Elitist Jerks - Blogs

Internet Rant: Borderlands

LodeRunner — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:00:24 GMT

I, like many other people, played a lot of Diablo II. The vast hours spent scanning piles of drops for that socketable claw with just the right +skills for the whirlwind Assassin, and the endless piles of exploding cows on my Necromancers are recalled with fondness. Good times. World of Warcraft eventually came out and slaked my thirst for loot for several years. I've also played my fair share of multiplayer shooters, from UT to TF2. Lastly, Road Warrior is one of my favorite movies. Say what you want about Mel Gibson; we both know he's a total badass in that film.

Naturally, when I learned that a game was coming out that was a co-op FPS with a Diablo-like feel set in a Mad Max universe, I was very excited. The art style was fresh and interesting. More importantly, though, was the promise of 87 bazillion guns. Gearbox studios developed an entire AI whose sole purpose was to generate guns. Shotguns with scopes that fire acidic rockets? Awesome. Impractical, maybe, but still totally awesome. Pistols that sometimes electrocute your enemies so their heads explode? Oh yeah, we've got that shit covered.

The game is available for both console and PC. I have strong feelings about shooters on consoles being a waste, but I'm told they'll often have twice the sales figures of their PC counterparts. I guess I have to accept that people are stupid and like to cripple themselves when aiming. Obviously I bought the PC version. Interviews from before the game came out asked if the PC version was going to be just a straight console port. The answer came back,
"No, the PC one is being built from the ground up."
Good. Proper. This is actually a blatant lie, but we didn't find this out until we bought the game.

There are 4 different character classes in Borderlands. Each class has one unique skill that sets it apart from the other classes. Each class has skill trees that don't add any new abilities or buttons to press; they solely enhance your existing abilities. They've given each class a sort of specialization with certain weapons. Through these talent points your class can become more proficient in a select few weapon types. In this game there are four ways to kill enemies: Shoot them, throw a grenade at them, melee them, or activate your class' unique ability.

Let me expound upon this. You all know about those retarded crybabies in WoW who have awful specs and claim they don't want to be forced to play the class the way Blizzard feels it should be played, like a rebellious, nerdy form of sticking it to The Man? In WoW that doesn't work, and we all pretty much know why. Borderlands caters to that crowd of retarded crybabies. People will frequently be using sniper rifles on Brick, the big melee character who specializes in rockets. I feel this sort of thing happens frequently for one major reason:
The game is too fucking easy.
This concludes the positive portion of the review.

Allow me to explain what you will experience should you want to play Borderlands multiplayer. First, you'll need a GameSpy ID. This ID is the name that will be shown for your character in all multiplayer games. Naming your character is solely a vanity option that can be changed at any point in the game, like changing the color of their shirt. Once you're online, you'll likely want to find a friend to play with. At this point you may check your Steam list and see who's playing Borderlands and see that your buddy is also playing. You send them a message over Steam asking for their GameSpy ID. You get that, get rid of the Steam overlay, and send a friend request to the account name. If this part managed to not fuck up they'll see a request on their side. Once they accept that it sends another window back to you letting you know they want to be your friend, too. Yaaay.

Now you've got a person on your friends list, so you think you'll send them a message and coordinate a game. Oh wait, there's no chat interface in this game when you're in the lobby. That's ok, right? Back to the Steam overlay. You let them know you're gonna host a game and you want them to join it. They say ok, and you host a game. Once your game is up you toss them an invite. Unfortunately they can't join because you didn't forward your ports on your router. Yes, fucking seriously. Port forwarding.

You tab out to the Borderlands forum to figure out which ports need forwarding, and you fuck with your router for a while. It doesn't work. You remember how much you hated forwarding ports years ago, and think how nice it is that modern games don't need that shit done. Oh, wait. After you get pissed off and tired of fucking with your router, your buddy says he fixed his own router and he can host; just join his game. Alright, well the quests aren't synched but whatever, it'll be fun to play multiplayer at least. You join and it's kinda laggy. You wonder what ping you're getting in this game, but sadly there's no command I know of to check that basic function. You wonder why you hear what sounds like clicking and keyboard sounds over your speakers. It turns out that the voice chat in this game a.) is sound activated b.) cannot be disabled unless you want to edit .ini files.

Whatever. Two more friends join the game and you play for a few hours. The gameplay is fun, and so is blowing shit up, really! There's a lot of loot. The 'collect loot' button (E by default) seems to flat out not work a lot of times, but whatever. That guy's head just exploded! Neat. You play for a few hours and get some nice gun upgrades as well as a few levels. Your buddy who is hosting the game needs to head out, so he leaves and ends the game. You want to finish up this last quest and then resume tomorrow, so you make your own game.

This is when you realize you hate Borderlands. Everything you just did has been rolled back. Why? Because the host left first. The host fucking left first so it rolled back your hours of experience, quests, and loot. Seriously.

Let's talk about something else. Vehicles. Yes, there's vehicular combat in Borderlands. You get a vehicle. They're actually free from any vehicle spawn station, which are fairly plentiful throughout the world. You can spawn yours with either a secondary rocket launcher or machine gun, depending on your preference. I used the rocket launcher pretty much exclusively because I'm not a pussy. Controlling the vehicle is somewhat unorthodox. Yes, W and S are start and stop, but steering is through the mouse. I personally find this incredibly awkward and frustrating, but you probably have to experience it to know just how bad it is. Also, expect your vehicle to get stuck. A lot. See that tiny rock in the road? That will make your car go from 100-0 in a heartbeat. There are a *lot* of rocks in the world of Borderlands. I guess inertia was pretty hard to code, so they just said "fuck it" and let you get stuck all the time. In some cases, if it's not too badly stuck, you can get out and punch the vehicle. This will, in some cases, make the vehicle fly off the ground, doing several midair flips and landing a good 50 yards away. This same punch will likely not hurt an enemy too badly, but vehicles face certain death from your fists.

Speaking of fists, I made a Brick character. Why? Because he specializes in rockets and punching things. Both are very near and dear to me. Every minute (can be reduced with talents), Brick gets to use his special ability, Berserk. At this point the edges of the screen go red and he starts screaming unintelligibly. You can sometimes make out a few words like "BLOOOD!" and '"MOOOORE!", but most of the time it's incoherent shrieking. It's really awesome. In one of the few successful multiplayer games I got going, a friend commented the following:

"You know, I thought watching and listening to a Brick berserking was the best thing ever. That was until you joined and I witnessed *two* Bricks berserking."

Brick's berserk punches do a lot of damage, and you can power them up with elemental effects later. But, of course, since this is Borderlands, even this marvelous punching system has large flaws:

- You can't see shit while berserking. Edges of the screen are red, elemental effects flying, you're pretty much blind. You run around hoping you're hitting something because you really can't see a damn thing. If they'd made you go to the third person during this it would have *greatly* alleviated the problem.
-Enemies constantly knock you back. Constantly I find myself running into packs of mobs, wanting to punch them to death, only to get tossed back a good 40 yards by some sort of stomp skill. I charge back in and immediately get tossed out again. Charge back in again and, fuck, berserk wore off.
-There is comical stupidity involving Bricks and duel requests. By default, the way to request a duel with someone is to melee them. They accept by hitting you back. You can set an option to automatically deny duel requests, but by default it's on. You get two berserking Bricks fighting enemies and they're likely to accidentally punch each other. This will spark a duel often in the middle of a giant pack of enemies. Like I said, comical stupidity.

There are many, many more unique and interesting examples of bad coding and overall stupidity in the game design, but you'll get to experience them all yourself if you pick up the game. Hey, you could go in on a 4-pack over Steam with 3 other people you'll never actually get to play with! If anyone needs me I'll be playing HoN.

Blackberry Storm2

VerziehenOne — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:28:14 GMT

Multi Purpose blog post time.

Me and the girlfriend went and picked up Storm2's on Friday last week, since I decided my Razr was nearing the end of it's awesomeness, and she decided she wanted a smartphone, and one that didn't have a crack in the screen that looked like a very large hat.

We jumped through all of the hoops and walked out with 2 very new, very slick Storm2's.

Purpose #1: Brief Review of the Storm2

I'd give it a 3.5 word rating: Slick, Smooth, Patience-required

It is very slick. Integrated everything you can imagine ... many many e-mail address that you can monitor seperately or all at once, many IM clients (AIM / Yahoo / MSN/ ICQ / Google Talk / Blackberry IM / etc), SMS and MMS, and much more, all easily monitored. Integrated support for Facebook is quite nice, as you can sync the Facebook picture with their Contact Photo, (updating if you wish, everytime their Facebook photo does), as well as syncing the Contact list with your Friends on Facebook and updating / etc. MySpace is also available as an App, but it is less integrated. Flickr, Word/Excel/Powerpoint, Weatherbug (nifty), Pandora/Slacker Radio, and much more. Must mention RDM+ Remote Desktop for Mobile ... wow, SO cool! Search for it for more info... All run very smoothly and are quite nicely integrated.

Smooth! 5.0 is fantastic. Scrolling is fast and easy, making changes is intuitive and organized, and it is quite user-friendly when it comes to making changes / updating / all sorts of fun. Camera takes great photos very smoothly, with a very bright light and clear quality. You can even hide your dirty photos if you want... The Video recorder is also quite nice, (24 FPS I think), and looks great! The music output is very loud and clear, and it functions quite nicely without even a pair of headphones (which you can either get a Bluetooth pair and wirelessly listen, or use a standard 8MM jack).

Patience is required. The one thing that really makes this stand out from the iPhone, besides that it is a Blackberry, is the SureTouch technology. The entire touch screen is a button. In the Storm 1, it had one receptor and you could only input with one touch at a time. The Storm2 they redesigned it, and now it has 4 receptors which provide a much smoother, easier and more accurate clicking experience as well as allowing multi-clicks. You even get the added benefit of disabling the SureTouch when it is locked, which saves battery and is just nice all around. However, this must include the mention that Texting is quite different on this phone than any other QWERTY keyboard one, or the iPhone, due to the way the SureTouch performs.

At first it was different, even a little frustrating. Unlike a physical keyboard, there is no haptic feedback and you are not really 100% what you're pressing. However, as you become more familiar with where your fingers are actually touching, before you click, you will become way faster at typing. Since I got it, i've really grown into liking it a lot, and am texting much faster now than even before on my Razr, which is very nice.

Negatives: Auto-Correct / Suggestion. Good God is that an irritating feature. It likes to change your words to 'similar' ones, which some might find nice ... I find increrdibly irritating. One such example was my girlfriend trying to type 'Su', to spell 'Super', and it changed it to 'Diuretics'. Yep. Some of this can be turned off, but it appears it is not that easy to completely disable it, and it can be jarring.

Another negative is lack of customizability to the packaged Theme's look. Yes, you can reorganize the buttons, display what you want, and how many rows on the startup. Why isn't there color-change options? Why do you have to have your main screen taken up by icons (even in the 'today' view)? It seems antiquated that this isn't more customizable, but there are a lot of promising and neat Themes out there for the taking I spoze.

GPS ... I am not paying 10$ a month for the bad Verizon one. I cannot wait until Google finishes theirs...

Vibrating is SO loud too. Way loud. Not necessarily bad, just loud.

The Alarm is nice too, but I miss the Razr's functionality in that it had 3 Alarms that could be set, instead of only 1.

That all said, it seems so far to be a very slick phone with a lot of promise. Yeah, the iPhone is awesome, but AT&T is not as awesome. I love my iPod Touch though, so I can play with that.

