Thursday, July 23, 2009

Travel Update.

Here I am at 5 am waiting 2 hours after checking in to take a 1 hour flight, god but I hate airports. You wait for obscene length's of time bored out of your mind for what seems to be no good reason.

Speaking of being bored out of my mind, I found that shaving your head again (I had shaved it a couple of days ago so it kind of needed it kind of didn't) in an airport bathroom just because you are bored is not a good idea. Shaving your head should be done with a well moistened scalp, shaving cream and a good quality razor. It should definatly not be done with bathroom despencer soap and a cheep ass disposable razor.

Anyway I just popped on to post this as a way to kill time and and to try and keep myself sane.

Oh, and by the way, why is it that security people seem to want to undress me every time I go through security in an airport?

Anyway I might pop on again with another update if I get bored again.

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Why so quiet?

I apologise for my recent silence, but I've had a bad case of writers block and raiding hasn't exactly been great lately. Also Tomorrow, I'm taking a little trip over to England where I will be meeting up with two priests, two mage's and a pally ... possibly also a Deathknight if he can make it. Preperations for this have also left me kind of busy.

I'll bring back some IRL screenshots, oh what do you call 'em ... photo's, that's it.

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Arms DPS 3.1

Lately I've been getting a lot of people asking me about arms DPS, and it seems that my normal explanation of "Take your face, apply it to keyboard then roll like you mean it." just isn't enough for some people. So I thought I would write a better guide here . I will try and make it less of a "Wall of text crits you for 9000000" by highlighting important sections and linking appropriate talents, anyway here we go.

First lets talk about statistic caps. There are three of these that you should know.

Hit Rating.

This is 8% or 262.32 hit rating. After this point hit rating gives no benefit to your dps and is wasted itemisation. Please also note that if your at around 250 hit rating don't bother to gem for it as nobody gives a damn about such a small miss percentage, no really, it's not a big deal.

Expertise Rating.

There are actually two of these but there is only one you need to worry about since you should always be behind the boss, and if your not please take yourself out back and give yourself a sound thrashing, trust me you deserve it. The expertise cap for dodges (which is all you have to worry about) is 6.5% which is 26 expertise or 215 expertise rating. Again any expertise rating after this point is wasted itemisation. There are other things to consider when looking at expertise rating.

The first of these is that you will be specced into Strength of Arms, which will provide 4 expertise meaning you only need 181 expertise rating or 22 expertise (please note that the 4 points from SoA will be added to the tool tip on your character sheet so that it will read 26 expertise with 181 expertise rating).

The second thing is that for each 1% you are under capped by (refer to the tooltip on your character page for this), you can put a talent point into Weapon Mastery, up to a maximum of two.
This means 165 expertise rating with 1/2 WM and 148 expertise rating with 2/2 WM.

Armor Penetration (ArP)

This is probably the most complicated of them all so I will try to keep it as simple as possible. The cap for ArP is 100% after sunder armour and other debuffs have been applied. The only realistic way to reach this cap is with the help of a trinket proc, either Grim Troll or Mjolnir Runestone. My recommendation would be to go for the Grim Troll first as it is so easy to get. I want to keep this a easy to understand as possible so I'm not going to bombard you with a big list of numbers instead I want you to mouse over your hit rating on your character sheet and look at the percentage of armour ignored by your Armor Penetration.

This should be (when capped) about 41%. This is because you get 10% ignored by battle stance and 49% from your trinket proc.

If you are using mace spec ... go get an axe. If you can't get an axe it should read about 26%, as you will get 15% from mace spec.

Gems

First off a couple of rules.

1) Never gem for crit. Just no, ok?

2) Don't make me want to beat you, so go find those attack power gems in your gear and replace them with Strength gems. These scale with talents and with blessing of kings so go get 'em.

3) Once you hit 30% passive ArP from gear and battle stance (so that's 20% from gear) it's time to start gemming for ArP as it provides a greater dps increase than strength at this point. Once you reach the soft cap for ArP go back to gemming for strength.

