Random dungeons, with PUGs. When on the very slim occasion I random a good group, I smile, and remember why in fact I chose healing all those years ago: it’s fun. The other 99% of the time.. I shake my head in disbelief.

I honestly do not recommend healing PUG groups to anybody. I am amazed at the amount of fail I have seen these past four levels.

I’ll provide an example of a normal run for me.

Vortex Pinnacle, second boss down. We jump across to the last platform with the humanoid pulls. The mage and rogue in the group refuse to use CC, even though I mark and ask nicely. All DPS are not following my kill order. The tank is holding aggro, but only if the mobs are next to him; any caster will just keep beating on me as the tank doesn’t bother to hold them.

I explain that the Adepts heal, and need to be killed ASAP (or CCed.. but no, that’s MUCH too hard for those poor DPS). The tank runs in, and what results is a 3minute failfest of frantic healing all over the place as the Adepts can not be killed. I barely manage to pull through.

I mention I need a mana break and begin drinking. The tank runs off and pulls the next group with the DPS, and they all die.

“Dumbshit healer.” I here from the tank, and I am votekicked.

This wasn’t the worst run. This wasn’t uncommon. This is basically a normal PUG run for me.

Whenever I try to mark and explain a kill order, request CC and the like, the tank will most likely get fed up and threaten to leave, resulting in me being vote kicked. I can’t even ask for a mana break without potentially being kicked.

I just don’t understand. The smoothest run I have had was with a group with the tank being an alt character, only level 81 and tanking VP. With only ~65k health and one of the DPS only pulling about 2k, I was expecting another bumpy run. It all worked out the opposite.

Everyone said hello at the beginning of the run. I marked a kill order for every pull, including CC (frost trap) and it was all followed. People asked me questions, I answered them. The tank was new to tanking so we went slowly, but did not wipe once. It was the most fun I had healing a PUG in such a long time.

In contrast, the worst runs for me seem to come from tanks with 120k+ hp, which really proves skill > gear.

At one point, I almost thought my healing was actually really bad. I couldn’t understand why my groups kept failing. I queued for a dungeon run with a guild group, nervous of what to expect, and everything was completely smooth.

Healers, seriously, stick with guild runs.

*runs around excitedly*

My exams finish in less than a month, and this is what I have to look forward to.

The new ToL forms for Druids (from MMOChamp)

Night elves get the purple form.
Tauren get the brown and green form.
Worgen get the dark brown form.
Trolls get the light brown form.

Happy healing!

The posts are titled “Pimp Your Druid” and go into detail on how to obtain rare and unique mounts, items and shirts for your Druid. All of the guides are well written and contain helpful pictures and advice.

The series is as follows:

Pimp Your Druid – Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros
Pimp Your Druid – Reins of the Raven Lord
Pimp Your Druid – Swift Razzashi Raptor
Pimp Your Druid – Swift Zulian Tiger
Pimp Your Druid – Fiery Warhorse Reins
Pimp Your Druid – Swift White Hawkstrider
Pimp Your Druid – Reins of the Blue Proto-Drake

Personally, I have only obtained one of these, The Reins of the Raven Lord. This iconic Druid mount only took me one week (7 days) of farming and to this extent I was quite lucky. Doing circles around Dalaran has never been any more fun.

Soldris on his Raven Lord

Good luck with your own farming!

This experience was great experience for my band, Scry, to have a chance to record our sound, and to (soon) be able to share it with others. We are a four piece melodic rock line up, and have been playing together for almost two years. With seven original songs currently written we plan to record an album in the form of a story if we get the chance in the future.

Before recording myself, I had always wondered what the recording process for rock songs actually entailed. For those interested to read on, I will outline what the experience is like.

My band is in the interesting position of being a four piece rock band, but only having three current members. I myself play the drums, Tim plays the guitar and Andi plays piano and sings. Our search for a bassist may now (as of only this week) be over, but at the time of the recording, we had no bass player.

Tim decided he would play both the bass part and the guitar part to the song we were recording. Obviously, he could not do both at the same time, so we entered the realm of multitracking.

