Steve: Hey, Matt.  MATT!  You know what I love?  Shhh shhh, wait.  I’ll tell you.  Just wait…  I love YOU, man.

Matt: I love you too, Steve!  I love everything.  I love money.  Don’t you wish we made money, Steve?

Steve: Yeah, what’s up with that.  11 million subscribers, all because of us, and where does it go?

Matt: Where does what go?

Steve: I… um… I forgot.  But now I’m pissed off.  You know what I hate, Matt?

Matt: Is it me?

Steve: Nah, man.  I hate mages.  Feck mages, Matt!  All magicing and shite.

Matt: Yeah, Steve.  Let’s go nerf mages again!  Weeeeee!

Steve: Shhh shhh…  No Matt, they’ll see it coming!  There could be a mage here right now, and we wouldn’t even know it!  Noooo, we gotta be tricky this time.  What do mages hate?

Matt: Um… Feral druids!

Steve: RIGHT! So, get this.  We take away druid CC breaking, right.  Right?  And then we make mages own them, without actually buffing them.  Right?  Then, when the druids can do nothing to fight back, we call imbalance, and BAM!  Class review, biatches!

Matt: Feck mages!

This is the best scenario I can come up with.  Since BC, the feral spec has seen nothing but love, and as a result has gone from a means to level a raid healer to very much its own beast, while mages are more than familiar with the tough love of a patch’s stiff backhand.  I can’t actually imagine that a sober person willingly desired to end that momentum.

Some say cat raid damage was getting a little out of hand, but looking at the patch notes, I don’t think any effort was made to stem that.  Bleeds got a minor nerf, and burst damage got a huge boost.  Without testing it myself, I can only imagine this helps the raid scene.  Kitty damage tends to drop off in fights where they don’t have time to “get in the zone”, or rather position themselves perfectly behind the target and setup/maintain their complex set of debuffs.  The improved burst emphasis can only help mitigate the damage loss in those high-mobility fights (those fights cats should theoretically be good at).

We also lost our glyph that made Entangling Roots an instant cast (technically, it became “cast time reduced by 0.2 seconds”, but you know that’s the same thing).  Honestly though, we all knew this one was coming.  I wouldn’t call it broken, but it was game changing, which sort of goes against the core intent of glyphs.  This wouldn’t go amiss as a nice balance talent for my boomkin brothers, though.  *hint hint*

But those changes aren’t on trial here.  Abilities get tweaked, we relearn our class, and we move on.  The major loss here is the removal of the ability to cancel root (immobile) effects by changing shape (and to a lesser degree the loss of fear break on Beserk).  Only by going Resto (the spec that mostly doesn’t change shape anymore, if you recall) do you get to keep this functionality.  Changing still removes slowing effects, though I’ve rarely wasted a GCD for that purpose.  If Feral Charge is off cooldown, I can instead close the gap with that, after which Infected Wounds (also nerfed, but since its constantly reapplying, I can’t see why anyone bothered) slows my opponent down to my speed.

This is an issue, because feral druids have little to no means of mitigating CC outside of these two abilities.  Okay, they’re immune to polymorph spells.  Of which there are, what, two?  Keep in mind, there are spells like Scare Beast and Hibernate that pretty much ONLY work on feral druids (and hunter pets, I guess).

Position also means everything to a kitty.  Imagine you’re some strange rogue build.  Backstab is your primary damage dealer, Hemorrhage is necessary to do proper damage with it, and your best combo finisher is Rupture.  You don’t get stunlocks, you don’t get vanish, and you don’t get cloak of shadows.  Burst damage is ultimately not your strong point, your survival tools are limited, and you don’t have too many ways to prevent your opponent from fighting back.  But feral druids have always been able to put on the pressure.  They glue themselves to your backside.  You have to offer them your completely undivided attention, because while they weren’t going to take you down instantly, they were going to take you down soon if you couldn’t sleep, stun or freeze them completely out of the fight.

But, *sigh*.  I suppose you can argue balance until blue in the face.  What really bothers me isn’t really PvP balance.  I can remember a time when a bug made PvP gear free, and the store was so packed you couldn’t find the vendors to click on them.  Things like that and that Tol Barad 1800 honor debacle exist to remind me how gear dependent and busted PvP is for a casual participant like myself and ultimately kill the fun in it.

