my death knight 10/10/51 build

and so the 2 most popular death knight (DK) builds after patch 3.1 are:

12/0/59,  recommended for those that are still starting Ulduar and have not a Conqueror’s/T8 set gear yet but have at least 4 pieces of the Valorous/T7 set

and

0/10/61, recommended for those with at least 4 pieces of the Conqueror’s/T8 set, or more.

most of the DK sites, blogs and forums recommend these 2 builds. i however went with another.  the not so popular 10/10/51 unholy build.  this has been floating around for quite a while now. certainly i am not the first to use this build i am sure.  but this one i did not copy.  i just read `talks` and references of the 10/10/51 build and thought i’d create my own. it’s not hard.  you just use your better judgement in distributing the points and pray you get lucky with it.  LOL!

when patch 3.1 came out, i was not happy with 12/0/59/.  it was just like the the old one, minus the +5% crit from  Dark Conviction, but the added mobility that comes with the run speed increase from an improved unholy presence.  0/10/61 puts you in with more threat since you don’t have Subversion invested into your talents. plus its a more suitable build with Ulduar gear. i didn’t like the latter for the reasons that, (1) since our guild is still learning Ulduar (now past Auriaya), i wouldn’t be of much help to our tanks grabbing the threat from them.  it’s not that our tanks are bad. they are very good. when my crits are in a string i am sure to grab aggro from Bosses or mobs, especially at the start of fights, even from our best paladin tank who is geared to the teeth in heroic Naxxramas gear. without Subversion, i’ve done this lots of times when i was still a dual-wielding (DW) death knight using the now defunct 0/32/39 shadow-frost with perma-ghoul build.  so i didn’t wanna repeat the times when, for example, during the adds fight on Thaddius, i was thrown instead of the tank.  weee.. . flying is FUN when you are not on a mount. LOL! and, (2) my gear is not Ulduar level yet. well i got 2-3 pieces, neck and ring and another one, from Ulduar. having a 2-piece Conqueror’s set would really get me started on this particular build.

so what is my 10/10/51 build?

well it just takes most of the important talents in Unholy, up to the 51st talent which is the Summon Gargoyle.  let’s go down from top to bottom of which talent i skipped or partially put some points on.

Unholy Tree – 51 points

(what i did not get or partly did)

Wandering Plague.  i didn’t take this talent at all.  for me it didn’t hold much allure.  even before patch 3.1, everytime i review my DPS meter, wandering plague was always at the bottom of the damage i’ve done, and it didn’t proc that often.  i’m not so sure how this talent really works, but it is definitely equal to your melee critical chance, and for this to work or to benefit the most, there should be more than one target nearby.  with my unbuffed critical strike rating going down from reshuffling my gear for hit and without Dark Conviction, this talent definitely didn’t get my interest.

Magic Suppresion.  no use getting this if you want to maximize your damage.  this is more of suvivability.  well they say a dead DPS is zero DPS. which is absolutely true.  most DPS builds won’t include this talent. so it’s your take.

Anti-Magic Zone.  didn’t bother on it.  this, in my opinion, is only useful in boss fights with heavy magic abilities, and you are assigned to lessen the blow from magic damage to the raid.  i don’t even think Unholy (UH) tanks get this ability.

Improved Unholy Presence.  most people recommend UH death knights to get this.  it will give you, according to their calculations and based on previous facts, a slightly higher DPS gain on running fights.  i would tell you to get it too.  Ulduar is full of running boss fights.  however i did not for my build to work.

Dirge. spent 1 talent point on this. just to reach higher talent tiers.  2.5 additional runic power is not so bad at all too.

Blood-Caked Blade. skipped this.  chance again! i placed everything instead on Necrosis which deals 20% additional Shadow damage on auto attacks.  from my DPS meter reviews on boss fights, next to my Scourge Strikes, melee (or white attacks) is the highest in overall damage.  while BCB is definitely not bad at all, i thought it would be best if i poured out the points on just Necrosis, giving me a flat 20% increase damage on all my white attacks.  BCB also doesn’t double-dip anymore.  they nerfed it.  it doesn’t crit too.  so why do i have high number of melee attacks, i wonder? perhaps i got too much haste? LOL!

note: i’ve been reading the forums heavily, and some say Necrosis is better than this, while some say otherwise.  most of the time, Necrosis stands out as the winner.  5% dps increase, compared to 3% on BCB.  that is point for point of the talent.

