World of Warcraft XIII: Even Aspects Get Nerfed

[Karoht]

Item Drop Rates is usually my only sticking point with raiding.
Literally, for 3 weeks, we got nothing but mail gear on every boss. Our Shaman had a full set for all 3 specs because the loot gods did greatly bless him.
Sucked for the rest of us. 3 weeks with zero upgrades for anyone was a real morale killer too.

If there is mount with a drop chance I will never win it. 3 years of killing OS3D just about every lockout is proof of that. 3 years of ZG clears twice a week religiously and no tiger or raptor, are proof of that.
It is just a fact I have come to accept. Part of a reason why I'm not completely and vehemantly against the Black Market concept.

[subanark]

Yea same thing with us, mail drops a lot. But I can't complain since I'm the shaman. I don't bother to take the agi gear though. We only have 1 strength user as well, so he is pretty well geared up too. Its our clothy spell casters (5-6) that are suffering... that and int rings just don't seem to exist.

[Zherog]

I haven't played in quite a while. I've been, er... busy writing something on a very short deadline. Last night, I was in bed by 9:30 (I'm usually up to midnight or so, even on weekdays).

Tonight? Beer and WoW! Tomorrow night? Beer and WoW!

[Hullabaloo]

I posted this on the wow forum, but received no response over the last 36 hours (at which point its burried and old news on a game forum :) )

soooo... I pose it to you all. Ive started leveling a healer shaman, which has been my first real dive into macros. The below didnt work, so I tweaked it some, and got it working to the point where if its a bad guy I have targeted (not mouse overed) it will cast LB, and If I mouse over it will cast HW. Not sure how I got one to work but not the other. Advice or suggestions would be great :).

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Just starting to get into the healing macros (ie reading up while pretending to work :) )

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#Healing Wave
/cast [@mouseovertarget, harm, nodead] Lightning Bolt; [@mouseover, nodead] [@focus, nodead][] Healing Wave

I think I am missing something from the above. My hope was to have one key where if I was hovering over a mob it would cast lightning bolt, if I was mousing over a friendly it would cast healing wave on them, and if on neither it would cast healing wave on my focus. Is that to much to put in a single macro?
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Also, while tanking I always wondered what healers did when I did not take much dmg. Shaman seemed very oriented toward being an active dps/healer hybrid in some of the easier 5 man content. Earth shield, then lightning to keep SP up and grant stronger cheaper heals. I look forward to testing it.

[Karoht]

Also, while tanking I always wondered what healers did when I did not take much dmg. Shaman seemed very oriented toward being an active dps/healer hybrid in some of the easier 5 man content. Earth shield, then lightning to keep SP up and grant stronger cheaper heals. I look forward to testing it.

I use healbot, I'm not a mouseover macro kinda guy.
That said, you've pretty much got it right. Any spare GCD (spare time) you have where you are not healing, should be spent on damage, CC, stuns/slows, interrupts, or anything else of the like as the situation warrants.


As a Resto Druid in 5 man's I'm usually maintaining my CC on 1 or 2 targets (Dragonkin are vulnerable to Hibernate AND Entangling Roots), or I'm CC'ing the next pack already.
Drop DoTs on badguys, then casts. In my case that means Moonfire/Insect Swarm and Wrath bolts, in your case it's Flame Shock and Lightning Bolt.
If it's a trash pack of more than 4 things, I either try to Cyclone the casters a bit, or root the melee. Or Cyclone anything extraneous that doesn't look like it's getting much in the way of damage.
And in MoP I'll be using Ursol's Vortex and Typhoon as well.


What I would do in your situation is Flame Shock and Lightning Bolt whenever you can squeeze the two in.
Also, don't forget your Fire/Earth Elemental in situations that need just that little bit more DPS. IE-Burst damage situations like Spine of Deathwing.

[Expf]

#Healing Wave
/cast [@mouseovertarget, harm, nodead] Lightning Bolt; [@mouseover, nodead] [@focus, nodead][] Healing Wave

- The two spells need to be on separate lines.
- The correct target is mouseover not "mouseovertarget".
- The help condition is required to make sure that the target exists and is friendly (and thus healable). You can use exists to make sure the target exists, but it does not check for friendliness. For hostile targets, harm is used.
- Typing #showtooltip at the beginning ensures that the correct tooltip and icon are displayed.
- (Useless) Tip: /use and /cast are aliases of each other and can be used interchangeably to save you an extra character in the limited macro text box.

