind wandered I came up with the following bits of prose.

A Comment on Law
Twisted and warped by the greed of man,
Justice is nothing more than another commodity,
The rich can buy their so called innocence,
Thus making a mockery of our legal systems.

Storm Plea
This heat is dampening both mind and skin,
The very air it fights against my breathing,
So for my eyes of fire and nose of water,
Give me a storm to rage all summer!

Wisp

Ravenholdt(ed)

2009-06-26T00:28:00.005+01:00

After 10 trips back and forth from Southshore to the manor I finally reached exalted, and only a week behind schedule. (This was caused be getting bored with the grind and avoiding it for several days). And with one more quick trip after to max out the faction.

Now I need to get Steamwheedle back up from Revered to Exalted and collect another 92 DMF decks!

Wisp

The Zombies are Coming!!!

2009-06-18T22:16:00.001+01:00

On the web there are many places to get hold of small time management type games to idly pass the time. One that I have been using for over a year now is Big Fish Games. I buy a credit a month and depending on my mood pick up a time management, puzzle or word game. Most are simple in that I complete them in 2-3 days and then move on but occasionally I get one that just grabs my attention and sort of swallows my time whole! In exactly the same way a full scale Roleplay or Strategy game can do. Well on Thursday last week a game of this time popped up – Plants vs Zombies.

The idea is simple you plant, plants into your garden such as the Peashooter to kill the waves of zombies before they can get into your house to eat your brains! So I’ve completed the adventure, all the mini games and puzzles, completed all the survival modes but still I’m spending hours playing the game!

I think part of it is the zen garden! As the play you can pick up plants for your garden which you just water and nurture until they are fully grown. So I’m repeating the adventure and survival games in order to pick up as many plants as I can, need them all!

Which I think partially explains why I’m doing this! The game is fun and I have an addictive personality when it comes to games….

Wisp

The 700th Junk Box.

2009-06-11T18:22:00.000+01:00

On Tuesday night I was on standby for the raid and so made use of my time in collecting another 150 heavy junk boxes in Tyr’s hand, passing the halfway point in the process! I’m down to a mere 13 hours of farming left! so am expecting to be exalted with Ravenholt a week on Friday!

On another goal I made up my first Outlands DMF deck in time for this month’s Fair and put myself onto 0/12000 Honoured. From farming the materials for making the outland cards I have noticed the real slow down factor is the Primal Life. Even buying all the stuff on the AH it doesn’t keep up with pigment from the 50% herbs.

So the plan to deal with this is finish of Ravenholt and then get Sneakycat up five more levels to 65 so she can get Wrath inscription to make Northrend DMF cards. Once that’s done I will have a reason to get the Druid up to 78 for herb farming, It also means I can buy and mill the new herbs which have a much bigger supply on the AH!

Wisp

First Hard Mode Uldar Kill

2009-06-11T15:34:00.001+01:00

Sunday we cracked Thorim hard mode after wipes at 5% then 7% then 2%. That fight was a seriously fun challenge, despite the loot being rubbish. I am now looking forward to next week when I’m hoping we get Hodir and Freya+1 done. Flame leviathan +4 would also be good but I think the plan is to just move up to +3.

Wisp

National Qualifier Season

2009-06-05T18:29:00.000+01:00

So last weekend the qualifier season for the 3rd World of Warcraft TCG national championships stared. The format is slightly different this time round thought as there are two types of qualifier, local & grand.

In a local qualifier only the winner qualifies for the Nationals, where as in the grand qualifier it’s the top 4 players. In both cases the qualifier passes down if somebody has already qualified.

The next thing that’s important to know about this set of events is that until July when Fields of Honour becomes legal the format is constructed, then it gets switched to sealed.

I’m planning to hit at least one competition a week this time round starting with the first Grand qualifier of the season in Leicester on Sunday.

My hero to start with will be Chloe Mithrilbolt but that is sure to change as the UK meta game potentially adjusts over the course of the month!

On Sunday when I get home I’ll post up the deck list and how that little Gnome tank faired.

Wisp

Emptying Scarlet Pockets

2009-06-01T19:07:00.000+01:00

After the Yogg kill last night I spent almost an hour on the rogue running around and around Tyr’s hand. And the average number of junk boxes was about 1 per minute. So with travel time to a post box and run back I’m looking at 50 boxes an hour.

With 1250 more needed for exalted, once I hand in the 50 from last night, that’s a mere 25 hours of grinding. Which on the scale of things, like the time spent on Steamwheedle rep, is absolutely nothing! So by the end of June I’m expecting to be Exalted with ravenholdt. It’s silly really In that levelling a rogue to 60 will have taken 3 to 4 time longer than the job I needed the char for!

Wisp

Who ordered Yogg(urt)?

2009-06-01T16:59:00.002+01:00

Last night we downed this stupid ugly giant brain. The fight is intense taking almost 15 minutes but reasonably simple once the pieces fall into place. So now he is down I’m hoping that we as a guild start working on more hard mode achievements and kills because I want my 310% Protodrake mount!

I do know Tuesday will be hard mode council as they are the only boss fight left in this save.

Wisp

Progress at Last!

2009-05-31T18:06:00.003+01:00

I've not put as much effort into the achievement as I could have, but thats partly due to raiding Uldar, Doing stuff in the Argent Tournament. Plus Cards and being all over the place out of the game. But on Friday when my rogue reached 55 I decided that this weekend I will push it to 60 and then get started on my Ravenholdt and DMF rep.

So the rogue is now level 60, and Tyr's hand is a perfect place for farming junkboxes. There are a LOT of humanoids to pick pocket, and the place is large enough that by doing circuits the starting mobs have stuff back in there pockets when you get to them again. So 100 junkboxes handed in today - 1300 more to go... Will start timeing my circuits later on.

Also getting to outlands means Sneaky now has inscription over 325 allowing me to make outland DMF cards. So off went the druid to farm the trees in Skettis. 20 trees (5 circuits of kills) takes about 45 mins. I've only done two 45 mins trips, but grabbing any extra herbs its averaged out at 3 cards worth of ink & primals a trip.

So.. Progress is being made, its going to take a while but at least thinks are moving now :)

Wisp

So I got bored!

2009-04-20T17:55:00.000+01:00

I have got Wisp back up to revered with the steam wheedle cartel. And then the idea of another Knot run made me shudder! So I switched over to levelling my rogue. Everything was going fine up to about level 45 when I got bored…

The upside of this is I spent a chunk of the two weeks off work for Easter avoiding playing WoW. I got through the majority of my unwatched DVD’s – Go the 11 episode straight marathon of Lost season 3 (season 4 now arrived and waiting...). I also found an online game/community site that ate up some more time, to be covered in another post, probably, maybe.

This means I’m a bit behind on my schedule and now that 3.1 has hit I have less time to work on The Insane. But I’ve not given up and the rogue is still levelling (its reached that seemingly really slow bit I remember from my main and two of my alts, between 40-55).

I’m not even going to put a time on things but the next DMF is in three weeks and I would love to have the 100 decks needed ready to hand in then…

Wisp

Accounting of Time

2009-03-25T22:52:00.002Z

So last night I hit neutral with the goblins of the cartel and because it was only about 10:30 I pushed onwards to Friendly. So the halve way point has been reached and passed. The planed timeline is now:-

Wednesday – Minimum (3/6 Friendly), Best (0/12 Honoured)
Thursday – Minimum (0/12 Honoured), Best (3/12 Honoured)
Friday – Minimum (6/12 Honoured), Best (3/21 Revered)
Saturday – Minimum (3/21 Revered), Best (15/21 Revered)
Sunday – Minimum (12/21 Revered), Best (Exalted)
Monday – Minimum (18/21 Revered)
Tuesday – Minimum (Exalted)
Wednesday – Possible Patch Day but I hope not!

Ok these targets will take a lot of time, so only minimal Rogue levelling which is another reason I hope that patch isn’t next week! Now we are going to imagine that the patch hasn’t hit. It’s been a while since I levelled a toon to 60 and never in such a rush so I’m going to make some guesstimates on time to level. Up to 40 – 2 hours per level, up to 50 – 2.5 hours per level, up to 60 – 3 hours per level. Currently at level 24. 16 levels till 40 = 32 hours, 10 levels to 50 = 25 hours, 10 levels to 60 = 30 hours. Total 32+25+30 = 87 hours until level 60… This seems a bit high. Time will tell I suppose.

Wisp

The Race is On!

2009-03-24T17:15:00.000Z

Ok, while on the phone to my parents I had parked myself outside of DM north ready for the next run. When I got off the phone I notice someone had typed “/s Race you to the insane!”

Interesting.. of course I wasn’t going to be the only NUTCASE working on it on the server. So I looked up this warriors reputation on the armoury and thought damn! Probably not going to beat him to server first. This individual was about 3k ahead of me on Steamwheedle rep, which is rather irrelevant as I’ll be exalted by patch day. The kicker was the fact he had already maxed out Ravenholdt and was a good 2-3k into revered of DMF.

But despite this I’m still going to try for it! I’m hoping the patch doesn’t hit next week because that will then give me at least the start of my two weeks off work to work on getting the rogue up to level 60 and farming junkboxes. If that happens I recon I can catch up on Ravenholdt and it will all come down to the DMF!

The other side effect of this is every time I arrive and leave DM I’m checking whose there and looking these people up on the armoury to see if they are competition. Maybe that shall be another post.

Wisp

Losing Sanity: The Endless Knot & Card Collecting

2009-03-24T17:10:00.000Z

This post was lost in time! It has now re-found itself 2 weeks later…

Now I’m a Bloodsail Admiral its time to get back into the good graces of the Steamwheedle goblins. I have spent 4-5 hours in DM North so far with many more to go! The good news is that I’ve discovered that handing knot the mats to make a Gordok Ogre Suit is actually worth 75 rep each time! As I have a stash of Ogre Tanin already, and will get at least 1 every trip that’s a nice little boost to the grind!

Most trips into DM north will be quick, on the first hour I had hit the 5 instances and the hour cap after just 36 minutes. Some are unfortunately slow, having to kill almost every ogre to get a shackle key takes about 20-30 mins. So what do I do when I hit an instance cap? Well….

I have started levelling a rogue. Yup I feel DIRTY but it has to be done. This new char by the name of Sneakycat as I couldn’t get Ninjacat or Bubblegum, has two purposes. The first is to reach level 60 when it can pick pocket all those heavy junkboxes needed for Ravenholdt, the second is its an inscriber which is important for phase 3 and making of lots and lots and lots of Dark Moon Faire cards!

You see back in the day when the DMF first came along I went out doing all those gathering quests in order to get my 1000 or so, tickets for something I can’t even remember! What I discovered was once your rep hits friendly these quests will only give you tickets. So the answer was Darkmoon faire decks, at 350 rep a pop for turning them in. I did 4 or 5, because the Ace of Elementals used to be easy to farm and the rest of the set was cheap on the AH! But in the end though I gave up due to the expense!

We move forward to the present day, the best way to get DMF cards now is from inscription. You can make, without cooldown, a random card from the original sets, Outland sets or Northrend sets. Get a set make a deck and sell it for a fortune on the AH or hand it in for 350 rep. Can you guess which I’m going to be doing once my rogue has a high enough inscription? There are other cards as well, the Rogues, Mages, Swords & Demons sets. These are made by lower level inscription recipes and you only need 3-5 to make a deck. The down side is they are worth only 25 rep each, but the upside is you don’t have to wait until the Faire is in town to hand them in. The last couple of days has found me buying cheap cards on the AH and making the rogue cards with my rogue.

So its maths time! I’m currently at about 2500/6000 friendly. So for exalted I need 36,500 more rep. With the small decks being 25 rep each I would need 1460 more hand ins, which is millions! So as far as buying these cards from the AH is concerned I’ve stuck a 4g a deck limit on how much I spend on a card. The bigger decks of course are worth a lot more rep so I need to get this rogue to 60 as soon as possible so it can max out inscription!

Wisp

Losing Sanity: Raising the Bloodsail!

