Post-cataclysmic journal from an AV-loving warrior

My goblin warrior Shoosa recently entered Northrend. I've done AV all weekend, now revered with my very own Frostwolf Howler. Between AVs, I've skilled up cooking.

Complains from the Lunch Lady

Cooking is much tougher to level to 300 now that a lot of the cooking recipes are simply unavailable. In particular, it's no longer possible to skill up using only fish.

I don't get it, Blizz: You give us Pilgrim which is like free cooking skill, but you make it way much harder to level the old-fashioned way? Design philosphy, please?

Mohaha, eat spell reflect, palatards!

I hate pally stuns with a vengeance. Okay, it's probably balanced to stand stunned for 6 seconds at level 85 with a lot of health and resilience, but at anything lower than that, 6 seconds is waaay too long. Before, when spell ranks existed, it lasted shorter at lower levels, and you bought ranks as you gained levels which increased the stun duration.

However, as a prot-warrior, I have an answer to that. With the glyph, Spell reflection has a 5 sec duration and 6 sec cooldown. If I play my move smart, I make sure to silence or stun the paladin for the last vulnerable second, and I'm - almost - unstunnable. In addition, it's hilarious fun to see the pally eating his own stun.

The exception is a smart pally that will burn my spell reflection on some other spell, but that's not necessarily a bit problem. I don't mind loosing to smart paladins. I mind loosing to everyone else, and I'm sure that not every paladin player I've met so far have been smart.

Oh, and it's also fun (though much harder) to stun Frost Mages with their own deep freeze.

Tough, huh?

After I realized what I could do, every game I've just charged straight for our mine. I can charge/intercept and just run through all the mobs there, pulling more than 20 without any risk of dying and no usage of cooldowns.

How? Rend one, Thunderclap to spread it around (with the talent), spam spell reflect and throw a shockwave once I've collected some 10+, and Victory Rush shines up like a christmas tree all the time.

I also took down a rogue who 3 levels higher than me while having more than 5 mobs on me. In fact, they helped me a lot. They granted me a ton of rage through a talent, and broke Blind and Gouge on me instantly.

However, there are tougher around...

No matter how tough I like to think I am, Prot Pallies are tougher in one-on-one fights. Possibly Blood DKs too, haven't met too many of those. Enough pallies around, though. With Word of Glory every 9 sec, it's hard to keep up with their self-healing ... so far.

At least I'll get something in a few levels... Shattering Throw. Say bye bye, bubble-boy.

Perhaps surprisingly, Resto druids are also tougher in one-vs-one. I just can't bring them down. Only instant heals, which I can dispel one of every 6 seconds, and they can slowly take me down with Insect Swarm and Moonfire. Emphasis on slowly, I ran away after a 2 min fight with a druid, and I still had half my health left. She, however, had full health and almost full mana.

Looking forward to the next AV weekend

Which is some 2 months from now. I really enjoy AV, and it almost never comes up with random BG. And I'm not a fan of queing just for that and waiting around forever.

For some weird reason, though, Isle of Conquest comes up a ton during prime time with the random, though. How come only IoC and not AV? No idea.

I have one design issue with AV, though. It yields *way* more honor and rep to those that fight north, and very little to those that choose to stay south and defend and retake towers/GYs.

A very simple change would be to grant the same "honorable defender" buff in AV as you get in AB. Wouldn't solve anything, but it would make slightly more people defend south. Right now, I understand why so many choose to rush north; it's just way better rewards, both on a win and a loose. Even if it was a critical defense that granted the victory.

Professions that really help your alts

I've got 6 characters at 80, 5 of them at the same server.

Since we're less than a week away from Cata, I've started planning which characters I want to play and in which order. I couldn't help but notice that I'm very influenced by my choice of professions for said characters.

First and foremost, I ought to consider which class mechanics I'd rather want to work with for a while. However, after playing all healers and almost all tanks (save warrior which is reserved for my goblin), I've just realized two things. One: the grass will always be greener on the other side, no matter what fence I'm on. Second: Barring broken class mechanics, I can work with almost any class, and I consider them pretty balanced too.

With that in mind, I've started thinking about which professions I'd prefer to have maxed out first. There are several things to keep in mind here. The first is that (practically) every profession offers useful stuff for that character itself. So while some of them look really neat and cool, I try to disregard that information when evaluating professions. Instead, I'm looking at what each profession can provide for my other characters.

