Holy Dogdoddles Batman.

I was tired of having my arse handed to me on a plate over the last week in Battlegrounds…

Did you know you can purchase nearly all of the Wrathful PvP gear with honor alone?

Any gear that requires 1800 or less less than 2,000 rating can now be purchased with honor, no rating required.

At 1st glance this seems like cheating… and well, I guess it kind of is, except for…

… the fact that the game is so unbalanced at the moment anyway.

They have buffed resilience because we are all so OP, so if you don’t have it, or just have non-Arena-rating levels, you are butter to the Wrathful Gladiator’s hot knives.

And ohhh boy are those knives hot!

Arena season has ended… all these arena geared psychos with nothing warm-blooded to kill… but…

… Rated BGs will be here soon…

… might as well go slice some Relentless and Furious players into little pieces, then spread them all over the Battlegrounds.

So, if you have been spread all over a battleground lately and have any honor in the “bank”, pop down to the Arena vendors in the sewers for the set pieces, weapons and off-hands, and of course the vendors in Stormwind or Orgrimmar for the off-set pieces.

Spend that apparently small amount of honor you have, on all your Xmas presents now!

Right… I’m off… I’ve got some Horde that need to be taught a lesson or two about trying to spread resilient Gnomes.

Épíc

Sun has just risen, I have just left the Raid from the Heart.. it was awesome!

Sleeping through 2 alarms didn’t keep me from the event.

I want to make a special mention of a stranger that I bumped into yesterday on Kael’thas-US.  It is literally the story of a “dog” (OK, Ghost wolf) following me home and me keeping him.

You know those times when you are rushing about only to discover someone following your (like I think he was literally on auto-follow).  I’m incredibly happy that I didn’t go the path of the Grumpy Gnome, because this Shaman, Paradoxz, turned out to be truly EPIC!

You see, our Alliance Rent-a-Port didn’t appear… but Paradoxz had a nobler, more Magely side… yes he is a level 80 Mage.

He swapped over to Épíc (with the funny things over the E & I) and saved the day.  Poor guy was a bit overwhelmed when we left the ‘Span, don’t know whether he will ever regain the courage to cast a Portal ever again. Some of his guildies & mates also rode shogun through the wetlands, leaving roadkill to either side of our path.

I was a bit surprised to discover that you don’t eat your roadkill up north… but someone pointed out there was no need to eat roadkill while there were Gnomes to eat!  This coming from the Alliance side…

So apart from the expected thanks to BBB, Cassie and all the other people that made this such a great event (I know there are quite a few of you, but don’t know names, feel free to out yourselves), I’d like to give special thanks to Épíc for not just coming for the ride, but getting us all to where we needed to be.

That and something special for another post, where I show (Well, Epic provided the evidence) that BBB’s fears of a NewMageOrder are well founded.

Ohh if you were at the event, and now have a harddisk full of screenshots, you can email them to BBB over the next week.

Remember to send you donations (come on you know you want to) to:

• American Heart Association
• Heart and Stroke Foundation (Canada)
• British Heart Foundation (UK based organization)
• National Heart Foundation of Australia

Also the store is still open…

As an additional option for donations, Tesh, the brilliant artist and author of the Tish Tosh Tesh game design blog, professional game artist and all around great guy has created several wonderful T-Shirt designs for the Raid from the Heart.

Gnomer and Out!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2010/10/17/im-so-angry-you-could-consider-me/

TELL ME ABOUT FIRE PVP!

I’m a Fire Mage, I think it’s in my blood.

From the moment I got my 1st fireball and accidentally oneshot the 1st quest giver I knew.

It felt so good I rushed on and levelled my Fire Mage from 1 to 80 in 4 years.

I discovered some time back you are a closet Fire Mage, deceived into the wayward paths of Frost and Arcane.

Now I read you have cast off the Frosty and Arcane specs to return to Fire. 3.3 was good to us. I was so looking forward to the 3.3 changes that I dumped my dubious raid Arcane 2nd spec and bought me a Fire PvP spec and it was still only 3.2!

As I hadn’t really entered battlegrounds since the TBC Honor frenzy, I also had to craft up some of that blue PvP gear.

I couldn’t wait to get to Wintergrasp and…. die, die, die.

I have lots of talents but not much skill, so I was thinking of adopting the PvE strategy of overcompensating for incompetence through overgearing.

As I write this I have close to 75k honor and 75 odd marks of Wintergrasp, the question is what to do with them?

I think gear progression for PvP is somewhat simpler than PvE. There are a lot less options, especally for the non-Arena player.

So tell me:

• What should I get?
• How should I spec?
• Should I get up close and personal, or should I stand back and Flame Strike spam?

I’m turning to you because I know you are the master of the Experimental Arcane Arts.