2009-03-03T16:59:00.000Z

One day behind schedule and I am now revered with Ravenholdt. I reached 11999 just before 1am within seconds of the album I was listening too finishing! A quick trip over to the manor to hand in the 5 boxes I had ready for 75 more rep and phase 1A was complete. It appears my numbers may have been wrong, which serves me write for trusting what someone wrote on wowhead! See 21000 rep at 75 per hand in is 280 hand ins, 5 boxes a hand in = 1400 total! So I need nearly 400 less than I first thought, Yipee. The boxes are phase 1B to run concurrently with phases 2 & 3!

So now its time to head on down to booty bay and start phase 2A, the death of 1800 Booty Bay Bruisers. Not sure how long this will take! I’ll know after an hour of farming, if only I could rope some friends into helping…. In fact I know a couple of Bloodsail Admirals who have not yet fixed their cartel rep.

Wisp

Losing Sanity: Ravenholdt

2009-02-27T19:51:00.003Z

Yesterday before the raid I began farming Ravenholdt rep! Going from abuot 106/3000 neutral to friendly took me just under an hour. On that basis I'll do two hours tonight to get upto honoured and then over the weekend another 4 more hours to reach 11999/12k. After that I'll need about 1800 Heavy Junkboxes.

To get those I'll need a rogue... hopefully I can get people to farm em for me at 1g each, if not I'll have to level a rogue due to the AH being bare of boxes :(

Overall I think this grind won't actually be too much trouble especially as the syndicate mobs are worth 5 rep now up from 1!

Wisp

Wispcat's Formal Name

2009-02-26T18:03:00.006Z

I was just curious what kind of name I'd have on Wispcat if I could choose to display all my titles at once! I've added comma's to group things together in a way I like.

Merrymaker Ambassador, Salty Chef, Elder Knight-Captain, Twilight Vanquisher Wispcat Jenkins the Explorer, the Argent Champion of the Shattered Sun, the Hallowed Champion of the Frozen Wastes, the Seeker Guardian of Cenarius, the Exalted Champion of the Naaru, the Diplomat Hand of A'dal the Lovefool

Wisp

Insane in the Membrane

2009-02-26T17:45:00.000Z

The ultimate feat of strength is coming in patch 3.10! This feat gives the title suffix of “the Insane”. So what do I need to do to achieve this? Well…

Shen’dralar – Exalted …done
Steamwheedle Cartel – Exalted …done
Ravenholdt – Exalted …mmm ok
Darkmoon Faire – Exalted …that’s expensive!
Bloodsail Buccaneers – Honoured … FECK!!!

So on the positive side I can do Raven & DMF from playing the AH for lockboxes and cards. If I give Deathcat inscription I can even make my own cards. These two factions will take a while and probably cost a fair amount but with dailies etc the funds needed can be acquired.

The problem comes with the Bloodsail. You see to get rep I need to kill Booty Bay Bruisers which loses Booty Bay rep. And then once I have got Bloodsail rep up high enough I will need to grind DM for Knot releases to get back up from 0/36000 hated to exalted.

Exalted 999
Revered 21,000
Honored 12,000
Friendly 6,000
Neutral 3,000
Unfriendly 3,000
Hostile 3,000
Hated 36,000

So I am currently at about 6000/36000 hated rep with the bloodsail, so based on the chart above to hit honoured I would need 30+3+3+3+6 = 45000 rep. Each dead bruiser is worth 25 rep so I would need to kill 45000/25 = 1800 of them.
That would be stage one completed but those 1800 bruisers would have cost be 125 Booty Bay rep each which is more than enough to drop my rep with them to 0/36000 hated.

Stage two is to get my Steamwheedle rep back upto exalted which from the chart is a tiny 84000 rep. To do this I'd need to make a couple of Knot runs to DM worth 350 rep each. Clarifying “a couple” gives 84000/350 = 240 trips. At level 70 I averaged about 3 an hour, from what I've been told at level 80 that should be upto 5. So I'm looking at 48 hours worth of farming in DM to get my rep back!!!

Well that is actually a scary amount of work so I had better get started! Bye Bye what sanity I had left.

Wisp

WoW Intervention

2009-02-17T22:31:00.002Z

An amusing YouTube video about World of Warcraft players.

Wisp

To die a bit inside...

2009-02-10T19:30:00.004Z

Ok, plenty of post to come, but this short one for now.

Since the patch I've been Survival, and guess who I found while doing my Oracle dailies? The one, the only, the rare as hell, the awsome looking spirit beast - Loque'nahak but not being 51 points into the Beast Mastery tree he was untameable... so I killed him for the Northern Exposure achivement and in doing so a part of me died.

Wisp

Patch 3.0.8 Hunter Fallout

2009-01-26T18:15:00.001Z

So its been almost a week since the patch and I’m learning my rotations for survival. I’m not even trying trap dancing because until they give us a ranged option for more of our traps the very concept grates on my sensibilities.

Once again blizzard have altered hunters so that one tree alone is end game raid reliable. And what grates the most is that tree is out damaged by hybrid classes, which ones tend to depend on the fight but Death Knights, Fury Warriors and Elemental Shamans and Retribution Paladins are usually up there.

Anyway I’ve sort of got over the fact that in 25 mans on single target fight like patchwerk I’m no longer likely to be near the top of the dps charts. Its still really annoying but maybe it’ll be fixed one day…

I have noticed that with survival my burst damage has jumped and after almost messing up a 10 man patchwerk pull I have learnt that using Explosive shot with a Misdirection can be bad due to its ticks being able to crit! Survival is interesting and different and I don’t mind having to learn it that much, what I do mind is being forced into it.

Finally, volley was over powered and needed to have its damage reduced, it was insane that hunters could be topping the charts on AoE packs. But WHAT THE HELL where blizzard thinking? If there is a class that it makes even less sense to give huge AoE potential to it’s the Rogue. But lo and behold in 25 man Naxx I have been seeing Rogues put out almost the same level of dps as pre nerfed volley!

Blizz Get a Grip please, I’m begging you!

Wisp

Depression

2009-01-22T23:37:00.003Z

So its happened, patch 3.0.8......

And BM hunters have been f**ked up. I did a 25 man VoA on the day of the patch, and my dps went from just under 4k to 2600......

So I'm trying a survival spec, its something new and currently is far better than what was Beastmastery. But trap danceing... I'll be honest I don't like it, why O why O why should a hunter have to move in and out of melee range to maximise their dps??? It is completly and totaly STUPID. We are a ranged class no a melee one!

Any way another problem with with Survival is I'm geared up for BM, so I'm forced to spend gold on re-gemming AND all that mail armour that has been passed on an DE'd in the past I suddenly need to go back and get.

The argument from blizz was that BM hunters where doing to much damage compared to other classes.... Maybe to start with, but up until this nerf, and nerf is an understatement. I've been watching the mages & locks catching up. Our achivement gaining Patchwerk kill, I was only a fraction above a lock.

Now I get beaten into the ground by hybrid classes, DK's near the top, elemental shamens, boomkins, all of them beating me in the 25 Naxx I've just done. I was around 8th place on patchwerk a single target full out nuke fight. Something that hunters and rogues should be excelling at.

Blizzard got this patch very very wrong. Hunters needed a nerf to our AoE damage, but BM didn't need to be screwed on this scale, MM & Survival needed to be brought upto the same level as us. Mages & Locks in PvE where with gear catching up. Rogues needed bringing up in line Hunters.

Suppose atm, I am feeling really let down, disappointed and depressed. If I wanted to stick with BM and try it, I know I'll be way down on the damage these days and I'd have to swap my cat for an ugly looking devilsaur OR spend days doing nothing but camping the spawn points to try and get a spirit beast (I'm OCD but not to the point where I can't see progress as time passes).

Maybe the large bar of cadbury's will make me feel better, but currently I doubt it. I'll let my imaginary readers know.

Wisp

Damage Charts

2009-01-22T17:04:00.002Z

I did write this the day after my last post! But forgot to sort of put it up. So Here is my view on where a hunter should be on damage meters. I know that Blizzards current policy is something about utility no longer being purchased at a cost to DPS, but I feel there should be limits especially if you include PvP. This game has two major sides PvE and PvP and the majority of players will do both, and so to give all the DPS classes/specs the same damage in a raid situation is in my opinion a bad thing because when you swap to PvP that gives the classes with added utility an unfair advantage. Just have a look at how over powered retribution paladins and death knights are at the moment in battlegrounds and arenas.

So below is a list of how I feel the DPS chart for at least ¾ of raid bosses should look if every one is equivalently geared and the players equally skilled. Then I’ll run through the different classes, but please be aware these are my opinions from observation and experience.

Damage Meters for Boss – Generic

Hunters, Rogues, Mages, Warlocks
Priests (Shadow), Druids (Feral/Balance), Warriors (Arms/Fury), Shaman (Elemental/Enhancement), Paladin (Retribution), Death Knight

Hunters – I know I’m a hunter but I do think we should be one of the classes topping DPS Charts in a raid situation. And this should be regardless of talent tree. The reason for this is a hunter is a damage dealing class, translated into PvP we are still a damage dealing class our only shared form of Crowd Control is freezing trap which has 100% chance of break on any form of damage. Then based on spec there is Intimidation which requires our pet to be alive and to hit and is a very short duration or scatter shot which breaks on damage and is also a short duration. Apart from that we have a few tricks for staying at range which can help against some classes but against others who have multiple stun, slow, cc options we are stuffed if our anti cc trinket is on cool down, or we are not a BM hunter with Bestial Wrath off cool down.

Rogues – Should be pretty much sharing our top spot. A rogue has weaker armour than a hunter and has to fight in melee range, which is an argument for them having more DPS. But they also have better damage mitigation in stupidly high dodge ratings and better CC options than a hunter. Vanish is also a much better get out of combat option than Feign Death. Taken all together these all roughly balance out.

Mages – When it comes to AoE and group mobs, like all 5,10 and 25 man trash fights seem to be so far in Wrath. Mages should be up there at the top along with the destruction type warlocks. For raid bosses, mages have much weaker armour than hunters and also stand at range. This may, like with rogues, be an argument for slightly higher DPS but again their utility in party and personal buffs as well as better CC options, ways of getting out of combat in PvP and off course their AoE abilities should balance that out.

Warlocks – Warlocks are currently completely underpowered in PvP, gone are the days of the joke “I beat a warlock and then the game credits rolled”. This was followed by or had replaced shaman, can’t remember which way around it was. Warlocks should really be sharing the spot with mages on the DPS charts, with those spec’d into direct damage being higher than those spec’d into DoTs. Warlocks have the same armour as mages and also fight at range. Warlocks like mages have good CC options but there other utility is in the fact they can have pets and put DoTs on lots of enemies at once. Apart from CC and run they are lacking good ways to get out of combat.

The Rest – One thing that the remaining classes have that the first four don’t is entirely different role options in the different talent trees. Priests can spec to heal or DPS. Shamans can spec to heal or DPS. Druids and Paladins can spec to heal, DPS or tank. Warriors can spec to DPS or Tank. Death Knights currently appear to Tank & DPS in all three talent trees. Because of these options the DPS specs of these classes should be behind Hunters, Rogues, Mages & Warlocks who are damage dealing classes in all talent trees.

How far behind is probably a contentious issue, and my personal opinion is that it should be around 2%. Its not a huge amount, but to me it sounds reasonable.

Wisp

AutoHotkey

2009-01-13T17:24:00.003Z

There was a major problem with hunters that existed at the end of TBC in the end content raiding. This problem stems from the need to maximise your dps and the use of a “button” mashing macro to achieve it. The idea was that you rapidly hit the key binding or clicked on the action button for a macro. Each press can only trigger one skill so by spamming the button it fires off the ones not affected by cool downs. Before Autoshot & Steady shot got decoupled they where two of the actions included in the button, the rest where usually pet related.

Now button spamming has a major problem, you are doing a repetitive action for sustained periods of time and this leads to injury! And it got that far with me on more than one occasion. The solution to this problem? Don’t use a macro, watch your damage drop and get shouted at for slacking on the dps? Buy a programmable keyboard, a solution I know lot of people use.

I didn’t have the money to justify this so in the end I found a little bit of software to do what I need, AutoHotkey. With this program I run a script on my PC while using wow.

