Accountability

Time to hold myself accountable. At the beginning of the year I set the ambitious goal of continuingng to raid with my DK and provide reasonable if not exactly cutting edge suggestions on how to get the most out of your toon. I also had the ancillary goal of leveling all 9 other classes to 80.

Of course what I didn't know at the time is which way my life would turn. These WoW goals were set assuming life outside in the real world would remain stable.

It didn't.

However, I still believe it is important to see how I did against these goals as with all goals in life.

The real world saw my work schedule become very busy as we had several major initiatives going in the office. It also saw the decision to have another baby, the full pregnancy, and the birth of my daughter. These factors led me to quit WoW at the end of March. I just couldn't do it all.

After four full months away from game I came back to find my small group of friends mostly back in a guild we ran Kara and Gruul's with and I was welcomed back there as well. I spent a couple solid months leveling toons when time permitted but never got The Scourge out for another spin beyond respeccing him when all the points got refunded.

I took additional breaks from WoW on a regular basis especially after my little girl was born. So here are the results.

As you can see my druid went from a T5ish feral tank to 80 and is a boomkin. My lock is back to affliction after leveling as a felguard siphon life spec. Gotta say with full Frozen Shadoweave this build had so much self healing I don't think I ever ate or drank. My hunter languished and went from 70 to 73. I took my rogue up to 70 and have plans on finishing it someday. My Shammy made it all the way from 61 to 80 and is now a heroic resto but I just don't make the effort to be a fantastic healer and usually let a dps or two die during the run.

My mage is up to 70 and remains the frost AOE grind champion but has yet to go any farther. My pally went from a resto pocket healer at 60 to retribution for the solo push to 71. There is no spec more OP than Ret Pallies IMO. My priest went from being a pocket dual box healer at 60 as well and is now full shadow. It is also a hard to kill toon with all the self healing. If it has mana, the mob(s) is dead. My warrior is a dual wielding titan gripping disappointment. At level 70 it has the lowest dps by far from all my toons and while I may not be optimal at rotations I do look up standard rotations for each class so I am somewhat competent.

That leaves my DK. The Scourge sits in the same gear he had the day I retired. He hasn't stepped foot outside of Dalaran except for a single fishing excursion. It was a very fun toon but I think I don't run heroics with it to collect badge gear because I don't want WoW to have that much influence on my life again.

On the subject of heroics and the new random pugs I have run a ton this week while on vacation on my Lock, Boomkin, and Shammy. Overall I have had good experiences. Only one run did I have to deal with asshats and I can count the complete wipes from 30-40 runs on one hand.

Lastly, I am somewhat amazed that after 9 months of shutting this blog down I still average 100 hits a day. That is a long way down from the 750-1000 I had at my peak and I wonder how far could this have gone had I devoted the attention to it that it deserved. I had several good e-mail interviews for DK of the week feature but ultimately the feeling of obligation to generate fresh, relevant, daily content was also a contributing factor to my departure.

I hope 2009 treated everyone who shared this journey with me well and I wish you all the best in the new year.

Regards,

Omen aka The Scourge

Life after WoW

It's been two months since I canceled my account. In some ways leaving the game has been easy, in others not so much.

The biggest issue I have with WoW is also its biggest attraction. The persistent nature of the game. Even when you are logged out events that affect you continue to transpire. This is a powerful motivator to not log out, not miss anything.

I figure I was playing 20-25 hours a week before I quit. Six to eight of those would have been raiding, the rest doing the daily grind. Fishing, crafting, dailies, running heroics for rep, etc, etc, etc. Most of that time was not truly fun.

The time spent raiding also included tons of down time for breaks and wipe recovery.

Outside of the game I was putting another 10-15 hours a week into this blog. Between the two it was as if I had a second full time job with no pay. I'll admit it was one I enjoyed.

In my resignation post I identified two aspects of my personal life I had let slack. Reading and my health. I have addressed both of those.

I have read a couple books but have focused most of my readings on online journals and blogs that deal with my professional interests of data modeling, economics, decision theory, and personal finance.

I write a blog on my professional interests and it is achieving my goals. I don't update it near as frequently as I did The Scourge, but then that is the nature of my professional thoughts. Insight takes longer to develop and distill in that arena. My readership is also much lower but that is also a nature of the material. However, I am getting the right readership. People who can further my career.