Purpose #2: I'd love it if I could track an RSS of certain threads on this site, or even an RSS of the threads that I am tracking in my User CP already. Any of you have any ideas on how? If not that's fine, just thought i'd mention that i'd like to be able to do that.

My Life in Two Pages

DeeNogger — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 04:24:17 GMT

On September 10th I turned 24 years of age. Twenty-four years and nine months before that, my parents had sex and I was conceived. I spent the first part of my life adjusting to the world around me and biting my older brother. I evolved, with time, to learn how to crawl, walk, talk, make doody in the toilet, and cope with my emotions. I learned that crying when I dont get what I want is an inappropriate response. I learned that some things in life will always be closed to me and some things in life will always be available; and its the later that are most important.

I made friends. I learned the value of money. I explored the world around me and worked with my parents. I learned the value of a college education. I learned how to count. I learned how to multiply, add and subtract. I did my best to learn how to divide, but quickly learned that inverse-multiplication is easier. I raised ducks, I made a snow man out of paper, cotton balls and paste. I ate the paste. I threw up the paste. I had accidents, cuts, bruises, slips and falls. I liked a girl, I pulled a girl's hair.

I made new friends. I became awkward around girls and grew taller, wider, then taller some more. I learned how to say "Bonjour" and "Hola" and learned how to spell neither. I failed spanish, I passed spanish, I got a C spanish 2 and gave up on spanish 3. I got good grades, I got detentions, I got a suspension! I joined the soccer team, I quit the soccer team. I joined cross country, I got skinny. I threw up again.

I applied to colleges through out the Midwest and got into all of the ones that werent in my home state. My dad was sad. I went to prom with a hot girl. I got a hand job at prom, I ruined a pair of pants at prom. I went to state track, I did not get to run at state track. I passed my AP tests, I graduated and I asked the girl of my dreams out as we walked to receive our diploma. She said no.

My world ended. I went to college. My world was reborn. I had a terrible roommate. I joined a shitty major. I learned how to code. Pointers, variables, C, C#, C++, assembly, floating point, int, double, long, double long, and for loops. I got bad grades and hated life. I played video games instead of going to class. I played video games instead of running. I played video games instead of drinking, partying and having sex. I gained weight.

One day, in the fall semester of 2006, I woke up feeling like hell. I had just spent the week avoiding classes, neglecting school work and hating life. The only things I did that brought me any feeling of accomplishment was wow related. The night before I had stayed up long hours after the raid talking with a fellow officer about all things wow and life. He told me about when he was in college that he had gone in not knowing what to do and was swept up into being pre med. For several years he worked through the course work but always felt it wasnt his calling, wasnt what he wanted to be. Finally he decided that it was time to change, that he was wasting his time and he wasnt going to one day want to be a doctor. “Do what makes you happy” he said. As I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, I knew it was time for a change.

New major. New attitude. New schedule, new classes, new (better!) grades. I lost weight. I played video games less. A lot less. I met a girl. I had sex with the girl. I got dumped by the girl. I took calc III and IV. I learned how to balance an equation. I learned how to titrate, distill, rotovap, recrystallize, dissolve, and crash products out of solution. I took Organic chemistry, Physical Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry, Analytical chemistry. I did research. E. Coli, HIV, cells, proteins, FPHairpin, N70, FP, Hairpin. I got a job, I made money, I met good girls, hot girls, bad girls, and all three in one.

I decided to pursue grad school. I took the GRE, the Chemistry GRE. I asked for letters of recommendation, I got letters of recommendation. I worked hard, I worked long. I did research. I got published. I asked for advice from professors. I asked for advice from students, TA's and family. I talked with admission offices, I talked with financial aide offices. I wrote my personal statement.

I have worked hard. I have made mistakes, failed, fucked up and destroyed lab work. I have done my best to learn and learn enthusiastically. I have been stressed, I have been happy.

Most importantly, I have learned that writing things down always makes me feel better.

Make textures rotate without the need of onUpdate

zork — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:08:59 GMT

I recently learned a bit more about the animation system from Blizzard that is imo way to underused by most addon authors.

Maybe it's just because the have no clue that it exists or maybe they are not capable of doing (which I doubt). I think its laziness. In my opinion the reward of getting into it will be worth it.

I'm using the new animation system from Blizzard at the minimap and for the orbs. You can create really cool stuff without major texture spam. Some basic textures are all you need.

To make a rotation-animation work without any onUpdate this is what you are looking for:

AnimationGroup:SetLooping("REPEAT")

For more read: SetLooping

Once "played" the animationgroup will always repeat itself, so no onUpdate needed to start it again.

The only big package that I am aware of that currently has some animationgroup functions is OpenRDX.
List of OpenRDX animation files: OpenRDX SVN

Example

Now: Let us do a quick animationgroup example for a texture rotation.

First we need a frame to work with.

local h = CreateFrame("Frame",nil,UIParent)

So now "h" is our frame. Now let us apply some values to the frame:

h:SetHeight(200)
h:SetWidth(200)             
h:SetPoint("CENTER",0,0) --will be in the center of your screen (anchorframe is UIParent)
h:SetScale(1)
h:SetFrameLevel(0) --to over-/underlay other textures/frames

Our (h)olderframe for our texture is done. Currently it is empty. So let us apply a texture now.

local t = h:CreateTexture()

So, "t" is now our texture object. Llet us give it some values now.

t:SetAllPoints(h)
local texturepath = "Interface\\AddOns\\PathToMyTexture\\MyTexture"
t:SetTexture(texturepath)
t:SetBlendMode("BLEND") --choose "blend" for normal color or "add" to multiply the texture with the background
t:SetVertexColor(1,0,0,1) --red color, full alpha

The texture object is done. When finished we want to return the (h)olderframe out of a function. If you want to have access to the texture aswell we need to create a subobject for "h" that will be our texture. Thus:

h.t = t --h.t will contain our texture object

Now we need to create the animationgroup:

local ag = h:CreateAnimationGroup()
h.ag = ag --new subobject of h which will be our animationgroup

For more read: AnimationGroup

So, now we have the animationgroup-container ready to be filled with animations. Those can be rotations (rotating textures), translations (moving a texture from one point on the screen to another), scaling- and alpha-changes.

Let us add a rotation animation now:

local a1 = h.ag:CreateAnimation("Rotation")
a1:SetDegrees(-360) -- -360° = clockwise, 360° = counter-clockwise
a1:SetDuration(60) --how long should it take to make rotate the texture for the degrees set in seconds?
h.ag.a1 = a1 --new subobject that will contain our animation

For more read: CreateAnimation

Finished. We now have the holderframe that containts the texture and the animations set. Time to "play()" it.

h.ag:Play()
h.ag:SetLooping("REPEAT") --This will tell the animationgroup to repeat itself until stopped or a new looping is defined

If we put everything we just wrote into a function the final result would look like:

local function my_animationgroup_test()

  local h = CreateFrame("Frame",nil,UIParent)
  h:SetHeight(200)
  h:SetWidth(200)             
  h:SetPoint("CENTER",0,0) --will be in the center of your screen (anchorframe is UIParent)
  h:SetScale(1)
  h:SetFrameLevel(0) --to over-/underlay other textures/frames
  
  local t = h:CreateTexture()
  t:SetAllPoints(h)
  local texturepath = "Interface\\AddOns\\PathToMyTexture\\MyTexture"
  t:SetTexture(texturepath)
  t:SetBlendMode("BLEND") --choose "blend" for normal color or "add" to multiply the texture with the background
  t:SetVertexColor(1,0,0,1) --red color, full alpha
  h.t = t --h.t will contain our texture object
  
  local ag = h:CreateAnimationGroup()
  h.ag = ag --new subobject of h which will be our animationgroup
  
  local a1 = h.ag:CreateAnimation("Rotation")
  a1:SetDegrees(-360) -- -360° = clockwise, 360° = counter-clockwise
  a1:SetDuration(60) --how long should it take to make rotate the texture for the degrees set in seconds?
  h.ag.a1 = a1 --new subobject that will contain our animation
  
  h.ag:Play()
  h.ag:SetLooping("REPEAT") --This will tell the animationgroup to repeat itself until stopped or a new looping is defined
  
  return h

end

local f = my_animationgroup_test() --f will contain your frame with the animation now

If you want to know how this could be used ingame check: Galaxy animation, it shows some rotating textures.

The range of applications that are possible is quite huge. You can animate textstrings, textures and much more. Think of a button that if pressed would roll a menu into the screen. Something like that.

Another cool example is the blackbox test: BlackBoxLua. You can push around a black box with your mouse on the screen.

Our example contains only 1 animation for that animationgroup. But each animationgroup can contain up to 100 animations and with

Animation:SetOrder(order)

Meet the Warlocks: a tale of three talent trees.

Emolate — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:29:38 GMT

Those that raided endgame content during Burning Crusade may have noticed that any asshole off the street could apparently tear the roof off any dungeon from Karazhan to Black Temple by leaning on a single button that read "Shadow Bolt".

In those days of Demonic Sacrifice the majority of the Warlock player base was hip to the fact that the best option for tightly controlled DPS once you had sufficient gear to be hit-capped was 0/21/40 with a sacrificed Succubus. Many a succubus was sacrificed over the course of the burning crusade making them nearly extinct in most parts of Azeroth. In an effort to prevent Warlocks from outright hunting them to extinction, some subtle and then not-so-subtle changes were made to the Warlock talent trees to steer us away from butchering our whip-lashing ladies and they even managed to make a Felguard spec worth playing.

WotLK has been pretty good to Warlocks thus far, with three very viable talent trees that can provide solid performance and some raid utility that allows for DPS that isn't exactly stunning like it was during Burning Crusade, but does manage to be competitive.

At the time of this writing the PTR for 3.3 is currently up for testing and there are some rather significant changes being batted around for Warlocks, but the bottom line is this:

This is the first time that all three talent trees have been this competitive in terms of raw performance, and it's a good time to be a Warlock. There does seem to be a bit of a gap these days in comparisons to Hunters, Mages and even Moonkin druids, so some folks may be curious what exactly the Warlocks in their raid are doing (or should be doing) and that is what I'm going to try to address here.

Warlocks no longer have Demonic Sacrifice, they took the spell away and removed the effects from the game, so we always have a demonic minion underfoot. The only minion that is questionable is the Voidwalker, but there are encounters (such as Faction Champions) where the blueberry can be used effectively, or in encounters that can be gamed a bit by having a Demonologist Warlock tank something with their Voidwalker in lieu of a dedicated and proper tanking player.

Affliction Warlocks will prefer the Felhunter if they lack a Priest or Mage, since the Felhunter gives a Spirit and Intellect buff to the raid, but they don't stack. If you are caster heavy and lack Mages or Priests (a problem I've only encountered in 10mans occasionally) a Felhunter's Fel Intellect can come in handy. The Felhunter can also Devour Magic and skilled players will be able to assist with cleansing magical effects from your raid. I use mouseover macros for it but other people have other methods they're more comfortable with. My other raiding toon is a Paladin, so mouseover spam works well for me.

If you don't need any of this type of utility, a Succubus is a great option because she does decent DPS and will dutifully follow a target around and whip it incessantly. The Succubus's crowd control ability isn't exceptionally useful except in some larger trash pulls in Ulduar, I've found that in an encounter like Faction Champions she's not going to be able to keep anyone CC'ed very long and is rather frail.