XButton1::
Loop ; Since no number is specified with it, this is an infinite loop unless "break" or "return" is encountered inside.
{
if not GetKeyState("XButton1", "P") ;
break
;
send 7
sleep 200
}
return

This script is simple as can be, my left side mouse button, the one in reach of my thumb has been reprogrammed to press the 7 key on my keyboard 5 times a second. Number 7 used to be my hotkey for my old TBC Steady Shot spam macro, currently its just normal steady shot. I get the same effect of repeatedly hitting the key or clicking on the macro button, but without the risk of RSI.

Wisp

Hunter Specs

2009-01-13T17:13:00.001Z

When I first started this game I levelled my hunter in the Marksman Tree. To me, coming from a pen & paper RPG background, the hunter was a ranger type character. The main attraction to the class was distance combat that wasn’t spell casting. From a lore point of view I was thinking along the line of the night elf sentinels, maybe they should give night elf hunters an ability to put an owl up a tree... And from the fantasy RPG side one of my preferred classes has always been ranged fighters of some form. Back on point, the pet part of the class was an interesting gimmick and not that important.

And so I level to 60 and started to raid still as marksman. The pets had started to grow on me a bit by now but due to their vulnerability back then I did instances and raids as much without my pet as with it. At some point while at level 60 I switched from MM to survival, I think it was while I was doing a lot of PvP as well as raiding.

Burning crusade came out and I was soon back to MM, well at least I think I was and I levelled up to 70. It was at level 70 when I started to raid the new 25 man instances that I began to look at optimising dps. In the old 40 mans as long as you knew your job and didn’t slack it seemed less of an issue. But now with only 25 people not only did you have to know your job and not slack but also try to optimise dps. So I started to investigate and for a while I stayed as MM but eventually, despite pets still being vulnerable I made the leap, and to me it was a huge leap, into Beast Mastery. I lost scatter shot!, I ditched silencing shot! I even sacrificed my extended range. Because I do a lot of solo as well as group content as well as play in battlegrounds every now and then this loss to me was HUGE.

A BM spec took some getting used to, having to try and keep my pet alive as well as dealing DPS. Back in the time when it seemed no healers realised how important the pet was, especially to BM hunters, and so the only heals it got was the old channelled mend pet. Seeing my pet die on any boss fight with AoE damage was depressing but I got used to it. Then as time passed I suddenly realised my view on the class had changed, my pet had gone from a gimmick to an integral part of what it meant to play a hunter. And from that point onwards I have been a Beast Mastery hunter.

Then the awesomeness that is Wrath came out and levelling to 80 with my gorilla being able to tank 3,4 & even 5 man quest mobs for me. I was tempted to level as a PvP orientated spec so I could practice a different style of play ready for Arena’s at level 80 but Beast Mastery had become for me the defining spec for my class. I tried various MM & BM builds for raiding but BM always came out top. I didn’t try Survival because since it was nerfed way back in early TBC or it could even have been before, my memory fades, I’ve considered it more of a PvP than PvE talent tree.

So here I am completely committed to the BM spec, dreading the host of nerfs threatened on the current PTR because competent PvE BM hunters have been blowing every other class out of the water. My views on these proposed nerfs and where a hunter should be on a DPS chart shall be my subject for tomorrow. And I listen to the latest BRK pod cast, this time he has an experienced survivalist hunter talking about survival raiding talents. Its well worth listening to, but got me thinking about once again trying an alternate spec.

As I see things the rotations for a BM hunter are the simplest to use > Put Serpent Sting on the target and then SS every 1.5 seconds until SS expires and replace it. The complexities come from managing your pet, keeping it alive changing aspects to maximise the gain from Bestial Wrath etc.

For a MM or Survival hunter the pet is a lot less important, if it dies your not going to lose 40-50% of your dps. Because of this it needs less micromanagement. These two specs have their complexity in the shot rotations and knowing when to use a special shot based on the procs of others.

Where as the specs of some classes like Paladins and Druids are obviously completely different most people don’t realise that different hunter specs are subtlety completely different and I would, just for my own ego like to master the different aspects of what it means to play a hunter expertly. Changing specs at 50g a shot doesn’t really help this as the gold is needed for other goals I have in the game and now I’m exalted with pretty much everything I don’t always bother with the dailies. So I think once dual specs come out it will be time to master the multiple ways of being a hunter as they exist now.

Wisp

Achivements

2009-01-12T17:37:00.003Z

In the early hours of Sunday morning I reached 5555 achievement points. And as the number looks cool here it is!

It was a nightmare to get that last 10 point achievement to reach the 5555 goal! I thought to myself the hoard have Winter Grasp and I still needed the Leaning Tower achievement, so all I have to do is kill some hoard to get rank two and drive a siege engine up to a tower and level it!

Unfortunately in the WG battle around 3am the number of alliance in the zone ranged between 3 and 5, While the tenacity buff grew up to around 8. Taking down that tower while outnumbered like that was not easy, One of my siege engines didn’t even reach the tower, the one before got just a single hit in. But I persevered and eventually using a demolisher I got close enough for the last three shots needed to bring it down. Getting my achievement and somehow around 2000 honour for a loss……

Wisp

Naxxramas Pwnage

2009-01-09T17:49:00.006Z

Last nights Naxx raid was amazing for a whole host of reasons. To start with it was our first one night clear of the instance which is AWSOME. During this amazing raid we did Arachnophobia again for those in the raid who still needed it and because it made clearing stuff faster. This was achieved the same way as the first time; through the treacle effect of lag.

Then moving forward in time to the last wing of the night – The Construct Quarter. This one is left till last because of Thaddius, normally lag makes things trickier but Thad tends to lag even if there is no lag elsewhere, these two can stack up making him almost impossible. By leaving him till last the hope is a lot of raiding groups have left.

So… getting back to the point, last week we killed Patchwerk is 3 mins 23, leaving 23 more to shave off for Make Quick Werk of Him. Well last night he went down in 2 mins 39 and I hit 5092 dps! WWS Stats of the fight.

And finally at the end of the raid looking at the corpse of Kel’Thuzad I found this lying around.

Now armed with the Envoy of Mortality I should go way over that 5k dps on our next Patchwerk kill! Even on trash in 5 man heroics I was pulling 3000 dps with the new gun :)

So as the title says last night was Naxxramus Pwnage!

Wisp

Achievements

2009-01-08T17:37:00.002Z

There are those who hate them, claiming they are just another grind, and there are those like me who think they are a great addition. Some off them keep track of the things in the game that interest me anyway such as reputations!

So achievements are earned for all sorts of things and some of the harder one even come with bonuses like vanity pets, mounts and titles. Each achievement also awards achievement points, there is no use for these apart from as a measure of progression.

My personal land mark achievements so far have been.

Complete 3000 quests – “Wispcat the Seeker”
Complete the fishing achievements – “Salty Wispcat”
Exalted with 40 factions – “Wispcat the Exalted”

Now as achievements are something I wish to complete all off!!!! I’ve added my current score to the counters on right side of the blog.

Finally there is a web site that crawls the EU & US armouries for each characters achievement points allowing you to easily compare yourself! This site, Achievement Tracker, appears to update on every Sunday and I’ve added it in my wow links, pre-filtered to Aszune.

Wisp

Playing Warcraft Catchup Again!

2009-01-08T17:18:00.002Z

Its been a very long time since my last world of warcraft post. Initially because I was a bit fed up at the time, and later because I can be a lazy git! Well as I said in my new year post its time to start talking, once more, to my imaginary audience.

So in roughly chronological order here’s a rundown of what has been happening.

Due to poor attendance the GM of Dice called a raiding break for the summer period…. Over the next two months, yup TWO MONTHS! People understandably left to guilds that where not taking stupidly long raiding breaks.
Being the kind of person who has never left a guild lightly I stayed around until September when raiding was planned to recommence. But the guild was pretty much dead at that point. So I left the guild.
Within a few days some friends invited me into “The Exalted”. Now the main members of this guild where key members of my second raiding guild “Exalted”, way back in the days when MC & BWL where the places to raid. Why a different name? well that’s maybe a story for another time. The plan was to do 10 man content once WotLK was released.
A few weeks later I got a whisper from an officer in Elysium, I’d applied to join them ages ago. Well here was a chance to raid SWP to see and master the final raid of the Burning Crusade which I had almost given up hope for. So I joined Elysium.
Once by one the bosses died, clearing up to Muru by the time patch 3 hit and all the mechanics changed in preparation for the second expansion. Muru and Kil'jaeden soon died. I have to say raiding then was a pleasure, this guild was mature and the raiding atmosphere was reasonably relaxed.
While not raiding I started working on the new achievements and maxing out more factions to exalted.
WRATH OF THE LICH KING
A week off work to play wrath. And OMG Blizzard have learned loads. The quest lines flow together, you talk to an NPC about a quest and those around them actually listen and offer there own quests! Then there is the phasing technology, as you follow the story lines the zones change to reflect what has happened. This whole new way of doing things adds to the feeling of immersion, to the feeling that what you are doing has AN IMPACT. Unlike the Sunwell where the changing was server wide, this is done on a player by player basis.
Level 80 was reached during that week off work, as per the plan.
In the month and a bit that has followed we have cleared Naxxramus the introduction level 80 raid and the two single boss raids Eye of Eternity & Obsidian Sanctum. Hopefully the next raid Uldar will be more challenging! But while waiting for that content patch the achievement system gives ways of doing the raids in harder and more challenging ways for greater rewards and loot!

And that sort of brings me up to date. I’ll cover my new obsession, achievements, in another post!

Wisp

Happy New Year

2009-01-01T03:37:00.001Z

I've been a completly lazy git since september by not posting but that will change.... as if!

Any way to all my Imaginary readers! WELCOME TO 2009 :)

UK National Championship 2008

2008-09-01T20:25:00.009+01:00

Less that a week left now until the nationals which are in Shieffield this year. And I think I have finally decided on the deck type I will run with. Having brought less cards of the last three sets than I did with the first three I have less options for suddenly changing my mind!

Any way what am I running? Well....

It will probably not be a Hunt for Illidan updated version of my hunter deck from the Realms and DMF Lyon. The reason being that while a good deck, it just dosn't have enough tech options.

It definatly will not be a mage control deck, I've played the water elemental control decks... boring! And completely not my style. Tho this is an archetype likely to crop up a lot in the event so my almost decided choice has a lot of answers to it.

It won't be bubble boy/girl as I really HATE paladin decks! well almost as much as I hate paladins in PvP - Damn bubble and heal to full with no way of stopping it at all!!! It would be less annoying if they where not in tin can suits. This is the UK, so there WILL be a large number of people running paladins... so teched against they are.

Well I've not yet mentioned what I'm going to run with and being honest I'm not going to! But I'll add a few more that will almost certainly appear.

Ssssssssssss, traitor druid rush, a fast deadly and damn right scary archtype. Damn not running mage so no spell stollen serpant form for me.

Its allegidly a problem in this country, but how much of this is due to Media hype is open to debate. A similar problem is in this game as there has been a large increase of kids with knives and daggers. Such as the persistant untargettable Ashtongue Blade, the destructive Retainer's Blade and even some funky throwing knifes. So expect dagger rogues as well!

To finish this post I have a fun way of making a good rare quest (yes I did just say Quest, Rare & Good in relation to one card!!!!) work even against solo decks!!!

The quest is Minions of the Shadow Council, the 2nd card is Metzen the Reindeer, and to finish off something to kill the pirates straight away! such as splash damage from a water elemental! Pull it off and even against solo decks you can pay 3 to draw 3 cards! If you had more than one copy of the quest out they are ALL now ready for pay 3 and draw 3!!!

Wisp

Interesting Reading

2008-09-01T20:25:00.006+01:00

Ok, while at work on saturday, the only one I have to work each year, I came across an interesting series of articles on the BBC website. They are about numbers and statistics and how the media and marketing makes use of them in a way that shows what they want rather than anything like the truth!

And so we have
Lesson 1 > Surverys
Lesson 2 > Counting
Lesson 3 > Percentages
Lesson 4 > Averages

Now why have I linked these? Easy they are about numbers and I like numbers!!!

Wisp

Back to the grind!

