I would consider myself a casual player. I raid 3 nights a week usually from 9pm to 11pm. Literally only 6-8hours a week unless i pick up a fail pug or something and i might even be able to get away with less if i really wanted to with the same level of achievement if i decided to be lame and skip progression nights My guild is working it’s way through H ToC 25 bloodying our nose on Jarraxas. People may consider our guild hardcore because of our level of success in ToC and on some servers maybe we are. I consider us medium hardcore and borderline casual.

Interestingly enough when RL started limiting my playtime is when i became more “hardcore.” When i wasn’t able to play as much as i wanted to i had to decide what i wanted to do with the time i did have. So i chose to spend less time running circles in dal, fielding guild drama, and waiting for an hour for people to show up for a raid and more time actually raiding. That meant i had to make some  changes in my play style. The first one being finding a guild that raided when my RL allowed at the level i wanted so that my time spent playing the game was actually a rewarding experience.

So what did i really change that makes me “hardcore?”  Did i play more? No. I actually played less.

Did i neglect my RL responsibilities so that i could become a WoW god? No. My family is and was my motivating factor for becoming more “hardcore.”

Did i stop being the sweet and gregarious psy that everyone is familiar with in exchange for an elitist jerk attitude complete with it’s own shiny title so you can all see how leet i am?…can i have a second on that one?

The truth is all i did was cut out the insane amount of idle time i spent playing the game and focused on what i wanted to do so i could get crap done. I don’t waste time unless i want to. I don’t play with people who aren’t serious about playing. I make sure i bring the things i need to raid and read all relevant strategies so i don’t have to sit through an hour of explanation before every fight. AND my guild mates do the same as a sign of mutual respect for  each others time. I’m happier in game and in RL as a result. Wow! ALL in less then 15 hours of play time a week. That’s a few hours each night with some weekend playtime thrown in.

What’s my take on the casual vs hardcore debate?

The entire idea of “casual” vs “hardcore” in my opinion was created by lazy unmotivated people who felt entitled to the same rewards and level of respect given to those people who decided to play the game in a conscientious manner and accomplish something. The old adage that casual players aren’t bad players they just don’t have enough time to play and that hardcore players have no life and play 20 hours out of every day in their mom’s basement is a widespread and incredibly pervasively accepted falsehood.  Why?

I have an idea.

As long as lazy/casual people label successful people as losers they can keep being lazy and unsuccessful blaming others and their current situations as the reason for their failures so they can just keep on being lazy without feeling any shame and/or responsibility for it.

Basically they want to run circles around Dalaran and get an achievement for it…i can haz achievement too?

If your playtime exceeds more then 15 hours a week you don’t get to be a whiny little baby over how “casual” you are. my advice to you? Lrn2play noob.

your leet lock,

psy

When and where i use them depends heavily on which boss i’m fighting and what gear i’m currently raiding in /available to me. For example i would normally use +haste with my current gear but on the  General Vezax fight i would choose to use +spell power over haste because the shadow crash pools already give %100 percent haste and that to me seems like plenty so now i want to make sure my spells are hitting as hard as possible to take full advantage of the mana i have to use. (plus flaps always brings fish feasts. FREE is always better imo *smile!*) In this case the fight determines the food chosen.

Let’s look at another situational use of buff food where raid composition determines what food i use. For the most part i have the privilege of raiding with a moonkin and a shadow priest which in both cases have talents that increase spell hit but there are those rare occasion where i end up in a raid without them. I run below the hit cap on purpose so i can stack other stats in light of the fact that i can make up for it in raid buffs provided by these guys but in an event such as this i tuck away a little hit food just in case.

You may be asking where can i get this magical food of awesome? Well there are lesser versions of the awesome food but i’m only going to go over the awesome food because it’s more better then the less awesome food. (that whole sentence was just for you Grimmlokk)

Awesome version of +Hit:

Worg Tartare      Snapper Extreme

Awesome version of +Haste:

Very Burnt Worg Imperial Manta Steak

Awesome version of + Spell Power:

Fish Feast     Firecracker Salmon     Tender Shoveltusk Steak

If you’ll notice there is a fish version and a meat version of each type of food and both are pretty easy to farm. I spend about and hour a week farming on top of doing my cooking daily and have more then enough but if your lazy then you’ll probably be able to find what you want on the AH.

happy raiding,

psy

*post edited for accuracy thanks xan =D

Anyway.

If you want you can read about it here via a post from jagoex over at Warlock Therapy. I actually love this blog (paladin schmaladin that is.) If all this is true i feel sad for farraro that he/she felt like they couldn’t be truthful about who they really were. The blog itself truly stands alone as an amazing paladin resource. You don’t have to be an uber cute chick to get readers. I could care less whether the author was cute or a haggle fish or if it had 1 author or 7 . I would still read it and enjoy it. I probably will still read it and enjoy it. The drama surrounding Paladin Schmaladin doesn’t take away from the quality of the content contained in it IMO although i can see how others might feel differently.