Alchemy

I've decided that I will be leveling my paladin first. It sounds strange for me to say that, but I really enjoy paladins now with the new 4.0 mechanic, and since I've paid for a race change, I no longer have as much trouble with the theme. In fact, I think Sunwalker is a cool theme. I have Alchemy / Herbalism on my paladin, which is a very nice thing to level first. After all, everyone can benefit from elixirs and flasks.

In addition, alchemy also bring some other gems, namely with Transmutation. Since transmutation has a 1 day cooldown, the faster I can get it the more items I can get from it. Add to that that my paladin Koiane (formerly Tirvin) is a transmutation master, meaning I can gain more than what I started with using transmutation.

There's also the Potion of Treasure Finding, which all my alts can benfit from.

I'm not going to hide the fact that I'm really excited about the ability to transform myself into a dragon. For that particular reason, I've decided not to spend time getting a nice-looking flying mount for my pally. However, ... personal benefit only, and it's only a cosmetical upgrade unless I'm going to carry friends around.

Inscription

My other full hybrid, Ayeba (druid), has inscription / herbalism. It is a very useful profession, but just not as useful anymore after 350. As far as I can see, there are no new glyphs. There are an almost-as-good-as-Fortitude-runescroll, a book that gives you a random buff on a 4 hour cooldown, the ability to create darkmoon decks and relics and off-hands. Only my priest will benefit from off-hand items apart from the druid herself. I've got several characters who can benefit from relics, though. However, it will grant no benefit if the other characters are decently equipped, then the items crafted will be stricly worse.

The interesting part for me is that I can level inscription with herbs from Koiane without actually leveling Ayeba. However, I will probably level my druid anyway, as it's a neat class in itself.

Enchanting

My death knight is enchanter / miner. Enchanting will be very useful for all classes at top level. Less useful while leveling, though.

Mining is also handy, because it can provide me with raw materials for...

Jewelcrafting

Jewelcrafting is still a top profession. Gems will always be usefulf or all classes, mostly at top level. Unfortunately, I've got JC on my shaman, which I'm not planning to level anytime soon. Right now you can call me tank-a-lot, and shamans don't qualify. However, if I spend time on my death knight, I can level the jewelcrafting without actually leveling my shaman.

Engineering

My priest is an engineer. I've had an awful lot of fun with it in the past, but unless I've missed something, it's still a very 'egoistical' profession that offers little for alts/other classes. Okay, there are a few new cool group benefits, but they require the user to be an engineer himself or herself, meaning I can't send it to alts.

I must admit I'm really tempted to play my priest just for Leap of Faith. However, no tanking here either (in fact, less so than with shamans), and other classes also get cool new stuff.

Blacksmithing

I don't have a blacksmith... yet. However, give me a few weeks and I'll probably have a goblin warrior one. (If you've been reading my journals, I decided to make my goblin a blacksmith instead of an alchemist because I now have an alchemist, namely my paladin). However, I'll need months to get it to top level, if I'm going to spend any time at all with my current 80s.

Blacksmithing is a semi-useful skill. It has the potential to be useful for my plate-wielding alts, but requires that the blacksmither becomes 85 before the other plate-wielders. Since that's not going to happen, blacksmithing will only offer stuff for personal benefits. Correct me if I'm wrong here. The only item I know of is the "enchant" that grants an extra gem slot in a belt item.

Leatherworking, Tailoring, Skinning

Got none of either, so not applicable. My wife has a skinner / leatherworker, but she's not playing WoW now and possibly never will again. Both leatherworkers and tailors, however, suffer from the same problem as blacksmithing and to a certain degree inscription 350-425: They grant only benefits to lower-level alts. With the exception of the leg-specific enchant.

Bottom line

Alchemy, Enchanting and Jewelcrafting are, in my opinion, the top three professions for helping your other characters. All three continue to help other classes even when they're all at 85.

The other professions can help lower-level alts, but grant very little once you're all at 85.

Heard between Cielstrasza and Alextrasza

Alextrasza: Cielstraza, can you come over here for a moment?

Cielstrasza: Of course, Life-Binder.

