Thursday, August 28, 2008

Hunter love and Pet emotes

Lately have been playing Padrad alot and now I have even more reason to play him, and scamper around with my kitty Siam. He's Shy-Rotams mate from winterspring and for me one of the two best kitty skins in the game; I had Humar but stupidly sent him away when i went owls for awhile. The new reason is simply that I found out about a new to me addon called Pet Emote, yes I'm late to the party on it but gives life and personality to my pet.
While I don't play on a RP server I seem to structure my play along the old role playing game style( i.e. Dungeons & Dragons) where Padrad is more than just a jumble of pixels to me he is a very special dwarf, possabile overly influenced by the gnomes who came to Ironforge after the disaster in Gnomeregan and the stories of the explorers league, he went searching for adventure and crazy new plans to build with his engineering training.
So with that kinda of being the "backstory" finding Pet Emote made it come full circle. The first time siam nuzzled up to my leg i was hooked. Know my kitty could always roar and stretch if i was quick i would see the animations but know he has his own way of communicating with me. Running around nagrand and having Siam do his own emotes just cant be beat. I haven't played very much with it but have a few that I plan on adding soonish depending on fast he gets to doing certain things. Warning to all the Sidhe Devils if Pad ever makes it into Kara expect Siam to see dead people, ok its lame but ill get a giggle out of it, and I probably make one about tasty Blood Elves for when i make it out to netherstorm.
They way i see hunters or at least try to play mine is that my companion is wholly part of me. Blame it on the Fact that the first movie I ever saw was Grizzy Adams my grandad took me when i was a wee lad back in the 70's. I never have had a bear named Ben and probably never will but the idea kinda stayed. So I will set it up so that when someone pats Siam he'll purr and maybe stretch, I'm keeping the nuzzles for my self.
So in closing I just wanna add to any hunter who thinks of the pet more than something to feed and occasionally sacrifice to get away from the mob that will get you I heartily recommend Pet Emote to add a little life to our companions who after all have to do most of the dirty work.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Big changes pre xpac

Late last night I was looking around on WI and found out that we are gonna have a pre release patch for some of the content in wrath. Stuff that will effect my characters the most are gonna be the release of the new talents , spells , etc. . So it kinda got me wondering what will happen to my erstwhile main Graimerin; protection paladin who's kinda semi retired because I'm having a bout of altism and enjoying pure dps with my hunter. I haven't been able to access him today ( boo maintenance ) but a quick look at the armory shows a couple interesting things.

First I am excited about how the talent Touched by the light (10% of total stamina to spell power) is gonna work. I mean the interesting thing other than a huge jump in threat potential I like the total word being there. Some basic numbers on Grai from the armory current unbuffed stamina is 1075; now assuming standard raid buffs +30 stamina spicy crawdad, +70 stamina fortitude, +15 stamina gift of the wild bring us up to 1190. Now i always run with kings so that adds another 10% to stats which brings me up to 1309 total stamina.

Now assuming my math is correct that means a spell power increase of 131 if blizz rounds up the number. My current spell damage is 254 from what i have been able to glean about the beta is spell dmg translates at a 1:1 ratio so I might/will/hopefully will have a raid spell power of 385 before any wizard oils or flask. As I normally run with the +40 spell damage wizard oil and flask of blinding light ( +80 holy spell damage) I can again if I added right be sitting at +505 spell power. I'm not passed kara/gruul's/za content by choice so i haven't had an issue with losing aggro in awhile so seeing a gain of 131 spell power makes me wonder how much faster my dpsers are gonna be able to start.

Using Nightbane as the fight where threat is an issues flight phase is it possible that i can build a big enough lead that his breath attack that always seems to target a healer will be mine instead. Are some of the awesome dpsers gonna be able to attack 1 or 2 seconds faster. I like about a 7 to 8k threat cushion so i dont wipe the raid on a bad fear. Assuming 2 secs sooner entry for dps that's one extra steady shot for hunters, one extra combustion+fireball for mages etc for everyone else. Doesn't seem like awhole lot but if i can get there sooner 8k threat he dies sooner meaning I hope that every ones mana,energy,rage last and be used to apply max dps.

