March 11, 2010 :: Posted by - Plectical :: Category - Cataclysm, PVE, Raiding
Confession time. Raiding on my Warlock has become tiresome. I’ve raided with him from the beginning of the Burning Crusade and throughout WOTLK. We’ve braved the depths of Black Temple, explored the haunted hallways of Karazan, tested our mettle against the worst that Northrend has to offer in TOC, and taken the fight to the door of the Lich King in ICC. I’m well versed in the many different Warlock talent builds, used to slightly altering my play style each time a new patch comes out and I’m an old hand at grousing when my group makeup isn’t just right. It may be time to trade up mains.
There is hope on the horizon though and that hope (as odd as it may read), will be Cataclysm. Players often use expansions to switch up their main character. TBC saw the emergence of many new Draeni Shamans and Blood Elf Paladins, and WOTLK saw the explosion of Death Knights on every server. Cataclysm will be a chance for many people to change up their class once again. I’ve got a few thoughts poking around in the back of my head as to what I’ll change to…it involves a ranged pet class. Maybe its just the grass is greener on the other side but it seems that Hunters experience less instability than other classes do (dps wise) in game. For Warlocks, we’ve gone from the top of the DPS pile to the bottom and back more times than I can count in the past few expansions. All I’m looking for is a little more stability in my overall output and new class mechanics to explore.
Anyone else thinking of changing up their class in the upcoming expansion? If you are going to change up, I’d be interested to see a short list of likes and dislikes about your current class and what about your new class seems interesting.
March 10, 2010 :: Posted by - Stompalina :: Category - Community, PVE, Raiding
You may recall our frequent updated on The Raidmovie project being produced by Kevin Michael Johnson, in cooperation with TankSpot.com. I wanted to follow-up to make sure everyone knows, there are only 29 days left on Kickstarter drive. If you haven’t made a pledge, please check out the details surrounding the production, and the beneifts of becoming a sponsor.
Additionally, we are looking forward to having Kevin on for a brief interview this weekend. If you have any questions you would like to ask about The Raid, contact the sack!
Lastly, a new video has been released this week featuring Lady Raiders. Collectively they discuss the stereotypes surrounding female gamers, the luster of MMO raiding, and how much joy they get in kicking masoganist asses!
March 09, 2010 :: Posted by - Ozimandias :: Category - Cataclysm
/rant
I don’t know why this bugs me so much, but I can’t stand that my hunter is displayed without his gun or his pet. (I can understand why the pet is not displayed, I am mounted somewhere over Storm Peaks, so my pet isn’t out. That still doesn’t excuse it, but I understand.) What I don’t understand is why hunters don’t get ranged weapon displayed on the log-in screen. NOBODY CARES ABOUT MY STAT AX AND STAT DAGGER! Read more…
March 09, 2010 :: Posted by - Plectical :: Category - Cataclysm, Other
News has started to leak out of Blizzard that Shadow Fang Keep and Dead Mines won’t be the only instances that Blizzard makes into Heroic instances. As always, its refreshing and troubling to see Blizzard revisiting old content and adding a coat of polish. It’s refreshing because there is so much content that just sits underutilized in WOW. Its troubling because as nostalgic and fun as old content can be, it’s slightly worrying that Blizzard is sprucing up old content instead of making new content. Anyway, I’m getting side tracked. Read more…
All of the guilds represented share the Staghelm server with Haf and Stomp!
Together they discuss their guild’s success, player expectations, and what sets their guilds apart from other guilds. This special episode is available via iTunes, RSS feed, direct download, or you can stream it from our website!
March 07, 2010 :: Posted by - Stompalina :: Category - Podcast
This week, Haf taps out as Stomp welcomes special guest, Draechen from the Pugcast Podcast! Together, Drae and Stomp cover a few of this week’s news topics, share a few inside jokes, and compare ICC progression and goals.
Special thanks this week to our listener sponsor, Borsked from the Alliance guild, Blood Red Moon guild on the Zul’jin server. Make sure to check out his blog and the guild’s current recruitment. They seem to be having a great time clearing ICC!