The Imp is a good ranged minion, and gives Blood Pact, which is a large health buff. It's raid-wide now and when talented, the little guy hits pretty hard. The unfortunate thing is that those talent points can be spent elsewhere with better effect for Affliction.

Finally, Affliction is the only spec where using the massive Doomguard is a DPS gain. The Doomguard is an interesting fellow, with a Cripple effect and an AOE attack that you should take off auto-cast because he'll use it in the least effective ways. He's much better off melee'ing the boss or by selectively using his Cripple on add spawns. He's large and in charge, and may be undesirable if you're fighting in close quarters. And good news: it doesn't kill anyone to summon him anymore. He also doesn't drop his enslaved status and start killing priests!

Affliction does good DPS, has a lot of residual healing coming back to the Warlock making them a bit more self-sufficient than others due to Life Tap use, and also allows for enough room in talent points to pick up improved Healthstones for your raid, and can use Improved Shadow Bolt, giving the raid a 5% increase in crit change on the debuffed target. It is one of two specs that can do that optimally, though the preferred Affliction execute is keeping all Shadow DoTs and debuffs up on a target and using Drain Soul when the target is below 35%. It's up to you to find out if you should be keeping Shadow Vulnerability up during this time or not. Your mileage may very. Since most mages I play with these days are Arcane, I've found Improved Shadow Bolt to be a valuable contribution to a raid group since they're not Scorching anything.

The only other spec that will carry Improved Shadow Bolt is deep Demonology.

Demonology was a very weird tree in Burning Crusade. The addition of the Felguard as our 41 point talent gave the spec a truly defining characteristic: a big hulking meleeing minion that has an intercept stun, a cleave, and a taunt. That taunt is surprisingly useful through clever use of mouseover macros -- it can save a healer if you're fast enough, as can that Intercept. Deep Demonology in WotLK gives another trademark skill, Metamorphosis.

In Metamorphosis the Warlock transforms into a demon-like form, complete with special abilities unique to that shape-change. It gives you an Immolation Aura you can activate, providing a cozy, yet fiery AOE effect to mobs in the immediate vicinity. Most Warlocks will drop a demonic circle prior to Metamorphosis, letting them charge into melee range, activate their Immolation Aura, DPS the target, and then quickly teleport back to their ranged brethren for the cost of one GCD. While in demon-form, Warlocks enjoy buffed damage output, increased armor, a taunt (careful with that), and a Shadow Cleave.

Deep Demonology also gives Demonic Pact, which doesn't stack with Totem of Wrath, but may be more valuable depending on level of gear and composition. Demonic Pact gives 10% of the Warlock's spellpower to the raid, which means that the buff can get quite large depending on the spellpower of the Warlock. Demonic Pact will be up as often as your Felguard crits, which means that you should have very good uptime for the buff. Deep Demonology Warlocks should stack as much spellpower as possible to make this buff more worthwhile, and due to the large amounts of spellpower and crit this spec gives, greatly favors haste (note: Demonologists should be farming regular ToC 5-man to get the Abyssal Rune trinket, which with Illustration of the Dragon Soul will be your two BiS trinkets if you're hit-capped).

Demonologists will be able to pick up improved Healthstones, keep Improved Shadow Bolt (since their filler spell is Shadow Bolt) and have an Execute called Decimate that lets them weave Shadow Bolts and Soul Fires with great effect, pummeling the target with shadows and flames. This talent gets reworked in 3.3 and while it is too soon to tell what the final outcome will be, looks like they're trying to change the situation we face now where you have to find the right distance from your target to do a 1-to-1 "weave" of Shadow Bolts and Soul Fires. As of this time the 3.3 PTR relies on a Shadow Bolt to give the Warlock a Decimate buff that lasts `n` seconds, allowing for Soulfire spam that doesn't cost a Soul Shard and with a haste effect. Ordinarily, Soul Fire costs a Soul Shard and is very slow to cast, making it not an ideal choice for everyday use. And since we have to drop summoning stones, soulstone tanks and healers, summon new demonic minions, buff our weapons with self-enchants and bake cupcakes for you fatties every attempt, Soul Shards get used enough already thank-you-very-much.

So Demonology Warlocks enjoy providing talented cupcakes, a large spellpower buff for the entire raid, a lot of survivability, Improved Shadow Bolt for 5% crit for your raid, and while they currently lag behind Destruction Warlocks a great deal, are getting tuned a bit in the right direction for 3.3. The composition of your raid group will dictate if Demonology is worthwhile, groups that lack an Elemental Shaman will probably benefit from one, but don't discount the impact of the Felguard in heavily buffed stacked-with-melee raid groups and the powerful Decimate execute.

There is a variation of the Demonology build that picks up talents for 3% more +hit (Suppression in the first tier of the Affliction tree) and drops Demonic Pact. If you enjoy playing demonology but don't have enough spellpower to be the Demonic Pact Warlock for your group, it's available as an option.

Destruction is a very good spec these days though the subject of a lot of a tuning and monkeying with every release of WoW. They have enough talent points available to pick up talented Healthstones and even to reach Soul Link for improved survivability for harder encounters and learning hard modes, and use the Imp as their demon of choice. Fully talented the Imp is a little gatling gun, and can pewpew nearly infinitely with Judgement of Wisdom on the target.

Destruction gives great tightly controlled burst damage, and finally gets to use Conflagrate giving a nice cast time reduction on filler spells from the Backdraft talent, Incinerate and Chaos Bolt. Conflagrate gets touched a lot by Blizzard developers and they're continuously tuning it. For the most part, Destruction Warlocks are going to use Curse of Doom or Curse of Elements (depending on the presence of a Balance Druid's Earth and Moon or Unholy Death Knight's Ebon Plaguebringer), Immolate, and spamming Incinerate. They should use Conflagrate and Chaos Bolt when it is off cooldown, though depending on gear levels and haste it can be better to save a Chaos Bolt cooldown until after Backdraft charges are used.

In addition to great DPS, Destruction also returns health to the Warlock from damaging with their fillers, and gives access to Improved Soul Leech, which provides Replenishment to your raid. Destruction Warlocks can talent for more crit rating from Backlash if desired, and there is a lot of room in the tree for flavor if you want to pick up Shadowfury for an AOE stun, the previously mentioned Soul Link for survivability, or some of the stat-boosting talents from Demonology. There is a variation of this build that drops Improved Soul Leech for more +hit from Suppression. All variations of this spec will probably want to use Fire Stones instead of Spell Stones for their weapon enchants, though in some cases the difference between the two is modest. Destruction Warlocks cannot reach the Master Conjurer talent, which gives their self-enchants a substantial buff.

Destruction Warlocks will always want to use the Imp, as any other minion is a DPS loss.

All three trees can provide talented healthstones, two of them will provide +5% crit via Improved Shadow Bolt, one of which carries a large spellpower buff to the raid, and another that gives Replenishment. There are many options for Warlocks in WotLK and there is likely a place for them in every raid group, without fear of being redundant. We don't just lean on Shadow Bolt anymore, which lets players differentiate themselves by having more opportunities for demonstrating skilled play, and all three specs can be very engaging to play with a lot of nuance to each.

I think all Warlocks should be looking forward to 3.3 as it will bring some exciting new changes to the game for us, and remind us why we enjoy playing this class so much. While we may not be the top of the food chain, we are a valuable resource to any raid group, though please be aware that if we could enslave you and make you our minion, we probably would. Never turn your back on us.

Battle.net Fears

emptyrepublic — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:57:09 GMT

I saw this blog post on WoW.com today and feel a bit of a need to respond regarding the purpose and eventual impact once WoW requires all players to bind their accounts with Battle.net.

Overall the author is concerned that Battle.net integration is essentially foisting features that are unwanted and will impair or otherwise diminish their gaming experience. Personally, I am a fan of Battle.net integration for no other reason than the fact that when I was setting up my account I was able to enter in my Diablo 2 CD keys and get fully updated and downloadable copies of the game despite the fact I was missing one of my Diablo 2 CDs. Regarding the arguments in the blog entry though. They are speculative and largely uninformed. Here are my counter points...

Reason 1:
The author's concern here is related to disciplinary action on the part of Blizzard. The fear is that if a disciplinary infraction occurs in one game it will lock them out of other games. The implication is that if a player is banned from WoW for 3 days they would not be able to play anything else that is linked to Battle.net. I have not read any specifics regarding Battle.net disciplinary policy but it wouldn't surprise me if you got banned from WoW for 3 days that Blizzard would take you offline from Battle.net Starcraft or other games. To my understanding a similar policy applies to Xbox Live. Why doesn't it make sense for Blizzard to do something similar?

Would this mean you couldn't play Starcraft at all? No. I do not know of any game (outside an MMO) that prevents you from playing offline if you got an infraction or banned outright online. Steam games run fine locally when there is no Internet access. You can play Xbox games despite being banned from Live. Blizzard is not so far out of the mainstream that I imagine they would do otherwise.

Additionally, if your concern is that you might not be able to play one game because of disciplinary problem in another I don't think that your ability to play games should be a priority. Perhaps some behavior modification should take precedent. Personally I'm fine with a troll being banned in WoW and then unable to find me (by accident or on purpose) if I do a quick game of SC2 on Battle.net.

Reason 2:

I really don't care about cross-account achievements. Not a selling point for me.

Fair enough, but is that a reason NOT to merge your account? If you don't care what people think of your achievements from an Armory look up now, what difference is this going to be?

Reason 3:

I can see it now, I'd post my thoughts on the Barbarian on the Diablo 3 forums, or about some issue I was having, or something balance related, and the first 15 replies would be something like "Nice ladder rankings in SC2 nubcaek plx 2 go kill urself failtard"

If you are opposing features merely on the basis of how a segment of the community might respond you might as well just shutdown your PC and toss it out the window. The nature of our hobby (video games) plus the anonymity the internet provides makes trolls and other intellectual stupidity unavoidable (see PAs Greater Internet Dickwad Theory).

Again, going back to the author's second reason attitudes of others regarding your play style and accomplishments are unrelated to actually having a Battle.net account. It not that hard to click on a character name on the WoW forums and mock a poster now. Perhaps the author is also opposed to the Armory? Making is somewhat easier to see how good or bad you are at a game is unrelated to the benefits that Battle.net provides (unified authentication for Blizz games, downloadable clients, easier support, etc).

Reason 4:

Cross-game communication is not something that I want. If there is an invisible mode, and if I could opt out of #3, I MIGHT be able to live with #1. The very last thing that I want is to have people in one game be able to see when I'm playing another game, or even to be able to see that I'm playing the first game.

This is perhaps the only argument that has any merit and I agree with to a degree. Personally I sometimes want to play WoW with a character that no one else knows about just so I don't get the usual "please heal", "please tank", or "please run me through this low dungeon". Sometimes I just want to be left alone and do new things without being bothered.

Having said that though I imagine Battle.net will have some feature that in some fashion that hide your status from people playing in different (e.g. non-WoW) Battle.net games. Within WoW it maybe unavoidable, however I am speculating much like the original author so it's difficult for me to properly argue the other side. Until we see exactly how Battle.net works its not worth opposing integration based on preconceived ideas of how it will work.

Reason 5:

I don't like to have to type in my 27 character email account to log-in to my games. I know there is a "Remember Username" checkbox, but I have 2 WoW accounts, and while one is inactive, it isn't ALWAYS inactive, so the check-box isn't always going to help me. And #1 certainly makes merging the 2 accounts into 1 Battle.net account not an option.