As for my health I indicated I had put on a few pounds. I know myself. If I don't have a good kick in the ass by someone other than my wife I will not exercise. So I hired a trainer. In just a few weeks I've dropped a few pounds, lost an inch from my waist, gained a lot of endurance, am a little stronger, and have the energy to keep up with my son at the park.

Gaming wise, I played a number of games. I tried Diablo 2 again. It was fun and I could see a lot of the Death Knight in my old favorite class the necromancer. I also finally got Warcraft 3. I'm not and RTS fan and WC3 is definitely not WoW. I did join iRacing and settle into it. I've always had a love affair with racing and this is much cheaper than buying a spec Miata. The beauty is, I can fit my racing schedule more easily into my routine and if I need to quit for something in RL, 9 or 24 people are dependent on my being there.

But it's not easy walking away from something that was a big part of your life for two years. I still lurk on a few blogs. Afterall, WoW blogging really is a community and especially amongst us fellow DK bloggers. Death Knights continue to be in the good hands of Me And My Ghoul and Death Knight Tactics, though the loss of Skeleton Jack leaves another hole in the group.

I have no intentions on removing this site from the web, but two months after WoW I can say I have no intentions on coming back.

My Non WoW Blog

This post will have nothing to do with WoW other than to say I actually don't miss the game. I do miss the community around it.

Part of writing The Scourge was to see if I had what it takes to be a blogger and had real life not intervened I would still be playing Warcraft and keeping this blog up to date.

I'm not terribly surprised that blogging has gotten into my skin. I've kept a journal at work for over 6 years now. I have found it invaluable in tracking my accomplishments come review time as well as allowing me to see developing trends in the day to day office politics. Blogging is not a big shift from that.

I have been writing a blog for the real world for a couple weeks now and expect I will continue with it. Some of you may find it interesting. Many of you won't.

As with The Scourge I write about what I am familiar with. For my new blog that covers topics on decision theory, data mining, personal finance, business, and macro economics. So for those of you who may be interested in those topics from a practitioners point a view, feel free to stop by. I can be found at http://www.broadcastthoughts.net/

For those of you who were hoping for more Death Knight updates I recommend you peruse Skeleton Jack for your DK needs.

Following the herd

out the door.

When Phaelia left to have a baby it didn't really phase me since I never followed Resto4Life.

Yesterday BRK pulled the plug.

Today it is my turn.

To be honest it's something I've contemplated. I like to claim I'm pragmatic and can be happy with 95% of the benefit for 50% of the effort. But when it comes down to it, I'm not satisfied. Never have been, never will.

I launched this blog for two reasons, one I wanted to give blogging a spin, and two, at the time I couldn't find any good DK blogs. If you look at my link list on the right you will find plenty of good blogs.

The reality is, to achieve my blogging goals I need to put in more than 50% of the effort. That is time I can not afford to commit. For the past two years WoW has dominated my nights once my son goes to bed. I've given up more sleep than I care to admit. I've done what I could to minimize the impact on my personal and professional life, but I know I haven't eliminated it.

In the year prior to taking up WoW I read the following books:

Cowboy Capitalism: European Myths, American Reality
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Intelligence, Genes, and Success: Scientists Respond to The Bell Curve
The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
The Purchase of Intimacy
The New Direct Marketing: How to Implement A Profit-Driven Database Marketing Strategy
How to Lie With Statistics
Making Great Decisions in Business and Life
Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences
Personal Financial Planning
The Nine Nations of North America

Since I started WoW I haven't read a single one. I personally believe I am not as interesting as I once was.

Before WoW I was a part time college professor in addition to my day job. I haven't taught in two years. Though to be honest I don't think I will take that up again anytime soon. Student demands for grade distortion, cheating, lack of willingness to study or do homework frustrated me to no end. There were exceptions of course.

I've put on 15 pounds while my bike gathers dust.

So there I was deluding myself I could have it all. After all BRK was a middle aged professional like myself. He had a wife and kids like myself. He was more successful at raiding than I ever was. He was more successful at blogging than I ever was, or likely ever would be. What I didn't see was how much he was sacrificing at home until he admitted to it yesterday.

Truth is, I don't want to be BRK, or even like him. I want to be the same guy my wife fell in love with 13 years ago, only a little older. That will still include computer games, just not ones with persistent worlds where I fear if I'm not online I'm missing something. They will be the kind where I can hit save and walk away and don't rely on 24 other people to achieve my in game goals.

To those of you who know me IRL, we'll keep in touch. To everyone else I've met in this fascinating game, I wish you the best of luck in achieving what you want out of life. It's a rough world out there and I hope I have added a little enjoyment to y'all as I know I have received my share of enjoyment from you.

