There are countless blogs talking this game up, and as you can see in the previous paragraph this writer feels no different. The art, music, scene editing, storyline… absolutely breathtaking.

What I’d like to do is list my biggest pet peeves about RDR, not an original idea I’m sure, but I haven’t read any yet.

Your horse loves to go swimming!

OK, this can be funny, but seriously now. What happened, did we teach horses and cows to swim in the mid-1900s? I’ve whistled for my horse and watched him run straight into the water like he was a dolphin in a previous life or some shit. And he knows it will kill him, that bastard damn well knows. During a cutscene he walked right past me and an NPC to see what the end of a dock looks like. Me and a friend watched him take a 15-second cruise straight for the river with me chasing behind him whistling the entire time. He would not stop. We laughed for a good 10 minutes over it.

Now, the storyline is that the reason John Marsten can’t swim is he doesn’t know how… fair enough, Rockstar. But after the game is beaten, and water is not needed as a border any more, let’s get some Swimming Lessons event, ok? OK.

To Load, or not to Load, that is the question.

Being stuck at a Loading screen is never fun, this has happened maybe 10 times. Mostly, it involves switching between Multiplayer and Single Player modes from what I can tell, but it has happened in just Multiplayer. I foresee a patch fixing this in the near future.

Who on earth is talking to me?

To clarify, this is on the 360, so PS3 owners… ignore. Set up a Party Chat. Party Chat is buggy anyway I know, at least it is for me and my friends. Once you’re in Party Chat you can do a Free Roam, and you all can talk to each other. We were having dropped connections, people being removed from their Free Roam session, etc. I’d like to know if others experience the same.

So eventually, we switched to just using in-game chat. I couldn’t find a setting to only have your Posse be able to talk with each other, and I know for a fact every now and then random people, not in the posse, would be talking to us. It makes it very annoying to talk about a strategy when you’re after someone if they can hear you.

This may be easy to learn why, but this is a pet peeve article, I don’t have to be smart about it.

Achievement Whoring

That title is misleading, I see nothing wrong with achievement whoring. I just hate that, once again, there are no counters. How many bears have I killed? Have I done X event or Y event? Lots of games do this, and it may not be Rockstar’s fault at all, I’m not placing blame.

For the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s sake, add decent Achievement tracking.

You Can’t Swim

I seriously fucking hate this.

It’s like Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw said in his Assassin’s Creed review, Marsten is “hampered with a unique genetic birth defect that makes him fucking water soluble.”

Huzzah!

• Flame Shock now deals 834 Fire damage over 18 sec at max rank. (Up from 556 fire damage over 12 sec) Lower ranks increased accordingly.
• Lava Burst no longer consumes Flame Shock.

Currently the Glyph of Flame Shock makes it last 18 seconds and prevents it from being consumed by Lava Burst. This glyph is being changed to allow your Flame Shock ticks to be critical strikes. Now, what’s interesting is that this change is already accomplished by the T8 2-set bonus.  I imagine that the set bonus will not change, and will not stack. This allows you to either use Glyph of Lava, if you are still in T8, or switch to the new Glyph of Flame Shock, if you are in almost full T9.

I’ve restored some of it, but basically anything posted after October 2008 was gone, even comments.

Now for the relevant elemental shammy changes, my notes are in italics!

• A customizable totem bar will now be available for shaman allowing the storing of 4 different totems. These totems can be placed on the ground at once in one global cooldown for the combined mana cost of all 4 totems. Starting DPS earlier is going to be great, and with the 4 different sets, you can have a few PVE and PVP versions. If you’re dual-spec with Resto when you switch it can have it’s own separate sets for PVE and PVP.
• All Shocks now have a default range of 25 yards, up from 20 yards. Again, possibly starting DPS earlier. This will help me in our Thorim fight as our tank takes the second mini-boss up the stairs, he sometimes gets away from me.
• Ghost Wolf: Can now be learned at level 16. While in this form, snaring effects may not bring the shaman below base normal run speed. Much needed change for PVP, but I’ve yet to see how much it could possibly help. Except for Thunderstorming opponents off cliffs Ele Shammies are kind of gimped.

Tier 9 Set Bonuses

Elemental 2P Bonus: Increases the duration of your Flame Shock spell by 9 sec.