I don't like having to enter my username and password into e-mail. I don't like having to swipe the card pass at the gate for the parking garage. There are many small inconveniences in life that we deal with because we have to or we want to. I imagine the author had to enter a username and password to get into WoW before. It's still the same behavior, you'll just be typing a few more letters. Again, is this sufficient to oppose Battle.net integration?

The author's solution is interesting...

Well the only thing I can think of is to use a different email address and different battle.net account for each Game/Game Account.

What I find particularly amusing about this solution is that is adds even more inconvenience to the process than the Battle.net integration would introduce on its own. Plus it won't fix much. It would really only solve the problem described in Reason 1, which shouldn't be a problem unless you are prone to break terms of service. If you have a friend who has everything wrapped in one B.net account who has friend every account in your games what has changed? They know its you and the only thing is that's different is that if you wanted to join them you'd have to login with a different B.net account. Additionally this solution would only aggravate concerns address in Reason 5.

In conclusion the author does not give compelling reasons to avoid or otherwise resist B.net account integration. Will the system be perfect? Of course not. Will there be new problems? More than likely. However, from what I have been able to glean thus far this system will give Blizzard a more cohesive online presence that is clearly working for other companies like Microsoft and Valve. Given Blizzard's track record for good software I feel confident in sum B.net will be a good thing.

Alcaras' Blog

alcaras — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:31:05 GMT

I blog over at Alcaras’ Blog.

Short Sweet Rant #5

VerziehenOne — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 16:51:12 GMT

Just Try It is NOT at Strategy!

First off, apologies for posting so quickly after my last one .. this is simply a very current issue that has been in my guild, and ranting is something I like to do.

My guild is currently working on Heroic Beasts of Northrend at the moment. We have been doing some Theorycrafting, (by that I mean, made a thread on our forum and asked for discussion, facts, numbers, etc), and the result of it has been the above.

I have done many calculations based on our group, our group's DPS, likely composition and also factored in what I know about the encounter from both videos/strategy guides and personal experience.

I have provided numbers to support my various inferences, while not actually saying 'we're using this strategy, deal', as I wanted to spur discussion and have actual data / facts to support theories.

The responses that some have given were "Yeah, you've given numbers and all, but why don't we just try it?" (It being the very thing my numbers, and cited actual experience, prove to be a bad idea, or potentially very detrimental).

I'd just like to say once more ... "Just Try It" does not magically negate fact, change situations, fix realism or ignore mechanics of a fight. More times than not, it is a 100% waste of time, and unlike your first time in a brand new encounter, it usually can be predicted!

Note: This 'Just Try It' method was used on Anub'arak, regular, when we decided to 'Just Try' having one tank for all 4 adds, and not kill any in Phase 1 .. though the numbers said our tank would die, pretty much with 100% certainty. Yeah. That worked realllly well.

RABBLE RABBLE

Short Sweet Rant #4

VerziehenOne — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:59:20 GMT

MY COFFEE TASTED TERRIBLE TODAY

Normally it tastes alright, maybe 8/10 stars .. today it was a 3 at best.

Bitter, not just-below-scorching in temperature, and no discernable Vanilla flavor (it is a Vanilla Bean coffee).

I am disappointed that I spent $1.50 on it today. Should have gotten tea.

That is all.

PS: No, I didn't make it. I purchased it at the same little store thing that I always do. Today was just a sad day for humanity and coffeeanity.

Guide to building a character in Champions Online that won't fall flat on its face:

Adoriele — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:33:34 GMT

General: Your framework picks don't matter. Really. Like, at all. Which framework a power is in is only relevant until you hit level 26, after which you have access to every power in the game. For reference, here's a table for how early you have access to powers, depending on whether you've been focusing on its framework:

	Focused Framework	Unfocused Framework
Tier 1	Level 5	Level 8
Tier 2	Level 8	Level 17
Tier 3	Level 14	Level 26

Level 1

Energy Builder, DPS Power, Innate Talent

You're going to pick three things here - Your Energy Builder, your first DPS power, and your Innate talent (in that order). If you pick a Framework default set, you'll just get the EB and main nuke from that framework, and the Innate Talent that the devs have decided to associate with that framework. I'd suggest clicking Custom and picking them yourself, there's really no downside and you'll get a lot more customization from it. You can only ever have one Energy Builder, but obviously you can pick a few DPS powers over time.

Energy Builder: Not much matters with this one. Some people have mentioned that you should always pick a ranged Energy Builder, even if you plan on having a melee character. Whether you do is up to you, but there is definitely a difference to the way you play if you can't get energy at range. Personally, I haven't found it to be an issue, but the highest Melee-only character I've made was ~15, back in OB.
DPS power: Pick whatever you want. Really.

Innate Talent: The only major choice you have to make right now. Talents, including your Innate Talent, serve only to boost your stats, nothing else. Later on you'll pick two stats to focus on. You will probably want to pick the Innate that also focuses on these two, but you can also get good returns from just picking Hero and being done with it. For reference, here's a breakdown of what each stat does (ignoring, for a moment, your focuses).

Constitution (CON)	Bonus Health, 10 HP per CON
Strength (STR)	Slight Melee damage bonus (i.e. you will only ever get 20% damage bonus from STR [again, ignoring focus], and reaching that much STR is fairly easy). Increases the strength of any knockbacks you perform, and increases your resistance to everyone else's knockbacks (~1% per STR). Increases your ability to break free of "tangible" holds.
Dexterity (DEX)	Increases your chance to crit (?% per DEX at level 40). Increases your stealth (which doesn't affect a very large number of characters)
Ego (EGO)	Increases the bonus damage of your critical strikes (.05% per EGO at level 40). Increases your ability to break free of "intangible" holds.
Intelligence (INT)	Lowers power cooldown time (.15% per INT at level 40, works like Haste, so 100% means half recharge time). Lowers power energy cost (??% per INT at level 40). Increases your ability to see stealthed players.
Endurance (END)	Increases your maximum energy (1 Energy per END).
Recovery (REC)	Increases your energy recovery rate with your energy builder, increases your Equilibrium (Those two yellow arrows on your energy bar? Your energy will naturally gravitate toward that point out of combat. High REC means you start fights with a full or near-full energy bar). Scales such that you need 40% more REC than END for a full bar.
Presence (PRE)	Decreases threat in all stances except Protector. Increases threat in Protector stance. Increases strength of most heals.

Most of the stats are balanced to provide flavor differences of the same thing. Boost REC, and you'll spend less time building energy, and more time using your higher-DPS nukes/heals. Boost END and you'll have a larger energy pool to work with. Boost Int and your powers cost less energy. While functionally different, they all provide the same goal of increasing your energy efficiency. DEX/EGO boost that as well, though more directly as your powers do more damage per cast (i.e. INT/END/REC boost cast/energybar, DEX/EGO boost damage/cast). There are other things to take into account when picking stats, but I'll cover that in a second.

Level 5

Travel Power, Characteristic Focus, Power

Congrats, you're out of the Tutorial. You get a metric shit ton of things to play with now: Your first Characteristic Focus (Super stat), your first Travel Power, and another Power. You can choose these in any order, unlike when using the character creation.

Travel Power: Jet Boots have the highest top speed. Flight is the most maneuverable (and I assume this includes Fire Flight, which is really just a Flight recolor). Swinging is kinda funky, Tunneling and Super Speed won't let you get up to high places very easily. Super Jump and Athletics are kinda okay, I guess. Teleportation looks cool, and is just as mobile as Flight, with the added benefit that you're immune to damage while teleporting (though it is NOT a threat wipe). Travel powers which allow you to use other powers while they're active (really, all but Teleportation and Tunneling) will increase the energy cost of those powers. Teleportation will gain a short cooldown if used in combat. Jet boots cannot be charged like the other Flight powers. Most importantly - You can try out all of the powers for free until you leave the powerhouse, so there's no reason to be locked into a travel power you don't like.
Characteristic Focus (Super Stat): This is the stat thing I told you to wait for. On top of the benefits provided by each stat innately, you also pick two stats to scale your damage with ( . Order picked doesn't matter. Your damage dealt with almost all powers will scale directly off of these stats (and if your pick Super Strength, this stacks with the innate melee damage bonus from STR). You also, by virtue of supering these stats, get a bonus to them. At level 40, you get 80 to both of your Super stats on top of your gear's stats. Which one should you pick? If you plan on healing, you should probably take Presence as your first Super, as most heals scale off of it. If not...

Power (suggested: Passive Defense/Offense): You have an EB, and you have a nuke. At level 5, I'd suggest you then take a Passive Slotted Defense. You're likely going to need one eventually, and there's no reason not to take it now so that your Characteristic Focus can provide more than just bonus damage. All Passive Slotted Defenses except Regeneration (which may actually scale with Recovery now). You could also take a Slotted Passive Offense, though only Quarry and the Martial Arts Slotted Offenses are avaliable yet.

What is a Passive Slotted Defense? Well, first you need to understand Passive Slotted powers in general. You get one Passive Power slot (though not all passive powers are slotted, some are just always on), and what type of power you can put in that slot depends on which role you're currently in (analogous to Warrior stances). By this point you've probably unlocked both Avenger and Protector roles, as well as the Balanced role you begin with. Avenger is the DPS role, Protector is the Tanking role, and Sentinel (which you won't unlock for a while most likely) is the Healing/Support role. When you're in the Balanced role, you can slot any passive power you want. When you're in the other roles, you can only slot powers which match the role - Defensive powers in Protector, Offensive powers in Avenger, and Support powers in Sentinel. At the end of the post I've listed all of the benefits of each Role.

There are 5 passive slotted Defenses: Personal Force Field in Force, Invulnerability in Power Armor, Lightning Reflexes in Martial Arts (A large number of the Martial Arts powers are associated with all four MA frameworks, rather than just one), Defiance in Might, and Regeneration in Supernatural.