No, I really just want the ability to break roots from an identity standpoint.  It was an identifying piece of the class.  I like getting new things, even when they suck.  I could probably count the number of times I used that ability leveling or running heroics without running out of fingers and toes, but when I got to, it felt good, because that was me using a unique capability to practical use.  It’s like a Holy Paladin using their Prot abilities.  Any paladin can click “big heal” and “small heal” and be a capable healer.  It’s using those fringe abilities that shows you’re mastering your potential.  To see an ability like that just ripped out without a second thought leaves a hole and makes the game feel a little more shallow and empty.  It makes that little voice in the back of my head cry “you’re paying for an open beta, you dip”, like someone somewhere is playing the finished WoW, and I’m the one testing it so it’ll be a polished experience for them.

Uh oh, Skip is starting to sound like a sniveling, self-entitled baby.  Time to cut this one short.

TL;DR Version: Skip doesn’t like standing around, so he played a feral druid.  Now feral druids stand around.  Skip is sad.

Your fortune cookie:

Patch 4.0.6 Notes:

Fortune cookies reduced by 50%.  This should…

WTF:

December 22 – 27 Cataclysm Hotfixes

Winning as an attacker now rewards players with 1800 Honor Points, up from 180. Winning as a defender still rewards players with 180 Honor Points.

Tol Barad

I found this along side a blue post as such:

The odds are already stacked against the attacking force. In fact, they’re stacked in favor of the defense more so than we would like at this point. We’re looking to address this in an upcoming patch so that defending Tol Barad doesn’t feel like there’s virtually no fear of loss.

In line with that design goal, we made this hotfix to ensure winning Tol Barad back for your faction feels much more rewarding.

So, alright.  We acknowledge that somehow this thing made it out of beta without noticing that one side manages to squat on it and win for days at a time.  We want to fix that, but its the holidays and we have lives, so we’re instead going to make losing that much more frustrating.

Ah, but then if both sides were to intentionally let the attacker win, both could average a few pieces of  PVP blues a day.  The scam begins.  From what I’m reading, most servers seem on board with this already.

Of course, then the queues fill to the brink.

Oh, don’t worry, you can apparently just wait at the bridge and still get credit, without even taking part in the scam.

Now, an aside.  Ever since I hit 85, I’ve been grinding my honor hard.  I started PVPing at level cap late in Wrath, so I couldn’t really get into it like I wanted back then.  Everyone else had full PVP gear and raid-end weapons.  No amount of skill could over come that.  I was paste on the ground within seconds of every encounter.  Trying to grind out the honor for the gear just wasn’t fun like that.  So I promised that when Cataclysm hit, I wouldn’t let myself get left behind like that.  I like PVP.  I wanted to have a fighting chance to actually be involved.  I always felt the system as it was felt like it was designed by an asocial twelve year old, but I was willing to play their little game.

Now, back to the topic at hand.  How in the hell was giving 1800 honor for anything a good idea?

I was at odds for a while over how to handle it.  I could get involved and get my thousands of free honor, or I could walk away.  I thought about it, and whether I involve myself or not, that goal I’d set for myself is now cheap and hollow.  It’s lost meaning to me.  I can either achieve my goal via empty means or relive the “paste on the ground” days again, as people with that empty gear slap me around for several more weeks.

No, I’m just walking away from it.

In the process of trying to re-acclimate my UI and buttons to feline fun, I noticed something.  Fairly often, my Rip duration was ending about 3 seconds before my Tiger’s Fury was coming off cooldown.  Rip has a duration of 16 second duration and Tiger’s Fury has a 30 second cooldown.  I’d never really considered them close enough to exhibit this behavior so frequently.  So, I broke down what I was doing.