4) The only time you should be putting anything but red gems in all your sockets is to activate your meta gem or if the socket bonus is really fricken awesome.

Ok that about covers it on gems.

Weapon Choices.

This is a simple one. When you look at the bonus from specialisation
Axe/polearm > Mace > Sword.
Yep that's about all you need to know on this section.

Talent Build.

This is unfortunately not as simple as take this build and own the dps meter. So I will start by showing you my favourite build then talking about the variations you can take.



Now it's time to talk about the various changes you can make you your build based on personal preference.

The first is the three point's I've placed in Iron Will, these can be placed into Tactical Mastery if you find yourself changing stances a lot. And this is something I will probably change next time I respec.

The next is the 5 points I have in Commanding Presence. These points can be spent on Unbridled Wrath if your having rage generation problems or placed into Improved Demoralising Shout if your tanks are not specced into something similar.

Lastly are the two points I have in Improved Execute. One of these can be spent on Anger Management if your short on rage. Also you remember where I was talking about expertise? Well this is where you get the points from to put them into Weapon Mastery.

That about covers the talent build.

Glyphs.

These are the major and minor glyphs you should be using.


Some people prefer to use Glyph of Bladestorm but it provides a dps boost on only a few fights.

The Rotation (kind of).

Arms dps doesn't use a rotation rather it uses a set of rules to determine which ability you use next. So I will now go through each ability you use on a boss fight and the rules that determine when you use them.

Rend. This is the very first ability you use at the start of the fight. Let it run it's full duration and refresh it as soon as possible afterwards preferably within 2 seconds of it falling off.

Mortal Strike (MS). Keep this baby on cooldown as much of the time as possible. The only reason to delay using MS is to refresh rend, or to avoid wasting a Taste for Blood proc, more on that later.

Execute. When using Execute through a Sudden Death (SD) proc the only time you should delay using it is if you have less than 30 rage or if by using it you will then prevent yourself from using MS i.e. using it will put you on less than 30 rage while MS is off cooldown and an auto attack will not land within the Global Cooldown (GCD), a swing timer is a valuable tool in helping you manage your SD procs.

Overpower. Because you are using this through a Taste for Blood (TfB) proc you have a 6 second window in which to use it before you get another TfB proc and effectively lose the first one. This means that you can realistically use at least 3 other abilities before you have to use Overpower. This means that while it is one of your higher damage abilities it has a lower priority than most of them because of it's ability to be used anywhere within the 6 seconds without delaying the next one.

Slam. This is you "Fill the gaps" ability, you use this only when you have no SD or TfB procs and MS is on cooldown. As arms you should be using every GCD and this is what you use to fill up you "spare" ones.

Bladestorm. You should keep this on cooldown as much as possible, but there are a couple of conditions to fill before you use it. The first is to ensure that rend won't fall off your target in the middle of your Bladestorm. The second is to make sure that you have used your TfB proc before casting Bladestorm and that the next one wont occur for at least another 3 seconds. The third is that you have MS on cooldown, you will always delay MS by using Bladestorm, just try to minimise the delay as much as possible. The fourth is to make sure you not going to be hitting anything your not supposed to i.e. pollymorphed mobs or creatures that have to be killed at a specific time.

Heroic Strike (HS). You use this ability only to ensure that you don't waste rage also referred to as a "rage dump". What I mean by this is that when you are at high rage and you get another auto attack it will often take you over 100 rage. As you can only have 100 rage this means that most of the rage you would have gotten is wasted, this is not good, it makes me a sad warrior when rage is wasted. So what we do instead is when we are at over 75 rage we cue a heroic strike thereby boosting our damage slightly instead of wasting rage, this makes me a happy warrior.

Additional notes on Arms DPS.