Power	Scales With	Linked Active Defense	Useful For	Opposite of / Similar to	Description
Personal Force Field	END/EGO	Field Surge	Short fights with massive damage	None	Acts as a second HP bar that sits on top of your normal one. The size of the HP bar scales with your END, and it regenerates (even in combat, though more slowly) according to your EGO. PFF will not block all of an attack (at full strength, it will block 95% of an attack, and the percentage drops with the relative amount of shield you have left. I.E. if your PFF has a max HP of 500 and a current HP of 100 (20%), you will block considerably less than 95% of an attack with your PFF. As well, actively blocking by holding shift only decreases the post-PFF damage, so if you're at maximum field strength there is little difference between actively blocking and not. The only way to "heal" your PFF besides its natural regen is with another power, Field Surge, its linked Active Defense. Field Surge also significantly increases your damage resistance for a short period. All Active Defenses have a 90s cooldown, and enforce a 30s cooldown on all other Active Defenses (and usually have a ~15s duration).
Invulnerability	STR/CON	Unbreakable	Fast-hitting-small-damage attacks, namely hordes of henchmen	Opposite of Lightning Reflexes	Invulnerability has two components, much like PFF. First, you have a full block component much like the current WoW block mechanic, which scales with STR. Any incoming damage is reduced by this component as a scalar - i.e. if your STR-based block has a value of 100, and an incoming attack does <= 100 damage, you take nothing. Secondarily, you get an additional %-based decrease based on your CON. The active defense associated with Invulnerability is Unbreakable, which greatly increases your damage resistance for a short period.
Lightning Reflexes	DEX	Masterful Dodge	Any ability with a long charge time	Opposite of Invulnerability	Lightning Reflexes simply increases your dodge rate - though it increases it by a huge amount, and the increase scales with your DEX. To understand how helpful this is, you have to know that dodge has two components to it, and both scale with the charge time on the incoming attack. The first component is your chance to dodge. Assuming you have a 15% chance to dodge listed, you will dodge a 1s charge-time attack 15% of the time. You will dodge a .5s charge-time attack 7.5% of the time, and a 2s charge-time attack 30% of the time. When you dodge an attack, you reduce its severity by a much larger, though similarly scaled amount. For example, dodging a 1s attack will reduce that attack by 50(??)%. Which also means that dodging a 2s attack will reduce it by 100%. Yes, you can go over 100% with this power, meaning that you have a good chance of taking no damage from long-charge-time attacks. On the flip side, you will take almost full damage from almost all small-time attacks, making you tissue paper against mobs of henchmen. The active defense associated with LR is Masterful Dodge, which greatly increases your dodge (both chance and reduction) for a short time. Note that you can both block and dodge an incoming attack for very significant damage reduction.
Defiance	CON/STR*	Enrage*	Long fights	Similar to Regeneration	Defiance is a fairly simple power. Every time you get hit, you gain a stacking damage reduction buff (%), scaling based on your CON. The internal cooldown of this proc is decreased when you rank it up, with max rank allowing you to add to the stack every 3s, which also refreshes the stack duration of 20s. Maximum stack size is 8, so you'll have the best defenses 24s into a fight at max rank. Defiance has no active defense associated with it. Instead, Enrage, when used, will consume all stacks of Defiance, and convert them to Enraged, which buffs your damage. Enrage scales with STR.
Regeneration	REC/CON*	Resurgence	Long fights	Similar to Defiance	Regeneration is also a fairly simple power. As you take damage during a fight, you begin to regenerate HP. The more damage you take, the more HP you regenerate (note that this isn't tied to your current health, but how much damage you've taken recently. When you stop taking damage, your regeneration lowers. Your regeneration also lowers when you attack, though I don't believe it lowers as quickly). The Active defense associated with Regeneration significantly boosts your HP recovery, but once it drops it resets your HP recovery back to its beginning (i.e. out-of-combat) value. The boost to your HP recovery scales with CON.

Okay, wall of text over. Bottom line for picking a passive defense: PFF and Invulnerability are decent for soloing, the others are good for boss fights (for various reasons - Defiance and Regeneration are just good on long fights, LR is best against mobs that use a large number of charged abilities). There are some downsides to each. PFF can't be healed by anything but Field Surge(directly, anyway. It self-heals over time, so you get something similar to a mini-Regeneration on top of the original shield buffer, on the order of ~50 HP per tick), and blocking only affects the bleed-through damage, so it's possible that in terms of effective health it would be better just to stack CON. You get 10 HP per CON, and I'm not sure how much each END adds to your PFF, but if it's not significantly more the costs outweight the benefits. Regen provides no damage reduction at all - Heavy hits will still kill you, and if they come early enough in a fight your regen won't keep up. It's purely reactive. Invuln, LR, and Defiance look to be the best functional powers, but Invuln does (almost) nothing against bosses and LR does almost nothing against henchmen.

HOLY FUCK I'm only level 5, did I really need to know all that?

Simply-put, yes. Super Stats are really the most important choice you'll make for your character, and for non-healers it's mostly going to come down to which passive defense you want. With how Retconning works, picking a bad power this early in the game means a HUGE resource sink in order to fix it later - often impossible without a free Retcon from the Devs, so you're better off knowing what you're getting into. If you don't want a passive defense, here's a short table of the other powers which scale from specific stats:

Power	Type	Damage Boost	Damage Resistance	Other
Electric Form (Slotted Offense)	Energy(Electric, Sonic, Particle)	END	REC
Fiery Form/Ice Form (Slotted Offense)	Elemental(Fire, Ice, Toxic)	PRE	REC
Killer Instinct (Innate Offense)	N/A	N/A	N/A	Energy return scales with EGO
Ego Form (Slotted Offense)	Ego Blades	EGO	CON(physical)
Ego Surge	N/A	N/A	N/A	Mini non-slotted Ego Form, with no damage reduction component and a 12s duration.
Telekinesis (Innate)	N/A	N/A	N/A	Reworks your pick-up-and-throw ability to scale off of your EGO instead of your STR.
Shadow Form (Slotted Offense)	Paranormal(Ego, Dimensional)	END	CON

At this point, you should have a good idea of which stats you want to SUPER. If not, it's likely because you don't intend to pick up any of the powers listed (which would really be a funky move, but it's doable). In that case, there are two fallbacks - CON is a great all-around Super Stat; pick it, and the same stat boosts both your damage and your HP. This pairs well with END for high HP and Energy. Other wise, if you're going pure DPS, Super both DEX and EGO, which will make you crit often and get big crits. This is the OOH SHINY NUMBERS option.

While not a function of level specifically, you'll also gain access to Crafting once you're out of the Tutorial. Crafting on its face is very simple. You pick one of three Professions: Mysticism, Arms, and Science. Within each Profession, there are three Specialties. These specialties don't affect the gear you can create (yet) in any meaningful way - they just change the names for RP flavor purposes (i.e. the "gear" you get from Science can be something you invent, something you're exposed to, or some way you mutate, but it gives the same benefit either way). There are also action figures for each specialty. Changing either your specialty or your profession will reset your skill to 1, but will not cause you to forget your blueprints, hence if you stay within the same profession you will eventually be able to craft everything within that profession at the same time.

There are three ways to skill up crafting; You can craft an item (obviously), you can gather mats for your profession from one of the nodes in the world, and you can do Research. Research consists of taking an item which matches your profession and breaking it down for parts. This will be the main way you skill up your profession, and is likely also the best way to gain mats. When you Research, the output depends heavily on the input. You will get back a portion of the mats used to create the item (yes, this applies to items that are not really crafted). You can put in multiple items and get more mats back. Doing this will also increase the rating of the Research you do. The more powerful the equipment you research, the higher the portion of mats you get back, and the greater the number of skill you get. As well, certain tokens (Epiphany for Science, Profundity for Mysticism, and I forget the term for Arms) require 5/5 rating to receive (at the level they're mainly used - i.e. if I'm a tier 3 crafter, I need 5/5 rating to get a tier 3 epiphany, 4/5 to get a tier 2, and 3/5 to get a tier 1). These are mainly used to buy Power Replace or Conversion Blueprints, though a couple other blueprints require them as well.

Your maximum skill with a profession is gated by level: 100 until level 11, 200 until level 21, 300 until level 31. As well, here's a list of the stats each profession focuses on. Note that stats are also dictated by type of equipment - You won't see INT on an offensive item as a main focus, for example. High numbers mean a better focus. Note that Primary slots focus a lot more heavily and have a lot more budget, so I'm adding 3 to anything in a primary slot.

Profession	Gear Slot	CON	STR	DEX	EGO	END	REC	INT	PRE
Mysticism	Primary Offense		4	5			6
Mysticism	Secondary Offense		1				2		3
Mysticism	Primary Defense								6
Mysticism	Secondary Defense				3	2		1
Mysticism	Primary Utility				6	4		5
Mysticism	Secondary Utility				3			1	2
Mysticism	Total	0	5	5	12	6	8	7	11
Arms	Primary Offense		6	5			4
Arms	Secondary Offense	3	2	1
Arms	Primary Defense	6
Arms	Secondary Defense		3	2			1
Arms	Primary Utility				5	6		4
Arms	Secondary Utility	3			1	2
Arms	Total	12	11	8	6	8	5	4	0
Science	Primary Offense		4	6			5
Science	Secondary Offense	1		2			3
Science	Primary Defense	6							6
Science	Secondary Defense				1	2		3
Science	Primary Utility				4	5		6
Science	Secondary Utility	1				2		3
Science	Total	8	4	8	5	9	8	12	6

Level 6 (FINALLY)

Talent

Relax. If you're here, your character build is, for the most part, done - even this early. You know your intended Supers, and you've already purchased one. Other than level 21 and level 35, every level from here on gives you exactly 1 thing: A new Talent, a new Power, 2 Advantage points (more on this at level 7), or at level 13 you'll pick your second Super Stat. Level 21 gives you both Advantages and a talent (your last), and level 35 gives you both a power and a second travel power. Powers are easy to pick for the most part, though I'll give suggestions. Talents are just stat boosts. Level 6 gives you your first non-innate talent:

Talent (suggest: Super1 +8): You should make your first Talent match your first Super stat, for the extra damage bonus. Past level 5 the game is balanced on the assumption that you've got a super stat picked and are at least marginally interested in gearing toward it. Do yourself a favor and add as much to that stat as you can.

Level 7

Advantages

Honestly, me trying to suggest specifics of advantages is just going to be too much. There are some basic ones that a lot of powers have, such as adding threat to an attack, or an energy return proc, or a taunt. There are others that are fairly specific, such as a 20% damage bonus hotspot left on the ground after you use Force Eruption. You'll probably want a taunt if you plan on tanking, as well as a threat attack, and everyone would do well with an energy proc though I don't think it's necessary. As well, Advantage points let you rank up your powers. Rank one (which you get for purchasing the power) is, at level 40, designed to be somewhat undertuned. Rank 2 is normal, and rank 3 is exceptional. If you plan on DPSing, make sure your main nuke is rank 3 unless you can't make it rank 3. Why would that happen? Because each power is limited to 5 total advantage points. Ranks always cost 2, so you could have rank 3 and a 1-point advantage (such as the Energy proc I mentioned, which always costs only 1 point), but most useful advantages cost 2 points as well, so you can't have rank 3 and, say, the Hotspot on Force Eruption I mentioned. Some very powerful advantages, like the Taunt effect, take 3 points as well. You'll get 36 advantage points over the course of leveling up, and I won't really mention them again because, again, they're largely going to be up to you. Just remember that your travel powers also have ranks.

