We do what we can because we must.

So wowhead links just became a whole lot simpler! Wowhead just released a simple javascript package for blogs, so I've upgraded our template, and it will now create nice popup links for ANY outgoing wowhead item link automatically! If you want to be fancy, you can include the "class" attribute, which will color the links accordingly, and then you use "q1" for common, "q2" for greens, "q3" for blues, "q4" for purps, and "q5" for legendaries.

Non wowhead links are unaffected. It seems a lot faster and cleaner than the old allakhazam links, and it's certainly much easier for us to create. Here are some samples:


<a href="http://www.wowhead.com/?item=31109" class="q3" >[Stealther's Helmet of Second Sight]</a>

<a href="http://www.wowhead.com/?item=32044" class="q4">[Merciless Gladiator's Shanker]</a>


Becomes:
[Stealther's Helmet of Second Sight]

[Merciless Gladiator's Shanker]

This is also a good time to let you know that I bought my new S3 chestpiece! [Vengeful Gladiator's Leather Tunic]

Sweet Little Lies

Not exactly a forum, but the comments on this item made me smile.

it's that time again

screenshots!!!

sooooo sexay


sooooo laaaame



FINALLY! YEEEEEEBUS

Wherefore art thou Slotr...

So... paid name changes are finally possible on Dragonmaw, and I have a problem. So most of my 70 toons and 29 twinks follow a consistent naming convention. They're all aliases of the Futurama character Bender, with some 'y's and phonetic mispellings thrown in.

• Bendyr


• Fleckso (another bending unit, who he impersonated on a few occassions)


• Coylette (his name when he became a fembot)


• Bloto (his alias when he was in the mob)

However the other toon that I play is a 49 druid right now. His name is "Slotr" and the idea was that I was going to earn him a "sergeant" rank before the old honor system went away. That never happened of course, and now he just doesn't fit into my naming scheme.

Obviously I'd like to retain the "Bender" related naming conventions, but I might have to expand the list to general "Futurama-robots". I'm thinking either:

• Kalculon


• Hedonismbot


• TinnyTim


• Rodriguez (Bender's last name)

Or I can abandon the robot angle entirely and go with just other Futurama characters/concepts that sound cool for a character:

• Elzar


• Slurm


• Poppler

And I can misspell the names as necessary to get around existing character names. Any thoughts or other ideas?

Update: Thanks Cowchan! How could I have forgotten Superking! So the name change gui seems to hate any name with the word "King" in it, so I had to actually go with "Superklng" (that's a "L" instead of an "I"). I also had to share the "success" picture that they give you when you do a name change, because it's priceless:

dwightshroot, i avenge you!!!

Couldn't have asked for a better setup. Priest and hunter grinding together, low 30s, finishing up a fight (although I think they were still both ~80%). Ganked both of them in about 2 gcd's. gyoooohohohoho



Got a mage later for good measure.

loot whoring ftw

so the ubers have been rolling in at a nice rate lately...

new bootzors!

new bracer...zors!!!

and the zos mah gahr lewt of the year... hh helm!


ooo and also the ring! forgot to ss but you get the idea

gyoooooooooooooohohohohohohohohohohohoooooooooooo

now to level kotonoha and pwn bitches in the 40-49 bracket

Farewell, BBQ...

So yes, after talking it over with Meef, Cowchan shall be taking a leave of absence from the BBQ. I've been sorta recruited into another guild, and the prospect of raiding and no longer having to do full PUGs has brought me over.

This isn't to say that I'm leaving you guys (cuz I'm still totally down with Chicken N ROFLs), but more of an opportunity to expand the BBQ's connections to the WoW universe. But yeah, other than that, nothing has changed, besides the little name that pops up next to my character tooltip when you see me in-game. But as I also don't want the presence of the BBQ to fully die, if you ever see a Pally named Skylaraa walking around, I'm sure she'd appreciate an invite to the guild.

Anyhoo, let's get our arena rankings up, and get us our epix! BBQftw!

wassap

So what are youfs up to? Any particular ubers being worked on?

