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You receive loot: [Bindings of the Windseeker]

:D :D :D :D :D

Got the left one (Geddon's)! Now to continue farming Garr forever and ever...

Yogg down!

In 10-man, at least. Fun fight; my favorite in the zone so far, but I'm probably biased since I'm a melee DPS and get to have all the phase 2 fun. Looking forward to working on 10man hard modes so we can wipe on Algalon for an hour every week and cry a lot.

My only reservations about the instance so far are cooldown-related. It's somewhat alarming how much we were able to get away with by just having our DK MT pop Icebound Fortitude every time something ugly happened. We completely bypassed Vezax's kite period this way. I'm told Feral Druids can do something similar with Barkskin and just having a ton of HP.

Blizzard's done some work on cooldowns already, but that primarily seemed pointed at the "chain cooldown" style of play where there's always something active. Unfortunately, many of the fights in Ulduar operate along the lines of "stable tank damage for a while, then a ton of tank damage for a few seconds, then stable tank damage again". This has a heavy bias toward the DK "low mitigation but lots of cooldowns" style of play, since they can orchestrate their cooldowns to be active during the high-damage parts and still be stable otherwise. I'm just not convinced that style of tanking can play nice with the Ulduar style of encounter design.

Of course, none of this matters too much in normal mode (except possibly Vezax since it does trivialize a large portion of the fight). In the hard modes, however, when everyone's stretched a little thinner, I have a feeling we may see a Sarth3D repeat.

It's 7AM

...and I haven't slept yet.

...and instead of going to bed, I'm making a blog post. Oh, the sacrifices I make for the four people who read this!

Anyway, in case you're curious, the reason I've been up all night (which is becoming common lately) is that I was working on a video guide for Mimiron. Fun fight, but very complicated. So much talking I had to do! Look for it on Tankspot sometime tomorrow, hopefully before servers come up but I make no promises.

My 10 man crew is progressing nicely, and we're not far behind in 25's. I'm hoping we'll get at least one Yogg kill in this week! I've needed to do a surprisingly little amount of tanking. It's a little ironic, I suppose, that once I finally have access to dual specs I don't need to swap three times a week. Ah well.

Okay. Need sleep.

PS: In before irony argument.

Lore the Mortal

Seriously, I don't think Blizzard wants me to get this achievement.

45%ish on Kel'Thuzad. Entire instance has gone absolutely perfect.

Ret Pally gets Detonate Mana. Starts to run out, gets hit by Frost Blast. Catches the two melee near him at the same time. Frost Blast ticks twice, Detonate Mana goes off. Two melee are dead in under 2 seconds.

Infuriating.

Guess next week we just won't have people with mana bars in melee range.

Taking The Plunge

So I had a nice chat with my boss at my full-time job the other day, and the conversation eventually pretty much boiled down to "Do I want to pursue a career melting plastic, or do I want to pursue a career in video gaming?" The choice, for me, was pretty easy.

However, I can't just up and drop my full-time job without making the cash up somewhere else. I still have a wife and two kittens to feed. I'm staying on part-time at my day job for now, but probably not forever (in fact, I'd prefer it not be forever... that would suck). So I've got a few things in the works:

1. The Azeroth Advisor. I've mentioned my work there on here a couple times. They pay me pretty well, and we've been working on expanding a bit to make it more appealing to a wider audience, so that should be pretty good (speaking of which, tell your newbie leveling friends to subscribe -- the level-up ability and talent articles are excellent, and hey, it's free). I can't really make the Advisor a full-time job, but it goes a long way towards making ends meet.
2. Project Marmot (and TankSpot in general). The extra free time is going to give me a lot of time to work on movie guides, especially with Ulduar coming up. Keep an eye out here, should be some great work coming along. As far as monetary gains, PM isn't really a big income source, though I am working with Ciderhelm on a project or two there. We should be able to start putting out podcasts more regularly again, too.
3. This Blog. I plan on keeping on top of this a lot more, especially with the random thoughts/articles/guides that seem to be somewhat popular (probably less of the "what did I raid this week" stuff). I've thrown a PayPal donate button up on the right; no one should feel obligated to send anything my way, but hey, if you're feeling rich and/or charitable, I promise I won't spend it on drugs and prostitutes.
4. My Super Secret Ultra Project. I'm a man with a million ideas, and I plan to start putting them to work. I don't really have anything to announce yet, but I'll be sure to give updates when I do.

Exciting times ahead!

Still not dead

Don't let my lack of posts lately concern you too much -- I've got a lot in the works for the weeks to come, and this blog is a fairly big part of that. I'll be discussing this quite a bit in the next week or two.

In the meantime, if you're wondering what I've been up to (outside of running a raiding guild), I present the following in easy-for-my-brain list form:

- Moving! My wife and I finally got out of the apartment and into a house. Then she got a dog, so now I have that bothering me all day (and terrorizing my two cats =( ).

- Tankspot! Been doing a lot over there lately, including working on some of the Project Marmot videos and generally posting all the news before Ciderhelm can (which reminds me, hopefully we'll get another podcast out soon)

- Azeroth Advisor! If you haven't checked it out yet, hit up http://www.azerothadvisor.com. I'm a content editor for them. This means it's my job to fix things that are wrong (and keep them from being wrong in the first place). It's working out really well and I'm enjoying it a lot.

- Probably like 10,000 other things I can't think of at the moment.

Anyway, look for more stuff to come in the next week or two. I hope to get into a little more detail soon =)

Red Proto Drake

hughguhgfuhugfhaughughafgf FINALLY

Protecting My Investment

My account was created at 10:59:03 AM, November 23rd, 2004 - the day World of Warcraft launched. Having had some beta experience, I knew WoW was a game I was going to spend a lot of time playing, and I wanted a Zergling pet so bad, so I dropped the $70 and preordered the Collector's Edition.

I did the same on October 28th, 2005, for the release of The Burning Crusade, and again on November 13th, 2008 for Wrath of the Lich King.

My account has been inactive for exactly one month to date since the original release (and not by choice, I assure you). I estimate, all said and done, that I've spent somewhere around $900 between box purchases and monthly fees.

I also spent $6.50 on a Blizzard Authenticator. They didn't even charge me shipping.

They work, and they're worth it. If you possess six dollars and fifty cents but not a Blizzard Authenticator, ur doin it rong.

(EU doods: This is your link. It says they cost EUR 6,00 or £4.80. I don't know what that means but I'm betting that's not much either.)

"Why use 969"?

Fair warning: I may get a bit ranty. This is something that manages to drive me completely insane.

Every time someone judging Light and/or using two ranks of Shield of Righteousness calls the 969 rotation "unnecessary" I want to stab them through the internet using my own blinding rage.

It takes quite a bit to truly get under my skin. Ignorance? No problem, you just didn't know any better. Misunderstanding? Here, let me explain how it works in ridiculous detail. I like talking about tanking. That's why I do it so much.

But at least have the decency to comprehend what I'm saying.

You only need one point in Imp Judgement because, if you're doing everything right, you can't judge any more frequently than 9 seconds. Please stop asking me why I don't want to judge every 8 seconds. I would love to. I just can't.

100 of your friends are just going to ask the same question again in 30 seconds anyway.