1. Skip’s out of energy from spamming death.  Skip presses Tiger’s Fury for a 60 energy burst, thanks to King of the Jungle.
2. Skip Shreds with impunity.
3. After a couple of seconds, he hits 5 combo points and quickly refreshes Rip so it takes advantage of the Tiger’s Fury 15% damage buff.  This happens at roughly the end of TF’s 6 second duration (we’ll say 5 seconds in), so its cooldown has about 25 seconds to go (the cooldown begins right away, not at the end of the buff).
4. Rip lasts for 16 seconds.  My Glyph of Shred adds another 6 seconds by the end, so ends up lasting 22 seconds.
5. And so, Rip is ending with 3 seconds left on the Tiger’s Fury cooldown.  If I wait 3 more seconds to reapply Rip, I can use TF to give it that 15% damage buff.

Of course, waiting to reapply Rip is bad.  Rip is easily the kitty’s biggest damage dealer, especially with our Mastery rating adding to all bleed damage.  Any downtime is lots of lost damage.

What the Flip, Skip?

What is so important about getting Tiger’s Fury and Rip together?

Well, your bleeds take advantage of your damage bonuses at the time they are applied.  If I apply Rake or Rip during the 6 second TF buff, they will get 15% bonus damage for the full duration, or until I use the ability again to refresh it.  If I gain a damage boost after the bleed has been applied, the ticks will not get stronger.  It’s all about that first hook.

Since bleeds are a cat’s biggest damage dealer, any buff you can give them will show favorably on your final damage total.  That doesn’t mean you should go out of your way to make sure every bleed is always buffed.  Cat “rotations” are far too chaotic, and you don’t need that kind of stress.  However, should the opportunity arise, you should certainly take it.  If nothing else, I try to always refresh Rake anytime I use Tiger’s Fury.  Because Rip is dependent on combo points, and should always be used with 5 of them, you kind of have to take them as you get them.

Enter Glyph of Tiger’s Fury.

I had started by glyphing Rip, Shred and Berserk.  In terms of raw, lab result DPS, Berserk is a great glyph.   It bumps Berserk from lasting 15 seconds to 20 seconds of sheer, unadulterated pwnage.  I offer this praise in that sort of “it’s not you, it’s me” kind of way, because it is getting dumped.  It just so turns out that Glyph of Tiger’s Fury reduces the cool down by exactly 3 seconds, the same window with which I keep finding myself.  Yes, please.  Berserk is probably still the better glyph in terms of numbers, but I’m a usability guy, myself.  Make my life easier!  Kitty deserves a break.

Fortune Cookie:

The system goes on-line August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from fortune cookies.  CookieNet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.

Enjoy your cookie.  :)

The Fluid Druid’s Cataclysm Feral DPS Guide

Oh, and then there’s Nom Nom Nom.  (It shall always be called Nom Nom Nom.)  It really doesn’t change the game much.  If the boss is below 25% health and Rip is still up, use Ferocious Bite instead.  Tada.  One more tracker for you kitties to wire into your addons.  There’s a few more talents that make life a little easier, but I hardly feel the need to discuss them (that’s obviously a lie, I probably will out of content starvation another day).  Truth be told, I feel the word “claustrophobic” fits the bill in talking about the feral tree.  I was working with this build before I decided to take a break from feral (a cat nap, harr harr).  My usual flare for passive survival is there, so it’s probably two Infected Wounds away from a PVP build.  Do with it what you will.

Blah blah blah, durid spec talk.  Yes, moving on.

So like I said, I’m taking a feral break.  With all the pimping of the new Eclipse system for Balance and the new treeless tree in Resto, I thought it time to give casting another try.  I’m not typically a caster.  I hate going out of mana.  Haaaaaate.  So you can imagine I was less than impressed by the oomkins of yesteryear.  The problem does seem to have cleared itself up, however.

Rewind a sec.  Eclipse.  Alright, so here’s the abridged version of it.  No, wait.  Here’s the storybook version of it.  I like those better.

Once upon a time, in a kingdom many patches ago, there was a talent known as Eclipse.  Druids of the day had two primary attack spells, Starfire and Wrath, with little governing which was better.  Eclipse offered guidance using its unique mechanics.  If Wrath ever scored a critical hit, Starfire would become more powerful.  If Starfire ever scored a critical hit, Wrath would become more powerful.  As such, a druid would stack on enough crit to make a rogue blush and fire one until such time as a mystical proc occurred, then they would use the other.  Other druids would moonfare spam until they were oom, and the peasants rejoiced.