Alextrasza: What just happened?

Cielstrasza: A blood elf flew in. He was very eager to get our tabard and champion for our cause. Then he left.

Alextrasza: Yes, I noticed he jumped down. So why is there a blood elf corpse with our tabard on the ground by the temple now?

Cielstrasza: I'm not sure, Life-Binder. He appeared to be unconcerned about the height when he jumped off. He seemed to cast a spell, which as far as I can tell, rendered him immune to all damage.

Alextrasza: That still does not explain why there is a corpse there.

Cielstrasza: I don't know myself. He said something about 'oh no, they've reduced the duration!' as he fell.

Alextrasza: ...

Alextrasza: I'm starting to doubt whether out our tabard to all these mortals really aid our cause.

-----------------




If you didn't get it, I fell to my death because Divine Shield now lasts 8 seconds rather than 12. The first thing after I bought and equipped the Wyrmrest Accord tabard. I just imagined the conversation in my head as I flew back (at snail speed) to my corpse.

What to write? Decisions, decisions

Since the last post, I haven't been writing much at all on my (now no longer) NaNoWriMo story. It's just as far from balance as writing all the time at the expense of everything else.

My original plan was to publish my NaNoWriMo story here in November, and go back to my "regular schedule". Now, I'm not sure what to do.

Who am I writing for?

A good question to start with.

Originally, I intended to write for myself, mostly. To have something to look back to. However, I'd also like other people to read what I write. I've got a lot of stuff on my mind I want to share. Recently, I've also wanted to write about non-WoW-related stuff. Okay, I have done that before, but at a very minor scale.

I don't have any clue how many read this blog. I know how many official followers I have, but I've got a heapload of blogs in my own reader, and I'm only officially following one of them.

WTB votes plz

I'm adding a poll to my blog for a while. Hopefully some people will vote on it. You can vote for multiple alternatives. If you feel I'm lacking any alternative, please post in a comment here. It closes at the end of November.

On an almost unrelated note...

There's also another reason why the writing is slow. I was recently recommended I should read a comic called Gunnerkrigg Court by a friend. It was completely awesome, and I'll be following all updates at it.

Ding 80 nr 6 and NaNoWriMo

I dinged 80 with my paladin Tirvin yesterday, and hit 450 Alchemy soon after. I have a lot of stuff I could write about it, but I've decided to make an attempt at NaNoWriMo. I suspect the demands for writing far exceeds what I can do, but I'll still take a shot at it.

My November posts will all be my story, not the usual WoW-related stuff. The story itself is not WoW-related at all.

Something happened to the mob/level formula...

In my mind, orange mobs are hard. Like, your attacks barely dent them, while they crush you all the time. I'm currently repainting that picture.

While leveling through Northrend with Tirvin (my second pally past 70, by the way), I'm just having such an easy time it's getting silly. At level 71, I soloed Sarathstra for the quest Sarathstra, Scourge of the North. It was a level 75 elite, originally intended for a 5-man group. I was never even remotely in any danger, and killed her without using a single cooldown. The self-healing from Word of Glory kept me up with no trouble at all. In fact, I only spent about every second Holy Power dump on Word of Glory, the others went into Shield of the Righteous.

I did less dps than I could do with yellow mobs. However, my damage was much less reduced compared to what I remember from pre-4.0. Part of that may be because I had a decent amount of Vengeance all the time, but I didn't notice a lot of glancing hits. Similarly, I took much less crushing blows than I used to.

I tested it with other higher-level mobs too, and nope, they weren't really dangerous at all. At 72, I pulled groups of four lvl 75 mobs at a time in Grizzly Hills. With that many mobs, I was starting to take about as much damage as I could self-heal without cooldowns. If it weren't for the level requirement to pick up quests, I'd be in far higher-level areas already.

I'm also taking this opportunity to do some other quests I've skipped with my 5 other 80s. With all of those, I focused on quests that would get me reputation with the Northrend fractions. This time, I don't need to bother with that. In a month and a half, the reputation in Northrend will have very little to say, unless you're an achievement collector.

I'm looking forward to a lot of cool quest chains in Grizzly Hills. Just dinged 73 last night when I finished Battle for the Undercity. It's rather cool, and since it'll be gone in 4.0.3, I took the opportunity to do it one final time. Sylvanas and Thrall are just badass!

