Jason

I watched ZDTV years ago when I was in High School. I watched TechTV in college and after I joined the real world. I stopped watching when Comcast bought them out and turned it into G4TV, because they destroyed any good content that was on the channel.

I skimmed the comments, so I'm sure some of this has already been said.

1. Add-ons are not required for raiding. People have been raiding for years without them; adding LUA and the ability to include them doesn't make them required and there's plenty of folks in the Cataclysm Beta proving that now. They can definitely provide some good quality of life improvements, but they're hardly required. Even mods like DBM are hardly required with Blizzard announcing major events in the UI standard now, not to mention the new dungeon maps giving a WoWWiki style rundown of all the bosses.

2. I do agree on the guild organization issue. Organize one way or the other; trying to please everyone will ensure that you please no one.

3. The Internet, by and large, is a wretched hive of scum and villany. People really are everywhere trying to steal your information and take every advtantage of you they can. Curse, WoW Matrix, WoW Add-ons and other sites have been used as vectors to spread keyloggers, virii and other types of malware. The level of trust anyone puts in a site is highly personal; telling someone they're wrong and stupid for their opinion does nothing but show you as intolerant of differing opinions.

From what I've seen playing around on the PTR, Chain Heal does far too little and costs way too much to spam like we are on live.

As for healing in general, gear, stats, etc, nothing's really changing for us in that regard. Stat priority hasn't changed much, except that instead of looking for MP5, you're looking for spirit. Mastery figures in there as well, but I don't see it as being worth reforging out of or into.

On the topic of reforging, that seems more like a way to make gear focused at another spec(elemental, for example) useful for your current spec(resto). A good example: Reforging +hit into spirit or +crit or +haste.

Chicken and Waffles with a Dark Amber maple syrup are an anytime food.

@Bennet: The issue here is, as Clevins rightfully points out, people actively doing harm to the guild should be counted completely separate from people who are less active, level alts, etc. There is a far cry from the guy who wants to be in a guild and have access to perks, but doesn't meet someone's definition of 'contributing' but does no harm and someone who both doesn't meet the definition and actively leeches from the guild bank.

This is news? This is two year old history at this point. It's been new IP forever, it seems.

The most annoying thing about this is that I already have 3 of the confirmed songs from the first country pack. What a load of crap if they don't set up some sort of ala cart system with 3 5 song packs and a 6 song pack so folks like me aren't paying twice :(

Yea, it's not completely fixed. I've been trying to install it all day and keep getting an error message.

I used WoW Interface's updater for a long time before it went AWOL. Curse's client came around after WoWMatrix(And reportedly had more issues with things like loggers, ads, usability). Overall, they're both WAY inferior. Best solution on all parts? Work with them. They're not stealing your bandwidth any more than I am by spending 3 hours(!!!!) finding the addons I have installed between both sites, downloading them, unzipping them, etc.

Freaking ridiculous, and absolutely reprehensible.

On Cap Boosters - Purely for PvP. 800s are far too expensive for general mission use.

On Caldari Missions - Guristas are 75% Kinetic Damage, 25% thermal damage. Go find the damage profiles in EFT and see, I've already run the numbers myself. I"m well aware of the stacking penalty. I'm also well aware that for the specific rats I was talking about, an extra kinetic hardener is worth it. 2x Therm, 2x Kin is excellent for Sansha, however.

Semiconductor Memory Cell - Yea, I know about these too. And yes, they will give you a longer overall run than the CDCS, but there's a reason that I didn't bring up these or the cap booster; you mentioned nothing but T1 modules in the article, designating it clearly as being geared towards a newer player, despite using the Raven as your platform. I brought up CDCS as a cheaper, effective replacement for the CCC, which the SMC is clearly not at nearly 40 million ISK per, 2.5 times the cost of a CCC rig. In my mind, that makes the cost prohibitive for the effect you get out of it.

As for the Golem, it's performance is only slightly better than the Raven Navy Issue(What I'm actually flying), at a cost on the market of roughly double the price. I might get one eventually to make salvaging easier, but meh.

On DCU IIs - The performance boost over 2x PDS IIs isn't huge, and as I haven't delved into mechanical skills any further than I needed to for my Harpy, I won't for a while yet.

On Permaboost Ravens - If you really want to do this right, you'll run 2x Small Pithi B-type boosters, 2x CCC rigs and a Core Defence Field Solidifier(More shield regenerated by boosters per cycle). This will permarun with L3 cap skills, and 4x hardeners, fitting for the rats you're fighting. I don't have exact numbers to hand(EFT got corrupted and I don't have time to download a fresh copy), but I assure you that it will beat out the XL Booster/Boost Amp's sustained defence by quite a margin, and is more than adequate to tank just about any L4 mission, except perhaps Enemies Abound 5/5.

Overall, you make some good points, but in my mind you deviated from the thrust of your article in trying to prove me wrong. You wrote an article aimed at getting it done cheap, and I was giving an even cheaper alternative, with a minimum loss to the overall effective tank. Cheers to ya.