There are two main ways of recording a song. The first involves the whole band playing through the song and all parts being recorded, with later some overdubs (solos and harmonies) being added. The second, multitracking, involves building the song up from scratch, one (or few) instruments at a time.

The most important part to a recording is the drums. Once the drums are laid down, all other instruments can record to the drums and be in time for the recording. It is near impossible for a drummer to record over the top of a guitar, or any other instrument, and play well in time.

As I recorded the drum track, I had a click track, with heavy syncopation, blaring in my ears. What this sounded like was a constant ‘ping ping ping ping’ going back and forth across my headphones. It was quite helpful for keeping in time.

As I recorded the drum part, Tim was in the drum room with me, recording the bass. By being in the drum room he could lock in with the bass drum and get a nice sound for the rhythm section of the song.

After recording the drums and bass, and fixing up mistakes (along with guide vocals by Andi, to get him warmed up), we all moved to the mixing room and Tim recorded the guitar parts. To do this, he went through the song once, just playing the basic chords (and this take later got panned to the right), and then went through the song again, playing the basic chords with licks in between phrases. This created quite dynamic effect and was not something we had planned on beforehand. The mixer who worked with us (his name slips my mind) helped us out by giving us ideas such as double tracking the guitar, without being to intrusive into the song itself.

Next, Tim overdubbed his guitar solo. He had three takes to do this, and we experimented with distortion versus no distortion. In the age of digital recording, deleting takes, using part of one take and part of another, and recording from any spot in the song is unbelievably easy.

Finally, the vocals were recorded on top of everything else. The nature of the song had no need for double vocal takes or harmonies, meaning our recording was done.

The song itself was not. Recording a song is very much a three stage process. First, there is the writing of the song (which is a whole post in itself), followed by the tracking (discussed in this post). Afterward, there is the mixing, by which all parts are matched to one another to sound like a complete product.

We received our recording only a few days ago, months after making the takes. The mixing process takes quite some time.

With exams less then three months away, and most of my time taken, this is one of the most interesting things I have done over the past few months. With no WoW (and no gaming at all actually, except for some Halo 3 at an Open Day I went to.. long story), there is not many gaming related things I can say.

Except this. To all of my friends who have been non stop talking about Starcraft 2 for the past few weeks, while I’ve been studying like crazy, I hate you all. I’ll be there in a few months!

Using this method of streaming music through Vent you can isolate your mic input and the music stream. This allows you to either just stream the music, just talk, or do both. You will also be able to hear your own music but without the Vent delay (so it will be in front of what everyone else hears; that means no singing along ). This guide was written for Windows XP, but Vista users shouldn’t find it much different.

Programs required:

Ventrilo
Winamp
Virtual Audio Cable*

*VAC is not free but you need it to make this work.

Part One: Setting up VAC:

Open the VAC Control Panel. (Start – All Programs – Virtual Audio Cable – Control Panel). You should see this screen (minus the Virtual Audio Cable 2 line):

To make this work you need to add another virtual audio cable. Change the number in the top left corner to 2 and press set. You now should have two running virtual audio cables. You can now close the control panel.

Part Two: Setting up Winamp:

“Why Winamp?” you may be asking. It’s not my favourite media player but it has one extremely useful/required function which not many other media players also have: the ability to output to any audio I/O source. If you use another player that can do this it should also work. If you just lolwuted, don’t worry, Winamp is free and takes next to no time to set up for this.

We need to set Winamp up to output to Virtual Audio Cable 1. To do this, open Winamp:

Go to options and select preferences:

Select ‘Output’ in the left box, click NulSoft DirectSound Output v2.49 (d) [out_ds.dll]:

And change the output to Virtual Audio Cable 1:

Part Three: Setting up the Audio Repeaters:

Open up three Audio Repeaters (Start – All Programs – Virtual Audio Cable – Audio Repeater). You need the Audio Repeaters plus Winamp open whenever you want to stream music.

