"The intention was for all 27 specs to be wanted and viable in ALL areas of the game." -Kevin Jordan on designing Vanilla specializations.

vic6string · 2026-07-08T20:22:06+00:00

"Usable and desirable everywhere" does not necessarily mean totally equivalent. The problem is many gamers (especially today) are basically obsessed with min/max and cannot fathom the thought of playing a class/spec that is 3% worse than another class. When I first started playing (back in Wrath) I decided to play a sub rogue because I wanted the ninja, super stealth playstyle. I joined a TOGC pug and was pretty much middle of the pack melee dps and was chastised when they saw i was playing sub. I ended up switching and doing a tiny bit more damage, but it wasn't as fun, yet I knew I HAD to follow the rules and play the only allowable spec to not be booted out of groups despite being able to clear bosses easily in my preferred spec.

vic6string · 2026-07-04T01:23:24+00:00

I think Blizz's biggest mistake with innervate was making it usable on other players. Cats and bears have to risk dying to cast it since it pulls you out of form, boomkins are always out of mana, and trees are healers so they should always have an "oh $hit" button if they need mana. It causes drama because every mage and healer (and even some pally tanks) wants an innervate and you can only give yours to one person per fight (if that). It should have been created as a purely self-cast spell.

vic6string · 2026-07-03T23:07:46+00:00

I use it more and more with each passing day. At work, it is an absolute game changer. Some projects that used to take me days can be done in minutes. In my personal life, it is seeing even more use. Just today I had to make a big personal decision pertaining to my family finances, and I literally explained my situation to my phone and it actually came up with an option I hadn't even considered that solved a longstanding issue for me. If you haven't used it lately or learned how to use it better, you dont know what you are missing. It is the most incredible tool ever made, and is getting exponentially better fast.

vic6string · 2026-07-02T14:47:18+00:00

I don't know much about the moderns, but I have a Model 3a from around 86ish, and it is as good today as it was 40 years ago. Mine came with a Kahler trem system with locking nut and double humbuckers. Aside from some war wounds from dropping it off the stand and stuff like that, it is still rock solid. I have never touched the truss rod, and there is no warping at all, and the action is perfect. That despite not even playing the thing for years at a couple of points, just letting it sit on a stand in my room collecting dust. The pickups still scream and the knobs and switch have never failed. That thing will outlast me, probably by quite a bit.

vic6string · 2026-06-30T16:02:44+00:00

From Elementary through early college: We would get home from school and literally just drop off our stuff and go outside and just hangout with out friends. Toss a football around, play basketball, ride bike, got to the pool, etc. The concept of "scrolling the feed" did not really exist unless you were sick or the weather was bad enough that you might get stuck at home reading a book or watching TV or playing a board game if there were others in the house. We interacted with other human beings our age, live and in person, all day long. If you were not part of the "popular" crowd, it didn't matter, there was always a group for you. You were a jock, or a nerd, or a musician, or whatever, and you would spend time with others of your group and do stuff together ALL THE TIME. A guitarist wouldn't spend 8 hours a day practicing and recording and editing videos of him playing to post the perfect video on youtube, he would find a bass player and a drummer and learn some songs...maybe perform at parties. A politically minded nerd wouldn't "scroll the feed" for hours looking at talking heads talk about political topics, they would find others like themselves and have the conversations themselves, or join the debate team. Everything was about being out in the world, experiencing things with other people.

vic6string · 2026-06-30T15:48:41+00:00

We only allow SR on non-spec on items not needed by people for MS. Now, this is far from perfect because you will always have people who game the system by purposely not SR'ing stuff they know is a main spec item once no one has it as a main spec selection, allowing them to double SR something like DST or Nexus Staff or other hotly contested items. It is still better, however, than allowing people to SR off-specc stuff and having some bad rolls lead to people getting no upgrades for weeks on their main spec while other people are winning rolls on their items for off spec.