My only other option would be to turn to the recunt hugger, but she’s a Warlock-come-Paladincome-Rogue with issues about my snowdropping, panty pinching ways.

Please Sir, can I have some moar… FIRE!

Edit: The Power of Blast Wave!

Gnomer and Out!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2010/01/12/dear-mr-euripedes-sir/

Hell, I bet my Australian readers wont be able to view this post!

Wont be long before I’m not even allowed to write it…

Anyway, let me put your mind at ease.

This isn’t about that kind of Cross-Dressing (although admit it, who doesn’t like a nice floral summer frock?)

This is about Cross Dressing in WoW!

You with me yet?

Gnomeaggedon has been a cross-dresser from the day he was rolled… he wore frocks from level 1 to, well till about 57 when he was forced to wear pants for 10 levels… Then back into frocks…

You know where I’m heading now right?

Wrong… dirty sleazy regular readers of mine…

I’m talking about cross dressing Tier Pieces!

It never really mattered for Gnomeaggedon.

In reality a fair portion of theMage QQ from WoLK was that every time a new Tier set came out, it forced you out of the closet and into a new Spec.  There would be one Mage Tier set, with stats and bonuses that benefited one spec… well any spec except Frost.

Squidly’s got issues

Squidly, on the other hand, has some dilemmas at the moment.

I guess I should be thankful that Blizzard has effectively prevented Squidly from ever wearing anything but Mail. I mean I could have had some real issues if I had to choose between the lace legwarmers and the leather chaps…

His real problem is Item Stat vs. Set bonuses

One is awesome, the other wrong… Or one is average and the other awesome

You see I don’t care too much about mana at the moment… maybe I should, but since I always have something left in the tank (I just let the Bad Standing DPS die if I am running low… it’s called mana conservation), I want something else… I want HASTE!

Rawr even tells me I want haste.  Rawr values the Elemental set above the Resto set right now… go figure…

The problem is, I don’t throw that many Flame Shocks or Lava Bursts around as a Resto Shaman.

Admittedly it’s nice that I can purchase some Elemental gear for my Resto spec so I can at least beat DeathTards when I’m running Elemental… but the problem then is I don’t get a set bonus because the rest of my Tier gear is Resto…

I’m an Adult. It’s a free world, let me cross dress if I want to!

So what I want (Christmas is coming… I might find this under the tree… I have kinda been good this year…) is:

• When I’m Spec’d Resto, let me use all my Tier pieces to count towards my Resto Set bonus…
• When I’m Spec’d Elemental, let me use all my Tier pieces to count towards my Elemental Set bonus…
• When I’m Spec’d Enhancement, just shoot me!
• Oh and let me roll on Cloth and leather gear…

What sort of a Nob would do this to me anyway?

Nobundo?

Gnomer and Out, Squidly and Stout!

PS: be warned… Gnomeaggedon’s reindeer have been leaving droppings all over the Blogsphere… be carefult where you step!

Speaking of which… looks like I got caught up in a party I couldn’t handle… enjoy & Merry Christmas.

Ohhh and another early Christmas Present… this time from Fim, Nib & The Bind on Equip crew.. No the Dingo didn’t steal my baby, but Episode 70 – What the DINGO is a Chook? It should have been episode 69… ahhh well.. Pants on Head.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/12/17/cross-dressing-gnomes-and-she-man-squids/

• The T10 tokens.
• The Arena season gear
• The mounts, all of it!

Let’s not kill the players with more grinding. Let’s make all the loot useful to someone.

I know, Ninja time…

At least make the emblem gear all BoA. You main has a hundred emblems rotting in the bank? Buy your alts some new threads.

Your a tank or healer that wishes you could DPS, or at least swap rolls, but you are barely in heroic gear…

Why can’t your main give you a leg up?

Instead of personal, or guild banks, have account banks where all your emblems can be stored. Let it be your decision who makes the withdrawal and lines up at ToC!

Gnomer and Out!

OK, you got me.. this isn’t the post I intended for today, but I am afraid there is so much exciting stuff going on.  My new home is now my new home.  Odin and I went and had a look last night… he was so excited that 2 hours after his normal bed time he conceded that it was time to leave his new unfurnished bed room and head home.

Anyway.. a few projects in the works… you may have seen yesterdays….

If you don’t see a post when you expect it… smile, it probably means I am trying to work out how to squeeze the couch in through the front door…

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/12/16/make-it-all-boa

Rawr is now making the beat out of your bad gear situation, so what else is important?

Tell Me More… What’s Next?

So now you have optimized what you already posses, the time has come to see what you could aim for.

Back to the optimization window (Tools – Optimize), but this time press the button bottom right – Build Upgrade List.

This may take a while… It takes about 30 seconds for Squidly’s Resto gear and about 5 minutes for Squidly’s Elemental gear, of course my new PC will probably do that all a lot faster than my 4 year old one.