The Execute Phase. When the boss get to 20% you can now use Execute whenever the hell you want to. This is a bad thing because just spamming Execute will actually lower your dps. So what you do instead is continue with your normal rotation, keeping rend up, keeping MS on cooldown, using your TfB procs, the difference is you no longer use Slam and never use HS, instead whenever you would normally use slam you use execute instead. Another tactic is to switch to two good one handers, keep Rend up, use your TfB procs and Execute the rest of the time as you should generate enough rage to Execute on every GCD. I haven't tested enough to tell you which tactic works the best so take your pick and hope for he best :)

Multi target dps. When you have several targets to hit that are close together continue with your normal rotation but switch out HS for Cleave and use Sweeping Strikes (SS) on every cooldown. On a side note to using SS make sure that it is off cooldown just before you use Bladestorm. Pop SS and Bladestorm at the same time and each Whirlwind attack will hit each target twice. To make the most of this turn off you auto attack just before you do this as each auto attack will eat up a SS charge but only generate 1 additional hit. This means you will need 50 rage before you stop auto attacking and use SS and Bladestorm. Start your Auto attack again as soon as the last SS charge has been used.

Addons.

Quartz - good for swing timer and nice target cast bars.

Power Auras Classic - use this to track you TfB and SD procs. Some people find it too flashy but I like it.

Auracle or Buttontimers - these provide an easy way to track your rend duration

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

The Picture Says It All.

Ok so maybe the picture needs a few words to back it up.

Last night we couldn't continue our progress on Yogg'saron in 25 man because of summer. Yeah you know that thing that happens where the sun starts shining and people stop raiding. Anyway we were short on tanks, dps and healers.

What do we do in this situation?

Go back to naxx? If we do I may have to shoot myself.

No, what we do is grab whoever we can and make as many 10 man teams as possible. In this case it happened that we could only make one team ... and I had to tank. I protested this mainly through force of habit rather than any other reason. Fortunately due to them running a 10 man on one of our off days earlier during the raiding week we only had Mimiron, General Vesax, and Yogg himself left. This meant that I only had to tank for Mimiron and the trash up to Vesax.

We one shot Mimiron, despite a healing screw up that caused Bloodthrust to die while tanking in phase one. I kept screwing up in phase three while on the scrap bots and bomb bots. kept miss clicking and failing to taunt the bomb bots (going to have to make a macro for that, although I should really just practice more instead).

We one shot the general, infact we almost entered hard mode by mistake.

Then it was time for Yogg. We were pretty confident since we'd had so much practice on 25 man, but we figured we would have to see phase three a few times before we got it right. The most we'd seen of P3 on heroic was a confusion of adds running around seemingly killing tanks at will.

We had Bloodthrust solo tank it and he did an amazing job, once I told him to stop tanking them so close to the damn clouds that the mobs were actually standing in them, but we managed to wipe in phase 1 by spawning too many additional adds.

Time for attempt number two. This time we didn't spawn too many adds, and the melee (me included) didn't try to commit suicide too much, so P1 went very smoothly. After the chaos of seeing it in heroic P2 was almost a joke, and we finished it in 3 portal phases, despite having one of the portal team miss the second one.

Then it was phase 3 and those adds that were wantonly destroying our tanks on heroic, were behaving themselves and eating mah axe like good adds should. Except for one who went and ate our lovely tree healer Ikna instead, I had to go remonstrate with him and show him the error of his ways. Bad add, Bad. STUNTY SMASH.

Then suddenly it was all over.

WTF?!? Weren't we supposed to like spend the better part of the night wiping on this guy?

We gave a brief cheer and then milled around a bit. I think Bloodthrust summed it up when he said "well what are we supposed to do now, there's like 2 hours left on the raid?". It was a very half hearted victory. We were all pleased, but I think everyone would have like him to have put up a bit more of a fight before dieing. Ok I know we out gear it being decked out in mainly 226 ilvl gear, but still it was like he just rolled over and gave up. Oh well now to do it on heroic.

The rest may have gone and done something else but I called it a night there, having no inclination to go back and do older content.

Anyway here we are taking our victory pose after the surprisingly short struggle.


So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Monday, July 6, 2009

That Fuzzy Feeling Of Hysteria.

