New dad gaming...a pseudo how-to for Blizzard fans with a newborn kiddo

So,
Have a kid and your world will be rocked...certainly for the better.

If you're like me, you'll be very focused on that child, helping out the wifey, and you'll probably still have to go to the old J-O-B.

C130J...if it ain't rainin', it ain't trainin'

This post is for you, if you still want to get your gaming fix in, especially if you are an avid Blizzard fan.

1. Hearthstone is now on your iPhone.

I played the entire Blackrock Mountain campaign on my iPhone.

2. 5-minute gaming strategies for WoW on your laptop.

I get to add captions to any pictures of my kid.

3. Mobile Warcraft options using Splashtop.

This is a screenshot from my iPad, which plays at about 15 fps with a 1 second lag.

Those are a few of the good options available...I'll expand on each of them, some now, and some in future posts.

First of all, if you have ever played a CCG, you will likely enjoy Hearthstone.  It is a particularly well-done game, and the iPhone port is phenomenal.  It runs better on my iPhone 6 Plus than it does on my iPad 2.  It was an absolute thrill to start that game, btw...the campaign unlock portion I found to be very fun.  Even now, my go-to form of playing Hearthstone is playing against the innkeeper with fun decks I create.  I'm not a particularly competitive person.  So, if you like CCGs and you enjoy Warcraft, you simply must try this free-to-play masterpiece out.  Admittedly, after I got into the game I spent some iTunes cash to get some new decks, but you can have a ton of fun without spending a dime.

"5-minute gaming" is kind of a play on words from a good book "One Minute Manager," which I read because I like leadership and efficiency books.  There is a way to play WoW five minutes at a time, although this is an idea that I have yet to truly flesh out into a real method.  I can tell you that some aspects of WoW are entirely exclusive to those people who have huge chunks of time they can spend gaming without major interruptions.  I am no longer one of those people, and I have not been since I stopped serious raiding during TBC.  While I miss raiding, I still enjoy the game.  Therefore, I have to find ways to play that don't take a ton of time.

What can "5 minute gaming" NOT do for you?  You won't be able to raid, run 5-mans, complete lengthy quest chains at one time, or even

How do you play WoW five minutes at a time?  I think the answer begins with some basics.  Have small objectives that cater to a larger goal you've set.  For example, if your goal is to have a level 100 of a certain class, you can level that alt five minutes at a time.

Want to get more out of your five minutes?  Get a leveling addon, such as Zygor, WowPro, Dugi, etc.

Other helpful 5-minute leveling tips: choose "exit game" when you have to leave quickly, instead of hearthing.  (You can zone back in and pick up where you left off, instead of having to travel back...the slight rested experience accrued is NOT worth the travel time.)  Pay attention to opportunity costs while gaming!  Addons can really help you be more efficient.  Here are some addons I love: Master Plan, Topfit, RealUI (stay tuned for a full blog post on this gem), and EasyMail.  Also, have a bank alt that is in a major city!  Simply send your sellable items there and don't bother trying to move your current levelers or garrison players to those cities...not worth your time.  Some other things that "5 minute gaming" can really apply to: reputation grinding for bodyguards or factions in WoD, garrison chores, and social conversations.

Finally, there is a particularly unique way to transport World of Warcraft over to the world of mobile gaming.  No, they have not created a playable WoW port on your iPhone or iPad, although that would be FANTASTIC.  However, a streaming app called "Splashtop" is very capable of controlling your WoW characters with a surprising level of fidelity.  Splashtop has a feature you can pay for that allows you to create your own overlay controls, and this can make WoW into a console-ish game where you control your movement with one thumb and your camera angle with your other thumb.  I also added buttons that would function as keys, such as 1-4, Q, E, R, Enter, Escape, etc.  With these basic controls I can get around, even collect the ore and herbs in my garrison.  I intend to improve and validate my design by doing some leveling using only my iPad.  Oh, by the way, those essential splashtop controls are only available for their iPad app, not their iPhone app.  But anyways, it is pretty cool to be able to sign on my iPad and play WoW at all.  The lag between your control input and the character response is dependent on the connection.  If you are playing on the same Wifi network, it's about a half-second delay.  The video on the same Wifi, by the way, is stunning...it's about 15 fps on my iPad!  Over the internet (another service in Splashtop you must pay for), it's certainly lower fps.

Here is the Splashtop setup: WoW must be installed on a computer, either PC or Mac, and the Splashtop Streamer app must be running.  (This works best with only one active monitor.)  You log into Splashtop Personal on your iPad and choose "native resolution" for the computer.  When you connect to that computer, you should put it in trackpad mode for best use, then activate the gaming controls if you bought that feature (which you should if you intend to play WoW).  You are essentially using a VPN to access that computer, and you can do anything...one of the things it does well is WoW.  That screenshot above shows you how it can look.  Configure your Splashtop buttons to include the important keys you would find yourself pushing.  The left-most circle is the movement button, which allows for WASD-type movement.  The red button on the right is my solution to camera angle problems.  I configured it to "right click then drag," and then I turned the Splashtop sensitivity all the way down.

If you jailbreak your iPad, from what I hear, you can actually get a bluetooth mouse to work with your iPad...THAT would be the best of all worlds, but I have not even tried this yet.

OK...so these are some different methods I use to still get my gaming fix in while living a very dynamic life which requires my attention minute-to-minute.  Let me know if you have any other ideas!

Balance. How to win at RL and WoW. Can it be done? Episode 1.

I wrote the following segment while cruising at FL290 on autopilot on a 6 hour flight returning from Cuba to home station.  This is the start of a segment about gaming with priorities.  It was prompted by listening to the Convert To Raid podcast, which made me wish I could get back into raiding.