I Can Haz That?

The end result will be a long list of potential upgrades. By default this is the overall upgrade – no matter what the slot. You can change that to a specific slot if you want to… But why would you want to?

Export for Analysis

At this point it helps if you have some spread sheeting knowledge, but it isn’t essential. You could just use it as a more permanent list.

Tools | Copy to clipboard.

Paste this in a new page/tab of your spreadsheet.

Have a quick look through it and cut out the irrelevant rows.

Irrelevant Rows?

Pre-80 you really don’t care about the 0.08 upgrade. Likewise if you leave quests in your selection you will be presented with quests you can’t even receive let alone complete before 80.

Now you can see what is (according to Rawr) the best bang for your buck.

You just have to decide whether it’s achievable, affordable and sometimes wearable (instance drops might require a higher level than you possess).

Whatever the case you have now reduced the hundreds of thousands of items down to the tens – and you can clearly see which ones are better than the others!

Filter it out!

If you are using a spreadsheet tool like excel you can use filters. AutoFilter will do the job in Excel.

Once the filter is on, select the drop down for Source and select Custom…

You can put up to 3 filter conditions in here, so come up with some that suit you…

• Begins with “Purchased with”
• Begins with “Crafted by”
• Contains “ToC”
• etc

This can be handy as you enter an instance and you already have a customized loot list at your fingertips, filtered down so you know exactly what you want from this place.

I am including a link here to one of my spreadsheets that I used while leveling. It’s in GoogleDocs for your convenience, but I used Excel.

You will realize pretty quickly I haven’t done anything special. The spreadsheet just serves as a low overhead printable source of the info. If you would prefer to stick to Wowhead or Rawr… Don’t let me stop you!

• Min/Maxing gear before 80 part 1 (Setting the scene & the 1st 70 levels)
• Min/Maxing gear before 80 part 2:  (Introducing Rawr)
  
• Min/Maxing Gear Before 80 Part 3: (you are reading it!)

Gnomer and Out, Squidly and Stout!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/11/30/minmaxing-gear-before-80-part-3/

Then this post, part 2 of my series on Min/Maxing your pre-80 character may fill in the gaps.

In part 1 I discussed using Wowhead’s profile and find an upgrade tools to get you from 1-70, well they will get you further and will sometimes reveal items that other tools, such as Rawr, won’t reveal. So don’t stop using it even though there is a new tool in your arsenal.

Rawr

Rawr is tuned for level 80, but can still be useful before then. The closer to 80, the more useful it becomes.

Rawr will do all sorts of incredible calculations for most of the class/spec varieties. New versions are coming out frequently to handle the tweaks as Blizzard delivers them to us. So keep it up to date.

Character Profiler

You don’t need to join the character profiler website to get excellent mileage out of this addon. I do use the website because I like to know what’s in my bank etc when I am away from the game.

For the purposes of optimizing your character and predicting upgrades, you just need to install the addon and make sure you save the data before logging off your character of choice. Make sure you read the instructions, open you bank, mail & professions etc before saving.

Where to begin…

I am going to assume. You have downloaded and installed (extracted) Rawr and have downloaded and installed Character Profiler. Logged in and taken a snapshot of your gear by saving your character (save button on character sheet)

Preparing Rawr for action.

1. Start Rawr
2. Choose Create New Character – it doesn’t matter yet
3. Deselect all the things you don’t have access to yet in the filter dropdown on the right hand panel (above all the possible gear options).
4. You may cut this right back to just the 3 or 4 instances you can currently enter. May include faction gear or craftables – the choice is yours!
5. Exit Rawr so it remembers (and activates) your filter settings
6. Start Rawr, once again with a blank character.

Making the best of a bad situation

The next step is to make the most of what you already have. The great thing about using character profiler is that it has a list of ALL of your gear. Not just what you are wearing (like armory), but the gear in your bank, bags and mail as well.

1. Choose File | Load from character profiler
2. Select your realm and character and import.

A minute later Rawr will be displaying for you your character. It knows your spec and your gear, so the time has come to make it do some thinking.

Spreadsheeting the before and after.

At this point I grab a snapshot of the gear I am wearing and put it in my spreadsheet.

Tools | Copy character stats to clipboard.

Paste it into your spreadsheet and get rid of everything except for the slot name and item. You can keep the rest… It’s all useful information, it’s just that I am talking simple gear selection here.

You can see wsat I mean here on GoogleDocs

You may want to copy and paste this gear a 2nd or 3rd time depending on the number of scenarios that are important to you. For instance, I want to know about Sustained and Burst gear. Sometimes mana is more important than haste and power, so I am going to build 2 sets… Of course if you are dual spec, this might blow out a little more.

Wriggle your fingers and work the magic!

Remember I am not here for the in depth explanation of Rawr. Go to their website or EJ’s for that. So as simply as possible you want to optimize your gear.

