I heard the bells...

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
  And wild and sweet
  The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said:
  “For hate is strong,
  And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead; nor doth he sleep!
  The Wrong shall fail,
  The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Then, ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
  A voice, a chime,
  A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And the bells they’re ringing
Like a choir they’re singing
And with our hearts we’ll hear them
Peace on earth, good will to men

Do you hear the bells they’re ringing?
The life the angels singing
Open up your heart and hear them
Peace on earth, good will to men

adapted from “Christmas Bells” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and
“I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day” by Casting Crowns.

Merry Christmas and a Peaceful New Year to you all.

My mom is the best

Aside from the usual reasons most people love their mothers, I love my mom because a large chunk of my sense of fun comes from her, and for me, the whole gaming thing comes from her. It has a lot to do with her ability to maintain a childlike nature throughout her life.

After my wife and I put our kids to bed here on Christmas Eve (well, it was when I started this post), my mom gets these huge presents out of a closet, handing one to my dad, my wife and me. “You have to open these now,” she says. Okay...

A few minutes later, the three of us are firing away at each other with our brand-spanking-new Nerf N-Strike Vulcan EBF-25 blasters while my mom took pictures. LOL What a blast! (Yes, that’s my wife screaming a battle cry as she charged around the corner at me. At least, I think that’s what happened—it’s all a blur... :-)

Thanks, mom. You’re the best!

Time, time, time

So you noticed I haven’t blogged much lately? Yeah, I noticed, too. Something about all the holidays and family birthdays this time of year really seem to sap my interest in doing things like blogging. On top of that, this being a blog about a game, it’s really not *that* important that I post something here. Anyway...

Patch 3.3 hit last week, and Devolve hit up the new Icecrown raid (10 man) on Thursday. The couple days before raid I spent quite a bit of time reading up on rogue changes over at EJ. I was sad to see that combat spec was getting the shaft. Based on changes to Deadly Poison and Improved Poison, mutilate spec was seeing a substantial improvement in dps, giving it a 15% to 20% lead over combat. Blizzard quickly realized that was probably too high, and they were very fast in nerfing Hunger For Blood, changing it from giving 15% damage boost to 10%.

Big bleeping deal. Mutilate still has roughly a 10% dps lead over combat, seriously impairing combat as a viable spec. I know Blizz said they wanted rogues to *want* daggers more, since too many rogues (in their opinion) were neglecting, or passing on daggers, in favor of swords, axes, fists and maces. However, I am highly annoyed that they would make the PVE dagger spec so good it would make any attempt to stay combat look questionable. Combat should be a viable spec, but right now, most rogues that want to maximize their raid dps, will go mutilate.

/sigh

Seeing as I had already been feeling that combat was not delivering like it had back in Ulduar, I decided to go ahead and bite the bullet, giving up my favored spec to go with mutilate.

Fortunately, Ofn has a couple really nice daggers (since no other class on our raid team really wants or can use them, meaning they all fall to him), and with a little re-gemming, gear adjusting and re-speccing, I had a setup that the spreadsheet reported would give an additional 800 to 900 dps. Good grief. (more annoyed)

So, at raid Thursday night, I was ready to go as mutilate and by the time the night was over, I saw both the highs and lows of the spec. On stand-and-deliver, I-can-stay-behind-the-target-and-never-move fights, the spec really shined, fairly easily out-dpsing other classes. On fights requiring movement, or switching off to adds, it was mediocre. And on trash, there were several times when it downright sucked.

I was reminded of why I abandoned the spec in early LK / Naxx days (even though it supposedly provided better dps than combat back then, too) — inconsistent performance over the course of a whole raid and a world of difference between trash and bosses.

This pattern has been repeated in the days since making the switch. When running 5-mans, or dpsing trash, mutilate’s dps fluctuates from adequate to bad, but when dpsing single-target, long-lived, stationary fights (hello Saurfang), it’s incredible.

I had made the decision to drop the combat spec entirely, going with PVE mutilate and PVP mutilate as my regular specs. However, after last night’s raid, where we downed Saurfang, I’m thinking I will move to always having a combat spec available for heroics and raid trash, and changing the mutilate spec between PVE and PVP depending on need. If only they would come out with the ability to carry *3* specs, lol!