What is it like to be a "former raider"?
Caution: podcasts like Convert to Raid will make you want to do it again.  What is it that causes a WoW player, former or present, to miss raiding?  The sense of achievement, the thrill of a hard-earned victory, and the addictive elements of gear progression.  Also, inevitably, with consistent raiding will necessarily come a sense of community and personal connection.  If you stop raiding, you will absolutely miss the conversations on teamspeak/ventrilo, you will inspect high level raiders and feel an acute sense of envy, and you will find yourself underwhelmed by less challenging forms of gameplay.  Some people are treating "raiding withdrawals" by starting up new games, such as Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm.  Others quit the entire MMO scene cold turkey.  They will literally find themselves missing it so much they dream about it for a while.  Some people seem to shuffle around guilds in an effort to find a raid team that meets the fun quota without the time obligation.  Those folks might find it by raiding at lower difficulty, but at the expense of some of the sense of achievement.
I found myself in the "cold turkey" category when I started pilot training in late 2006.  Earlier that summer, I had been the top priest of a successful 40 man raiding guild that claimed a US 3rd kill of the final boss in AQ40.  When pilot training began, needless to say, I had almost no free time during the week, and often I was too tired on weekends to play at all.  They call this "RL," real life, which should always be a priority over hobbies.  From 2006 on, I made a conscious effort to prioritize my RL career responsibilities, then my family responsibilities when I later met my wife in 2008.  I do not regret that one bit!  Now, we have a daughter, and I'm learning how to be a husband, a dad, and an Air Force pilot and officer all at the same time.  I have continually reinstalled WoW after various leaves of absence, and I dabbled in other games such as Star Wars: The Old Republic, miscellaneous RTS games including SC2, Hearthstone, Clash of Clans, and others such as Borderlands and Skyrim.  Bottom line: nothing had me like WoW.  I would miss every aspect of the game that I wasted time on over the years...farming mobs, leveling, gathering professions, PVP, 5-mans, and of course, raiding.
How, then, do you do what you like and prioritize what's more important?
My hypothesis is that you outthink the problem.  What are my limitations?  Money? No. Skill? No. Hardware? No, although my rig is aging.  My limitation is time.  I do not have the quantity nor the consistency required to raid by most standards.  Heck, I have trouble finding time to even level my toons.  But, before I outthink the time problem, I must define with what I really want out of WoW now.

So, what do I want?
I want to have that sense of achievement and challenge, to have a group of people that I can get to know and enjoy in game, and to have at least one character that is clearly geared due to skill and effort over time.  That last part means this: a set of gear that is at least above average, which indicates a level of progression and achievement in relevant raid zones.  I would like to fill a niche in some community, but I can not have a group of people depending on me to log in before they can raid.

Why do I want these things?  The sense of achievement is that basic addiction...it's called fun in non-gamer vernacular.  It's the reason people play any game, start any craft, or play any sport.
The group of people is important to me because the community of players provided a substantial addition to the fun I had during my first years playing WoW.  I played with actual friends often over the years, and made new ones.  These people were constantly engaging me in conversation, linking sites and videos online, developed a unique and exclusive common ground for humor, and even helped form my experience as a user of the internet as a form of networking and communication.
The actual character development is important because every piece of gear you work hard for will carry great memories.  I can relate stories for almost every piece of the Tier 2 Transcendence gear I acquired during Vanilla.  The shoulders took me 3 or more months to get, raiding 3 nights a week.  The staff Benediction was a huge accomplishment.  Etc, etc.  It is hard to describe this to a non-gamer, but there is a sense of pride when you log in to an MMO and see your character at the initial screen wearing exclusive gear.  WoW players get this...a hard-to-earn set, or an exclusive title or mount, says, "I am good at this, I am above average."  It's a point of pride.  It's something I miss.

Ok, we started with why...but HOW do I do it?  I'm not sacrificing meaningful time with my wife or daughter, nor am I going to slack off as an instructor pilot in the Air Force. I am still going to work out and run and stay in shape, and I am still going to prioritize my faith.  That's a lot of stuff on my plate that comes before hobbies.
I doubt anybody will ever read this far, but we have just drilled down to the meat of what this blog was intended to be.  I suspect that there are a lot of people who will fit in this category, or at least should.

So, here we go...maybe I should make this a podcast.

Problem #1: How to raid with little overall time in small increments.
LFR is the simplest answer, but it's worth noting that LFR contradicts Problem #2 (developing and playing with a group of friends).  The newest option available to WoW players is the revamped LFG feature which allows a player to search for a specific group as a certain role.  I will likely heal, but might choose to tank some too, because the DPS role is not in demand and I have no time to waste waiting for a group to form.
LFG will allow a player to plug into groups that are pre-formed, and if you look for a "custom group," you are not necessarily just joining a complete pug (pickup group made entirely of strangers).  Instead, you might be the one person who is augmenting a guild raid night.
Before I go into Problem #2, however, I still need to solve #1.  How do I find time to raid?
I can not realistically set the same time aside on a schedule, because that does not fit with the way my family works. I need to be available to hop up and help with our kid during most evenings, and my wife deserves my time and attention, especially on those weeknights when I've been at work all day.  What about late night hours?  Maybe in the future, but not right now.  Our daughter wakes up at night and sleep is currently at a premium, especially during the week.  I can squeeze in some mindless garrison work or some AH time (if I learn how to AH in WoD), but I can not level (much), quest, or raid.
That means I basically have weekends when I wouldn't automatically feel like I was compromising as a husband and dad.
How, then, do I arrange a raid "block" on the weekend, and what will it look like?  I think my best bet is probably late Friday night, Saturday afternoon, or Saturday late night.  If I can set aside some time, how much do I need, what do I need to do when I log in, and what can I do throughout the week to prepare?
Those questions can be answered later, but the simple solution to Problem #1 is: plan a few hours of hobby time late on Friday/Saturday and raid.

Back and blogging...RL upgrades include: fatherhood, masters degree, and instructor status

I am back in action.  My blogging hiatus is complete.  I finished my masters degree in Theology (inadvertently boosting the "priest" element of this blog), completed the USAF's instructor pilot course in the C-130J, and (most importantly) we had our first kid, Molly.
This blog will henceforth be exclusively pictures of my adorable daughter.