On A Pale Horse.  errr what?!  PVP perhaps?  don’t get this.

Corpse Explosion. very good on trash pulls for AOE damage.  doesn’t work all the time, since it doesn’t explode elemental or mechanical mobs.  but fun, FUN!  ok i skipped this.

Epidemic.  take this or not, this talent is really good. get it.  i did not get it though. hehe.. . i placed my points instead on Morbidity, which lessens the cooldown of my Death and Decay, while increasing the damage of my Death Coil for another 15%.  besides, didn’t blizzard increase the duration of 2 death knight main diseases by what, 3 seconds?  that’s good enough for me. if i had more talent points to spend, i’d definitely get this. but i need it for the other trees so i have to sacrifice something.

Unholy Command.  great for PVP and leveling!

Anticipation.  get it if you’re a tank!  enough said.. .

Ghoul Frenzy.  i have yet to try this. it doesn’t look very interesting.  plus you will have to put this in your rotation on when to blow it since it uses a rune.  this will just add more headaches to an already complicated UH rotation.

Frost Tree – 10 points

(what i have)

Improved Icy Touch.  3 of 3.  no explanations needed.

Runic Power Mastery.  not much choice here. they reshuffled most of the frost talents. then again it’s not too bad.  more RP means you will have enough juice to squeeze in a death coil or an uholy blight in between rune CDs or when your gargoyle is summoned.  you just got knocked back far, far away from melee range from a boss?  your DPS loss wont be so bad being a melee. with full RP  you could death coil twice, icy touch  1 or 2 depending on available frost runes, then death coil another 2 times.  if lucky, you get 6-8k death coil crits. yes this does happen. yes, i know the rule of never letting your RP bar go full.

Black Ice.  5 of 5.  they nerfed this for frost, so to speak.  but the overall gain from the 10% more damage in both frost and unholy spells is a win, especially that i am a shadow death knight.  stronger Scourge Strikes and all.  WOOT!

Blood Tree – 10 points

(what i have)

Butchery.  this is like our mp5 equivalent.  hehe.. .

Subversion.  less threat, more crit chance.  though UH DKs would only be able to use blood strikes.  lesser threat is generally a good idea!  would’ve been perfect if it also increased Scourge Strike crit chance. but then that would be too imba!

Bladed Armor.  3 of 5.  filler points which are definitely very good.  if you want, you can spend all your remaining points here.  but you lose out on  Two-Handed Weapon Specialization.

Two-Handed Weapon Specialization.  hmm.. . 4% increased damage to all weapon-based abilities.  definitely a go!

—

there you have it.  tailored to my gear and preference.  here is a link for my build.  try this if you want.  you might like it.  not to brag, but i top damage meters, and such, every so often with this build.  that would go for my guild and in PUGs given my gear level. my gear is not the best in slot.

—

for my glyphs i’ve always used the following except for the new Glyph of Dark Death which replaced the Glyph of Blood Strike.

Major Glpyhs

Glyph of Scourge Strike – 25% chance for this strike to cause Frost Fever and Blood Plague

Glyph of the Ghoul – gives your ghould additional 40% of your strength and stamina

Glyph of Dark Death – your death coil damage is increased by 15%

Minor Glpyhs

Glyph of Raise Dead – makes summoning your ghoul a free one. no more corpse dust needed.  this saves you bag space plus gold!

Glyph of Pestilence – extends the effective radius by which your diseases are spread via pestilence by another 5 yards.

Glpyh of Horn of Winter – increases the duration of your Horn of Winter ability by 1 minute.

—

Xzeeviera of Kul Tiras

non-KDE app filechooser trick

did you ever get annoyed of that non-KDE application using KDE’s native file chooser taking up the entire width of your screen whenever it is opened?  this seems to be a common and persistent problem for non-KDE applications that use the KDE file chooser to open or save files.  a good example of this is OpenOffice.org.  here is a simple trick to solve that problem.

