the Drift

d r e a m

we try
but we don't belong

you'll know where you are

mmm. cookies.

Fender CIJ ST71-93TX | Yamaha AES620
Line 6 M13 > ^Effects Loop In > OM Labs Sahasrara > Xotic BB Pre-amp
Catalinbread Dirty Little Secret > Tech 21 Liverpool > Effects Loop Out^ >
Stereo Out >> Boss FV-50L > Vox AC4TVH 4W amp & V112TV 12" cab
>> Vox Pathfinder 15R

ASIO bit-matched WinAmp > ASUS Xonar Essence STX >
Denon AH-D2000 | Audio-Technica ESW10jpn | Nakamachi Soundspace 1

iPod Touch 2g 16GB > Sennheiser IE8

Total Damage: $7010+++

Other notable gear I own or have owned/loaned/tested extensively -

Epiphone WildKat | Monsterpiece NPN Fuzz | Goosoniqueworx Boosty | Visual Sound Route 66
Voodoo Labs Tremolo | Electro Harmonix White Finger | Electro Harmonix Mini Q-Tron
Red Witch Medusa | Death by Audio Total Sonic Annihilation | Line6 DL-4
ProCo Rat2 | Tonefactor Huckleberry | Boss CH-1 | Boss DD-20 | Yamaha Magicstomp
Empress Effects Tremolo | Boss RE-20 | Moog MuRF
Vox VBR-1 Brian May Special | Blackheart Little Giant & 12" Cab

Audio-Technica AD700 | ALO Cryo SXC 18g| Ultimate Link Silver Master-i | Crossroads XBi
Sony MDR-EX71 | Westone UM1 | Etymotic ER6i | Graham Slee Voyager
Mogami 2549 OFC IC | iBasso D3 Python

Feel free to ask me for mostly unbiased reviews in proper english - with pratical considerations from the viewpoint of a budget-conscious student

but for now we are young
let us lay in the sun
and count every beautiful thing we can see

028

Sunday, September 28, 2008 ( 8:02 PM )

Probably my final or at least penultimate post about WoW. So I not-so-recently sold my rogue for a decent amount. I guess it's somewhat of a pity considering the 2+years of adventuring (RP lol) I spent with shadow; and that she's being played by a noob now. Well, enough is enough. I do regret not taking more screenshots..maybe I should get all those LtCH boss kill shots from Kirk soon before some virus wipes them out. I suppose a short tribute is in order - it was quite an enjoyable experience (well it's a video game after all, isnt that the point) and there were plenty of fond memories -

First(!) screenshot ever. Lol look at us noobs. Benjy I blame you for sucking me into this game!

Cleared Mount Hyjal @ 60. We r proz. I wonder what's Zaf doing now. We never did find out if she's a hot chick. And look! Fang of the Faceless! Lol silent.

What's a UI?

It's stupid how much I PvP'd at 60. Partly for the Rank11 mounts and partly inspired by old-skool Rogue PvP vids. 69k lifetime kills...meh. Lvl 60 duels were more fun than all this arena crap now lol.

Early TBC days...probably when I really learned2play, no small coincidence with the immense growth of the rogue theorycrafting community. It was pretty simple math at that time, simple number crunching to figure out Sinister Strike had become superior to Backstab, and Hit Rating was better than Crit Rating and provided four-fold benefits to various rolls while 80% of vanilla hard core raiders were still stacking agi/crit with dagger builds.

SSC. Best raids ever. It was pretty stupid that at one point of time Shadow was the best-geared rogue on the server in terms of pure dps pieces. Lol cant believe Tidewalker was the dps benchmark those days. Yup sword spec with S2 swords, running 1S5R with the OP 2pc T4 and wastewalker bonuses, pre-ppm nerf, stacking procs and cooldowns, chugging haste pots. Retarded imba dps. This was a point where choosing the right gear, compressing cycles on the fly, and watching your procs and timers actually made a big difference in dps output, hence I permitted myself abit of an ego to take screenshots with dps meters lol. Theorycraft had come a looong way by now, our models spit out numbers for every conceivable cycle, and computed stat weightage relative to one's gear, buffs, and cycle slack aka its the only time I gave a **** about maths.

The high point of TBC raiding. Cant believe when we killed Vashj and Kael I was still in T4 head and Wastewalker shoulders! Which also means I hardly got an upgrade in between gaah. Well, 3rd (or was it 4th? heck) on server to down pre-nerf Kael is pretty damn gd for a guild that was very casual by raiding standards. Also, almost 1million damage done on Kael is pretty pro =p Well, this was pretty much midway through my inaugural uni sem, and I found it pretty hard to commit to BT/MH raids. Crappy hostel connection didnt help. Attendance problems and guild leader gquitting led to ****blocks; nights of meaningless wipes led to me quitting...or so I thought.

lol check out the guild name

I foolishly re-subscribed during the year-end holidays, and levelled my priest up (actually it was a little more complicated, including being strongarmed into arena tournament and a failed installment deal). Dps-ing was really boring now - RNG mattered way more than any form of "skill". Really, you could teach anyone how to play a dps class to at least 95% of its optimum performance within 5secs (for warlocks) to 1min (for rogues). Nonetheless, I continued to raid on my rogue...eventually jumping guild for the sake of seeing some end game content. A blessing in disguise, raiding on my rogue with Daimyo was so boring I finally made up my mind and took another break from the game.

Logged out one fine evening after Sunwell and never went back (well I did, but that was just to settle mail and accounts). Put up ads awhile ago, Shadow was xferred off and renamed shortly after. So, farewell Lt Gen Shadowmeree, Hand of Adal, Champion of the Naaru, troll rogue of Frostmourne, blah blah blah. It was fun while it lasted. Maybe things would have turned out differently, but considering the departure of old companions - Dimer, Vodoshock, Zafra, Kagin, Cai, Soli, Schzar, Yuufa, Mayo, Mamushka, Turg, Brx, Gosuivan, Rave (I missed plenty of names, apologies in advance) its best that we too go our separate ways.

R.I.P.

Nope I'm not all that keen on Willow either. Priests might as well be deleted from the game, since all 3 other healing classes are better at what they do. We're the most versatile cross-healers in the game, but that hardly matters outside of 5mans. It gets worse in WotLK - Flourish makes CoH a joke, Riptide pwns all our nifty stuff like Renew and PoM, and retadins and survival hunters replace shadow priests. Seeing as how they're dumbing down the game by removing downranking and crushings, condensing stats and homogenizing gear, streamlining aoe tanking and single-target dps to be almost equal across all classes; and generally eliminating any unique-ness or "skill" in any class...I'm quite inclined to truly give up for good. Anyone wtb toon/account with 11k gold?