Just kidding.

Fatherhood and instructorhood are treating me well, although my sleep-to-wake ratio seems to have changed forever.

I now play WoW and Clash of Clans, and only in-between time spent with my wife and daughter, and when I'm not on base.  I no longer raid, but I am an avid garrison developer, and I am leveling my fourth character to 100.

Remarkably, I recovered my oldest WoW account, the one I played when vanilla launched!  My original priest is still there!  That means I now have a character with full Tier 3 (Transcendence) gear and the ultimate priest mantlepiece, Benediction/Anathema.  I am in priest transmog nirvana.  So few priests can tout those old pieces, and almost none can claim that they got Tier 3 when it was the top gear in the game.  Ahh, the old days.

I will be blogging about gaming with sporadic schedules, mobile gaming with Clash of Clans, and a LOT of WoW strategies for "fire and forget" gaming.  "Fire and forget" is a reference to air-to-air missiles which a pilot can launch and then ignore due to autonomous guidance systems.  In WoW, this includes follower missions and garrison buildings.  In CoC, just about everything other than active attacking is considered fire and forget.

Stay tuned for more updates!  I'll be sharing about my first paladin, Smoogepal, which was my first character to hit 100 thanks to the free character boost which came with WoD.  I'll be talking about the fantastic crafted items which are making my hunter, Smoogehunt, a force to be reckoned with.  And, I'll be talking about the best ways I've found to capitalize on the WoW economy when you only have minutes to log in at a time.

And, in my normal fashion, I'll weave in parallels from my career as an Air Force pilot, where I am now an instructor, flight commander, and soon (hopefully) to be a Major.

Signing off...

Waddle

High latency DPS observations

The internet is down completely here in Afghanistan today, so I took this opportunity to write a few letters home and construct a new blog entry.

Since moving to location B on this deployment, my internet connection has been stable, running about 400ms latency with a cap of 128Kbps download rate.  This has been nice for applications like FaceTime, which seem to be optimized on the military and paid networks.  The internet costs $130/month for that “faster” speed, but over here I think that’s about as good as I could ever expect.  I've been able to communicate with my wife daily, and in some of my spare time I've been able to even do some light raiding in WoW.

My most recent enjoyment in online gaming has come from a surprisingly fun class to play in WoW, the hunter.  Mine has been 90 for a while, although I merely used that toon for professions.  However, I was relatively diligent in downing Ordos and Celestials each week for a total of 4 chances at high item level gear, and that paid off (this only takes about 10 minutes if you use oQueue, or accomplish it on a Tuesday after server reset).  I ended up with four pieces of “warforged” 559 gear, which tops out at 567 once upgraded using valor points.  For Smoogehunt, I started sensing that his DPS might actually be competitive in raids at a higher item level, even with the taxing latency that slows ability use.

And so, this is what I’ve learned about playing DPS classes with high latency…

BLUF (bottom line up front): Let your UI do some of the thinking for you, because you have less time to think.

In WoW, bandwidth is generally not your biggest limfac (limiting factor).  Your super awesome hacker university-level mega internet pipeline doesn’t necessarily perform any better than my in-home $50/mo cable internet.  In reality, latency plays a much larger role in your ability to complete raids or farm mobs.  (Don’t even try to compete in PvP with high latency, at least in arenas.)  As far as I know, there is no way to queue abilities for use, so every time you want to cast Explosive Shot, you have to press a button.  For every DPS class I've seen so far (DK, rogue, hunter, and warlock), this means your triggered abilities will always be delayed by your latency + reaction time + physical cast time.  So…with 400ms latency, it takes .4 seconds at least for my system to receive the notification that Lock and Load has procced, then I have to mentally react and decide to cast Explosive Shot, and then I have to physically push my “1” key.  Now, my reaction time is decent, but this delay is simply unavoidable over here.  How, then does a DPS player compete when he is at a near half-second or greater disadvantage?

Select the right spell at the right time.  i.e. Don’t bother with Serpent Shot when a lot of low-HP mobs are in front of you…use your Glaives.

The only thing I've found so far to help with that is User Interface improvement.  Simple addons such as TellMeWhen and SpellFlash will quickly cue your attention to upcoming and high priority abilities.  For instance, I found a pre-made string that I imported into TellMeWhen for my Frost DK.  It provides some centrally positioned icons that show when I can use an ability.  It does the checking to make sure I have adequate runes or energy, and it highlights procs when they happen.  For my DK this helps me anticipate which abilities I need to use.  Even with latency, if you are selecting appropriate abilities based on energy and procs, you will suffer less DPS loss because you are never capping in any of your resources. 

Capping your resource is an automatic loss of DPS.  For a DK, you have two resources (runes and energy).  Rogues simply have an ever-regenerating energy bar, just like a hunter, and casters have mana.  My warlock also has an energy resource that can be spent to transform, which is less time critical, and my priest stores up charges that I can consume to increase my healing throughput.  If you ever have 100% energy or all of your runes (rogue/hunter/DK), and an enemy is standing, you are losing DPS.  If you capped your focus as a hunter because the game was ticking away while your connection slowly registered your actions, you lost DPS due to latency.  However, if you have 500ms latency, you can still keep your focus below 100% almost all the time.  The only exception I occasionally see is when a Lock and Load procs when I already had about 50% focus.  I might hit 100% focus while I’m dumping Explosive Shot, but the next ExS that requires focus always brings me down quickly.

The universal cooldown seems longer when you have higher latency.  OK, maybe not mathematically correct, but I can tell you that you have to wait for the UCD (the natural recharge rate before you can cast any other ability) before you can select your next attack.  With high latency this often means that you accept an additional delay between instant casts.  I notice a much faster attack pace on a faster connection with my rogue and hunter, because each of those occasionally spams instant attacks to dump energy/focus.  The good news here is that most of the time you will be selecting abilities based on procs and cooldowns, not just spamming one key waiting for the UCD.  When I do need to dump energy/focus, it simply takes me longer than a player with 30ms.  Best advice here: don’t fixate on spam abilities…the chances are that you have a proc or a cooldown you can use to fill that time instead.  Try not to ever cap an infinite resource when in combat.

