GnomeDruid

*Where D = Dead

Man, after last Thursday’s 20ish attempts, I really wasn’t sure we were going to get this one this week. But we pulled it out on about the 3rd attempt. This one felt REALLY good.

I’m really not sure what changed, or if folks just brought their A-Game after the weekend off. I was just trying to DPS and not die after we got the 3rd drake down.

I did not get the mount, but there’s always next week. ^_^

There is a gnome after the cut.

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Even with a 3 day weekend, it feels like I’ve had no time this week.

I wanted to do a write up on our Sarth+3d attempts on Thursday, but they pretty much boiled down to: Tank Falls, Everyone Dies. We would lose one of the three tanks, and the rest of the raid would shortly follow. We were reliably getting Tenebron down, and making good headway on … Drake #2, but then we’d lose a tank and that was all she wrote.

I don’t know if we were getting a 2nd whelp spawn or not. I’m concentrating too much on staying out of lava walls and keeping my rotation up. I need a big aggro-screen flashy warning “Whelps, Many Whelps!” to alert me on the 2nd spawn.

Aside from Sarth, we got Spore Loser in Naxx 25 on Friday. We also churned through the entire instance in one night. I think we’re reasonably close to the Immortal Achievement, as long as folks can keep from being stupid. Well, and if the RNG cooperates.

The Gnome

Caliban and the newest addition

I have my first full tier set! Caliban got his full Plagueheart set Friday night. I got the chest token during Naxx, and then got the last piece (legs) off of our 25 man Archavion right after. I doubt I’ll ever wear it in full, but hey, first full tier set. It wasn’t the sky-opening, angels-singing moment I’d envisioned. I might have had that moment had my rogue ever gotten the last piece of his Nightslayer.

I was also gifted this week a Proto Drake Whelp by my good friend Illian. (Thanks Illi!). That makes 79 vanity pets! As my guildmate says “You have a disease.”

The Durid

Not mucht to report on the druid front this week. Between school work and paid work I haven’t had much time to play him. I went feral to run my brother through BRD and haven’t switched back to Balance or Resto yet.

Because I don’t have much (any) healing experience, I’m reluctant to spec Resto and foist myself on appropriate level instance groups. Right now, I just need that elusive substance time to sit down and play him again.

Back to work for me. We’re supposed to try Sarth3D again tonight.  Hopefully there will be a big post from me tomorrow that we got him down. :]

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This post has nothing to do with WoW.

Last night I had the opportunity to see the Turtle Island String Quartet perform with Cyrus Chestnut.

It was amazing.

Their selection ranged from Beethoven to Miles Davis, from Duke Ellington to the theme from Snoopy.

I could spend hours trying to put that experience in words, and not come up with anything better than what my friend said to me upon leaving the theater: “Next time they’re here, don’t even ask. Just get tickets.”

If you have any interest in Jazz or even just music, see this group if you have the opportunity. They are an amazing, talented group and you will not be dissapointed.

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Caliban is a Fool for Love. Or possibly, I am the fool for doing this achievement.

Mostly, it was fairly easy. Mostly, I had it done by Thursday evening (hooray working from home) and finished up the rest on Friday.

Then I spent the rest of the weekend waiting for a stupid Candy Bag to drop. And then once I got the damn thing to drop, I had to hope for the right candies.

The Problem with Probability

Setting aside for the moment Blizzard’s intentions for the over-arching Meta Achievement, lets look at simple probability.

There were 3 Achievements for LIITA that required random drops: Black Dress, Perma-Peddle, and Be Mine. The first two were NOT requirements of the Love meta-achievement, the latter was. (I am not counting the Picnic achievement, because while that was a random drop, the achievement itself allowed you to utilize someone else’s picnic basket.)

According to the drop rates on Wowhead, the average rate for either the Black Dress or the Truesilver arrow was about 1%.

If I have my stats math right, the average chance of opening a Gift/Pledge of adoration and getting any ONE of the eight candies you needed is also about 1%. Chance of getting the bag (about 10% per WoWhead) times the chance of getting 1 of 8 candies (12.5%) = 1.25%.¹

This means that in general (please see the footnote) you are going to need the equivalent luck of getting 8 Black Dresses or 8 Perma-Peddles to get this ONE achievement.

¹I am NOT a math major, nor am I extensively trained in probability math. 0.125 (1/8th) is NOT an accurate probability for pulling the candy you need out of a 10-chance Candy bag. Due to the # of chances you get, it will be higher than this. 0.125% IS the chance you have of getting the candy you need on any single pull from the candy bag. Since no single pull affects the outcome of any of the other pulls (only the amount of frustration) I am confident using the 1% number for the comparison I am making.

Lets look at this another way. Continue Reading »

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In celebration of this glorious holiday, here is a picture of a gnome in a very lovely dress.

You have been warned.

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Dual Specs Ex-spec-ted for next patch.

A summary by the original poster I got this from:

• Dual spec confirmed for next patch
• You’ll have to be 80 and pay some money to unlock dual-spec
• Glyphs and action bars will swap with spec
• You can only switch specs at a lexicon of power
• Inscription will be able to summon in a lexicon of power soulwell-style
• Hunters will gain the ability to access their stable remotely on a cooldown(so they can swap pets with spec)
• Itemrack/closetgnome/wardrobe/etc functionality will also be coming next patch

I don’t mind paying money to unlock it, but it would be nice for leveling, especially for resto folks: Go out and solo-quest as Feral/Boomkin, but easily swap to Resto for that instance run you got an invite for.