Step 1 > Click on the file chooser icon as shown in the image below.  Or you can click on the File menu and then selecting Open.

Step 2 > When the file chooser dialog box is already out, resize it to your preference.

Before.  Notice how the file chooser box occupies the entire length of my screen.

After.

Step 3 > Click on the window menu that is usually at the icon located at the top left corner of the window.  Then select Advanced, and then selecting Special Window Settings from its sub-menu.

Step 4 > On the Special Window Settings dialog box, check on Size and select Remember from the drop down menu to its right.  This will tell it to remember the size of the file chooser dialog box to its current width and height (when you resized the box in Step 2).This will not only remember the size of the file chooser dialog box on this session, but also in future sessions.

Step 5 > Don’t forget to click OK once you’ve done all these steps.  Close everything.  You don’t have to close the application (OpenOffice.org in this example).  Open the file chooser dialog box again and notice that its dimensions are now set according to how you wanted it.

Note that this trick will only remember the size of the file chooser dialog box to the application you’ve configured it to.  I’m sure there are ways to tell KDE to always set the file chooser box to a certain width and height.  That’s gonna be another topic later on.  Enjoy!

PC hardware problems

just great!   just a week or so after my NVidia 8800 GT died, my primary hard drive becomes unreadable.  it’s an old 80GB IDE drive from SeaGate, where my bootloader and Kubuntu 9.04 resides.  it is a good thing i made the Windows drive the secondary.  at least the default option to write MBR upon installing Kubuntu defaults to the primary disk,  or i would’ve had to do something with it on Windows.

and so everything in that drive is lost.  i think it is.  BIOS can still recognize the drive but it takes forever to read it.  there goes the movies and everything.  and my freakin pictures in HK, Singapore and all those i’ve collected through my years of stay here in Cebu. . .  shit!  now i just realized that i don’t have backups of it.  waaaaa! =(  i do have selected pictures uploaded but the originals.. .

controlled PVP environments

many of the nerfs or “balancing,” as what WOW devs fondly call it, are being put out because of PVP reasons.  people QQ that class X is so OP and when a number of these complaints become substantial enough, i guess, the devs take a look on the issue with the nerf bat ready in their hands.

i was wondering how battlegrounds should be controlled instances, just as arena is somewhat controlled.  in arena, for example, you can’t use your abilities that has a 15 minute (or greater) cooldown. you can’t use potions, food buffs, elixirs and the likes, inside it too.  some things are allowed, like a lock candy or buffing up your team.  but any other external means of buffing is almost always not usable in arenas.

but arena is far from being a perfect controlled PVP environment.  one thing that should not be allowed in arena is being able to resurrect a teammate.  a resto druid did this twice in one of  our 3v3 matches.  and i was shocked and dismayed at the same time, on how this could ever be allowed to happen.  mage novas also doesn’t have a diminishing return.  there have been many instances when the mage, with its partner dead in 2v2 matches, can still proceed to demolish a double dps teams on its own.  if on a 1v1 mages can pawn any class, clearly, there is something wrong if 1v2 mages still pawn.  maybe their frost novas should be subject to longer cooldowns just like every other class.

but really, the issue here is how PVP environments should be controlled to balance the classes without affecting PVE too much.  BGs and arenas are instances.  Wintergrasp in patch 3.2, i heard, would become another instance and not a world PVP battleground that is open for all.  so if these are instances, surely something can be done.

in dungeon raids there are, and have been, many bosses that have abilities, or trigger effects, that places debuffs on the players.   General Vezax in Ulduar, for example, makes it harder for mana users by stopping their mana regen totally unless the players kill a saronite vapor.  mana users can have a bonus by standing on a shadow crash after it has crashed, but not for too long.  melee are given a disadvantage as well. their attacks become 20% slower.

if PVP environments such as battlegrounds can be like this, i think it could fix some of the issues of class imbalance.  give penalties to each class but only in battlegrounds and arenas.

the filipino mis-directions

after tonight’s ordeal, now i can really sympathize to non-filipinos and how they really criticize the way we give directions.  this is not a baseless criticism to filipinos by the way.  i am a filipino too, and i love this country no matter its shortcomings.

the story is that i tried to get to a friend’s birthday party.  everyone would be there, including a lot of my friends too.  being not a cebuano, i can go my way around the familiar parts of  cebu city.  but when it comes to other places, especially the heavy residential zones, i’m gonna have to say, i am still a noob in cebu.   my more than 3 years of stay here in cebu didn’t help at all, since i can only recall common and popular places and streets.

generally, this is where we fail in giving directions.

