UFO over Farnham details

At roughly 00:38 on Friday 26th Jun (today as I type this) I was looking out of my bedroom window into the darkness when I spotted a bright orange light taking off on a curved take-off trajectory, gaining height to just above the tree line and maintaining a steady, level flight silently for a few minutes. This was followed, initially by 2 or 3 more shortly after one another, all performing in exactly the same fashion.

I tried grabbing my video camera, which promptly died due to uncharged battery, so grabbed my digital camera instead, sprinted downstairs but couldn’t see them outside for long enough to get a picture as they were going behind the trees.

Thinking “well, that was bizarre” I popped back upstairs and posted up on Twitter only to see two more take off. So, back down we go, and I managed to snap some pictures of the UFOs passing by. Now, by UFO I don’t mean aliens, by UFO I mean Unidentified Flying Object…which was what they were.

So, yes, they were seen flying over Farnham, Surrey. I’m intrigued as to what they were. Excited and intrigued. Could it be aliens? (okay, no, highly unlikely!) Could it be some sort of government conspiracy, or testing of secret drones by the military and air force? Okay I’m just toying with you to increase the excitement. Sorry!

The pictures can be found at the top of the blog, they are 100% crops of the originals but scaled slightly to fit into the blog post. Click the link to open them up to their 100% scale.

If anyone saw the same thing please email me at graham@letmerephrasethat.com with a subject like “Farnham UFO” so I don’t think it’s spam!

digg it!

Whilst there is a red suit type thing involved, I’m afraid there’s no Marvel character to be seen. For those of you who don’t know what the Iron Man is, it’s a triathlon of mind-boggling scale. A triathlon in the sense that you swim, run and cycle over a set distance but unlike most triathlon the distances of each phase are slightly longer. Many triathlons stick to a formula similar to 400m swim, 21km cycle finished up with a 5km run, or suchlike. The Iron Man is broken down as follows:

1. 2.4 mile open water swim
2. 112 mile bike ride
3. 26.2 mile run (a marathon)

But why am I telling you all this? Well, in August this year, my brother in law will be running the UK Iron Man for Help for Heroes. Help for Heroes are a charity who support our wounded and provide practical direct support to those servicemen and women wounded in the line of duty in the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Having family and friends in the armed forces I think H4H do fantastic work and I’m happy to support them.

At the moment we’re in the processes of raising money for Help for Heroes for the UK Iron Man challenge, which is just epic. Rather him than me!

If you would like to support H4H and my brother in law please visit the links below:

www.justgiving.com/joe-walker

www.helpforheroes.org.uk

There’s also a Facebook group which I set up to raise some more awareness.

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I, like many others who play Druids on WoW, have been rather excited recently about the new Druid forms coming in patch 3.2.  When I first created my Druid it was really because I loved kitty form, I called him Shadowpaws…and ended up as a healer. Go figure! My main spec is Restoration, as some of you will know, but at heart I love kitty form. I recently made Feral my offspec in order to run through dailies with a bit more fun and to get some paws back into ‘paws.

I knew they were being released soon but with my new PC being delivered today I completely lost track of things due to the oodles of ‘to do’s’ running through my head at the time, until Nassira reminded me on Twitter.

The above tweet, as you can imagine, had me somewhat worried. I shot over to WoW.com, leaving my lvl 39 Paladin to get munched in Dustwallow Marsh by a blasted Crocolisk, and was immediately befuddled. The previous shots of the Tauren and Night Elf bear forms, and the Tauren kitty forms had immediate, final decisions from me. The Night Elf kitty forms, on first impression, had me laughing. After looking at them for a while I couldn’t decide whether I liked or disliked them. Actually, my immediate impression was of familiarity. I looked upon the kitty forms and cast my eyes to the one looking directly at me. I couldn’t help but feel I’ve seen that face before…

Thoughts? Am I wrong? Anyway, I love Sir Ian, I think he’s fabulous and a brilliant actor, but (and in no way is this related to Sir Ian) I couldn’t help but feel these cats look a tad on the camp side. I can see a lot of the female WoW players going for the pink and white kitties, I’m sure a few of the lasses in <Ferocity> will be happy to have them.

