Belated thanks.

It occurs to me that I never properly accredited my new blog design and layout, after my previous "I'm sorry for the mess" post.

Thanks must go to Zicon of Wowhead -- also Isolde of the fine 25-man casualcore raiding guild, Aurora, on Quel'thalas-EU; and Tone, to give her real name, which isn't pronounced at all like "Tuna" -- for painstakingly designing this new layout from scratch, after looking at the mess of HTML that comprises Blogspot's default layouts.

Kudos on your recent Heroic Beasts kill, Tone. May Aurora continue to thrive.

Captain Kirk is climbing a mountain.

Why is he climbing the mountain?

Wat.

Wat.

More 3.3.0 number-crunching.

Now. Once more, I'll deliver the disclaimer that this is still PTR stuff and it could all change. Additionally, I will say that my numbers are of a 10-man-heroic BiS list, and thus the numbers do not necessarily apply to any other gear set, above or below.

This is my BiS wishlist. I decided to have some Simcraft 3.3.0 fun with it. Firstly, I did some basic controls:

3.2.2 average DPS over 300-second fights, 10,000 iterations, full raid buffs: 7514
Scale Factors (Normalised):
Spirit: 0.35
Int: 0.23
Spellpower: 1
Hit: 1.45
Crit: 0.73
Haste: 0.69

3.3.0 average DPS, same conditions: 8726 DPS
Scale Factors (Normalised):
Spirit: 0.55
Int: 0.22
Spellpower: 1
Hit: 1.17
Crit: 0.74
Haste: 1.36

Then I started to have some fun with it. First test: Changing all "potent" gems to "Reckless":
8789 DPS
Scale Factors (Normalised):
Spirit: 0.56
Int: 0.23
Spellpower: 1
Hit: 1.25
Crit: 0.74
Haste: 1.31

Second test: Changing all "runed" gems and all "potent" gems to "Reckless":
8833 DPS
Scale Factors (Normalised):
Spirit: 0.55
Int: 0.20
Spellpower: 1
Hit: 1.28
Crit: 0.73
Haste: 1.14

Third test: Changing all yellow sockets to Quick King's Amber, and all red sockets to Reckless Ametrine:
8827 DPS
Scale Factors (Normalised):
Spirit: 0.56
Int: 0.20
Spellpower: 1
Hit: 1.14
Crit: 0.71
Haste: 1.09

So the third test took it too far -- as predicted in my previous post on the subject, socketing as many Quick gems as possible causes too much spellpower decay and the haste scaling loses its potency. There is something to be said for changing Potent to Reckless, but beyond that it starts getting a bit silly and expensive for not very much reward. And, besides, this is only tier 9 gear -- when patch 3.3 does hit, we'll be wanting to replace it all.

Huh. How about that.

So, it's early days on the PTR; thus, all things are subject to change. Buuuut ... I was curious about whether anyone had done any 3.3 Simcrafting, taking into account the haste changes.

Elitist Jerks, naturally, came through. The PP values of the current build, using 3.2.2 BiS T9 gear, and with 2/2 IST etc. etc., are:
Spellpower: 1 (Always)
Hit: 1.42 (No surprises here. Hit's always what you want)
Crit: 0.84 (Fairly consistent, really. It just naturally goes up as gear improves)
Spirit: 0.56 (Very consistent with the buffs to spirit. I guessed this precise number before I even saw it. For me, it would sit at 0.5 exactly because I don't run with 2/2 IST -- IST gives it a little extra push; just over 10%, as you see)
Int: 0.24
Haste: 1.31

Haste is better than Spellpower.

But don't all start gemming for it just yet. Early days, folks, early days. If these numbers do make it to Live, I would recommend exercising caution -- consider full Reckless gems rather than switching everything to Quick King's Amber. Scaling relies on all the stats available. The values above are from a full complement of BiS tier 9, gemmed optimally for 3.2.2 stats. In other words, all the slots apart from two would be gemmed pure spellpower. If you sink >200 spellpower and turn it all into haste, and then run the 20,000 Simcraft iterations again, you're going to get a much smaller gap between Spellpower and Haste: you'll speed up, but each thing you do will be doing less damage.