I'm looking forward to see how badass Baine Bloodhoof will be in Cataclysm.

"Anyone else thinks paladins are overpowered?"

The quote above was said in party chat when I was tanking Utgarde Keep yesterday.

I hadn't played for several weeks when the patch hit. I went online and started fixing glyphs for all my characters... I'm fairly certain I made more than 100 glyphs with Ayeba, my druid. Fortunately, I had a lot of materials stacked up. Sadly, I lacked several key glyphs, but every glyph I could make myself saved me a lot of gold. If I'd been greedy and not so lazy, I would've sold glyphs with my mats instead of making them for myself.

After I had fixed up glyphs and talents for all my characters, I still lacked key bindings and macros. I was not sure what to do. What was there for me to do? I don't raid, PVP was a tad broken, I didn't need anything... so I decided I could spend time leveling my paladin which have stayed at 62 for more than a year. I figured it also gave me a good opportunity to test out the new holy power change.

Three words on my personal feelings of the new system. "I" "LOVE" "IT". I never managed to really enjoy the old paladin mechanic, but this... this is just awesome. While the system needs some polishing and possibly rounding off, it is a much, much better framework than the old system.

Retribution

I tested Retribution for some quests and one instance. The system felt much more interesting than it did before. No more just cooldown-smashing, now I actually had to watch out for procs (Divine Purpose) and use different attacks based on what I was doing, primarly deciding between Templar's Verdict and Divine Storm as a holy power finisher, occasionally using Word of Glory for self-healing. I expect it to get even better at 70 when I get Mastery Hand of Light and at 71 when I get Inquisition.

My biggest problem was that I lacked some sort of way to keep track of Holy Power without looking at the top left corner of my screen. I searched and tested a few addons, and decided that the one I liked best was Class Combo Points, positioned right below the center of the screen (just edit frame.lua and set cfg.pointx = -70 instead of the default value of -150.

In other notes, Long Arm of the Law was a great distance closer. Okay, not as great as Charge, but I also (ab)used it to run away and to move fast in instances by judging distant mobs and critters. The Art of War was not in itself dramatically different (except it no longer allowed healing, but I got that from Word of Glory instead), but the visual proc made it a heapload better. Thanks, Blizz!

I felt retribution was much better now than it ever was before. However, I'm not sure that it sails up as my personal favorite dps spec, even so. But as long as it's not gravely annoying, I'm all good. After all, the reason I want to play a paladin is to heal and tank primarily.

Protection

Okay, protection was just so much fun I had trouble controlling myself. The reason I didn't like it before was that it felt awfully... static. It was just a very locked rotation.

In a way, it's still locked, but there's so much more choices and versatility in it now than earlier. The locked part is the 3 sec cooldown of Hammer of the Righteous and Crusader Strike (Ignore the tooltip, both have 3 sec CD as protection). 3 sec CD means you can use it every second GCD, and in most cases, you should. It provides good threat, gives a point of Holy Power, has a chance to reset the cooldown on Avenger's Shield, and deals a decent amount of AoE damage as well (in the case of Hammer of the Rigtheous).

However, there are still circumstances where I decided not to use it every second GCD, such as when I needed to both dump Holy Power into Shield of the Rigtheous or throw an Avenger's Shield. And it felt like I wasn't seriously punishing myself doing that.

Speaking of which, Avenger's Shield is completely awesome. I love having it as a proc, since it hits like a truck, particularly considering it can hit 3 mobs. Part of the reason I love it is the new power auras which display when I've gotten a proc. The silence effect is a welcome boost as well. I still think it's a bit ... ehm... cheesy, for lack of a better word, but I guess I can live with that.

There's also another proc available, Sacred Duty. For some reason it doesn't show up in the Power Auras, most annoying. It's also much more passive... it rarely changes the way I use my powers. The only exception might be if I have 2 holy power, and Hammer of the Righteous, Crusader Strike, Judgement and Holy Wrath are all on cooldown. Then I might consider dropping a 2 HP guaranteed crit Shield of the Righteous on my target... otherwise, I'd just use another ability and wait for the 3rd Holy Power. In fact, I decided to drop the 2 points in the talent in my latest respec.

