Am I Opening a Goodbye?

This is going to be a slightly somber day for me today. After I post this up I'm going to be logging on to WoW to do my set of dailies for the FL mount and it might be the last time I log on. See today is Christmas and I'm going to open SWTOR and I can't wait.

Over this past year WoW has grown very boring and, well, I don't know maybe I've moved past the game.

I don't have a ton of time to invest in a video game lately, so I won't have the time to jump on both and I know me, I'll be leveling as fast as possible.

Hopefully MoP will bring me back full time, unless the primary word on SWTOR is wrong by what most say.

I will let everyone know as soon as I have it figured out but I do know this if I start a tank on SW, I'll blog about it too. I really enjoy doing this.

Happy holidays to everyone out there. I hope this day finds you healthy and happy and be safe out there for the New Year.

Thoughts on LFR and a pug experience.

My gear!

Above is a shot of my Tier 6 retro gear!

Last post I mentioned I hadn't got into the LFR system yet. A few hours later I jumped on, que'd up and gave it a go. This was literally 8 days after the LFR system opened up. I came in mid fight as a DPS and was in tank gear so I took off RF and put up my 9k dps (hey I tried, bad gear and lil vengeance doesn't equal good DPS in prot spec and gear). Down went the boss and I was thinking, I heard it was easy but wow. That was the final boss for the 1st part.

I que'd back up. Now sadly I'm on a lap top and it doesn't handle the 25's well as I learned in my first LFR.. So I went as DPS. We smoked the first group of bosses. The ease is amazing. My thoughts are that 5 mans are harder.

On to the DS, which I figured would be harder. Nope, in fact we wiped on the back of Deathwing and 7 people left saying this was a fail group and they don't group with bads. How did we wipe, no one listened to the 9 stacks the NPC must get or the tentacles spawn.

Of the 9 bosses I did in LFR (one twice) we wiped twice. Once because it seemed all the healers lagged on Hagarar. Deathwing was total FACEROLL and I did win the sword Gurthalak from ole deathy himself. I know I'm a tank but I was DPSing and that is my other spec. Every class that can use that can spec prot so I took a shot and won it. yay for me.

Pugging HoF-

I was chatting with a friend on RealID. He told me to come over and we could que up for the new 5mans on a DPS toon. I was excited because I don't like to que on my DPS, takes too long and I never get a good group. I was pretty happy that he was going to run me thru.

I went on my hunter Zumhug, I neglect him big time and his gear suffers for it. I waltzed into the new 5 mans in my broken MM spec and started doing 9k DPS on trash. The tank who was on vent told me it was a tad low but wait til a boss. Some how, some way ZIXIO a frost DK who was pulling a whopping 16k told me how bad I was and my DPS was to low to be in "this stuff".

Now in my defense (and excuses) I was low; my gear was bad, I think it was ilvl 351 and I'm playing on a laptop where I don't have use of my key binds and my bar add-on which leaves me on stock UI which is a bit clunky.

Our 1st boss was Jania, I went all out and since I was in vent with the tank I head a heads up on when it was going to start. I put everything I had into it. I pop'd cooldowns and tryed not to let a global pass, to my dismay, I hit a horrid 12k. Oh my I didn't hear the end of it. Then they started on my gear. My poor hunter got a beaten. I do have the rogue/druid agi trinket (Unheeded Warning) which isn't bad, it has nice Agi on it and well, I'm not raiding with this toon.

Since Zixio was a frost DK he did a pretty decent amout of damage and the the Rogue just smashed the charts. I was feeling shame and I heard over and over how bad I was at this game, I was a kid and it was my kind of player who was ruining the game for good people like him.

My response was, you are a DK and you think your DPS is good. It takes skill to play a frost DK and do good damage, am I correct in that?

Anyway, the last boss in our 5 man dropped the Agi and the healer (shammy) rolled and won it. Before leaving he ad sure to tell me my 17k on that boss was pathetic and left.

