Five miniature blogs and a poem.

"My name is Phillip Lang and I neglect my blog."

As said by me, just over eight months ago. Nothing really changes, it was true then, it remains true now.

First, I'm going to talk about World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. Specifically, raiding and the changes to the lockout system.
With 10man and 25man raids sharing a lockout, many players are calling it the death of one or the other, but I disagree.
To paint a picture, you have your core 10man team, all needing to gear up. You have at least 15 players sitting by wanting to raid. You also have more pieces of gear dropping in 25man raids. So, what do you do? You run 25man raids. It's simple really. You effectively double your chance at getting the right drops, assuming the core raiders get first shot at gear, your effectively gear up twice as fast as anyone else. Once they're geared sufficiently, go push progression on ten man.
Death of 25man raiding? No. The birth of 25man farming.

Second, how are you going to level to 85? I've heard a number of good ways, but most of them I've been sword to secrecy about, although I highly doubt no one else is planing on using the same methods. I'm also rather sure that some of the better ways will be prevented by Blizzard.
Personally, I plan on grouping with three real life friends (2x DPS, 1x Tank, me as heals), all of us sitting in the same room, and spamming heroic dungeons. That we'll have ample time to perfect the pulls and strategies is simply a bonus.
Professions? I'll be levelling my enchanting, certainly. Any mats won by any of the four of us will be used to level Vori's enchanting, with any extras being sold and the profits split. I'll also be on the lookout for any and all herbs, and donating them to one of my friends for alchemy.
With any luck, I'll hit 85 during the first wave, and also have high enchanting by the time it's wanted.

Thirdly, I detest being sick. I was hit by a ridiculously strong wave of nausea about an hour ago, so needless to say I went from being asleep to wide awake, and my stomach is now empty. Pretty standard really, the whole being ravenously hungry but still rather queasy however, is plain annoying.
I did have a rather full day planned for tomorrow, but that’s been cut down to only what I need to do. Appointment with the employment agency is still on, still at the time I was told it would be. Tangent, but I’d be much happier about going if I had any choice whatsoever as to when it is. It annoys me quite thoroughly when I’m told “You need to be here at xx on yy” at the end of my appointment, especially when it’s only three days later.

Fourthly, how do you tell someone that even though their skill surpasses their gear level, they’re not ready for ICC? Especially when this person is someone you know in real life.
Yeah, he’s (barely) geared for it. Yeah, his skill is better than his gear. However, he’s too set in the random heroics frame of mind, he doesn’t react fast enough, and makes little mistakes over and over again.
Prime example; Consecrate, Avengers Shield, then melee’s Deathwhispers adds. Adequate, if DPS hold back for a couple of seconds, but too slow if they don’t. Low DPS? He waits until one set of adds are dead before grabbing the next, causing, if we’re lucky, unnecessary raid healing.
As an off tank with a reasonable main tank, he’s fine. The problem with this however, is that no tanks want to group with him because of his gear. Meaning we end up with him main tanking, and an off spec tank as off tank, along with the problems they bring.

Fifthly, how the hell is my sister so smart?! She's 6. And reading novels. She's six, and easily dividing, multiplying, and doing basically any other math. She's six and spouting off words I can't even fucking pronounce, spelling them, and telling me what they mean. "Trichoglossus haematodus". Seriously. Can you pronounce that? Can you imagine being able to spell it? Can you imagine a fucking six year old being able to spell it? Year one, and no matter how hard I try, I can't stump her. The only time I've come close was "onomatopoeia", she got it her second try. It's ridiculous.

And to finish, I did have three or four lengthy posts half written in a word document, which unfortunately, was wiped, leaving me having to start over. And I dislike starting pieces of writing over, as I can never remember the wording, or get it nearly as good as it was, so it’s unlikely they’ll ever be re-written.

"Felyia, write a poem about butterflies and warriors losing threat!"
"Just as butterflies fly,
Warriors let people die,
Reroll pally eye em oh,
Keep the ground yellow,
Simply by pressing '1',
And suddenly you have won."
"I'm speechless, I've just been hit by a five minute silence."

Felyia, my low level druid, and a random trade troll at approximately four in the morning.

My own Tyler Durden.

My name is Phillip Lang and I neglect my blog. I've been awake for 38 hours as of right now. The words I string together so carelessly probably wont make sense, but I'm writing anyway.