Today was not a great WoW day for me as I kept having technical issues. It started when I was doing my dailies before the raid and a friend of my housemate was over with his kids. They kept running around a knocking the cable out of the router. Now you cant get angry with them because they are just doing what kids do, which is run around, and the cable stretches right across the living room perfectly positioned to catch little feet as they rush by. Fortunately the latch on the connector is loose so it pull's out before it can trip them up. I'd much rather get DC'd than have a child get hurt. So I patiently got up from the PC room and plugged the cable back in every time they knocked it out. It was no big deal, barely even worth mentioning, except that this disguised a problem that would become apparent later on.

The friend and his kids leave about 20 minute before the raid starts and everything is hunky dory ... for a while anyway. Then I start getting strange lag spikes and random DC's, being unable to log back in, being unable to establish an internet connection. All kinds of strange problems. My frustration at this was compounded by the fact that we failed twice on Mimiron, a boss that should be on farm status for us, and I caused something like a 15-30 minute delay while I tried in vain to get online/remain online for any length of time.

It's a good thing the kids had gone because I had just become a raging, frothing, malcontent gamer with the strong inclination to take a hammer to both my router and my PC. The language was not at all suitable for little ears.

I manage to get back on in phase 2 of Mimiron on our kill attempt (fortunately I had been DC'd inside the room before the pull) only to have my game crash in phase 3 while I was on Magnetic core duty (why is it that I always get core duty?) fortunately Nyziu (my gnomish melee confederate) covered for me while I restarted WoW. I managed to remain online long enough to finish the fight after that.

That done with I asked Elix, our raid leader if they could clear trash while I ran some tests to see what was wrong. Normally I would have asked to be replaced but we were running under the full 25 already as it's summer and people have suddenly found summery things to do instead of raiding (damn them and their real lives, don't they know I've got yogg to kill?) .

Anyway I started by checking the router connections, nothing wrong there. Then moved on to the router settings, nope all is well there too. I then preformed a ping test and suddenly got a conflicting IP error. Hang on a moment. Right now my PC is the only one active on this network. A bit of frantic checking later and yes my suspicions have been confirmed, for some god forsaken reason my PC had decided it would be a great idea to try and open two connection to the router with the same IP. Damn computers, they'll never catch on. Obviously I had told it to do this somehow since PC's will only do what they are told to. But damn it, they should do what I want, not what I say!

I got back after they had only cleared one trash pack on the way to General Vesax. My technical problems however had thrown me way off my game and it took all the remaining trash to get remotely back on track.

Then I had the problem that, while normally I would be one of the main interrupters on this fight I didn't want to have another round of technical difficulties cause a wipe. So I asked for volunteers to take over ... I had to ask 3 times before I got one. Eventually I got a response and we sorted the rotation and it was time to pull. The annoyance at having all the tech problems then sorting out a replacement caused me to not realise that I hadn't switched over to my fury spec until I hit an in combat charge.

But you know what? At that stage I just didn't care any more, I wanted to release my frustration and unleash the beast that is a dwarf warrior packed with rage and hyped up on coffee on this guy.

I promised myself that if they missed even one interrupt I would switch over to berserker stance and add mine to theirs, but they didn't miss a beat, and I got to unleash. I managed to keep my head enough to stack Sunder Armor for the other melee, but not enough to check if anyone else was doing the same so I could stop. It didn't help my control that I was the recipient of, not one, but two DK's Hysteria's. In fact when one landed right at the start of the heroism I announced over vent that "I love you guy's".

Yes I am that easy, one Hysteria during heroism and I'm all yours baby.

My brain got into the swing of things as well and started doing some pretty nifty rage calculations allowing me to maximise my Sudden Death procs and heroic strikes. So even with stacking sunders and the melee haste debuff which gimped my rage generation I was still able to pull out (as I found out when I had wiped enough foaming, dps frenzy, spittle of the screen that I could check my recount) the second highest damage in the fight.

Then I did a little double take when I saw who was above me and by how much.

What kind of sick, twisted, sadistic abuse had that man done to his keyboard. Surely there is some kind of society to prevent that kind of cruelty.