The article mentions they may increase it to more than 2 specs, and I can definately see the community clamoring for this. Each class has 3 trees, so I think three would be a good number of specs.

The other thing the article didn’t mention, was whether or not the inventory functionality would take the gear out of your bags or not. I kind of doubt it, but it would be nice. Especially for druids who generally maintain 2-4 types of gear, at LEAST.

Add Ons

Meh, who needs two posts when one will do?

Passport to Shandris turned me on to a mod called Pawn. It’s kind of a DruidTips for everybody and may save me the trouble of hacking DruidTips with Resto/Balance stats.

However, one thing I don’t like right off the bat: DruidTips gives me Base + Enchant + Socket = Total stats. Pawn looks like it just gives you the whole total. Also, the item compare page looks like it gives you the “adjusted” stat-weight numbers, and not the raw stats.

Since stats vary depending on how much you have of certain ones (like hit cap for DPS casters, or the Int/Spirit/Mp5 balance for Healers) there is a certain amount of judgement call involved and I like seeing the raw stats compared as well.

I normally run DruidTips alongside RatingBuster so that I can use the information from both to evaluate a piece of gear. I missed having that DruidTips kind of “total” DPS number for my other classes. I will definately give Pawn a look, but I may still end up hacking DruidTips for my own use, depending on how I like it*. I tend to like my mods simple & single purpose, and not try to do everything for everybody. Which is why I haven’t picked up LunarSphere to replace Sphere which is no longer being updated. Pawn may fall into this “doing too much” category for me, but we’ll have to see.

*One more project for myself. Right behind the consulting project, learning how to make WordPress themes. And oh yeah, homework and primary job. >_>

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Well, as you can probably tell from the sheer mass of people in the old world cities, today was the first start of the Love is In the Air event.

I have 8 of the 12 required achievements done.

Heartmender: only need to mend 1 more but ran out of bracelets and energy

Fistful of Love: I have 6 left, need more rose petals. But I’ll be concentrating on getting Gifts of Adoration tomorrow, so this shouldn’t be hard.

Be Mine!: This is why I will be camping ___’s of Adoration tomorrow. I need another candy sack to get the last 3 Hearts.

Nation of Adoration: This is the one that has kind of torked me off. There are GIFTS of Adoration, and then there are PLEDGES of Adoration. The achievement wants GIFTS, which you get from citizens. Not realizing there was a difference, I got 3 Pledges and 2 Gifts before I figured it out and schlepped over to Wowhead to confirm why I wasn’t getting credit.

Then, to top things off, I was in Stormwind, having figured out the Gift/Pledge thing — go to talk to the first citizen i see with a heart, which is a cute little female gnome … who proceeds to give me a Gift of Adoration: Ironforge.  *headdesk*

Not Ironforge, Stormwind! I don’t care if you’re Gnomergan faction, you’re in Stormwind! RAAARGH!  Well, at least I know where to go if I decide I want to do another Tri-Cities Gift Pack.

I didn’t have too hard of a time collecting the mats for 3 Tri-City packs. This gave me all the chocolates I needed for Sweet Tooth, as well as the arrows for Shafted!.

That’s enough for tonight. I should assail you with a glimpse of Caliban in his Lovely Black Dress, but I would like for you to return.

The Gnome Sez: Iz time for bed.

PS. A note if you haven’t done it yet: The guards in Stormwind Harbor are jerks. They will take your loooooove token and not give you anything in return. [Insert STD joke in poor taste here.] Stick to the guards in the city proper.

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We all know how wonderful warlock dps is at the moment. [We will pause a moment for the laughter to die down.]

I try not to be a min/maxxer. I play this game for fun, to get away from homework and work and life stress for a bit. And my guild is pretty cool and understanding about real life stuff, and the policy is pretty much “as long as you’re not a detriment to the raid, spec how you want.” But it is always nice to feel like I’m actually, you know, contributing to the raid in a meaningful way, other than being aggro fodder.

Wall of text after the cut. It doesn’t crit you for 9000, cause afflic locks can’t crit that high *rimshot*. Continue Reading »

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I liked the old one, but the white text on dark background was bugging me.

Eventually I need to get around to making my own theme, but  now I have to go to class and pretend to be interested.

[eta] I REALLY need to make my own theme. These canned ones are driving me nuts. Project for the weekend after I get my programming homework done.

[eta#2]  I know, I know, I’m changing themes like … well, let’s not go there, I’ll probably get in trouble. I realized the last theme wasn’t showing the “read more” links (which was a problem with a copule others also) nor was it showing the “leave a comment” link (which is less of a problem, but still important to me). This theme has both of them, and will suit me until I can rip the themes apart and make my own.

Fracking dammit. and now THIS theme is hiding the comment I got on the About page. Elearin, I’m sorry but I’m just going to stick with this theme until I can fix it how I want it, then your kind comment will show, I promise. Cross my gnomish little heart.

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Holey Maracas! I got a link from Phae at Resto4Life o_O

Her comment about the blog was “Blasphemy!” I must be on the right track!

There will be druid stuffs, I promise! See, Tim is right here! And he might actually get leveled this weekend, if i get my programming project done.

Ho crap … that means someone may actually come LOOK at this blog now … where’s the vacuum?

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