Well, one thing Archaeology has going for it is that I get time to write stuff (blog posts, forum posts, responses to people’s PMs and emails) while flying back and forth across Kalimdor in search of Tol’Vir sites for the Ring of the Boy Emperor.
At any rate, I ordered a new computer in early April. It arrived on May 25th. It’s an Alienware from Dell and I will, at this time, ask you to refrain from criticizing my decision to get a pre-made (albeit custom-built) machine and for choosing to get it from Dell. (I know all of the above can be polarizing topics.)
I adore it.
I have two 23″ screens, 9 GB of RAM, dual 1GB GDDR5 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 (SLI enabled), a regular 1TB HD and a 300GB 10k RPM HD (Dayden – I was obviously wrong and was looking at one of the 17 different builds I’d assembled before placing the order.).
It’s awesome.
Let’s be clear, here. I have been playing WoW on a laptop with an integrated video card for pretty much the entirety of the last five and a half years. Exceptions have included stints of housesitting for my parents and two short periods of time where I raided from an internet cafe because my laptop(s) had to go to the shop for various reasons.
Playing with spell details up is insane. Water is GORGEOUS in this game and I never knew! How smooth things are, when I can experience them at 60 FPS or higher as opposed to my traditional 7-12 FPS! And SHADOWS.
So, as you can imagine, I am super excited about my purchase and even MORE excited to raid on this thing!
So far, I’ve done Magmaw, ODS, Chim, Maloriak on official raid nights on the pally (all but ODS on heroic) and Halfus, V&T and Council (with many Cho’gall attempts) on Monday night on the hunter. (Hilarious! I am not completely huntarded!)
The changes are amazing. Dark Sludge is really easily visible. Blaze and shadow crash are easy to avoid. I cannot WAIT to do Atramedes and Nefarian on my new computer. CANNOT WAIT.
And in the meantime, I’ve hit 85 on my baby paladin. I basically did Uldum for the Ramkahen rep and have ignored any other quests (except the various quests to open the portal to Twilight Highlands, plus Crucible of Carnage) and have randomed my way to 85 by way of healing.
A lot of groups are filled with fail. Fail failfailfailfailfafwftgtwfgishf.
Ahem.
People who can’t do Corla’s beams, people whose pets are on aggressive, people who don’t understand how the pyramid packs (damn you, Majik) work in Vortex Pinnacle…
However, there are the occasional groups who are AWESOME. Tanks who ask about my mana and ask if I need CC, skilled DPS who can zerg the last guy in Blackrock Caverns while pulling the adds off JUST long enough for me to heal the tank…
Some very pro groups and some very fail groups.
The baby pally, who still needs a self-deprecating nickname, is gearing up nicely and has 7 346/359 pieces already.
Erudax, in Grim Batol, has already denied me his bracers (333 on normal) once. We’ll see if this gets to be a trend…
So that’s going nicely. I’ve even livestreamed a few times: http://www.livestream.com/kurnmogh
In other news, Apotheosis had a rough week last week, failing to repeat on heroic Magmaw or heroic Atramedes. The former due to a lot of mistakes, the latter because we ran out of time.
This week, we walked in and one-shot heroic Magmaw.
I’ll take it. >.>
And speaking of Apotheosis, June 1st is a fourth anniversary! Granted, we weren’t really a guild, per se, during most of Wrath, but we’ve been a guild since October or November of 2010 and we were certainly kicking back in Burning Crusade. So it’s time to celebrate what we’ve accomplished together and remember the laughter we’ve had during the last several months. I’m planning a retrospective that includes videos (!) and the like. I just need to get videos to render properly and finish going through some screenshots. Should be fun and hopefully done this weekend at the latest.
Having responded to most of my outstanding PMs and emails and having done about as much archaeology as I can stomach for now, I’m going to head to bed, but that’s what’s up with me, lately.
Upcoming blog post topics include: keys/attunement, ZA/ZG gear and T12 gear. Probably not in that order.
Something that I just can’t understand regarding Corla’s beams is the fact that I always *ask* people if they know how to do the fight/beams. I’ll even assign people to the beams (since of course no one else will). I find this results in one of the following scenarios (or several):
1) No one stands in beams (so I try to, even if tanking)
2) Two people stand in the same beam, leaving the other by itself. At least one of these people will fail at the stacking and get mind controlled, most likely both will manage.