Level	You Get	Suggestion	More
Level 8	Power (Focused Tier 2 unlocks, Unfocused Tier 1 unlocks)	Some form of PBAoE	You're going to get larger groups of mobs now. Why not take advantage of that by getting something that hits more than 1? Note: If you're Dual Blades, you get PBAoE on most of your attacks anyway.
Level 9	Talent	Super1 +5, CON +5	If you're already Supering CON, pick a third stat whose benefits I listed at Level 1 match your goals.
Level 10	Advantages		You get these every 3 levels until level 21 (except 13), then 2/3 of your levels after that. If I don't list a level, assume you get Advantages.
Level 11	Power	Heal
Level 12	Talent	CON +8
Level 13	Characteristic Focus		Here you pick up your second super.
			Around this point you'll finish your first non-MC zone. Head to the other and revel in fighting mobs much lower level than you for a while.
Level 14	Power (Focused Tier 3 unlocks)	Active Offense	There are a few clickies in the game which boost your damage for a short period. Now's a good time to pick one up.
Level 15	Talent	Super2 +8
			Should be time to head to MC for some decent questing about now.
Level 17	Power (Unfocused Tier 2 unlocks)	Block Upgrade	There are quite a few powers which augment your active block, and there are quite a few Super/Master Villains coming up who you'd really be wise to Block against.
Level 18	Talent	Super1 +5, Super2 +5
			By now you should be finished running around each zone you have access to for the first time. From here on you're going to bounce around a bit for a while.
Level 20	Power	Ranged AoE
Level 21	Advatages, Talent	Super2 +5, CON +5	This is your last Talent. At this point, you have +30 to Super1, Super2, +23 to CON (or whichever CON replacement you picked), and +5 to all other stats from talents, assuming you picked a focused innate talent You'll also have +~40 to each of your supers just by virtue of them being your supers, 5 to each stat as a baseline, and your gear on top of that.
Level 23	Power	Active Defense	You should probably pick up the Active Defense associated with your Passive one at this point (unless you don't have one, obviously). At this point, the rest of my suggestions can really come in any order - actually, the last couple probably could, too. I've tried suggesting alternating offense with defense, but that's just to spread things out a little. For the rest of your powers (you have 5 left before level 40), try and also pick up a Hold, an AoE Nuke, and a couple other powers of your choice.
Level 25			Time to create your Nemesis. Go to the Police Station 2 blocks north of the City Hall. If you haven't been to City Hall yet, you're not playing the same game I am.
Level 26	Power (All Powers are now unlocked)
Level 29	Power
Level 32	Power
Level 35	Power, Travel Power		You get your second Travel Power now, and by this point you should know the shortcomings of the one you have and be able to cover them with the second.
Level 38	Power (Your last one)
Level 40	Advantages (Your last 2 points)

And that's it. Assuming you've been following the guide, you should now have an Energy Builder, 13 Powers, 2 Travel powers, and 36 Advantage points (for an average of about 2.5 points per power, including your EB). You'll also have 115 to each of your Super stats, 28 to CON, and 10 to everything else, plus whatever you get from your gear. Now, as promised, I'll list the advantages of each of the roles:

Role	Damage	Bonus HP	Healing	Holds/Roots	Resistance to Holds/Roots	Energy Decay	Energy gain while blocking	Threat	Slot
Guardian	Standard	Standard	Standard	Standard	Standard	Standard	Standard	Standard	Balanced (i.e. Any)
Avenger	+20%	-50%	-20%	-20%	-20%	-50% (good)	None	Standard	Offensive
Protector	Standard	+25%	Standard	Standard	+20%	+100% (bad)	+100%	+??%	Defensive
Sentinel	-20%	-25%	+20%	+20%	+20%	-50% (good)	Standard	Standard	Support

Edit since this is a bit more public than the BB: I can't take a huge amount of credit for this. Most of the information presented here is an aggregation of posts from the official CO forums, including other guides. If anything, it's just a place to consolidate information.

Cataclysm: Disaster Movie, Warcraft Style

emptyrepublic — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 21:57:23 GMT

I'm late to the game in general commentary regarding Cataclysm but here are a few overarching thoughts.

Old World Rebuild
I personally believe the rebuilding of the old world is a fantastic idea. I very much like the idea that the launch of the expansion is a discrete point in the history of the game with a "no going back" feeling. In a way it's a relaunch of WoW and there will be much more meaning when someone says, "I started playing WoW before Cataclysm."

Additionally it's nice to "go back home". The past few years it's felt that a lot of the problems players had to deal with were more existential. While still a threat to the Alliance/Horde players had to engaged the enemy elsewhere. "Home" generally was though of the place that the auction house was at.

Stat Overhaul
I'm very thankful for this. Gearing decisions are becoming a calculus of sorts that unnecessary detract from other aspects of the game. I believe the following blue posts touches on the problem nicely...

Originally Posted by Ghostcrawler

If you were one of those players who picked up a piece and understood how armor pen vs. attack power benefited you or whether defense was still worth collecting after you had hit crit immunity, then you were in the minority. Hopefully we can get back to a system where eyeballing an item's stats has some chance of being right. Source.

While folks on EJ are masters in determining BiS and generating appropriate lists it's a function that should only be necessary to benefit the top 1% of the player population. I'm very supportive of the concept of making gear choice much easier just by looking at the item.

Guild Improvements
Another good idea. I believe this will improve guild cohesion, at least for those guilds whose interest is raid progression or other activity outside of simply being social. Guild banks were a good start in my view, but very tangible benefits (like the guild talents provide) that equally benefit everyone will increase incentive for players to participate more in their guilds development.

New Races & Combinations
I've already expressed my love for Tauren Paladins. Beyond that I have no problem with the combinations so far presented. There is a lot of talk about lore and how it plays into these new combinations. From the little that is out it appears that Blizzard will cover these combinations and explain them in the context of Warcraft lore. I think those that say the lore is no longer driving game development are complaining too early.

As for Worgen/Goblins. Great! More races always makes things interesting. Hopefully people won't complain about their introduction as much as people have about Draenei (whom I have an affinity for as well).

Concluding Thoughts
Overall I think Cataclysm will be a great expansion. I like the direction Blizzard is going and I think the proposed changes are generally positive and will keep the game going strong.

Short Sweet Rant #3

VerziehenOne — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 21:25:51 GMT

At my place of work, people do 2 things that cause me horrible agony and a flood of ulcers that is ruining my youthful joy and turning my heart into a black black place of death and Barrens chat.

1) Those stupid backpack things with the wheels that people pull behind them.

WHY!? They can't possibly weigh more than what, 10 pounds? And you wheel the freakin' thing around? It's called a Backpack for a reason. Not a 'take up the space of 3 people behind you', 'cause people to nearly trip a lot', 'make extra noise when in tiled areas', and 'make going through doors an art and delay' thing.

Do yourself a service. Build some body muscle. Carry the damn thing.

2) How difficult is it to go right? You have 2 turnstyle doors in front of you. You are entering the building. People are walking toward you, having left through the Right side.. What do you do?

a) Go Right like you do when you drive.
b) Go Left like you do when you want to cause a traffic jam, slowdown, or just irritation. (Or British relapse).
c) Use your ogre-slaying knife to open the door.

I mean really? It's almost like, whenever i'm thinking about it ... thinking 'Oh, please go right, make my day and go right ..' the next 5 people go left.

GO RIGHT. IT SAVES LIVES.

GAHHHH

/dial tone

Tauren Paladins

emptyrepublic — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 06:07:42 GMT

Tauren Paladins: Coolest thing ever!

If this is true I'll have my pre-order in tomorrow.

I'm curious how it will be explained lore-wise, but I really don't care. Tauren (my favorite race) + Paladin (my favorite class) = 100% awesome.

Short Sweet Rant #2

VerziehenOne — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:18:56 GMT

As a Guild Master / Raid Leader / person who has ran with PuG's a LOT in the past week (alt hit 80), I have come to a conclusion.

Gear that you acquire should have a time limit on how long it can remain (at the very least) ungemmed, before it is taken from you.

I'm not even kidding, it bugs THE HELL out of me to see a raider or even someone i've ran with before, wearing a piece of gear for a week, or longer, that is not even GREEN-quality gemmed. I mean really!? They cost like 2 fucking gold if you buy it off of the Auction House.

POW

Winning Streaks

VerziehenOne — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 15:47:39 GMT

This is not WoW related.
-----------------------------

FYI: This is very opinionated, and subjective. I do not intend to change the world with this post, simply to incite some discussion, and see if there is something i'm missing, or clarify/define/refine my thoughts further.

The past few days, i've spent some time thinking about Winning Streaks, and their affects on our perception of Victories and Defeats.

Dictionary.com defines Winning Streak as: "A series of consecutive successes, a run of good luck"

I suppose that is a definition that is self explanatory, much like 'dying' is pretty simple to define, but more complex to explain, and the circumstances add further to the overall story.

I, like many (I would venture even 'most' or 'all'), of you, have had multiple times that could be defined as Winning Streaks, so this isn't an uncommon or unfamiliar idea.

But sitting at work, between calls, I was pondering the nature of the Winning Streak, and came to a few conclusions.

1) The Winning Streak is less defined by the streak, and more defined by that which ends it.

Consider any time where you had a streak of good, wins, victories, whatever. I use the example of: 'not being late to work for 4 months, and then forgetting to grab my badge from my car, and ending up 2 minutes late.'

Sure, 2 minutes is nothing, and after 4 months of on-time awesomeness, i'm not fearful of my job or anything. But that doesn't change that when I sat there after logging into the phone queues, I was absolutely consumed by how frustrated and disappointed I was. It didn't matter that it was 4 months of 'victories' before the 1 day of 'defeat', what mattered was the defeat, and the implications.

I submit to you a similar situation of the Minnesota Vikings, and of Gary Anderson's 1998 season as the Kicker. The Vikings had a great year. 15-1, only losing by 3 points to the Buccaneers in week 9. (Their pre-season record was flawless too.) They went in on a high of winning many games, and a few Playoff games too. Gary Anderson had the only perfect kicker season, in NFL history, that year. And we get to the final few minutes of a close game, and Gary goes up to kick .... and misses. Ultimately, this led to a tie, and then the Falcons' kicker made a similar (also 38 yd) field goal, for the win.

Now, sure, that moment was slightly more important than others, that maybe missing earlier in the game would have mattered 'less', but it was still a miss. Gary Anderson's perfect season was summed up, not by the many successful kicks, but by the one he missed. This leads me to conclusion #2.

2) The Winning Streak leaves the victories in the dust, the 'big picture streak' being more important than the individual wins.

Sure, every single victory that season by the Vikings was equally exciting, and a fun thing to watch,.. but when I sit and think about it, I think about how the victories were less 'woohoo for a victory!' and more 'yes! The streak is still intact!'

I don't think about the 80 days I was on time to work, as individual 'victories', but rather focused on 'another day, another on time'. Not because it is impossible to celebrate each individual victory, but because it becomes swept up in the overall picture of the bigger streak, and almost ends up overshadowed, losing it's significance as a victory, to the 'another notch' mentality of a streak.

This tends to lend credence to the first conclusion, as the loss of the 'streak' seems many many times to far outweigh the success of the many victories prior. I guarantee I didn't go to bed that night thinking 'man, great season!', but rather 'man, if only they'd won....'

To conclude,...

I don't think Winning Streaks are inherantly bad, but I think that it is difficult to keep sight of the little victories, when there are so many in a row... and ultimately difficult to remember them at all, when there comes a loss. My feeling is, if we celebrated the individual victories as much as the overall streak, that the inevitable loss wouldn't be felt as much, or overshadow that which came prior, nearly to the extent that it can and does.

It kind of goes in line with something else i've been pondering,.. the idea that it is impossible to have good without bad, as you would have nothing to define the former by, without the latter. A victory becomes less important, or less celebrate-worthy, (in perception), without remembering a loss that was overcome.

How to make addons start walking

zork — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 12:33:48 GMT

For some reason the animation fogs (RedRadiationFog.m2) stopped working with patch 3.2, which had a major impact on my UI since the glow stopped working. So I had to develop a different solution.

I had already tried some stuff with rotating textures before, so my first thought was: "Lets try to overlay 1-3 cloudish textures with blendmode and let them rotate on the orb".

No sooner said than done, I started a new testmod called rGalaxy. My idea was to have 1-3 galaxies rotate on the orb background instead of the glow.

The question in place was: "What technique shall I use to make that thing rotate?"

I remembered myself of the animation system that Blizzard released in 3.1.0 and that is bugged like hell. (Hello animation:Stop() crashing WoW!)

I google'd a bit and found "Blackbox".
WoW AddOns - BlackBox - CurseForge.com

A neat developer addon with a small black box that can be pushed around with the mouse. His code helped me alot to create rGalaxy which should just create some textures that should rotate constantly.

So this is it.

Code:
trunk - rothui - Project Hosting on Google Code

Final product:
rGalaxy : WoWInterface Downloads : Graphic UI Mods

Video: Roth UI new galaxy animation

Now why have you done this again? To make my orbs look like this:

See those swirlies? That are galaxies, three of them at different size and rotation speed.