Corrected version:

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover,harm,nodead] Lightning Bolt
/cast [@mouseover,help,nodead][@focus,help,nodead][] Healing Wave

[Dublock]

This is a good time to ask, is mouseover a big deal? I do have a restro druid that I have healed in all 5 mans, LFR (and top heals or 2nd to top pending on if there is an overgeared person or someone who is overhealing a lot) and normal DS once a month or two ago?

[Expf]

This is a good time to ask, is mouseover a big deal?

It's a matter of preference. Either click-casting or use mouseover macros, whichever you find most comfortable. Both can achieve fast reaction times.

Click-casting can be a bit clunky because you need to use a lot of modifier keys like SHIFT, ALT, CTRL, etc, but it's what I "grew up" with so I'm stuck with that. However, it does free up key-bindings for offensive abilities and does not require macro slots.

Mouseover macros reduces the number of modifiers you need to use, but the trade off is that it will occupy a portion of your key-bindings, leaving you less room for offensive abilities. It will also use up a lot of macro slots. Some addons can bind mouseover healing directly without the use of macros.

Also, there is no reason why you can mix both in, either, if you find one beneficial in some situations.

[Fredaintdead]

I need some advice about a friend, who frankly has the worst/laziest DPS I could possibly imagine for his class, spec and gear level, even if he was just spamming buttons mindlessly.

Explanation:

Spoiler

Show

Friend A plays an Unholy Death Knight, after being bought the game by Friend B. Both I and Friend B have bought, given and crafted gear for Friend A, up to the point where I can estimate his item level at being between 375 and 380 (he has a few Hour of Twilight Heroics, some Valor gear, and some crafted 397 gear). We have ran him through so many dungeons it isn't even funny, and his DPS, is frankly terrible. At that item level he manages to get MAYBE 15K DPS at any one point (it's usually closer to 10K, if that some times). Friend B went out and found Friend A the optimal spec, and a fairly simple rotation to help improve his DPS. At item level ~330, I can regularly outdps him on Fury Warrior, and I can't for the life of me figure out how to get his DPS to go up any further than me and Friend B have already tried to do. Our plan was to eventually take him into LFR and try and get him some tier gear, but we're actually afraid to take him into it because we think he might get kicked out of that frankly toxic environment just because of how bad his DPS is for the gear he currently has.

Now, here are the problems me and Friend B have identified:
1) He craps his pants whenever he takes any damage. We have no idea why. He just does. He's playing a DK, we've told him he has enough defensive cooldowns to get through incidental damage on fights.
2) He lacks awareness of any kind sometimes. Seriously, we've asked him why he was just standing there in some boss fights doing nothing, and he replied that he was texting. This is not a rare occurence, it happens nearly every other fight.
3) According to Friend B, Friend A is just lazy, despite the fact that Friend A recently finished his first year at one of Britain's best and most strict universities.

I just don't know what to do. He's playing a DK, a class that can frankly do decent dps through mindless button-spamming (I'm not ashamed to say that 50% of the time I'm only half following my rotation/priority system and am really just spamming buttons, although I am getting a lot better/luckier at managing a rotation continually through fights).
It is honestly getting to the point where me and Friend B are just thinking about dropping the niceness (we've been okay with it so far since in the past he's been alright and we've blamed his lower DPS on lack of gear rather than anything else, but now that there's no excuses left it's just irritating) and confronting him about it.

Sorry for the wall of text in there, but I needed to vent that. I still do need advice about it though please. Any help that could be given is appreciated immensely.

[Dublock]

Thanks Expf, I am used to all the modifiers myself so I think I will just stick to what I am used to then :)

To Fredaintdead:

Is Friend A enjoying the game? If he (assuming gender) is texting in the middle of a boss fight, odds are he isn't engaged which leads me to asking of this question. Could be he is only playing this game to spend time with you and friend B and doing enough of the game to feign interest.