I won a few peices, bougth a trinket and paid for the crafted xbow. I hate being bad. On my next go round in those 5 mans, I hit about 20k on bosses and felt better.

My lord are people in LFG nasty. What a community wrecker.

Thoughts on 4.3, Deathwing Incoming!

I want to take a second to say sorry for my lack of posting lately. I wanted to make more effort at posting. I've had to deal with two pretty sick kids and a full schedule of finals lately. So as the year winds down I'll make more of an effort and try if even to short the post to give at least my 2 cents.

With the arrival of 4.3 Blizz finds themselves smack dab in the middle of cheating drama, while players are supposed to know how to play by the rules, being that this is a video game it must allow the cheat to happen. There must be a mechanism for it to happen or it simply wont. Never the less we see another top of the line guild take advantage and get busted. More on the happening here.

New gearzzzz
In less than 5 days playing I'm hitting 373 ilvl, just a reminder I didn't have on VP and did see one FL boss during T12. I did the three new five mans which I have to say were beautiful and provided a lot to take in but there is really no skill involved. I pugged them and had a few wipes due to mechanic etc...but all in all it lacked a challenge.

LFR
I don't have anything to report here other than the rave reviews I've heard about this. Being so busy in RL I haven't raided at all. I intend to give that a go tomorrow and I can't wait to see this new tier of raiding.

Darkmoon
I'm not too sure I know all the quests there but the games are fun and they go quick. I still have a few more time to finish up the FL dailies so I'm doing those as well. Good news is I'm making gold.

Its the time of year to give thanks, I thank my wife and kids for putting up with me all the time. I'm also very thankful for the people who come here and read my babble.

The art of the pull!

Pulling a pack of mobs or a boss is the first step of any fight. The first time you put on the shield and 1h weapon and que to tank, making sure you handle your pulls runs thru your mind more than once. For some its second nature and for others they never quite get the handle on it.

Just a few ideas to make the pull easier and help those who are worried about that contact with the mobs you are going to say hello too. This simple act is and can be the biggest issue on how others perceive you as a tank. If you don't nail it PUGs will torment you. If you don't pick up your target fast enough it can lead to a wipe and if someone can prove (on any given fight) that they can do it, you might lose your spot as the tank.

This comes from a Paladin POV and the reason why is because its what I know best. I have dabbled in Warrior and DK pulls but I'm not nearly as good or as comfortable with either of these toons to want to raid or speed pull. I would rather take the 5 extra seconds in setting up the pull with my non main toons than wipe and cost us minutes to corpse walk, buff and bio after the wipe.

First allow me to give you a tad of background on how I learned to pull. The very 1st pally I played with was tirelessly slow and methodical. He could make a 1 hour H-Botanica run into 2 hours. Learning to play in TBC ---> A L.O.T. of your success was dependant on your pull. Ave Shield (AS) was a 1.5 second cast, didn't silence and in general Pally's were not pull friendly at a distance. Now...consecrate would gather EVERYTHING up then but if you had a caster...oh my how it sucked. Til this day I'm a tad uncomfortable running and pulling with my pally because of my early play time. When Wrath came out I thought I was good at the pull. Shortly after LFG came out, I que'd with my hunter and seen a world class player pull H-UP in 258 ilvl gear pull and finish it in 8 minutes. Now as ICC gear came out and 277 ilvl gear was all the rage, this was easy. As I watched this dude pull this place with precision and grace I knew I had alot to learn. I worked at it, it took some time but after a bit I got better. Here are some tips...

This will help with bosses or trash. It might even help you when a pat gets you are you have a tab targeter who like to help speed the run up.