Targeting makes a huge difference.  In some fights, such as Garrosh, I have noticed my DPS goes far below normal.  That’s because I don’t have a great way to target new enemies when they pop up.  I still use my mouse wheel “up” as my “target next enemy,” which I’m finding to be entirely inadequate.  I’m rarely selecting my intended target on the first single scroll, so entire seconds are lost just trying to find something new to shoot.  This is not good, and it’s even worse if you are on a melee character such as a DK or rogue!  With a hunter you should have almost zero downtime because you attack at range and you can cast all of your shots while moving.  No excuses for a hunter, so I’m going to try to find a good addon for target selection, perhaps in the form of nameplates.

Be ready to use your big abilities.  Know which key to hit when your 2-minute DPS cooldown is up, and quickly fit it into your rotation.  I now use “Q” “E” “R” and “V” more than I ever used to, because they are relatively quick to strike.  The primary numbers I use are 1, 2, and 3, and I do use shift some.  I currently have some cooldown abilities tied to the F-1 through F-5 keys at the top of my keyboard, but I find myself reaching for those and using my cooldowns a lot less frequently than I otherwise would.  I am not sure where to fit those abilities, since I also don’t naturally use the Ctrl button.  I’m constantly looking for good keybinds to improve my speed when it comes to ability selection.  The first step is definitely getting to know which spells are your character’s most important.

I recommend Icy-Veins as a great first stop.  I probably spend about 15% or more of my time “gaming” actually reading forums, tutorials, and other people’s advice.  I have been told that Noxxic is grossly inaccurate, so I went back to Icy Veins for my theorycrafting and to simply learn basic rotations on new specs.  This is where I figure out what my important spells are, and I assign the most common ones to the easiest keys to reach.  For instance, Explosive Shot is “1.”

Flying IRL, flying not IRL, achievs, and race change

OK, it was a slow week for gaming, fast week for flying.

Almost done with another air medal (20 combat missions flown).

But in my off-time I had the chance to do a few cool things.  I was invited to help clear SoO on normal difficulty, which is one step harder than Flex.  We did great!  I was present for the first 7 bosses, and was ranked well in healing, usually near the top if absorbs are counted.  A big shout out to the folks at Genetically Superior for offering to give me a shot.

I got a 553 ilvl staff off Galakras, which is a level of loot I never even expected to have.  After 2 upgrades, that's a 561 weapon!  I have a few new good lessons learned about healing on this network, which is notorious for hopping routers without warning, therefore disconnecting all connectivity.  This almost always occurs in the middle of a boss fight.

A note about networks...

This is what you want to see if you're using a wireless adapter.  

This shows you how many routers I can pick up at one time, however.

The network we use here is configured, perhaps inadvertently, to swap your router to a "stronger" connection upon any background scan, which Windows insists on doing no matter how much I try to avoid it.  So, when that happens and my primary "good" router has a lapse, I get reconnected to a "lesser" router that effectively kills the internet.  Everybody has this problem here, and it's common for folks to complain about skype cutting out at interval or for facebook to simply stop loading.  That's because, in the background, their wifi connection is going to something like this:

My only solution so far is simply to initiate the background scan on my own and choose my primary router, forcing the connection to the good one.  How long it will stay on that router is anybody's guess...I would say I get about 15 minutes before it hops, if I'm lucky.  It's not unusual for me to literally reconnect to my router in the middle of a raid boss fight, so for a period of 10 seconds or even more, my guy is standing there uncommanded.  Fortunately, I'm usually so quick that the game doesn't even boot me off.  I have tried programs such as WLAN Optimizer to cancel the background check, but it seems to have no effect whatsoever.  That tells me that the mil routers themselves may be the culprits.  One way or another, we'll be at a different base in a few weeks, so perhaps their internet will be structured differently.

In other news, I transferred my pandaren toon over to blood elf, primarily for raiding and transmog reasons.  I like the pandaren character model in theory, but in reality it looks awkward on most mounts, terrible in most good transmog sets, and the area consumed by the player in the middle of the screen is less than ideal for healing.  My first 7 years, I played an undead character model when healing, and never had to deal with large character types crowding out my monitor before.

Oh, and I finally got the achievement in ICC10 I've been working on for 3 weeks.  Check out the new look of Smooge.  Notice the subtle glowing skeleton death dragon mount:

Regaining the original tier 2...old school loot

I have decided that I am going to restore my priest to the original set that I had at the the end of vanilla WoW, all those years ago.
Some people may not know that the old tier sets, as well as the bosses that yield them, still exist.  On my original priest that was long since traded away or deleted or both, I had EVERY single piece of Transcendence gear, and I got that gear at a time when resilience did not yet exist and there were no higher instances in the game than Blackwing Lair.  I was literally the best geared priest on my original server, Smolderthorn, for quite some time.
Unfortunately, that character was deleted from WoW years ago, and my new priest, of the same name, has fine gear but not the legacy pieces that once stayed in my bank.

HOWEVER, you can still get this stuff!  I am now going through the process of clearing Blackwing Lair ALONE!  Despite many naysayers online, I successfully destroyed the first boss, Razorgore, using Discipline.

Details, in case anybody wants to try this: I MC him on the orb, start destroying eggs on the far side, and as the timer comes close, I bring him back to me, shield him, then use divine star to thin out the adds and build up aggro.  The shield heals and protects him, but you can only use an instant cast spell because casting breaks your hold on the orb.
I got about 60% of the eggs on the first MC, and he was still above 80% health.  It took 3 MCs total, and he had about 40% health left at the last egg.  He is, of course, simple to kill at that point.  The only trick is not getting him killed during the egg hatching, but the adds seemed to favor me, for whatever reason.