When MMO-Champion starts giving us enough data to build a Tier 10 BiS list, we'll be able to see the theoretical scaling values of a set with full Quick King's Amber versus one with full Reckless Ametrine or Runed Cardinal Ruby. My intuition tells me that Reckless will be the way to go, but time will tell.

About-face.

The chilling presence of the Frozen Throne deals Frost damage to all nearby enemies. Removes 1% of your health every 3 sec.

So, Blizzard, I heard you didn't want another Sunwell Radiance aura in future expansions, because it was a sign that you had screwed up some game mechanics. You put in diminishing returns on avoidance to ensure that this wouldn't have to happen.

So instead, you seem to think that healing is far too powerful, and that that deserves to be drained.

Fix your bloody game and stop being hypocrites.

In which I get Tailoring nerfed.

I apologise to all tailors. I just respecced Tailoring from JC. Blizzard will now nerf it, in line with their policy of breaking any profession I choose.

EDIT 1: (I can't sleep. As usual.)

EDIT 2: Oh god. 9g for a stack of Mageweave. Brickwall time! Fortunately I have lots of Runecloth stockpiled for the tailoring equivalent of the Thorium Sink.

EDIT 3: So apparently I don't actually need Mageweave at the level I learn how to Bolt it. Back to cheap silk. Yaaaay

EDIT 4: You can tell I planned this way in advance.

EDIT 5: Long craft times are the bane of my existence.

EDIT 6: Gee, Chris, do you want to guarantee these ten insignificant levels by using your overpriced Mageweave cloth, or will you take the ULTIMATE GAMBLE and risk losing TENS of silver by crafting YELLOW silk pantaloons?

EDIT 7: Why the hell do dyes stack in 10s if thread stacks in 20s?

EDIT 8: 225. Time for all the Mageweave to disappear magically.

EDIT 9: 250. Let's see what Runecloth I can scrounge up from my Death Knight.

EDIT 10: Ah. Runecloth Belt. My old friend.

ToGC. Healers: Tuonie, Chayah ... Sinespe?

You better believe it. I shelled out sixty emblems to pick up the Tier 9 healing Shoulders and Gloves, because I've had no luck getting the gloves from VoA, and I helped heal the first four bosses of Trial of the Grand Crusader, in my mix of off-spec-rolled healing pieces and just-happens-to-work-for-Disc-too DPS items. Ironically, I got no upgrades for my DPS set tonight, but I got three items (Belt, boots and ring) from ToC10N and Onyxia10 for my healing set. Know what I was doing in ToC10N and Onyxia10? DPSing.

Additionally, there's nothing quite like clearing ToC10N in 26 minutes and 30 seconds, including breaks.

Still wouldn't want to heal as a main, but it's nice to know I'm keeping myself fully up-to-date and competitive even in my offspec.

I have 12k HPS

And so can you.

I GOT THE BASTARD.

[13:30:21] [RL] [80 Shibba:1]: [Illustration of the Dragon Soul] roll
[13:30:24] Sinespe rolls 92 (1-100)

FUCK YOU, SARTHARION.

Urgh.

I'm ill. Whenever I get flu, my early warning sign is a sore throat. Sore throats happen to be the thing I hate most about illness. I can cope with the aches and the shakes just fine, and the loss of appetite isn't so much of a problem (thanks to Charlotte for sorting out that one: "Drink squash. Really strong. With lots of sugar. You'll trick your body into thinking you've eaten something and you'll get lots of glucose to fight the virus.").

I write the above paragraph as a warning that I might not be quite so lucid as I normally am, since I have something to respond to today. Yaaaaay.

Eoy now tells us that Ensidia has dropped him from regular raiding in ToGC25, out of reasons of efficiency. Naturally, one of those points of "Efficiency" is our "low DPS" compared to other classes. Which other classes? Mages and Warlocks are the two noted in his post. Those are pure DPS classes. Fair enough, a 2k discrepency is perhaps a tad higher than it should be, but those things could be fixed by nerfing damage done across the board rather than boosting Shadow Priest DPS, and comparing us with pure DPS classes has always been a silly thing to do. Nowhere in his post does he mention Elemental Shamans, Boomkins or Retribution Paladins. Now, why would that be ...?