Aside from my annoyance with rogue specs, we all had a good time clearing ICC 10 this week, and I was lucky enough to get Ofn a new cloak, belt and ring out of it. They aren’t exactly the slots Ofn needs to upgrade the most, but they are significant improvements nonetheless.

In other news, I finally got my pally alt (prot/ret), Zephaniah, to 80 a few weeks back, and was steadily gearing him up until 3.3 hit. I’m still learning the tanking ropes with him, but he is, apparently, geared enough to tank heroics, having successfully run 5 or 6 of them with no wipes or serious threat problems — not that he’s been running stuff with Donk, Neo or Lakini dpsing, but still... Now if only I could get him over the level 285 blacksmithing hump; thorium is expensive and I believe it’s not a good use of my time to go farm it. Oh well, it’ll come.

Back to Ofn, he is now up to almost 7400 achievement points (the armory is incorrect). The big, slowly developing ones I’ve been working on are 35 exalted reps and 100 mounts. Exalted rep #34 is almost done (Hand of Vengeance) and then I’ll have to pick either Lower City or Keepers of Time to finish out (both are about 9500 revered). Of course, following that, there will be getting to 40 exalted reps which will give the title, “The Exalted”. But one step at a time.

Regarding mounts, Ofn sits at 91, with 3 more that can be purchased with gold. That leaves 6 mounts to get to 100. There are 3 more Tournament mounts to grind out and 3 PVP mounts to grind out, which will give him the achievement. If only Mandokir, Thekal or Rivendare would drop their rare mounts, I’d have less grinding to do. But alas, no luck so far.

Finally, no exciting AH story of the week this week (or for the last several). I haven’t really worked the AH in quite some time. Simply put, my toons all have plenty of gold, and I’ve been spending time leveling and achieving instead. I’ll get back to it at some point, as the purchasable mounts will be quite expensive and I want to have a sizable chunk coming down the back stretch of LK.

In off-topic news, my 4 year old daughter’s ballet class were reindeer for Santa in the Maine State Ballet’s production of The Nutcracker. No, there are no reindeer in the official ballet; this is a cameo at the end of the show, just something they do here in a nod to the season and the tiny ballerinas. I was impressed that her 7 year old brother watched the show as intently as he did, seeing as it’s a pretty far cry from Astro Boy. Of course I happily played the role of the doting father, bringing her a flower for her performance and showering her with praise. I intend to enjoy these times to the fullest while they last.

The Baconstrip™ Maine Weather Report:
Currently 39° F and overcast

Epic

This post is off-topic.

A fairly new advantage to summertime for my wife and me, is the sending away of our children to stay with grandparents for a few days, allowing us time to be adults and enjoy each other’s company — without interruption.

The kids have been gone with my folks for the last 3 days, and Sunday, after church, my wife and I were deciding what to do for lunch. We considered grabbing something “to go” and heading to the beach, or going to a restaurant on the water. But, given the awesome weather, and it being a weekend day, we figured both options would likely be crowded. So instead, we headed to our local supermarket, where they steamed some lobsters for us and we grabbed some fixin’s &mdash asparagus, potato salad, deli rolls and wine and then went home, enjoying a quiet, epic lunch together... uninterrupted. ;-)

The Baconstrip™ Maine Weather Report:
72° F, clear and sunny with low humidity

Not fade away

My raid team members may remember that I left Tuesday’s Naxx 10 run early due to a pet emergency. Though things appeared to work out alright that night, it turned out to be only the beginning of a sad, helpless, 4-day ordeal that ended this morning. Brownie, our black, barking cat (it’s true--ask Blue, he heard him over Vent) has passed on.

He was a content, laid-back, happy cat who communicated more with his tail than some humans do with words. He was patient with our little kids, loved to sleep on my wife’s pillow at night and he liked pumpkin pie.

From the red dirt of Oklahoma where we took him in as an abused stray, to the white snows of Maine where he lived most of his life, he traveled far and lived well. He brought much happiness to our lives and, I believe, we brought him happiness as well.

Rest in peace, Brownie; you will be missed.