Signing off.

Visit over at www.bubblewhore.blogspot.com for my shiny, better edited paladin blog that will actually have content on it!

Updates galore.

I've been neglecting this blog the last month. My posts are badly written, and thrown out there without much thought. Now I might be okay with this if I truly didn't care about blogging, but I do, and I'd like to put out quality work. So, as of half an hour from when this post is published, I will be making a new, shinier, better edited blog, focused more on Paladin tanking, raiding, addons as tools instead of substitutes(I'll explain later), and the view of the Wow universe as seen by a slightly OCD, casual player.
           -Also, expect profanity, lots and lots of lots and lots of profanity. I can't help myself.

Now that that tidbit is out of the way, I have a couple thing I'd like to throw out about the upcoming patch, 3.3.3. I'm not going to put links in about the changes, or bore you with details, there are other sites you can go to for that. What I want to put out there, is the opinions that I, as a tank, healer, and raider have about the changes being made.

The first change is the extra 15 minutes added to the Dungeon Deserter debuff, bringing it to a whopping idiotic total of 30 minutes. In case you didn't know, this change is to compensate for the lack of tanks in the LFD system. If we have to wait for 30 minutes to re-que after leaving an instance, we won't ever leave right? Fuck no, wrong. If I have to wait 30 minutes after leaving a group that's been wiping, then I'm just not going to use the LFD. I don't need frost emblems enough to suffer through pugs that warrant me leaving. This 30 minute lock out is like blizzard giving me a slap on the wrist and telling me to go sit in the corner. Fuck you Blizzard, I pay for this game, I should be able to do what I want, when I want, I don't need you telling me that I can't do an instance just because I didn't feel like wiping for an hour on a heroic.

The second, less in-game focused is something I hadn't thought about, but makes perfect sense. Class/Spec specific buffs, such as the shamans Elemental Oath, now functions like a Moonkins aura. Some people might think that this will give the classes effected a dps boost, but geared players of these classes get the proc so often that it won't effect their dps. What it will effect, is server latency. If I'm a shaman, and I proc Elemental Oath every second, or every second and a half, I'm sending that information to the server that often. The server has to recognize that I have the buff, and then it sends it to any addons I might have. By cutting down on the servers work load, it will ultimately reduce lag.

Well that's it for me. I should have the new, shiny blog up and running soon, and once I do, that's where all future posts will go. My last post on this blog will be the name of my other one, and me signing off of this. Shamans are great, but I like bubbles more than totems.

Needing what you want.

Is it possible to need what you want? What I want is this: A clear, defined place that my guild is in. If we are casual, that's fine, but don't expect me to raid, because we are a "social" not raiding guild. But if we are a raiding guild, I expect to have a set schedule, a raid leader that is willing to really lead, even when people might not want to do what s/he says. Now, I say I want this, but honestly I feel like I need this. I hate being in a guild, expecting to raid, and then not raid. It's fucking annoying. I hate being in a social guild, that wants to raid, but doesn't know the first thing about it, again, fucking annoying.

This is a game, a game I would like to have fun in. A game shouldn't involve anything I don't want to do, because who has fun doing things they don't want to do? So a guild that knows what it wants is a want, but it's a need because if I don't have it, I'm doing something I don't want to do. And if I'm doing something I don't want to do, I'm not having fun, and why would I play Wow if I'm not having fun? Point set and match, I win, my point has been made.

P.S: My point in all of this was, someone needs to make a guild, or tell me about a guild that needs a pally tank and isn't full of idiots, raids at a decent time(EST goddamnit), and is able to kill content without a massive amount of wipes(# see prior statement:Not full of idiots).

Ugh. Just Ugh.

I want to raid on my paladin. Not a crazy request right? I'm not asking for a lot. I just want to raid. So why the fuck is it so damn hard to find a guild that runs 10m raids, and isn't super balls to the wall hardcore about it? I don't want to raid five days a week, for 4 hours a day. Cut that in half, then sure, but come on. Is a casual 10m guild too much to ask for? Answer me that, because I am honestly confused on all of this.

/ugh
/pull out hair
/fuck 25m guilds

The loss of epicness, the gain of gear.