All I can say to the other casters is, Be Like Lau. Sure the man's a sick, twisted, keyboard hating animal. But any man, no matter how much of an animal he may be, who gives my recount that much of a headache deserves some kind of respect.

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Sunday, July 5, 2009

Is It Still A Mistake If You Didn't Know Until You Were Dead?

Well of course it damn well is. An avoidable death is an avoidable death no matter what. I should know I've died in almost every way imaginable on a boss fight. I've died form over aggroing. Died from aggro dumps. Died from standing in the wrong spot. Died from standing in the right spot, but standing there too long. Died from standing too close to someone. Died from standing too far away from someone. Died from moving at the wrong time. Died from not moving at the wrong time. Died from mind control. Died from AoE. Died from big, glowy, spiny, damn obvious AoE. Died from moving in the wrong direction. Died from moving in the right direction, but too far. Hell, if there was a boss where you could only die by standing on your head whilst reciting nursery rhymes I'm sure I'd manage that too somehow.

What does all this rambling about me failing have to do with anything?

Well I like to think of it as a list of credentials as to why I'm specifically qualified to talk about this subject. It may not always be as obvious as those I listed but a mistake is a mistake, no matter the situation.

Let me tell you a story.

Our raid leader did me a favour, for which I promised him that I would worship the ground he walked on and not die for the next 10 bosses we downed. I was in luck as it was the beginning of the raiding week and that the first 11 bosses in Ulduar can be classes as on farm for us. I survived the Flame Leviathan with ease. I survived Razorscales adds and flame patch's. I survived being put into Ignis The Furnace Masters pocket twice in a row. I avoided being deconstructed by XT-002 Deconstructor. I survived being DC'd twice on the Assembly of Iron. I survived the AoE of Kologarn. I survived the adds and void zones of Auriaya, even the death of our main tank on that fight didn't stop us or cause my death. I survived 800-900+ lag on Hodir.

(As a side note I had asked to be replaced because of the lag and DC's that had been plaguing me but there was realistically nobody online to replace me)

I did all this by doing my utmost to minimise my damage taken and maximise my positioning and self healing. Then however it was time for Thorim and I got sloppy.

The first attempt I was in the gauntlet and did everything I could to stay alive, but the arena team died from being overrun by adds and the big sparkly ball of death came for me. Our raid leader kindly said that one didn't count. The next attempt I was put in the arena so that our raid leader could "keep an eye on me", and for extra dps on the adds. I kept a damn close eye on my health and my aggro and survived long enough for Thorim to join the fight. We finished of the adds that were left and started on the big man himself.

This is the point where I make my mistake. I know that he does chain lightning, and I know that it gets stronger as the fight progresses. So why in gods name did I stand so close to two other melee? Ok so it's hard to judge how hard the lightning is hitting unless your keeping a close eye on raid damage. And yes the other melee should have been spreading out as well. And yes we do get forced closer together by that ground level lightning stuff he does. All this however in no way excuses me from just standing there and face rolling my way to the floor. Even if the others were not, I at least should have been maximising my distance from the rest of the melee group. I did not, I paid the price and broke my promise. It was a hand up, my bad, mistake with no excuses allowed.

What's the point of all this nattering?

Well the point is that a whole lot of death's are avoidable and next time you die take a good long look at your combat log and the sequence of events that lead up to your death and see if there was any possible way to avoid it, or even to just reduce the chances of you dieing. I'm not saying you have to play perfectly, god knows I don't. All I'm saying is realise you made a mistake and try to learn from it.

So until next time this is Stuntyone the Incompetent Warrior signing off.

Saturday, July 4, 2009

What I Did While AFK.

In this post I am going to completely deviate from the norm on this blog and talk about Real Life... you know, that thing that happens when you go afk or log off.

Yesterday I had myself a little adventure. You could, if you wanted, liken it to your, say level 20 alt that hasn't gotten his mount yet, getting a quest that takes him right across Kalimdor through unexplored areas. But that's a horrible analogy so lets pretend I didn't say it.