If the above question is a no then now is the time to sit down and have a conversation. The first conversation could be "look at what I am doing and see me do a few boss fights/training man" Then have him do the training man and see how close he can get, and I mean go over to his house on his toon so he can see the difference between the two dps. If this is more of an online friend then its less effective as you are on your toon but you can still put some time on the training man and see. I realize that you might be difference specs but sounds like you already have a good idea of what he needs to be doing anyway. I think if you made it known how big the gap of correctly doing the rotation opposed to doing it half way then that might shape him up.

[Fredaintdead]

Thanks Expf, I am used to all the modifiers myself so I think I will just stick to what I am used to then :)

To Fredaintdead:

Is Friend A enjoying the game? If he (assuming gender) is texting in the middle of a boss fight, odds are he isn't engaged which leads me to asking of this question. Could be he is only playing this game to spend time with you and friend B and doing enough of the game to feign interest.

If the above question is a no then now is the time to sit down and have a conversation. The first conversation could be "look at what I am doing and see me do a few boss fights/training man" Then have him do the training man and see how close he can get, and I mean go over to his house on his toon so he can see the difference between the two dps. If this is more of an online friend then its less effective as you are on your toon but you can still put some time on the training man and see. I realize that you might be difference specs but sounds like you already have a good idea of what he needs to be doing anyway. I think if you made it known how big the gap of correctly doing the rotation opposed to doing it half way then that might shape him up.

As far as I can tell, he's enjoying the game. He's more than happy to play by himself sometimes, heck, he once moaned at me for hitting his mobs while we were levelling, even though we were in the same group. Me and Friend B have been there both to play with him and as help so that he ends up with as few irritable sorts during dungeons runs as possible.
Thank you for the advice anyway, I'll see what I can do.

[Hullabaloo]

@Expf: Thanks, I'll give it a try next time I am able to log on to group.

@Gold: Its easy to say that gold is something that people just shot for high scores, or that you dont need it, when you've been in the game a bit. Playing for 2 months, I'm pretty much dead broke after buying Heirloom guild cape. Waiting on a helm for some more cash. The flight buying on one guy was killer :). At some point most MMOs become more about BTA, Soulbound ect stuff as opposed to gold costs, but before that is a decent spending curve.

[Karoht]

@Mouseover and Healing
If you are comfortable with what you are doing, I think that is more important.
If you feel the interface is clunky, then you might want to try something new.
I used to click to heal and did just fine. Then I tried healbot and it changed my life. But not everyone likes mouseover or addons. It's up to you.

@Friend
He sounds like he just wants a single player game to play on his terms. I don't think he actually understands the concept of group play. I've had friends like that. Eventually they either catch on and catch up, or they stop playing altogether.

@New Animations and 90 Talents/Abilities
Halo. Wins my vote for coolest looking ability.
Cascade wins my vote for second coolest, the sheer chaos of it I rather like.
Divine Star is really cool, Holy Healing Yo-Yo Batman! But it's not as flashy or overt the way Halo is.

Personally, I see Disc using Divine Star because the cooldown is short (15-20 seconds I think), and it should match up with Pennance well. I see Holy using Halo/Cascade because both work well when everyone is spread out, which is where Holy is the weakest. Also the Mastery of Holy which leaves a HoT on every target healed will be highly effective on Halo or Cascade.


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EDIT:
Checked out Beta Talents again. Didn't realize that Treants are now on a 1 minute CD VS 3 minutes on Tree of Life. I'm going to be switching those two talents all the time it seems.


First actual raid with the new guild.
We one shot every fight except blackhorn (3 pulls due to a connection issue) and Spine (5 pulls, mostly because we had a new set of tactics and methods and the tank was a wee bit slow on the uptake). Not bad for our first night.
Tonight is Madness of Deathwing (Heroic) and after that we will probably start clearing some Firelands junk, maybe kill H Rags on Friday or something.

[subanark]

Tonight was first 5 bosses. We had some issues with Hagara (people taking too many ice lances and disconnect issues, and our priest respeced to holy since disc sucks on spine), and Ultraxion (we subbed in someone who didn't do it before). The total raid time was just under 2 hours. We apparently lost one of our core raiders as they no longer appear in the guild and "Unknown" is on the calendar, so we spent some time deciding who was going to be a perminate replacement.