Hitting level 80 on my paladin two days ago, I was cnoforonted with a problem of how to gear him up. Do I jump right into heroics without gear, or do I do some regular instances to get gear. My answer came by way of the other newly 80 paladin in our guild. He was running heroics with mainly quest blues, and some BoE epics he had bought. It got me thinking about whether I was more concerned with getting gear, or feeling like I'd accomplished something when I has in an instance. There is really only one answer to that. With the dumbed down style of just AoE killing packs of mobs, epics and badges being thrown at you like candy, you can't really get that epic feeling of killing a boss, or getting a certain piece of loot. I miss that feeling, and I know more than a few people that don't play as often, or at all anymore because of the loss of it. When you got an epic in classic Wow, you were king for a day. You had done you work, killed the boss that other people couldn't kill, and gotten this amazing piece of gear.You could go strut your stuff in some major cities, and just show people how awesome you were. In BC, epics were more available that Classic, but still took work to get. That epic ring you wanted at the end of a heroic? If you plan carefully and have a good group, it might only take you two hours to get there. Along comes wrath, and in some ways I love the new way gear is handled, in others I feel like it takes the fun out of doing heroics. I can go into regular ToC and get epics. I can buy epics, or get them from reputation. I love this because I can easily and quickly get geared for raids, as that is what a heroic is preparing you to do, but do I really feel epic after spamming consecrate and everything is dead? I applaud blizzard for making a way for people like me, that might not have the time to farm for gear, to get into raids without spending a year gearing up. But, I want that epic feeling again, it was what drew people to raiding.

Addon Highlight:TauntMaster and ForteXorcist

I'm an addon whore. WHORE. I have four separate folders of wow, all with different UI packages/ custom designs, and each has at least 40-60 addons in each. I could go so in-depth into my addons you would think I knew the first thing about making one. So today, as my so apt-ly named shaman blog that is now almost exclusively about paladin tanking, is getting to be a chore, I thought I would start talking about something that could be called an addiction, or possibly a fetish, depending on how much you look into it.

I was recently listening to a little ol', not so known podcast(sarcasm) called "Inside Azeroth", when I discovered this nugget of tanking badassery. Known as TauntMaster, this addon makes you just that, the master of taunts. The way this addon works is thus, it provides a healbot-esqe looking unit frame indicator. Let's say I, as the tank, Initiate a pull. My bar will turn red, the traditional color of "Holy shit you bout to get smacked in the face". When a dps starts to get close to my threat, their bar will turn yellow, and when it attacks them, it will turn red. What this addon allows you to do is left/right click on that players bar to taunt off of them. If A group of mobs aggro the healer because they came up behind us or something, I can right click to AoE taunt them to me. This addon, despite this not really being it's use, has replaced grid as a group-health monitor. The other fantastic thing about this addon, is that it automatically recognizes your class, and the spells you have to use. There are pre-set bindings for my Hand of Protection and Divine Intervention, as well as both taunts.

The other addon I'd like to talk about is one many people know, ForteXorcist. This addon is kinda like a 5-in-1 addon, doing more things than you really need, but damn are those some nice things. It provides a cooldown bar, much like another addon called Coolline, but it is the spell timer that sets this addon apart in my opinion. You can track everything and anything with it. As a healer, I use it to track how many charges of earth shield my tank has, it will track the duration of buffs, like Tidal Force, and power-ups like Art of War on the paladin or redoubt. You can hide certain things, like replenishment, or avengers shield, and have certain things get bigger when they are under a certain time, all kinds on things.

These addons are fucking awesome. Addon are one my passion, I would love to be able to make them, but unfortunately I just can't be bothered to do things that other people benefit from.

Defensive, offensive, and on the fence...ive.

Fair warning, I'm writing this at midnight on 2 hours of sleep the night before, abandon all hope ye who enter.

A few days ago, I posted about how I felt a tad off when I was tanking, how it didn't mesh like healing, or even dps'ing does. I boiled it down to misplaced bars, and lack of skill bucket then, and it's possible I was right on both fronts.
1.Keybindings: As a Protection Paladin my rotation consists on 5 spells, known as the 969 rotation. Previously, as in 3 days ago, I had all my 9 second CD's right next to each other, and then my 6 seconds would eventually be in the same boat. It's possible that this method works if you use an actual keyboard, but with my n52, it wasn't cutting it. Having 4 skills bound to the D-pad, and one to the little, barely a button button above it was difficult to say the least. So to solve that problem, I just moved things around and changed the actual bindings of my gaming pad. Now Divine Plea is my little pussy button, so it's close at hand, but not important or in the way.
2.Spells: Good God in Heaven, Divine Plea! Before this spell of orgasmic delight, I drank after every fucking pull, no matter the size or how much I actually did. Kill 1 non elite? Drink. AoE tank 4 fast attacking mobs that I blocked and dodged like a bitch? Drink. With Divine Plea, AoE 4 mobs, run to the next pack, accidentaly aggro another pack, who cares, I got all the mana in the world. Do I pull to fast now for you healers? Karma for healing those bumfuck dps that pulled entire rooms because I had to drink. Oh so poo on you mister healer, I could care less.

This just in Rallii, aggro queen extraordinare and super douche tank Will pull entire rooms unless you tell him not to, and if you pull off of him, then you suck. Jump off a cliff and die. That is all.