Reflections From The Pond

Posts Tagged ‘Paynne’

Gnomes are rather small, you know, and for some weird reason they have the largest mounts in all of WoW. Maybe they feel a subconscious need to compensate for something, but the fact remains, all gnomes manage to choose the largest of the flocks for their mounts so they can look down on the lesser races from their high saddle perches.

And the largest of all mounts is the mammoth. So a gnome on a mammoth must be pure win, right?

Paynne, the fearsome gnome warlock, recently found to her pleasant surprise that amongst her ambling meandering dungeon runs she had actually managed to scrape together a total of 317 Stone Keeper Shards.

And of course you all know what you can buy for a mere 300 such shards? That’s right, the Wintergrasp people sell a Black War Mammoth for that measly sum.

If you look closely you can see the blue-clad black-haired gnome in the saddle, and for those who can’t I will handily provide a close-up:

…and yet another one:

Who are you calling small?!?

Do you ever get the feeling when you open your closet door and look at all your clothes stuffed in there that you have nothing to wear? Or when you are out shopping that you find nothing at all you would like to wear – a whole bloody city full of nothing but bloody clothes boutiques and there is not one bloody piece of garb that you find interesting enough to buy?

Happens to me a lot. My clothes – the ones I do manage to buy – are nice, good-looking and comfortable, yet when I stand there in my dressing room in my underwear looking at them I often find nothing in there I really want to put on, and I generally hate going shopping. Total outfit paralysis.

Usually ends up with me grabbing something I know I will find comfortable wearing, which explains why I am always dressed the same and the hot little dresses I for some reason keeps buying usually languishes away at the back of the closet.

It’s like that for me in WoW as well sometimes.

My shammy has her bags crammed full of shiny gear and yet she usually wears the same stuff. She has a lot of jewellery but same thing applies here, she usually wears the same necklace and rings.

She is now standing before the Triumphant Vendor with some brand new Crusade Trophys burning in her purse and she has total outfit paralysis.

I was going to replace her helm and shoulders since they are ilvl 232, but Elitist Jerks with their Best in Slot list seems to find that the Elemental helm and shoulders of the t9 are actually much better for a resto shaman than the resto ones, while looking a bit further ahead it seems the Resto head and shoulders of the t10 is the ones to go for and EJ suggest wearing the tunic and the gloves of the t9.

So what should I get? I don’t want to spend a lot of gems and enchants on gear I will replace real soon, and I don’t want to miss out on the t9 2-set bonus. And I don’t want to spend too much dkp on buying the t9 tokens now that the t10 marks are in stock. So t9 ilvl 245 helm and shoulders? Tunic and gloves? I already have very nive ilvl 245 tunic and gloves  (althought not tier stuff) and which gear will actually last me the longest if I should lose the set bonus?

And – most importantly – will I look fat in it?

Ze warlock has similar problems.

She has gathered up a nice bunch of Triumph emblems but there is actually nothing in the shop she wants to wear. Or rather, she is very attached to her current gear since it is things that has dropped for her in raids with her friends and it has a lot of sentimental value to her. Nothing like winning a roll and picking up a lovely silk dress from the innards of a dead mob to form a real bond with your gear.

Also, the fact that the Iceshear mantle and Raiments of the Corrupted looks absolutely hawt on a dark-haired green-eyed gnome while the t9 looks, well, let’s just say that sloping shoulders starting at your ears does not look good on anyone, this fact does not make her very inclined to buy them.

The t9 set bonus, the increased damage of her pets, is very alluring though since she is a real warlock and a real warlock uses pets, so I guess she will eventually overcome her dithering and buy the legs and gloves.

Anyways, who said it was easy to gear up with this new badge system?!?

Remember how I talked about the painfulness of being at the low end of the dps meter?

I modified Paynne’s spec a bit to a variety of the Felguard/Emberstorm spec, put Incinerate on that easy-to-reach key where I used to have Shadow Bolt, and dove head first into the world of raiding again. And it payed off!