Cheers,

Monday Morning Blues

I didn't get much playing done over the weekend. Outside of a couple dailies and fooling around in a couple dungeons didn't do anything exciting.

I'm still trying to score my first Maly run. I honestly don't care whether it's 10 or 25. I also don't care(but wouldn't pass up) about loot in there. I raid to see content and I still haven't seen this fight outside of Tankspot, or gotten a kill.

I'd really like to have that before 3.1 hits.

In the meantime I'm collecting mats for Northrend Inscription Research. One I can use the mats to finish capping my scribe prof, two I'll hopefully discover some of the better new glyphs early on and be able to make some easy money.

I have about half a dozen good entries for my next DK feature. It's going to be a hard decision. If you aren't chosen don't worry there are always future weeks as well.

I ran a nexus regular pug on my hunter over the weekend. We had a DK tank. He was level 70 with 61 points in Frost. Not exactly ideal spec and I would argue that while leveling just grab a few pieces of +def gear and tank with a DPS spec. But it was clear the guy hadn't tanked before. That's OK too, we all need to learn sometime.

The tanking basics that you need to know regardless of class.
1) Only pull when your healer is ready
2) Know where a safe place to tank the pull is
3) Don't pull when a Patrol can join the fight
4) Make sure you have a way to establish and maintain aggro on all mobs that are not CC'd
5) Use Line of Sight to ensure casters come to you
6) If you do not have the health, mitigation, and avoidance to survive a 5 pull, use CC
7) Slow Down and Think

For DK's Items number 4 & 5 means use DnD either on the mobs where they are (assuming #2 isn't violated) or apply rule #5 and make sure all the mobs have to run through your DnD as they come to you.

I bring this up as there were numerous trash pulls I died on since feigning death would have put the mobs back on our healer that much faster. I'm sure some of the expert hunters out there could give me some tips on kiting casters in tight spaces. I know I wasn't good at it.

Fun night out

Nothing exciting was going on so several of us friends decided to run the daily heroic UK last night. Ordinarily there would be nothing of note from that place. What made it more entertaining is I tanked it in a full DPS 17/0/54 spec.

With my tank gear I was uncritable of course and still had 30k health unbuffed with 26k armor nd 34% avoidance. Needless to say that was still more than enough to handle the place. Not to mention we all have raid experience.

Ingvar only got one dark smash off before we dropped him. The extra 500 DPS I brought to the table really sped the place up.

We also do this for out alts on occasion. We did a regular UK 4 man with an Enhance Shammy as the "tank" a hunter kitty as off tank, my boomkin and a holy pally. Since the shammy didn't really have any aoe aggro tools beyond pulling with a chain lightning we used lots of CC. I'd root melee toons and the hunter would range ice trap casters.

So remember raiding is srs bsnss but kick back and have some fun on occasion.

More Changes on the PTR and other things

Let's start with the other things. WoW Insider linked my feature of Mundien which lead to my second largest daily visit total. I got an e-mail from Mundien stating that his graphic card died so he can only access e-mail on a friends computer. He wanted to pass on his thanks for y'alls interest and support and added that tanking with 1000ms means you really have to anticipate where the mobs will be versus where they appear on your screen.

So lets talk PTR. MMO Champion has the latest build notes up and if you haven't heard by now master of ghouls and night of the dead are changing places.

Unholy DPS specs that rely on a perma ghoul will be just fine since you will still be able to get both talents. Blood and Frost DPS specs that used to dip into unholy to get the perma ghoul are going to go without.

Now we all know perma ghoul without night of the dead is not that permanent since they die to AOE a lot so this may not be as big of a nerf as we think on the surface. That said, I'll leave the hard core theory crafting up to our friends over at EJ. The same goes for Death Strike nerf.

Over the next few days I will replace my hybrid Tanking/DPS build linked on the right with several builds for 3.1. I honestly haven't used my hybrid build in a while. It works great for small guilds in heroics and Naxx 10 but it just doesn't perform well enough to forego the respec costs to change back and forth between dedicated tank and dps in Naxx 25.

The builds I am planning on putting up are Blood Tank, Unholy Tank, and Unholy DPS. The expectation is that you will have dual spec and pick two out of three. I have seen rumors that ebon plague stacking has been fixed but I don't yet have evidence I'd rely on 100%. As soon as I find it I'll pass the confirmation on.