The Throughput Theory

As a an end-game progression level raider, one should constantly seek to improve in every way possible- To me this also includes finding different gear for different situations.
I have been somewhat limited in my capability to acquire side-grades and "to play with" pieces, thereby restricting my ability to apply more practice to the thought of a "side-spec mainset." However with the increasing availability of some unique pieces of gear in TOC, I have been beginning to entertain the idea of a "Throughput set."
The idea is based around the short fight or the fight that requires a large amount of healing. The reason behind this is Trees must find a balance between output and mana control. The throughput set would be much less focused on mana efficiency and more focused on putting out as much healing as humanly possible by sacrificing things like MP5 and spirit for raw spellpower and crit. The haste cap should always be taken care of regardless of which set of gear I'm wearing so I was far less concerned with that particular stat. The problem a Tree runs into is 'How am I going to balance the spirit that converts to spellpower in tree form with the other stats I am trying to stack?' This question deserves testing and my current short answer is: 'The amount of spellpower lost from losing 1 spirit needs to be evaluated on a piece-by-piece basis. Each fight is different as is each person's healing style and role. If you are spamming nourish the entire fight, then obviously losing 30 spirit to gain 30 crit will more than balance out. You would need to evaluate your current stats as well: if your crit is 20%, then your nourish has a 45% crit chance with 5 points in Nature's Bounty. You probably don't need more crit but as I said, you have to evaluate each fight and piece of gear individually and choose what fits best."

Not bad, kid. Not bad.

After completing the setup on my new computer, installing drivers and and whatnot, I got my chance to raid on my new computer. And doubled my previous performance. I know my framerate was terrible before, maxing out at about 6-8 fps in combat looking at a wall, but the way my computer performs now has changed my ability to perform in every situation. I have no problem keeping up with other resto druids in my raid and outperform most of the other healers. My raid awareness is more apparent now that I actually have a computer that can perform at the rate required to keep up with my actions. Managing my global cooldown is unbelievably easier to manage now that I can actually see it and chaincasting is much smoother. I can see where things are going before they get there and I can determine more precise movements in everything I do.

Lesson of this story: FIX YOUR FUCKING SHIT.

ICANHASFASTMODEZ?!?!//!slash?!?!1111one

NEW COMPUTER MAKE STUFF GO FASTMODE YAYAYAYAYAY!!!!
Okay now tha t I've gotten the little kid exclamation out of my system, I have a brand new shiny, sparkly, fast, good computer. I'm just a little excited *little bit ^___^* because I'm downloading like 7 things and installing 12 other things and my computer is sitting here like "Yep. On it. What's next?" Although I now have 2 blank spaces in my keyboard where I popped the Windows key out (because I hate those fuckin things) everything seems to be running smoothly. This whole "You have to manually install every driver and program you need on this computer one by fucking one as well as redo all your saved passwords, favorite, shortcuts, and settings." So basically I'm going to use this computer for WoW and nothing else. Too much to fucking reinstall and I sure as hell am not paying for another copy of Microsoft Office. $450 for something I already have? Noooo thank you.
Anyway. Bedtime because I actually want to go to Philosophy tomorrow.

A sigh of relief... (?)

So I talked to my friend about the fact that I can't afford the way he lives. That problem is fixed. The problem of him not having any money isn't. He's supposed to be taking some kind of psychological test to get back into the military and go back to SatCom for the Marines. Oo-rah. He was a combat medic and took a piece of a frag grenade to the back of the leg in Iraq three years ago and then got engaged and decided to leave at the end of his contract.

Now he's leeching off of me and sitting around doing nothing. Oo-rah......
But onto other things.

GUILD MERGER. Whoa what just happened there...? 40 people in the raid? Are we doing AQ tonight or something? Well, not really, 15 people sit every fight. -_______- Weeding out the bads and picking raiders for the next 3 weeks is going to be interesting. I'm sure people are gonna QQ hard and rage like I am for a while. A few have already left and some have already been kicked but I'm afraid that I'm going to have to fight the two other resto druids for a spot. Being sat for 4 fights in TOC and 4 fights in Ulduar on the first raid night after the merger doesn't make me any more comfortable about where I stand. Hopefully I can get my shiny new computer up and running and my performance will improve with my computer's but I have to prove it. A little worried about the fact that one of the other trees is my guild master's sister and the other one is just straight up amazing. Insta-glad if he pvped, imo. Must... do... moar... bettar! x_x

AFK, Murdering Roommates

So my friend from Iowa got kicked out of his house for no reason a few weeks ago and I allowed him to come stay with me. I thought it would be fine but now he's causing nothing but problems. He knows I raid Sunday through Wednesday from 7:45pm to 3am. He knows I run at a terrible framerate ANYWAY. Yet he still decides to use this time to download movies and random games. When what he should be doing is looking for a fucking job.

*SIGH*

The downloading makes my computer shit itself while it figures out what the fuck my latency is doing to it. Tonight I raided the last half hour (it would've been an hour and half but we stopped early) with 550ms. And he doesn't pay a damn cent to give him the "Fuck you I pay for this shit too" excuse.
Now I wouldn't be so angry about the kid not having a job and just lazing around the house all day if it weren't for the fact that he eats twice as much as I do twice as often, leeches my internet and pisses my actual roommate off. Living on my own and being a rather small person, I usually eat twice a day and I might have a cup of coffee for breakfast. One reason for that is that I can't afford to eat constantly and the other is because I don't really eat much to begin with-- small stomach and high metabolism makes for toothpick size. I'm not really sure how to solve this without sounding like a complete asshole but I think it's going to have to be done.

RRRRAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGEEEEEEEEEEE

-Blindreaper

Falling behind is good imo

So after being switched to my lock, I've been sat out for every single TOC, 10 or 25, that the guild has done, save for the very first one and am now over 40 badges of triumph behind almost everyone in the guild. How am I supposed to continue to progress in gear level alongside the rest of my guildmates when I'm a tier behind most of them AGAIN? I don't understand why the officers in my guild have decided that I should sit every week. Yes high dps is good, but it's not like I'm not pulling better dps than many of our casters. Now I'm going to fall behind again and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it. *Sigh*
I'm beginning to wonder why I sit around for 3 hours for nothing other than filling a role on a single fight because soon my role won't matter because I'm so far behind again. Gotta talk to someone about this or I'm going to end up wasting my time for nothing.

Hello!

If you can see this you're one of my first viewers so allow me to introduce myself. My name is Matt, though this blog is named after my World of Warcraft Character, Blindreaper. I also play a druid and will randomly rant about them from time to time, but that's beside the point.
I have been playing World of Warcraft for about 4 years now, since about 2 months after vanilla was released and my main has been my warlock for the duration of my wow career, save for about 6 months starting at the beginning of Wrath of the Lich King when I became fascinated with druids for a time. At the beginning of Wrath, I considered my warlock my alt but still kept him decently up to snuff, albeit I couldn't get him into Ulduar so I settled for Naxx runs and random other instances to satisfy myself when I wanted a change of pace from my druid. About a month and a half before patch 3.2 came out, I was approached by the officers in my guild and asked if I would play my warlock. I thought to myself, "Are you fucking kidding me? I never thought I'd raid on my warlock again! *wicked grin*" So I agreed to play my warlock but warned them that I would basically need to be thrown gear every night because I was stuck with random shit that was a tier behind the rest of the guild. Nonetheless I sucked up doing terrible dps while I gathered gear to match my counterparts. Although I still need work, I'm quickly catching up to the rest of the guild. And now here I am writing about it. What a strange, long trip it's been. *Sigh*