3) Two people take a beam each – and I think we’ll be fine, until suddenly they both are mind controlled.
I have yet to do Corla on normal on my alts with people who know what to do. But who knows.. maybe one day it will happen!
Grats on the new PC! Playing with details on Ultra is the way to go, SO much to see in the game and the devs/artists really have done a nice job, imo. The world is so much more alive than it used to be, especially when you can SEE it :D
I’ve been thinking the water is *too* nice though, too glassy, what do you think?
I’ve got a pally tank, and while he’s been 85 a while, and done some Ret DPS, I’ve recently been working on his tank gear and got him into heroics. I’d not done a lot of tanking since pre-LK raiding when I switched to my Hunter to fill a guild need. I’ve noticed much the same in my random groups- many many fail players but a handful of very very good ones too. I’d say the best healers I’ve had have been pallies!
My GL and I were talking about this the other day- it seems there are a lot of newer players in heroics now, and many of them are either just bad, or lazy, or both! When we were first introduced to Cata heroics there was, of couse, a learning curve, but we all sort of grew together and perhaps out-distanced some of the player population who didn’t spend as much time in the game (and just weren’t as interested in doing so.)
I would say the majority of the players in heroics (non-Zs) now are those who’ve come late to the party and have some sort of expectation that they can waltz through it all. Sure, if you get a group of highly geared folks it’s going to be easier, but as a tank learning how to Do It Right in Cata, it’s frustrating to get DPS who refuse or don’t know how to CC, or focus fire, or pay attention to my kill order marking. I hope you continue to have successes with your pally and I will keep pressing forward on mine.
Grab an extra 23″ monitor and play WoW in Surround mode. :)
I have two 460s, and 3 23″ monitors (as well as a 32″ LCD TV I use as a 4th monitor) and WoW at 5760 x 1080 is amazing.
Oh my. I’m very envious of your new setup! I dream of the day when I have the space and money to do that. 60fps? Steady 10-12fps for me :(
I’ve been meaning to ask, actually – did you choose your questing zones based on reps needed at 85? I’m sure I’ll draw up a plan this weekend (78 now, so very close) but it’s nice to hear what other people did too.
Saga – I hope that the Corla fight will eventually be as well understood as the Svala Sorrowgrave encounter in Utgarde Pinnacle. Well. Kind of. There was a period of time in there where people understood you had to kill the adds. Then they stopped understanding that…
Kulseth – The water is, at times, a little too glassy, I’ll definitely grant you that. Still, it’s miles better than what it was for me on my laptop! :D
Speaking of pug players, I had a FANTASTIC, like absolutely FANTASTIC hunter in a ZA random the other night. I was on the baby pally over on Skywall, running with two guildies (one a moonkin who was specced bear for the occasion, the other an arcane mage) and we got a DPS warrior and hunter in our group.
The hunter was PRO. He pulled BEAUTIFULLY, was amazing at CC — used Wyvern Sting AND Freezing Trap AND misdirection. Absolutely outstanding. I told him so, too, thanking him for being awesome. :D
Good luck to you, too! :D
UFTimmy – haha, tempting, tempting, but I like just having the one screen to focus on for wow and the other for websites/WoL/twitter/etc. It’s very much my “utility” monitor. Maybe one day I’ll try out dual monitors as one screen for WoW….
Arolosseien – Man, I LIKED 10-12 fps when I was raiding at 5-7… :)
For the baby paladin, I skipped all quest zones except the Ramkahen quests for that rep (Sun King’s Girdle is outstanding). I could have, should have, done Hyjal for the helm enchant, but basically, I just got Madrana to buy six Arcanums of Hyjal. They’re bind to account, so I sent them over to the baby paladin and I don’t need to rep up until I’ve gone through 6 helms. ;D
I also decided I was NOT going to rep up with Therazane (two toons at exalted is quite enough for me, thank you kindly!) so I became a scribe. That meant I only needed to focus on Ramkahen instead of Ramkahen, Hyjal and Therazane.
I could have thrown in Earthen Ring there, but various other drops are almost as good as the rep chest/rep gloves.
All in all, I’m happy with how I geared and levelled. :)