I love the build of them and I adore the markings (they’re my favourite part of the new Night Elf bear forms too) but as a whole, I’m not too sure. I think the only way to tell will be to wait til 3.2 and see how it looks.

Be prepared to see a lot of Druids lined up outside your barber shops though!

One final thing; Kikirowr posted a fantastic image on Twitter, which she cannot take credit for, of photoshopped Nelf Kitty forms.  Click the link above to check it out.

G x

After <Ferocity>’s first few jaunts in Ulduar we’ve experienced trash doing ridiculous amounts of damage, then doing about half that, bosses not doing what they’re meant to be doing, adds not appearing or twice as many appearing. Suffice to say, Ulduar has been hit and miss for us in our little 10-man progression guild. Despite the hiccups and bad luck we’ve managed to down Flame Leviathan and XT-002 and got Razorscale to 5%. We’re doing okay when Ulduar behaves itself but we’ve had to rethink a few things.

XT-002 was a fight which had us really struggling with tactics. Not so much the tactics for XT’s abilities but for our own personal ones. For the most part, the focus was on the healers during tantrum. As a Druid I tried Wild Growth, which did diddly-squat. I tried Nourish, which worked okay on the four or five people I could cast it on before the rest died. I tried Rejuvs and Swiftmend but that only worked for one person before they all died. Lifebloom was the same and would’ve worked okay if people weren’t getting lightbombed, which meant I was healing them (usually myself as it happens) and not popping Lifeblooms on people.

The only thing left to try was Tranquility. We split the groups to have a Druid in each and it worked fantabulously…until the next tantrum came along and Tranq was still on cooldown. Fel suggested a respec so I quickly put one together on WoWhead and we both popped back to Moonglade and implement the new talent build with two points in Improved Tranquility which has brought the cooldown to 4 mins instead of 10. Doing this means we can Tranq the first tantrum, people have to rely on pots and healthstones for the second tantrum and if we get lucky, Tranq the third tantrum but there can be a few seconds left to wait on the cooldown.

Apparently the tantrum on XT has been changed and <Ferocity> are back in Ulduar tonight so I’m hoping we’ll go straight to XT after Leviathan. We’re hoping to one shot both of them and then spend some time on Razorscale and Ignis but I’m looking forward to seeing how the changes have affected the healing.

G x

I’m not proclaiming to be the fixer of 3.1 issues but I’ve noticed a few people coming to the blog after searching for things like “rolls not showing in chat+patch 3.1+wow” and “patch 3.1 chat text not appearing”. I have managed to get this fixed so I shall try and help out those who haven’t. A lot of people were speculating that the issue was with Deadly Boss Mods, I turned it off and the issue was still present. Same thing for TitanPanel. However, what did get things working again was updating all addons to their current versions and NOT loading out of date addons. It means I’m no longer running my Hunter aspect bars and a few other (non-essential) addons but I am able to see everyone’s messages and my own rolls/yellow information.

I hope that works for you too =)

Now, for the person who searched “resto druid 3.1 rotation” and arrived at my blog, I apologise if it’s a bit late, but let’s bounce some ideas around. As a Resto Druid, I’m guessing that pre-patch you will have been using the Rejuv > Lifebloom x3 > Regrowth/Nourish if needed rotation? Our main focus in this rotation was our three stacks of Lifebloom, which cost very little mana and, with the three stacks, was a great HoT to have on the target as it ticks every second. The whole idea of using Lifebloom was that we kept refreshing it every 8 seconds as that one application refreshed all three. Excellent.

I was on main and off-tank healing at various points when the guild went to Ulduar and I thought it’d be a good opportunity to test out a new healing rotation. That was the plan anyway. In reality we seriously struggled with damage as some points. I found my initial thoughts of a Lifebloomless healing rotation went completely out of the window and I was having to cast everything I had to keep the tanks alive. At one point, though, this happened…

Yes, I had to read the combat log after I saw 20,002 in big green numbers on my screen. “What the hell did that?” I thought to myself, “I haven’t cast Healing Touch (my previous ‘big heal’) on anyone.”