Good luck all you priests!  And stay tuned as I continue in BWL on my quest for the lost tier 2 gear.  Btw, nothing dropped from Razorgore, so I'll have to try him again next week.  Also btw, I had to get attuned to BWL, which was a simple process that involved soloing upper Blackrock Spire (UBRS), which was a lot of fun to see again as a level 90.  All in all, it took 5 attempts to learn his fight, but it took almost just as long to find the entrance to BWL.  When was the last time you entered Burning Steppes anyways?

Flying high again!

So, I am back in the flying rotation, and I've got to say...it feels good!  

Me (left) and my crew - Nov '13

And, while we're tearing it up over the friendly skies of Afghanistan, I've had a few moments here and there to continue my raid healing experience.

I finished collecting the top tier transmog set:

And, while I was lucky to loot a Flex 540 item level staff off Galakras, I think the new look compliments the aviary look of the tier set:

I have 548 level shoulders, but I am currently equipping a 528 set piece from LFR so that I can experience the 2 piece set bonus: 10% extra crit whenever I use archangel.  This is HUGE as a disc priest, since I generally use archangel on cooldown while atonement healing.  That means more shields on raid members!  Still running around 300-800ms latency in-game, but I've now completed much of ToT (Throne of Thunder) on 10-man and most of the first two zones in SoO (Siege of Orgrimmar) on Flex.  Bottom line: I'm not slumming it in LFRs, and when I do LookingForRaid zones, I usually end up on the top of the meters.

I am countering the lag with prevention, and stats that compliment server-side heal decisions.  Crit, which automatically converts to shielding, is very effective when paired with atonement heals.  Cascade is proving to be valuable as a raid heal, which I often use on cooldown.  Oh, and mindbender is considerably better for me than solace.  Power Word: Solace requires me to use it on cooldown to receive the mana benefits.  Since my latency is high, that global cooldown can be a lot more expensive, and I don't always get the PW:Solace on cooldown.  Mindbender is available every minute and returns a considerable amount of mana with a single button push.  And of course, I am using spirit shell, paired with archangel and inner focus, to prevent damage.

Oh, and I am now a mere 2 Titan Runestones away from my legendary cloak, which has me very excited indeed.  I set a goal to achieve that by the end of the month, and it looks like I will exceed that goal handily.

Disc healing Afghanistan...Priest and Pilot is back, better than Iraq.

Priest and Pilot is back.

I'm about to pick up a full time crew and step out of the job I've been doing for nearly two months.  Up to this point, my Afghanistan experience has been 6 days a week in the "mission planning cell," or tactics shop, supporting our daily theater tactical airlift missions as the deputy chief of tactics.  All that means is that I am responsible at night for the development of the products our crews fly with, and occasionally I get to fly.

How does that relate to the common theme of this blog?

Well, I have had a consistent schedule, and I've made some time to play a game here and there in between my work shifts.  In contrast to Balad, Iraq, where I spent my first two deployments, this place has "high speed" internet in the rooms.

This time around, I set up the small form factor desktop and I use the same USB adapter as before, the AWUS036H that I used in Iraq.  Since the routers are close to the room, I ran the simple omni-directional antenna outside the door to my pod and mounted it using a magnetic base.  (I will create a separate entry for the LAN work I've been doing here to optimize my connection.)

So, the end result is that I have a decent connection which allows me to game online, to varying degrees.  Since arriving, I have taken my priest from itemlevel 485 to 530.  I've managed to complete every raid via LFR, with the exception of the final boss in Siege of Orgrimmar.  The 400ms-1200ms connection makes effective healing a challenge for sure, but I have even completed the Legendary questline through the metagem.  Now, I am patiently gathering the final pieces to earn the Legendary cloak, which will be the first orange item I have ever earned in WoW.

One important lesson I learned early on was that I could not compete as a reactionary healer.  With limited bandwidth and “red” latency, you need to fill a role that either prevents damage or automatically selects heal targets at the server level.  If that isn’t possible, you need to be able to direct heals as quickly as humanly possible.  These parameters drove me to atonement healing as a discipline priest, and forged the way I heal raids technically.

Atonement priests deal a portion of their healing via Smite, Power Word: Solace, and offensive Penance.  The damage is directly (and automatically) duplicated to the raid according to who needs the healing.  The value is great; it maximizes effective healing, reduces overhealing, and removes the time required for choosing healing targets.  When your latency is high, a player may be already healed by the time you select them and cast your direct heal, but atonement healing allows you to be just as effective as the nerd spamming chain heal.  Now, add Halo, Cascade, Spirit Shell, and Power Word: Shield to atonement, and you have a viable healing platform with moderate to high latency.

Addon-wise, some important things had to happen as I ventured into LFR (and later in flex raids through oQueue).  I researched macros for smite, shield, and my direct heals.  I am only in the rookie phase of macro use, and I combine that with a clean UI called "LUI."  These macros all include a mouseover function, which blends nicely with any raid frames.  I happened to settle on Grid2, primarily because of the simplicity and minimalist nature.  Thus, when I place my cursor over the tank’s “square” and hit the key for my PW: Shield, it will shield him even if I’m targeted on an enemy, another raid player, or myself.  Likewise, if I select the tank as my target and cast smite, it will cast against the tank’s target.  Built-in logic allows me to quickly select heals without having to spend valuable time searching for a target.  How a healer would ever succeed at high levels without these tools, I have no idea, but I met a disc priest today in Flex that uses more macros, no mouseover, and focuses on higher atonement dps and healing.  I should also mention that yesterday I ran a Flex 10-man Siege of Orgrimmar (SoO) and was the top healer of 3 healers, and my latency was consistently higher than 850ms the entire time.

And so begins the technical discussion on atonement healing in current raids, both 25-man Looking For Raid (LFR) and 10-man+ Flex raids.  What sets some disc priests apart in the raid setting in Throne of Thunder (ToT) and SoO?  It all comes down to two elements: HPS (healing per second) and damage prevention.  The former includes a proper management of your available mana, appropriate stats on your gear, and simply keeping people from reaching zero.  The latter requires a knowledge of the fight, situational awareness, and appropriate use of preventative spells, such as Spirit Shell.  I’ll be talking a lot about those elements of healing over the next few months while I’m out here.