Anyway I had some business that I absolutely had to take care of, and to take care of it I had to be in a certain town by 10 am. Ok so what's the problem with that you ask?

The problem is that this town is ~45 km away (taking the rout that guarantees I wont get lost, something that happens very easily) and I live in the middle of nowhere and don't have a car.

Ok so take a bus.

I'm sorry but public transport sucks in this country and the earliest I could get to this town by taking public transport would be 1:15 pm, way way too late. Also taking a taxi was out of the question as I had a grand total of 6.40 Euro on me (this being the reason that I absolutely had to sort this out that day).

My solution to this problem was to leave the house at 6am. This caused it's own little problem as at 3am sleep was still nowhere in sight so I ended up pulling an all nighter just to guarantee that I would leave on time. I had calculated that that if I maintained a decent speed I could cover that distance on foot in 4 hours and 30 minutes. Those of you with half a brain will realise that this would end up with me arriving half an hour late. Do not be alarmed, I had a plan, if you can call sticking my thumb out and relying on the generosity of the motoring public a plan. Usually you can stick you thumb out on any major Irish road and get a lift to the next town in fairly short order.

I think I must at this time talk a little about the rout I was taking to get to where I needed to be. I was taking two main roads to avoid getting lost, like I said before this is something that happens quite frequently. One road straight up the other straight across. Simple right? Well I thought it was, and taking two main roads was also supposed to increase my chances of hitching a lift.

Well the first road was actually a main road and one I'd walked a good few times before. The problem was that it was 6 am, traffic was scarce and those that might have been inclined to give me a lift probably hadn't had their coffee yet, poor buggers.

After an hour of walking traffic had picked up, but I was making good time, better than I had originally hoped, and it hardly seemed worth getting a lift the (relatively) short distance to the turn off. So, foolishly, I stopped trying to hitch and just walked the last half hour to the next main road.

Finally seeing this "main" road was quite a shock. I've never taken it before, but it was the one direct rout between two (for Ireland) fair sized towns. I must say I was expecting something ... bigger. This so called main road was barely large enough to accommodate two cars passing each other and had no hard shoulder for me to walk on, in fact if two cars were coming in opposite directions near me I had to find a gap between the hedge's around me and squeeze in there until they had passed. I really should have guessed, while it was marked as a main road on the map it looked like the cartographer had drawn in this particular road during an earthquake.

After walking for another twenty minutes down this cattle track of a main road I had become slightly nervous and kept expecting to hear that banjo tune from deliverance, that's when I come across my most pleasant surprise of the day. I turned a corner in the road and stumble across this almost picturesque town, one of the few I pass on my journey even big enough to have a sign with it's name on it. The lovely architecture of the old houses, the scent of the bushes and flowers in full bloom and the dappled morning sunlight working it's way between the tree canopy. All this left me momentarily entranced, and my first thought upon arriving there was "So this is where all the hippies who got old went to.". It even, bless it's rustic soul, had a footpath for me to walk on.

I continue along this footpath for a while enjoying the scenery of the old houses, the classic Irish pub and church (mind you if you've seen one of these you've seen them all) and the look of the old dry-stone walls, only partially spoiled by the layer of concrete that had been put over the top of them to prevent kids from knocking them over. These walls were probably older than some of the houses around them and certainly much much older that the concrete footpath I was walking on. I'd expected the footpath to only extend for about 300 meters but it went on for nearly a kilometre, and as I progressed along it I started to wish it had only lasted for 300 meters. The further I went along the more depressing it became as more and more of the "new" houses appeared. God but I detest modern housing. It all seems to be on the principle of four walls and a roof with the only difference being in the size of the building, the catch phrase for these places seems to be "cost effective". They seem determined to take all of the individualism out of what is after all somebody's home.

