I wish Blizzard would patch the PTR already so I can log in.  (If you have multiple WoW accounts tied to one Battle.net account, you currently cannot log in).  I want to melt the world, damnit.

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GoTW #13:  Guild chat was not working on Blackhand all last night after server maintenance, and even through this morning after a server reset, quest NPCs were not interacting, preventing people from doing holiday events, normal questing, or raid weeklies.  How does Blizzard break so many things when they don’t even do a content patch?

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Maybe I’m just too lazy to go through all of the options in Rawr after disgust from it’s default settings, however I fail to see how people continue to cite Rawr as a credible source to find upgrades.  I fail to see why it values hit rating so high past cap (or why it values it at all), and why in hell it values haste so high past cap, and why it values MANA PER FIVE AS A SUSTAINABLE DPS TRAIT WHATSOEVER.  Can someone please explain this to me?

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I just went to buy the physical DPS helm enchant from Knights of the Ebon Blade, and came to the realization I was no longer phased to it.  Apparently when you faction change you lose that phasing.  I got to waste an extra 15 minutes     re-doing the questline so I could get back into Shadow Vault.  *mutter*

I still haven’t done the Argent Tourney quests as alliance.  I hated them once doing them the first time around.

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This gripe really has nothing to do with being a druid.  Although it was a druid who caused my ire.  I was pugging ToC on my hunter this week, and a druid decided to claim feral as their mainspec, even though they were healing the instance, and WoW armory showed their specs as resto/balance, wearing balance gear, and the tier 10 balance idol.  They won the roll for [Lupine Longstaff], and the pug raid leader, like a dolt, just gave it to him, even though I pointed out that he’s not feral.

I had my revenge on Anub’arak.  Apparently he doesn’t shapeshift into bear form fast enough when the adds are misdirected to him.  The raid ended up wiping, falling apart, and I had my revenge.

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Am I the only one who hates having to go resto to a) get a nearly instant queue for random dungeons (vice 5-10 minutes as DPS), as well as b) ensure that you have a competent healer so the run goes by decently?  I managed to buy the 3rd piece of Tier 9.45 today, and I forgot I had a piece of 9.32, so I have the 4pc bonus, but I’m trying to grind for a fourth 9.45 piece.  I’ll post some details about the raids and my impressions of the fights and changes to balance druid after this Tuesday, when I have enough experience to get some good data.

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More information was released about Shadowmourne today.  Am I the only one tired of melee legendaries?  Let’s see.  There was [Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker], [Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros], and [Warglaive of Azzinoth] / [Warglaive of Azzinoth].  Granted, Sulfuras wasn’t used by many besides enhancement shaman.  This is still the third legendary weapon for warriors.  Healers have had two legendaries, [Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings] and [Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian], which was shared by DPS Casters, and it is arguably the hardest legendary to obtain at the time.  (Endgame Naxxramas40 is still probably the least obtained content by guilds, even to this day).  Yet, Blizzard decides to make another melee legendary weapon.

Knowing our luck, the next legendary will be a caster sword.

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Am I the only one who dislikes that MMO-Champion forces you to try to install the java applet so you can watch when they’re streaming the Pro Gaming tournaments?  I’m just there to read about updates, not to see people game.

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Ghostcrawler posted the following about Nature’s Grace:

I agree Nature’s Grace is a big part of the problem here. We changed Gift of the Earth Mother for pretty similar reasons. However, Nature’s Grace is a Really Big Deal. We honestly keep talking about changing it, but we’re also paranoid about screwing it up because Balance dps is dependent on it. NG is probably an overbudget talent, but in this case if we nerfed iit, we’d have to mess with Balance in a lot of other areas to compensate. We’ll almost certainly do it at some point, but I worry about messing with it for 3.3.

I’m glad he finally realizes something the rest of the community has been complaining about for a long time.  A lot of our DPS is situated around one or two talents (Nature’s Grace and Eclipse), and they have no short term method of ever fixing it.  Now if he could only admit that Eclipse is broken.

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You’ve probably heard of GearScore already, but it was something new to me when I transferred to Sargeras.  It had never really been used much on Area 52.  This whole phenomena around GearScore amazes me.  If you’re not familiar, GearScore examines your gear and assigns a rating value to it, and when you mouse-over a player you get a summation of the gear score, similar to WoW Heroes and a few other websites out there.  This has been the new de-facto “go to” add on for running PUGs, and PUG leaders tend to treat it as gospel.

To give you an example, my druid (which I’d say is decently well geared) rates at about a 5260 gear score in balance gear.  (And I’m penalized for having lower item level trinkets, even though both the [Illustration of the Dragon Soul] and [Eye of the Broodmother] are better then many trinkets at a much higher item level.

Ironically, my resto set gives me a higher gear score by about 100.  Using the gearscore ideology, I must be a better resto druid then a balance druid!  GearScore also doesn’t see any difference between PVP gear and PVE gear, allowing many people to ’slip in’ to raids by wearing PVP gear for the invite, then putting their lower rated PVE gear on once they start.

I think all of us here know that gear doesn’t make a player.  Unfortunately, most PUGs now don’t see that.  My hunter, after a /played of 1 day and 6 hours, already has a GearScore of over 4800.  (Mainly due to a couple lucky ToC 25 and Ulduar 25 runs).  That’s a higher gearscore then most players who don’t raid ToC 25 consistently, yet I will be the first to attest that I know hardly anything about hunters, and I can barely get the rotation down right.

Anyways I’m beginning to soapbox here, but tell me if you guys have ran into GearScore at all and what your opinions are of it.  Personally, I’d rather take someone who’s under-geared but has the knowledge of the encounter (ie, an alt of a guildie) over someone who’s well geared but no clue what they’re doing.  (Because gear’s so hard to get now, right?)  I beginning to think, however, that this mentality is not shared with most of the world.

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