On the road again, but managing to stay connected

I am on the road again, and although I am sad to be away from my wife, I'm trying to make the most of my travels.  I explored some new areas, worked in a military capacity, and had a few hours to play WoW and Hearthstone.

On the Hearthstone front, I can tell that it will continue to be a fun game to play, especially when the connection will not support higher level LFR groups in WoW.  There is only so much WoW daily quest grinding you can tolerate, after all.  Hearthstone is a great deal of fun, although it requires uninterrupted time to play each game.  It is also a game that will require you to lose a lot before you have a decent deck, from what I can tell.  I have probably opened 5 or 6 bonus packs of cards so far, using gold that I obtained from daily quests and victories.  I am becoming quite familiar with the feeling of losing to other players, and even the NPC practice opponents destroy me quite often.  Even with a deck that includes blue and purple cards, it seems to be a very luck-dependent game.  An addicting and fun luck-dependent game which will probably consume some of my actual income for new card packs.

On the WoW front, I reached ilvl 488 by completing the Golden Lotus revered grind and running quite a few LFR groups.  I finished Throne of Thunder today, concluding the list of available LFR instances, although I observed 75% of the Lei Shen fight as a corpse.  I still have no idea what killed me.  But I have put epic pieces in ever slot except trinkets...those simply elude me, and I anticipate more rep grinds to obtain those.  I do not expect to have a good enough connection to continue running LFR groups, so my priest will likely remain my best geared character for quite a while.  

I am bringing directional wifi antennae, and multiple wireless cards and connection points in hopes of developing a reasonable and reliable connection with which I can skype my wife and play an online game when I have time.  Remembering my last two deployments, I am bridling my optimism so that I am not sorely disappointed when the internet sucks.

So, I'm preparing to shift to alt leveling and rep/heroic gearing.  I have a goal to level some classes that I have not ever played so far, such as lock, pally, shammy, and monk.  And, I am completely unfamiliar with my DK, druid, and hunter, which are all sitting patiently at 85.  Smoogestab, my rogue, is now at 86.  Icy veins seems to be the new go-to place for leveling and gear questions, and I have adopted their combat rogue leveling strategy, paired with a good leveling addon.

As far as UI stuff goes, I have experimented with quite a few addons recently.  So far, I have settled on Dominos, Recount, Dugi, Atlas Loot, and a leveling addon.  I am still looking for a good unit frame and cooldown addon for both my priest and all of my alts.  I am tolerating Healbot and TellMeWhen, and I dislike the xPerl unit frames I currently have installed.

So, today I begin the process of really learning how to play my favorite MMO again.  That is, I am beginning to study the game with the intent of playing at an above average level.  My end goal is to be a competent, competitive player when I do log on, even though that will be less frequently than the 19 year old college student with infinite time to play games.

I might never raid properly, on a schedule and at the higher levels, but I do intend to gear up and have fun with PVE instance play.

If anybody has returned to Warcraft after a long leave of absence, they would immediately be struck by the sheer amount of options that exist the moment they log in.  Here are some of the questions that I had right away:
Where am I?
How do I get back to Org?
How do I get to the panda island?
How should I set up my UI?
What addons are good now?
What is the best healer in the game now?
How should I level, and which character should I level first?
Should I run through the extensive quest line?
Should I run instances before I hit 90 (level cap)?
How should I spec my priest?
What spec should I use for questing?
As I approach 90, what do I do now?
What factions are out there and what do they offer?
Where do I find the daily quests, and which ones should I do?
Where do I start getting better gear?
What stats do I want on my gear?
How do I make gold now?
What professions should I work on first?
Is farmville useful or a pure waste of time?

So, that is what my first few hours of gameplay were like, although I managed to grind through a few mini quest lines on my shadow priest/disc priest.  I started doing some google searches and found some decent forum answers:
I just hit level 90! Now what? : wow
Level 90... Now what? - Forums - World of Warcraft

Here are some good things I've learned so far:

• Disc priests are still quite viable in MoP, which is the acronym for the newest expansion.  They are good in instances because they can DPS while they heal.  Other priest specific resources indicate that spirit is important for mana, and intellect is now only tied to spell power.  Good to know.
• At level 90, buy the flying ability for the panda area at the Shrine of 7 Stars.  It's called "Wisdom of the 4 Winds"
• Some of the factions in MoP include: Klaxxi, Golden Lotus, Shado-Pan, August Celestials, Angler, Tiller, Cloud Serpent, Shadow Pan Assault, and Kirin Tor Offensive.
• Valor points are used to buy pretty good gear.  You can only get 1000 Valor points each week.  If nothing else, make sure to get those 1000 Valor points every week.  You get them from heroics and dailies.
• Dailies yield reputation and Lesser charms of fortune.  Those are turned in at the Shrine for Mogu runes of fate.  Those allow you to roll an extra time in LFR and raids, helping you get better gear.
• Klaxxi have an item level (iLvl) 522 Epic neck at honored for 1250 Valor points.  This should take about 1 day of dailies after I have done the Dread Wastes quests.  Mobs yield amber shards.  Turn those in for "Lesser runes."
• Each faction has a badge at revered that gives 100% increase to rep gains for all characters on the account.
• Tiller dailies are all about planting and farming things.  They provide extra mats and stuff for my character or professions.
• Three primary options exist for PVE groups.  Random scenarios, 5 man heroics, and LFR (Looking for Raid).  LFR requires an average ilvl of 460 for the first set of bosses.
• Random scenarios queue quickly and have less people in the party; they are supposedly much faster.  Scenarios offer 450 and 463 blues, and sometimes 476 epics.  They give 40 Valor points for the first one done each day.