As you know by now, I don't understand why people are complaining about our DPS. Primarily, this lack of understanding is because I do things like this (Note the lack of boomkin buffs). But let's talk about utility today, ladies and gentlemen. I'm willing to admit that our utility is not very exclusive, and I think it's a slight problem. I'm fine with Ret Pallies having Replenishment. Why? Because they're a hybrid DPS class. I'm fine with Frost Mages having Replenishment. Why? Because if you want to provide Replenishment as a Mage, you're going to be sacrificing some of your DPS in order to give it.

This brings us to Survival Hunters and Destruction Warlocks. Unlike the Frost tree for Mages, there is not such a huge loss of DPS by speccing Survival or Destro as opposed to Marksman or Demonology. Why should that be? They are pure DPS classes already, so why is their purity of DPS not tainted by picking up the extra utility?

But let's go back to the damage issue. Here's why I don't think it's very useful to say "omg buff us" (and, yes, as selfish as it is, it relates to my own situation). Let's take it as a fact that in 25-man cutting-edge content, Shadow Priests aren't performing well; but let's also take it as a fact that in 10-man cutting-edge content (where I currently am), Shadow Priests are performing well. What happens if you buff us based on the first fact alone? Our damage becomes overpowered in 10-man content. So what is Blizzard supposed to do? How can Shadow Priests be buffed for one raid setting without making us overpowered in another raid setting? Are we going to have to have a system whereby all abilities have a different base damage value depending on whether they're being used in a 10-player or a 25-player context? Would that not be something of an artificial solution to the problem?

And now I'm going to wander carelessly into the minefield of self-entitlement by saying this: cutting-edge content is not the only content there is. Or, rather, the "hardcore" attitude is not the only attitude in the game. Fancy Hat Club considers itself pretty hardcore in terms of our raiding ability, but I can't help but feel that guilds like Ensidia take this kind of stuff waaaay too far. If you're raiding in a guild where, as apparently is the case for Eoy, people are "Focus-geared" for the sake of "Efficiency", and where 2k DPS out of >100k RDPS matters that much, then, I'm afraid, you're not really in a setting that is representative of the game as a whole. "Bring the player, not the class" is the philosophy taken by Blizzard -- if Ensidia chooses not to follow that philosophy, do they not relinquish any claim to being representative? On their own heads be it, and I hope Eoy leaves Ensidia to find a guild that doesn't feel the need to min/max to such a minute level in order to rush through the content.

"Who's tanking?"

This question irritates me.

Specifically, this question irritates me when it comes from healers, in pugs. If you're a healer, presumably you have some kind of raid/party frame for, y'know, healing. Presumably this can be clicked to see a unit frame of the person you've selected. Presumably this unit frame tells you that person's current & total health. Total health is generally a good indication of whether someone's a tank or not.

If this is not the case, I'd love to know how you heal.

This has been designated a happy zone

All he needs is a hug.

Apologies for the mess

Page is undergoing some alterations. It'll look squiffy for a while.

"Can't".

There is no such thing, except in the realms of breaking laws -- either societal or scientific.

I'm keeping this post short. I just feel it necessary to reiterate that point for everyone who ever doubts themselves or others. Anyone can achieve anything if they are committed to putting in the necessary work. Never believe otherwise.

This sums up my current mood.

Sinespe, Hero of Shattrath

Many Basilisks were harmed in the attainment of this Feat of Strength.

Department of Labour and Fail.

Here's a sure-fire way of losing votes for your political party: employ people in those governmental departments deemed "Helpful to the public" who don't have the brain capacity to read words, letters and numbers accurately, and who type at 10WPM.

I'll do some background, just in case there are some non-UK readers of this little corner of cyberspace.

The UK Government has a service for just about anything related to living. This is a good concept. All of them tend to be found on www.direct.gov.uk. One of those services is designed to help the unemployed find work. It goes under a variety of names: JobcentrePlus is the formal title, though it's also 'Jobseekers'' or any derivation thereof. It provides a fair deal of useful and not-so-useful job listings on its website. (Though the website is pretty unnavigable until you've gotten used to the terrible way it works. If there's one thing I have to curse Blizzard for, it's that they give false hope to the idea that good design is easy to do or to find. Or maybe it's just that the Government doesn't want to spend money on a good web designer.)