I was really not expecting to see a 20k critical heal from Lifebloom. So let’s have a look at the post-patch Lifebloom:

Okay. Don’t panic if yours looks a little different, especially Mana cost, I have the 5% reduction from the T7 set bonus. Now, to translate the above into numbers that make some sense, I’ll do some heals on myself. With just Mark of The Wild cast on myself and in Tree form.

1 stack – 373 per second / crit = 4589 / mana returned = 490

2 stack – 745 per second / crit = 9177 / mana returned = 978

3 stack – 1118 per second / crit = 13766 / mana returned = 1468

Pre-patch the bloom didn’t scale with the number of stacks present on the target but the HoT did. The bloom part of the buff now does scale with stacks as can be seen above. Over the full rotation of a Lifebloom on a three stack bloom (with the above data) you’re looking at a total of 23,828 healing over 9 seconds. Awesome, huh? No, not really. Because we want efficient healing, not just big heals. What’s the point in having a heal of 20,000 if, when it goes off, the target is at full health? What we would really like is a 20,000 heal when the tank needs it but such is the way with Lifebloom, we would need to predict how much health the tank is going to be down 9 seconds in advance. Yeah, that’s not going to happen.

With the new mechanics of Lifebloom – the increased mana useage and the return upon bloom – we are wanting it to bloom so we can get a little bit of mana back. The three applications of Lifebloom will cost you in the region of 2199 mana, so getting 1468 of that back is quite helpful.

The way I found myself healing, after adapting very quickly to the notion that I need all the healing I can get in Ulduar, was to stack up my 3 Lifeblooms and let them bloom, then quickly re-apply them, using a Swiftmend or my ‘Panic Button’ if the tank’s health drops whilst re-applying, then topping off with a Nourish. Whilst this level of healing certainly keeps me on my toes, there is no room for error like there used to be in Naxx. On main tank healing I rarely healed at full ability, which meant I always had some room to play with if one of the other healers went down. This was illustrated on Thaddius when the two other healers unfortunately killed themselves, leaving me up to do raid and tank healing. My level of healing in that fight was still not quite as intense as it is in Ulduar 10-man on trash. Wasn’t far off, but still not quite as bad.

I think our only option is to heal with everything we have, let our Lifeblooms bloom so we can grab a slice of the mana cake back and use our Nourish and Swiftmends when we need to. If anyone has any other tips, feel free to let me know =)

Oh and that Panic Button I mentioned before is a macro:

/stopcasting
/cast Nature’s Swiftness
/cast Healing Touch

G x

So Patch 3.1 is here. Ulduar is here. Let’s talk about it!

Just before the servers went down for the patch implementation I parked both my level 80 characters in Darnassus because 1) it has target dummies, 2) it’s quiet and 3) it has a Druid and a Hunter trainer. I knew Dalaran would be packed as soon as our realm came back online so I was glad to avoid it. People in the guild were confirming my assumption, poor folk!

So I logged on and went straight to my respective class trainers to grab Dual Talent Spec for both characters. After doing builds and glyphs for both ‘geebs (Hunter) and ‘paws (Druid) and, of course, learning Call Stabled Pet, I took both over to the target dummies and met up with a couple of friends to chat about the new specs – due to talent and spell changes – and get some numbers from the dummies.

This was where I found one of the first problems. I’m sure I’m not the only one but it would appear my chat box is not showing me what everyone is saying. I had a couple of friends ask me why I was ignoring them yesterday, but the simple fact it…I had no messages from them. I also had no ‘yellow text’ to tell me when someone had joined or left my group, I couldn’t see rolls (which was annoying in Ulduar!) so that was my first frustration. Any ideas how to get around this? And yes, I’ve disabled all my add-ons and it still does it.

So, Hunter first as I was most interested to see what was happening with Beast Mastery as it was my original build – and I missed my Spirit Beast after being Marksman for a while. My primary build on ‘geebs is still MM because he’s already glyphed so I decided to do a quick burn down on mana to get some initial figures. Self buffed my MM build was running at about 2500dps on a lvl 80 dummy with a wolf for a pet. This I was pleased with, it brightened my day to see an MM build DPSing similarly to an SV build, still a little behind but not bad. I know it shouldn’t have done, but it did get my hopes up for BM. With the new pet talents I was hoping for 2500dps or thereabouts. Change build (I love this!), open Call Stabled Pet and grab Spirit Beast. Re-talent Spirit Beast, check spellbook to see no pet abilities. Dismiss pet and re-call..ooh, look! Abilities! Blizzard, you need to fix this. Anyway, BM put down about 2300dps. I’m going to be playing around with some rotations as I’m not satisfied with that. I want BM to put out about 2500dps or near to, this will be my off-time mission.