Eclipse today is no longer a talent, but an innate trait reflected by a bar under the mana bar.  Rather than triggering on a critical hit, the druid must gather “solar” and “lunar” energy. Starfire will generate solar energy each cast until you hit a “Solar Eclipse”.  At this point, you will become Jesus Christ with feathers.  The Moonkin Messiah will then do much more damage with nature spells (aka, Wrath).  Wrath will start generating lunar energy.  The Eclipse will end when the lunar energy forces the meter back to zero.  When it makes the trek back across to the Lunar Eclipse side, you are now Arcane Zeus, and your Starfire will be the 50 megaton nuke of win.

If all of that was a lot to suck up, just know that you are essentially playing ping-pong with the little dot on your meter and do omgwtfbbq damage about half of that time.  Thanks to the talent Euphoria,  you’ll get loads of mana back for keeping the volley going.

Also, there is now moonfare spam in talent form.  The peasants will likely be slaughtered.

As fun as this little dance has been, we’ll see how long it lasts.  A sick little part of me misses my kitty and her migraine inducing debuff juggling.  I’m also still putting two points in Feral Swiftness, cuz I gotsta have my indoor travel form!  Don’t judge me!

Your Fortune Cookie:

Moonkin Messiah OOM’d for your wins.

At any rate, let me tell a story.

I was testing out one of the leveling guide add-ons that aren’t $60 and advertised in banner ads out in Wetlands, when a Hunter dropped in and insta-invited me to party.  I figured he was killing the same murlocks I was melting and wanted to speed the quest along for both of us.  I hit accept.

Silly, naive Skip.

I found myself in party with the hunter and another priest somewhere off in another area and was instantly queued for an instance.  IT’S A TRAP!  But instances are good XP, so I rolled with it.  While we waited, the hunter was being helpful and on most of the same quests as me, so I was lulled into a false feeling of comfort.

who r u

Wha’, huh?  Oh, it was the other priest.  I wasn’t really sure how to answer the random whisper and was locked in heated combat with more gnolls than someone of my limited priestly understanding should ever be, so I let it scroll away.

stop talking in whispers with him. y won’t u talk to me!?!

I should’ve figured this was my exit, but I calmly tried to explain that I was just killing gnolls and wasn’t holding any secret conversations behind his back.  The instance started!  I figured things should calm down now.  Don’t ask me where all this uncharacteristic optimism and faith in humanity came from.  I’m as baffled as you are.  But faith is a fickle mistress and I was quickly proven wrong.  Gnomer came up and the party (some of which were on their 3rd time there in a row) just wanted out.  The priest wanted to do every side-quest in the area and was quite the vocal minority on the matter, threatening to go off on his own on several occasions.

After grating the tank to the point of insanity, he was kicked with such swiftness I barely got to look at the Yes/No dialog box.  He was replaced instantly like the cheap DPS fodder that he was and the instance went on.  Shortly after, I received a whisper complaining how I didn’t stand up for him.

This friendship is over!

Excuse me?  Friendship?  Yeah.

And this forcefully transitions into my intended topic.  Real ID.  See, I’ve been seeing a lot of chatter and complaints about Blizzard’s new in-gamne chat interface, as I’m sure you have too.  To highlight a few concerns:

• Your real name is displayed. Whether it be worry of stalking or privacy, lots of people are worried about their Internet life crossing with that IRL thing.  Bloggers are worried about piercing their aliases.  People just, in general, love their anonymity and alternate identities.  They keep the Internet in the Internet.  I’m no stranger to this, myself.  One of my early Internet communities was a collection of authors and writers, and amidst that particular community it was generally considered proper to go by your real name.  I deviated and chose not to, and have written under various pseudonyms for as long as I’ve put words to media.
• Your friends know all of your characters. No matter what server you run to, what alt you play, or what corner of the world you curl up into, your Real ID friends can find you, hockey mask and machete at the ready.  One luxury of WoW was always that you could make a new character and it was a clean slate in every way.  Some make alts just to get away from guildies or other online friends, just to take a breather and play the game.  Sometimes you just need to get away.
• You can see the friends of your friends. Like any modern social networking site, you can see what people your friends have connected with so that you, in turn, can find mutual friends and add them yourself.  Remember that this is your real name, so it just manages to make itself that much further out there.  In this era of identity theft, we certainly want to covet every tidbit of info we can.
• You have to give your friend your account login name. In order to become friends, you have to share your battle.net email address.  For quite a while now, this has also been our login, and so whoever gets this is one-half of the way into robbing your account.  Sure, they say you should have an authenticator, though until they actually come shipped with the game or are otherwise offered up as a part of the existing fees, you can’t expect people to shell out yet more money to Blizzard’s monolith of income.