My life's been more or less turned upside down. My father walked out, I'm basically unemployed, and we need to move. Have you tried to deal with rental applications, job applications, and adjusting to someone who's been there for each and every year you've live simply not being there anymore? It's a nightmare. When I do sleep, it's for minimal amounts of time, and I wake up feeling like it didn't happen. I'm a wreck. Emotionally crippled, physically exhausted.

And even though I've been awake for a day and a half, I'm not sleepy. So I'm stringing words together while I wait for slumber to come calling.

Are the strings elloquient? Or are they a vulgar butchery of the English language? I couldn't tell you what I wrote five minutes ago, let alone the quality of the writing. I cannot help but laugh and wonder how many people will read this, hoping for something with meaning, rather than the random string of words it's become.

What if this is merely a dream, a product of my subconcious? When I fall asleep, the dreamer awakens and goes about his merry way, maybe pondering the ridiculous things I do. And when slumber finds him, I wake, and go about in this dream world. I must admit, after being awake for this long, combined with a general lack of sleep recently, it feels like I'm within a dream world. An imaginary being sitting at an imaginary computer, writing for two imaginary friends. If you've read this far, I love you.

And you'll never get back the time you wasted reading it.
/cackle.

I think I may actually be experiencing mild hallucinations, blame the lack of sleep, alcohol, migraine, or painkillers for said migraine if you will. But I can hear songs in my head, as well as snippets of dialogue from games all mashed together. Bring ample supply of butter and FIRE IN THE HOLE! BOOM!. To the tune of I Caught Fire. Good times.

My eyelids are drooping, I feel as though I'm about to pass out. Time for sweet, sweet slumber.

Fare thee well, dear friends.

Normal UK dual boxed by a priest/rogue. I like this.

Trial of the Champion - A Guide.

A guide to ToC, based on my own experiences. Some spell details taken from wowwiki.

The beginning: Add your weapons to your action bar and equip your lance. Start the introduction, buff up, mount, get your shield up.

- Putting your weapons on your action bar let's you quickly equip them after the fight.
- The introduction takes about four minutes, so you have plenty of time to get ready while it's happening.

The Champions of the Horde - Phase 1: Keep your shield up and focus fire on each Champion. Once the trash is down, start on the Grand Champions. If possible, kill the bosses in the same general area. Keep an eye on them once they're dismounted, and run over them if they get back up. If you get dismounted, stay away from the Horde, run to the edge and mount a new horse. If you die, release and run back.

- By killing all three Grand Champions in the same general area, the pickup is a lot easier, and it lets you camp one player on them for easy trampling.
- If you go near them on foot, they trample you, and it hurts.
- It's possible to release and run back in during the entire instance, from begining to end.

The Champions of the Horde - Phase 2: Quickly equip your weapons and burn each of them down in order.

- This pickup is the hardest part of the instance. Tricks of the Trade and Misdirection both help a lot. If you managed to dismount them in the same place, it's a lot easier to pick them up.
- The five Grand Champions you could get, in general kill order, are as follows:
Tauren (Shaman): Casts Chain Lightning, and Healing Wave. Both can be interupted.
Orc (Warrior): Uses Mortal Stike, Bladestorm, Rolling Throw (standard knockback), Intercept (interupts).
Undead (Rogue): Fan of Knives, Deadly Poison (Seems to be applies by FoK), Eviscirate, Vial of Poison (drops a cloud of poison on the ground).
Troll (Hunter): Uses Lightning Arrows (interuptable) and Disengage (jumps back out of melee range).
Blood Elf (Mage): Fireball (interuptable), Blast Wave (AoE with knockback), Polymorph (interuptable, dispellable), Haste (100% buff to spell hate, dispellable, spellstealable).

Argent Trash: Three groups of three mobs will come out. You want to kill the Priestess first, since she heals, summons lightwells, casts Shadow Word: Pain, and on Heroic, mind controls unless interupted. Next you want to kill the Lightbringer, who uses a cleave ability, and finally, the monk, who will enter a bubble at 1hp on Heroic and slows attack and movement speed of nearby players. If your group is struggling, use CC on the Lightbringer to keep him out of combat, and snares etc on the Monk to keep him out of melee range of the tank. You can pull each group seperately, but stop for mana before the third if needed, as the boss aggro's once the last of the trash dies.

The second boss can be one of two, chosen at random, Eadric the Pure, and Argent Confessor Paletress.