Pre pull things:

• Is Rightous Fury on because you switched spec's?
• does the healer have full or near full mana?
• Know your enviroment, if this is your 1st time in this place DO NOT speed pull.
• Watch you pats (caster or melee) is it a watcher who will summon more?
• Pull the healer 1st, other casters 2nd and melee last. If you have a ranged (hunter) CC them.
• Will pulling this set pull the next set or special mob?
• Can LoS help you make this pull easier?
• What is the first thing this mob does? stun, cc healer etc. Pre-pop CD.
• Put second caster or secondary target as your focus, this makes switching fast and easy.

On pull:

• Mark a target, let the group know who needs the DPS 1st. Mark CC's and make sure who CC's who.
• NEVER PULL with HoR, if you do that ability is on CD, it does ZERO damage if someone pulls mob or boss off you, get top aggro until you can fix that. Its never good. just. don't. do. it.
• Exorcism or AS from range. On Boss or Melee, Exorcism is great and allows As and hammer to be used for more snap. On casters go with AS it silences them and brings them toward you for that extra bit of space in close quarters fighting.
• KNOW how your shield bounces, if there is more than one caster, did it them all? If not silence, CC or Rebuke on caster that is blowing you or your healer up.
• Plan what o do before the pull in case you miss with AS or you get a pat that is too close.

Directly after pull:

• Are all mobs on you? If not, you can HoR or RD them.
• How fast did your primary mob die? Do you need to get extra aggro on your secondary target?
• Do you need to lesson damage so your healer can keep you up?
• Can something bad happen now or in the next few seconds? Have CD ready.

As you see the last of the health leaving the last mobs bar, look to the next group, pat or room.

• Start this whole process again. Before the next set of pulls do  you need CD's to come up?
• Does the healer need mana? If not...go.
• If they do, wait a until what you need to come up.

I hope this helps those who need a bit of help on the pull, pull smoother. If you have any comments or questions. Let me know.

You too can be Better.

The party  you are with deserves it!

This is in response to a wonderful post to a brilliant blog. Vosskah over at Sword and Board is a brilliant blogger, well spoken guy and just by his hints, tips and ideas he must be a hell of a tank and WoW player. Please go check out his blog and I know you'll be back after reading once.
I'd like to in a way, mirror Vosskah's  post and make suggestions to fix someone you know that could do the job better. This probably isn't for a pro tank, raid tank or tanking officer but I guess it could be.

What can you do to help your tanking?

• Gem - Right now superior gems are a must! Mastery is KING! Put a gem in that empty SLOT!
• Enchant - if you don't have an enchant on it, go do it.
• Glyph - Why don't you have your glyph slots filled?
• Spec - Learn to spec. Bad placement = unspent points. As tanks we can now add to dps, TBC is in the past. DO IT! um, most specs are cookie cutter but once you your mitigation talents....add to the group dps.
• Gear - you have to know EVERY tank must have more than one set of gear. Switching trinkets and other types can go a long way to helping others in your group for a fight.

Those are the basics. As tanks we get an insta que, please go spend 10 minutes finding out the info on the above if you don't know it or send them to Righteous Defense, Sword and Board or Maintankadin.com, or have them email me. ----> there is a ton of great blogs to the right!

We all know every tank MUST generate threat. Even with the buff to tanking threat, you still have to work if you are outgeared by DPS. To me, if a DPS passes me I want to know why. You have to make sure your threat talents are in place. Make sure RF, Defensive Stance, Blood Presence or bear form are where they need to be. Next look to spec, (only pally) Rule of Law, Wrath of the Lightbringer and Crusade are almost a must. If you don't have them, GET THEM. If you are still getting passed in threat, you need more (as a pally, warrior or DK) Expertise, if you have to go this route, you might be playing with people that way outgear you or you need to be more aggressive.

You have to know how and WHEN to use Cool-downs. Here is a marvelous post from Mel on how and when to use cool-downs. As a pally, with trinkets and HS, we can almost have some cool down going all the time. NEWS FLASH WOG is no longer an acceptable talent cool-down at the 5 man heroic or regular raid instance. You don't need it, lose the talents and the glyph. If you need it your healers are not regular healers and don't know how to play the class. Just saying...

