Over this year it’s amazing the things I’ve learned. Mainly I have taught myself alot about HTML and how to implement it. I use wordpress for my selfhosted blog but do most of my posts on my iPhone. Which means I don’t have access to most of the tools wordpress provides.

I’ve also learned alot about video editing. I currently use fraps for in game video and corel videostudio pro x3 for all of my editing. This is a great thing since I am now making some videos for the guild. I also hope to have a pretty good understanding of making videos in order to capture some of the guild firsts going into Cataclysm.

I’ve learned the importance of social features such as twitter and YouTube for keeping up with news and getting information out to subscribers. This is cliche but the blog has definitely made me a better player. This blog makes me keep up with current specs. It makes me learn new strats on doing things. It makes me know when and where the best place to use an ability is.

Thanks to everyone who has commented, subscribed, linked or even just dropped by. Thanks to the people who have offered tips or expanded on my posts to add more relevant info. It’s great to hear about new readers and what they think about the blog whether it was good, bad or indifferent. At this time I am having fun in game and don’t plan on leaving anytime soon but as for the blog I think it’s about time I retired it.

Thank You All!

My Druid Mandelbaum is finally 80. He went kitty for the simple fact that I figured playing another melée class would limit my learning curve for a new character and that the play seemed similar to a Rogue.

I was dead wrong…

Combo Points. And that’s where the similarities end.

No interrupt.
No threat redirection.
No threat dump.
A raid buff.
Innervate.
Battle Rez.

Learning to play this kitty has been tough. I’m having to watch threat. I’m having to keep up with dead raid members. I’m having to watch for low mana healers. O yea and I’m having to keep up with 4 debuffs as opposed to my combo point mashing 1-1-1-2 Rogue.

If you’re interested in learning more about one of the toughest melee specs in the game to play, check out these videos by Coldbear.
Guide How to Feral DPS part One
Guide How to Feral DPS part Two

Now the rewards for this spec. High dps with a skilled knowledgeable player behind the toon. Unfortunately I am neither, so I am slowly but surely learning the class as best I can. It doesn’t hurt that currently melee is broken and by far the class of the field in Wrath. Tons of raid utility in the form of Innervate and Battle Rezs.

All in all it’s been a big change from my Rogue but I am really enjoying it so far. I’ve also been able to use the gear I’m replacing as tank gear. Since the stats don’t change it’s super easy to get a decent tanking set by just upgrading your current gear.

***Currently Reading***
Big Bear Butt Blog
Feral Aggression Blog

New Raid Lockout Mechanics Announced

The link above is to the announcement of the RAIDid changes and I am excited about them. In some guilds there are nights where some of your core raiders can’t raid. Because of this currently you may have them in a 25 man run one night and a 10 man run another night. Bascially you’re only getting two nights and four or five hours split between two different raids. Well not anymore. You now have another option. Run 25 man one night get as far as you can and then if you struggle getting everyone back in group, split the ID. Genius!!

Not only that, but how about if you get saved to a fail PuG run? Right now you twiddle your thumbs until the next week. In cataclysm you’ll be able to pug or join a guild run as long as the group is past the boss you’d previously downed. So if this week you are left out of the core group, fail in a pug. Then later if and when the guild picks up their raid again you may be able to jump in.

Alot of people were asking for this and it looks like blizzard was listening.

On a side note I have found myself caught up in the end of expansion lull I spoke about in my last post. My Rogue has been taking a back seat to my Druid who is o so close to 80. Currently sitting at 77 I’m excited to get him to 80 and get to work on my feral dps spec. Which I hear is one of the most challenging specs to master. I figure I already know most of the melée raid mechanics why not just transfer that knowledge to a new toon instead of having to learn an entirely new, to me, ranged mechanics. Plus melée is currently super OPed in the end game.

I have been gone for a couple weeks now, it’s not that there hasn’t been anything to talk about it’s just that most of my thoughts and ideas for posts just haven’t been put into written form yet, and believe me there are a ton of ideas running around in my head with the new raid Ruby Sanctum about to drop and plenty of Cataclysm info rolling in everyday there is plenty to look forward to!