Paynne is at the top of the DPS chart!!

Admittedly, this is on one fight only, and one that is very good if you are an aoe’ing dps class, but look at the stats from the last time Paynne was there:

In these 2 weeks since that first Gluth fight she has almost doubled her total dps output and went from a measly 2300 dps to more than 3900.

Granted, she has had a few gear upgrades, but mostly her boosted dps is a result of me sitting down and actually looking around for a spec that would suit me for both raiding and solo play. This spec is allegedly not putting out as much hurt as an affliction one, but it is also allegedly a lot easier to play since you don’t have to keep track of a lot of different dots ticking down.

This is how I play it:

Trash packs

Dot a mob up with Curse of Agony and Corruption and send the Felguard in with his Cleave enabled, empowering him whenever it comes off cooldown. The shadow damage ticks from the dots will proc Molten Core, and you rain fire down on the mobs’ heads. See all the pretty yellow numbers pop up on your screen!

Bosses or single-target trash mobs

Dot dot dot (no, I am not referring to Mamma Mia) the big ugly mofo with Curse of Agony,  Corruption and Immolate and start spamming him with Incinerate. Send the Felguard and empower him as often as you can. Like before, the dots will trigger Molten Core, and take care to always keep a fresh Immolate up for the damage increase to Incinerate.

See, not very difficult! :-)

So, the raiding is going ok with this spec, but how about the solo play and questing?

Well, since this spec leaves Paynne with only rank 1 in Mana Feed and completely devoid of the Fel Synergy and the Demonic Resilience, her Felguard is a bit more fragile when he is taking on the mobs as a tank instead of a dps, and she needs to Life Tap and  feed him up a lot more often than before. It’s not a huge difference in questing speed, and the increased raid damage makes her more than willing to live with it :-)

Last night we ran a guild 25-man, we went to Obsidian Sanctum with our regular raiders and a few guildies who usually don’t raid that much. After a few tries we downed Sartharion with one of his drakes still alive when we engaged him! Cheers all around!

The battle for Wintergrasp was in progress so we couldn’t stop by for a quick VoA run, so we decided to go to Naxx.

At Naxx we realised we may be running with a healer or two too much, so I offered to swap to my warlock to save the other healers a respec cost and because I thought it would be fun to take my little gnome for a raid spin.

And so I did and so we headed off into the Construct quarter.

Paynne has mostly been having a nice and quiet levelling in Northrend, questing with her trusted Felguard and her gear and spec is maybe not the best for a 25-man raid.

Thus, I did have a feeling that I was not topping the dps charts (well, more than a feeling actually, I knew I was not putting out any really big numbers), but I tried my best, blew my cooldowns, kept Curse of Elements up to help my fellow raiders dish out more hurt, and I only died twice (except for our wipes on Thaddius, but even then I was amongs the last ones standing), once on a trash pull before Thaddius where the huge ugly mofos wandering around there kept knocking me back, and once on Frogger.

I felt I was holding up good enough.

At the end of the evening I had gotten me some badges and an achievement, and I logged off a happy warlock, having had a good time with my friends all night.

And then the following morning I checked the WWS reports.

It was kinda painful.

The other warlock in there with me, he had done 50 % more damage than me on all boss fights, on some even double my damage!

For someone who really does not care that much about dps charts, I was surprised at how much seeing this actually hurt. And how useless I felt – although my dps was more than zero and thus better than nothing, and although I kept telling myself that someone’s got to be at the bottom of those lists, I still didn’t like that it was me!

But at least I could put the WWS reports to good use, I compared myself to the other warlock, checked what spells he were using and how much they hurt for, and tonight I will check out my spec. I am not that fast on the uptake all the time, and Paynne’s spec has served her good for a long time, but maybe it is time to do some spring cleaning! And she could definitely use some new fancy spring clothes, I think I will send her shopping or maybe levelling her tailoring so she can make herself some new pretties.

Because the next time I take Paynne for a stroll through a raid instance, I will be prepared!