The one most important rule for any tank in a busy fight is preparation! (thanks Ciderhelm)
If you can answer these questions, you know you're in good shape:

• When is the bad thing going to happen?
• Who is the bad thing going to happen to?
• Where is the bad thing going to happen?

Know your weaknesses, fix them. Vosskah mentioned kiting, if you are a bad kiter, go find a mob that can harm you and kite it. Any good tank needs to move, if you have issues moving work on it. Here is a great video and post about kiting. I was once a clicker, I worked hard at keybinding and button pushing. That was my biggest weakness. If one of your weaknesses is not doing something someoone tells you because your way is "fine" thats lazy and unacceptable. If you are just coming back into game or not a regular raid tank, take the advice of someone else. Give it a shot, who knows those wasted talent points you put in a worthless talent might help your raid or even that brutal heroic you are in as a pug.

Work on your strengths and make it work. I hate to DIE, omg do I hate to die. I solo tanked Arthus from P2 to the end of the fight. I was determined to kill him. I will do anything I can not to die, including not mess up two times in a row (fixing a mess up). I'm also a great chaos tank, when things go to hell,  I'm at my best. I take pride in not dying, I take pride in trying to out DPS my DPS. Sorry this was all about me but I'm just trying to give examples.

If you are unsure of these, ask someone, get some feedback. As your raid leader, tanking officer or take the advice of a blogger you trust. I'm going to be they'd bet willing to have a long conversation about how to make your runs just a bit better.

The Guild Builder!

I'm out of the club, I lost my blogging card....cuz this blog isn't about 5.0, Panda's or anything that happened at Blizzcon. I figured you'd be inundated with all that. Right now the info is coming from Blizz in bunches so I'll break that up and talk a tiny bit about something I've decided to take on.

I'm done with raiding, I mean, I'm done raiding on a set schedule. Life is just to hectic to say I'm going to raid with someone and have something change where I have to leave. I'm frankly not into looking for someone fit what I'm looking for. I'm not the type to allow others to wait on me to show. That just wouldn't be fare.

My options are to look for a casual guild that is super big and made level or grab a guild that has a raid team and be the outsider who try's to even get heroic tanking jobs. So instead, I'm going to LEVEL a guild.Why? Not sure, but I wanna try it.

A few months back I got ahold of a guild with a terrible name and three bank tabs. So I've put all my toons in this terribly named guild and started doing some quests. After 3 weeks I am now half way thru LEVEL 1...omg. The XP it takes is overwhelmingly high. Blizz really set the bar high getting to level 2 with a guild. To give you an idea, after 3 weeks of questing in my epic tabard, I couldn't hit level 2 until next week. To top it off, no one, and I mean, no one wants to join a level 1 guild. There is no reason too.

So whats the plan, not sure. I've made a macro and I try every day to hit up all the unguilded people I run across for every 3 I get, 2 leave. I don't wanna be a trade spammer and frankly I'm embarrassed about my guilds name. Sooooo until I can change it, I won't be doing the trade route. Until I get to level 2, I won't have success recruiting the lower level toons.

Back to the that plan...Well, I'm a tank, a pretty good tank. At least good enough for the heroics pose now in difficulty. I offer an insta que to those who want to gear an unguilded non raiding toon. Once I get a few who wanna get those toons some gear, we can hit that magical level 2 and then I can get the lower alts to come and stick.

I guess I should wonder whats the point of this, but I'm bored with the game, not in a place I can raid and just want to do something I have done before. This is my next project....

Stay tuned!

Tanks Gone Bye...

I was once told that you should thank the people you need too thank before its too late.

Going thru some Blogs last night, I was listening to the Double O Podcast about tanking done a few weeks back. What a great episode and I learned some stuff but...I also started thinking about those I have tanked with, set up a relationship with and I think I need to take a minute to say thanks to them, tell them what they did to advance me and let you see the pixels that not only helped me become a better tank but allow you to stroll down this memory lane as well.