1. Tools| Optimize
2. Choose the profile (conditions eg: burst, sustained, overall, survival etc) you want the gear optimized for.
3. Press Optimize gear.

Very soon Rawr will come back telling you which items you are wearing that need to be replaced with other gear you already possess.

If you let it, it will also recommend gem and enchant replacements. This is good, but you may be using the item for more than one role, so you choose the role that is most important and go with that recommendation.

Choose to update to recommended gear.

Save It!

Save your new gear selection. It’s one of those points in time, but also makes it easier to return to this point if you are messing about later.

Once again, copy the character stats into your spreadsheet, reducing it down to the slot and gear.

Now you can clearly see what you are wearing, and what you want to wear next time you log on.

Being a little dense at times I have used an Excel conditional formatting function to change the cell colors of the “new” gear depending on whether it is already equipped, or needs to be on next login.

You couldn’t call me pure…

As I mentioned earlier you have the flexibility of designing gear sets based on the encounter.

• Heroic Instances – Short and sharp. Forget mana regen, give me spellpwer and haste.
• Long drawn out fights with no mana battery? Build a sustained set for mana regen.

You already have most of the essential info sitting in front of you, so all you need to do is run the optimizer again, but for a different encounter profile.

But I’m more than just DPS/Heals/Meatshield.

No problem, just repeat the process for your other spec. You can do the quick and dirty, or the slower and fastidious.

Quick and Dirty.

1. Don’t exit Rawr, just change the spec on the 1st page. eg: Resto to Elemental.
2. Run optimize… Done!

Of course it isn’t perfect, unless you went to the trouble of entering your spec it’s going to take the wrong talents into account…

But it’s fast and no fuss… And probably doesn’t matter that much.

Anal Fastidious

I don’t really have anything to tell you here. You are just going to start from the top.

The only thing you need to remember is to respec and save your character again. CharacterProfiler.lua is now updated with your current detail, so go optimize your other sets!

• Min/Maxing gear before 80 part 1 (Setting the scene & the 1st 70 levels)
• Min/Maxing gear before 80 part 2:  (your reading it!)
  
• Min/Maxing Gear Before 80 Part 3: Eyeballing the upgrades

Gnomer and Out, Squidly and Stout!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/11/27/minmaxing-gear-before-80-part-2/

You possibly use Rawr or the plethora of gear advisory websites. You may even read Elitist Jerks religiously.

If you are 80!

If you are yet 80.

If you are somewhere between 1-79 you are probably feeling a little neglected.

Be Neglected No More!

I’m going to tell you how to min/max your pre-level cap character!

Min/Max =/= Min/Max

Most importantly, the further you are from 80, the less the traditional Min/Max definition applies.

Traditional: Minimizing less important/irrelevant stats, while maximizing the important ones, the ones that will give you the last dps/hps/tps.

Gnomeaggedon’s definition of pre-level cap Min/Maxing:

Expending the minimum amount of effort/gold to achieve the maximum gear result.

Some rules to gear by when leveling.

It doesn’t matter!

• There is a good change that you will replace your latest “epic” with the next quest handin/drop. So don’t worry about the small stuff.
• When aiming for upgrades look for anything 3,5 even 10 levels ahead – especially quest rewards. The speed at which you can level these days means that you will most likely out level an item as you hand in the quest.
• You can live in starting gear. It’s been done before. People have leveled to max level in their starting gear, or even naked. So don’t worry too much if you are level 60 wearing level 50 gear.
• Sometimes the old gear is as good, if not better than the new. High end Vanilla gear is better than early Burning Crusade. High level BC gear is better than early Northrend gear.
  BUT, it may not be worth the effort to get it!
• Sometimes an item looks too good to be true… It’s a quest reward? How easy can that be! Just check that it isn’t a reward at the end of a long chain – you will probably be 3 levels past it and into the next expansion before you get it!

Tools

I’m the kind of guy that is happy to abuse his tools. If I have a hammer in my hand and a screw driver in the shed, I will use the hammer to get that screw in.

You are going to be doing a bit of that with these tools, so don’t be a perfectionist!

• Wowhead
• Spreadsheet (Excel, GoogleDocs, whatever)
• Character Profiler
• Rawr

Wowhead.

Until around level 70, Wowhead will be your tool of choice. You could use Rawr, but it is tuned for 80 and Northrend. Sure it has legacy Vanilla and BC data, but now you are using a sledgehammer for get that screw in.

You don’t need a spreadsheet for this stage, but I find it helps to keep it “all on one page”. You are only using it for copy & paste… Don’t panic if you don’t know how to use them!

How to Wowhead your gear into shape.

1. Create a profile
2. Refresh from armory
3. Right click on the item and find upgrades
4. Tune the filter
5. Go shopping

Create a Profile

You can create a profile after you get yourself a (free) Wowhead account. Do it!