I have almost never had any trouble with mana while tanking since the patch. There have been a few exceptions, but as long as I remember to Judge and keep Holy Shield up, I'm usually good.

Now, there's one thing I don't understand, but don't complain about. I am doing so much dps, while tanking. I managed to tank an entire instance once forgetting to buff myself with Righteous Fury, just because I dealt so much damage. I mean, I was at 2k dps at lvl 68 in Utgarde Keep, while the dps (lvl 68-71) were below 1k on trash mobs. On bosses I was still above 1k dps, unless I spent all my HP on self-healing. And I'm not even very well-geared for my level, still having several green pieces from low-level Outland quests and no enchants. On every single instance in Outland I've topped the dps charts, usually by a wide margin.

Speaking of self-healing, casting Word of Glory on myself with Guarded by the Light and Divinity yields a massive amount of healing done. It heals for about 2-2.5k/holy power at level 68, and it can crit, healing me above full health. Unlike percentage-based heals (like Death Pact and Enraged Regeneration) it will probably be much less powerful at level 85, but at this level it's just too awesome, particularly since I can throw out one every 9 seconds. After a Shattered Halls run, I found that I missed some quest mobs, so I went back to kill them after the last boss was downed. Only a hunter went with me, and together we took down packs of 5 mobs (the gladiators with a single centurion), with the only source of healing being my own. With careful pulling, I'm sure we could've taken the entire instance that way, possibly not including the bosses.

Conclusion: I've really enjoyed paladin tanking, so much more than before the patch. I really look forward to lvl 82 when I can get Pursuit of Justice in my tanking build, too.

Holy

I respecced from Retribution to Holy and healed an instance with it, having only about 50% of my gear as healer gear. Fortunately, the tank didn't take too much damage, so I was good. It gave me a chance to test out the new holy power system here too.

I won't go into too much details since I've got much less experience healing than tanking so far, but the impression is that it rocks. Much more dynamic, way much more mobile. When Daybreak procs, I can ften throw out two Holy Shocks and a Word of Glory in rapid succession while moving.

Unlike most other Holy Power dumps, Word of Glory scales linearly with holy power, while Shield of the Righteous, Templar's Verdict and Divine Storm scales semi-exponentially. It means that it is not necessarily a bad idea to throw out a 2 HP Word of Glory if that's what you need to top off someone, while throwing a 2 HP Templar's Verdict is a guaranteed dps loss.

I will probably at some point (probably at 85) to test out a Holy DPS build, based on Blazing Light, Enlightened Judgements, Infusion of Light, Crusade, Speed of Light (from the beta, where it provides 3% haste), Judgements of the Pure, Conviction, Rule of Law, Divine Favor and primarily Denounce. Paragon of Virtue will also be handy to use Avenging Wrath more often. All holy power will be dumped into Inquisition. As you can see, there are quite a lot of talents that can improve holy dps. The Glyph of Exorcism and Holy Shock and either Judgement or Divine Favor are natural selections here.

I see three problems with such a spec. The first is mana. While Exorcism is fairly cheap with Denounce (7.5% base mana), with no mana returns except Divine Plea (which should be glyphed) and Lay on Hands (which should be glyphed not once, but twice), you might run dry during a long battle. Of course, you can stack Spirit since you still have Meditation.

The second problem is range. Holy Shock has a mere 20 yards reach, and there are no talents to improve that. However, it's just annoying, it's not critical.

The third and most important is boredom. The rotation is just boring. The instant Exorcism proc from Denounce doesn't change anything in the rotation, so it's just spam Holy Shock on cooldown, spam Exorcism else and use Judgement to keep up the haste buff. If Judgement deals enough damage, it can be part of the roation, but so far it seems it doesn't.

Edit: lack of AoE...

Outland in 2 days

I blazed through Outland (admittedly, from lvl 62) in two days. Most of the time in instances, and I know that's suboptimal for leveling once you've expended your rested XP.

During that time, I also achieved Revered with Sporeggar to get Transmute Primal Earth to Air, skilled from 330 to 350 Alchemy and grinded 4 Primal Air for the Primal Might I need for Master of Transmutation. Fortunately, I had plenty of Primal Earth and Primal Fire on my bank alt from mining with other characters. I ended up buying the Primal Manas from the auction house, since they cost only 7 gold a piece. The primal air, on the other hand, cost 45 gold each, and a primal might cost 180 gold.