With initial figures and thoughts of how to improve them going through my head I popped over to ‘paws to try out Boomkin DPS. 3000-3300dps. *re-reads Recount*

“Blue, does that say 3,000dps to you?”

‘I’m not looking.’

I did another DPS burn down and yes, it was about 3,000dps. Now, I know this is not a proper test but it’s nice to get some baseline test results. In an instance with raid buffs I’m sure the DPS figures will be different. What worries me, though, is the fact a hybrid class in Restoration gear is doing so much more damage than a pure DPS class. I hope it’s not the same for the likes of Mages. I really do think this needs to be looked into by Blizz.

Anyway, let’s look at Resto as it’s my main-spec now. Whilst I’m not overly happy with the changes they’ve made to the likes of Lifebloom, I am quite excited to get back to figuring out the best healing rotation I can for both group and tank healing, whilst being as mana efficient as possible

Lifebloom: Mana cost of all ranks doubled. When Lifebloom blooms or is dispelled, it now refunds half the base mana cost of the spell per application of Lifebloom, and the heal effect is multiplied by the number of applications.

Now, pre-patch the way I and many other resto Druids used Lifebloom was to not allow it to bloom and to keep the three stacks running at all times. This, with 700+mana per application doesn’t seem to be particularly efficient at the moment. Aside from the nerf to mana regeneration, which is only out of combat – something I don’t actually understand – and the Lifebloom changes, not much has happened to Resto Druids. We’ve had a few minor changes which are nice but nothing major aside from Lifebloom. See the full list of changes here.

I tried out a new healing rotation without Lifebloom when <Ferocity> went to Ulduar for the first time. We managed to down the first boss (see picture at the start of the blog) but really struggled on the trash afterwards with an issue with damage. There was a lot of raid damage and a lot of tank damage as well. For our usual set up with me on tank healing, I was really struggling to keep him at full health and I think I’m right in assuming I put out the most HPS in the guild so it wasn’t filling us with confidence. One other issue seems to be with swapping talent builds. Blue entered Ulduar and switched to SV spec, which unlearnt all his talents and all his skills. This meant he had to go back to the trainer and re-learn a load of spells he’s already learnt, using all the money he didn’t have in the first place.

We’re off back to Ulduar now to see what we can do with the trash we struggled on last night and to see if we can get any more bosses down. Flame Leviathan was an interesting fight. It was fun because it was different but I fear it’ll be a bit gimmicky and its fun will wear off. I hope not though.

Must dash, healing to do!

G x

I’m not going to be making a habit of this but from time to time if I find something I like I may well write something about it. You know, blog or website related.

Today’s feature is a blog/person, namely Aranea, written by a friend of mine and before you all click on the link to go and have a look, I must warn you, it’s all in Swedish. I met Andrea whilst playing WoW ages ago and we get on brilliantly, she was even kind enough to alert me to the Spirit Beast’s location which I detailed on here last year – so I am, of course, indebted to her. Haha.

Like me, she has been taking photos for ages but hadn’t done anything semi-seriously until she got her Nikon – a D80 in her case – last year. I remember chatting to her about the purchase and what lenses she should get…with much e-window-shopping from me at all the pretty lenses. “Yes, you want this 600mm lens…because it’s awesome, just don’t look at the price!”

With both Andrea and I having Nikon cameras of similar designs (my D70 to her D80) I was able to help her get used to and hopefully get the best out of her camera with the experience I’ve had using mine. An SLR can be quite daunting when you first unpack it and see all of the buttons and dials covering it but a quick ‘point-and-tell’ session cleared up some questions and had her on the way to really getting into the SLR-ness of the D80.