The other type of support that the Department for Work and Pensions supplies to people looking for work, apart from job listings and the like, is a baseline amount of financial support. They claim it's enough to live off of, but it really isn't (£53 a week, unless you qualify for further benefits).

Now, here's the problem; or, rather, here's the way the system works, and then how I got dicked over by one number or letter in one wrong column. To qualify for the Jobseekers' Allowance ('the dole', it's also colloquially called) you need to prove that you're actively seeking work. You're given a little booklet in which you can log your various job applications and any other speculative queries or steps taken to find work or improve your employability. Every two weeks, you're supposed to go to the local office and 'sign declarations': these declarations basically say, 'The information I am supplying is accurate as far as I'm aware. I am also aware that any deliberate attempts to supply false information can lead to prosecution.' At the signing, this aforementioned booklet is checked and, by the looks of things, you talk through it with the chap or chapess sitting at the desk.

The time at which you sign is denoted by your National Insurance number (I believe the equivalent to the NI number in America is the "Social Security" number). It determines the day on which you sign and the "Rotation" that you're on -- e.g. in my case, it would be whether I were signing on Tuesday 22nd September or Tuesday 29th September, and then the following signing would be either Tuesday 6th or 13th October, respectively.

So now we come to my problem. I was written down as signing Tuesday 22nd, then October 6th, and fortnightly every Tuesday thereafter, at 2.28 pm. I turned up ten minutes early, as I had been advised to do. I waited. My name wasn't called. I waited until 3.00pm, at which time the guys at the desk at which I was due to sign buggered off somewhere else. I went up to the person on the desk adjacent to that one to ask her why I hadn't been called. She informed me that I had been written down on the wrong rotation, and that I was actually due to sign next week -- the 29th. She edited my booklet (which has on it a little section for 'Turn up at this time'), and so I thought that I'd just need to come up next week.

Today, Saturday, I receive a letter telling me that I no longer qualify for Jobseekers' because I 'didn't turn up to sign my declarations'.

So. I turned up to when I thought I was supposed to sign, and I didn't get called. I was then informed that I actually would be signing the following week: i.e. I wasn't supposed to be there this week. If that were the case, how did it either a) get programmed into the system that I was supposed to be there and yet no one called me up, or b) display on the screen that I was supposed to be the following week, and yet still send a message through to the relevant 'Jobseeker cancellation system' or whatever to tell them I hadn't turned up to something I wasn't supposed to attend?

The guy who originally put me into this system suffers from the issues I opened this blog post declaring to be a sure-fire way of losing voted. He couldn't spell accurately, and he hunted-and-pecked. Hunting-and-pecking isn't necessarily a problem -- not everyone can touch-type, I get that -- but it's fairly obvious that he put me on the wrong schedule and cocked all this up. If I could remember his full name I'd get him fired. People like him are employed, and yet someone with a degree, a perfect command of English and A-level Maths, and an IQ of above 90, gets rejection letters for interview opportunities, let alone from the results of interviews themselves.

In an ideal world, this kind of thing would be simple to fix as well as being simple to happen. Except, it's not. From what I understand it, I have to go through a full 'independent tribunal' process because one incompetent drone fails at taking his job seriously enough to input the stuff that actually matters and can cause this kind of time- and money-consuming bullshit to occur. It asks me to send in a form, within a month of having received the letter which details an erroneous decision. Within a month?! Does this mean I'm going to be waiting two months or more before I actually sort this thing out? I'm hoping to be set up in Devon by that time, for God's sake!

Roll on self-employment. Except, since I'm not on Jobseekers', I can't get free help from a government affiliate by way of asking what I need to do to be self-employed, in terms of things like Tax Returns. I refuse to hire an accountant to do that shit for me, that's for sure. Hiring an accountant would admit laziness, and laziness alone. I'm perfectly capable of doing sums, I just don't know what the sums are that I'm supposed to do.

3.2.2

IST still sucks. Twisted Faith change is nice, but doesn't call for an overhaul in how we gear.

That is all.

