I feel a bit silly: I have had access to [item]Gavel of Unearthed Secrets[/item] for quite some time but have ignored it. It's the Lower City exalted spell damage mace. Recall that Seal of Vengeance favors weapon speeds that approach 3.0; since SoV procs 20 times a minute, a 3.0 speed weapon would guarantee a proc each hit. 2.7 is damn close.

Though a 2.7 speed weapon procs JoW/JoL less, it will proc SoV nearly every single time. SoV is very very streaky with my 1.8 speed sword, which has a fail rate of about 30%. In fact, the DoT drops off of the mob quite frequently...it's a problem. A 2.7 speed sword has a fail rate of about 10%. It's worth some testing.

Also, since the AQ enchants are going to be accessible next content patch, I am wondering whether it would be better to put 2% threat on my gloves over 20 spell damage. Need to work the math out when I have time. Mmm threat.

Edit: I didn't notice all that huge of an increase in my TPS, considering I chanted it with +40 spell damage (never bothered doing that on my other weapons, the pattern dropped for me last week...I am cheap and hate outsourcing chants). BUT it was Friday and I was tired. I should test SoV more.

Oh, and I have a new tanking weapon which will be mentioned in the next "Weekly Update." I am feeling posty lately, might even make an entry over the weekend for once.

I mentioned this topic in a previous post: Ray's Mod is one of the best G15 Winamp applets out there and as far as I know, it's the only one that will flash the LED's in beat with the music. My installation of Winamp has fallen into severe disuse since the great Coup d'iTunes well over a year ago. I've actually loaded it a few times soley for the purpose of turning off the lights to watch the LED's flash (hush, I am easily amused :P).

I had trouble finding a download link to the mod, it doesn't seem to be hosted at many places. So here's a working link from a German G15 mod forum. The flashing LED thing is somewhat of an easter egg because it's a hidden option. Here is what you need to do in order to enable it.

1. Go into the Ray's Mod option menu, it should be the 4th G15 media button.
2. Hold down both CTRL keys without letting go, while scrolling to the bottom.
3. There should be 2 additional options on the very bottom of the options list. Enable them with the play/pause key, then let go of the CTRL keys.

Load some tunes and enjoy!

Wow, the 2.2 PTRs are up! I honestly was't expecting the next patch to roll around until after BlizzCon, it's nice to see that I was wrong. The current patch notes though, are lacking anything substantial, so I am assuming that this is a very early build. According to blue posts, "voice chat is undergoing some additional polish."

The paladin blessing durations have been increased: Normal blessings to 10 minutes and greater blessigns to 30 minutes. I am looking forward to having my regeant costs being cut down and not having to rebuff as manically. I never realyl understood why they weren't 30 minutes to begin with. I know that the paladin blessings were designed to be highly situational, but like...how often do you change the greater blessings? lol.

I won't complain, I distinctly remember having to literally reapply the 5-minute blessings in 40 people constantly for 6 hours in the Molten core days (approximately every other pull). Or better yet: reapplying the blessings before a boss pull, only to have someone go AFK or delay the pull in such a way where we would have to buff all 40 people all over again. /rant

What's up with the nerfs, a 1-minute cooldown on Blessing of Sacrifice is harsh, no? Was this change PvP or Karazhan inspired? If the former is true, BoS is an easily dispellable buff, not sure why it's getting the nerf bad this hard...especially when it will affect PvE situations. Perhaps a blue post will enlighten us. Wouldn't it be more appropriate to shrink the duration down to 10 to 15 seconds or something?

The SoV buffs are interesting. The 25% duration increase is nice, though I am not convinced that it's going to make keeping SoV up that much easier, since it's not as if they up'd the PPM (which is 20 if I recall correctly). I am very very interested in knowing how much instant damage SoV does now on mobs already stacked with 5 applications, the spell damage coefficient, frequency, etc. I don't think that anyone is copied over yet though so I will have to wait.