Set the first Audio Repeater’s wave in to Virtual Audio Cable 1 and the wave out to your output device (speakers or headphones – for me this is Plantronics Headset).

This is what controls you hearing your own music. If you want to hear your own music while streaming, start this Audio Repeater. If you want to not hear your music while streaming, stop this Audio Repeater. You can start and stop whenever you want.

Set the second Audio Repeater’s wave in to Virtual Audio Cable 1 and the wave out to Virtual Audio Cable 2.

This is what controls your music stream. If you want others to hear your music, start this Audio Repeater. If you want others to not hear your music, stop this Audio Repeater. You can start and stop whenever you want.

Set the third Audio Repeater’s wave in to your input device (microphone – for me this is Plantronics Headset) and the wave out to Virtual Audio Cable 2.

This is what controls your voice. If you want others to hear you talking, start this Audio Repeater. If you want others to not hear you talking, stop this Audio Repeater. You can start and stop whenever you want. You can talk and stream at the same time.

Part Four: Setting up Ventrilo

Open Ventrilo and go into Setup. Set your input device to Virtual Audio Cable 2.

The other settings shouldn’t matter too much. If you want a continuous music stream without microphone interruption, set the sensitivity to 0, silence time to 0.5 seconds, put push to talk off and stop the third Audio Repeater (Mic –> VAC2).

Finally, connect to a Ventrilo server, right click on the server name (e.g. Avengers of Azeroth), then select Integration – Winamp. The song you are playing will be shown next to your name.

It is only very rarely that I come across what I deem to be pure awesome. If I go looking for pure awesome, I will not find it. That is simply the way it works.

This all began with Portal.

Pure awesome

Portal is pure awesome on its own. I first tried Portal when Valve released “Portal – The First Slice” for owners of nVidia Graphics cards. This promo coincided with the purchase of my favourite possession GTX280 and as such I was given the perfect opportunity to test my new gaming computer.

I was quite impressed. More then that actually; I was amazed. As young as I may be, I still believe the statement ‘it was one of the greatest games I have played’ has meaning. Portal combines a fabulous take on the Source engine, using it to create a mind turning puzzle game, while incorporating one of the most interesting gaming characters I have encountered, GLaDOS. I don’t want to spoil the story for anyone who hasn’t played Portal yet, but she has some great one liners.

I quickly went on the Steam store and purchased the whole game. Some 20+ play throughs later, Portal still amazes me with it’s genius combination of gaming features.

Nonetheless, I am not posting this anecdote to credit Portal with pure awesomeness. The internet has done its duty and achieved this task already.

No. I am posting this anecdote because of the cake.

Not just any cake. The cake.

You know what I’m talking about people. (If you haven’t played Portal, feel free to be confused.)

Spoiler alert! For those who have not played Portal, I recommend you skip down to the end spoiler tag.

After completing Portal, and after numerous reruns of the game, I became a die hard “The Cake is a lie!” supporter.

You all know the cake is a lie..

The internet may or may not have had something to do with this.

At any rate, by die hard, I mean quite a fanatic. Upon meeting anyone who had played the game, I would list countless arguments as to why the cake is in fact a lie. I went as far as to almost start a cult of like minded individuals.

Most people just took me to like the game too much; but this is beside the point.

End spoiler alert!

Then, I met another person who has played through Portal. Upon meeting this person, I asked the very, very important question. The same I had asked countless others, which I usually followed up with “The Cake is a lie!” spam.

“Do you think that the cake is indeed a lie, or do you believe otherwise?”

The answer I received is what I consider to be pure awesome.

“The true answer lies deep within each of us, in our selves. We must find our inner cake.”

I’ve been converted. The cake may or may not be a lie, but that is beside the point.

I am now searching for my inner cake .

One of the greatest games I have ever played, Portal, is free to install until May 24th.

This means three things:

• You should make a Steam account, download/install Portal and play it. Right now. If you have beaten it already, play it again!
• The cake is a lie.
• Portal 2 is coming very soon!

That is all for now. Status: playing Portal!