Oh, and the Transcendence 232 helm is just above Helm of Clouded Sight according to my napkin maths, so knock yourself out if you only have access to 10-man content: 265.44 to 256.38

FAO Atremini: Cease and Desist.

Sigh. Please stop polluting my forum with your ill-thought-out, class-cloning, or otherwise unnecessary ideas. Shadow Priest DPS is not so bad that it needs radical overhauls such as those you bash your head against your keyboard to show us.

I Demand a Recount.

This issue has been kinda beaten to death, but I'll forge ahead anyway and hope that something new or something more precise transpires from it.

There are situations wherein Recount is a useful tool. If you don't clear the DPS threshold required for each of the Northrend Beasts on Heroic (e.g., the Jormungar spawn before Gormok has died), but all of your DPS do survive the whole fight, it could be relevant to look at the Damage meter. If people are dying, the Healing meter or the Damage Taken meter might give some indication of what was happening. If your healers are going oom, it might be due to overhealing.

Note all the "mights", though. Owing to the diversity of fights we have been given in Wrath, there is not a single solution or fault with any scenario. Of the situations mentioned in what is a very basic, hard-hitting gear check, let's take them in turn.

The reason why the Jormungar spawn too early (Or, rather, why Gormok doesn't die in time) could be a lack of DPS; however, not on Gormok himself, but on the Snobolds. If too many people are staying on the boss, debuffs will fade which can affect DPS. This is always the problem with splitting DPS between two targets without any overlap: if I were to target the Snobold, but our Warlock were to focus on the boss, Misery would fade from the boss and Curse of the Elements would not be applied to the Snobold. This kind of stuff won't show up on Recount. That we have low DPS might not even be reflected by mathematical numbers. (Total DPS / time allowed) compared to (health of boss / time allowed) may not necessarily result in the total DPS being lower than the threshold (My DoTs on both targets, for example, would hide any deficit), yet the boss may not be dying quickly enough.

Similarly, with targets dying too quickly, it could once more be a DPS issue because of the snobolds. Equally, though, I mentioned the "Healing and Damage Taken meters". The latter of these requires clicking on individual bars to see whether targets died to their stack of Fire Bomb being too high and thereby being unhealable (Two stacks is the minimum you are able to take, given reaction time and assuming you're standing still; as you should be unless running into range of attacking a Snobold. Three is manageable. Four is pushing it. Five is a sign of Plancktardation.*), or maybe because of Impale damage or a healer being Snobolled. Note the italics: you have to look deeper than the coloured bars.

Healers going oom? That could be poor tank gear, or poor Impale tank switches, or, again, low DPS causing a fight to go on for too long. It's not enough to look at overhealing and say that that is the cause of a healer's mana problems. On Algalon, for instance, it's impossible for Holy Paladins to find time to use Divine Plea for its full duration because of the insane tank damage. I've taken to dropping Shadowform after the first Big Bang to pop my Hymn of Hope. I don't need the mana myself because Dispersion is on a 75-second cooldown for that fight. I can safely stop nuking for a few seconds, whereas they can't really afford more than one GCD to drop Mana Tide or Shield a raid target.

So, what am I getting at here? Well, pretty obvious, really: Recount is useful, but you need to go beyond the coloured bars. Now, it's time to look at the boring bit: what Recount is not for. More importantly: why it is that there is never any situation in which being top of the charts is in any way meaningful or important. This has been said by many, many people, but it has never really been explained other than in general terms of the rabid Pure Damage class who stands in the fire for the sake of not losing 0.1% of his DPS time.

Instead, and initially, I'm going to display a mathematical approach using a recent example from my own raid group. In this example, a rarity! A shadow priest at the top of the list! If I didn't realise how pointless the victory is, and if I were part of that horribly aggressive and anti-social demographic which, unfortunately, is the reason for this post, I might brag about it. Instead, let's see how much the success really means.

We will, of course, ignore the fact that Deathfist and Tinytran died early. That is an explanation far too easy for me -- naturally, looking at their DPS values, they would have been first and second respectively -- and Abominable Power would have taken Razzmatazz over my level of DPS. Those arguments don't matter to meter-spammers, because to their limited brainpower, the mantra of "If the DPS dies, it's their own fault" must of course apply to every fight in the game.