Good luck farraro!

your friendly neighborhood locktard,

psy

Yet again, another web site that is full of fun when i run out of my normal ways to internet stalk people.

for dragane. they love you. you’ll see. :0)

So how do i practice on the practice dummy?

1.) I set my stopwatch for 5min

2.) I pewpew until time is up switching my shadowbolt spam for drain soul for the last min to try and simulate a boss encounter.

3.) If i am trying to decide on which piece of gear gives me the most dps i do this 3X averaging the results in my spreadsheet for each piece of gear.

4.) Otherwise i do it and compare the differences between my best go and my worst go how ever times i feel is necessary

If you want to really get detailed you can use wow webstats and just load your combat log up but my method seems sufficient for me lol.

Here’s kinda what it looks like:

*A few notes on warlock dps and rotations.

As i mentioned earlier maxdps is just a starting point if you have no clue where your dps should be for your stats but obviously once that’s established i’m now playing against my best not what maxdps says.

My personal opinion is if you can do you rotation with your eyes shut then it’s gonna make it easier to do it when you can’t have your eyes glued to your dottimer like in almost every fight except patchwerk right?

3.1 is gonna change things so stop whining and start experimenting

If your instantly awesome then good for you but i need practice to be good and luck lol.

hope this helps somebody =D

yours,

psy

My very first commenter back in April was from rabbit from The Rabbit and Wow who i think is awesome and i love her blog. Soooo cute!

Blogs that i haven’t been tagged yet…this is going to be hard…

Creeping written by creep the prophet

For the Horde written by fikkle and sylus

Married IRL written by stephie and jason

Deathcoil.org written by jaramon

Greedy Goblin written by gevlon

Alrights! I gots my 5. All of these are worth a read. Way to go blogging community!

Lets just say it had something to do with me, a 5 man heroic group for the oculus, and a used raid ID that i was unaware of. Basically i wondered into the wrong portal while looking for the entrance to the oculus. Wouldn’t have been that big of a deal except that apparently the group i was in had cleared heroic malygos earlier in the week and acquired a raid ID for that instance and even though i was NOT in a raid group i got saved to it the instant i zoned in /cry.

Well that’s not really all…

That happened a couple days before our scheduled raid to kill malygos and since i hadn’t been in any 25 mans for the week i was unaware of my saved status concerning the eye of eternity. So when we got to the eye and i zoned in and there was no dragon we just thought it was one of those buggy blizzard things right? Wrong…

The solution we came up with of course was to make me leader and have me zone in first…

As that was happening Kwalan started asking my some questions concerning my raid ID such as…”Psy, have you been in here this week?”

“No.”

“Do you see the dragon?”

“No.”

“In your raid log do you have a raid ID for heroic eye of eterenity?”

“Yes.”

And before anyone could say DON”T GO IN!!!! 4 others had already done been zoned in and saved to my ninja raid ID acquired through my failzorgs 5man heroic oculus group…

You done been punk’d fool!?!! o.O Nopes, no Ashton Kutcher for us just little ol me and my saved self.

I haven’t even been 80 for a week and it’s already started MUWAHAHAHA!

I’s sowry everyone:(

<3

psy

P.S. Just for the record everyone involved handled the whole fiasco with kindness even though it was incredibly dissapointing and set our guild progression back an entire week. I didn’t even get one angry tell although i did get spammed with /hug from several of my guildies.  Special thanks to our raid leaders who took the time to explain the fight and organize us into 10 mans after our debacle and i’m still waiting for my hug from oxxy…./hug?

Looking forward to going again but i hope i can hit up heroics some and get some better gear. I hate not really being able to contribute more.

<3 y’all

psy

I remember how warm the car was on our way there and the frenzied chitter chatter from my mom all about how awesome the dentist was going to  be.

“Aren’t you excited Teener? The dentist is going to  be soooo cool!” (my full name is Kristina. Teener was my mothers pet name for me often followed by weiner…./sigh <3 my life)

The more she talked about it the more i wanted to go and apparently i am a very lucky child because i had zero cavities and i think i ended up leaving the dentist office with a sucker?… and a big kiss on my head for being such a perfect kid.

To this day i still love the dentist. My mother apparently has scarred me for life..rofl :P

She passed away sunday Nov. 30th 2008. Today i burried her in a small plot somewhere in Ohio in a cemetary so small it doesn’t even have an address. Tommorrow i drive and someday soon i’ll make my way home.

I miss you mom and your amazing ability to make life fun even in the most unlikely of places. I know you would have loved warcraft. you were always an adventurer where the best and most enjoyable parts of the adventure were the parts that had people in them.

your loving daughter and friend,

teener weiner

aka psy