I’m posting this to spread the word that my guild, the Avengers of Azeroth, is currently recruiting. We are a semi-casual 10man raiding guild on Ursin (US), Alliance side.

For the just over a year I’ve been with AoA I’ve had the most fun with WoW that I’ve ever had. Overall the guild has friendly atmosphere and is really fun to play with. You get known for who you are, not just as what class you are or something game related like that.

We’re looking for any class and spec. The main requirements are to be able to make it to raids and (most importantly) to have fun!

To see the full details, check Jed’s post on recruitment over at his blog. To apply to join the guild, post in the recruitment section of the forums.

Some people raid as if it were a sport; for world, region and realm firsts and to be recognised as the best at their chosen game. Others raid to increase the power of their characters; predominantly focused on gear and achievements. Others still raid for the sake of being with their friends and/or guildies and find fun in downing bosses and helping the people they enjoy playing with.

I would place myself in the latter category and this is something to keep in mind while reading this post. The level of fun I experience while raiding with my guild, be it progression, the weekly raid or even gearing others alts, surpasses that of any other aspect of the game. The focus of this post will therefore be how to be a good raider to the people you raid with.

The two most important things to raiding are being prepared and being efficient.

Be Prepared

Being sufficiently prepared is a crucial factor in determining how enjoyable your raids are. If all members are prepared then the raid will go much more smoothly.

In raiding terms, being prepared includes:

• Researching your chosen class, spec and role and understanding the fundamentals of raiding as this class/spec/role
• Practicing your chosen role in heroics/pugs to know how to use and apply your knowledge
• Creating a UI which actually allows you to play to your best ability (read: Blizzard UI fails)
• Having required addons installed and updated (e.g. DBM)
• Ensuring you have a computer and network connection that are sufficient (good latency, no lag)
• Setting up Vent so that you are clear when you speak and not overly loud or soft
• Planning your time ahead to ensure you will be able to play interrupted during the raid
• Allocating your talent points to maximise the impact you bring to your raid group
• Glyphing to match your talent spec and bringing stacks of glyphs you may need to change for different fights
• Obtaining the best possible pre-raid gear you can and PUGing easier raids where possible with the aim of upgrading this gear
• Gemming and enchanting your gear appropriately
• Bringing all reagents and consumables (scrolls, food, flasks) that you will need
• Researching potential gear upgrades to know what is worth rolling/spending DKP on and what is better off being passed to someone else

As a raider, no matter  how big or small your guild is, you should always be prepared to bring your absolute best game during raids. This is especially important in progression raiding. Your fellow 9 (or 24) raid members would do better to not have to wait for you to do your last minute preparations during the raid; all of this should be taken care of beforehand.

There is quite an extensive list of things you can do to prepare for raiding; not all guilds (especially more casual guilds) will be strict on making you do everything. That being said, being as prepared as you possibly can will cause others to see you as someone they can rely on and as a good raider, and in terms of raiding with your guild, a better guildie also.

Be Efficient

Being prepared for the raid is only part of the challenge. There is also things to keep in mind during the raid itself.

In raiding terms, being efficient includes:

• Logging on at least 15 minutes before the scheduled start of the raid
• Not being involved in any activity that you can’t step away from straight away to raid at the raid start time (e.g. being in a heroic at raid time is not a good idea; fishing would be fine)
• Sticking to your assignment and following the boss strategy outlined before the fight
• At appropriate times, taking the initiative to make suggestions (e.g. new strategies)
• Focusing on the raid (i.e. not half playing, half watching TV)
• Letting your raid leader do the majority of talking on Vent during the actual fights and only speaking when needed
• When speaking, as much as possible being clear and concise, using short sentences (e.g. ‘Battle Rez ready’ or ‘Soldris Battle Rezzed’)

Being efficient makes the raid as a whole run more smoothly. It increases the likelihood of a new progression boss finally being downed and reduces the total time spent clearing trash and bosses already on farm. It also helps keep your raid leader sane.

Being someone who is patient, fair, respecting and considerate to the rest of the raid will get you a long way.