Life is full of these little disappointments.
I finally got some strobes for photography, and gleefully did a shoot with them over the weekend. I noticed something odd on the shots, and set up a massive series of tests to get an idea of the actual duration of the flash on the strobes. I discovered they were way, waaaay longer than I had thought (which explained the discrepancies in my shots). This confused me and lead me to look it up online, where I discovered the answer and the reasoning and I suddenly realized how much easier it would have been if I had just done that first, rather than all the damned testing.
Back in the early days of the WHU I quickly learned the mistake of getting info from places that seem reliable (like EJ, or WoW tooltips). I got burned a couple of times, called out in the comments for something I said that, in fact, turned out to be wrong. I quickly learned to test everything (well — almost everything) myself, rather than trust other sources.
I sometimes forget that the rest of life is not like that, and I can just look up the answers.
In other disappointments, for those who have not already heard, BM is still sufficiently screwed up that I can’t really do a decent rotation video for them. By using a pet with a “claw” basic attack most of the abilities will actually work (they don’t work with bite or smack) however the problem comes from Kill Command.
Now that Kill Command can be talented to have no cooldown, there’s a huge question about whether to use Kill Command, or Arcane Shot, or some combination. Except Kill Command doesn’t really work right now, and even if it did the fact that its crit chance is based off your pet’s crit chance means that, right now, you’d never want to use it.
But I’m sure that we will want to use Kill Command — it’s supposed to be the “signature shot” of BM — but I have to think that we should use arcane shot as well, otherwise BM is back to having the two button rotation.
Anyway, I’ve been debating whether I should make a rotation video anyway and just say “Hey, we have no bloody clue what the priorities here are, but here’s me pressing some buttons!”
Finally, we are shutting the doors on the Wipe Recovery podcast. After the first couple episodes, we encountered endless scheduling conflicts and craziness. I mean every. bloody. week. And they were almost always crazy last-second omg I can’t make or X didn’t show wtf? As the weeks piled up it started to seem a bit doomed and we decided to set it aside for now… and I just plain don’t have the time to set aside for something that doesn’t actually happen. My brainspan is stretched thin as it is, and having one day of the weekend free of commitments seems like a pleasant prospect : )
Frost, take the weekend day for yourself. dont want you pushing yourself too hard. you deserve it after everything you do for the hunter community
we all appreciate all your hard work, your number crunching, aweseome humor and most importantly…your uncommonly good looks.
Apart from the look’s I second all that DarkDragoon says.
Take a day away from WoW and WoW-related, Frost. I had to step back; but that’s because raiding/WoW was something I “had to do” 6 days a week.
WoW, Hunter’ing, dps, theorycrafting, etc…all better after a day off filled with good beer and good food.
So what was wrong with the strobes?
Have you considered potentially just a wipe recovery blog? I can certainly appreciate wanting some free time, but other than the Officers Quarters post on wow.com, I haven’t found a good resource. Most blogs on the subject are just QQ rant fests.
If you can’t talk Dawn and Hrist into writing one with you (I bet that would be a challenge), are there any resources you’ve found to be helpful?
Cheers!
You’re a busy guy…writing for two websites, doing the podcast, etc. It’s better to shut down a project you don’t have time for, than too disappoint your listeners week after week when you can’t deliver. No harm done.
All your hard work is greatly appreciated. I would NOT be the player I am today without your guidance. /cheer
You deserve some “self-time” good sir!
Are you talking about the sync time with your strobes? The actual flash on a strobe is essentially instantaneous, but its the time that the electronics take to communicate with each other that slows things down. Especially when considering wireless sync. A good baseline is just to set your shutter to 1/200 then adjust your aperture and flash power to control the balance between ambient and flash lighting. But I’m sure you’ve read all this. Go read http://strobist.blogspot.com/ . He has an awesome Lighting 101 piece there. I got my small strobe about a year ago and have had plenty of time for all those “doh!” moments.
The funny thing is that someday, when you have kids, you’ll look back and wish you had all the free time you do now!
Regarding the BM rotation, there’s no rush. Blizzard will fix it when they get around to it, then refine it, then change it, and refine it some more, so don’t get all worked up about getting a rotation video together immediately. Even if it does end up being a simplistic rotation, is that really a bad thing? If one of the three specs is out Ret Pally spec, what harm would it do? Players are going to migrate to the optimal spec regardless of how interesting its rotation is, in my experience.
When I used the strobes they seemed to have a *much* slower flash duration than the 1/1000th of a sec they should have had — I actually had some camera shake blur in a couple shots.
Turns it’s partially the difference between t.5 and t.1 duration measurements, and partially that when you stop the strobes down, it actually lengthens the flash duration. So in practice that 1/1000th light had a flash duration of about 1/125th of a second.
Frost, as a loyal minion, I assure you, no endgame raider is on the end of their chair wanting an update on BM rotations. No need to stress about it.
We would, on the other hand, love to hear whether we’ll be trapping again in the first few Cata instances, and your thoughts so far on trap launcher!
I will miss the wipe recovery podcast. I enjoied it, had my question read the first episode and was giddy to hear it!