Just search for your character and save it.

Refresh from armory

If you are returning to your profile, you will probably need to resync your character. Sometimes I find this a little buggy, so to force it to refresh, I search for my character again.

Right click on the item and find upgrades

If you right click on any of the items you will get a menu which includes searching for upgrades.

Tip: Middle click on that option to open it in a new tab – that way you can repeat the process and have all your slots ready for review, while keeping your original page.

Tune the filter

You will find that the filter is already pretty much tuned for your class and spec. Some things to change…

Level required: 0-x (x being your current level).

You want to be looking ahead, so change the x to a few levels ahead, leave the 0 as that includes quest rewards which don’t have a level requirement (quests do, quest rewards don’t)

Additional filters

Some worth considering:

• Available in: BC, WoLK (this will exclude the stuff that’s out of your zone range and harder to get items from previous releases)
• Source…
• Quests, Honor, Crafted by… etc. Understand that with this choice you are really cutting down your options – but maybe, just maybe that’s what you need to do.

Go shopping

Get the items that give you the best bang for your buck. Ignore the items that are too hard/expensive etc.

Get items ahead of your level if they are cheap at that point of time, but be prepared to AH, Shard, Vendor items by the time you can use them as you may have found something better – and you will out level it very very fast.

Dual Spec Delight

If like Squidly and Gnomeaggedon, you are dual spec’d you can flick the Spec selection and refresh the search to find gear for your other spec.

This is where having a spreadsheet helps, because your currently equiped item will have different value based on your spec, so being able to track down the spec-specific item’s wowhead value from last time is handy.

OK, enough for today, I should be able to finish the guide off next time as there is less setup required.

• Min/Maxing gear before 80 part 1 (you are reading it!)
• Min/Maxing gear before 80 part 2: Introducing Rawr
• Min/Maxing Gear Before 80 Part 3: Eyeballing the upgrades

Gnomer and Out, Squidly and Stout!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/11/26/minmaxing-gear…fore-80-part-1/

Wot for?

Maybe I’m a bit old fashioned, but when an item drops that is an upgrade, a big upgrade, that is immediately wearable, it’s not greed, it’s NEED.

Maybe I have been spoilt over the last 4.5 years grouping with a bunch of long term friends, or worst case with guild mates.

Maybe the game has changed from NEED, GREED and PASS. I know this is true. I have never greeded so many BoPs as I have in the last few months with Squidly.

The Story

You see the story goes that while running an instance the other day a BoE blue dropped. One that was obviously an upgrade over my crappy green.

I asked if I could NEED (I always ask even if it’s explicitly stated, there maybe someone that will cry if the get beaten and I am not going to lose that much sleep over the blue or purple pixels).

The response was…

Nothing…

The roll timer was counting down…

Finally one of the group members says:

Wot for?

lol. Just greed mate!

It’s funny, cause I always thought greed meant “I am a greedy bastard with no use for the item apart from filling my coffers“.

I Greeded

I greeded…

I won…

I equipped my upgrade…

But I was left wondering what the new loot rules of the game were.

Mr OffSpec

I asked my mates and a couple of them responded with:

Yeah, that sucks.

Everyone but Mr. Offspec who responded…

I always greed on everything

Funnily enough, not my memory of the way he played, not even with friends.

He then started calling me the “New Mr. Offspec”.

Pffft whatever… I’ll just keep healing ToC and grab the epics instead.

Gnomer and Out, Squidly and Stout!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/11/10/its-boe-but-i-need-it/

Getting a flying mount at 60 is like getting a cheat code.

Stretch your mind back before patch 3.2, back to your incursions in Outland.

Hellfire Frogger

If you were lucky if you arrived in Outland with an Epic land mount. If you weren’t so lucky, one of the most efficient ways of crossing a zone was ghost running.

Even with the epic land mount it was preparation for Naxx’s Frogger.

Dodge left, dodge right, outrun the aggro.

Exploring a zone completely at the appropriate level either required anal explorer skill at Artisan rank, or maybe a quest-completionist-dysfunction.

On the Wings of XP

The 1st thing I noticed when I got my flying mount was all the zone discovery XP.

Now I think about it, I really should stop questing and just explore Outland for a level or two.

I hit more discovered zones than mobs for a while there.

Why kill-kill-kill-mana, when you can just fly by, or drop in?

Just passing by, saw your light on, thought I’d drop in

That’s where the real cheat code comes in. I reach Zangarmarsh and 1st quest I receive is to kill 30 mobs and their boss.

The boss is at the top of a tower.

A tower surrounded by mobs and water.

Death and a slow movement rate (pre “swimming” mounts at least.) await me.

Gnomeaggedon hated the quest. Kill 2 mobs, sit for mana, get interrupted my a pat. Once I got to the tower I had to kill the mobs at each level, mana up and move before the pat descended the ramp.