Latest version:

This is only step one. To make it even more random you can add translations (move the animation around), scale it and change the alpha.

Hmm...does Blizzard even use it? Yes they do, for the glyph window:
Blizzard_GlyphUI.xml
Blizzard_GlyphUI.lua

Blizzard WoW animation API
World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> 3.1.0 API Changes - Animation System

So if you need some more inspiration you can look at Blizzards code aswell.

Trial of the Crusader: First Impressions

emptyrepublic — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 20:25:26 GMT

If I had to use one word to describe the new 5-man introduced in Patch 3.2 it would be... short.

There is a lot of ceremony during the instance and it's cool to have Thrall, Wyrnn, and Fordring watching as you fight. However, there are only 3 encounters in the instance. The first has you joust/fight 3 champions of your opposing faction. The second you face an Argent Crusade champion and some lackeys. Lastly, you fight Black Knight.

The instance is even shorter than Violet Hold. If it were not for the long start at the beginning I believe a good group could be done with the instance in under 10 minutes.

I'm reminded of Culling of Stratholme where it takes several minutes to get the dungeon setup to before you can really start it. The immersion factor is great, but much like Stratholme, after third or fourth time you just want to get on with the fighting.

Clones?

VerziehenOne — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 21:07:08 GMT

This is not WoW related.
-----------------------------

So I was thinking about the subject of Clones today.

The dictionary.com definition of Clone is: "a cell, cell product, or organism that is genetically identical to the unit or individual from which it was derived."

To what extent is this taken? Does the definition, (or the more common Movie / society-accepted idea) include the mind/thoughts/ideas/experiences?

In many movies we find ourselves seeing what amounts to copies of a person. Some movies even have DNA amounting to what is a 'clone' of a dead person, coming back with memories. (Spooky, I know.)

So it was something I spent a lot of time thinking about, that a clone could not exist beyond physical/genetic makeup, as the actual product would be different based on the sum of the experiences of the person. A clone, in other words, would basically be an artificially made twin.

(Yes, I am aware that Sum and Product are part of different mathematical expressions. :P )

------

A Twin being (dictionary.com): "either of two persons or things closely related to or closely resembling each other."

So, by that definition, is a Clone just basically a science-produced twin? Yeah, twins are often shown to have experienced 'similar' things, even if separated, and are often times similar in ways, but are definitely different people.

I suppose the logical end of this thought, is regarding whether a clone would have a soul or not. This idea is often muddied by the theory that they would be effectively the same person, which simply is impossible, unless they literally shared the same brain.

------

So, where did this line of thought come from? Well,... i'm a guy, and was talking to a guy, about the following often pondered question/theory:

"If a clone of your girlfriend existed, would kissing her/etc be cheating?"

And the conclusion was reached that, unless the brain was literally shared, or all experiences were shared by both, (which would render the point of another pretty well useless), then it would be cheating ... which is defined as it not being your girlfriend.

The other avenue or question that is similar, is:

"If an exact copy of your girlfriend existed, ...(so on, so forth)"

And the same sort of conclusion as the above is reached, that she may be identical, but the point at which you show her anything different, whether affection at a different time, saying something different to one than the other, being with one at one point, the other at another time,.... they would inevitably end up not the same person, even if they started as the same person.

------

Unless of course they had no brain, and were robots. Then I spoze that'd be different. And also ... she might interfer with my internet connection then, and that's just inconsiderate.

AH / Hardmode Raiding... done

Derrek — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 19:50:55 GMT

It's been a few weeks since posting, and my WoW playtime has pretty much hit 0.

*The 'guys' I've raiding with for four years have quit for real life and kids.
*My kids, being only slightly younger, will demand that I quit in a year anyway.
*For me, this game sucks without the end-raiding; and there isn't anything that holds my interest in WoW anymore (besides hardmode 25man, which again... is limited to a year at best.)
*I hit the WoW goldcap (/golfclap). So, AH raiding has lost its interest. I have done a few nights for the guild (I get about 2000g for 30-45m of time), but that's about it.

So, life without WoW. I haven't entered an instance in four or five weeks. I still know all my remapped hotkeys by heart. (I wrote sooo many macros that were all bound to keys) At this point I'm planning on putzing around until I can finish a long, strange, trip meta achiev then cancelling my accounts.

I have been playing EvE online.

Not surprisingly, I enjoy the economics of the game, and have started off as a miner. Questing (missioning) as a secondary hobby until I build up enough to dive into research/manufacturing effectively. Although, after I get a good feel for the economics... it's trading time.

In 2 full weeks of playing EvE, I have:
*purchased cyberware for my two accounts (~$80M isk)
*upgraded my ships (~$25M isk)
*purchased a lot of skill books (~$50M isk)
*purchased an 'alt ship' for missioning when mining gets too dull (~$20M isk)
*upgraded clones / bought misc stuff (~$5M isk)

and I've banked an extra ~$25M for contingencies.

So, I've accumulated about ~$200M isk over a two week period, starting with the standard $100k. I feel that this is quite a bit in a relatively short period, and a few vetrans in my corporation (guild) have been impressed. But, how does this compare with WoW?

CCP (EvE's creators) offers 'pilot licenses' for sale for IN GAME money. A player can purcahse a $15USD game card and sell it through the game's open market for ISK. (I like this concept sooo much. Needless to say, it's essentially killed the 'gold sellers'.) The license currently goes for $300-325M isk. Let's say $300M for easy-math. This equates to $20M isk for $1USD. Doing 10 seconds of 'research' via google shows I could buy 200g from wow for $1. ($5 for 1000g advert.)

So, this would roughly be the same as having a new WoW player come online for two weeks, play about 60hrs (~3days... kids were at grandma's with my wife) and gross 2,000g. All in all, i'd say... that's pretty normal for a character almost hitting lvl45 without a rush. I've done better, but then again.... I know many tricks in WoW.

Some of the real important things regarding EvE for me:
*You can specialize and get to YOUR endgame in about six to seven weeks. Old timers may be able to do 3x more than you, always... but you can catch up in your specialty because they'll have run out of things to do.
*ONE universe. I play in the same universe as EVERYONE else who plays EvE. That's just kewl.
*The economy is EXTREMELY player driven. NPCs generate some very basic building blocks, but EVERYTHING people really want is made by another player.
*A massive, massive AH 'market' to have fun with. I'm still learning until I get full into the AH. My second account has already started the skill training regimen for hauling goods between trading hubs.
*It's PvP. PvP player pirates, PvP alliances establishing control over the boarders, Player controled spacestations, and everything has the potential to get blown up, including the police. (Although there are always more cops...)

Regardless, I"m currently interested in the game, and it fits one more, very important element: I can logg off for a business trip, family, or just 'cause with no issues. You can't push hardmode WoW and have that as a reality, at least in my experience.

Ghost of Chance

Adoriele — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:17:42 GMT

Preface: As mentioned in previous comments, I'd rather dump heavily mathy things here than in the Moonkin threads, because it's easier to keep out of clutter. This post was prompted by comments on determining NG uptime when spamming Wrath. The talk referenced (fuck if I'm going to edit this post because I'm putting it on my blog instead of the thread) is Peter Donnelly shows how stats fool juries | Video on TED.com, with a followup article at Statistics of Coin-Toss Patterns | Skippy Records. As well, since I mentioned it in the thread, I'm attaching a copy of the last version of my spreadsheet that pre-dated WrathCalcs. It attempted to do a probabilistic determination of how many Starfires you could fit into a single Moonfire application, including the effects of NG, to determine DPS using a MF,SFxN rotation. All of the mechanics are completely out of date, but it might be interesting for some looking for more examples of how complex some of this business can be.

Originally Posted by Arawethion

This reminds me of something else I've been pondering while working on WC/TTT stuff. We've always been modeling NG uptime as a steady-state average for each type of spell, but of course in reality there are significant edge effects since we change spells so often.

Now, there's a good reason to imagine that the edge terms largely cancel. Wrath has high NG uptime for example. So when you switch to Wrath, the model slightly overestimates your haste for the first two Wraths, until you're into the steady state, but it will correspondingly underestimate your haste for the next two spells you cast after switching away from Wrath. And in the current WC I posted, I extended this rationale to instants--I give Moonfire the same NG uptime as Wrath, and IS I simply treat as having no NG effect since it can't crit. Even though this fudges the time spent casting an individual spell, it should provide a workable estimate of the eventual NG contribution from the spell.

Curious if anyone has ideas for improving on this.

Well, it's somewhat like the medical test example in the video Gormane linked, or alternatively a more complex version of the wrath spam problem. Each spell you cast has a probability of being affected by NG depending on two factors: What spells finished casting in the previous three seconds, and the probability of each of those sequences during a given fight. The first factor is relatively easy to generate (ignoring Latency and possibly Starfall), and hence find the probability that, with that sequence, the cast is affected by NG. The second factor, though, is horrifically hard to determine, and depends largely on how you structure your priority list and whether there's any movement (though this is less of a factor given how short NG is).

As an example, here's what I'd list as the first factor for Moonfire, with the assumption of 400 Haste and raid buffs, 45% crit on all spells that can crit, percentage at the end is probability of NG being up for the MF cast (N = Normal, NG = with NG, E = with Eclipse, I = Instant):