The list continues, but I think I hit the high points.  And as such, I’ve read that many people have chosen not to use the Real ID system.  And to those people, I congratulate you for making an informed and intelligent decision.  Your reasoning may be slightly off-tilt, but you’re hitting the right targets.

For everyone else, I started with the story I did to emphasize a point.  The priest in that story was an extreme example, and probably just some kid looking for attention, but it’s not an isolated incident, even among mature adults.  I feel that the Internet, particularly social networking sites, have skewed our definition of “friend”.  I’ve met people with over 500 friends on their FaceBook/MySpace/Friendapocalyspe/etc.  Are they all really friends?  Friend has plenty of definitions, and someone you’ve met only briefly and made that interaction enjoyable can certainly be a friend.  But I feel that maybe the phenomenon of collecting friends like stamps has further depersonalized the meaning.

I could debate on that for far longer than a paragraph, but its a topic far better suited for dialog than just me waving my finger and saying “back in my day, we had to walk 50 miles, in the snow, up hill, both ways, to get friends, and we were happy!”  The point I guess I wanted to get at was that Real ID is not a “friends list” as we have come to know it.  If using it concerns you, than you are completely in the right for dismissing it.  In fact, those concerns can be made into a bit of a checklist.  Or better yet, a Choose Your Own Adventure book!

• [Page 1] Does this friend know your real name?  If not, would you be comfortable with them calling you by it?  If so, turn to [Page 32].
  If these are people who you only interact with on a guild or blog level, and you do not want them behind that veil, turn to [Page 102].
• [Page 32] Would you be comfortable with this friend having your address and cell phone number?  If they showed up uninvited to your door, would you be happy?  If yes, turn to [Page 58].  If these thoughts make you uncomfortable, turn to [Page 102].
• [Page 58] Would it be alright if this friend talked about you with their other friends, even the ones you don’t know?  Would sometimes meeting their other friends not be too much of a put off?  If all of this is fine, turn to [Page 93], else turn to [Page 102].
• [Page 93] Would you trust loaning this person things on occasion?  Maybe you would loan or spare them a little money from time to time.  This person would be respectful and thankful of that which your share.  If this is the case, turn to [Page 105].
• [Page 98] The room quickly fills with water.  Unable to escape your weighted shackles, your last gasp of breath fails you and everything fades to blackness.  You’ve learned all too late the dangers of taking candy from strangers.  Also, you shouldn’t read ahead in Choose Your Own Adventure books, cheater.
• [Page 102] Perhaps this friend is not a good choice for a Real ID companion.  They may be a perfectly upstanding person and maybe one day your relationship will blossom into befitting this union, but for now, you should stick to being regular WoW-based friends.
• [Page 105] Congratulations, you have met someone truly worthy of your Real ID friendship.  Cherish this bond for all time and it will give you many happy memories and raids.

Yes, I’m being a tad extreme and silly with it.  I admit that I’m just having a little fun in order to take a go at a far simpler point.  If features in the Real ID system have you on edge, it’s very possible that what it is peddling isn’t particularly aimed at your needs.  It’s certainly possible to have deep and fulfilling relationships with people with which you would never get more personal than letting them hear your real voice over Vent.  My main point is that you shouldn’t feel the need to shoehorn this feature into that life, nor blame the feature for not catering to your needs.  I only know two people playing the game who I’d share IDs with, both people I know face-to-face, and only the one has shown open interest in the idea.  He plays on a completely different server and is moving away in a couple months.  I’m happy that Blizzard has come up with a system to fit that singular need for me.  For the rest, the old system has worked just fine.

