Socket Bonus AHOY!

So Therigwin made the transition from Mining to Blacksmithing.

Now his Blacksmithing is not maxed out, but I did get high enough to be able to Socket Bracers and Socket Gloves.

So now Therigwin is a Min/Max Jewelcrafting Blacksmith.

The big reason for this change was the changes coming in Patch 3.2. The Dragon's Eye gems will no longer be Prismatic (meaning they count as all colors) but are changing to be color specific. Well, with Blacksmithing, I now can use them in those sockets and not worry about socket bonuses being missed. It did mean I changed up some of my existing gems, but overall, I saw a net gain in stats verses having the mining.

So the PTR has gone into retail state and that means we will soon have the patch on our hands.
It is going to be an exciting time for Eternity Matters because it will allow us to do more hopefully.

But that will be another blog post.

See you all online!

Changing of the Guard

So after three years of being under the gentle guidance of my loving wife, Eternity Matters is changing it up. Daraia handed the GM position over to me yesterday. It was after much prayer, sweat, tears, and heartache that she came to that decision.

As of late, Eternity Matters has been dealing with people respecting each other. There has been this vary callous attitude permeating the guild where the leadership is disrespected and treated poorly. In the last few months, we almost lost our core officers.

In fact, that was one of the decisions we faced, disband the guild and reform it. We decided instead to change the leadership.

Now wait Therigwin, Daraia was your wife and you were basically her right hand man, how does this really change anything?

It doesn't change much except the stress is off my wife's shoulders and now on mine. My wife was more gentle in dealing with individuals. I am a holy righteous hammer swinging paladin of protection that will smash things.

So there will be some changing in for my guild.

The guild's motto has been bringing the peace of God to a World at War. We have had very little peace in the guild, so our goal cannot be met.

So where we used to be like, yup, you can join, that will no longer be the case. Guild members need to realize that they represent us and what we stand for. Those that break the rules will be removed much quicker than we have previously done.

I love my Lord and Savior. I Love my wife. I love my family. I love my guild. And I want us to be a good representation to all.

The bar has just been raised, I pray that everyone rises to it and those that do not, can understand where we are coming from.

Vacations are good

So I am on my last day of Vacation from work.

I had last week Thursday, Friday, and Monday, and Today off. It was originally so we could go to the wedding of our good friend, but childcare never happened and we were unable to do that.

I have found that is good to take a break from things. First, I had a break from work. It was a much needed break as it can be a high stress at times. (In fact, I am going into 2 weekends of high stress).

But sometimes it is good to take a break from playing wow and raiding and even your main character.

So part of my vacation I helped my son get his Shaman up to level 55. He was finally able then to make his Death Knight. So we made Death Knights together. We did the starter quests and got ourselves all set for regular leveling again. We did some quests in the plaguelands and did Scholomance together.

Then I embarked on my new goal for this Death Knight. As always, I use my alts to support my main and to be a distraction and vacation. Well, this character was going to be a suporting character mostly. I made her (yup, I made a girl), a miner and herb picker. I got her up to 315 mining and she has a bank full of bars, stones, and raw ore. Level 62.... Yup, she is fun to play and easy too. (DK's are OP)

So this is the plan. Therigwin is going to drop mining once Mystriah (a mystery) my death knight is able to provide Therigwin with the ore to prospect and use. Therigwin will instead pick up Black Smithing.

Here is the main reason, with the changes to Jewel Crafting coming in 3.2, the primatic Dragon's Eye gems will no longer be all colors, but instead be the specific colors that match their ability.

Paladin tanking gear has no blue sockets. I like socket bonuses, but I also like my 41 stamina gems.

So from Blacksmithing, you get 3 sockets for gems. I get 3 dragon's eye for gems as well. That means I can always utilize the best gem for those 3 slots. So this gives me +82 stamina then verses the 50 stamina from mining. It also benefits my off speck in that the 50 stamina is not wasted, but instead I can gem up 54 strength instead.

Now when patch 3.2 hits, that stamina bonus is increased from 41 a gem to 51 a gem, giving 102 stamina verses the 60 stamina they buffed mining with.... And the strength goes up to 34 from 27, giving my ret paladin speck +68 strength.

So my in game goal is to get my Death Knight to 77 so she can mine stuff up for Therigwin and have it all in place before patch 3.2

On a side note, I got the Northern Barrier last night. My wife bought it for me for 7k on the AH.

Oh and a pick of Mystriah for you all to see. (She is Myriah's twin sister for those wondering)

Big Projects

So, I have finally got my guild's website updated with the latest versions of phpBB3, ezportal, and coppermine.

It has been an experience getting it all working correctly and migrating the data from the old system.

I am really happy with how it all turned out. Still a couple of things I want to add, but it is getting there.

Now for the next Big Project. Finishing the Guild Video that I have been working on. That I will tackle this coming weekend.

And last, I finally killed Gruul. It has taken forever, but I finally got it after numerous tries in the past that ended in failure do to technical reasons (disconnects, no instances could be launched, bugged encounters)

Fires take down site

So, today, I had great plans.

I was in the process of upgrading the guild website from phpBB2 to phpBB3. I was going to add the primetime portal for the front page stuff. It was going to be awesome.

Well, I guess wherever the datacenter that hosts the site, they lost power do to a fire and the website is down.

Well, my second project is a video I have been working on.

But all the data I need is on the guild website.

Well, I did rework some of the video, so for my guildmates that are interested here it is -

Reading the Librim

All paladins when they get into the higher levels (above 50) start picking up Librims.

It is basically a tie back into that they were once priests and these are their holy books, being that of scripture, prayer books, etc.

Well, in my Guild, Eternity Matters we are doing some new things. Sure we always have done a Bible Study in the game every Sunday at 3:30pm servertime. But many of us were feeling burnt out, discouraged, facing all sorts of drama.

Then it hit me. We were not reading our Librims. So this week we embarked on some new changes.

We did our normal Bible Study on Sunday where we typed it all out in chat.

But Monday, I prepared a special retreat for the officers. We did Kara. But at each boss, we read our Librim. I picked out scripture to go with each boss. It was a time of encouragement.

Enok writes about it in his blog, Now that is a little different.

So last night we started my next new concept for reading our Librims.

I call it our "Pray and Raid" night.

From 8:15pm to before the raid at 9pm, we had a Bible Study and prayer time in ventrillo.

Yesterday we read and talked about John 17. We listened to two worship songs on vent, one at the beginning and one at the end. We had a good time of prayer.

After that, we went in and did OS 25 with 1 Drake up with 23 people.

Not a bad night.

Tonight, we continue with another BC raid where I will take my officers back into their Librims while we take down some bosses.

Overall, this experiment has been met with positive results and I pray that it only gets better.