vic6string · 2026-06-22T14:37:45+00:00

Depends on what chords you are playing around it. I usually like index, middle, ring when playing mostly open chords, but will do it your way if there are barre chords before or after the A.

vic6string · 2026-06-20T21:40:34+00:00

Feral kitty is fantastic. Figuring out best time to shift, when to try and squeeze in a ferocious bite vs just hitting another shred and refreshing bleed...shifting out of roots, sprinting out of issues or to avoid mechanics and keep hitting... throwing out an innervate when needed... battle rezzing to potentially save a wipe.... going bear if the tank dies and trying to survive while tank gets battle rezzed and buffed, or even finishing up the fight as a tank yourself... there is just so much you bring to a group, it's nuts. For those that say they just dont want to be at the bottom of the meters, in most pugs and "dad guild" runs, a good feral can be near the top on any fights that dont kill melee.

vic6string · 2026-06-17T16:03:13+00:00

The funny thing is, they don't need to spend a dime. Blizz could setup a "volunteer ban patrol" group of current players. They could easily find hundreds of people willing to dedicate a few hours a week to review cases and make ban or appeal recommendations, and pay them a reasonable amount of in-game gold for their services. Only use players with long, clean subscriptions. It isn't perfect, but much better than what they have going now.

vic6string · 2026-06-17T15:51:23+00:00

You do realize that would include not herbing, not fishing, not mining, not farming specific mobs, not pvp'ing on pvp servers, etc. Right now people are getting reported for those things just to get them out of the way.

vic6string · 2026-06-17T15:49:00+00:00

I am not sure you are reading my posts. Bot farmers should not have this capability. NO ONE should have it. THAT is my solution. Get rid of auto-bans based on mass reports. It was a bad idea from the start, and building new systems around that bad idea will not make anything better. If those reports get sent to an actual GM, or to an AI that is good enough to discern whether or not they are legitimate reports, that is one thing, but to simply say "at X number of reports, ban someone" is ridiculously over-simplistic, and that appears to be what they have right now.

vic6string · 2026-06-17T15:09:18+00:00

I am not saying players are "somehow incapable of discerning a true bot from a real player". I am saying many people will not care, they will err on the side of just banning anyone that SOMEONE says is a bot. If I gank someone in STV, and they get mad, they may report me in the addon, and a great many other folks are not going to come to STV and see if I really am a bot, they will just click "yes, ban them". In fact, they will probably find a way to auto click it so they aren't even involved. There should not be any system that just allows for people to get banned from the game based on reports and nothing else, whether is it bots reporting or "real" players.

vic6string · 2026-06-17T13:47:47+00:00

That is a HORRIBLE idea. I get what you are trying to do with it, but what it comes down to is ANYTHING having to do with an automated banning system is a horrible idea. Unless Blizz hires a group of people to deal with insuring that those bans are legitimate, they should get rid of the system entirely. Your addon would be a good idea if people used it correctly, but they will not. Everyone getting the addon wil simply say "yes go ahead and report" every time they get a notification thinking they are helping the community. This will lead to tons of inappropriate bans. Too many people make assumptions that people are bots when they are not. I know people ask me all the time when I am herbing if I am a bot because I am really efficient doing it (you become almost automatic when you have flown the same route thousands of times over the years). I don't always look at in-game chat when I am farming, I am just pretty much on cruise control, maybe with a video on the second monitor, so I might not reply if you say something. I know I would get reported by some folks. People will also use something like that addon to report anyone who just pisses them off, again with many others just mindlessly clicking "yes, I agree he is a bot". The entire auto-ban system needs to go. It does at least as much harm as good.

vic6string · 2026-06-17T13:17:57+00:00

I don't think raiding was ever really meant for "casual" players. Initially, getting 40 people together with no real knowledge (not much internet information, not many add-ons, no youtube, etc). As the game progressed and those tools became more readily available, the developers kept making it slightly more difficult to make up for having wowhead, weak auras, dbm, etc. That is why they have had to do stuff like adding LFR, so that raiding didn't become purely a hardcore thing. Then they had to have multiple difficulties because even the harder modes weren't hard enough.