1) it is common for filipinos to use their mouths when giving out directions.  how?  for those who are not familiar with us, we often form an `O` with our mouth and extend it as much as we can from our face to point to a direction.  yes it is easier and more convenient to use ones hand (or both) to point to a direction.  i don’t know why we use our mouth instead.  it is really funny.

2) our streets are named but we seldom use it to get to a place, or to tell someone how to get there.  instead we use landmarks and the name of a zone.  while landmarks aren’t bad, street names would be better.  but then again the  street signs are not prominent everywhere in our cities.  sometimes it is there, or hidden, partially or totally, by something.  and because of this, everyone here has gotten used to giving out directions by saying for example, “7-11 of  zone X.”  good thing if there is only one 7-11 store in zone X.

3) not giving out an estimated distance to how far this point is to another point.  is it walking distance?  is it a 100 meters?  we often generalize and say “it’s just up there, look for  a big tree,”  when the truth is, that big tree is more than a kilometer away.  this will not work always.

i was laughing at myself  tonight, all sweaty after all that walking.  my god i didn’t even know it was over a kilometer from a popular mall in this city to the province’s capitol office until i saw the road sign that said – “capitol turn right 1km ahead.” what the fuck?!  going from my apartment alone to this mall, is almost,  if not over, a kilometer as well.  that makes it 2 kilometers of walking already. this is just going one direction.

in that part of the city where the party was being held, that’s another story.  it’s beyond the capitol of cebu.  it’s a big zone.  not all of the streets are lit by lamps.  we generally don’t have city blocks here to make it easier.  so it’s just a maze of streets turning left, right and in odd  directions.

i didn’t want to take a taxi because i’ve been taking a cab for 3 years now. it’s time i get on the generally accepted cheap form of public transportation which is the jeepney.

so there, i failed miserably into getting myself to that party.  when i was walking along dark street corners, poorly lit streets and passed many groups of people just standing or sitting there on the sides, that did it for me.  no way i’m gonna get mugged here.  this is ridiculous!   and so i hailed a cab and called it a night.  a cheesburger from McDonald’s sounds better instead of a broken bottle on my head.

where nerfs are epic

Welcome to the World of Warcraft!

