The chain rule

Any time anyone mentions The Chain Rule with reference to Calculus, Fleetwood Mac must be played.

This is actually mostly a WoW post, but that joke has been bothering me for a while.

My mage hit 85 and has been on the heroic and raid grind. Thus follow my observations of magery in Black Rock Descent normal.

Primarily, the trash in BRD is mostly actually fun and interesting. This is a total novelty after ToTC and ICC in wrath, one of which had no trash at all, and the other had multitudes of boring giant undead spiders to AoE down.

The bosses that my guilds casual raid has downed thus far have all been fairly well crafted, interesting fights.
Magmaw can be, however, annoyingly buggy. Blizzards vehicle UI bossfight problem strikes again. Golem council does a novel thing; it's a council fight I don't hate!

I've found so far that Arcane spec is slightly better for both Magmaw and GC, it has more reliable burst for exposed head phases on Magmaw, whereas Fire DPS can tank with a bad run of crit streaks, and Frost doesn't put out quite as much raw DPS. However, if you're not tanking the worms on Magmaw, Frost is really very useful, the ability to reliably root and slow the worms without taking a significant DPS hit is excellent for getting the Parasite Evening achievement. Plus Fire has weaker survivability than Frost or Arcane, so depending on your healer load, that can be an issue.

For Golem Council, I've been finding Arcane pulls ahead entirely on the back of Arcanotrons mana pool dealies keeping mana topped up during the AB4 phase of the arcane rotation. Also worth noting is that when arcanotron puts up barrier, it's worth nuking him and spellstealing the debuff he puts up, it's a DPS boost for all specs.

Maloriak seems to be fairly even across specs. If you're fast with spellstealing Renew Arcane would likely pull ahead in raw single target DPS, but Fire AoE is amazing for killing the adds during Green phases, and the DPS difference is negligible in my experience. The main reason to spec Arcane over any other spec is trivial application of caster slow, which may or may not be important depending on raid comp.

Chimaeron, it probably doesn't matter. Cauterize might provide some wonkiness, but this really isn't a DPS fight, it's all on the healers. We just get to pew pew and get loot.



It's also amazing how quickly heroics become fairly trivial. The 333 to 346 gear jump seems to make a huge difference. Grim Batol is still too damn long though. Also, more wand drops please Blizzard. I finally got mine, but it took ages.

Magery and the pre Cataclysm events.

My mage in WoW finally dinged 80. I've played around with all three specs and formed impressions of all three:

Fire: Undoubtledly the most involved of the three, it requires juggling Living Bomb, FFB and Scorch, watching for Hot Streak procs and timing combustions. The tree has one very, very noticable problem though; pyromaniac requires 3 or more targets so it's useless on boss fights with no adds, but very strong when adds are present. I struggle to get as good overall DPS out of fire spec than frost or arcane, but I have a tendency to clip LB just before it explodes, which is less than ideal.

Arcane: Still a total faceroll of a spec. Arcane blast, repeat. Brings the strongest single target DPS of the 3 specs due to the ease of play and strength of AB. Also has the major quality of life upgrade that is Improved Blink. The main reason I keep this spec at all is for that talent. At 85, with it being accessable from Fire or Frost spec, I can't see me speccing arcane

Frost: Balanced between the DoT watching of fire and facerolling of Arcane, Frost has gone from PVP/Solo only to a fairly competative raiding spec. It plays not dissimilarly to pre 4.0 ret pally, in that you're constantly proc watching. The combination of Icy Veins, Deep Freeze and Cold Snap gives tremendous burst damage too. Although it lacks the amazing quality of life upgrades on Arcane, it has amazing survivability, soloablility and good raid damage, as well as bringing replenishment. This will probably be my secondary spec at 85.

On the pre Cata events:

The elemental bosses are fun, however, the loot tables make them extremely annoying to queue for, as plate gear isn't evenly spread across all three bosses.

1+1=2

Not math related other than the title, but I asked my girlfriend to marry me, and she said yes. Clearly the indoctrination is working.

On heroes

I've been reading two autobiographies lately; Stephen Fry's The Fry Chronicles and Confessions of a Conjurer by Derren Brown.

Although I'd hesitate to call Derren Brown a personal hero of mine, Stephen Fry certainly is, and Brown is something of an inspiration.

The books have made me consider both who my heroes actually are and what I'd actually define as a hero.
So, what do I mean by it? They both inspire me, they're both witty, erudite and knowledgable, and they both seem to delight in sharing that knowledge. Moreover, they both seem to be genuinely nice, kind. individuals. The kind of person who would be a favourite uncle or grandfather.

I think though, it's the passion for knowledge that sets them up as something of heroes of mine. This links into the title of the blog (somewhat loosely, but forgive my indulgences, it's my blog after all) too.
This passion is what essentially got me started on the path to mathland. Some background:

My previous degree required a 4 hour(ish) round trip every day for classes. While the morning trip was mostly spent asleep, the evening one was spend in the papery grasp of a book. I read voraciously during my first and second years, when I would make the trip 4 times a week. Initially I began reading popular science books, but branched out into popular maths (a term which still seems oddly juxtaposed to me). The book which had the most immediate impact on me was Infinite Ascent by David Berlinksi. I've since gone back and reread it, and the prose is pretentious even by my standards (and I used juxtaposed in a sentence), but at the time it, to be somewhat cliched, opened new vistas. It exposed me to the beauty of a subject I was middlingly capable at in school, and mostly ignored in university (despite my mother being a math teacher). This led to books by two people I really would consider my heroes; Professor Ian Stewart, of Warwick University and Professor Marcus Du Sautoy of the Mathematical Institute of Oxford University. Both of them are relentless popularisers of mathematics, and their enthusiasm for the subject really shines out from their books. Prof Stewart in particular was instrumental in me going back into undergraduate education through his books. If not for them I'd probably never have gone into maths at all.

Really, that's who my heroes are; people who inspire me to do different things, to change myself, to be good, great or kind when I could otherwise do nothing.

It's a blog entry!

Mein Gotte!

So, first entry. What should I put in it? I suppose a statement of purpose; what'll I be using this blog for?

It claims to be Adventures in Mathland, so there'll be some math. I'm gonna document the interesting bits and pieces I do at uni that are worth sharing. I also play WoW, so I'll be commenting on my experiences there. I'm in a moderately successful raiding guild based on Kirin Tor US and my main is a Retribution Paladin.

I'll also post any other junk I find interesting or rant worthy.