I've kinda made it goal to up Meef's pvp prowess and get a decent (i'm hoping 1600+) arena rating. To that end I'm working on a spreadsheet to plan my upgrades... either of you know of an "aep" type rating for warriors (pvp oriented of course)? Just for the hell of it I tried 2xsta, 2xres, 1.5xcrit, 1xap, 1xstr, .2xhit, .1xparry, .3xagi... pretty sure that's not balanced properly though -_-

Kotonoha, Nayuki and Mahanaxar are kinduv on hold for a bit, mostly because I've rolled a mage on a pve server a coworker is playing on (echo isles).

In other gaming news, I've been playing soul calibur 3, portal, halflife 2 (finally completed it!), hl2: ep 1, and geometry wars... so yeah... too many games, too little time...

joining the masses

So given my reduced playing time and pvp focus, I've decided to respec arms for a while. given my lack of arms pvp experience i'm really sure what i'm doing, but hopefully it'll be an improvement. well... maybe. i have a really shitty sword. it's a green i bought off the ah since i didn't have a 2h sword ;_;

but yeah, some new goodies include ms, deathwish, improved intercept (-10s on cd), piercing howl and second wind... now i just need to gear up with some pvp equipment... and get used to using all these damn new skills. yeebus. smashing ms ever 6 seconds, overpower when i can... trying to remember to pop deathwish when it's up... grargh.... as prot i could just drum my fingers on shield block, revenge and shield slam with an occasional spell reflect or intimidating shout. ^^;

Finally...

After a long few weeks of blowing my cash on Crystalhide Handwraps and a Vengeance Wrap, I timed it so that my cash flow and my rep with the Skyguard peaked at the same time...
Hells yes. It's about damn time.

Bendyr: DPSer, AFKer, Director!

So when my Toshley Station transporter malfunctioned yesterday, I was unable to fight or mount up for 2 minutes and 30 seconds. It seemed like the perfect time to try the new built-in video capture mechanic in the Mac client. Here is the result:



Toshley Station Transporter Malfunction from infomofo on Vimeo.

It was kinda cool, but the process slowed the framerate a ton. Also, I can't find a place to share the full resolution video. This site vimeo is slightly better than youtube in terms of quality, but it's still not great. In the original source video, you can even read my chat and combat logs.

UPDATE: Found a better site to upload to, and I triggered a cooler debuff this time!



The only problem is it doesn't play well with my firefox and I can't get the embed to size right...

Arena points ftl

Sadly, after using the new arena point calculator, it'll still be the same amount of time to get my epic crossbow whether we drop to 1300 or jump up to 1500. Crazy, huh? Not to say I'll be slacking off in any arena, but it makes me feel better about having the worst win/loss record on the team.

BTW, has anyone tried the new voice chat yet?

Bendyr は 貧乏 です。

With great drops come great expenses :/

I almost had to cry when [Gloves of Dexterous Manipulation] dropped in Kara yesterday. Sure, it was a huge improvement over my blue gloves, but TWO sockets, an enchant, and everything was already going to be a hit on my waning money supply.

Like I said before, whenever I get a certain amount of money, I start buying crap. I was up to 900 gold last week, when I decided for some reason that I needed a [Riding Crop]... Then I saw a [Relentless Earthstorm Diamond] for 100g on the auction house, which in my defense is a steal. And of course, I was buying flask mats and pots and healing potions and repair bills...

I'm down to 300g now... and tomorrow I'll have enough points for my [Merciless Gladiator's Bonecracker], which I know I should be really happy about, but all I can think about it how much those Mongoose mats are going to set me back...

If anyone needs me, I'll be at the Orgrimmar Blood Bank.

Fel mana potions...

So the FelManaPots are not ftw, nor are they ftl. I've found out that indeed, they do not affect my Mend Pet, and the loss of damage on Arcane shot is fairly minimal. Indeed, it seems to be a good fit if you're a hunter going against someone and you know you're gonna run out of mana...like being overhealed, but only with mana.

It does, however, affect your global potion cooldown, so once you pop a FMP, you have to wait the usual cooldown if you wanna down a Super Mana Potion. FMP gives you more, but it's not all at once. So it's very conditionally cool, depending on the circumstances.

I also spent a crapload of my honor to get these lovely little boots, which I makes me feel more uber than before.