2008-08-15T19:54:00.006+01:00

Well, I made a few of runs to Stath, after 5 Frayed Abomination Stitchings. Your guarenteed one a run from Ramstein the Gorger but have a chance of more from the abominations. Well 4 runs
and only one per run. And as is the law of sod, the 5th run resulted in 4 more!!!

Then as I had all the mats to make 24 libram handins (8 of each) it was time to go hand in! Well the run from the Dire Maul Library to Feathermoon Stronghold and back takes about 15 minutes, so the hand in took me 3 days! But in the end it was done and this happened

I am now Revered with Shen'dralar! All thats needed to add another exalted to my belt now is a few more libram hand in. To be precise if I do them in 3's this means its time to farm: -

14 x Libram of Rapidity
14 x Libram of Focus
14 x Libram of Protection
42 x Pristine Black Diamond (already have!)
112 x Large Brilliant Shard (erm have 16.....)
14 x Frayed Abomination Stitchings
28 x Blood of Heroes
28 x Skin of Shadow

Well I better get farming then! And when its time to hand in I think I'll recruit a 'lock, a mage plus one other so I can portal out to a post box and then get summoned back in!

Wisp

MMO's

2008-08-10T22:44:00.004+01:00

Well, I got wisp the ranger into the mid 70's. Built a Tier one city and then had a heart attack on discovering the materials needed for Tier Two city buildings!

Started a demonologist got it into the level 30's and

Got bored! Yup I got bored with AoC. The first 20 levels are awsome, and its worth getting a character of each type upto level 20 just to see how the destiny story arcs interweave. After that is ok the first time round but once you hit the level 70s it sort of gets dull.

Now at this time I logged onto wow and did not much, got bored there as well!

So for the last month or two I have been playing silly little games I pick up from Big Fish Games which has helped pass the time. And now as off last wednesday I'm back to WoW and not bored anymore. Looks like I just needed a break!!!!

So AoC subscription has gone, and I'm back ontrack with my wow leveling projects! Maybe I'll also be motivated to post here more regulaly again as well!

Wisp

City Building

2008-06-16T18:36:00.002+01:00

Well Wisp has now passed 40th level and can now learn her two professions. Well as I’ve been telling the guild since we booked our “Guild Village” spot in the Purple Lotus Swamp that one of them will be Architect. Having a profession beyond the mundane little things really appeals to me.

So what is needed to build a keep, the first building for the village? Well 20 Bricks which is 200 Sandstone, 15 Joists which is 150 Ash, 10 braces which is 100 Copper and 5 Plain Facades which is 50 Silver. Fine so far I have most of that myself already! Add in the fact that our guild village is in a private instance only shared with the guild who take the southern city spot, means that farming is easier as I find lots of 100% nodes.

Now materials covered what else is needed? A plan, which is drawn up from 2 parchment and 1 drawing ink, sounds simple enough off to see the trader. Ink 25s… erm OUCH. Parchment 50s each… erm 2 by 4 to the face! So 1g25s is needed to build the keep, at level 41 I have 60s.

Building our village may take a while, but at least it’s a guild thing so I don’t have to farm all the mats and buy all the paper & ink by myself. Time now to keep levelling as I have a 3g horse to get and then a keep to build!

Wisp

Dark Moon Fair – Lyon

2008-06-12T22:26:00.004+01:00

What an awesome weekend that was. My notes are complete rubbish and I should have written this up Monday so any mistakes are down to that! So time to run over the highlights!

My first time in a plane, I didn’t get a window seat on the way out (but did on the way back and the views are amazing). And take off! WOW! The plane taxied to the runway and I had a small smile, the engines kicked in the acceleration and my smile grew, when the plane left the ground that smile became a grin and with every jerk and jolt it just got bigger, it was all I could do to stop myself laughing out loud! All I can really say is “What a Rush”. I’d love to learn how to fly just so I can take off and land repeatedly.

Once in Lyon I met up with my team mate Jack (who was reporting for UDE rather than playing) and the three Middlesbrough players he had driven down with. We got some food and then went back to our rooms for some play testing.

Saturday and the Fair was HUGE, 209 competitors made it the biggest DMF to date in either Europe or Yankland. We met up with the four from Lincoln, making a group of 8 UK players, UDE report 10 but I’ve no idea who the other two where, ready to face the world!! or Europe as the case may be.

The first pairings came up and it was time to play. I was using my Chaigon deck from the UK realms but with a few more tweaks, the decklist and credits at the end.

Round one was Mage #1. The cards just flowed and he was squashed very flat very fast for a nice comfortable 2/0 win
[UK Players => Me 1-0, Andrew 1-0, Gary 1-0, John 1-0, Julian 1-0, Mark 0-1, Karl 0-1]

Round two was a ripped deck… damn. Game one though I rushed him to death and it was over by turn 5. In game two I sided in only 1 silent fang … why???? Must have been a moment of madness! But it was on the table in time to stop his first ripped and despite recurring deshura my allies squashed him a 2nd time. Another 2/0 win for me.
[UK Players => Me 2-0, John 2-0, Andrew 2-0, Julian 1-1, Gary 1-1, Karl 0-2, Mark 2-0]

Round three was against the world champion. Yup that’s what I said! Before the round Jack told me I was playing the world champion (made me worried) with a runetusk deck (made me more confident). So I sat down against a mage deck….. O well Jack must have been mistaken as to who I was paired against. I went on to beat mage deck #3. Turns our Jack had got some French players and their decks confused, it was the world champ I beat after all. That was good for my confidence!
[UK Players => Me 3-0, John 3-0, Andrew 2-1, Julian 2-1, Gary 1-2, Karl 1-2, Mark 1-2]

Round four was Mage #3. What is it with these little 25 life pipsqueaks?. But By this time I am buzzing and made the win needed to guarantee my cut to the top 64 and the draft.
[UK Players => Me 4-0, John 4-0, Julian 3-1, Mark 2-2, Andrew 2-2, Karl 1-3, Gary 1-3]

Round five was a rogue deck, and my cards finally deserted me. In one game I had a had fall of jank, completed a one dreani’s and hit two jubilies but still had a hand of jank, at the end of my 3rd turn I’d discarded 4 cards. Well ended up losing 0/2. Was a shame but hey these things happen.
[UK Players => Me 4-1, John 4-1, Julian 3-2, Mark 3-2, Gary 3-2]

Ok the draft and I’m in pod 2, I’ll need 3 wins to guarantee top 8 and taking advice from jack on board I grab an infusion of fortitude from my first pick, as I let priest cards wheel it becomes obvious to me that I am the only one drafting priest. I pick up a second infusion and a couple of absorb magic’s. Later on I pick up an Eclipse after letting it wheel, which goes nicely with the instant 3 cost heal 8 (split as you like) card Salvation. I’ll admit I’m not the best drafter, I let two Ingrid Shadowstorms go past me and picked up an Atani of the Watch which being honest is pretty crap in draft as it doesn’t trade off in any way shape or form. So in the end I had a reasonable but could have been better traitor priest deck – list at the end.

Round six and lol victory in game two came from the use of Piana and Eclipse to slowly burn his hero and allies until I could drop the big guns. I won 2/0 comfortably keeping me on track.
[UK Players => Me 5-1, John 4-2, Andrew 4-2, Julian 3-3]

Round seven and letting the flip denial dude slide came back to haunt me, that combined with no early game cards beyond my healer and Antani showing up in either game meant I could not get an momentum going and in the end I lost 0/2. So my dreams of top 8 almost gone – might have a chance on tie breakers if I win my last match.
[UK Players => Me 5-2, Andrew 5-2, John 5-2, Julian 4-3]

Round eight went to time, I lost the first game, and got the second game with an eclipse and then healing his hero for 8 when he had 7 health left. The third game had been on 1 damage each for a while when time was then called. He had just done intensify rage on Jezbella of Karabor and used it to kill off Order Keeper Henley, and it was over to me at time. I promptly stole his ally with my flip traded off his only other remaining ally. His turn was some more aggression ready to hit me with. In his end phase I dropped prayer of healing on my acquisition to keep it alive and hit him with it. His turn and he couldn’t get the last 3 damage needed to beat me.

So my final score was 6/2. Turns out that the person with 7/0 folded against his 6/1 opponent so that they both got into the top 8. The result was 8 people on 7/1 so no top 8 for me.

[The final UK player standings where => Me 12th, Andrew 18th, John 22nd, Julian 52nd]

I am understandably really chuffed with 12th out of a field of 209! This netted me a £60 amazon voucher – will be a lot of books. And 12 boosters, 6 MotL & 6 SotB. Called a rocket on the first Servants pack and pulled on! (Would have done that on every pack, but getting it on the first looks impressive!!!) Just need to give it a few months before I sell it (I’ve used one already) and that’s the whole cost of the trip covered.

Overall it was an awesome event and I really enjoyed myself.

So I end up with my constructed and draft decks. The constructed deck is based on a deck by Mark Slack which he used in one of the USA realm championships, I was trying to build a
myriam deck and jack pointed me to an article featuring his deck. I like playing hunter decks to I took it, tweaked it and ran with it!

Contructed Deck - Hero: Chaigon Steelsight
Main: 61 Cards

4x Xavar the Resourceful [1]
4x Zandar Shadesprocket [1]
4x Apprentice Merry [1]
4x Marksman Glous [2]
3x Vindicator Kaldel [2]
2x Chipper Ironbane [2]
4x Waldo the Decoy [3]
3x Jubilee Arcspark [3]
4x Myriam Starcaller [4]
3x Fury x 3 [5]

2x Bloody Weclome [2]
3x Feign Death [3]

2x Annihilator [2]
2x Glaive of the Pit [7]

4x Kilbler's Exotic Pets
4x Marks of Kil'jaeden
3x One Draenei's Junk...
2x Chasing A-Me 01
2x The Defias Brotherhood
2x Dr. Boom

Side: 10 Cards
1x Chipper Iron Bane [2]
1x Bloody Welcome [2]
2x Burn Away [3]
3x Thrill of the Hunt [4]
1x Annihilator [2]
2x Silent Fang [2]

Draft Deck - Hero: Remba Abbess of Ash
Main: 31

1x Touch of Darkness [1]
2x Infusion of Fortitude [1]
1x Prayer of Mending [1]
2x Absorb Magic [2]
1x Salvation [3]
1x Mental Anguish [3]
1x Eclipse [5]

1x Xavar the Resourceful [1]
1x Atani of the Watch [1]
1x Piana [1]
1x Hanaga Silvervein [2]
2x Durae Crystalshield [2]
1x Vindicator Agran [3]
1x Anchorite Alonora [4]
1x Magdeline Prideheart [5]
1x Breen Toestubber [5]
1x Orderkeeper Henley [5]
1x Narthadus [6]
1x Weeble [6]
1x Gabble [7]

1x Abyss Walker's Boots [2]

1x Gurok the Usurper
1x Information Gathering
1x Forces of Jaedenar
1x Natural Remedies
1x The Spirit Polluted
1x The Sigil of Krasus
1x Wanted Durn the Hungerer

Side: 9 (The other playable cards drafted)
1x Vindicator Belian [1]
1x Zaistor the Vigilant [1]
1x Aldana [2]
1x Orderkeeper Calister [4]
1x Rames the Purifier [4]
1x Fade [1]
2x Heartening Arrival [3]
1x Crystalfire Staff

Wisp

Flash of Insight

2008-06-04T21:44:00.002+01:00

To day at work I had one of my flashes of insight!!! About 15 years ago Lenny Henry did a comedy called Chef. Now flying forward to recent years Gorden Ramsey swears a lot and shouts and every one in kitchens in a similar way.

THEREFORE – Gorden has OBVIOUSLY modelled himself on this show!

Like all my sudden understandings about the inner workings of life and the universe this one was completely unrelated to the current topic of conversation.

Wisp

My first Illidan Kill

2008-06-04T21:36:00.002+01:00

Well, last night was our guilds 2nd Illidan kill and my first. So I have finally got my neck piece that teleports me to the gates of the black temple, conveniently close to the best place I’ve found for farming cobra scales….

Any way he dropped the main hand Warglaive of Azzinoth. Which went to the only rogue in the raid, had no fury warriors present either.