Below is the links to those who I've Co~Tanked with and a bit about how they moved me along:

Saharah - The person responsible for me being the player I am, in fact I rolled a tank so he could play his hunter that he really enjoyed playing. All in all, this is the person that taught me to tank and was an in game friend. Sah, ran the guild, was the RL in TBC and basically a father figure to us all. A bit of a misunderstanding in the guild and resulting drama drove the guild apart.

Solner - The coolest RP'r I've met in game. On top of that a hell of a tank with so much of a real life it held him back from being one of the best in the world, IMO. Solner, taught me pace, mob control and how to min/max. He also allowed me to make mistakes and guided me to be better. He was a no nonsense tank and I hope I take some of my style from him.

Kurok , Jexar and Janthar - My Co~Tanks, from a guild I was in called Natural Twenty. I was newer to hard core raiding when I joined them and we sat around top 1000 in the world during Ulduar. All of these guys were ahead of me in skill but always made me work to earn my spot. In fact Kurok, gave up his tanking spot to DPS so I could tank and Janthar played his Shammy. Natty 20 was the most talented guild I was ever in. One day I logged on to see the GMotD state "thanks for the memories, we will not be a guild as of next week. The members of Natural Twenty made me a capable raider.

Soten -Best tank I've played with while he was on and had incredible motivational influences on the raid and he was a natural leader. Amazingly he was only a teenager but I at time felt in awe while tanking with him. I learned so much from him. We were in a guild called Refuge, they were super casual, none the less great.

Shem -  He was such a great guy and a good tank. The guild always made him feel inferior due to how good Soten was. He was good, he never knew how good. During Wrath pally's were OP and that fueled Shem and Skreebo in the ongoing "Pally's are OP debate".

Skreebo/Raxial - What a goof! This guy was probably the closest friend I had in game. He knew so much about every class in game and helped me learn warrior and druid tanking. He had a job that didn't allow him to raid hardcore and he got tired of the game far too fast. He took about 3 extended breaks while we tanked together. Amazingly he had so much grace he made a troll look like a ballerina while pulling.

Vars - I learned something every time I logged on to raid with him. Much to my chagrin none of it was good. Vars was the GL and RL for the guild he was in and ruled it with a heavy hand. He was a loot hog and disingenuous. No wonder he had gone thru several tanks including me and the other pally he recruited at the same time as me. It was a great lesson thou and other than the comment about "our guild doesn't give new people gear because bring new raiders in is a big investment" there are no hard feelings. Hey Vars....the big investment is the $50 it cost me to learn how bad things really can get.

Elms - The best DK I've ever seen! He was RL, tanked and always wanted the kiting job or OT role. He never missed anything and made improvements on the fly. We were top 3000 in the world and I think most of that was because Elms was so good at his jobs. I really wish things would have been different and I could have stayed with that guild.

Lifedrynker - What do I say about Life? He was a tremendous player, an officer without the role and just let me do my thing...Tank. He had ZERO ego when it came to putting the best class in its proper role. He was a step ahead at all aspects of the game and I wish I had his awareness. Life just recently left the game due to burn out, too bad we didn't get to tank more together. I could have learned alot from him had we tanked more together, as it stands I'm a better player for working with him. Who knows maybe SWTOR will see me and life getting hit in the face again.

And I never tanked with any of them but a special big shout out to those who have helped me and did so much work with the pally community at Maintankadin.com.

Pink is the new Green.

Cancer is bad! It is such a  horrible disease that takes far to many lives in the world each day. So any cause that works to fix and treat cancer is a great thing. If you look here and other places on the net you will see there are so many places that want to help and ways to show that you helped put an end to this terrible disease.
The most recognizable and widely embraced is the Pink Ribbon used for breast cancer awareness. October is Breast Cancer Awareness month and most major sports pay respects to this and allow the players to wear pink to honor the month. I think this is amazing and it's sad that this is only done during this special month but...it is what makes it an awareness month.