Other than that, I'm still holding out in Arena points for my XBow, and I can never (probably due to my strange student schedule) find a group to do the last Ogrila prereq I need or the crazy boss grind to get up to summoning Terokk. Alas, someday the epic flying mount shall be mine...

Stealthing IRL

I often begrudge the fact that we didn't have cool technology like the internet, iPods, and what have you growing up. However, when I see videos like this I'm a little relieved, because... this would totally have been me 12 years ago, had Warcraft and YouTube been available.

Fel Mana Potions for Cowchan?

I never really got the point of the "Fel" potions. The one for HP seemed like too big of a tradeoff for a dpser like myself, so I never got it. The Fel Mana Potion restores a ton of mana, but reduces spell dmg and +healing for 15 minutes. However, a really interesting thread on wowinsider pointed out that there's pretty much no downside for hunters using the Fel Mana Potion.

Most of the hunter's shots are barely affected by spell dmg anyway, and the -healing effect doesn't even affect Mend Pet! You basically get 2 mana pots on separate cooldown timers with pretty much no downside...

OP!

Battling the heat

So you guys have been subject to my terrible video card's heat issues. On the bright side I think I may have found the problem -- for some reason or other, the power I was supplying to my new heat sink's fan was no good. I went back to pluggin the fan into a separate computer's mobo and my card has been acting a helluva lot better.

Here's what I've been goin thru... [click for full size versions]


nut so great.

bendyr saves my ass.

not a good way to start a match...

doh!

kotonoha has evolved to chocobo knight!

woo! finally hit 40 with another character on this server. kotonoha has been birded.



the gut ripper is equipped.

eat dagger alliance bitches!

With great ubers comes great responsibility

So I decided to try out a few Kara runs with a friend's raiding guild. Things were pretty tough the first day, but the second day I got the hang of it a little more and I even topped the dps charts on The Curator! I was rewarded for my efforts with [Garona's Signet Ring]



So, it's been pretty fun, and the guild I ran with was kind of in a good phase for me to get in; they've run Kara a few times, but they're still gearing up for the bigger raids, so they're cool with me not really being familiar with the encounters yet. I've decided I'm going to join up with them for the time being and see where that goes.

In the meantime, I've passed the mantle of guild leadership onto Meef. I'll still be around and available for 2v2 arenas (with better gear even), so make sure to free up a slot on your Friends List for me.

P.S. Oh, and since you're going to find out in-game anyway, my new guild's name is "Team Ramrod"... Please don't /point or /lol next time you run into me in Org...

P.P.S. My decision to drop Mutilate was totally validated by the Kara run too. Sooo many poison immune mobs and fights where I can't choose my position would have made me a sad Panda. A sad Panda with DPS below the tank, more than likely.

A dangerous new meme...

Bel airing, Rickrolling, and facepalming are suddenly too on-the-nose... Is the new forum meme going to be South Carolining?

I personaly believe that the reason most combat rogues do not take blade twisting is because some rogues don't have weapons. I believe that these weapons such as warlock and the druid such as and I think the dagger rogues in wow should help the warlocks and the such as druids so we will be able to build up a better rogue comunnity.

Thank you for your candor.

A change of plans

So I got my Main Hand Arena weapon! I also respec'd Combat Maces, which is a more PVP oriented spec, since i'm not instancing as much as I used to. Hopefully this will work out better!

Uh, what should I do, guys?

So I've been planning on going towards 5/5 Beast Lord as we slowly rack up Arena points, but if I buy something soon, I'd say I'd get [Merciless Gladiator's Chain Gauntlets]

since they give the Multi-shot boost, and also since out of the three pieces of BL set, the gloves drop in SH, and I hate doing SH, while I actually like doing SV (where Kalithresh drops the other 2). So, that's if I wanna drop the points now.

But I'm also ignorant of all sorts of WoW stuff, including Arena ish. So assuming I get to carry my points over from S2 to S3, and assuming that there's a drop in price of S2 gear, and since there aren't a whole lot of weapon upgrades I can get from non-raid instances, I'd say maybe I'd save up and go for [Merciless Gladiator's Crossbow of the Phoenix]

So whadda you guys think?

merciless shield wall

gyohoho!