Sir, yes sir!

You know the warlocks’ Ritual of Summoning, used to gather people from afar so you all can be one happy family together.

The summoning can be used for other purposes as well, like  to pick up people who have fallen into waters and can’t get up or to summon stuck people (roots in the underwater passage to the Coilfang instances, anyone?)

This below is a screenshot of Larue, ze resto shaman, being summoned from the platform of Feugen to the platform of Thaddius in Naxxramas.

The distance between those two platforms is only a couple of meters and should be easy to jump across.

Well, “should be” does not always equal “is”.

The trick here is that when you have killed Feugen and his counterpart Stalagg  who resides on a third platform, Thaddius will be released and you will have to get down to him and fight him asap.

So, you need to jump. Fast. And the raiders jumped. And the raiders landed on Thaddius’ platform. All the raiders except one. One raider landed on one of the round thingies below the platform (you can see them in the screenshot) and were out of line of sight from the whole raid.

To be out of line of sight is a bad thing for a healer.

I legged it back through the green slime goo on the floor and ran up on Feugen’s platform for another daring attempt to cross the abyss. And I landed in the very same spot again.

Venting my frustration on Vent, running back trough the slime and up again, thinking I would spend this bloody fight running back and forth here and not doing much else, I realised that I could actually reach my compadres from Feugen’s platform with my heals – I didn’t have to jump! Our other healer, a tree, cleverly positioned himself on the other side of the raid to cover those who happened to get out of range from me.

Standing on the edge, accompanied by a white cat (our hunter’s pet was wiser than me and didn’t even attempt to jump the gap), I managed to pull my weight on the boss fight and help keep everyone alive.

Of course I couldn’t switch sides when Thaddius did his polarity shift, but then again it didn’t really matter that much because I was way more than ten yards away from anyone else, so the only one I could damage was myself.

 Fight went splendidly, I got myself a brand new achievement, and everyone was happy.

Then I realised, staying in my cosy comfortable position up here on the platform also meant that I was too far away from the boss to be able to loot him!

And that, my friends, was where our friendly neighbourhood warlock really earned himself a big hug from me :-D

Larue’s Note To Self: Don’t enter the Construct Quarter of Naxxramas without a friendly warlock along.

Sadly, though, this is not the first place Larue’s been having problems with jumps.

Remember Azjol-Nerub, that loong drop from Hadronox’  lair to the bottom of the pit? Remember the water below that you land in?

Well, most people seem to have no trouble with this, and their only concern is to get out of the water on to terra firma again.

Now, Larue, she follows the lemming train going over the cliff, faaaaaalling all the way down. And then she dies. Poof, not a shred of life left.

No, I didn’t accidentally have Water Walking on. No, there were no DK’s who put up a Path of Frost. No, I didn’t hit anything going down, I was at full health all the way down, and then when I landed in the water I had no health at all so I died.

I was in a run there once with three warriors and a rogue and I died (I kid you not!) 8 times in that fall! One of the warriors had a pair of  jumper cables on him, which he successfully used to ress me twice, and I used my own self-ress twice ( we had a bit of trouble getting Anub’arak to roll over and be dead, so we had to run in a few times).

In my subsequent runs I have tried jumping off (or running off without jumping at all) from about every possible place around the hole’s rim and I have actually survived some of the falls! But I can never be sure, so…

Larue’s Note To Self: Don’t enter Azjol-Nerub unless you have another resser along to pick you up.

After this run I ticketed a GM to report that constant dying as a bug.

Huh, what did you say? Of course it’s a bug!

Well, anyways, the GM’s suggestion was that the warriors, being plate wearers, had more damage mitigation than I did as a mail-wearing shammy and thus they took less damage from the fall.

News-flash for you, mr GM, damage taken from falling is a percentage of your health and not mitigated in any way by what kind of armor you have! (I think it is like this anyways, how would achievements like Going Down? work?) And how can anyone working as a GM not know that the fall in Azjol-Nerub lands you in water and you are not supposed to die when landing in water that is deep enough?