Heroic Blackhorn tonight, lets see if we can get kill #2 in a decent enough time, and then move on and see how spine works out. I really hope everyone shows, I will not try to heal spine, Restro shamans just don't cut it due to the fact their mastery is pretty much completely wasted the entire fight.

[Karoht]

Heroic Blackhorn tonight, lets see if we can get kill #2...

Of all things, last night we did Blackhorn with two healers, and completely ignored all small swirlies. But I should emphasize that Drakes and Sappers were just vaporized.
If you're using your Mirror trinket tactic, you should have zero problem if every DPS just takes one small swirlie each.

...and then move on and see how spine works out. I really hope everyone shows, I will not try to heal spine, Restro shamans just don't cut it due to the fact their mastery is pretty much completely wasted the entire fight.

True and False. If you're working on the tanks, your mastery is not wasted, as they never get the debuff. Also, Resto Shamans are ideal for clearing off the Blood debuff, as they have two talents which help considerably.

[Hullabaloo]

Got an upgrade to my boots at the same time I earned enough VP to get an Indefatigable Greatcloak, bumping my Ilvl high enough to get into the LFR.

Guild was doing a few BGs after (10 of us on mumble running wild in Warsong Arathi basin) so will try out the LFR tonight for the first time. Watched once though on a tutorial on each one, so I hopefully dont make a HUGE fool of myself tanking it the first time in...

@money again :): Able to gem up all my gear that is 378 or above as well as get the cheaper enchantments. Would love to top out all the 346 stuff while I wait for better drops, but Ive been playing a Resto Shaman as well, and that riding stuff is not cheap!

[Karoht]

@Money
AH has really really gone down in demand, price is remaining stable. So I'm basically holding on supplies until MoP when they will be more niche.


@Raiding
Oh man, just not having so much dead weight last night, it was excellent.
And it turns out that the GM and a few of the guildies literally run about 4 raids per week on various characters. Apparently they pugged 7/8H right before we our guild run.
When you have an entire raid group that is in 400+ gear and good teamwork, with that 25% nerf it honestly feels like normal mode again, just with a slight few extra mechanics.
I can't wait for tonight.
And next week, I just need to get my Hagara achievement and I get my meta mount.

[Expf]

I really hope everyone shows, I will not try to heal spine, Restro shamans just don't cut it due to the fact their mastery is pretty much completely wasted the entire fight.

Resto shamans are the best healers for Spine:
- Ancestral Healing: 10% Physical damage reduction (reduces the AoE damage from the Corrupted Bloods) as well as the 10% maximum health increase to every player (helps compensate for lost maximum health). In order to do this, Resto shamans must maintain 100% Healing Rain uptime on the raid.
- Spirit Link Totem: The fact that it ignores the healing debuff allows it to save players who are dangerously close to dying even if they have the debuff.
- Mana Tide Totem: It's a healing intensive fight, so the more mana for the raid the better.
- Cleansing Waters: Mana-efficient dispels.
Why do you think the world first H Spine kill was done with primarily Resto shamans? :)

[The Succubus]

I got my first legendary item on my Mage last night [Bindings of the Windseeker]. I look forward to getting the other half and subsequently trolling every single warrior, rogue, paladin and hunter I see with my shiny sword.

[The Glyphstone]

I got my first legendary item on my Mage last night [Bindings of the Windseeker]. I look forward to getting the other half and subsequently trolling every single warrior, rogue, paladin and hunter I see with my shiny sword.

And make sure to spam it in Trade chat.

[Traab]

And make sure to spam it in Trade chat.

Oh god no, please no. Not the thunderfury again.

[The Glyphstone]

Oh god no, please no. Not the thunderfury again.

What, you don't like the memories brought back by seeing [Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker]?

(SAN check.)

[The Succubus]

Oh god no, please no. Not the thunderfury again.

Back in my day, it was all about [Dirge] spam. A lot has changed since the last time I subscribed (like the whole "levelling to 60 in a week" thing - that really shocked me). Other things that surprised me was managing to sell a stack of Briarthorn for 40g, seeing Lava Cores up for 10s and seeing so many classic weapons being lost (Oh [Benediction], why did you leave ). Some things never change though - people still wipe in the Whelp room of UBRS, Arcanite is still horrifically expensive (I'm on a level 65 new character - *everything's* expensive!) and people in PuGs still grind my gears after 5 minutes.