[Merciless Gladiator's Shield Wall]

it is mine! now i just need an chant... think ima go for more shield block value for kicks...

i can now crit for ~1k with shield slam! gyohohohoho

Arena musings...

The ROFL went 5-5 again this week, which makes me think we've hit a kind of equilibrium around 1350. This may be about as well as we can expect to do until we get some better gear, or maybe touch up our spec's a bit. That being said, the points from this week should put me at about 2500 something, so I'm definitely going to get my [Merciless Gladiator's Shanker] next week, which should definitely make me a little more dangerous.

However, after reading all these people qqing about warlocks in arenas on the forum, I have to wonder if we're a weird group, or if 2v2 is just that different. I don't really think Warlocks give us that much grief. As we usually single them out as our primary targets, and they're cloth, we usually take them out before they can get a full dot rotation off (not counting those crazy tier 6 epix warlocks we somehow get matched with on occasion). As a rule, I think my "most hated" classes in our 2v2 games are:

1. Paladins


2. Hunters


3. Mages

I wish that the arena would give us some breakdowns of the teams that we've lost against and their class makeups. Maybe I'll start jotting these down myself...

Wot, no Arena Points?

So I'm flying to London today for work! I'll be there and in Edinburgh until next Sunday. Meef and I already got in our 5 games, so Cow, try to sync up with Meef and get the rest of the 10 games in before Tuesday. I am bringing my laptop to london, but i dunno how much I'll get to play, but in either case I'll be back next Sunday to get in my minimum 3 games for the following week. Woot!

QQ

The word on the street is that Season 3 weapons will actually require a specific arena rating to purchase (the number being thrown around is 1900). This was supposedly confirmed at blizzcon, but I haven't found a blue post to back it up... Still, it seems like it's happening.

Oh well, I guess now I don't have to agonize over whether or not to purchase the s2 dagger this late in the season.

UPDATE: Here's the exact quote from the wowinsider blizzcon transcript:

4:33pm: Because weapons aren't as distingushed against raid gear (players were raiding, and just doing arenas for the weapons), there's going to be a rating requirement to buy a weapon-- can't just save points, have to do well to get the weapon.

Argh, I feel like this punishes melee classes more than casters. For casters, weapons are really just glorified armor pieces. For melee classes, the arena weps are a significant dps boost over anything else that's accessible without raiding.

/tar Other Blog; /cast Pickpocket; /cast Vanish

So, I was browsing some other wow blogs at work, and I saw this blogspot had javascript and css that was pretty cool for having mouseoverable wowhead links. I thought I'd use my crazy Rogue skills and ninja the code, so here we go:

[Stealther's Helmet of Second Sight]

[Merciless Gladiator's Shanker]

Hoping this works, if you want to include wow-links like this in the future, use this code:

<a href="http://www.wowhead.com/?item=31109" class="rare" onmouseover="showWowitem(event,31109);" onmouseout="hideWowitem();">[Stealther's Helmet of Second Sight]</a>

<a href="http://www.wowhead.com/?item=32044" class="epic" onmouseover="showWowitem(event,32044);" onmouseout="hideWowitem();"">[Merciless Gladiator's Shanker]</a>

Plug in a new link, item number, name, and class, and it should work!

And the award for "most improved" goes to...

Chicken and ROFLs! We got a very respectable 7-3 record this week, pulling our rating up to 1401! That should net us a clean 236 points this week, which will put me with 1000 points of my uber daggerness!

Gentlemen, i think we're getting better at this... or they're getting worse.

grack

well, so just some crap fyi

1) i've been in a seminar thing in sf all week so my schedule is all crap and don't really have much internet access during the day -_-
2) going home this weekend and next weekend since my sister got into davis med school and i need to get my dad's truck back.
3) epic mount roxxors and totally kicks ass for quests... of course... now i'm almost out of quests (well, prolly still 1-3 more weeks of netherstorm at my current rate). still, for dailies it just makes them that much faster.
4) netherdrake quests suck big ass.
5) got an awesome tenacious earthstorm diamond for my helm from the steamvaults completion quest

5) now that my income has been freed up, lemme know what kinda crap ya need. tomes, signets, diamonds, pots, etc.
6) should i get a gut ripper for kotonoha? eeeehehehehe

new rides

at long last.....

epicccccc mouuuuuuuuuuuunnnnnnnnnnnnnttttttttttttttttttttttt!!!!!!!!!!!!


and another new mount...


much gold and real money ;_;

time to farm...