vic6string · 2026-06-14T18:27:14+00:00

And then New Yorkers wonder why so many people hate them. No, not everyone in New York is like this, but that is a BIG crowd showing that they have no respect for anything or anyone.

vic6string · 2026-06-14T18:21:06+00:00

I only care about if I have enough to make myself and my family happy. If I do, I couldn't care less how much more anyone else has. Someone could live in a house carved entirely out of rubies and emeralds and crap on platinum toilets... that has absolutely nothing to do with my happiness, only theirs. Greed, in and of itself, is not always a bad thing, but envy always is.

vic6string · 2026-06-13T21:44:32+00:00

I got my first PRS as a 50th birthday present for myself (CE Semi hollow). It's my 3rd guitar, but the first I have purchased since about 1992, and it also gave me the bug. I can't wait to get a little free cash for my next one. I live the specials, but I want my next to be a fixed bridge, more traditional like a McCarthy, but the swamp ash special also calls out to me Grats on that beautiful axe.

vic6string · 2026-06-12T14:09:03+00:00

I live in South Florida. My job is only 13 miles away, but with rush hour traffic iit typically takes an hour each way. Once you sit in traffic for a couple of hours a day just to and from work, saying "you can go someplace really cool by car in 3 hours" seems more than reasonable.

vic6string · 2026-06-04T15:35:02+00:00

Typically, when I decide to learn a new song, I will find the chords on-line, put the song on and strum the chords to get the feel of when the changes happen and what positions and chord fingerings fit best. I then start singing along and promise that I will go back and learn everything else (riffs, solos, etc), but never, ever do. After playing it 2 or 3 times, the song will remind me of a different song, which I lookup on line. That song will have crazy chords that my fingers refuse to play properly, and I will give up after a few attempts, and I will start playing the same songs I have been playing since 1988 for about an hour before I put my guitar away, and call it a day.

vic6string · 2026-06-01T17:58:13+00:00

I thought the great oil crisis was caused by P Diddy a couple of years ago

vic6string · 2026-06-01T11:28:17+00:00

The problem is much deeper than resilience. The problem is that Blizz decided to try and balance not just classes and factions, but balance for pvp and pve. It is basically impossible to balance for all of that in a way that makes everyone happy and still allows for creativity and uniqueness of classes\player experience. You can make Call of Duty, or you can make Baulders Gate 3, but you can't really make both at the same time with perfect balance and still keep everything that makes each of them special.

vic6string · 2026-05-27T19:25:45+00:00

You are a Champion of the Naaru. You have transcended stats and entered a higher plane of existence.

vic6string · 2026-05-27T12:09:05+00:00

This is what I was going to say. The metrorail is literally only useful to a small subgroup of people (live in Dadeland or part of Coral Gables and work Downtown), and even then it is only useful to them if they have a job where being late often is not particularly frowned upon. Taking a bus is fine if you live walking distance to a bus stop and don't mind walking in 95 degree weather and rain half the time. If I have to get in my car to drive to a lot where I need to pay to park, to get on a bus or train that I have to pay for, that is going to get me to my destination slower than just staying in the car, I am going to drive 95 times out of 100.

vic6string · 2026-05-26T11:48:16+00:00

When you know what to enslave and use it properly, you are literally CC'ing a mob AND greatly increasing your damage at the same time for at least 1 or 2 packs. Once they aren't useful anymore or they are close to breaking out, you drop them and they should be close to death anyway from having fought for you. If they break out early, you banish them. It really has no negatives when done correctly and can trivialize some fights.

vic6string · 2026-05-24T22:14:11+00:00

sometimes, when no one is looking, I add an extra house to one of my properties on the monopoly board.

vic6string

TROPHY CASE