Something I've noticed so much lately is not only are more people wearing the pink to show that they care and want to help, it seems many retailers are cashing in on this as well. If you look at this from a business sense its a no brain money maker but the purpose of this is supposed to for increased donations and income for breast cancer research. Now, I'm not saying donations are not being made to the organizations that need the help but if you look at pricing at a retail stores the mark up is higher on anything pink during this time. This is not to bash anyone so I'm not going to link examples but a local NATIONAL chain sporting good store has a display as soon as you walk in showing the pink items they have. Very nice and respectfully done. If you head back to the specific isle to look at others they offer, the pink items cost about 25% more for the same type of item, the only difference, it's pink. This was across the board, something as simple as a branded T-shirt that was pink is now $3 to $5 more just for the color.

While wearing pink during this month is cool, remember that probably not all the extra profits go where they are needed and far to many people are cashing in on self profit for this to be only done for only good intentions. Here is an article I found that might give you some different thoughts as well.

Remember while wearing pink during this month does so many so much good, its also helping line pockets of others. If you really want to sure that your efforts are going to the correct place visit some of the following links:
http://www.nbcam.org/
http://www.breastcancerfund.org/
http://www.nationalbreastcancer.org/
http://www.cancer.org/
Check them out, see if its somewhere you think you money might go to help those in need.

I understand this is in no way a WoW blog, but it was something I wanted to get out there and say and since pally's are pink....we kind of have a relation....right?

Also a really quick footnote, I am in no way related, nor do I endorse or am I affilated with any of the links in this post, it was something I thought would help get people moving in the right direction.

No More Accents and Other news.

Shame on you accents -

4.3 is up on the PTR and here is one thing that makes some scratch their head, kinda along the lines of removing portals, to put them back up later...

Not sure what to think about this, really. But Blizz in the patch notes stated the following below. I understand that people get frustrated about having to type or look how to make the special code for this, is that really that big a deal when the names that currently have them won't have to change?

North American realms (excluding Brazilian, Latin American, and Oceanic realms) no longer permit letters with accents in character or guild names. Existing character and guild names with special characters will be unaffected by this change. (source)

I xfered to a server where Chasey was taken by a level 11 toon that hadn't been on in months and wasn't on for all the time I was on the server. After multiple attempts to get a GM to open the name, finally I got one to do it for me. The reason: the character didn't meet the criteria to unlock the name. I asked why and it was because the toon was to high a level. All in all it worked out, I got the name. I did however have to pay for this service.

Here is where I have issues with this, if you have a toon and need to xfer, the name is your toons identity, at least it was for me. I understand rolling a new toon, find another name but really....Chasey was always Chasey even if she did have a å in her name.

There are two other issues that I'll hit on briefly and you can make your own mind on this issue but reading this on MMO-Champion, you'd think this was the BEST THING EVER.

• To many people sit on names, not logging in and Blizz wants us to roll alts, you hear lots of complaints that too many names are taken.
• Having one special accent in a name is no harm at all, yet this is a patch note, is this a game changer?

Maybe they plan on opening up surnames?

Bout me...
Not sure where I'm at in game. I'm done with raiding and my computer is still out. I still keep up with the news. I did some looking to see what I wanted my gear to look like when we can change it. BTW anyone else think that "transmogirification" is a weird name?

Here is one idea I came up with:
Found this while doing a search, it has spirit on it but really its just for looks. I have no idea what weapon to go with, but I will go with the Isle's shield. Always loved that thing.

My other options and I have it sitting in the bank is Tier 6. How can you beat Tier 6 as a paladin?

I'll throw a picture up later. Sadly this is the only thing I got to look forward to so far, I'm not a very vanity orientated player but making my toon look good is going to be pretty awesome.