I'm not a theorycrafter I love to play with my toons numbers but will not claim to be fully informed etc about other classes but again I have hope that because of these changes that the supposed changes to down ranking are moot. So if we can kill a boss 5% faster (arbitrary number) will mana last 5% longer Im not sure.

So yeah I excited about this patch because I'll have a chance to balance my play style rotation of spells etc before i hit northrend. Maybe Ill be the ubber noob again on Grai and he can be fun to re learn. I know the blue said in the coming weeks so Ill have to wait like everyone else just. I'm just glad the we get a pre xpac bone from blizz and chance to play with our new toys. I rather try out new spells in a known area on fights i understand than be a tester because i know the boss fights and I will have a base of comparison to actually have it make sense.

So I'm sure ill be writing soon about great wonderful feats of bosses dieing or complaining that they broke they way my toons functions no matter what coming soon to a blog near you we will have are new stuff to go on about.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Busy Busy weekend

This weekend has been very very busy for one member of the gang. Padrad my hunter has been leveling alot lately needed a change from being the tank. Having tons of fun and getting to do somethings i havent before. Saturday as triple B has said we got the final onyxia attunement done and beet up that silly dragon, yeah I got her 18 slot bag. That was Saturday afternoon and evening then Sunday when I logged in to do some farming got lucky and was able to pick up a pug group for under bog happy happy 3 quest done and got the underspore frond free food and mana woot.
Then Sunday evening when i was on cleaning up some quest in nagrand shrinn on her druid elysse built a group for a blood furnace run and i got the legionaire blunderbuss woot new gun for my dwarf. So i ended the weekend about 20% short of 65 moving along nicely hopefully will get 70 soonish be nice to have a toon that can actually kill stuff fast maybe then ill finally do dailies. Well back to the hunter and to the leveling grind

Friday, August 22, 2008

Why I have been not around alot lately

Real quick as i havent posted in along time. Havent been feeling the greatest lately so I havent done much. Pushing padrad thru the levels hes almost 64 and thats about it. Nothing funny or sad but funny just level questing. Kinda in the blah's about the other toons at the moment deciding who ill push when Pad runs out of rest. Just havent felt like raiding much maybe it will pass i dunno.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Grai Dings 40

Ahhh a joyful day will be spent around the home of Grai's Gang today, as I leave the 30's behind forever. I'm hoping to discover some heretofore unknown ability that may get unlocked, but if i do I'm sure the training cost will be high. Shrinn gave me my card before she went to bed and it was a look at the year i was born 1968 (save all the math). The top songs, cost of items, pres and vice pres all that kind of stuff and i got me wondering about video games in general and wow in particular. WARNING MEMORIES OF AN OLD MAN COMING.

The first video game i ever wanted was combat; not the atari game but one that had a 2 handed joystick for each player, that you tried to squeeze two people on play. Time frame was about the same as pong which my friend had. Mattel hand held games football and baseball i remember old led lights programmed to light up if u did the right sequence. These where huge when Simon was still new, but if u had more than 2 people over it was done.

So about the time i read the lord of the rings series the first time summer of 7th going into 8th grade a buddy ask if I wanted to come over and play D&D at his house. I said i would and "gaming" changed for me that day. All of a sudden the novels i was getting into reading i could play or something like them. So they explain how the character process goes and the dice oh we had dice and tell me to choose what i wanted to be. I choose a knight; yes cliche yes, because of King Arthur. So our dungeon master explains the adventure to us (quest for you new folks)
and off our group went 6 of us adventures and our dm for 7 total. Matt,Chris T. ,Rodney, Chris B. ,Chuck, Dave K.,and yours truly. Almost 30 years ago and i still remember that group of guys we spent the rest of that day doing our dungeon and i was hooked. That was our group till high school sports, girls , and jobs broke us up.