50% mana, 50% health and here comes the boss! The boss goes goes down against the odds, but now I have to grind back out through the mobs.

Enter the cheat code…

Fly over the heads of the patrolling mobs.

Laugh manically at their ignorance of the incoming assassin.

Alight on the top floor. 100% mana, 100 % health. Boss dies and I have the choice…

Fly out the window again, or casually stroll down the ramp picking the mobs off?

Stealing through the Circle of Steel

I have now done the same thing with a few of these quest mini bosses. Group 2 or 3 quest.

Pffft! Only if I grind their honor guard 1st.

No, I will hover overhead until their circle of steel is looking the wrong way. Dismount, drop in, kill, mount and fly away.

Who needs stealth when you have wings?

Martin’s Fury was innocence in comparison

I know…
I know…

If I think it’s cheating, it is cheating. Why don’t I play the game the way the developers intended?

Well, I guess you could say I am an opportunist. I didn’t set out to cheat or subvert game mechanics.

But just like Martin’s Fury the Devs put the tools in my hands, or mailbox.

If the vendors sell them, they must be legitimate… Right?

They haven’t just given me the wings cheat code, but also the shoulder, chest, weapon and two trinket cheat codes. There are more of course, but I like the “pure game” experience… cough… cough…

Wallowing in the Muck of my own guilt

I do feel kind of dirty, but I have a water aversion allergy… I don’t want to come clean once I am wallowing in the muck!

You should try it…

Go on, get your hands dirty…

We all love a dirty filthy cheater…

Well, I do when it’s me!

Gnomer and Out, Squidly and Stout!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/09/29/a-flying-mount-is-a-cheat-code/

There was only one reason for doing so, and it had nothing to do with the reported excellent quest line, daily gold gains, or even the quiet chuckle at the innuendo that surrounds the Sons of Hodir… Thrusting Hodir’s spear… seriously…

No, it was all about one thing, and one thing only, increasing my performance.

I am not a big fan of dailies.  I am still not exalted at Sunwell, even though every man and their 2nd Alt is.  Argent Tournament is one of those things to kill time.  The idea of doing 40 days worth of dailies, probably 1 or 2 a week, just sent shivers down my spine.  I had heard that you can “glitch” the quest line, so you can repeat a couple of one-off quests, over and over again.  That will only nett you 150 rep… but if you are like me, and have more large blocks of time than frequent short blocks of time, then that could be appealing…

Always talk to the Innkeeper before embarking on a long journey!

Well, it would have been, if not for my savior… Larisa!

I note she has had her own moment of clarity about dailies, of the Argent Tournament variety at least.

What is a Gnome to do with his stockpile of TBC gold?

BUY favor with my faction of choice…. Ohh lordy, that’s just so easy.

So a couple of grand down the local Auction House, and I am exactly 0/999 Exalted with Hodir.

As an added bonus, I notched up my 15th exalted reputation.

I was getting pretty bored pressing Accept quest…. Complete Quest, so I thought I would put my Arcane, Magely powers to good use… Why do one hand in at a time, when you can do FOUR!

Ohhh, just because they may be 20% less stupid, but those Mirror Images can’t be trusted to complete a quest.

They also got bored real quick with nothing to attack…

So I let them go.. global recession and all that stuff.. I can’t maintain them AND Me.

So just as I got myself some new thread in my shoulders when the call went out…

Let’s take Naxx down!

While I am sure it wasn’t

Let’s literally take Naxx down

That was what happened…

But taking a step back… our goal

20 minute Spider wing

No screwing up guys, if we get one wipe we will call it.  No need to rush, just to stay alive.

Boss 1, Wipe 1…

Well at least we can relax now, we aren’t going for the timed run.

Therefore of course we got it easily…

On to Grand Widow Faerlina.

Arrgghh.. luckily we weren’t chasing the timed achievement.

It was while Mr. Tree (as Tree Hugger Dave wants to be known as…) was looting and distributing the goodies, that we realized just how overpowered we were.

Mr. Tree: Need rolls on Watchful Eye

Gnomeaggedon: Rolls 72

PuggyPriest: pass

Mr. Tree: The winner is PuggyPriest with a roll of CRASH BOOM!

Yep, we downed Naxx.. the whole place… gone!

Actually we downed the Instance server… Yep, why get a killing blow on a single raid, when you can Overkill and take out all raids?

I realize in hindsight, it was the Loot Gods that were angry…

How angry?

Very very angry!

Proof?

Everyone (after a bit of stuffing about, and being ported randomly around Azeroth) managed to get back into Naxx….

Hell, I discovered via twitter that even Pugnacious Priest (no relation to PuggyPriest) was suffering from the Loot God tirade… even though she is far far away in another realmiverse.