Anyway I came out the other side of the town and started walking down the cattle track into banjo country again, and then the thought struck me. That had probably been my best chance of getting a lift as there was actually places for people to pull in and pick me up. Luck however had not been on my side as not a single car had passed going in my direction over the last kilometre. Cursing my luck I trudged on. I had now been walking for over two hours and the fact that I'm missing a tendon in my right knee was starting to show, as the mussels that I had conditioned to take over the job of the missing tendon were starting to burn with fatigue.

At this point I'm going to interject a little note on hitch hiking for those of you who may not have done it on a regular basis (Oh how I love to interrupt the flow of my own story -_-) . When you catch somebody's eye as they drive past and don't pick you up there are usually two types of look you get. The first type is the apologetic look, as if to say sorry there's nowhere to stop, or sorry there's not a free seat. The second type of look is the disdainful look. This look basically say, "Like I would let you into this car, you filthy pedestrian you.", god I hate that look. I'm probably more intelligent and better educated than most of those people and they look down on me just because I'm walking somewhere. Ok, so I may not be better educated as I tend to become bored and lose interest half way through whatever course I happen to be on.

Anyway as we rejoin my journey through the no man's land that is rural Ireland, I have been walking for 3 hours and my good knee, which hasn't been quite right since I damaged it when I was four, is stating to complain since it's been compensating for my bad knee for the last hour. I ran out of cigarettes just after leaving the house and I could almost kill for a smoke. Then as if in answer to my cravings I turn one of the many corners that looked just like the ones before and low and behold, there it is, the first shop I've encountered since leaving my house. I could have jumped for joy, except that my knee would probably have collapsed under me. I went in and spent the best part of my remaining funds on a packet of rolling tobacco and drink. Some of you might find 19 degrees to be a laughable temperature but it was enough to make me sweat and I had become damn thirsty at this stage. Having my thirst and cravings sated had now made me much less likely to throw a stone through the window of the next driver to give me "that look".

I walked for another twenty minutes despairing more and more of ever arriving on time, when I stuck my thumb out for what must have been the hundredth time. The car drove on past me and my heart sank yet again. But wait, what's this? Yes they are pulling in. Finally I had gotten a lift, just 7 kilometres from my destination, but that would have taken more than an hour to walk in my current state. I shall be forever grateful to that lovely couple for stopping to give me a lift when so many others would not, they even gave me directions to where I needed to go in that town after they dropped me off.

Anyway I got to where I needed to go and sorted my business out. Now all I've got to do is get back home. There's no way in hell I'm going to be able to walk back, my leg just wont take it. I know, I'll get a bus into the city and then back out to where I live. I'm under no time constraints now so this isn't a problem. So I'm there waiting for the bus to arrive when the heavens that this is the perfect opportunity to open up on me. Damn, I don't want to leave the bus stop because only god knows how often a bus leaves this place. I call the bus company in an attempt to find out the bus schedule so I can go find some shelter until then. It takes me 15 minutes to get through to them all the while standing in the heavy rain in case I miss the bus. As soon as I do manage to get through and find out that the next bus isn't for another 1 hour and 40 minutes the rain decides to drop off to a minor shower, leaving me soaked and thoroughly annoyed.

Ok so what do I do for the next 1 hour and 40 minutes? I doubt this place has an internet cafe. I know, I'll go buy a book and read for a while. After walking around the town for a bit and not seeing one I stop a person on the street and ask them for directions. To my absolute horror I'm told that if I want a book shop I'll have to go to the next town over. Now I'm starting to feel sorry for the people who have to live here, they've got fast food shops, fashion shops, a super market, hairdressers, and even *shudders* a solicitors, yet no book shop. To me this is a truly, truly depressing situation. I go buy a news paper and get a pint in the local pub (I justify this early drink with the fact that it's not mid day for me but very very late at night) to try and distract myself from this depressing realisation, and decide that if I ever come back here it will be too soon.

So you could say that I arrived to the raid on time, killed the boss and got some phat lootz. But you wont since that also is a terrible analogy and we will pretend I didn't say anything.

So until next time this is Morgan Walsh the Incompetent Pedestrian signing off.

Friday, July 3, 2009

It's On It's way.