• this is a Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG).  it is the number one and the biggest in the planet in terms of subscriber base.  yes it is quite addicting to play!
• this is not a Free to Play (F2P) game.  it is paid for, also known as Pay to Play (P2P).  about $15 a month.  relatively cheap if you are earning a steady income.  yet Blizzard Entertainment, the company behind World of Warcraft, has been very succesful on this MMORPG and has raked in tons and tons of gold.. .err dollars (US$).. . off of it.
• being that one of the most successful game company is behind this MMORPG, and might i add, a company known for creating one of the best lores and storylines with their games, World of Warcraft follows the same tradition that Warcraft, Diablo and Starcraft did.  be that as it may, it’s never really followed in-game.  it’s just for promotional purposes in my opinion.
• World of Warcraft has been around for over 4 years and it continues to be strong.  while it is losing customers left and right, it is gaining more everyday too.  so while it is at its peak, the game makers are making sure they get the most out of it (read: earn more money!).  hence they are adding in more features to keep the newer (noobs) players interested and happy, while the interest of those who have been playing it for some time dwindles day by day.  but this is a smart scheme.  you can’t expect people to play this forever. sooner or later someone has to stop. they can’t do anything about this, so always keep the noobs happy. they are your major cash earners anyway.
• FOTM or Flavor of the Month is one of the basic ways they keep people interested or continue to play.  say for this month they buff up one class so much to a point that players call these classes OP.  that’s short for Over-Powered.  meaning the class is too strong it would be hard to beat them.  but what really happens is that it’s just a hype.  they only let you think that way when in fact it’s not.  the truth is, casters have been very much OP ever since.  tales and youtubes of warriors dominating are exceptions, not the rule.  any mage or warlock can decimate you with two to three spells.
• while casters being OP is not entirely true, yes, coz pure damage dealing classes are basically favored over hybrids.  so rogues and hunters are as mean-ass as mages or warlocks.  lately the rogues have been buffed up greatly.  hunters have been toned down coz hundreds of thousands of hunter victims have QQed (cried and whined) in the official WOW forums to nerf them.  but that smile on your face won’t last long.  hunters are slowly being re-buffed again to what they once were -  the kings of battlegrounds and the kings of PVE damage.
• perhaps the only one hybrid class that’s continuously being favored while the rest gets the nerf bat are paladins.  yes!  they have it all.  they are the true hero class.  not death knights (DK).   DKs are just FOTM.  it’s clearly a publicity stint to bring back interest to people and bring in new blood (read: more income!).  paladins excel in all areas may it be in PVE (player vs. environment) tanking, healing or damage dealing or in PVP (player vs. player). while paladin healers may not be AOE healers, they are very good with keeping your tanks alive just like any other healing class, no questions about that.  plus who doesn’t love pally power – blessings of might, kings, wisdom, etc.?
• this is World of Warcraft, don’t be surprised if your hybrid class gets nerfed every now and then. that’s perfectly normal.  it’s been happening since the first WOW patch started.  it’s never gonna end.  that is the truth.  accept it or quit.  it’s a WOW cycle.  QQ as much as you want. they will still nerf you next patch or on a “silent fix.” the game developers clearly stated that no hybrid dps should ever be above a pure damage class’s dps.
• don’t whine if game developers don’t like your class.  warriors have been nerfed time and again without any logical discretion.  and to state nerf when the fledgling warrior class is as weak as it was, is really an overstatement. this is World of Warcraft, favoritism is always there.
• World of Warcraft is full of elitism.  only the top ranked guilds and the top ranked arena players get a chance at influencing the game for changes, fixes and balances.  i said chance.  developers might or might not listen to their inputs.  developers of WOW are known to be stubborn and vague to everything they say. not to mention that elitism is already being branded on the pure DPS classes.  eat that hybrids!
• Ghost Crawler (GC) the lead game developer can be equated to a traditional politician.  he says things to appease the customers.  but  he says it in such a way, that nothing is really definite.  he’ll have you assuming things and later on will tell you that he never really said it.  instead you will end up being wrong coz you assumed things.  quite tricky.  but that’s how the game is played, just like in real-world politics.  he will also say things definitely from time to time, and then later on, will just eat his own words.  he’s been known to do that a lot.  and this is not just limited to WOW’s beloved GC, the same thing goes for any of their game developers or “blue posters.”
• this is World of Warcraft and magic pawns might anytime.  don’t be surprised if your rogue or DK gets 2-shot by a warlock or mage.  that happens.  you also can’t kill a resto shammy.   but he/she will kill you with a totem while just healing his/her shit out of your damage. rofl!
• Arthas was a paladin.  when he went over to the dark-side, he became The Death Knight.  perhaps when he was a paladin he was a protector of life, truth and justice, so it it normal that paladins should be able to tank and heal and DPS.  but as a death knight, Arthas was only meant to sow chaos across Azeroth. as the Lich King, he is the pure meaning of death, corruption and destruction (read: damage dealer).  death knights were never meant to tank.  Blizzard just wanted another tank to satisfy the bored warriors. plate means nothing against magic. we know that. druids can tank too, so it doesn’t mean plate wearers immediately become tanks.  fix your shit Blizzard or i dare you to make shamans and rogues tank.  rogues can have a riduculous dodge rate and give them an armor buff like droods.  shamans have shields.  if you pigeon-hole plate-wearers and shield-bringers as tanks immediately, why not include shamans as well?
• this is World of Warcraft where everything is about nerfs and more nerfs, your definition of epic will never be the same again.  that is why people love and hate the game at the same time.  be ready for the ride of your gaming life!

problem connecting to Yahoo! using Kopete?