Eadric the Pure: Eadric is more or less tank and spank. He casts Radiance, which damages and disorientates anyone who doesn't turn around, Hammer of Justice, which stuns for six seconds and allows him to hit you with Hammer of Rightousness, Hammer of Rightousness, which hits for a large amount of damage, but only if you're affected by Hammer of Justice.

- Hammer of Justice is dispellable, and dispelling it means you can't be hit by Hammer of the Rightiousness.
- If you can't be hit by Hammer of the Rightousness, you'll "catch it", and are able to throw it back at Eadric.

Argent Confessor Paletress: Harder than Eadric, but still fairly simple. Casts Holy Smite, Renew, Holy Fire, which does damage and adds a DoT on whoever it hits, Confess, which heals her, shields her, and reflects a quarter of all damage done to her. She also casts Summon Memory, which summons a random boss from earlier in the game. The memory has three abilities, Waking Nightmare, which does damage and fears everyone, Shadows of the Past, damages one player and slows their attack and casting speed by 90%, and Old Wounds, which adds a DoT to someone in melee range.

- The tank needs to be ready to pick the memory up as soon as it spawns, as it's possible that it spawns ontop of the healer.
- The memory has around three times the health of Paletress, so it's recomended you save DPS cooldowns for the memory.
- Shadow Resistance helps mitigate the damage the memory does.

The Black Knight - Phase 1: Burn the Knight until he summons a goul from Arelas Brightstar's corpse. Burn the ghoul, then finish the Knight off. Uses Plague Strike/Blood Plague, Icy Touch/Frost Fever, a stun that does damage and knocks back, and Oblitirate. Frost Fever and Blood Plague need to be cured if possible, otherwise Oblitirate does major damage.

The Black Knight - Phase 2: The Knight self rezzes and summons an army of the dead. Uses the same abilities as phase 1 except the stun, does Desecration instead. As the fight progresses, the Knight will cause ghouls to explode. There are two ways to do this, the first is to kite the Knight around the room avoiding the Desecration's. This works because the ghouls stay stationary when they start exploding. The other way is to AoE the ghouls down quickly before they explode.

The Black Knight - Phase 3: The Knight self rezzes again, and uses Death's Bite on everyone, which damages, increases damage taken, and stacks. He also uses Marked For Death on one person, which increases damage taken by 200%. Healers need to be ready for Marked For Death, as whoever has it takes a ridiculous amount of damage. I suggest you save your cooldowns for this phase, as the longer it takes to kill him, the more damage everyone takes.

Why do some people have a huge sense of entitlement? Seriously.

Joined a 25 VoA pug. Hit feint too early, and cloak fails. I die on the first Nova. Pally who also dies gets brez'd. Second druid in the raid ignores my asking for a brez completely (love you too Zeebus). Emalon dies and said pally gets the acheivement. Tier 8.5 legs drop, I win the roll. Raid leader says I did less damage than the tank and gives it to Infoxy. Much debate ensues, and lasts until after Archevon is dead and looted. Infoxy hearths and logs, then claims their house burnt down so they had to log.

Seriously, what is this? It's a sense of entitlement at it's best.

"[16:47:24][W:To][Infoxy]: I've opened a ticket. GM can sort it out.
[16:47:36][W:From][Infoxy]: he give me house?"

This is why I hate people.

Account Banned

Ban Type	Temporary
Expires	08/10/2009 08:38:10 AM PDT
Ban Reason	Posting harassing or defamatory language towards others

Suspended from the World of Warcraft forums for a 72 hour period for harassing other players.

"

* 14. Re: @Baest 08/06/2009 11:42:35 PM PDT

Q u o t e:
BAEST AND I ARE A HOMOSEXUAL COUPLE AND WE ARE PROUD!



YOU HAVE A **!@@. BAEST DOES NOT LIKE **!@@.
BAEST HAS A VAJAYJAY. YOU DO NOT LIKE VAJAYJAY.

Opposites really do attract. "Let's play a game, you hold threat and I don't OOM!"
"

...Blizzard fails.

Musings.

Heh, long time no update. Before I start, to the people who actually read this, why? Which posts do you enjoy, the ramblings entries about myself, those about WoW, or the completely random ones, like this one?