Ok now a quick question in Warcraft III what class was Illidan? Answer – Demon Hunter. Ok what classes can use the warglaives? Answer – Warriors & Rogues. Can you see the issue here? Illidan is a HUNTER but we can’t use his weapons….. stupid game :p

Wisp

The Death List

2008-06-04T21:28:00.003+01:00

Before I get onto the main topic off this post, here is another screen shot of my AoC character highlighting something I noticed on the character selection screen while loading the game. Its only a small thing but these kind of touches can really make a game. This one is the fact that the neckpiece being worn is actually visible on the character.

The other reason is I can't get over how damn good the characters in this game can look!

Now onto the main topic of this post. I rolled on a PvP server and I am fully aware of what this means while playing and levelling. But there are still some things that piss me off.

1) getting ganked by someone twice your level - I was killed by a level 40 Assassin when I was level 20.
2) getting attacked while talking to quest npc's - you can't do anything to defend yourself and may not know its happening until your dead.
3) killing someone who is almost dead from fighting npc's - this one is less annoying tho, especially as I have been guilty of using it to kill someone a lot of levels higher than me.

But as I’m on a PvP server I know these things are going to happen all the time, although in the case of the first one I think its mainly sad losers trying to get over an inferiority complex. So its silly getting annoyed as it was my choice of server type. Instead I have my Death List! I'll happily make a note of these people from the combat log and screen shots and one day I'll hunt em down and have VENGENCE! REPEATEDLY! First on my list is.

He was ganking people in their low 20's around quest giving NPCs. After my death I used tracking to hunt him down in stealth, arriving in time to help 3 other irate people lay into him.

Wisp

New Trinket

2008-06-04T01:14:00.002+01:00

Last night I got my first bit of Black Temple loot in over a month. From the Illidari council comes.

On our Illidan attempts during the rest of the evening I recon the proc is up at least 33% of time which is nice as it lifts my armour penetration to 586. Plus I saw it refresh itself before the duration was up, this is good because it shows the trinket doesn't have a hidden internal cooldown.
The major bonus from the trinket for me tho is the 20 hit rating, this allows me to swap my 3 orange HR gems (total +13 HR, +13 Agi) for yellow crit gems (+26CR). I will hit 33% crit unbuffed eventually (a random target pulled out of the air).

Talking about crit not sure what is a good amount the more the better I suppose. As I'm using a 3/2 Steady/Auto macro and Steady shot has a 1.5 second cast (without haste buffs) this means in theory every 4.5seconds I have fired 5 shots. So an average of one crit a "cycle" would be 20% i.e. one crit every 4.5seconds. Which is crap. So if I wanted twice as many crits it would be 40% and one ever 2.25seconds. Fractions are annoying so I think I'll like to round down to one crit every 2 seconds. A quick bit of maths…

There is a shot every 0.9 seconds so S = 0.9. And we will say that T is the time between critical hits. Finally we sill say the C is the % chance of a critical. Putting this together we get a nice little formula.

S/C = T (If we have a 20% crit chance this gives > 0.9/0.2 = T = 4.5)

Ok now we want to know the crit % needed for 1 every 2 seconds giving us.

S/T = C (0.9/2 = C = 0.45)

So from a quick bit of theory crafting based on an assumption that the 3/2 macro gives me 5 shots every 4.5 seconds I have aquired my target crit % (raid buffed) to get a crit every 2 seconds.

Wisp

A new incarnation of Wisp

2008-06-02T07:20:00.003+01:00

On Friday, I went an brought a copy of Age of Conan because I was curious and a lot of friends from wow had been giving it a go. Including some who have quit playing. First thing to notice, my graphics card is just below the recomended level (I have a 512Mb GeForce 7800 Gsomething, and recomended is a 512Mb GeForce 7900 GTX) Then we move onto the 32Gb hard drive space... Yup I said 32Gb!!! As I only have two 80Gb hard drives in my PC, full of a lot of junk it was time to make a trip to Argos.

Eventually I arrived home with my new game and a 500Gb external hard drive. This game having cost me over £100 but I needed the storage anyway. 30 Mins to move all the junk from one partition and its overspill onto another into my new harddrive. A quick defrag of the now empty partition and its was installation time.

We will now take a quick break to read my book, go to buy food from the supermarket, prepare and eat dinner, do some more reading.

Over two hours later the game was installed and patched.

Well character creation is awsome! I could spend hours on this screen customizing how my character looks down to the smallest little detail! Basic mode lets you choose your chars size and height, select from a list of predefined body marking, facial features etc. Then you hit advanced! your can change anything from the angles or the eyes, shape of mouth, nose & chin. The shape and lengths of arms, legs, torso etc. After 5 mins of messing around with this I did realise that I have no sense of proportion and only if I wanted to make a bug eyed monster would I use this section! Back to basic for me. And so the new incarnation of Wisp is born! Small and slight, a mere wisp of a lass. (See I can even justify keeping a variation of my WoW chars name.)

The gameplay reminds me of a multiplayer morrowind, some one else mentioned Oblivion but I never got around to playing that due to WoW. I am seriously enjoying it at the moment, and the music, well, its impressive. Combat is resonably simple in concept but mastering it will of course take time. You have 3 basic attacks left, centre & right. Then you put combo moves onto your hotbar these involved using them and then one or more basic attacks in sequence. Add to this the fact you can get other combat bonuses by double tapping movement keys, and it becomes a really engaging system.

Will I keep playing? A good question, and I think it will depend on the end game. I have already almost decided that in the next wow expansion I will be doing the end game instances in the 10 man mode rather than 25. A more relaxed approach should give me the time to actually do other things!

Wisp

The Tiles of Existance

2008-05-26T01:18:00.009+01:00

The tiles of Existance are a form of divination used in the world of my campaign. Unlike methods such as tarot cards or palm readings they can not be used to foresee the future of a single person. The tiles are instead used to get an understanding of the current state of things on a global scale, as well as the near future.

(The root of my ideas for this has come from the fantasy series, A Malazan Book of the Fallen, one of the best I have read for years. The link takes you too its wikipedia page.)
A "deck" of tiles contains a variable number of members, this is due to changes in the balances of power in setting. All the tiles are broken down into three categories, suites is the best way to describe them, these are "The People", "The Orders" & "The Influences".
The People. This group of tiles has never been known to change in size - none have ever left or joint the deck. The tiles are: - The Oracle, The Dark Seer, The Sorcerer, The Conjurer, The Mystic, The Artificer, The Mind Dancer, The Body Mage & The Invoker. One tile for each speciality plus invocation. When both tiles from a discipline are shown on the field of a reading it is said The True Seer, The Elementalist, The Blade Mage or The Soul Mage is in play.

The Orders. This group of tiles has had the greatest number of changes over time, when a new order is created or an old one destroyed their tile enters or leaves the deck. The current tiles are: - The White Sun, The Black Moon, The Purple Dream, The Orange Flame, The Blue Wave, The Golden Sword, The Crimson Soul & The Unaligned.

The Influences. The last category of tile, these represent both the major supernatural groups, as well as key features and symbols of the setting. The tiles in this group have been known to change but the last time was hundreds of years ago. The current tiles are: - The Elemental, The Spirits, The Angelic, The Demonic, The Mundane, The Dead, The Heart Stone, The Gift, The Portal & The Circle.

A reading of the tiles is made upon a field. Each tile is placed in a fixed order upon a named location in the filed. The diagram below shows this casting space.

So in order the these locations and there general meanings are:-

The Focus. The tile placed here is the focus of the entire reading and it has an influence on every other tile that comes into play.
The Ally. This tile supports the focus.
The Foe. This tile has the opposite function to the ally and is at odds with the focus.
The Lands. This location represents reality out side of The Risen Hold and is usually considered as a positive tile.
The Risen Hold. This tile in this location is considered to be in a position of power, risen above the rest. Like the Lands this is usually a positive tile, but when at odds with Lands both become negative.
The Wastes. This is a barren location and the tile placed here is viewed in a negative light.
The Shattered Hold. A tile here is in a position of weakness, its power base damaged or destroyed.
The Ascendant. The tile that is placed in Ascendancy is rising above the field, generaly a good place to be. At least for what the tile represents.
The Mirror. The last tile to be placed in a casting, this tile is the mirror through which all that has come before is seen. A good way of looking of it is imagining it as a kind of filter.

And so that is the Tiles of Existance. I will leave you as an example the casting my players saw at the start of the Concord (A meeting of the mages from the orders to discuss issues). This reading confirmed the suspisions of some of them and horrified others.

The focus is the heartstone and its ally is the gift. In opposition stands the mundane. There is a war between the magical and mundane world. Moving to the lands, occupied by the White Sun and in the risen hold the Black Moon. A representation of their current conflict for these two can never be reconciled. Next in the wastes are the Angelic and the shattered hold is of the Golden Sword. The guardians and their patrons cast down! Rising ascendent above this field is the Demonic. And so the last tile the mirror through which this field of conflict and war is seen is that of the Crimson Soul, returned to the deck at this inauspicious time.

With the mirror certain things come into light, the heartstone at the focus is that of the Crimson Soul as is the gift. This means the war between the magical and mundane world is that of the Crimson Soul and the mundane world. The conflict between the lands and risen hold is to the Crimson Souls benefit as two very powerful potential foes are occupied with each other. The ancient foe and opposite of the Crimson Soul is in the shattered hold with there allies in the wastes.

Finally the Demonic is rising in ascendance. This last line means a lot as the characters discover that not only was the original order destroyed for binding a powerful war demon its members had the blood of demons running through their veins. These are the ancesters of the characters and so they too have a demonic legacy.

Wisp

UK Realm Championships

2008-05-20T22:43:00.003+01:00

On saturday in Brumland, was the first major UK competition of the year. In the Brittania hotel just around the corner from the station over 70 players arrived for the tournement plus more for the side events. The atmosphere was Awsome, if a bit too hot by early afternoon due to air conditioning being dead!

To start every one got an EA Wraith Scythe participation card as well as a top 8 qualifier T-shirt, back dated prize support, so I have three of em!

And sometime soon after 10 the first of 7 gruelling rounds began! And I was facing Nimadus the Implacable. (Paly deck nr 1). Game one, My inspiring allies helped to keep my hand full while the board built until I had two Myriams burning the tentacle faced bubble boys face. His turn he counted the damage I would do and cast lay on hands. Yippee two turns for me! that 20 damage guarenteed but I had a glaive of the pit in hand so it was my game anyway, top decked a Fury and killed with the kitty kat instead to keep my secret weapon, well, secret. Game two was similiar myriam's & kadel's burning him quickly.
1-0 (A good start)

Round two and .... Jack .... DAMN IT! sooo typical playing a team mate so early on. Well in playtesting his desecrator deck beat me about 70% of the time. And to add insult to injury I lost the die roll. Game one I got smashed on turn 5, twig to the face > rak > twig to the face > rak > twig to the face! So game two, he got rushed to death by turn 6. Fury + Fury, go kitty go! Game three - damn was close, dropped a fury he cycloned it. And finished me off. Would of got him next turn with my 2nd fury but he had a cyclone ready, and the next card on the deck was Fury nr 3! but thats the way things go!
1-1 (Drat)

I'll admit I can't actually remember which order the following three rounds happened ..... so this may be wrong!

Round 3 or 4 or 5, And an Aleyah Dawnborn match up. Game one was quick, I laid down the rush got as far as 2 Myriams on the board. Then came my clever move! My opponent han Solanian's Belongings available and a blessing of freedom in the graveyard. So I played Chipper from my hand, then tapped Myriam nr 1, he off course completed solanian's to recover and then play the blessing. So on the chain after it resolved I blew chipper to blow the blessing! With the two myriams and a glous that put him on 28. Not finding a way out of the last point we moved onto game 2. This was a game I felt really bad about winning, after muliganing my opponent had nothing. His only none resource play was to drop Tatulla. I responded with bloody welcome and kiblered a Fury. On his turn 5 he knew I had fatal damage available and conceeded.

Round 4 or 5 but deff not 3, and time to play my 2nd team mate of the day - Jay. Another Aleyah Dawnborn deck, and two very fast games, I'd rushed him too death twice in about 20 minutes. Looks like this deck I'm using loves to play bubble boy control!

Round 3 or 4 or 5, Can't even remember this one! but I won it!

Back to a proper time line!