Right now I'm 89, about 2/3 the way to 90, on my priest.  Apparently, the real game starts at 90.

2013 Recap and Summer in Abilene

2013 has been an exciting time, with a lot of travel, Air Force trips, and good career development.  Limited gaming time, and very little computer work though.

I now serve as an Aircraft Commander in the C-130J, a primary scheduler for my squadron, and a deployer-to-be once again.  Later this year, in true herc pilot fashion, I'll be saying adios to the U.S.A. once again for a while to do what we do where we do it.
I spent 2 months in Montgomery, AL, where I knocked out three classes towards my Theology masters degree, completed a leadership course, and played a good deal of Starcraft II.  The internet connection was so shoddy that I could not play Mechwarrior Online, which was a real shame for me.  In that time, I drifted so far back in the MWO scene that I am hesitant to pick it back up seriously.  And, while I have a lot to say about SCII, my playtime on that game has been 0.000 since returning to Abilene.

Now, as I begin to anticipate a long stint in another deployed location, I've started looking for some good hobbies I can bring with me to help me pass the time.  I have not upgraded my Macbook Pro since the last deployment, so that is somewhat restrictive if I want to get into something released recently.  After what seems like endless google searches for good MMOs that do not hinge on fast-twitch latency, I have decided that there is simply nothing out there that topples my old staple.  That being said, tonight I began downloading the client for WoW and, coincidentally, I resurrected this old blog.  I will also be posting randomly to the Born to Waddle blog as I aim to improve in the area of running and core fitness this summer and while deployed.

This blog was conceived as a catch-all for hobbies, leadership lessons, and career accomplishments.  So, I fully intend to capture the things I am learning as I fly, as I fire up an MMO once again, and as I practice leadership concepts in the best laboratory ever created (the military).

Here are my simple precepts:

1. God, family, others and me - those are my priorities in order
2. Fly safe, operate professionally, and always improve as a pilot, officer, and husband
3. Work hard and play hard, in that order
4. Play efficiently, work smarter not harder in games, and capture lessons learned
5. Be duplicatable in everything, whether it be dealing with airmen or leveling a character

Stay tuned for more updates on leveling my first character to cap in Mists, lessons learned as I try to improve processes in scheduling airlift operations, and trips and fun during my precious few months left at home.

July is already completely scheduled out, with a brief TDY to MS, some good family travel, a checkride, and a lot of deployment preparation.  One of my personal goals, with respect to the deployment and connectivity, is to consolidate all the equipment that I want to bring with me when we ship out.  I'll be thinking about routers, LAN equipment, wireless equipment, carrying cases, power options for 240V infrastructure, and good ideas for software that I'll want to have with me.  I'll be trying to set the laptop up for easy use and limited download requirements once I'm over there.  I'll be looking into good video communication options to use so I can talk to my wife.  It's certainly going to be an interesting time once again.

Thanks for reading the revived Priest and Pilot blog.

A game within a game...and a lot of RL application.

OK, this is a quick post, but there will be a lot of follow-on.

I just started playing the AH, using my 4 maxed professions, and a few new powerful addons and resources.
1. TSM (TradeSkillMaster)
2. Call2Auction podcast
3. The Consortium site

I'm heading into work now, but might be able to elaborate in a little bit.

One of the better decisions I've made recently was leveling an alt to 85.  I'm happy with the decision to take herbing and mining, but just like real life, the real money does NOT come from trading hours for dollars (or gold).  There's more to be made if you're willing to take advantage of the market, your individual skills, and tools and training...just like real life.  Seeing a trend?
In this case, I'm talking about the potential profit of the AH combined with professions and addons like TSM (TradeSkillMaster) and Auctionator.

Up until today, this was me: Go gather as quickly as possible.  Smelt the ore and sell the bars.  Use the herbs to make flasks and sell them.  Eripedes from Call2Auction makes a great point: at some point, it is completely more profitable to use the AH and your professions versus spending time gathering.  For me, that point is undeniably now. 

I've been doing hours of research, reading tutorials, and listening to podcasts to start understanding what to actually DO to make gold with the AH.  Today I began using TSM, using Eripedes' basic setup tutorial.
Here's what I accomplished today:
I figured out how to automatically queue up alchemy recipes.
I figured out how to set up automatic posting of my flasks.
I figured out how to search for the required gems for my alchemy transmutes.

Here's what I really wish I had:
A jewelcrafter to prospect ore.
A good use for my 525 enchanter.
Proof that the TSM pricing I'm using is actually going to work on my server.
A TSM strategy that will earn at least 2000g each day.

Some good things I've found that are already helping me out:
Automatically posting auctions at a set price below competition allows me to post large quantities of multiple items very quickly, knowing that I am undercutting everyone without posting too low.  Also, the answers to all of my questions are out there, and the Consortium guys have put together an awesome community that seems relatively friendly to brand new WoW entrepreneurs.

I am still unsure how TSM determines the cost of the mats, although I'm setting up posts at a threshold of 105% of crafting cost anyways, based on guidance from Eripedes.  I have about 5k worth of auctions up right now, so I'll post the results when I finish up at the squadron.  Go figure, no WoW on NIPR computers.

There are some great parallels here, though.  What you can do using the AH as a platform for profit is conceptually similar to finding a way to take yourself out of the "ditch-digger" categories that the bots and farmers occupy.  I've heard many times from my mentors that the main element in success is the way you think.  An average man could be a doctor or a janitor, and the difference between the two is simply the way they think.  An average player could be gold limited or have an abundance of options, and we all know that everybody starts the game at level 1.  Some people have all day to play, and some people have only a few hours each week.  The crazy thing is that some of those time-limited players are gold capped.  And a whole lot of those people that log 40 or more hours a week are flat broke (probably IRL too).  My goal is to set myself up for a profitable strategy that will work on a bare minimum time requirement, because I have a lot of RL priorities that will go above my virtual wallet...such as my wife, my family, business, and my job.  I still want to excel at my hobby though, and this is THE best chance at a win-win as I finish my second deployment.