[Raves] to the Blizzard team on Starcraft 2. This game is simply amazing and it’s hard to believe it’s only in the beta phase. I’m happy that the game kept alot of it’s original mechanics. It’s always tough to take a successful game, completely change it and then keep it popular. Basically Starcraft 2 is just the original with a shiny new box and a couple new toys to play with. I simply love it. This combined with the efforts Battle.net is making to streamline all of their games into one big social experiment, it’s a great time to be a Blizzard gamer!

First up is my druid alt Mandelbaum in Slave Pens, sped up to 400%

Next is Leo in Nexus, sped up to 500%

If you didn’t read in one of my last posts I have moved on to another guild. A less casual guild who is currently focused on 10 mans. All the while slowly building the guild up to be able to get together a 25 man team. Picking up players here and there, mostly from Pugs, who enjoy the sometimes crazy banter going on in vent. Ok, now on to the meat of this post.

This type of progression is a new concept to me. Knowing on any given night you may be downing a new boss is a great feeling. Knowing that I can sit there stare at a bosses ass, smash buttons and truck a boss knowing that what’s going on behind me is being taken care of by another capable raider. Knowing that even if someone makes a mistake there is a chance that the team will still be able recover. I’m literally collapsing in my chair after a fight from smashing my buttons harder and harder and yelling at the screen trying to eek out every bit of DPS I can. I’m really enjoying this, it’s exciting. Sure we may still die to stupid shit but the fact is every raid team will run into this time to time. The difference now is when you have capable raiders everyone learns from their mistakes. They do whatever they can not to make them again. They talk and figure out solutions to problems to ultimately move forward which is really what progression is all about.

So that’s it. Just a quick post about what’s going on in Leo’s world!

Alright so let’s go down the list;

Mutilate – I love this add-on because it lets me focus on what’s going on around me so I can “Get out of the fire stupid”. Basically this is an ever changing add-on on my screen that tells me which ability I should be doing next. Whether my Slice and Dice is about to drop and I need to Envenom, or Hunger for Blood is about to drop and I need a Rupture to reapply it. It also tells me when my vanish and tricks of the trade abilities are ready to be used. It basically makes an easy spec, even easier.

CT Viewport – This add-on adds the black bar to the bottom of my screen. Adds the ability to change the game’s viewport. This modifies the size of the rendered world, so that you can place UI elements outside of it. Use /viewport to bring up the window.

Bartender4 – This has been a staple for me ever since I used SpartanUI. It’s just so easy to configure.

Pitbull Unit Frames – Honestly, this add-on is good but it doesn’t do much on my screen except player, player’s target, target’s target and focus.

DHUD3 – I love this add-on. I have been leveling a druid lately and when I first started I was having trouble keeping up with my health and the health of mobs before I realized how dependent I had become on having a health bar right next to my toon. It’s higly configurable and also displays your combo points as large or small as you want them.

RoguePowerBars – Great add-on configured right out of the box to include most all of the Rogue buffs and debuffs. So find a good place to put this on your screen and go!

Grid2 – What?! A rogue using grid? What the hell for? I love the simplicity of this addon, and I find it real helpful when my focus target dies and I’m trying to find someone else to Tricks. It can also display all members of the party without cluttering the left side of the screen like the default UI or Pitbull.

AZCastbar – This is a simple addon for displaying cast bars. I have a target cast bar above the DHUD3 and a player cast bar below the mutilate addon.

So that’s it. My UI. I’ve been running this for sometime now and I have gotten used to the sometime cluttered screen, but I have no problem finding anything here.

Azure Shadows is also doing a couple of posts on their UI. Check it out!

So basically I’m gonna talk a little bit about everything. Kind of a week in review post.

•The new ICC buff is active. I must not have paid much attention because I hadn’t heard about this until last week. Lots of people said it had been announced before ICC was released but again, hadn’t been paying attention. Anyways this buff adds 5% health, damage done and healing done to every raid that enters ICC. It is supposed to be increased weekly monthly(?) until it reaches 30%. I would be a hipocrite if I said I didn’t like this. I started playing again at level 75 about 8 or 9 months ago. Ulduar was active at the time and here I was a undergeared basically new player getting back into the game. In a matter of weeks I was geared and ready for raiding. Alot of that had to do with the guild helping me out but for the most part I ran heroics until my clicking finger was about to fall off. Warcraft’s move to the casual player helped me greatly. Now I am well geared and was able to join a new progression guild because of it(more about the guild later). If these were the days of Vanilla wow I would have been twiddling my thumbs probably doing PvP all day. But now I hope to see the Lich King soon!