Round 6 and Andy Morgan, this was a matchup I had been dreading, in playtesting I was very weak against ripped decks. The first game went on until about turn 12 before he finally finished me off. Was a bad muligan, and I think my starting hand while not good would have done me much better. Then onto game two and it was flawless, the cards came as they should and he was squashed flat fast. Final game, I was no longer too worried about Andy's deck, but despite a muligan my rush never materialised and he won.
4-2 (Sigh - Get the last and its down to tie-breakers).

The final round Lionar the Blood Cursed, This match was for 5-2 my best result ever in a competition this size. Game one was over fast my opponent was rushed efficently. Game 2 I lost, my muligan was into five cards costing 3+, a bloody welcome and a single quest. The final game came soooo close. His turn 7 down came deafening shout, my field all died. as my turn 8 started I drew a fury, to go with my burn away, not enough resources to use both and claim the game, so I did the only thing I could and killed the shout. His turn, 8 to the face from self readying ferocity guy - Ras'fari Bloodfrenzy - And a glaive of the pit dropping and smacking me. Put me on 2 health left due to the weapons minus five. He was tapped so fury came down for game.
5-2 (Now the wait begins)

I had gone into the 7th round in 11th place, and I had 30-40 mins of waiting time after my match before the final placings got announced. I knew I would just miss it and get 9th, and I was correct. Jack on the other hand made it through, he started round 7 in 10th.

My best performance EVER in a comp this size so I was happy, at the same time a bit gutted to hit 9th. From now on 9th place will always be the Bittersweat one for me! No Nintendo Wii, or Ipod touch for me, but I did get my playset of EA wraith scythes, another T-shirt - getting a serious collection and 24 boosters. Which can't have come from the same box because I got 4 epics and 3 more biscuit loot cards! Overall a brilliant day and roll on Darkmoon Fair: Lyon!

Wisp

The Druids Quest

2008-05-08T17:46:00.002+01:00

Gather around children while I tell you a great tale of two young druids on a quest for their swift farm forms. Be warned that while this is a tale of adventure and daring, it is also quite scary in parts.

And so around 9pm our tale begins out side the entrance to Sethekk Halls, where the party, Playcat had gathered from among her friends was waiting.
First there was a Restoration Druid, experienced in the ways of healing, taking time out from her adventures in SSC, TK, MH and beyond.
Second there was an Elemental Shaman also equipped to Tier 4 and above. Third there was a Mage, maker of food, water & sheep and like the two before was geared to T4 and above.
Finally there was the two young druids, both spec’d feral, both with defence scores way beneath the cap, laughable amounts of armour and barely 10k health in dire bear form!! Can you guess who was tanking!

So as one (or five actually) they passed the translucent purple barrier with the sinister and incredibly portentous skull in the middle of it.

The first set of mobs two bird man thingy guards, immune to being turned into mutton. The heroic party buffed and rearing to go! Young Playcat enrages to generate some rage and just as she attacks…
“Wait a second, I’m moving next to the entrance just in case” says our resto druid.
… charging into one monster trying to aggro both as all hell breaks lose.
“Good start” says the ghost of the other young druid.

Rebuffed and ready the group try again, and soon fall into a brilliant rhythm, except the many times they died, of dual bear tanking. Many twisted bird men fell before the teeth and claws and magic of this group until the first boss was reached. The fight is brutal and bloody but despite the little pet elementals the terrible bird fiend summons the foul monster is soon roasting over a spit! Grilled Chicken anyone?

Before the party can continue they must slay two Raven Guard.
“Beware these hit hard”
Smack smash whollop, both young druid tanks die in seconds!
“Really?”
As the ghosts run back to that sinister pink skull floating across the entrance the group make plans on how to kill the raven guard, aware that beyond there a several more pairs lurking around.

And over the next hour or so with many breaks for alcohol and food! The party changes! Our Shaman leaves to make way for a hunter, our Mage swaps to his Warrior character, our new hunter swaps to his warrior to pick up the guard that always runs past and ganks our resto druid!

“Sometime soon, Wispcat is going to come to this place with a group all equipped in T5/6 level gear and KILL EVERYTHING HERE!” says young Playcat during one of the many corpse runs.

And at this point the best quote of the epic adventure was made by the other young druid.

“That’s the PVE equivalent of swapping to your Season Three geared character, after someone ganks you in the barrens”

And so the group that finally killed the pair of raven guard consisted of our two young druid heroes, our resto druid, the warrior of the hunter and a new Druid tank (this one with actual tanking stats and gear!!!).

The journey continues as more and more groups of bird men are slain until at the top of some stairs two more raven guard, guard a door. After another death the warrior swaps back to his hunter and Playcat makes way for Wispcat. The dps was sorely needed.

The two raven guard are peppered full of arrows and the group of intrepid heroes move onwards deeper & deeper into the Halls of Sethic. Soon after killing enough bird men to keep every KFC in the country stocked for a couple of years the summoning room of the evil Raven God was clear! And the very last group of birds between here and the big bad boss bird had also been slain. And so Wisp left to make way once again for Playcat
“Almost done, soon we can actually get some sleep”

It was time, four druids and a hunter stood ready to slay Anzu. I would tell you children that this was another heroic and brutal fight, full of close shaves, desperate potion drinking, feral’s shifting out of cat form to do emergency heals but I would be lying!

At their feet lay the corpse of the raven god! Our young druids could after one last fight go and learn the ways of flying bloody fast from an instant cast spell. The final boss bird was the only thing in their way! Ok only in their way if they went on and not back.

But these are great heroes and so going back was never an option!. Another massive fight occurred was as hard as Anzu was………
“Why do we always struggle on trash and easily kill bosses?” was asked by the tanky druid.
“The bosses are never the problem on heroic” replies wise young Playcat.

And so it came to pass, at around 1am, that Playcat had completed all the quests within Sethic on heroic difficulty, where as most people do them on normal, had gained the key to the shadow labs, and with the other young druid can now herb on the wing at high speed! The AH shall never again earn money from Wisp buying flasks!

That children is the end of the epic tale “The Druids Quest”. So what have you learnt from this tale?

“That characters raiding end game instances may be able to carve their way through heroic instances as if they where warm butter, but when playing alts they need to remember gear makes a huge difference!”

“That anyone who tries to do heroics which most of there gear being quest rewards from quests going up to level 70 is nuts, and for two of the party of five to be similarly equipped makes them ALL nuts!”

“That KFC is made out of dead bird men!”

Wisp

What Lurks Out There

2008-05-06T18:25:00.001+01:00

Now its time to describe the main groups of entities out there in the world of my Crimson Soul Chronicle. These grouping a reasonably broad, but breakdowns within the group all share common traits, and needless to say there are things that cross and blur the lines between.
The first two are probably the hardest to comprehend, which is why they are first.

The Elemental
These entities are the very essence of a thing. If you take something and metaphysically boil it down you will be left with an elemental. For example take the flames on a camp fire and within is a Fire Elemental. Take a pebble on a beach and within is an Earth Elemental. This is on the simplest level, elementals get more complicated as the thing they are the essence off becomes more complicated. Magna from a volcano, boils down to an elemental of fire & earth. Elementals are primal forces and largely without intelligence, but there are always exceptions. Living things like plants & animals do not boil down to an elemental, but the parts that make up their physical forms do. A fact that can be used to devastating effect by those with the knowledge.

The Spirits
The spirits are the metaphysical reflection of a thing, cast upon the world. A fire spirit may appear similar to a fire elemental but are very different creatures. Like elementals most spirits are mindless or without intelligence, this though is dependant on what has cast the reflection and how people view that same thing. For example a tree spirit is cast by a tree and its concerns are off a tree. But if intelligent creature view that tree as evil and malignant, the spirit comes to be evil and malignant. This is because the tree has been metaphysically altered.

The Angelic
Angels, Messengers of God(s), Mortals who ascended to sainthood. These beings are divine in nature, the move silently and almost invisibly among mankind seeking to guide and enlighten us. Those who can see them are considered blessed and the gift they give to those who work with or for them is the inspiration of a concept or idea within that mortal. Beware though for the Angelic are not a united group and what some believe is correct will truly terrify you.

The Demonic
Demons, Fallen Angels, Mortals damned to the hells. These beings are dark creatures. They feed upon the mundane world, small demonic imps feed on the flesh of animals while greater demons may feed on emotions such as hate or regret or lust. Others may feed off concepts such as murder or war. The demonic make pacts with mortals and in exchange for their “gifts” the beneficiary is required to perpetuate the ideas that feed the demon.

The Dead
The dead who will not or can not move on. All members of this group once lived as mortals do, they where born, they grew, they died. This group breaks down into two major subdivisions – Insubstantial and Physical dead. The first group are your ghost and poltergeist type beings. An argument rages between scholars as to whether these entities are actual dead people whose souls have not moved on or the spirits of dead people. Yup there is a difference, have a look at The Spirits above. The physical dead on the other hand are walking corpses from mindless rotting zombies to highly intelligent vampires.

There remains but one major group left within this world, and that is the Mundane, the mortal, us!

Wisp

Druid Hits 70

2008-04-30T00:39:00.002+01:00

At 4 minutes to midnight I finally got my 2nd character to level 70!

All thats left for tomorrow after work is a massive 185 consortium rep for honoured, so I can get a better shot at gems that being only friendly. A collection I have to do tomorrow as its the last day this month, miss it and I lose em. Then the harder task of getting nearly 5000 lower city rep, clear the group quests and an instance or two will hopefully be enough. Once thats done its bye bye 5000g and hello quest chain for my epic farm form.

Wisp

Exalted Nr 32 - And the Moon!

2008-04-29T17:10:00.004+01:00

Last night I got my 32nd faction upto exalted while in Black Temple. The means that I have every TBC faction that requires a raid group complete. This makes me very happy as any other gaps I can fill in myself even if its after WotLK has come out!

And I got to see the moon in shadow moon valley from the domain of Illidan as well. You have to agree is looks damn good!

Wisp

The Orders

2008-04-28T17:40:00.001+01:00

Ok, so the setting of my current campaign has several orders of mages living within it. While some things are fundamentally the same across them all, others are radically different.

The current orders are: -

The White Sun,
The Black Moon,
The Orange Flame,
The Blue Wave,
The Golden Sword,
The Purple Dream

You will notice a lack of The Crimson Soul, this is because the rest of the magical world doesn’t know they are back yet! Well lets now have a quick run down of the character of each of these orders.

The White Sun.
This is the order with the most members, its also one of the most powerful. The White Sun are the self appointed police of the magical world. They believe, fanatically, that they have the right to punish those breaking the laws. Laws which they themselves impose. The order of the White Sun was responsible for the destruction of the Crimson Soul in 1782.

The Black Moon.
This order is small in size, but the members are some of the most powerful mages in existence making its power on a par with the White Sun. The order itself is matriarchal in structure as well as being two tiered in ranking – those born within the order above those who have joined from outside. Fortunately for many the Black Moon doesn’t really give a damn about any one else and keep themselves to themselves.

The Golden Sword.
Crusaders is a good way to describe this group. They hold themselves to a higher purpose and laws than those of the mundane world. Many members of this group have made agreements with the Angelic and its even rumoured that divine blood run in their veins.

The Orange Flame.
Almost all members of the orange flame have skills in the Elementalist discipline which is appropriate as there main dealings are with Elementals. Members of the Orange Flame bind elementals of fire & earth to their service as well as make bargains with the greater elemental beings of fire.

The Blue Wave.
This order is the counter and balance to the Orange Flame. Again most members will have some skill as Elementalists, but its is water & air that is bound to their service. The bargains and pacts of the Blue Wave are with the powerful entities of water.

The Purple Dream
The strangest order of them all. The members of the purple dream have abilities beyond all others when it comes to the human racial sub consciousness. They can call into reality things from man’s greatest fears and desires. The rumours go that the more powerful members of this order can even travel into the group mind of non human creatures both mundane and supernatural.

So that is an overview of the magical orders in my game. In my next post on the chronicle I will go over the main supernatural entities that exist within the setting.

Wisp

Magic of the Orders

2008-04-25T17:27:00.002+01:00

This is my first post on the system & setting i'm using in my Chronicles of the Crimson Soul campaign.