Congrats Sad Panda...and cataclysm discussion continues.

As I have not kept up this blog until today, I have a lot of input. But before I get back into game mechanics, I want to give a huge shout out to my guild of many years, Sad Panda. I was online the other day when they accomplished First Level 25 Guild on Smolderthorn.

I’m honored they let me stay in as a legacy member, despite my raiding and instance inabilities. These guys have stayed competitive for years in WoW. Originally a guild called Entropy, which cleared up to BWL, we merged with another guild and became Epic. Some of the old faces are still around, such as Daedal, Bugs, and maybe even Fuse. After Epic, many left and formed a rival guild called Gloryhogs before BC released. Epic shifted to what was then an alt guild called “Sad Panda,” and Fuse led that guild for years. I know others have had some great input there, including my friends Jason and Josh, as well as Kkyle and Jessica, and now a new cadre of apparently very capable guild and raid leaders and raiders. The core competencies are still evident to me, and there are a lot of high level, hilarious, experienced players in SP…congrats on a great achievement!

On to the discussion on latency and its adverse effect on both disc and holy priest specs.

For holy, your rotation now involves heal, greater heal, binding heal, prayer of mending, circle of healing, chakra states, and prayer of healing for the most part. I rarely found myself using my old staple, flash heal. High latency hurts casters big time…especially healers, and especially priests. Refer to my previous notes on queuing spells, because you’re going to need to do that on a bad connection. First, you will notice very quickly in cata that mana is an issue when you have crappy gear. Also, latency means your throughput is even less. So, I recommend using your big spells and staying away from heal simply because it loses its value if you can’t cast it quickly. Your tank will be dead if you are on a 2000ms connection spamming heal, most likely. One good dynamic, though, is that you will find yourself in the 5 second rule for mana regen more often, by nature of not being able to cast as much. I found that I was less likely to run out of mana than wipe the party, so I had to lean towards larger, more expensive heals and just pay the price of drinking after nearly every pull if necessary. Also, I leaned very heavily on the AoE version of chakra, because of its “fire and forget” nature, along with the unconventional renews. I also glyphed for prayer of healing and used prayer of mending on cooldown EVERY time, because those spells would continue to be productive when my connection choked for a few seconds at a time, which happened frequently. Ultimately, it looked to my party like this: PoH procs HoT from glyph, renews on people that have taken any dmg, PoM on tank, chakra AoE around tank, and “why is that priest just standing there waiting now” followed by a binding heal or flash heal.

For disc, PW:S is a required pre-cast, as well as PoM on cooldown. I use PI and Inner Focus on cooldown…IF is even macrod in every gheal cast. If it’s available, I’m using it. I use PW:Barrier and Pain Suppression on cooldown too. Then I’ll Q up a penance first, gheal second. I have an A/A spec, so if the connection is decent or the damage distribution is steady and not too much, I LOVE smiting for automatic healing distribution around the party. However, keep in mind that you won’t be able to do that on trash if you have high latency and the mobs are dying relatively quickly. Your throughput will go to zero. I typically use it for big mobs and bosses where damage is manageable.

One important lesson learned this deployment: do not sit in an instance and wipe a party because of bad lag. You’ll end up just getting vote kicked anyways, and you will have wasted time queuing. Know what your playability limit is…mine is about 2500ms. Anything higher than that, or if I’m experiencing frequent bandwidth lag (game seems to pause and then catch up real fast a few seconds later), I will heal through a pull then leave the party when they are safe. That’s right, I don’t even try to finish. It’s more productive to do some of the options I’m about to discuss. Unfortunately, that means I’m not able to do a lot of instances right now.

So what DO I do?

I find other ways to support and develop my character or cater to my end goals in the game. I always play every game with a goal in mind. For instance, in Black Ops, my goal was to hit level 50 so that I could unlock all the weapons. In WoW, there are so many different things you can shoot for. For me, it is to create the ultimate healer that is asked for when any tough healing situation arises. To be competitive at the highest levels of PvE as a priest healer. What caters to my goal? Anything that adds value to my main. Gold, mats, crafted items, professions, instance experience, UI improvements, and networking.

So, here are options I have been exploring and enjoying in cataclysm when I’m not able to heal instances as I would prefer.

• I started a DK at lvl 55 and leveled the toon with herbalism and mining. (I have played my priest almost exclusively since WoW released...I originally shunned the idea of serious alts, but I was missing out) Taurens get fast herbalism gathering, and pale rider in the frost tree means I can fly faster on my 150% speed flying mount.
  
• Gathering is considerably easier and faster now that you can fly, and those mats are lucrative. The lower level mats have earned me about 2000g so far, which is really a small amount in cataclysm. However, Kyle Rudd has informed me that flask sales on the AH are guaranteed to bring in thousands with good frequency.
  
• I plan to have my alt gathering herbs and Smoogee already has almost maxed out alchemy. I estimate I'll be bringing in about 10k per week once I have that system running.
  
• The leveling process is fun and new, and along the way I am auctioning nearly everything I can. I anticipate that my DK will have earned about 20k+ gold by the time it is 85. And THAT could be an ilvl 359 BoE healing Staff of Dark Mending, or Vial of the Sands, or something I really want. Also, I plan to purchase some heirloom items for my DK if the timing works out with justice points…may or may not happen. Gold opens up a ton of options for anybody’s main.
• I am leveling my alchemy and enchanting, and neither of those will be cheap. I’m already at a high level, and I have my rings enchanted and the alchemy trinket. Oh, by the way, pots help a ton for priests.
• Networking is the last thing I’ve started getting back into. Rebuilding my friend list with current players who I can go to for parties, help, professions, or even information. Remember when WoW first started? I still have connections from the version 1.0 days, and it makes a lot of sense to intentionally redevelop that habit pattern. That way, when I can play at higher performance levels, I’ll have relevant connections on my server. (The new “add a note” feature is awesome, as well as the RealID system)