So my theory was that somehow the tall draeneis were too big to safely jump from any spot whatsoever around the rim, that they sometime would hit the eggs on the bottom and die instantaneously.

This theory was falsified though when I was there with my gnome warlock Paynne for the first time.

 That place just seems to hate me…

Well, of course I was gonna visit the barbershops when they opened up in Ironforge and Stormwind. My RL visits to the hairdressers are always pleasurable, and besides the actual haircut it includes gossiping, a scalp massage and a glass of wine or two. Of course I wanted to treat my loyal WoW girls to that as well :-)

And now there was this achievement too! Being the achievement nut that I am I just had to take the flock to get stylish(er).

First one out was Jools.

Her old look with that long blue braid on her shoulder wasn’t very cool, it was a bit of an strict old-maid school teacher look, not at all appropriate for my sweet Holy priest.
Now she has a soft shoulder-length bob haircut with a slightly side-swept bang and a white ribbon to hold the longer hair back from her face.

She didn’t dye her hair but kept the cornflower blue color since it sets off her reed facial tatoos nicely.

Next one out was Joaquime, my feral druid.

Like Jools, Joaquime also kept her original hair colour, but unlike Jools she kept the long tresses, not feeling truly feral without a mane of hair in caster form as well.

She has a slightly stricter hairdo now, no more hair getting in her eyes as it is gathered in a loose braid at her back, holding it back from her forehead with that gorgeous tiara.

Paynne went to the hairdresser’s as well, but after quite some time trying out the different hairdos and hairdyes available, she realised that there really is no such thing as improving pure perfection.

She did try out a set of larger earrings, just for the sake of the achievement, but she had to go back right away and get her old ones back.

Tessye had similar problems, there really was no other hairstyle that looked good on her no matter what combination of colours or styles she tried out, so after a lot of agonising in the barber shop chair she decided to keep her golden brown hair curled up on her head – the perfect hairstyle for a sneaky rogue.

She was daring enough to try out a new eyebrow ring and nose ring instead of her old earrings, which actually look kinda cool on her.

Larue dyed her dark curls light greyish blond but she didn’t really feel comfortable in that hair colour so she had to go back and get rid of the dye job. With that dark skin of hers the dark hair colour looks much better.

A good friend tells me that half the job when tanking is to convince the group or raid that you are capable of dealing with any issues or emergencies that may arise – in other words: you gotta look like you know the drill ;P

As such, it was way overdue with a makeover for my little warrior!

Her pink pigtails is gone, replaced by a darker reddish colour and a thick ponytail down her back. Now she looks like a real warrior and would get into any over-21-nightclubs without a hassle!

So, achievements all done, new looks for a few, and generally overall satisfaction with looks all around! Now, all I need is that scalp massage and the glass of wine…

So last night I was in Karazhan again. Was a fun run, we started at The Curator and worked our way up to the Prince with only a few minor glitches.

The Curator dropped a token for the imba warlock gloves, but I passed on them since I was wearing my own imba gloves, complete with sparkling stuff and a nice enchant, while my fellow warlock in there only had some blue crap on.

Anyways after the big ugly mofo was down my newly be-gloved fellow meddler in the dark arts asked me about Curse of Doom crits during the mofo’s Evocation.

Well, truthfully, I am usually to busy to check how much damage I do while in the middle of a fight, but after everything has settled down I am likely to head over to WoW Webstats and take a peek at my performance and see what things I can work on to improve my damage output, especially since I recently went Destro and am still trying to work out how to handle this fiery spec :-)

So I headed off there and looked. Idd, the Curse of Doom does some very serious spike damage when it goes off!

20 902 damage!! Too bad it is on a 1-minute timer, eh? ;P

So when you are out adventuring, and you just happent to meet that cute fellow adventurer that makes your heart double beat, what do you do? Why, you flirt, of course!