Sorry people no real post today eiter I had a bit of a Real Life adventure today that has left me completely worn out ... but flying in the face of the Incompetent Warrior tradition I will actually be posting about this.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Annoying My Guildies Part 2

Occasionally I shall be doing a completely fictitious expose on, guide by, or interview with, one of my guildies. I have of course asked them if I "can use your ingame name so that I can take the piss out of you on my blog". I asked, they said yes, they only have themselves to blame.

SoL In-depth.

Hello and welcome to SoL In-Depth, I'm your host Dirty McMuckraker and today we have a special treat for you as we'll be discussing Bloodthrust one of SoL's regular raiders.

We also have our main source with us today, but he has asked for anonymity so we have disguised his writing and we will be referring to him by the code name ST1.

Let kick things off shall we?

ST1 how would you describe Bloodthrust?

Well that's a bit of a hard question to answer as he's such a ... composite ... personality. I'll have to break it down into a couple of descriptions. First off Imagine a monkey.

Ok.

Now place that monkey in a very small cage.

Right.

Now add about 15 gallons coffee and 100 packets of jelly tots to the monkeys system.

Riiiight.

Finally add a large supply of ... monkey product ... for him to fling at unsuspecting people near by, and you have the general impression of Bloodthrust.

You paint a startling picture of one of your core raiders ST1.

Not as startled as our new recruits when he starts flinging his monkey product, I can tell you.

I can imagine ... I'd rather not, but I can.

Now for a more defined view of Bloodthrust. You've probably been to one of those casual get together's that people have right? You know the ones, they start about 4pm, bring the kids kind of affairs. Usually out door eating if the weather is good.

I know the ones.

Well you know that one kid right?

That one kid? I'm not sure I follow you.

You know the one, there's always one, about 4 or 5 years old, cheeky little bugger. By the end of the night he's probably running around in nothing but his T-shirt despite his parents best attempts to stop him. This kid will usually do something horribly disgusting during the party, along the lines of finding some dog doings, placing it on a paper plate, then presenting it to a table full of adults in the middle of eating, with a big ass "look at what I found" grin on his face.

Okaaaaay, I know the one's ... maybe not to that extent, but I know the one's.

Yeah, well that kids Bloodthrust.

Wow ... just wow, I knew I'd be living up to my name tonight but this is just amazing. I think we have a general impression of Bloodthrust now, so lets move on to the next question. How did you meet Bloodthrust?

Well he just kinda turned up in our ventrilo server one day. All quiet like. Just sitting there saying hi to people as we logged on to do instances or whatever. At the time nobody suspected he was a raging monkey hyped up on caffeine and sugar with a pile of product at his disposal. Apparently he was a guildie from way back when SoL was Sentinels of Light, who stopped playing before I joined the guild.

So he just kind of turned up, rolled a deathknight, and got into the raiding team?

Well it was with the release of Wrath of the Lich King, so we were all at the same level when we hit 80 ... but basically, yeah that's right.

Well, what can I say? With all this information it brings us nicely to our next question. For the love of god Why do you keep him around?

A couple of reasons, he tanks so I don't have to, he does good dps when not tanking. But mainly it can be summed up in two words ... Entertainment ... Value. There is nothing quite like watching a new recruit try to raid for the first time with a new guild while dodging monkey product.

My final question is one that as a good muck raker I would normally never ask ... but do you have any proof about his personality?

I have some light documentary evidence. At the time of this screen shot we were discussing his new best in slot tanking boots, and he turns it down hill as only Bloodthrust can.

Then as if to prove his superiority he comes out with this little gem less than a minute later.

There has been a lot more but unfortunately I cannot screenshot vent where most of it happens.

Compelling evidence I must say. There you have it folks one of SoL's regular raider laid bare for you all to see.

That's all from me and our source ST1.

So until next time this is Dirty the Muck Raking Reporter signing off.

I may have gone a little over board with this one, but it's Bloodthrust, he can take it ... at least I hope he can or I'm going to be doing a lot more dodging from now on.