Imagine if the future could be seen. Not clearly, just coming events. Imagine a time line of small, insignificant events that are yet to come. Now imagine someone was going to, say, die three weeks from now. They'd know it, of course. And of course, when the day came, they would die. Now imagine that time line didn't really show the future, but everyone was certain it did. Would said person still die on the day listed? Think about it. They'd be so adamant that it was going to happen, they'd ensure it did subconsciously. Either that, or some crazy psycho would haul off and kill them.
Different example. A book is scheduled to be a best seller. The insight into the future is real, of course it will be. If it's not, everyone will still rush out and buy it because it's so "good".
And when the "end of the world" thing comes up, you just know someone's going to push a big red button and blow the planet into tiny chunks.
Moral of this rambling hypotheses is to be wary of prophecy, it's more than likely manipulation.

This is the product of a mostly sleepless night. Why I didn't sleep, I don't know. I wish I did, but I don't. It's now after six in the morning, so it's not even worth trying to sleep some more. The next part however, is something I've been thinking about for a fair while, and finally feel motivated to write.

All signs point to the next WoW expansion being the Maelmstrom, and as such, I have a few thoughts as to what we may see.

The first, and most obvious, is Queen Azshara. Queen Azshara was Queen of the Night Elves before the Great Cataclysm (Sundering). and was corrupted by an Old God, and twisted into a Naga. Since there is no evidence at all that Yogg-Saron's, or C'thun's influence spreads as far as the land now known as Azshara, I think it's safe to infer that it was a third, aquatic based Old God. With an Old God in the equation, of course Neptulon, Elemental Lord of water comes into play. Neptulon's minions include the Kraken, which is where things get interesting. To date, there are four Kraken in game, with a fifth being added in patch 3.2.
Starting with the oldest, we have Tethyr, who is part of a quest in Dustwallow Marsh. I'm sure you remember it, a lot of running, visiting Nat Pagle, then using cannons to kill the huge beast.
Next is The Lurker Below, one of the bosses in SSC. Being in SSC means it's under control of Lady Vashj, who was Azshara's cheif handmaiden back in the day, and the original contact between Naga and the other races.
Next we'll take a quick look at the newest, the North Sea Kraken. It's being summoned by the Kvaldir to attack the Argent Crusade. The Kvaldir are an aquatic Vyrkul type race, living in mist on coastlines and islands. Not much there.
The second to last, Oacha'noa, is revered as "Goddess of the Depths" by the Tuskarr. Involved in a quest chain in Dragonblight.
Last, but definitely not least, Leviroth. Leviroth was imprisoned by Azshara five hundred years ago, but is being set free. For a quest, you're given a trident blessed with the power to slay it by Azshara.

To recap, we have one Kraken under Naga command, one destroyed with the help of the Naga, one celebrated by the Tuskarr, one under Kvaldir command, and one renegade.

There's also the ancient, giant Kraken, which have appeared twice thus far in Lore. Once to destroy the Gurubashi empire, and the other during Rhonin's travels through time. These Kraken are said to be invincible, and massive.

Like I said, it gets interesting. Rather than ramble about it, I'll outline my thoughts clearly.
The Kraken are primarily Neptulon's minions.
There are at least two types of Kraken.
They are summoned (from the Elemental Plane?) to Azeroth.
The Kvaldir are either minions, or worshipers of Neptulon.
The Kraken are not all "evil".
They can be controlled by force, coercion, or loyalty of a sort.
Azshara, and the Naga, are willing to destroy, or use Kraken as it suits them.
Azshara is at odds with Neptulon, and by association, possibly the Old God(s).

The Naga being at odds with Neptulon is further shown by Skar'this the Heretic in H Slave Pens. He is imprisoned, and refers to Neptulon as the one true god.

Considering how recent most of the lore outlined above is, I doubt it will be retconned for a new expansion. So will we two of the Big Bads warring with one another? Or will it be more akin to Kael'Thas and Illidian, a behind the scenes power struggle? Personally I think an all out war would be more fun to play in, especially with a mercenary type "reputation" system similar to that in Grizzly Hills. Kill one of Azshara's minions, and Neptulon's will be neutral towards you, and vice versa. Or, I could simply be reading much too far into all of this. But really, why make is so pointed that Leviroth is bad, to the point where you're given an item by a Naga, which has been blessed by Azshara specifically to be able to kill it, if it's not important?

Any thoughts on this? If so, please share. Aspects of lore like this, and the speculation which goes with it interest me greatly.