Since last week I have had trouble connecting to Yahoo! using Kopete.  I guess the same holds true for those who are using Pidgin.  At first I thought my Amarok was just eating up too much bandwidth since I was streaming party music from Cool Streams.  So I didn’t really bother connecting to Yahoo, exiting it (Kopete) after it was unable to login to my account.

Today I tried connecting to Yahoo again.  This time Amarok wasn’t streaming.  After some time I still didn’t see any buddy icons in the list.  Strange.  I checked the connection status and it said, “Connecting.”  I tried changing the status from offline to online several times and waited several minutes without any success. Just to be sure that Kopete wasn’t doing anything stupid, I added my Google Talk account.  It connected fast after the setup!  Ok this calls for some google-ing!

I Googled for any news that was affecting Kopete from connecting to the Yahoo! message service.. .  And there it was! A lot of people using Kopete, and Pidgin as well, were having the same problems.  Here is a link to the bug that was reported to bugs.kde.org.

So for a quick and temporary fix, they suggested to change servers.  From the default scs.msg.yahoo.com you should change your server to either of the following:

(1) cs101.msg.mud.yahoo.com
(2) cs102.msg.mud.yahoo.com
(3) cn.scs.msg.yahoo.com

You can change this by going to Settings > Configure > Accounts.  Then select your Yahoo! account, press Modify Account.  Change to the Account Preferences tab.  Check Override default server information then edit to either of the ones above.

The port is still 5050.

Both servers 1 and 2 didn’t work for me, though some people confirmed that it worked for them.  Only server 3 allowed me to connect.

Try it out and welcome back online!

a theory on the RNG factor in WOW

RNG is short for Random Number Generator.  this is also a term that is used in abundance in the popular game, World of Warcraft.

now how is this important to the game?

well for one, if you are not in a guild with a laid out system already, such as those making use of the DKP or EP/GP looting system to distribute the loots from raid instances to their members, RNG will certainly be a BIG factor to you.  in most cases, you won’t be in such a guild.  only hardcore and some slightly-dedicated raiding guilds use such loot distribution systems.  and how many hardcore/dedicated raiding guilds are there in a realm?  perhaps only 25-30% of the active population?  so most of the time, you will be left to the mercy of the /roll system.  pray the RNG gods are in your favor.

/roll is an internal game command that you can use to generate random numbers.  /random is similar.  based on the official definition of the 2 commands, they are exactly the same (check it out here for reference of the said commands and their usage).  but some addons, loothog for example, discriminate against using the /random command.

so what really is the difference between /roll and /random?

most players will use /roll instead of /random.  i think there really is none.  most probably it has to do with /roll being a shorter command and thus faster to type in the keyboard. and games such as the World of Warcraft, they are so full of shorthands, abbreviations and acronyms that would almost make up a new language.

how reliable is the World of Warcraft RNG?

i would say it is NEVER reliable.  it is random, yes?  not really.  try to observe in your guild raids how some player will always get a high roll than the rest of the players most of the time.  this is very true.  in our guild, since we’ve been raiding from February, there are 3 to 5 prominent players who will, most often than not, get high rolls. i am not saying they win all the time, but their rolls are up there.  this happens most of the time, ridiculously i say, that it is very hard to miss once you’ve been running with the same set of people several times.

in all the complexity of the World of Warcraft, and given how many people are playing it at any single time of the day, not to mention that you have a hundred other issues to consider, random number generation that is done server-side, has several controversial issues.  for example,

(a) Need or Greed system in the game.  how many times have you heard or been in cases where in a 5-man raid, 3 in the group selects Need and all get a roll of 100, but the first to roll need always gets the loot?  this scenario is familiar is it not?  it doesn’t happen all the time, but it has happened many, many times. of course, there would have been X times as well that the first player to roll a 100 and got a tie from another player, also didn’t get Y item.  that goes for the other players who got a 100 as well.  Blizzard says the server will pick out a random player as a winner when this happens.  Read this article for more information.