Hello Azeroth, it's good to be back.

[Karoht]

Heroic Madness of Deathwing = Dead. Got him in 2 pulls. Amazing what happens when your guild sheds a bunch of dead weight.


Current Server Rank before updates on Wowprogress.com ???
8th
As of this post, less than 10% of guilds tracked on wowprogress.com have beaten Heroic Madness. And less than 5% have completed the entire meta.
Compair that to Firelands. Less than 8% of guilds have beaten Heroic Ragnaros. But even look at the normal mode stats. 79% have beaten Normal Deathwing, less than 65% have beaten Normal Ragnaros.

The above is taken from my memory of checking it this morning, my numbers may be slightly off.

Also, before anyone asks, wowprogress tracks guilds which have walked in and killed a boss in order to even be tracked in the total number of guilds. Guild only groups are not required to the best of my knowledge.

[Traab]

Mind posting some spoilers with any dialogue that gets revealled about what his whole insanity was about? I stopped playing shortly after the fireland dailies were put in, so im fuzzy on what the storyline is. Do we learn more about what drove him crazy? Did we get hints of future threats from the old gods?

[subanark]

Well we spent all of Wensday trying heroic Blackhorn. We got him down last week, but it doesn't seem like everything is clicking this week. We have a similar but not quite the same team as last time. Main problem seems to simply be random deaths (including tanks). Our last pull one of the healers died from full health to 0... he said he wasn't doing anything wrong, and our death log doesn't show anything at all.

I ended up costing the raid about 1/2 hour though due to my power going out (something about a lawnmower that didn't effect our power directly, but they had to turn it off to fix it).

We did consider joining up with another group who is 7/8 herioc (and some members have kill 8/8 from a different server), but it was decided it would break up the guild, and we wern't hardcore enough to simply get rid of under performing members, or simply take someone for a fight since they were a better class.

[Karoht]

Mind posting some spoilers with any dialogue that gets revealled about what his whole insanity was about? I stopped playing shortly after the fireland dailies were put in, so im fuzzy on what the storyline is. Do we learn more about what drove him crazy? Did we get hints of future threats from the old gods?

Plenty.
First there are the novels, namely the Well of Eternity series. It's the only works of Richard Knaak I recommend reading.
Second, the book Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects, which I highly recommend. But I highly recommend anything writen by Christie Golden.
Third, they detail some of the important stuff in the Well of Eternity 5 man dungeon.

But ultimately, under the Spoiler Cut, is a short version, not all that different from what you would find on wowpedia.org

Spoiler

Show

Azeroth is a planet which the Titans used to contain the Old Gods. There may be other Old Gods imprisoned in other planets, we don't know. Draenor may have housed an Old God or two prior to it's explosion.
Neltharion did indeed explore the depths of Azeroth, and in his travels the Old Gods did hear the whisperings of the Old Gods. It is entirely likely that he heard all their whisperings, not just one or two.
The Old Gods encouraged Neltharion to create the Dragon Soul/Demon Soul artifact during the War of the Ancients, and infused it with some of their power, along with that of the Aspects. When Neltharion attempted to use it, it literally tore his body apart. He then retreated to his underground caverns, and had the plates created and fitted to his body in order to hold it together. He then took on the name Deathwing.
The Deathwing we see at in the Well of Eternity dungeon has already had this event take place, already betrayed the Aspects, already wiped out the majority of the Blue Dragon Flight (including Sindragosa, the mate of Malygos who you may recall from ICC), and already had the plates bolted to his body.

Side Note:
Meanwhile, Illidan recovers the Dragon Soul and hands it over to Azshara to help her open the portal to Sargaras. The fact that we see a Demon Tattooed Illidan in the Well of Eternity dungeon means that he had already betrayed his people and been marked by Sargaras himself. So while he is in fact trying to help shut down the portal at this point, he has already betrayed his people, and been rewarded with demonic power.

In the dungeon event, he tries to take back the Dragon Soul, and the Old Gods prevent him from doing so, and further warp his body.

In the years between the Well of Eternity and now, The Dragon Soul falls into the hands of the Orcs when they arrive on Azeroth. They use it to subjugate the Red Flight and use them as mounts in their campaign in Warcraft 2.