Everyone…

With one exception…

Mr. Tree.

Mr. Tree was not only without an Instance server… but without an Authentication Server.

When he FINALLY rejoined us, I shot him whisper…

Gnomeaggedon: You got my off-hand?

Mr. Tree: What off hand?

Gnomeaggedon: Ohhh… we need to petition the Loot Gods!

Screw You!

At that moment in time I felt a little antsy… I was reminded of how much I have wanted to capture that one expression that Gnomeaggedon could fill 50% of his posts with.  That expression alledgedly created by the French to taunt the English bowmen (OK, I knew I would get this wrong… next time must take the 2 minutes to confirm my suspicion.  It was the English taunting French… see Drazmor’s comment below).

We ended up moving on without Mr. Tree for a while, listening merrily to his screams of frustration over Vent, while he copied addons, deleted directories, repaired WoW, replaced addons…

I know it was painful for him and really the only thing I can say to Mr. Tree is…

IN FUTURE, DON’T PISS OFF THE LOOT GODS!

Moving on…

So yeah, anyway we moved on, and I want to tell you how from that point onwards it was smooth sailing…

• Maexxna – One Shot!
• Instructor Razuvious – 3 shot!

Hang on, that’s not the way the story is meant to go…

• Gothik the Harvester – 2 shot!

Definitely not the way I like to tell a Naxx story…

• The Four Horsemen – 3 shot!

OK, I need to stop here for a moment…

• Once again, we needed someone to tank the back horsemen.
• Once again, I was the best candidate for the job!?!
• I did have some help in the form of a female Gnome warrior
• The PuggyPriest had many, many reservations about the chances of us doing this with only 3 healers…
• We said… like we always do… it’s will be cool.  Mr. Tree can handle the back.

Have you ever watched a female Gnome warrior?  I did… well actually, at 1st I couldn’t even see her… Gnomes are small you know!  Still, I found it quite disturbing that a) we had a Gnome warrior (some would suggest that that is an oxymoron), and b) that she was female.  It just didn’t sit right. Nothing sexist you understand… maybe it was just the sight of a scantily clad Gnome female that had me all distracted.

Anyway..

Attempt 1: I go down like a bag of spuds.

Attempt 2: I can’t remember what happened attempt 2.  After attempt 2, said scantily clad female Gnome warrior called it a night…

Call it!

Down to a 9 humanoid raid, why not… just stay… for one more attempt…

Attempt 3: So we had to get the New-to-Naxx Hunter to tank the back with me… actually, I think this is the same hunter than caused the 2nd wipe… but whatever.  Once we explain again the concept of swapping when charges hit 3, and I set up /yell and /whisper macros and make sure he can actually hear me on vent, we begin.

Faster that you can say…

I am going to do more damage than you this fight Mr. Z!

… Mr.Z! was down, as was Mr Offspec.

In fact the only people left at the front are the Tankadin, the Tank (WildMan) and PuggyPriest.

Vent is filled with…

Call it!

It’s over!

Wipe it up folks!

But… we just didn’t give up…

At one point, when doing my swap, I find WildMan on my Horseman.  before I can get to the Horseman he is gone.. charging back into the fray at the front of the room.

What I didn’t know, was that in the seconds prior to his charge, the Tankadin was going down… 100%, 81%, 61%, 41%, 21%, 1%

Taunt!

WildMan has saved the day!

IWIN!

Meanwhile, at the back of the room, I am pumping my IWIN! button… pumping it…

I was FFB spec for the fight, I didn’t want to risk mana issues.

As soon as the fight started, my 3 Gnomish friends joined me to start the slaughter… IWIN!

As soon as I hear the call to wipe, IWIN!

IWIN!

IWIN!

IWIN!

IWIN!

Last things I remember, on my last swap, was I had my initial horseman down to 10%.  As I turned, I see bodies arriving from the front of the room.

One Horseman left… IWIN! IWIN! IWIN! IWIN! IWIN! IWIN!

Loot rolls..

IWIN! IWIN! IWIN! IWIN! IWIN! IWIN! IWIN! Charmed Cierge (as shown earlier in this post)

For once I have both earned my keep and been rewarded for it… usually I just get rewarded for my conjured goods!

63% of the damage on Sir Zeliek and another 48% on Lady Blaumeux

Naxx Breaker

Noth went down without any major event… well, l except that Gnomeaggedon went down on about the 3rd or 4th bunch of mobs…

How Embarrassment!

Heigan the Raid breaker finished us off… we didn’t get him, but we were all tired.. tired of Instance server crashes, and the 30-60 minutes lost trying to get the raid going again. Tired of wiping… Just tired!

The only thing left to do before logging, was to petition the GM’s… well actually I already had… but they hadn’t shown.. and no matter how much I watched the ticket, it didn’t change… no GM whispers, no expected resolution time.. but let’s face it…

They would have been busy!