Instead, let's destroy the fallacy by looking at the values on their own merit.
Sinespe: 2265456
Razzmatazz: 2249801.

0.14% separates us. The amount of actual damage separating us is the equivalent of one Mind Blast crit during Icehowl's stun. What is the point in getting excited over that? The RNG favoured me over him -- it wasn't down to my skill, or my gear, or anything. In fact, I screwed up my DPS quite a lot over the course of that fight: I always do, because it's so hectic. I even got spell locked at one point during Gormok because I wasn't paying attention. Getting help from the RNG doesn't just account for that 0.14%: in a simulation of perfect circumstances he would have beaten me based on my errors alone.

Aside from the RNG issue, why should it ever matter who did how much DPS, if the boss dies? It's as pointless as looking at HPS on a successful kill: If your assigned targets do not die when healing them, and the assigned DPS target does die, why should it matter how much "value" everyone brought? It's clear that everyone brought a sufficient measure to overcome the task set for us, otherwise we would have wiped and had to have re-evaluated. Evaluating these figures on a kill means nothing. It is, however, funny sometimes to see classes that scale incredibly well with fight mechanics do ridiculous DPS. It gives no real value aside from its humour, though.

So far, though, I've given far too much credit to the whole scenario: I've assumed a raid setting in which everyone is pulling equal weight. The reason I've done that, though, is that "Everyone pulling equal weight" is the only situation that comes even the slightest bit close to being relevant or being a "Strong argument" in favour of meter whoring (There are in fact no strong arguments). Even worse is when people meter-whore in PuGs. Fantastic, Imapwnu, you managed to out-DPS everyone by 3% or more. And what is your point here? You out-gear them. And if you don't out-gear them? Well, I guess you out-skill them. Well done. You out-skill a random collection of people on your server, who probably are not putting 110% effort into their performance because it is a PuG, not progression content.

I've gone into the realms of ranting now, so I'll reign it back a bit into more sober territory. Meter-whoring (I promise I'll end on a positive note. My conclusion isn't "Meter-whores suck". Well, not the main one, at least.) is a sign of division within a raid. It is a sign that at least one of your members is confused about who, exactly, is the "enemy". You are not supposed to compete with each other in a raid setting: your adversaries are not your fellow DPSers; your adversary is that massive three-part robot trying very hard to P3W*2 your face off. It is absolutely fine to want your personal DPS to be as high as it can be, but pushing yourself for the sake of yourself is much different to pushing yourself for the sake of "Beating everyone else".

Yet, going back to PuGs, I will say that Recount is useful for building friendships if used in a civil, jovial manner, rather than a jerkish, braggardly manner. I know one of the best-geared Shadow Priests on my server, of equal skill to me, because we were in an Eye of Eternity PuG together and we were trading places on the meter with every failed attempt. This is where I have to admit something: while I don't use Recount as an e-peen measure, I do use it to see if people aren't shaping up to how they should be. I do allow myself to get somewhat annoyed when I see a Rogue in full Tier 8.5 pulling 3k DPS on Koralon, for example. Thus, when I find someone who actually uses their gear to its full potential, I have a tendency to reach out to them either in lighthearted competition or in outright appreciation. I was most impressed at a particular Warlock whose name, alas, I can't remember: in Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle, in a mixture of heroic epics and blues, he came pretty close to out-doing me in my 2/5 Tier 8.

Though I'm elitist, I don't want to sound arrogant by what I said in the last paragraph: I don't talk to these people out of a sense of relief, per se, that I've found someone "Worthy of my time" -- more the opposite, really. In such a negative environment that the Internet seems to encourage through anonymity, it isn't very often that kind words get spoken. Particularly when I'm healing, it's nice to get complimentary whispers on a job well done -- but that applies to my DPS, too. I don't consider myself "above compliments", by which I mean I will reply to people who say "Nice DPS" with a "Thanks" rather than an "I know". The latter I consider arrogant.

I've strayed from my point somewhat. That's what I get for being distracted all day and coming back to this again and again to write a little more each time. I think my point is: use Recount constructively. If you feel that you "need to be at the top", you need to rethink your priorities. What's more important: being at the top, or killing the boss?

*Apparently that is a word I shouldn't use. I do rather like it, though.