Magic.
In this setting there are two primary forms of magic, The Disciplines & Invocation. The first is only accessable to those with true magical power, while the later can be used to some extent by anyone. These abilities control what someone can do.
There are two other stats that are important for the use of magic, Magical Strength being the first. The form and source of this power can be manyfold but for the characters and all other members of the Crimson Soul this stat is called Inheritance. It is combined with a discipline or invocation to form the dice pool. When the effect of a discipline is maintained the effective Magical Strength drops by one.
The last magical stat important for the system is Magical Power. When an ability is used points are spent from this pool. For disciplines they are regained every 5 rounds at a rate equal to your Magical Strength. For invocations the points are locked up until its duration expires.

Ok now that the base is explained we will move onto the actual disciplines themselfs. There are 4 disciplines of magic each of which is broken down into two specialities. Its the specialities that a character has dots in.

True Seer

Oracle - Abilities to see distant places, the past and possible future.
Dark Seer - Abilities to see the hiden world, things and creatures hidden from mundane sight.

Elementalist

Sorcerer - Can maninpulate elemental forces in coincidental ways, such as making a computer short circuit or a flame just across a gap.
Conjurer - Can directly create elemental forces from nothing, flinging fireballs and making walls of stone.

Blade Mage

Mystic - Just think of kung fu films and the almost impossible things the characters can do, run upwalls, move incredibly fast, kick someone standing on the other side of a room.
Artificer - Can make weapons & martial equipement out of nothing. Imbuing them with power.

Soul Mage

Body Mage - The power to alter your own and other peoples bodies, from harder skin to extra limbs to mind influencing pheremones.
Mind Dancer - Reading of minds, entering peoples dreams and leaving lasting changes on their psyche.

There is one other thing about the disciplines that is very important to know! They leave marks on those who know them. Every character has mystical tattoos on them. A character has three colours, the first represents the disciplines and the other two each represent a specialism in each discipline. So a character with only one specialism in a discipline has a two colour tattoo, with both its three colours. Each discipline marks a certain part of the body and when powers are used at high levels or for extended periods they glow and become noticable even under clothing.

True Seer - Marks around and between the eyes.
Elementalist - Marks around the upper arms and legs.
Blade Mage - Marks on the hands and wrists.
Soul Mage - Marks across the chest and back.

Next the power of Invocations. These come in two types, those that have to be learned and those that can be performed from guideance such a book. To make use of the learned types you must have an invocation skill of at least its level. For the others no invocation skill is needed but to have it would help with reliability.

An invocation takes a number of hours equal to its level to perform and if a duration is not stated lasts for 24 hours. To perform an invocation successfully a number of points of Magical Power must be spent equal to its level. These are then locked up until the ritual ends. I did say that non-magically gifted people can perform rituals, but they are without Magical Power. For them the answer is sacrifice, a route also available to those with power if they should so choose. For an idea of the value of a sacrifice heres a quick chart.

Sacrificing a small mammal such as a rat or chicken. Losing a finger or toe. Giving up something of great value to you - like permantly breaking all contact with a loved one.
Sacrificing a larger mammal such as a cat or dog. Lossing a hand or eye.
Sacrificing a human. Lossing an arm or leg. Giving up every think you have and own.
Sacrificing your own life.
.....

As you can see the more powerful the invocation the more is needed and the cost increase is not linear! There is a way around the great cost though and thats to cast the invocation as a group. Each mumber making there own contribution to the total power of the invocation.

And that is the overview of the magic of my campaign. In the next article I shall go into an overview of the organisations of the world.

Wisp

Reorganising Tags

2008-04-25T17:20:00.003+01:00

I fell like adjusting the tags attached to my posts. Basically I've added an "Online Games" tag to all posts about World of Warcraft and Blogshares. It'll also be added to any future game I may talk about.
And for the all the posts currently tagged as "Roleplay" there will also be an extra tag based on the campaign or system I'm mumbling on about.

Wisp

So Whats Been Happening? Part 4

2008-04-25T17:15:00.000+01:00

Roleplay

Because of the number of TCG events i've been to on sundays and the unavailability of the rest on other sundays I have not done much of my sunday games this year.

But I have been running a game when I go to see friends outside the hell hole that is Milton Keynes. For mechanics i'm using White Wolfs old world of darkness system, but the game setting is, like a lot of my games these days, my own. The game is called "Chronicles of the Crimson Soul."

In this game the character possess magical abilities in one or more of four disciplines. The use of this power is very free form with the characters skills applying a limit on the effect. They had been taught by a now dead relative and warned to "Beware the Orders".
The game had started with them receiving a mysterious letter telling them the time had come to reform the order of their ancesters destroyed hundreds of years ago. So the characters come together and then set out to find the three parts of the shattered Heart Stone and by reforming it recreate the order of the Crimson Soul.
Now the characters are hunting down the other magically empowered decendants of the old order. I think i'll post most about the setting and system in future posts.

Wisp

So Whats Been Happening? Part 3

2008-04-24T22:37:00.002+01:00

Online Games

On blog shares I’ve sort of only stating paying attention to it again in the last couple of weeks, so not a huge amount to say. I am still working on getting ideas in every industry and every artefact.
Did find one industry I’d brought 1000 or so ideas in relatively cheaply that was now worth orders of magnitude more! So sold all but one and jumped from B$25 Billion to B$225 billion cash in hand! Dumped 75 of that into my investment in the Blogshares Bears Corp leaving me with 150 Billion there and the same as free capitol. Another nice thing to come back to is the rise in value of some ideas has made me a trillionaire.

At the start of the year I spent some time messing around on a game called Duels, there is a link in the side bar. It’s an amusing time killer but has too much luck involved to keep me interested for long periods of time. Basically you fight other players and bots. Use special moves and different equipment. But it’s a case of set your character up and let it go. As I said it kills time every now and then.

The other game I’ve have been playing, a very recent discovery is PoxNora. Its interesting, basically a “Collectable Turn Base Strategy Game”. You buy “Packs” of runes and then use your collection to assemble a 20 rune “Deck” which is used to play the game. A nice touch is that the Champion runes (the characters as opposed to Spell, Equipment & Relic runes) gain experience during each battle that can be used to upgrade them. There is a sample set for each of the 8 faction you can use to play and I think I’ll use them till I have learnt how to play and stand a chance of winning this game or get bored! Before I sink any real money into packs.

Wisp

So Whats Been Happening? Part 2

2008-04-24T18:27:00.004+01:00

WoW TCG

Servents of the Betrayer, set #5, is now out with some interesting cards! Survival hunter can finally move properly into the solo field! Like I orginally tried a year ago when through the dark portal came out. I've so far only really tried out one new deck idea, and have more in my head I need to start working out. The deck i've been using is a Horde Traitor Druid build.

"Traitor Druid?" I imagine hearing you ask! whats that?

Well Traitor heros are new to this set, in most regards they are just like normal heros who took a different path.

"Different Path?" you might say if you actually existed!

Yup, different path, take as an example Morn Walks-the-Path. He is an upstanding cow hunter in the rabble... erm I mean Horde and the traitor horde hunter is Morn Salts-the-Land. Notice the similarity? well this may help as well

Basically they are the same "Cow" but having taken different paths in life. This concept is the same for all the traitor heros. And whats nice is the flips, in most cases the traitor flip is a twisted varient on the "loyal" flip. The benefit for being a traitor hero? You get access to some SICK traitor only abilities and allies. The cost is the loss of any talent ability cards.

"I understand now, thank you O great one" you would say I'm sure!

Anyway my first SotB deck is: -

Desecrator Stormclaw

Abilities [30]
4x Form of the Serpent
4x The Natural Order
4x Cyclone
4x Tainted Earth
4x War Stomp
4x Moonfire
3x Tranquility
3x Chew Toy

Allies [8]
3x Magister Ashi
3x Pathaleon the Calculator
2x Warlord Kalithresh

Equipments [8]
4x Wastewalker Helm
4x Wastewalker Leggings

Quests [14]
4x Deep Sea Salvage
4x Information Gathering
3x Manaforge B'naar
3x Dr. Boom!

Things of interest in this deck:

The Wastewalker lock down. Basically when the helm is out any ally that is exhausted that my hero deals damage to gets destroyed. The leggins deal 1 damage to any opposing ally or hero that becomes exhausted. One both are out my opponent can no longer attack, protect or use tap abilities on there allies without them immediatly getting destroyed.

Tainted Earth. Want to use your quests? well its going to cost you health! sure you want to complete it?

Form of the Serpent. This card gives my druid an attack form that grows in size, with the option of resetting its counter to do damage to an pposing ally. which also works with Wastewalker helm of course.

Mana Forge Ba'nar & Warstomp. Both are for use with the wastewalker lockdown to force opposing allies to become exhausted and therefore destroyed.

And in the side deck! Illusionary Rods. The cheap counter to discard decks! ubre tech!

Wisp

So Whats Been Happening? Part 1

2008-04-24T17:47:00.002+01:00

World of Warcraft

I will start with my main hobby. Prometheous officially stopped raiding soon after my last post in January and I was left with no idea what I was going to do. After a couple of weeks I had more or less decided to play much more casually and level my alts while waiting to see what Wrath of the Lich Kings brings. Some friends have now stopped playing, one just totally disappered :(, another made a server transfer to try a fresh start and has since moved all her alts over as well.

One friend got me into DICE, he’s yet another one who has since quit his subscription, who where just about to start on MH & BT raiding. (I had to suffer a few weeks of SSC & TK raids but I survived!) So in the last three months I've seen every boss in MH & BT fall except for Illidan, and as this is the first week we shall make serious tries on him I sure he will also drop soon.

In other news there has been a major content patch (2.4) with a new quest area, new faction, loads of new daily quests, a new five man instance and a new 25 man raid. I'm exalted with the new faction, Shattered Sun Offensive, and along with Scale of the Sands (mount hyjal) I am upto 31 exalteds, with the 32nd coming after the next BT raid. I like the new 5 man, its quick and entertaining. While learning it I'd suggest 2 or 3 Crowd Controllers, especially on heroic. This is less important with better gear and I've done a heroic with me being the only CC'er - that was amusing!

The new daily quests generate a lot of netherweave. The best way of disposing of this stuff is to turn it into netherweave bracers and disenchant them. From a sample of about 100 bracers I was looking at an average increase in value of 150% from the value of the cloth on the AH.
Well.... that used to be the best way, several of the new daily quests give a shattered sun supplies as a reward, inside every one is a green item. Imagine a large chunk of the alliance population getting 4-5 green items of junk every day... with me so far? What do you do with this junk? answer you get it de'd and sell the enchanting mats on the AH. Result? the value of Arcane Dust (the most common result of this process) has collapsed. So now the best way to dispose of my mountain of cloth is to turn it all into heavy bandages and vender them, 3g a stack of cloth.

Enough of that for now. My druid is now level 68 and the proud owner of "Farm Form". Which is as awsome for herbalism and mining as I expected it to be! Just two more levels and 3000 gold away from doing the quest chain to get "Epic Farm Form". At which point I can stop spending a fortune on the AH for Wisp's raiding supplies! Once the druid is done attention turns to the mage, currently 56. Once its upto 70, I'll not only be able to get all my herb requirements farmed myself, I'll be able to produce all my potion/flask needs myself.

And Finally, one of my alts has its own guild "Wisp Inc". We a not recruiting and have a guild tabbard and a four slot guild vault.

Wisp

3 Months to Long!

2008-04-23T23:33:00.003+01:00

Its been over three months since I have typed nonsence for my imaginary readership to read!
Well tomorrow that changes. And I start to post again. I sort of feel like my life is on hold atm, think its been that way for years so time to start moving once again!

Back Tomorrow!

Wisp

Raid Instance Attunements

2008-01-08T17:43:00.001Z

Ok, I am of the opinion that attunements for instances are a good idea, especially from a story point of view and to show character progression. I like the key approach used in a lot of 5 man instances where only one member of the party needs it to open the door to let the rest in. Eg Scholomance, Dire Maul North, The Arcatraz, Shadow Labs etc. As far as I'm concerned there is not a 5 or 10 man instance in this game to date with an attunement requirement I don't approve of.