I’ve been interested in seeing the pictures she takes and I’m glad she comes to me with questions about photography as it’s one of my passions and I do love talking about it. I’m also glad she shows me some of the “bad” pictures she takes. Taking bad pictures is very good for improving your photography. If you can look at your own photos with a critical eye you can easily work out what to do to improve your next ones.

I’ve known people ‘get into’ photography and their photos improve with their speed of learning and the number of shots they take, which is understandable. Some people have a fast learning curve and some have a slower one. Photography should be about working at your pace so don’t try and improve massively overnight, it won’t happen. What’s been most impressive to see is Andrea’s quality of photography improve in such a short period of time. She recently purchased a 50mm lens, which is also my favourite lens, and her images took a noticeable leap forward in quality. Helped by an obvious natural eye for photography and a good image, it’s been an absolute pleasure to help out and watch the progress of her photography.

Aranea is her new blog, it’s very new and I’m looking forward to seeing more of her photos being posted up there, even if I’m not entirely sure what she’s talking about! Thank goodness for Google Translate?

G x

It’s always nice to have a change; redecorate a room, buy a new outfit, new hairstyle etc. So forgive me confusing you with a new blog design, I fancied something a little different. I hope you like it.

I may well be tweaking bits of it over the next few days so don’t be alarmed if something appears to have gone missing, I’m sure it’ll be back pronto, hopefully with a post about the new World of Warcraft 3.1 patch, which is available to Europe as of tonight.

I’m both looking forward and unenthusiastic about patch 3.1 for many reasons, which I should go through tomorrow after I’ve had a chance to play with it a little.

Having a level 80 Hunter and a level 80 Druid means I get a chance to see first hand how the patch will affect more than one class. I am especially looking forward to the dual spec feature for my Druid who will be going Boomkin as off-spec. However, the success of this will determine whether my Hunter goes into retirement or not, which would be a sad day as he was my first and main character until recently.

Just a quick post today before the bigger one tomorrow (I hope!). I’m off for a walk before it rains.

G x

I’m usually quite good at avoiding Meme things on the internet. I’ve managed to, cunningly, not get tagged in many of them. Until today. Nassira from Diaries of a Marksman Hunter got me good and proper. Like a big meme arrow from her hunters’ bow, she shot me in the chest. Not a glancing blow which can be shrugged off but full on! Anyway…here goes…

About You –

Real Name: Graham

Age: 23

Country of Origin: England

Fetish: I’m rather partial to a lass in jodhpurs and a rugby shirt…or glasses.

Random Things –

Guilty Pleasure Music (something you’d never listen to in public): The Doobie Brothers, although I’m quite enjoying Katy Perry’s new album.

Worst Fashion Decision (I don’t care how old you were): I went through a phase of buying tropical looking shirts. All of those were bad. And I suppose the jumper with TINY PENIS written on the front…but that was too humourous to be a bad decision.

Proudest Moment: At a shooting competition after hearing I’d beaten one of the top shots in the country on a few stands.

Best Misheard Words: “…the Death Uterus”

Questions for You –

Do you sing in the shower? Yes

How much frosting do you like on your cupcakes? A good amount. Not too much so it’s overpowering, otherwise I scrape it off and eat it afterwards, but not so little so it’s just like eating a muffin.

When was the last time you made love? (Clarence Carter, Clarence Carter, Clarence Carter, OOOOH SHIT Clarence Carter!) N/A, I’m yet to sassify a lass.

What is the coolest thing you’ve ever found hidden in or under your couch? Probably a £20 note.

What is the most disgusting thing you’ve ever put in your mouth? (be nice) Parsnips, without a shadow of a doubt. Vile creations!

Free-for-All, Share 4 Things You Want to Share –

1. When the time came for me to take my driving test, I had actually been driving cars for about 9 years.

2. I had never read a book from cover to cover until I was about 18.

3. I once partially built (the final part) a racing car but fell ill before I could actually race it.

4. I used to be the lead singer in a band but I cannot stand going to gigs to watch bands. I like appreciating music with no distractions, usually on my own.

Unfortunately, all of the people I would’ve tagged to do this have already done it, so it’s here merely for your perusal.