MF
<-	IS(N,NG)	1.2s/1s
<-	<-	SF(N,NG)	+2.6s/2.2s > 3s	45%
<-	<-	SF(E, E+NG)	+2.6s = 3.8s	75%
<-	<-	SF(I,I+NG),W(N,NG)	+1.2s/1s = 2.4s/2.2s/2.0s
<-	<-	<-	SF(N,NG,I,I+NG),W(N,NG)	+2.6/2.2/1.2/1.0 >= 3s	1-(1-45%)^2 = 75%
<-	<-	<-	SF(E,E+NG,E+I,E+I+NG)	+2.6/2.2/1.2/1.0 >= 3s	1-(1-45%)(1-75%) = 86%
<-	<-	SF(E+I,E+I+NG)	+1.2s/1s = 2.4/2.2/2s
<-	<-	<-	SF(N,NG,I,I+NG),W(N,NG)	+2.6/2.2/1.2/1.0 >= 3s	1-(1-75%)(1-45%) = 86%
<-	<-	<-	SF(E,E+NG,E+I,E+I+NG)	+2.6/2.2/1.2/1.0 >= 3s	1-(1-75%)^2 = 92%
<-	SF(I,I+NG),W(N,NG)	1.2s/1s
<-	<-	SF(N,NG)	+2.6s/2.2s > 3s	1-(1-45%)^2 = 75%
<-	<-	SF(E, E+NG)	+2.6s = 3.8s	1-(1-45%)(1-75%) = 86%
<-	<-	SF(I,I+NG),W(N,NG)	+1.2s/1s = 2.4s/2.2s/2.0s
<-	<-	<-	SF(N,NG,I,I+NG),W(N,NG)	+2.6/2.2/1.2/1.0 >= 3s	1-(1-45%)^3 = 83%
<-	<-	<-	SF(E,E+NG,E+I,E+I+NG)	+2.6/2.2/1.2/1.0 >= 3s	1-(1-45%)^2(1-75%) = 92%
<-	<-	<-	IS(N,NG)	+1.2/1s >= 3s	1-(1-45%)^2 = 75%
<-	<-	SF(E+I,E+I+NG)	+1.2s/1s = 2.4/2.2/2s
<-	<-	<-	SF(N,NG,I,I+NG),W(N,NG)	+2.6/2.2/1.2/1.0 >= 3s	1-(1-45%)(1-75%)(1-45%) = 92%
<-	<-	<-	SF(E,E+NG,E+I,E+I+NG)	+2.6/2.2/1.2/1.0 >= 3s	1-(1-45%)(1-75%)^2 = 97%
<-	<-	<-	IS(N,NG)	+1.2/1s >= 3s	1-(1-45%)(1-75%) = 86%
<-	<-	IS(N,NG)	+1.2/1s = 2.4/2.2/2s
<-	<-	<-	SF(N,NG,I,I+NG),W(N,NG)	+2.6/2.2/1.2/1.0 >= 3s	1-(1-45%)^2 = 75%
<-	<-	<-	SF(E,E+NG,E+I,E+I+NG)	+2.6/2.2/1.2/1.0 >= 3s	1-(1-45%)(1-75%) = 86%
<-	SF(E+I,E+I+NG)	1.2/1s
<-	<-	SF(N,NG)	+2.6s/2.2s > 3s	1-(1-75%)(1-45%) = 86%
<-	<-	SF(E, E+NG)	+2.6s = 3.8s	1-(1-75%)^2 = 92%
<-	<-	SF(I,I+NG),W(N,NG)	+1.2s/1s = 2.4s/2.2s/2.0s
<-	<-	<-	SF(N,NG,I,I+NG),W(N,NG)	+2.6/2.2/1.2/1.0 >= 3s	1-(1-75%)(1-45%)^2 = 92%
<-	<-	<-	SF(E,E+NG,E+I,E+I+NG)	+2.6/2.2/1.2/1.0 >= 3s	1-(1-75%)(1-45%)(1-75%) = 97%
<-	<-	<-	IS(N,NG)	+1.2/1s >= 3s	1-(1-75%)(1-45%) = 86%
<-	<-	SF(E+I,E+I+NG)	+1.2s/1s = 2.4/2.2/2s
<-	<-	<-	SF(N,NG,I,I+NG),W(N,NG)	+2.6/2.2/1.2/1.0 >= 3s	1-(1-75%)^2(1-45%) = 97%
<-	<-	<-	SF(E,E+NG,E+I,E+I+NG)	+2.6/2.2/1.2/1.0 >= 3s	1-(1-75%)^3 = 98.5%
<-	<-	<-	IS(N,NG)	+1.2/1s >= 3s	1-(1-75%)^2 = 92%
<-	<-	IS(N,NG)	+1.2/1s = 2.4/2.2/2s
<-	<-	<-	SF(N,NG,I,I+NG),W(N,NG)	+2.6/2.2/1.2/1.0 >= 3s	1-(1-75%)(1-45%) = 86%
<-	<-	<-	SF(E,E+NG,E+I,E+I+NG)	+2.6/2.2/1.2/1.0 >= 3s	1-(1-45%)(1-75%) = 86%
<-	SF(N,NG)	2.6/2.2s
<-	<-	SF(N,NG,I,I+NG),W(N,NG)	+2.6/2.2/1.2/1s > 3s	1-(1-45%)^2 = 75%
<-	<-	SF(E,E+NG,E+I,E+I+NG)	+2.6/2.2/1.2/1s > 3s	1-(1-45%)(1-75%) = 86%
<-	<-	IS(N,NG)	+1.2/1s > 3s	45%
<-	SF(E,E+NG)	2.6/2.2s
<-	<-	SF(N,NG,I,I+NG),W(N,NG)	+2.6/2.2/1.2/1s > 3s	1-(1-75%)(1-45%) = 86%
<-	<-	SF(E,E+NG,E+I,E+I+NG)	+2.6/2.2/1.2/1s > 3s	1-(1-75%)^2 = 92%
<-	<-	IS(N,NG)	+1.2/1s > 3s	75%

This only accounts for possibilities which could follow from a sane priority system - i.e. you're not casting a DoT more than once in under 3s. It's also a lot less complex because we're targeting a DoT. If we'd targeted Wrath instead, we'd have to account for MF in the preceding 3 seconds as well. Note also that I'm grouping cast sequences that have similar cast times and percentages of proccing NG. For example, the line which gives 83% chance of NG is composed of 96 different cast sequences (actually, 288 if you consider Wrath Eclipses, since whether you're casting Wrath has a different probability if Eclipse is up), each with a different probability of occurring during a given encounter (though most of them are unlikely themselves, as 84% of those sequences require at least one 4T8 proc). The cast sequence with the highest probability of NG being active for our targeted cast is also very much the least likely to happen; you'd need to proc 4T8 on the two consecutive previous Starfires while under the effects of Eclipse, and have been casting Starfire under Eclipse before those.

Also of note is that we're rather lucky that none of these sequences hinges on whether or not NG is up on any of the previous casts, and that's rather contrived. Less haste, and it's very possible that NG is the difference between 2 or 3 previous casts. More haste and it's the difference in some of the Starfire sequences. If NG were a factor in the decision tree, then our tree would be dependent on a second tree, which would likely in turn be dependent on another, cascading endlessly. Such a situation would (and, since that's the normal case, is) be practically impossible to solve probabilistically, requiring orders of magnitude more complex math than I'm willing to devote to the project. Suffice it to say that, as Hamlet mentioned, the decrease in error of the models in WC and Rawr are not worth the increase in time spent not only developing the model, but actually using it to generate the tree, and then the probabilities corresponding to it for a given gear set.

Attached Files

Stat equivalence.xls (70.5 KB, 132 views)

Healthcare Flowchart

MeCh — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 05:22:15 GMT

This is the in meme to do!!!!!!

Look at me, I'm practicing for Congress!!!!!!

This needs a shirt, someone get on it.

Attached Thumbnails

Attached Files

Short Sweet Rant #1

VerziehenOne — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:01:14 GMT

After having read, at the point of this post, 125 pages of the Wrath of the Lich King Lore thread ... I have come to a conclusion.

The word 'Lovecraftian' bothers me.

BAM

The ring mod #3

zork — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 18:15:07 GMT

I finally have overcome all the issues and made it through. The first version of the mod is out. Later posts will describe how it was done.

Mod
The RingMod : WoWInterface Downloads : Unit Mods

*Update* Mod is in the Pick-of-the-Week on wowinterface.com
Pick for 7/26: TheRingThing (new) - WoWInterface

*Update #2* First derivated mods released:
oUF RingThing : WoWInterface Downloads : oUF: Layouts
oUF RingThing2 : WoWInterface Downloads : oUF: Layouts

Documentation
rRingMod_Documentation.txt - rothui - Project Hosting on Google Code

Some teaser shots.

Orb-like
http://img2.abload.de/img/orblike_half0tit.jpg

Two half-rings
http://img2.abload.de/img/halfringsat89.jpg

Full health and manaring
http://img2.abload.de/img/hp_mp_ringepxa.jpg

The good thing: All functions that are needed to create the ring and to calculate all the segments are done now.

Now comes the next part. Giving it some functionality by connecting it to oUF and making it work like a normal unitframe.

[Contest] Gnomish Death Race - Northrend Edition

Nayt — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 15:07:45 GMT

Hello EJ community, I'd like to invite anyone to partake in our little event announced between a few friends and extend the invitation to my blog readers and fellow EJ posters/creepers

You can read about it here: World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Gnomish Death Race - Northrend Edition

I will be in attendance, as will many other Detheroc and Sargeras e-friends and all stars. The more the merrier.

And....let's not forget the 1st place finisher will receive: 1 Large 2-Topping Pizza from Papa John's courtesy of my crew and I.

Question #1: Gnome Hunters

VerziehenOne — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 22:08:20 GMT

DISCLAIMER: I'm well aware this is a video game by which Retcon and 'it didn't fit' or 'not enough resources/time/[reason]' is commonplace.

The subject of this particular Question of Logic™ is this: Why are there no Gnome Hunters?

Consider This:

We have Dwarf Rogues.
We have Undead Priests.

Expanding on said considerations:
Dwarf Rogues
------
Let's look at what a Dwarf is, by race and lore. This is a creature, a humanoid known widely as a loud drunken bunch of earth moving and shaping ruffians, unaffected by deep earth heat or high mountain cold. This is a short stocky race known for it's ability to resist a hit that would fell a normal person, as well as the noise with which they handle most encounters. (Battle cries to Dwarven gods, intimidation and blood pumping war screams). This is a race known for it's dancing (when druink), bull headed resolve for a goal's completion, and impatience when an avenue for resolution is available.

Those are all unique wonderful qualities of a lore-rich and fascinating creature, regardless of how it came to be. (Native denizen, Curse of Flesh offspring of Earthen, or [Other™]). The fact is, none of those qualities are in line with what a Rogue is by nature, training, and necessity.

A Rogue is first and foremost, just that,... a rogue. They are, by design, solace loving, seperate and largely mysterious throughout their inception. They prefer to deal with situations alone and without outside variables(read: Others), handling morally ambiguous situations without arguing over the decision, and ultimately, surviving by whatever means necessary. They are elegant, accurate, vicious, and silent. Living in the shadows and being seen as an anomaly is not merely for convenience, but because of what makes a Rogue a rogue.

Put the two together, and I do not imagine a stocky Dwarf nimbly tip-toeing throughout the background, using small sharp weapons and generally subverting the nature (of Dwarves) of being loud and communal with that (of rogues) of being essentially Warcraft's 'loner' that exists in silence and shadows.

Too Long Didn't Read version: Every time I see a Dwarf Rogue, I think about Carrot Top as a Comedian. Sure, it's possible that it may work, and that sometimes rresults will not follow expectation ... but are you really going to take that gamble?

Undead Priests
------
An Undead (Forsaken) character is an abomination of nature, from it's very 'rebirth'. Everything that is an Undead/Forsaken is abhorrant to the ground on which it resides, being in essence the antithesis of what Nature is the embodiment of: the cycle of Life, which ultimately ends in permanent death. In worlds beyond Warcraft, an Undead creation is the embodiment of darkness, usually having little to no memories of what made it more than merely an animated body, and usually is subservant to another. The majority of lore on Undead, in Warcraft and other sources, indicates that they are bent on revenge for their death, vicious to the point of madness(with nothing to lose), and with most Undead, a malignant tumor that only seems to grow as it kills(creating further Undeath).

A Priest is the embodiment of worship of the Light. Setting aside religion, a Priest in video games harbors a true understanding of what it means to oppose Darkness™, Evil™, and the Un-natural™. The Priest dedicates their life to serving the greater good, providing healing and purification of body and spirit, and sacrifice for the defenseless or weakened. All in all, a Priest is a set of (usually) very rigid principles on which the power of Light is granted, but only if followed with fervor and tenacity.

Both provide rich and colorful options for players to explore ways to interact with and change the World (of Warcraft). But, combining the two results in a contradiction even in the very name of the result. The embodiment of death and decay, serving the thing which (in Lore™) seeks to destroy and eradicate it? A bit far-fetched.

Too Long Didn't Read version: When I sit and ponder about an Undead Priest, I am quickly reminded of Dairy Queen's Burger menu. Sure, it may be an interesting idea,.. but if you're looking for a Burger, should you be going to a place that specializes in Ice Cream?

Wrapping it up ...
Blizzard ... if we have to accept the ridiculous notion of a Dwarf Rogue ... and the absurd combination that is an Undead Priest,... is it so far fetched that we have a Gnome Hunter? I for one, welcome the idea of a Gnome with Nuts, his faithful Squirrel with an insatiable blood lust for battle ...