(b) try to observe or remember how many times your rolls are low,  like below 50 low, since 50 is the median in the accepted rolling system of a number between 1 and a 100 in the game.  i myself can certainly attest to this.  i’ve been in countless situations where my rolls never go above 50.  sure, you can say i must’ve rolled a number above 50 countless times too.  true.  but then we go back again to being in the same set of people in every raid and the same people getting high rolls, it’s just impossible to miss.

(c) some people would  even say that there is a pattern to the number the /roll command gives.  they say it is 1 low, 1 mid and 1 high roll in succession.  the low, mid and high rolls referred here won’t always mean low is below 50 and high is above 50.  it is said that the rolls would look like this if you observe carefully – 14 (low), 32 (mid), 33 (high) or 77 (low), 92 (mid), 99 (high).  some say your first 2 rolls are always low ones. the 3rd produces a high number.  i’ve never seen this pattern.  normally when i just /roll to check my luck (or the lack thereof), the results would be mostly low numbers.  yes i’m not exaggerating.  anyway, if many people have noticed this so-called `pattern` to comment about it, then there must be some truth in it.

(d) ever notice how rolls seem to be grouped or close to each other?  if someone rolls a 90, there will be a high chance that more people will get to roll numbers that are close to, or over, 90.  try to observe that in the occasion that you roll against other players for a loot.  this also happens a lot in programming. i’ve seen this many times over the years.  you generate a set of random numbers, the results seem a bit much clustered to every other number.  if the first random number is a high in X loops, then many of the succeeding random numbers would also be highs.  same goes the other way around.

why do other players get high rolls most of the time?

i believe it has something to do with the random number generation and seeding used by WOW.  in programming, there is really no such thing as random.  there are many algorithms that can create very long sequences of numbers with good random properties but eventually the sequence repeats after only tens of thousands of trials.  these functions may even fall short of a high-quality randomness that is required for applications of a statistical nature, cryptographical, or in numerical analysis.

everything is in some way pre-determined by some initial value(s). this is what you would call a Seed or a Key. in its simplest definition, a seed is, A integer used to set the starting point for generating a series of random numbers. this is what they call pseudo-random number generation (PRNG).  if you are familiar with functions in popular programming languages that produce random numbers, you will find out that there is a pattern to how the function produces random numbers based on a seed.  or to put it directly, if you use the same seed on a random generator, no matter how many times you use it, it will always produce the same set of numbers.

now given that there are some seeds for these functions that will output low numbers more than half the time, say for example, in a thousand iterations of a number between 1 to 100, inclusuve of the min/max boundaries.  it is also true that there are seeds that produce mostly high numbers.

ever since i have noticed how the same set of people in a group/raid only a few select people get high rolls many times, while the rest get low (or mid) rolls, i have started thinking that each player must’ve been assigned a seed at some point in the game.  this would minimize the computing overhead for generating random numbers several thousand times a day on their servers/software.  this is not just in the case where the game client will have to call on /roll. there are several instances or mechanics in the game where RNG is needed too.  your attacks are also subject to RNG.  the same thing goes for heals, blocks, parry, etc.  these things however can be manipulated in some way through your choice of gear.  still, they rely on RNG.

while i can’t provide any evidence on this claim, then why in the 3 to 4 months of raiding do i only remember just 3 to 5 same people in a raid composed of 25 getting high rolls several times. and once again, i must say, their rolls are ridiculously high most of the time it is impossible to miss it.  i myself get low rolls a lot of times.  and i do mean lots, lots of times!  these are rolls that are lower than 50, and somewhere around the 20s and 30s.

this seems to be too much to be just a coincidence.

the pattern (\n|.)* and PHP Segmentation Fault

the pattern:

(\n|.)*

what it does:

this is a nice regular expression pattern that spans multiple lines.

example:

pattern used – <label>Address:(\n|.)*<label>Website:

<div id=’cominfo_hdr_div’>Company Information</div>¶
¶
<label>Address:</label><br>¶
33rd Flr. PBCom Tower, Ayala Ave., Corner Herrera St.<br>Makati City, Metro Manila <br><br>¶
<label>Website:</label><br>¶
http://www.example.com <br><br> ¶
<label>More Information</label><br>¶

—

this is very useful for parsing text from data with a repeating pattern.  just queue up the data source in a loop, run the regular expression pattern through it and you should have that particular text you want in no time.  yes?