Not paladin related, but I am an enchanter so this is worth noting: All of the AQ enchanting recipes are being added as BC faction rewards (mats are being adjusted). This is great because it was silly having some of the best enchants in the game exclusively from an old world dungeon (and a difficult one at that...doubt anyone is up to farming Twin Emps now-a-days). Additionally, Nexus Crystals will be enchantable into Small Prismatic Shards.

Let's see, it was a fairly interesting/busy weekend both in terms of WoW and real-life. I was going to only login for around an hour Monday to check my mail and farm, but raided a little bit instead. We wanted to get another crack at Prince before the Tuesday reset. We're weekend raiders and thus never do Mondays, this was actually a first.

It's a good thing that we did! First guild Prince Malchezaar kill last night on our first try of the evening. He was at 1% health, 9 people down with a single hunter up. Hunter solos prince! Nearly every single boss in Karazhan dropped some sort of healing gear this week. I think the actual loot percentage is at around 70% healing gear, maybe more. I swear that can't be a coincidence lol.

Picked up the Breastplate of the Lightbinder to semi-replace the Earthblood Chestguard. The shaman chest has a lot more stamina though, and almost identical healing stats. Also picked up Formula: Enchant Weapon - Major Spellpower last night while questing in Blade's Edge Mountains. It was off of the second kill too, I was expecting to have to farm for days to get that pattern.

I swear that I am just about to give up on The Sun Eater and settle for the King's defender, whenever it drops from the Chess Event. The minute that I get and bother chanting another weapon, I bet it will drop. It taunts me...

One of my favorite WoW podcasts, World of Warcast just finished a two part segment on guild management that I thought was well done. It's definitely worth a listen, especially to those considering starting a casual and/or raiding guild.

On a similar note, I have a fair bit of guild experience myself, having been the guild peon who didn't know where the entrance to the Molten Core was (in my glorious shitty greens), an inherited guild master (oh God long drama story), a founding guild master, disbander of a guild, witness to guild merger, alliances, implosion(s), casual to raiding transition, etc.

I thought that it might be interesting to share some guild/raid management tips as well as some of the things that I have learned along the way as guild master, since it doesn't seem to be discussed a whole lot (either that, or I don't read around enough).

It's actually a topic that I have been meaning to write about for a month or so, just haven't gotten around to doing it yet, in between all of the other nonsense that I type. It's such a large topic, especially in regards to raiding...

messy wires :3I like reading the "Reader WoWspace of the Week" articles over on WoWInsider. It's interesting seeing where other people play, in addition to giving me purchasing ideas (naughty naughty, I spend enough on "stupid computer crap" and "personal ergonomic comfort.") Figured I would do my own:

• Desk: Beech Veneer Ikea Galant table. My old deks was a large awkward computer cart. I like this one because it's plain, sturdy, and spacious. I am considering going back over to Ikea and getting the cable organizer that attaches to the underside of the desk, so that I can run the cables through it and hide them a little more.
• Chair: It was on sale at Office Depot for around $99. It's cushy and it's leather.
• Monitors: 19" Samsung SyncMaster 914v and 22" widescreen Samsung SyncMaster 225BW. Both were Black Friday sales, for 2005 and 2006.
• Speakers: Cheap Creative 5.1 speakers from Best Buy. One day, I'll replace them with a nicer set of PC surround sound speakers, but these are sufficient for the time being.
• Nostromo n52 Speedpad: I love this thing, it's so handy. I have just about every single ability and macro that I could ever want to use bound to the gamepad. It does though, take quite a bit of time to get used to. I don't think I can play without it now.
• Logitech G15 Keyboard: Newest toy, posted an article about it lately. My other keyboard drowned in a tragic coffee incident.
• Razer Diamondback Mouse: It's a low profile mouse with on-the-fly sensitivity adjustment options. Pretty, glows blue, very responsive.
• Burning Crusade Collector's Edition Mousepad on top of an IcMat (bought it from CompUSA and hated it...the noisy scraping noise eventually drove me nuts). The MC mousepad is a bit small though...