Improvements of all kinds

After going 0-10 our first week, we got a 5-5 record for the week! BBQ FTW!


In PVE news, I finally got exalted with the Keepers of time, leading to this epic dagger! I had to drop all my gold to get Mongoose, but it is worth it, non? Don't ask about the glow, though...

Weeeeee!

So after questing around Shadowmoon last night, and getting ganked twice by a stupid druid, Meef invited the new guy Steve into the guild, who then proceeded to follow me around to make sure the druid was backing off. When Meef logged, I was a mere 5 kills away from dinging. But fortunately Hallisy was around to help me out and rejoice in the moment.

Then tonight, after a delayed real-world event that kept me off the comp for nearly the entire day, I managed to scrounge up enough dough to go shopping. It was a tough decision to pick a color for the flying mount, but alas, one have to make tough decisions sometimes.


Weeeeeee!!!!!!!!! No more having to run all the way around stupid terrain anymore! The Cow is airborne!

WOOOT

So, if you saw me on sometime in the last two days and I totally ignored you, don't take it personally. I've just been singlemindedly grinding engineering ever since the patch hit, and between last minute desperate mining runs and humiliating defeats at the Auction House, I finally scraped together all the mats to get [Deathblow X-11 Goggles], my first crafted epic!. It's kind of atrocious that I went through all that and wouldn't spring for the Blue gem... but after dropping over 400g on the mats for my helm, spending another 70 on the Jagged Talasite seemed too painful...

Here's a screenshot of how it looks on me, plus my new sexy ACE gui.


So, since that whole thing I need to do some quests to get my finances back in order. I'm out of the country for the long weekend (AMSTERDAM, BABY), but I definitely want to start doing the prereqs for Ogri'La and Shatari Skyguard, as I can get an awesome trinket and bracers from them. As always, Black Morass and Shadow Labs runs I need muchly. The new 70 lock can help a lot in both cases; Locks can Offtank in Black Morass and their CC will make clearing that nasty room in Shadow Labs a lot easier.

additions

so you may notice a new 70 lock in the guild... he randomly wanted in because of our awesome name. not sure how long he's gonna stay or anything (he's been raiding, former guild downed magtherion recently, and his gear is pretty pimp) or if he seriously wants to remain with us, but i figured what the hell. he can be dwight's role model :D

screenshot dump

just summore random bbq happenings...

cow took kotonoha on a quick tour of sfk and sm graveyard. no torturing poker, but i did score some watchman pauldrons!
cow also got kotonoha her poisons! woooo!
later i was goofing off in the sm graveyard also...
today i actually ran shadow labs twice. both times were with members of the strange box guild... though strangely enuf with different members each time. they're good folks and we mopped up the place. leggings of assassination dropped twice, but no bold in sight. oh well, completed the quests and got a fat wad of cash out of it.
my questing in shadowmoon has been slow but steady... unfortunately i'm again left with a huge chunk of group quests... where are you bbqers? :P
i hate fighting elementals so much. damn unmitigated damage. well, i guess in that respect earth elementals are ok... but lotsa them have other annoying abilities -_- knockdownsplitupondeath bastards...
also ran botanica a while back... again, no bold armor, but it was fun to get to know the instance.


slowly climbing toward my epic mount. at this rate maybe i'll have it by winter... ^^;;;

if you're looking for bbq activity:
--meef needs group questing help and/or any bc instance run. and be sure to lemme know if you need a run to gear up an alt or somethin.
--kotonoha could really use a new dagger. a torturing poker would be nice (boss in sm graveyard, 5% drop, but it will prolly take only about 3-5 minutes per attempt). swinetusk shank from rfk would also be a nice offhand upgrade.
--nayuki could use a couple runs thru sfk :D

Better Living Through Mediocrity

So... First off, Meef and I created a 2v2 Arena team, with the epic name "Chicken and ROFLs"; Cow, Dwight, go see Meef and get added as alternates to the charter. Second off, we suck. We actually went 0-10 yesterday. Of course, we are both heavily PVE spec'd and geared, and we really just wanted to get our 10 games in to get our points. At our ranking of about 1345, we will still get about 250 arena points for this week. Coupled with the crappy 3v3 team i joined (about a 1400 ranking), I will get over 500 arena points for the week.

