Friday, September 21, 2007

Friday's at a Pharma

Summer...hours? You mean...people are allowed to leave at noon on Friday's during the summer? This is a concept, a practice, that I will have to get used to. Too bad this is the last acceptable Friday of summertime. I won't be leaving at noon today anyway because, well, it's my first full week and just doesn't seem right. Anyway, on to more important things...

More on Hit Rating and Mutilate...
Epic post coming. I've been lotioning and oiling and oiling and lotioning...er, rather, calculating and testing and testing and calculating. I did resocket a number of my gems to gain more hit rating than I had before, and my stat line now reads 1594 ap / 23.75% crit / 202 hit. Not too bad right? Eh, Wednesday night was my first test run, as we did up to and including Curator. The other 41/20 raiding rogue in our guild was out dpsing me by a fair margin, maybe 1/2%, on trash through Attumen and Moroes. His baseline stats are 1399 / 28.08% / 167. This was confusing to me at first, as I was predisposed to relate it directly to my change in hit rating. One would think that the -4.33% crit would be offset by the +195 attack power and +35 hit rating.

I was confused.

Alas, I was a psychology major in college. If there is one thing I learned from analyzing results data, it's that there is seldom just one cause for any one effect. What were the other factors? Well, our attack power difference became normalized because he was using flask of relentless assault + ravager dog, and I was using neither (Why? Because I have this thing about "overdamage". What? Yeah, it's just a wierd thing. I dont like to waste resources like flasks, pots, food unless I really need it.). That's 120 + 40 = 160 attack power. 1594 > 1559, but you can see how it wouldn't have the same impact as 1594 > 1399. Two other major factors: I was attempting to lead the raid, but was failing miserably because I was very distracted by some real life goings-on type stuff. That being said, I was not paying attention to my cooldowns and timers, instead dividing my time between *trying* to lead the raid and *trying* to deal with the other stuff. Anyway, Sunday and Monday will give me much better results as we are doing through Prince and Gruuls respectively.

What is my hypothesis? That when considering the 41/20 build for raiding, hit rating is slightly less important, but not near irrelevant, than attack power and crit rating; once miss chance for specials has been pushed off the table (approximately 9% hit rating, or 143 hit rating), crit rating becomes even more valuable. When I complete my experiments and calculations, I will propose more background research and critical variables to the subject matter.

Random workness...
Working in such a big office presents more opportunity to encounter interesting and captivating randomness. These are my observations so far today.

It is very hard not to chuckle when standing at a urinal and the middle aged, important-looking man in a full three piece suit standing at the adjacent urinal lets loose a squeaky, high pitched breaking of the wind from his buttocks.

The following are incorrect, and TJ agrees are entirely infuriating when heard:
-fustrated
-could care less
-imput
-lyberry
-drownding
-nuke-you-lar
-perscription

Walking to the snack machine, I happened to pass by a woman's cubicle to hear the following (in subdued sob), "I can't believe she passed away...". This is the kind of thing that will haunt my conscious for the next few days, every so often prompting me to place myself in her seat on the day I get the phone call that one of my loved ones has passed on to the next life. This is why it is so easy for me to understand and relate to others.

One Last Thing...
This is the best streaming radio availble. Everyone should try it at least once.