Tuesday, December 30, 2014

...and a Happy New Year, I Guess

wake me up for 6.1
I've had a bit of a falling out with Warcraft lately. My guild isn't too healthy and I've been occupied with other hobbies, so there isn't much of a drive to write about WoW stuff.

I know I won't stop playing WoW. I've taken several not insignificant breaks from the game before - the majority of them being due to guild complications - and I kind of feel like one might be coming up soon because of this situation.

I really won't know for sure what's going on with my guild until after the new year, since our last raid days of the year fell right on top of the holidays, along with a large chunk of people just not playing due to other holiday obligations. If I take a break, it would become a chore to write about WoW when I'm not currently interested in it. I personally enjoy writing, though. I don't feel like I want to stop writing just because I'm temporarily disenchanted with the game. This leaves me wondering what I should do.

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

A Very Merry Winter's Veil

I've been a lot busier than I normally am during the end of December. I was unable to make a Caturday post last Saturday, and I won't be able to update according to schedule probably until after the new year. A lot of birthdays also came around this time of year and there is just quite the handful of things to take care of. My guild has seen better days, and with the holidays falling on scheduled raid days and our GM going on Christmas vacation, we'll be falling behind these next two weeks.

This post is obviously a cop-out, as I'll also be busy later on today and haven't come up with a post topic yet. I'm sorry, here is a cat playing with string and winking at you.


Friday, December 19, 2014

For-Everbloom

Everbloom is one of the new dungeons in Warlords of Draenor. It's an outpost where the Kirin Tor attempted to make a magical link between Azeroth and Draenor, which failed horribly because it was right in the middle of a sacred botani land. Because of that, it became overrun with plant monsters and vines that mind controlled the Kirin Tor and also a lot of other creatures, which we now kill for loot.

I think Everbloom is a pretty cool dungeon in concept. It tricks you because it's very pretty, while under the surface it's actually full of horrifying plant monsters that subjugate unwilling animals and people. The thing is, Everbloom is one dungeon where I never seem to get a group who knows anything about it. Think of this guide as a public service announcement...

UPDATE: With 6.1, the shortcuts in Everbloom have been patched to be unusable. I'm leaving the details on how these shortcuts were utilized in the post for posterity to retain the history of the instance for future generations to enjoy.

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Rep Grinds - Better With Friends!

I'm kind of into farming reptuations
With Warlords of Draenor, Blizzard wanted to move away from the reputation grinds gated behind dailies. You were only able to raise your reputation with a faction a certain amount per day, as there wasn't anything else you could do. No repeated turn ins, no farmable mobs, just dailies. A few reputations were farmed with mobs of course, like Black Prince rep and Emperor Shaohao (which wasn't added until later). They added a few other things, like championing a faction to give you bonus rep when doing a random dungeon, but for the most part you could only do a little bit a day.

Monday, December 15, 2014

Minion Swarms - Call an Exterminator Today!

So, I've been really into my garrison and, particularly, very interested in my followers. I've already discussed why I find them so entertaining, if you'd like to take a look here. In short, I enjoy the idea of putting together a good team full of various ability counters and traits, along with leveling them all up to epic and gearing them to be a formidable force to destroy my enemies.

As such, I've been timing my availability around being able to do the most amount of missions. I won't start long missions until I will be gone for awhile or asleep and I'm using garrison resources pretty liberally to put followers on every mission possible, even when the resource to experience gain ratio is pretty bad. I've been putting a lot of effort into leveling these guys and getting them to epic quality. However, I've come across a particular issue each time one of them becomes epic quality.

Saturday, December 13, 2014

Caturday - Technically Every Day

I have a few posts in the works,

uh oh, this better be good

but today is Caturday!

Here are a few pics from across the net of our fuzzy friend, the cat.

Thursday, December 11, 2014

Prove It

During Mists, we saw the introduction of the proving grounds. At the time, it was just a way to show off and get some extra achievement points, as it had no actual purpose. In Warlords, they made passing silver proving grounds required to queue for heroic dungeons.

Before we even had it implemented in action, I saw a lot of praise for this decision.

"Oh, this will keep out bad players!"

Not exactly.

Monday, December 8, 2014

Simcraft Is a Tool, Not a Farseer

Simulationcraft is an amazing tool when used properly, but a large number of people don't seem to understand that it's not an infallible truth. I love what you are able to use simcraft for - stat weights and other research - but the general playerbase tends to look at simcraft charts and, basically, lose their minds.

We've seen these simcraft results pop up every time there's a new raid tier or general class rebalance. Here's one of the more recent ones, they are just more or less bar graphs showing everyone's theoretical max DPS. They are put together with each dps class in the most possible similar standards - in a no adds, patchwerk type fight - and with various bars for the same class depending on variations of specs, like fury with either one-handers or two-handers.

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Addon Highlights - Master Plan

Addon Highlights are back! I originally stopped writing these due to the upcoming expansion release, not wanting to suggest any addons that would end up being abandoned or non-functioning after WoD release. Now that addon developers are on track, it's time to start it up again!

Today's feature is my favorite new garrison related addon, Master Plan.


Edited to note: Master Plan has changed a lot since I wrote this. It's being constantly updated, which is great! But that means it doesn't quite look or operate the exact same as when this post was written.

World of Clash of Clans - Now on Android!

put your follower tokens into the loot slot machine!
I've noticed a lot of discussion about follower missions being uninteresting. The whole process is reminiscent of a time-gated mobile app game that doesn't actually require you to "play" or interact with the process in any way other than setting it into motion.

While I can see where they are coming from with their opinion, I think that one of the biggest things keeping people from enjoying the aspect of follower missions is that they aren't looking at it from within the game.

What I mean from this is people are looking at follower missions as a drag and drop UI function that spits out gold and loot rather than what it represents.

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

A Healer's Best Friend

As I've mentioned before, I play a balance druid - and have for quite awhile. From the release of the dungeon finder tool until a bit before patch 6.0.2, I used my offspec to tank and get instant queues, but I decided to switch things up this time around, so my dedicated Warlords offspec is restoration.

It's more convenient - I can use all the same gear and consumables - but I also have to remember what mana is and get used to remembering to carry water. On that note, though, there is an amazing item that I just can't get over how good it is.