My High School at the time had apple II and apple IIe personal computers 64k ram and no such thing as a hard disk. But there was this terrific almost mind blowing game that we could play for hours Ultima where u could control 4 "good guys" against an array of bad guys. The graphic quality was somewhere south of atari football but it was incredible to us, heck we still liked text adventures.

Ok so now you ask "What the heck does this have to do with WOW?"

WOW to me is all these games wrapped together. I'm still searching for that perfect sequence to light up the game. The group of guys and gals has grown from a mere 7 gangly and geeky kids to I have know idea how many. But the best part is still coming together getting or adventure(pardon me had to do it) and heading off to be heroes. I still play a knight but i rather be Sir Sparhawk (thank you very much David and Leigh Eddings) than one from Arthurs round table. Apple's are still around although gasp I play on a pc. The graphics well 25 odd years ago animation wasn't this good (Although Boskin's Lord of the Rings will always be a personal favorite) and rumor has it the xpac is crisper than these. The best part now as way back then is simple I have been very lucky to meet some wonderful people in this game so I wanna say hello to 6 of em seems right somehow. Muralimohan(this is how i meet you), Unseenfiend, Big Bear Butt, Wulfa, Eros, and Letva. When I log in and see some of you, all of you I know i will generally get a laugh and best of all a good group of people to run around with.

So ill wrap this up for me "happy 40th Grai"

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Why I have been hoping and not on last couple days.

As some of you may know my oldest son is down visiting this week. After his arrival Friday and hearing all about how customizable "Morrowind" is I had to play around with the only thing I didn't like about wow the interface. So after some experimentations with other ui's that people had created and not finding one i liked i took the plunge. Tried to use "PitBull" but the addon went in to code more than i wanted to. So played around with some others and came up with this set up. It has some turn on / turn off features so all the gang stay's happy and is alot more screen space for me. If u compare the old ui , Grai using the default ui + addons against nightbane. The new one and i hope cleaner version . I enclose a list of the addons used to compile my ui.

Align -adds a grid to your screen for set up and spacing
Bartender 3 a very easy to use bar mod with alot of adaptability
Xperl - a unit frame addon
CT Core and buff mod
Simple Minimap
Autobar

Those built the ui also i use pally power,omen recount,healbot,atlas loot enhanced and titan bars.

I sure ill be addindg addons as i go but I'm just glad i found my screen again and while frustrating it was alos alot of fun.

New 'UI"

The one with nightbane is the old Blizz ui the second is of the new one

Saturday, August 2, 2008

Sorry about missing Kara....Kinda of

Last evening I was supposed to run Kara with Grai's guild Blood for Blood. Also yesterday my oldest son was gonna arrive for a week at dad's. The original plan was for him to arrive around 4:30 pm we could hang out for a short bit eat dinner and the other stuff required to get settled. Then I would go to the raid. Well things didn't happen that way. He called to let me know they would be running late and didn't expect to arrive till around 8pm est time (7pm server) right when the raid was set to begin. So i got in touch with the raid leader to let him know and he understood. I felt a little bad but I don't often get time with my sons alone I have 4 and normally they all come down at once. During the summer tho each come down for a week alone at dads house. So he arrives we get him settled in and are chatting away about the x-games, wow and a game he's just started playing called "Morrowind". He explained its an older game 2004 he seems to prefer his rpg one of two ways rts games he's beat all the warcraft games or none mmo rpgs. So Dad takes a few minutes to show off the characters and of course this wonderful movie 3B made of ZA.http://files.filefront.com/Sidhevsnalorakkmpg/;11263341;/fileinfo.html. We continue chatting away as espn cycled thru there programming, when i finally happened to look at the clock it was after 1 am eastern. We had just spent a large portion of the evening just gabbing away about everything and nothing at all. So why i did feel a little bit bad about missing a run i said i would attend, nothing will ever be a fun or special to me as being able to gab with my 15 year old son for hours and have fun doing it.

Its rambley i know but i wanted to share a fun and special evening of a different kind.