I didn’t forget.  Your fortune cookie:

[Page 61] After much debate over the dangers of recursive anomalies, you decide to pick up the Choose Your Own Adventure book from the dusty library shelf and begin reading.  Turn to [Page 1].

It’s been a fun little dance thus far, though I have to admit, it hasn’t always been an easy write when my interest in WoW tends to phase with the moons.  That’s not really what made me fall off, though.  In truth, the time I typically dedicated to writing became filled in with work.  That probably has something to do with the fact that I wrote most of my articles at work.  Funny how that pans out.  Nope, there’s only so many months an employer will let you goof around aimlessly on the Internet before they cautiously put down their foot but not too hard and ask gently if you could maybe work on a project if it’s not too much trouble thank you.  That’s government for you.

Now summer is arriving, and with it comes the potential for a little personal project time.  I’ve strongly debated on it, and I think the time would be better spent on more diverse endeavors, like my WoW-less parent website.  I’d point you to it, but Skip isn’t about the wanton self-promotion.  That’s not how he rolls.  Wait, yes it is.  Skip rolls that way all the time.  But this one time, I’ll go against the grain.

Fortune Cookie:

This isn’t the last you’ll hear of Skip.  You’ve just become family now.  That means you get calls on holidays, birthdays and when he needs money.

Wait, what?

Making guilds!  Right.

So you want to make a guild.  Maybe you’re tired of your guild leader’s inability to cater to your every whim.  Maybe you don’t want to be bothered by people offering for you to join their guild.  Maybe you accidentally took a few extra Celexa this morning and rational thought has taken a backseat to manic impulse.

Whatever the reason, I’ve put it in your head, and now you want to make a guild.  But how?  Don’t worry, Jimmy.  Skip will tell you how.

Step 1: Acquiring a Guild Charter

For the simple price of 10 silver, you can acquire a guild charter.  If you don’t know where to get one, go into any major city and spam trade chat until someone tells you.  Don’t bother with proper grammar or spelling.  People who need for you to spell out your communication in full, well structured sentences to understand you obviously aren’t smart enough to know the answer anyways.  However, many people have difficulty seeing or paying attention.  They may be old or watching TV while they play.  Be sure to repeat yourself often.

Step 2: Picking a Name

Now that you have a charter, you need to pick a name for your guild.  Think carefully.  Whatever you pick, you will be stuck with until next week, when you give up and start a new guild. Blizzard has a strict naming policy when it comes to guilds.  But they’re also lazy and probably won’t care what you pick.  I mean, the expansion has been out for like a year, and paladins are still OP.  So, pick something cool, like <TeH gAy VaMpYrEz>, or <TRANNY SHAMMIES>, or <asdkghldhfsa>.  If they make you change it, remind everyone that Blizzard is gay and how horrible this game you play 12 hours a day is.  What have they got against Shaman Transmission Specialists, anyways?

Step 3: Getting Your Charter Signed

What, you don’t have a guild yet? That’s right.  In order to become an official guild, you have to get your charter signed by 9 people.  A common tactic is to enter a starting area and offer new characters a few gold pieces for the service of signing your charter.  This gives them very beneficial starting capital at little actual cost to them.  A less common tactic is to actually have 9 friends ready to join and run a guild with you.  You aren’t going to do either of those things.

Instead, enter a crowded capital city and run up to every individual without a guild you can find, prompting them immediately with the guild charter signing window.  Most people are dicks and won’t sign, but keep doing it and you’ll eventually succeed.  Don’t talk, just charter.  Talking wastes valuable signing time.  Some people consider this rude, but you’re a rude person.  If they don’t figure this out now, it’s just going to create issues later when they’re in your guild.  It’s better you weed out the soft-skinned pansies now.

Step 4: Guild Management

You’ve done it.  You now have your own guild, complete with new members.  Your responsibilities have ended.  Chat with your new peons.  Remind them that this will be the best guild ever.  The more everyone says that, the better it will be.

Pro-Tip: Promote all of your new members to officers.  Just like in real life, people will do things for you if you make them feel important.  Yet really, all you’ve done is given them the ability to do all of the work for you.