Would love to chat about photography stuff. Got a camera for christmas for taking pictures of my son, trying to do some sort of home studio stuff but can’t get them to turn out quite how I’d like, but I still have a lot more playing around & adjusting to do. Toyed with the idea of buying a lighting kit (and still probably will) but put it off for now. Are Strobing lights better/worse than always-on lights? Are there advantages aside from power & longevity?
Yeah that’s always annoying. Some manufacturers like to use the t.5 to give the impression of a faster flash but that second half of that flash is still light that can expose the sensor. Although a flash wont make ambient light any brighter so to avoid camera blur a good standard to go by for shutter speed is 1/focal length (ie on a 50mm it’d be 1/50). Not perfect but works in many situations.
Take a break from it all Frost and get some you time. We can’t have our fearless leader getting burnt out on doing wow stuff or having a seizure over-testing strobe lights. We are demanding a lot of things from you so perhaps it’s time to look to your wow community and start delegating some work to others. I would be more than happy to help you out. I’m a great delegator. So good in fact, I had someone else write this post.
On a side note, isn’t taking pictures of trees, which, let’s face it are really just big flowers, something that should be reserved for bark licking, leaf wearing elves*?
*No actual elves were offended in making this comment, but if they were it proves my point.
Photography- the peaceful way to empty your wallet and body build. Oh, and you get some pictures out of it! Lol. College stoooodents are too poor to get all these fancy things, so I stick with my rebel and hand-me-down tripod (that weighs a ton!). Those are the best of times. Real simple…
Whew, anyway, I agree with the folks here. Don’t stress yourself out or everything else starts to suffer. Keep up the good work, mate, and give us your best.
Yes take a day or week off if you need to! I’ll miss Wipe Recovery but you do enough already.
Do some more camping
Frost, I say this with much respect for you but the words ‘burnt out’ come to mind.
I know why people do betas but if the beta is always changing and always buggy,
it just seems like a waste of time. I mean I havent played WoW in over 2 months
and the only change was 3.5 which btw wasnt much. Maybe I’m the burnt out one lol.
take care, Creepnfreak
I LOVE this blog, but you do sound like you are heading down the burn out path… Podcasts don’t mean much to me, but I think that’s cause I never got into listening to them… I’d rather READ the info, anyway, since my internet non-WoW time is spent between calls at work.
Of course I’m trusting Frost observation completely, but if Arcane is better damage than Kill Command, this means both MMO and wowhead is incorrect in its listing the damage of Kill Command as:
53% of RAP + 1149.98
As that would even with the pet crit being half that of its master, slap Arcane around the room with its 16,5% RAP. Now compensate for focus, and things get closer, but still a ballpark 10% RAP (after crit compensation) advantage for Kill Command.
But of course – as with many toolstips in cata still the case – perhaps the tooltips don’t match actual behaviour?
But if the tooltip is the goal, indeed BM would be a two button spammer again in many situations.
Frost dont burn yourself out !, be sad to see wipe recovery go but these days with every ones busy life styles its hard to get everyone together and I can total understand where your coming from so just let it go for now , you can always pick it back up again if circumstances change but thanks for all your helpful info .
It’s a real shame to see WRP go, as I really enjoyed the podcasts, but I fully understand the reasons behind it.
What, exactly, are you shooting with the strobes might I ask?
Good Call Frost – look after yourself first, and then everything else will fall in line.
But if you’re feeling yourself spread a little thin – I think it would be a good idea to see what other time you can scrounge for just chilling.
@everybody: I’m not getting burned out : ) Just very busy and I have less patience for adding things to the wow-roster that may or may not happen.
@Sathien: I’m shooting people, of course.
@Armin: don’t forget that Kill Command damage is reduced by armor, and arcane shot is not, in addition to Kill Command currently having half the crit chance (when it works).
@Nomadigin: I learned the 1/focus length rule of thumb in college, and with some more experience I now think it’s totally crap. 1/2x focal length is closer to true (especially with non-full frame digital sensors, which extend focal length).
Not having access to the Beta, I can’t wait to see how the BM rotation turns out.
Hmmmm….i cannot think of a better cure for the little disappointments than a massive level 30 dwarf hunter raid on ______________????
Wink wink…hint hint…Ok so I am as subtle as concrete but hey! I have been on a month break from WoW (burned out on ICC frankly and sick of zombie-like random heroics). I would blow the dust off my authenticator for a few mugs of dwarven stout and some crazy WHU event terrorizing the other (insignificant) classes on the Icecrown realm.
Do what you gotta do! If it means that everything else on the site stays good and quality I’m behind you bro! I personally am anxious for BM but that’s just because I’m getting bored with MM; who else wants to try something else in Cata just for change’s sake?
“The one-man Rock Band” Heath Slater
hmmm, frost’s answer to sathien’s question brought a song to mind, changed a bit to fit. “Froooooost shot the sheeeeeriiiiiiif…but he did not shoot the deputyyyyyyyyyyy”
>.>
<.<
What point is it being african if you cannot get sunburnt.