Sadly though, Tessy comes across like a hot-air-head when it comes to flirting. She really needs some practice in this area, because what kind of strong handsome stranger would be attracted by lines like “You got me all a-flutter”, “My turn-offs are rude people, mean people and people who aren’t nice” or “I need a hero”? Only guy to fall for that is someone who was behind the door when the conversational skills was handed out, thats for sure (but then again, maybe it isn’t conversation that she is angling for?).

Jools and Joaq both are a little more flirty, and they like to say things like “There’s nothing like sleeping in the forest under the moonlight”, “Sure, I’ve got exotic piercings” and “If I wasn’t purple, you’d see I was blushing.” Well, at least it seems they are both truthful when they say that “I’m the type of girl my mother warned me about.”

Szorcha is more direct and to the point, she knows what’s going on and what she expects, so when flirting she boldly states “I’ll have you know I can flatten steel with my thighs”, “I like tall men”, and “I’d like to see you in a kilt”. She also prefers not to waste too much time as she says “Enough with the flirting. I know you think all dwarven women look the same”, but she likes to seem at least a little hard-to-get, so she claims that “I won’t fall for a bad pick-up line, you gotta try two or three at least.” You go with Szorcha, you better be prepared, she wants it her way.

Larue is not that much of a tease-flirt either, she rather directly hints that “The nights are so chilly on this planet” and when she thinks she’s certain to score she says “Are you thinking what I am thinking? Good. Bring ample supply of butter and goblin jumper cables”. Butter? Better not ask unless you want to experience it.

Paynne is very picky when it comes to flirting (mostly because she feels that no-one can really compete with her knight in shining armor, the valiant paladin Stauros), so she usually settles for the more careful phrases like “I do not find you completely disagreeable” and “Your ability to form a complete sentence is a plus”, indicating that she is really not very interested in anyone else.

Dizzie is more verbal and spontaneous, she can say things like “You are cute” or “At this time, I think that you should purchase me an alcoholic beverage and engage in diminutive conversation with me in hopes of establishing a report” but once in a while her engineering interests shine through, like when she exclaims that “I don’t feel that a 1-10 scale is fine enough to capture subtle details of compatibility. I would prefer a 12-dimensional compatible scale with additional parametes for mechanical aptitude and torque.” What can I say, it is lucky for her that she is cute ;P

Now Rancour is sure of herself, “I know, my natural beauty is intimidating”, and she is sure of what she wants “You’re the type I’d like to sink my teeth into”, but “I won’t bite you where it shows.” If the prospective lover seem hesitant when he hears this she asks “Aren’t you going to ask me out?”, but to be fair she also warns him that “When enraged, and in heat, a female troll can mate over eighty times in one night. Be you prepared?” Well, are you?

Another one who is sure of herself is Sweetsheeks, who tells you that “My mana tap bring all the boys to the yard”, “Do you believe in love at first sight, or should I walk by again?” and “Is that a mana worm in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”. If you get down to business too fast she tells you that “No, no I won’t do that. But my sister will”. Or if you are lucky, maybe you will hear her say “Normally I only ride on epic mounts, but … let’s talk…” or “I’m addicted to you, baby.”

And the real Tess, how does she flirt? Well, I think most of my girls have some fun flirt lines, and maybe I’ll use them sometimes, but I have a few nice ones of my own too. So, if you are a cute strong adventurer out doing heroic deeds, maybe we will meet and maybe you will find out what they are…;P

So,I couldn’t resist anymore, I specced my little lock back to demonology…

I use her too much for questing still to be comfortable with that destruction build I tried. Also, I heard that for a destro build to be really effective you need an awful lot of spell hit, which I didn’t have (always good to find some scientific reasoning to back your decision, eh?)

Anyways, I like the demo spec and I just luuuv my Felguard, he’s so protective of my little gnome (well he is more than twice her size so she can hide very well behind him).

Paynne has by far the most spells possible to use at the same time than any other of my girls (or maybe I just haven’t discovered all the other girls’ spells…ah well) and I use a lot of macros when I play her.