Nope!  at least for me it didn’t. it got me something else instead.

from my repeated manual tests using patterned strings spanning multiple lines similar to the example above, this regular expression would work.  however, when i started feeding the actual data for parsing in a loop, i got a PHP Segmentation Fault at some point. the data source isn’t that huge.  about 15 – 30 KB each in size, and close to a thousand.  sometimes it went through once or twice without an error, but after several iterations in the loop it always went down to a Segmentation Fault.

what seems to be the matter?

death to the Horde!

This is a real in-game experience as written by a Cajunjane of Kul Tiras, one of the premiere death knights of the raiding guild Bisdak.  The former is an officer and one of the founding members of Bisdak.  Read on.. .

One night, 5 dreary Bisdak members went to hunt spiders in the cave at AN [Azjol-Nerub]
.. and Lo! Hordes of horde were waiting in ambush!!!

Sarevok broke the tooth off the orc shaman…
.. Sygbine bit the leg of the tauren cow warrior
…Murdak death-kissed their female elf paladin
….Ascorbate ripped the skull off the undead priest
…and Cephas stripped the Knight out of their troll Death Knight.

It was a long terrible fight. The cave echoed with the awful noises of painful screams and battlecries. All around people stopped and wonder if the titans themselves have descended and laid a terrible war against the dragons. Only to find out it was the terrible screams of these valiant heroes as they tipped their glasses on their pcs, ram their keyboards hard, kicked their desks and shook their fists at the latency rate.

In the end…after several thousands of milliseconds of that awful battle..silence came. And when the dust cleared.. a lone unflagged alliance gnome came out from the corner and shouted in testament to the scene of glory depicted before him: “FTW Alliance rules!”

And there 5 men…of the clan Bisdak valiantly stood…with their shining swords and golden armors bloodied and soaked with the blood of the enemy. And all around them lie the bodies of 8 hordes. The rest flew away, terrified..never again will they try their will against our young heroes.

At last…one of the 5 spoke.

“Naa na tanan? Tara na. Sayang oras.” [Is everyone here?  Let's go. Time is running.] “Ok, let’s go!”  “Unsa to sila?” [What were they?] “Ambot nag tira man so tira lang pud ko..” [Beats me, I was just pewpewing away like everyone else..] “ah…looya oi.” [oh..what a pity.] “Bitaw… ” [Agree...] ” pa bap pls…. ” [buffs pls....]

And our heroes walked into the lair of the spider.

How to make OpenOffice.org go faster

this has been around for a while.  i’m posting this on my blog because i keep on forgetting the steps.  at least i don’t have to search the web for it now.  and i’m spreading the `love` too!  hehe.. .

here are the three (3) easy steps to make your OpenOffice.org start up faster.  many people find OpenOffice.org a bit slow and heavy.  this is very noticeable when you start it up.  while there is a quickstarter applet for this, i never liked to use it. it’s only eating up valuable memory.

note: before you do this, start OpenOffice.org and try to observe how fast (or slow) it initializes.  then compare the start-up time after you’ve done these steps.

Step 1 > Open up the Options dialog box. You can do this by clicking on Tools, then selecting Options from the menu as shown below.

Step 2 > Select Memory from under OpenOffice.org.  There are like 5 things you can set under Memory.  Copy the ones shown in the image.  These are the advisable values.

in other How To sites, they recommend to enable the QuickStarter applet.  i don’t recommend this. in fact, i never use that applet.  i don’t know if it’s still packaged with the newer OpenOffice.org versions. it seems like that is in the older versions of OpenOffice.org.  the Memory  Options in the newer versions of this wonderful office suite doesn’t have that quickstarter option.  you won’t see it anymore.  i’m using OpenOffice.org 3.0 as packaged with Kubuntu 9.04.

Last Step (3) > Go to Java Options. Make sure the checkbox is not checked.

After you’ve done these steps, click OK and you are good to go!  Exit OpenOffice.org.  Start it again and see the difference these 3 simple steps make.

you may want to read this post too >> http://www.zolved.com/synapse/view_content/28209/How_to_make_OpenOffice_run_faster_in_Ubuntu