Simply spamming Lightning Bolt only does 3-400 less DPS on target dummies, and this is because of the GCD waiting on Flame Shock. By lasting 9 more seconds, it will boost DPS by a decent amount more over LB spamming. However, losing the 4P bonus from Tier 8.5 is going to hurt. It may be better to simply wait till you have 4P T9.

Elemental 4P Bonus: Increases the damage done by your Lava Burst spell by 20%.

With the combination of FS lasting longer, this will really boost dps.

Rotation is still a priority system: FS>LBur>LBolts

No other Elemental changes so far! For the full patch notes Wowhead as always has a well formatted layout. Here’s the link!

Psion on a motorcycle in Ulduar!

Kologarn’s Head

Saturday was just as successful. It didn’t seem like it would be at first! We were wiping over and over on Auriaya. The pull is very difficult, but once you got that down it’s just down to paying attention and surviving. Each time someone dies, the risk someone else will die goes up, and if you lose more than 5-6 people you’re gonna be toast, depending on her HP at that point.

Auriaya defeated by Relentless!

Next, we moved on to Hodir. It’s a very easy fight and we had him down the 3rd attempt. Afterward, we killed the trash to Thorim, because he is supposed to be an easier fight as well. It didn’t go so well and we didn’t have much time left for the raid, so after the 4th wipe we called it. Basically half the raid goes down this hallway and half the raid stays in the center arena. I know the Arena groups had issues as well, but all I saw was the hallway group, and it was a mess! This mini-boss fires a slam down the hallway on one side or the other, and you have to move out of that. Then there are 2 sets of 3 mobs that have to be killed as you’re rotating back and forth. They also stun you. It wasn’t fun to say the least, we’ll be practicing more next week.

Most of the achievements for Noblegarden are pretty easy.

Wowhead’s Noblegarden Guide

I want to give a big THANK YOU to Marisse from my guild for showing me the perfect camping spot for eggs. I got over 200 eggs in an hour, there are 5 spawn points you can reach without ever moving.

In the following screenshot, the Psionic chicken is standing where the eggs can spawn. This is in Kharanos, and I am the purple bunny in the center. Enjoy!

From this spot you can reach all five eggs without having to move.

Elemental Shaman Spec and Glyphs

Now, this spec is for PVE, but you do have some leeway in where you spend points. For example, I put two points in Improved Ghost Wolf that you could put into Improved Shields. Also, I put a full 3 points into Unrelenting Storm, which is debatable if you need it or not. In Ulduar, I’ve noticed that on bosses I have no mana issues, but moving constantly fight to fight I have to drink now and again whereas before I was practically always full mana.

Now, for the gear. My ideal gear for patch 3.1 (with alternatives)

Helm: Conqueror’s Worldbreaker Helm

Neck: Pendant of the Shallow Grave, Pendant of Fiery Havoc, Pendant of the Piercing Glare

Shoulders: Conqueror’s Worldbreaker Shoulderpads

Back: Drape of Mortal Downfall, Drape of the Spellweaver

Chest: Conqueror’s Worldbreaker Hauberk

Wrists: Bindings of Winter Gale

Hands: Conqueror’s Worldbreaker Gloves

Waist: Belt of the Fallen Wyrm

Legs: Conqueror’s Worldbreaker Kilt

Feet: Eruption-Scarred Boots, Lightning Grounded Boots (These boots are BoE and craftable by leatherworkers, it has 2 gem slots which could make them better than the other boots.)

Rings: Frozen Loop, Pyrelight Circle, Shimmering Seal

Trinkets: Eye of the Broodmother, Pandora’s Plea, Scale of Fates +Hit > Living Flame, Elemental Focus Stone

Weapon: Soulscribe

Shield: Voice of Reason

Totem: Totem of Hex

Basically, you need to look for items that have spellpower, haste, crit, and hit. You don’t need spirit or mp/5 in practice. The hit cap varies depending on your race, spec, and whether or not you have a boomkin with Improved Faerie Fire in your raid. Here’s a good guide for hit rating courtesy WowWiki.

Keep in mind there are still some very good gear options in Naxx25, such as the boots above. Blizzard did not give us any options that don’t have mp/5 for Boots in Ulduar, from what we’ve seen so far.

We had maybe 10 people alive when he died! O.o