I have scoured forums and other venues of information to get my macros the way I want the, and I have shamelessly stolen snippets from anything that I thought I could use…so I figured maybe I should share some.

Summon Minion [Edited 2008-03-05]
Since I usually quest with my Felguard out this is a very convenient macro:

#show Fel Domination
/run PetAbandon()
/stopcasting
/cast [nocombat, nopet] Summon Felguard
/castsequence [combat] Fel Domination, Summon Felguard

[Edit: the bold text above (nopet) added to make the macro work as intended]

The macro is read from the top down. The first line shows if the cd on the spell Fel Domination(15 minutes) is ticking.

What this macro does is the following:

If your Felguard is out, in our out of combat, one press on this macro will dismiss him.

Why is it useful to dismiss your pet in the heat of the battle, you might ask. It is useful only if you plan to use your Fel Domination (you know, the spell that lets you summon your minion in 0,5 second – whooosh and he’s back) and resummon him, because when you do that, he will come back with full health/mana and all those buffs he had on when you dismissed him! If he dies and you Fel Dominate him back, he will come back unbuffed (although still with full health/mana). Takes a bit of concentration to see what how your minion is getting damaged and keep track of his health as well as your own, and get that key-clicking to work, but if you manage to pull it off the difference between unbuffed and buffed might help save the day :-)

The next line checks to see if you are in combat and if you are not you summon your Felguard the usual 10 second way.

The last line also checks to see if you are in combat, and if you are you cast Fel Domination on the first click and Summon Felguard on the second click.

So, to sum up:
Pet out – click once for dismissal
No pet and in combat – click twice to summon
No pet and out of combat – click once to summon

Pretty nifty, eh?

Paynne and her darling Felguard in the big city.

Seduce
Yeye, I am a warlock, we have a way to cc humanoids, and its called SEDUCE. Ever heard of it? I think many people, including warlocks, have not. It is a tricky thing to pull off correctly, and since it relies on a spell channeled by a succubus who might as well be made of glass, it has a big risk of gettin fubared unless you have practiced it before trying it on in a multi-pull in a 70’s instance.

/focus [modifier:shift]
/cast [target=focus, modifier:ctrl] Curse of Shadow
/clearfocus [target=focus, dead]
/petpassive
/cast [pet:Succubus, target=focus, harm, nomodifier] Seduction

We have a hunter in our guild who is one of the best trappers I have ever seen (well we have many bit this particular one I have played with a lot), and when I tank with him in my group I never worry about the mob with the blue square on. I know he will take care of it most assuredly, trapping, kiting, whatever’s needed, while at the same time dishing out an enormous amount of damage on the other mobs.

I want to be able to use my succy seduce like that hunter uses his frost traps. I am not even close at the moment, but I will get there (I hope).

This is how you use the macro (btw if you choose the red ? as the icon for you macro it will display the correct icon for whichever spell you have in it):

You target the mob you want to seduce and then you hold down shift while clicking the macro. The mobs portrait will get a shiny border so you see that you have set it as focus correctly.

Now you can target any other mob you like, your focus will still be set on your chosen mob. When the pull starts, I usually hold down ctrl and click the macro to cast a Curse of Shadow on the focused mob to lower its resistance to the Seduce and to get it running in my direction, to me and my succubus next to me, and then I hit it with a Searing Pain to get me high on the mobs threat list. After that, click my seduce macro, watch the mob start spouting hearts, and switch target to the skull.

Now I blast happily away on my nuke target pressing my seduce macro about every 15 seconds or so (I have improved Seduce) to keep the focused mob in the seventh heaven. The Curse of shadows and the Searing Pain is usually enough to keep the mob from going for the healers or my made-of-fragile-glass succy the first times the seduce is reapplied.

Paynne and her hot succubus out on a Seduce practice run.

I have some more nice warlock macros that I will post at a later time, now I better post this or I will keep editing it forever ;P