Incoming Nerf and Fixes.

Below is today's big nerf to 4.2 and at the bottom is my response to my comments from my last quote. For some odd reason I can't comment on my own blog...LOL

From MMO-Champion
September 20Firelands

• Hell Hound Rend Flesh damage has been reduced by 25%.
• The damage multiplier granted by energy to Unstable Magma has been reduced by 50%.
• Alysrazor
  • Health and damage have been reduced by 25% on normal difficulty. Health and damage have been reduced by 15% on Heroic difficulty.
  • Alysrazor now drops 1 additional feather in 10-player mode and 2 additional feathers in 25-player mode in all cycles.
  • The Wings of Flame buff duration on Alysrazor is now uniformly 30 seconds.
  • Alysrazor’s Fiery Tornados now move slower.
• Baleroc
  • Health and damage have been reduced by 25% on normal difficulty. Health and damage have been reduced by 15% on Heroic difficulty.
  • Baleroc now swings 25% slower while Decimation Blade is active.
  • The duration of Tormented has been reduced on normal difficulty.
• Beth'tilac
  • Beth'tilac's health and damage have been reduced by 15% on both normal and Heroic difficulty.
• Lord Rhyolith
  • Health and damage have been reduced by 15% on both normal and Heroic difficulty.
  • The health and damage of additional enemies in this encounter have been reduced by 15% on both normal and Heroic difficulty.
• Majordomo Fandral Staghelm
  • Health and damage have been reduced by 25% on normal difficulty. Health and damage has been reduced by 15% on Heroic difficulty.
  • Druid of the Flame have had their health reduced by 15%, and Sunfire damage reduced by 25% on both difficulties.
  • The health and melee damage of Spirit of the Flame have been reduced by 25% on normal difficulty, and reduced by 15% on Heroic difficulty.
• Ragnaros
  • Ragnaros' health and damage have been reduced by 25% on normal difficulty.
  • Ragnaros' damage has been reduced by 15% on Heroic difficulty.
  • Magma Trap damage has been reduced on all difficulties.
  • The health and damage of additional enemies in this encounter have been reduced by 25% on normal difficulty and 15% on Heroic difficulty.
  • Wrath of Ragnaros now knocks targets up, but not back, on normal difficulty.
• Shannox
  • Health and damage have been reduced by 15% on both normal and Heroic difficulty.
  • Riplimb's health has been reduced by 15%.
  • Rageface's health has been reduced by 15%.
  • Magma Flare damage and Hurl Spear damage have been reduced by 15% on both difficulties.

So here it goes:
Nat and Caly thanks for reading. I agree with you both.
@LM I appreciate you responding and reading the blog, I don't think you read this post fully. If you did, maybe you missed some of my points.
When T12 (FL) hit, VP was not available from the T11 instances. They placed a hot fix later to receive VP. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2795074028?page=4#69
That wasn't really an opinion, it was fact that has been updated and exact quote was:

Removing VP from T11 raids when FL hit.

alluding to the fact that it is NOW there. Sorry if that was perceived wrong in my type.
The next issue you addressed is ilvl, I was NOT saying was the highest ilvl in game. I made a mistake, 378 is from normals and 391 is from heroics. I made a horrible mistake and I'm sorry. Point of that whole paragraph is the guilds that have killed Rags on normal is very low.

Lastly is the nerf to FL being in steps, at the time of the post all the info I had was it would be done:

"by around the same percentage we brought difficulty down for the original Cataclysm raids when Rage of the Firelands (patch 4.2) was released."

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3494581#blog

There was no announcement of steps. It said the coming weeks.

I can see where this would be a huge area of concern for people as I got info wrong, I will make adjustments and fix this in the future. In general I do check my facts even on Op-ed type posts.

I hope I made your day better and cleared up some confusion, cuz that is what I'm here for.