On the whole my blog entries are for everyone. Generic, normal(ish), you get the idea. Today will be different I’m afraid. I apologise to those of you who won’t have the foggiest notion as to what I’m writing about but this is aimed at a very specific group of people, namely those of you who play and raid as Beast Mastery Hunters on World of Warcraft.

We all got hit with the nerf bat, boo hoo etc, let’s not dwell on it. If, like me, you enjoy playing the game and aren’t all about the top spot on the DPS charts then chances are you’ve stuck with Beast Mastery. I take this assumption because in my opinion Beast Mastery is the most fun spec for Hunters (although, I’m sure Nassira will tell me differently…back me up here BRK!). So you’ve stuck to your guns (or bows) and kept Bestial Wrath etc, good for you! But in doing so you’re struggling on the DPS side of things. If you’re not then great, you probably don’t need to read on

I’ve been kicked into writing this post by the amount of hunters I’ve seen with 2 or 3 points in Focused Aim…

“Fantastic! An extra 3% hit? Oh I’m having that!”

Hold onto your horses a second there, beaver! I was also a Focused Aim chap, I found myself missing on bosses and as we know, you could have all the attack power in the world but if you miss it’s useless. With this in mind, Focused Aim is brilliant. Or so I thought…

So, class of BM’09, what is our most precious thing in the whole of WoW?

No, not cake. Well, yes but no, not in this instance. Our pet! That’s what’s most precious to us.

With Focused Aim we could afford to drop our hit rating right down and rely on the extra 3% to boost us back up so we don’t miss. There I was, testing out some new gear on the target dummies and wasn’t missing at all. It was bliss.

Then the voice of realisation hit me when I reviewed Recount.

*SLAP*

“Ouch! What the hell?”

“Hi ‘geebs, um, just thought I’d point something out to you.”

“Okay, but could you not have whispered me or something, what’s with the hit?”

“You mean you already know?”

“Know what?”

“About the hit.”

“You just hit me, of course I know about the hit.”

“No, I mean your hit rating. Focused Aim doesn’t affect your pet’s hit rating.”

“So my precious Enigma doesn’t get that yummy 3%?”

“Absolutely diddly-squat.”

“But…”

“Nope.”

“So, that’s not helping at all, is it?”

“Nope.”

“Ah. Well, thank you. But next time bring me cake.”

That was a lengthy way of telling you, but it’s 3:43am and it seemed like a good idea. Focused Aim only stops you from missing, not your pet. Your pet is still running off the percentage your base hit rating gives. So if you have a base hit of say 6.70%, WoW rounds down, giving your pet 6% hit. Not ideal. And WoW always rounds down. It doesn’t matter if you have 7.99% hit, your pet will get 7% of that.

What we actually want to be seeing is an unbuffed hit rating of 263 and the following in your Marksman tree…

Do what you like with the three points you save, I decided to place mine in Rapid Killing and something else, I’ve forgotten now. You can find my talent build here.

263 hit rating will ensure your pet won’t miss. It will still have attacks parried and blocked, that’s the opponent doing the work. Technically you’ve still hit the target but it has done something to stop your attack doing damage. We can only avoid this with Expertise. Expertise is no good for us though as it’s a melee thing and that’s just not our bag, baby! Great for pets, useless for us. Just remember to put two points into Animal Handler and you’ll give your pet a little bit of help.

I went a bit hit-happy after this. I replaced most of my +32 Attack Power gems with +16 Attack Power +8 Hit Rating ones and did some other gear tweaks. In total I lost a fair chunk of Attack Power but my Hit Rating finished up at 274 (8.36%) giving my pet 8% hit. So whilst my Attack Power dropped, I’m actually doing more DPS because my precious little Enigma is now hitting more often. A lot more often.

We had a good chance to test out our theory in Naxxramas that evening. It was certainly a good test, with us one-shotting Kel’Thuzad on 10-man (our first kill) and both BM hunters easily cracking 3,000DPS over the whole fight. This was a figure we had only dreamed of hitting previously. A video of our kill can be seen below, there’s a teeny bit of colourful language so beware. Oh and I tabbed to check the health of the adds at 40% and didn’t realise my pet also swapped targets as he shouldn’t have done!

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