Now, just sit back and enjoy your new guild.  It probably won’t be as exciting tomorrow, but you can always just take the good stuff from the guild bank and /gdisband later.  It’s good to be the guild leader.

Your Fortune Cookie:

Your guild is going to be the best guild ever!

Wait, no, wrong story.

I game on a laptop. Well, it’s not so much a laptop as a small desktop with an identity crisis. I replaced my Frankenstein of a desktop with it because a) I wanted to game out in the living room and stop being such a shut-in, and b) the desktop was a fire-hazard waiting to kill me in my sleep.

An old picture I found of the old desktop taken from behind. Made mostly of yardsale and fleemarket parts, the power-supply didn't fit overtop of the CPU fan, religating it to a precarious perch atop the case.

The laptop, a stylish Toshiba Qosmio x305, became my new means of gaming. Its gaudy, metallic-flame design on the lid was always good for a laugh. The thing is massive and loud (both audibly and visually). I quickly realized that it needed good airflow to operate well, so I began placing it on an old notebook binder to give it a flat surface. The heat issues gradually climbed, and it was eventually cutting itself off, even with flat surfaces. One day, I came back from the bathroom to find it had cut off, and that the plastic sleeve on the binder had MELTED.

How hot was it getting, exactly? Well, if the sensors inside are to be believed, the machine was reaching 105 degrees Celsius before cutting out. If you’re not of the metric persuasion, let’s just point out that water boils at 100 degrees Celsius. Yup. That hot. After some reading around, I found I wasn’t alone in this, and that according to a Toshiba tech, the laptop is set to cut off before it can damage itself. Thus, it is rated to operate perfectly fine around 100 degrees. I found this pretty hard to swallow, but they’re the guys who built it, so whatever.

I invested in a cooling pad. A good one. This thing could keep a drink cold, and it worked great. The laptop became married to the pad, unable to continue running for more than half an hour without its arctic associate. Fast forward a few months, and it’ll still cut out with the pad if anything even remotely blocks the pad from getting good air flow. I finally decided it was time to void what was left of my warranty and bust the beast open to blow out the dust. I did and was amazed to find that the thing was nearly pristine.

Toshiba Qosmio X305 - It's very... red.

Fast forward again to a few days ago. The thing is running like garbage. I’m running around collecting carrots for the daily cooking quest. The area is nearly barren. My graphics are turned all the way down. Game play is jerky. I’m fed up and blaming Windows Vista, as I’ve never seen the piece of garbage run well and think “screw it, I’m getting Windows 7,” and I do so.

Imagine my wonder when the upgrade is complete, all of the software is in place, and I’m running around a packed Dalaran with my graphics turned up to medium without so much as a stutter. I admit to myself that I hadn’t actually expected it to work, and was just looking for an excuse to get rid of Vista. It’s running smooth, I’m holding a giddy conversation with my favorite Bossy Pally when all of a sudden — *black*…

WTF, mate?! Right… the heat. I give it the requisite few seconds, reposition it on my lap for optimal air, and give it another go. It boots up about 5 times faster than normal. I’m feeling cocky again. I load into WoW super-fast like no one’s business. I apologize and go to do some mindless questing — *black* Son of a Fel Reaver! Okay, we can do this. I brush any and all dust from the fan vents, make sure the fans are turned to full, and we go at it one more time.

–

*black*

…

FFFFFFFFFFU***********************************!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And so here we stand. My computer is running the fastest and most efficient it has ever known, and can’t seem to handle it. I’ve dialed back the speed, but it’s no use. The video processors (of which it has 3) can’t take the heat anymore. I’ve ordered an extraction fan to stick on its rump, which will try to suck heat off of the video card, but my hopes are low. I suspect I’m going to have to rip it completely apart again (an exercise in masochism if ever there was one) and apply new thermal grease. Maybe I’ll find where those extra screws from last time go.

So, at any rate, Skip is AFK until such time as he can get this garbage sorted out. That is unless the netbook will run WoW… maybe… no… maybe?

Your Fortune Cookie:

I looked at my kingdom, I was finally there, to sit on my throne as the Prince of Bel Air.

(I’m also putting it here so I have it for later.  >.>)

Melee Hit Table FAQ – The Fluid Druid