Experiments in the Arcane

I decided I would give Arcane a run for it’s money, and I thought I would start safe.. just those 3-4 minute fights.  That way if I cock up my mana management it wouldn’t matter.  In fact, I made sure I put in a call to raidside support (Mr. Tree) before the raid began.  He would dedicate his Innervate to me, he was even prepared to name a Macro after me… I felt honored.

I made up my IWIN! Arcane macro.. placed it carefully on my tool bar.

I took some screenshots of the previous 2 weeks worth of my WWS reports… just so I wouldn’t loose them (which I don’t have on me, but I did have a quick look), and a comparison of how Arcane was comparing to FFB.

I went hard… Mana wasn’t an issue, so I guess I could have just Arcane Blasted the whole time (and maybe that would have made a difference).  Arcane barrage wasn’t exactly procing every 3rd cast… but…

End result…

The jury (of one) is still out.

From memory there was only 1 boss fight where I reached 3k DPS.. the rest were either the same, or a mirror image of my FFB stats (One fight FFB better, next fight Arcane better etc.)  I was definitely leaving piles of corpses on the trash.. quite insane piles really… but, I don’t know if that is enough to convert me.  Admittedly I loved my PoM FlameStrike, followed by Blizzard… I always get itchy in that 1st 3 seconds of trash, knowing that Mr. Z! is already racking up the kills.

Ticket Time

This is the 3rd time in many years I have raised a ticket… I am yet to be online when a GM handles my ticket.  Not sure if they check who it’s from and think…

This guy is only on for a few hours each week, if we wait a little longer we can handle it at our leisure

Or they are just really busy with important stuff like dancing and singing.

Of course to be fair, I expect there were a pile of servers that dropped dead the other night, so one little Gnome’s cries for assistance would have been drowned out by the unwashed majority.

I got the usual, stocko standard in game email & also real world email.  But that was cool.  It prompted me to refine my ticket a little.

Then, while I was slaughtering my Alien foes in Space Crusade, I got an email from Mr. Tree, which included this…

I wanted to say the response i received from Styrend this morning was excellent.  He had a great sense of humor.  Had read the ticket in full before talking with me and had dealt with the ticket with efficiency, politeness and a laugh.

Well done. I realize these guys are busy and to deal with it in a quick and respectful way made my day.

It was his Blizzard customer service survey response…

That sounds good… Commandeer WildMan’s PC, check my ingame mail…

Problem sorted… and Mr. Tree had some fun to boot…

Thanks Rovorril, Hanthor & Styrend!

I want a visit from a GM… I can dance too you know!

Gnome Superiority

So I had a bit of a quick mess about with my items, just to see how much I gained/lost when combined with my Flameheart Spell Scalpel.

Seems I equipped the right combination of gear… I haven’t event thought about this, it just happened..

Still, it looks like I need a new Main Hand… not quite sure where I will get one from though…

Them Gnomes are Tasty

Don’t go spreading the word to those staving Hordes on the streets of Dalaran, but apparently I might be a tasty & nutritious snack…  I will be keeping my eyes on them next time I am crawling around in the filthy sewers looking for mushrooms.

Argent Tournament Revisited (or I need a new keyboard)

I was sitting on 24 Valiant’s tokens, and 24 Champion’s tokens.

It has been a big struggle to collect them.  The only time I have beaten a champion before the enemies gates is when one or two others hit my champion rather than their own.

Still, when you are that close, you just have to go for one more… (it’s always just one more…)

I have developed a new strategy now….  ensure 3 shields, Spam 3 (like really madly spam 3), turn & Spam 2 (like really madly spam 2), engage & Spam 1 (like really madly spam 1), then rinse and repeat.

I actually took down everything in my path.

Then I took my tokens back to the snooty Elves, and apparently they were impressed!

Leeet’s Gooooo Shopppping…

I have an offhand without a (worthwhile) Mainhand… I have 25 Champions tokens burning a hole in my Character Currency screen.

They are flogging off cheap (Last one in stock apparently) this beautiful pile of metal, that just suits me to the ground.

Gnomeaggedon of Gnomeregan and his Gnomeregan Bonechopper!

Seriously, how beautiful is that weapon?

Gnomish Engineering at it’s finest!

Sure the stats are OK…

But, that isn’t why I bought it.

In fact all the calculators seem to tell me the same thing…

Give it back and ask for a refund!

But, to me, it’s worth 25 champions seals to have this sitting in the bank.

That’s a wrap for this week…

Tonight we tackle a bit of the Old World.

If Mr Z! is to be believed, I will be sporting achievements for Onyxia, AQ20 and MC come Monday.

A level 80 Mage and his 7 mates (Mmm did that number just creep up by one) take on 3 level 60 raids…

That will really be something to GnomEpeen about!

Gnomer and Out!

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