During the month of March, tweet #RIDEADRUID to enter and win our best giveaway yet, a [Big Battle Bear] Loot card from WootLoots.com. This is about as close as Brigwyn will EVER get to taming, and/or mounting Stompalina!
March 07, 2010 :: Posted by - Plectical :: Category - Other
While I’ve been out of town, one PC game I’ve been plugging away has been Torchlight. Although the game is way more Diablo than it is WoW, there are still some tips that I’ve picked up playing that are applicable to WoW.
Increase Drop Rates
Let’s face it, WoW is an exercise in choosing between loot. Whether you’re level 10 or level 80, loot is the main factor that propels you to log into raids and 5 man dungeons. If Blizzard is looking to streamline the race from level 1 to 80 anyway (see the lowered level requirements for mounts, the increased payout for low level quests, Heirloom gear, etc), why not jack up the rate of loot drops in the leveling experience. Instead of seeing a piece of loot drop at a 5% rate, why not raise it to 15%? It hardly makes a difference as most early level players are not new players, they’re actually veteran players leveling up their alts (I’d love to see some statistics to support or undermine this assumption). Read more…
March 06, 2010 :: Posted by - Aellerian :: Category - PVP
So over the last month we have seen many buffs and nerfs to PvP. From a 100% resilience buff to a 10% healing nerf. Over the next few paragraphs I will be expressing my opinion on each buff and nerf to pvp.
If you have been following this at all you will see that our good friend(or enemy) Bornak over on the WoW forums has been a busy man. Lets go over what has happened. Firstly in season 7 we saw the up rise of protection specced warriors and paladins doing well in arenas. Protection specced warriors were a huge challenge, they had an incredible survivability, and a rather large amount of burst damage which was the problem. So to keep protection a viable PvE spec they upped the threat of the burst abilities and lowered the damage. This was needed. There was far too much survivability with a prot warrior, which there should be, and a huge amount of burst. That is where the problem came along. If you look at any of the classes you either have survivability or burst not both. So to fix it and not effect PvE, Blizzard went ahead and made this very simple and easy change. Read more…
Activision, my friends, has many arms. Many, many, many arms. As many arms as that Hindu goddess my wife has a picture of over the sink in the kitchen. Her name is Devi, the goddess, that is. Some of those arms of Activision are responsible for stuff like this. What most of us do not know is that Activision has a secret arm. An arm that is designed for the sole purpose of scrying and divination. They employ that Professor Trelawney who reads the freaky tea leaves and goes nuts when she touches Harry Potter. That arm made some wicked awesome predictions today and I wanted to share with you some thoughts on how I feel about this. Read more…
March 03, 2010 :: Posted by - Eulixe :: Category - PVE, Raiding
Reading through the official WoW EU forums earlier today, I stumbled across a post regarding the current progression system that is in place within Wrath. The main issue that was brought up was to do with the ease of gearing up your freshly dinged 80. Obviously this topic isn’t anything new, but there was an interesting point brought up that I’d like to give my 2 cents on.
The issue was to do with the large volume of Wrath content that is skipped by the majority of fresh 80’s nowadays. Instead of a streamlined progression from Heroics -> Naxxaramas -> Ulduar -> ToC -> ICC, most players, if not all, opt for the alternative of badge farming. A week or two of heroics, and as long as you’re gearing correctly, there’s a good chance you’re ready to hit up ICC-10. The downside of this being, all you’re doing before you start raiding in ICC, is grinding the same heroics you’ve done, time and time again. However, when comparing this to the Naxx/Ulduar route… are Heroics not the lesser of two evils? Read more…
/rant
So over the last month we have seen many buffs and nerfs to PvP. From a 100% resilience buff to a 10% healing nerf. Over the next few paragraphs I will be expressing my opinion on each buff and nerf to pvp.
Activision, my friends, has many arms. Many, many, many arms. As many arms as that Hindu goddess my wife has a picture of over the sink in the kitchen. Her name is Devi, the goddess, that is. Some of those arms of Activision are responsible for stuff like 