•Stoneybaby from Big Hit Box has a new project he’s working on. Big Crits is going to be a reality web based series on a raiding guild. Looks to be interesting. For people like me who love to see these projects based around MMO’s (i.e The Guild and Second Skin) I really hope they’re able to get this together.

•Lastly The Noisy Rogue reported that the bloggers guild is active. The Guilds name is Single Abstract Noun and they are located on the Argent Dawn EU server. If your interested in Single Abstract Noun and are in the states like I am then you can join on the Argent Dawn US server and here’s a link to the details. I’m not sure if I will be rolling a toon there. My experience with alts tend to be bad. After rolling a Rogue, I have trouble when I can’t stealth out of bad situation and restart. Hence why my DK has been stuck at 61 for so long. But there’s no doubt in my mind it would be interesting as I’m sure there’s never a dull moment in guild chat.

In Uncleleo personal news, I’ve joined a new guild! It’s a progression raiding guild as opposed to the great casual guild I was in before. This guild is small compared to my last guild with only about 13-14 geared raiders and we are currently 7/12 ICC 10 normal. Working on Blood Queen and Putricide at this time. I actually met this group through a PUG and was lucky at the time that they were finishing up recruiting for their first 10 man group.

[Rants] to Blizz for not sending me a Starcraft 2 beta key yet. Send it now. That is all…

“Tim: There he is!
King Arthur: Where?
Tim: There!
King Arthur: What? Behind the rabbit?
Tim: It *is* the rabbit!
King Arthur: You silly sod!
Tim: What?
King Arthur: You got us all worked up!
Tim: Well, that’s no ordinary rabbit.
King Arthur: Ohh.
Tim: That’s the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on!
Sir Robin: You tit! I soiled my armor I was so scared!
Tim: Look, that rabbit’s got a vicious streak a mile wide! It’s a killer!
Sir Galahad: Get stuffed!
Tim: He’ll do you up a treat, mate.
Sir Galahad: Oh, yeah?
Sir Robin: You manky Scots git!
Tim: I’m warning you!
Sir Robin: What’s he do? Nibble your bum?
Tim: He’s got huge, sharp… er… He can leap about. Look at the bones!
King Arthur: Go on, Bors. Chop his head off!
Sir Bors: Right! Silly little bleeder. One rabbit stew comin’ right up!”
Clip from Monty Python and The Holy Grail

***Insert cute lil’ waskily wabbit pic***

Think about this as a weekly raid quest. There’s an old man waiting at the entrance of the second wing of ICC. I can literally see this conversation happening.

As for appearance, did anyone see the Hogger Raid video from Blizzcon? He looks so small in the video. Yet is packing a quick cruel punch. What if you came across a little bunny in ICC, maybe one fake ear or a tail that’s been sewed back on by Putricide, piles of bones all around him from heroes before you.

Here’s how the fight goes. You talk to the old man. He gives you the disclaimer above. You then walk in to engage the bunny. He comes up to your raid group friendly, smells blood on you from the previous kills you have made and goes into a frenzy. Jumping from raid member to raid member throwing bleed effects on everyone from his sharp pointy teeth. Think about the cat lady encounter in Ulduar except without the Lady. Bunch the group together to keep him from pouncing. Next ability would be Bunny Eyes (The Bunny fixes his cute watery eyes on you) turn around like the ToC boss, Eadric the Pure, or you will be mesmerized by his cuteness and lose control of yourself for 10 secs. His other ability would be an AoE attack much like a Rogues fan of knives only he would be throwing out bones from the adventures before you. Or carrots but that seems a little ridiculous that a warrior in plate armor would get hurt by a vegetable. Last but not least is the burrow ability. At 30% health the bunny becomes rabid and will burrow every 10 secs reappearing in a random spot and your group must be quick to group on him to prevent pounces and stuns.
All that work to be rewarded with nothing. No Loot for You!

So there it is. My raid boss. Nothing super hard but damn cute.

Want to read other ideas for raid bosses, check out Blog Azeroth