Deathwing also has a hand in the Elemental War.

Deathwing's ultimate goal is to bring about the Hour of Twilight using the Twilight Dragon Flight, the ones Sinestra (Deathwing's Mate) was working on. You actually get to see the result of this in a dungeon called The End Times which is a possible future where the Hour of Twilight takes place. In other words, if we fail to kill Deathwing, this horrible end comes to pass.
They also wrap up the Infinite Dragonflight storyline in the End Times dungeon with the death of Murozond, the corrupted and anguished form of Nozdormu.

The Hour of Twilight basically ends all life on Azeroth, the Old Gods get free, etc etc.
Then you go into Dragon Soul, you fight the following:
-Morchok, the oldest earth elemental alive, powerful servant of Deathwing and the Old Gods
-Two Generals of the Old Gods, Vezax and Yorsahj
-A powerful Shaman/Twilight Cultist, Hagara
-Ultraxion, the ultimate Twilight Dragon, who's big bad attack is literally supposed to end the world, called Hour of Twilight.
-Thrall shoots Deathwing with the Dragon Soul. You then board an airship and attempt to catch up with Deathwing, only to be blocked by the final charge of the Twilight Dragon Flight, and a powerful dragon rider named Blackhorn riding his mount Goriana.
-You then parachute onto Deathwing's back, and due to Thrall wounding Deathwing, start tearing off his back plates to give Thrall a better shot. Sure enough, Thrall hits the now highly vulnerable weak point, and Deathwing plummets into the Maelstrom to his supposed Death.
-Deathwing rises from the Maelstrom, no longer contained by his Elementium armor, his corruption now at it's peak, and essentially turns into a giant Deathwing/Old God hybrid of some sort. With the assistance of the 4 remaining Aspects and Thrall, you finally defeat Deathwing once and for all.

Aftermath:
By expending so much energy on empowering the Dragon Soul to use it against Deathwing, the 4 Aspects have lost much of their power. They are no longer Immortal.
However, it should be noted that after the events of Firelands, the World Tree Nordrassil was again empowered by the Aspects as well, so the Night Elves have their Immortality back (in theory, not yet confirmed).
As of the novel involving the Emerald Nightmare, Teldrassil was similarly blessed. And the new Lich King, Bolivar Fordragon, who is also empowered by Alextrasza's Clensing Fire, make up 3 theorized 'containers' of their power.
The Age of Dragon's is over ending a period of Azerothian history spanning some 10-20 millenia, maybe much longer.

As for Old Gods, we know that Nzoth sleeps in the ocean and is likely responsible for warping the Highborn into Naga, and is probably good friends with Azshara. An Old God empowered Naga Queen with boatloads of Arcane power and was of considerable talent in using it before the Well of Eternity, and an entire race Naga at her command. Yeah.

I would still recommend the article on Wowpedia.org

[Admiral Squish]

So, quick question. Sorta working on restarting an old WoW account. But my guild died and I'm not having a lot of luck finding a new one. Most of my characters are horde, but I have one or two alliance characters too.

So, A) is there a GitP guilt that does RP that would be interested in getting a few more members? If not, then B) Is anyone here in, or know of, an RP guild that would be looking for more members?

[The Succubus]

I had quite a disgusting run of luck this evening and made my GM very unhappy.

Step 1: Complete Fishing daily, received ([Jewelled Fishing Pole]) in the loot bag.

Step 2: Went fishing with my new pole in Terrokar. Caught [Mr Pinchy].

Step 3: On first use of Mr Pinchy, received [Magical Crawdad].

So yeah, my GM is an ardent fisher and still hasn't caught his yet. He was not a happy bunny on hearing this.

[Dublock]

I had quite a disgusting run of luck this evening and made my GM very unhappy.

Step 1: Complete Fishing daily, received ([Jewelled Fishing Pole]) in the loot bag.

Step 2: Went fishing with my new pole in Terrokar. Caught [Mr Pinchy].

Step 3: On first use of Mr Pinchy, received [Magical Crawdad].

So yeah, my GM is an ardent fisher and still hasn't caught his yet. He was not a happy bunny on hearing this.

...I would go and fish for the turtle.