According to this point calculator here, if I were to join a similarly mediocre 5v5 team, and earn a fairly horrible 1300 rating each week, I would still rake in over 900 arena points a week. By maintaining a 1300 ranking in each bracket, I'll be able to afford the Gladiator's Shanker in just 3 weeks. Even if my teams get even worse and I only get an 1000 rating in each bracket, I still get the dagger in 4 weeks, according to the calculator.

I mean... sure, having a shitty arena ranking in 3 brackets will hurt the e-peen, and will make me more hesitant to link my armory profile in external forums, but hey, epix is epix. Why didn't I discover mediocrity sooner?

UPDATE: J has shattered my dreams. Apparently you can only get points for one bracket at a time, so my numbers are all off. If I was on a 5v5 team that maintained a 1300, I could get the shanker in 7 weeks. If i maintain a 1000, it goes up to 9 weeks. Blech. I'll stick with PVE i guess...

PASS THE EVADE BUG PLEASE

YES I LIKE IT WHEN MOBS EVADE BUG

AND IF YOU LIKE MOBS THAT EVADE BUG THEN DO THIS QUEST, IT WILL BE YOUR FAVORITE EVER

source: comment on alla

heheh, thank goodness it didn't happen to me while i was doing that already insane quest.

As if My Wallet Wasn't Already a Dark Portal

So, not satisfied with infiltrating my waking life, sleeping habits, and social life, Blizzard has now set its sights on invading my wallet. They're now offering a WoW Rewards Visa. The offer is pretty much:

• 1% cashback in the form of WoW playtime credit


• 1 month of WoW free upon your first purchase


• 0% APR balance transfer blah blah blah


• Recycled box-art, lazily passed off as credit card design

The offer is pretty crappy, considering that you can get more than 1% cashback on some cards in ACTUAL CASH, and the balance transfer is the usual scam, but I may sign up just for the one free month of WoW... I would be less meh if the artwork was actually good, but most of it is just the same old crap from the boxes.

すっきりした！

so i have roughly a billion screenshots... and some big (meef) news!

kinduva an old one from zangar... evidently this is how the world pvp tower capture battles go...
ahhh good 'ol... underbog? or wait slave pens? bah, whatever. damn crabs.i come for you bastard giant!Mennu betrays no more
i'm sooo glad no one frikkin fell off the platform. how do you recover from that anyway?

kinduva neato quest (well, mob at least) i duo'd with bendyr. guess that's the closest i'll ever get to tanking sapphiron. this is that one in the bone wastes...
always make sure to have a strat
more bbq questin :D spider huntin fun no you can't have a pit lord, i don't care if he followed you home. ... ... ... warlocks never listen.
sooo glad we got our caverns of time attunement quest out of the way. i love this place.cow took offense to the human jokes hahathrall is my hero.
you guys remember hindwes? i think that was the name of the 'cna i cmoe?' hunter. he invited me to a mana tombs group. then before they summoned me, the priest dropped and hindwes couldn't find another healer (after like 5 minutes) so he dropped. So we picked up two guys and rocked the place. man i was so happy when he dropped.
i think i like mana tombs. too bad i got no loot >_<
shadowmoon valley is rock. ok, sure it's all dark and burnt black, which would put it in the blasted lands/hellfire peninsula category, but man, all this shit's goin down and it actually feels like a war zone. it's great. and what the hell is this c'thun looking thing doing here.

this is an awesome area, right near the zone entrance. basically a holding area for the infernals.but they obviously didn't count on the bbq!
so yeah, i was running around shadowmoon since i was real close... eventually 28 xp close...one kill later... woooo!!!
and the best for last... *sob* take my money you bitchwooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
oooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!