But this article is about raid instances and going back all the way to Molten Core here is approximatly what is needed to get into them (errors are due to faulty memory).

Molten Core (MC) - A 5 man instance.
Onyxia's Lair (Ony) - A long quest chain with solo, 5 man and 10 man content (the 10 man being UBRS).
Black Wing Lair (BWL) - A 10 man instance (UBRS again).
Zul'Gurub (ZG) - None.
Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj (AQ20) - None (unless you include the server wide war effort and quest line starting in BWL that was needed to open the gate for the server).
Temple of Ahn'Qiraj (AQ40) - See AQ20.
Naxxramus (Naxx) - You buy attunement based on Argent Dawn rep, free at exalted. This rep can be gained solo or 5 man.
Karazan (Kara) - Long Quest chain including Solo and 5 man content.
Gruul's Lair (GL) - None.
Magtheridon's Lair (ML) - None.
Serpent Shrine Cavern (SSC) - Used to be kill Gruul and Nightbane so 25 man & 10 man content. Requirement now removed.
The Eye (TK) - Used to be 3 quests into 4 heroic level instances 5 man content. Requirement now removed.
Mount Hyjal (MH) - Kill Vashj & Kael'thras the last bosses in SSC & TK. 25 man content.
Black Temple (BT) - Complete quests in SSC & TK, then the first boss in MH. 25 man content.

Ok, pre TBC raid attunment was done via 5/10 man and solo content. Some like Onyxia was a long chain but there was nothing that could hurt or kill a raiding guild if members left. New raiders could get themselves attuned without a raiding guilds support and therefore made applying for and recruiting to those guilds easier.

Post TBC thigs began to change. Karazan the new 10 man instance is really equivalent to the old 20 mans (ZG & AQ20) requires 5 man and solo content to gain attunement this makes it no different from from the old raids. Gruul and Mag are both very short 25 man raids on a par to Onyxia's lair neither of these requires attunement to enter so irrelevent to this post :p

Then we come to SSC, before they removed the attunement if you had a guild membership upset you would be set back to Gruul. This is annoying but for a guild in SSC should be able to clear Gruul's in under an hour even carrying halve a raid who have not killed him before. And as long as you have people who know how to play there class you can get the nightbane kill done in Karazan simply enough as well.

TK, this was just 5 man content to get attunement so while you couldn't easily pug it, it was possible to run people through to get their quests done for attunement.

So far I have no real problem with the attunement needed. The TBC ones before the requirement was removed could be irritating if you suddenly have to recruit new members but that was all. This all changes though when we hit the current end game instances.

For MH you have to kill the last boss in SSC & TK. These fights are not easy they are two of the most complex to execute in the entire game. Every member of the raid needs to know their job and understand what is going on. You can't afford to carry anyone in these encounters. They take practice to get all the pieces to neatly slot into place.

On the one hand this is progression, but on the other hand if you on your way through MH & BT like we were, a major guild upset can dump you straight back into SSC & TK! Hell you could of cleared MH & BT and if you lose members you get dumped back into SSC & TK! which is why the guilds at the top only replace there members with those already attuned. These have too come from the guilds just starting this content. People moving to those guilds get a free ride (in my opinion) to epics and the guild they came from gets a bullet in the gut. Demoralising and painful.

I really beleive that in The Burning Crusade blizzard really FUCKED up the end game raid requirements.

Wisp

A Step Back

2008-01-08T17:39:00.001Z

Due to a certain group of people who f*ck*d us over by leaving, just as our MH/BT campaign was getting into full swing we have had some set backs. A few others have left to join one of the two guilds on the server to have cleared all of the TBC content so far, which is also frustrating as they where damn good players. After the Christmas Break there are a couple more missing faces as well. Including Kers :( Tho I've been told he is coming back but wont be raidleading any more. I wish I knew which sh*t p*ss*d him off so badly.

So its the first week back to raiding and we're once again in SSC/TK to get 9 people attuned to Mount Hyjal. Thats 9 in a raid of 25 some of who have not even attempted Vashj before! One of the most technical fights in the game with a new raidleader to boot. That is NOT FUN! but I am optimistic that we will be back on track in a couple of weeks!

Especially as a Friend whispered me they had an Archimond wipe of 29% in MH! We where ahead of that guild!

Wisp

Welcome to 2008

2008-01-01T02:01:00.002Z

Just to say happy new year to all my imaginary readers :D

Pendragon Campaign (2)

2007-12-30T12:54:00.001Z

Ok, much delayed but only by about 5 months! I'll continue on my catch up for our Pendragon Campaign.

Over the years since becoming friends Kian & Craig have done many great things. They have defeated evil knights & lords, almost single handidly recaptured city's, smashed invading saxons (lots of em), defeated unkillable Normans, dealt with Fae, Saved the country from an undead entity spreading a plague. Watched as Arthur drew his sword from that stone, Become Knights!, Become Knights of the round table, after the defeat of Lott they have even been made Earl's - on the border of Saxon controlled Anglia.

They are considered by most as mad! Neither has a fear of death and so they will take on the most foolhardy missions going and come out the other side victorious!

But in all the intermediate years the greated thing that has happened to Craig was falling in love! With the Lady Helen. Before he met her Craig put himself around a bit, but when she said no! that was a challenge! And after an incident with a Demon he woke up to see her face and that was it for him trapped and in love! Below is the Poem he wrote for her and performed in the court of Nottingham when trying to win her.

A spirit living wild and free,
Soaring High among the clouds,
Running Fast across the land.

Then came the eyes of forest green,
The voice of joyous singing birds,
And this spirit paused to see.

Hair the shade of midnight skies,
And skin reflected in the moon,
There stood a beauty radiant,
To put a woodland nymph to shame.

In a place of deepest horror,
The lightning struck and dark did come,
But when I opened up my eyes,
Beside me was angelic wonder.

This is the place my heart would be,
With this woman of warmth and care,
Beside this lady of charm and wit.

Free no longer willingly,
To be for you and you alone,
Thus I would pledge myself to thee.

I'll admit I'm actually pround of that one. Anyway onwards! They married and in 507 AD there first daughter Sharlwyn was born. Followed in 508 by the Twins Elwyn & Mael. Then in 509 Daughter number 3 in Arlwyn. The following year tradegy struck and Helen died in childbirth. Craig was devestated by this and had never been the same since. What makes this tale worse is Craig's best friend married a year after him. And his wife also died in childbirth a year after Helen.

So a few more years have past since then and we are almost upto date!

Wisp

The Steamwheedle Cartel

2007-12-29T14:38:00.002Z

So after lots of trips it is finally complete! Exalted with all four goblin factions in the Cartel :) Now I am able to move onto the next faction on my hit list! Wintersabre Trainers!

I was told to look at an armoury profile for Emilyspear on the Sylvanas realm LINK 33 exalted's is quite impressive! and in some intresting factions! Ravenholdt? - Non rogue? intreeging (4 attempts to misspell that word! damn is my spelling Awsome!) will have to investigate that at a later date!

Wisp

All for a Bow!

2007-12-23T03:19:00.001Z

I saw the season 3 arena bow... It looks AWSOME! Stats aren't bad either but its one of the best looking bows in the game yet! See for yourself.

True the dressing room background dosn't help, but until I have it in my hands thats the best I can do! Anyway back to the tale! So I made a 3v3 arena team with some friends and got squashed!

See the problem was two fold! One I've not really done arena's before! Two my gear is so not upto higher level arena matches! Problem one will be fixed with experience which will come as I work on my quest to get the bow! Problem two requires gearing myself up in PvP gear! So over the weekend I have done a stupid amount of AV (its an AV weekend) and have got the first two bits of gear. Can't make use of Sunday & Monday in AV due to being at my parent for Christmas but such is life.

My shopping list of gear, which should give me the survivability to push my rating upto 1850 is.

Honour Based (Honour needed in the brackets)

Medallion of the Alliance (Done)
Vindicator's Chain Sabatons (Done)
Gladiator's Chain Helm (Done)
Gladiator's Chain Spaulders (11,250)
Vindicator's Pendant of Triumph (15,300)
Vindicator's Chain Girdle (17,850)
Vindicator's Band of Triumph (15,300)
Vindicator's Chain Bracers (11,794)
Battlemaster's Cruelty (30,000)
Gladiator's Chain Armor (14,500)
Gladiator's Chain Leggings (14,500)

Arena Based (Arena points in brackets)

Vengeful Gladiator's Chain Gauntlets (1,125)
Vengeful Gladiator's Chain Leggings (1,875)
Vengeful Gladiator's Chain Armor (1,875)
Vengeful Gladiator's Chain Helm (1,875)
Merciless Gladiator's Chain Spaulders (1,304)

Other

Dory's Embrace (60 Badges of Justice)
Battlemaster's Cruelty (75 Badges of Justice)

Over all a pretty long list! Now a brief clarification of order! The Vindicator boots came first so that I could put the Boars speed enchant on them (minor speed increase & 9 stamina) this enchant means I don't have to use a speed increase meta gem in the helm.

Next comes the season 1 helm & shoulders, basically at current ratings it will be 3 weeks before I can get the season 3 gloves and as I need the 2 set bonus (+35 Resiliance) as soon as possible these are on the list. The shoulders being selected as the second piece because the season three shoulders need a 2000 personal rating! higher than the bow.

Then it is time to collect the rest of the Vindicator set, which after the neck peice for its socket will be in order of decending resiliance rating. The battle masters cruely is next. You will notice that it is on two lists because I may buy it either way depending on which one its reached with first.

Finally on the honour list are the last two bits of Season 1 gear I want. they are in order of worst first, because I'll pick up the season 3 replacements in the opposite order! If I get to the season 3 versions first I will of course not be spending honour on the old ones.

The arena list is basically what I get when I can! with the gloves being first as they are cheapest, and have a nice +5% multishot damage buff.

Wonder how far through this list I'll get before I can buy the awsome bow? time will tell.

Wisp

Hunter Decks

2007-12-20T23:28:00.000Z

Starting with the Beast Mastery deck and Flameheart! The current deck list is as follows.

Allies [31]
4x Bloodsoul, 4x Scout Omerrta, 4x Scraps, 3x Shelly, 4x Kagella Shadowmark, 4x Broan Charges-the-Fight, 2x Nyn'jah, 2x Instructor Antheol, 4x Fury

Abilities [14]
4x Bestial Wrath, 3x Wing Clip, 4x Master of the Hunt, 3x Trophy Kill

Quests [16]
4x Solanian's Belongings, 4x Chasing A-Me 01, 4x Finkle Einhorn, At Your Service, 4x Torek's Assault

In the end I swapped in 3 shelly's to replace the big drops. This gives me an extra 3 pet cards for use
with master and beastial wrath. The Instructor is a must as he gives an extra answer to cards like the Greench or Proudmoore etc.

The deck I've had the biggest problems with is solo rogue! so I'm tempted to drop the Nyn'jah and put a couple of anti equip or ability allies in. The side deck is going to be drastically worked on.

Getting rid of most of it and going for more equip and ability hate.
preferably in ally form so they can be recursed :)

Now onto the other deck! which is very much a work in progress. Kana Nassis.

Allies [21]
4x Korthas Greybeard, 4x Kulvo Jadefist, 4x Parvink, 4x Galway Steamwhistle, 2x Medoc Spiritwarden, 2x Breanna Greenmother, 1xThe Abominable Greench

Abilities [6]
3x Trophy Kill, 3x Lightning Reflexes

Equipment [18]
4x Blackcrow, 3x Skyfire Hawk-Bow, 3x Wraith Scythe, 4x Band of the Ranger-General, 4x Hauberk of Desolation

Quests [16]
4x Rescue the Survivors!, 4x The Defias Brotherhood, 3x The Missing Diplomat, 3x Chasing A-Me 01, 3x Sunken Treasure

Ok the basic premise of this deck is simple, stall until I can get out a Band, a Hauberk, a Bow and Galway able to tap. Then its infinite damage for the win! The deck plays quite nicely but several changes are needed! 4x The Fare of Lar'korwri are needed as they would allow me to drop
Galway on my opponents end phase. And other changes are to follow, when I think of them!

Ok thats it for now, bed in 40 mins so time for a couple more AV's

Wisp