During my grinding of Primal Air I killed a lot of level 71 mobs, at level 68. I was not even remotely in danger at any time despite having two or three mobs on me, and they went down fast! Protection is just an awesome spec for soloing as well, possibly more so than before.

Serious surgery incoming

I've decided to pay the money to change race on my paladin from Blood Elf to Tauren, once that becomes available. I just like the tauren paladin theme a lot more, and I really like taurens. Too bad their racials are strictly worse. At least I get the benefit of Cultivation.

I am already renaming the paladin abilities in my head to better suit the new theme. Guarded by the Light can be Bathed in Sunlight.

A candidate for very illogical naming...

One thing I've thought of. The talent Protector of the Innocent. It heals only the paladin himself or herself. Does that imply that the paladin is innocent? Bah, yeah, right. How many mobs have you killed during your level up, mister of-so-innocent pally? How many of those have not been a threat to anyone, and have just minded their own business until they were attacked?

It can also imply that the paladin is the only innocent, since it doesn't heal anyone else. Even worse...

I can see an interpretation where the paladin need to stay alive to help others, in effect, the innocent, but it's not a good way to base the naming on. You could rather name it Dancing in the Light or something like that. For my tauren paladin, this talent will be something like Walking in the Sun.

Soon, the point of no return...

4.0 (actually 4.0.1) is on the test realm. That translates to it hitting live servers soon. I'm really looking forward to it, although there's a few things I'll miss.

I'm not a fan of whining and complaining about changes. I believe that Blizzard does what they think is best for the game, even if that includes nerfing the class I currently play. When I stop believing that, I'll probably stop playing the game. However, so far it has worked out fine. Thus, I consider all change "good" in the broad sense that they'll over time make the game better and better.

I'd just like to list what I look forward to. I think it'll be fun looking back at it in a half year's time.

I look forward to practically every overhauled talent tree. It's just exciting to see the new possibilities and combinations, and test out various new or overhauled talents. Some specific highlights.

Before we start, I just got to say I really love that Mortal Strike and the similar abilities no longer halve healing, but reduce it by 25%. It'll be balanced in the end, but I think I like the balance that I can heal a bit more consistently no matter what enemy I'm facing.

Death-tards

First and foremost, the dedicated Blood tanking tree for DKs. I'm going to test something like this for tanking. I'll also test a modified version, for example this, for PVP as blood.

The other two DK trees look... fair enough. Good thing they're overhauled, but no super-changes I'm all wired up about.

Tree-huggers

Generally, I'm looking forward to the overhauled Thorns. I hope it'll be castable on yourself while tanking.

Bothersome Bear Boredom

The first two steps towards more entertaining tanking for bears: Pulverize and Skull Bash. Thrash is obtained at 81. Going to a bear-tanking spec like this for tanking.

Coming out of the closet... or bark

Druid healing without tree form, yay! Unlike a lot of other druids, I'm super-excited about it. This is how I PVP as a resto druid already. The resto tree is so full of awesome that I'm having a very hard time figuring out what to spec. Most likely a case of repeated respecs. I'll probably try a PVP-oriented build first, and see how well it works for PVE as well.

Just let me see if I got this correctly: Fury of Stormrage reduces the mana cost of Wrath by 100% at all times? So I can chain-gun wraths like there's no tomorrow, if noone is in need of healing? Oh, I'm so excited that I just can't hide it!

Ability to remove magic, fantastic!

The new spell costs will take some time getting my head bent around. The speedy healer, Regrowth, and the big healer, Healing Touch, costs almost the exact amount of mana. Meanwhile, Nourish, which heals for about the same as Regrowth, costs only a fifth as much mana. Hm. Interesting.

However, with talents, Regrowth is an almost guaranteed crit for 150% healing (an additional 60% + 4% from talents), and then provides both a Living Seed for an additional 30% of the critted amount, meaning about 45% of the normal amount, and a bed of pretty flowers under your feet for another 30% of the critted amount, or 45% of the normal amount. So assuming it crits, which it will do often, it can potentially heal for 240% on the main target plus a heal over time, and 45% of everyone else who happen to be standing in it. Given at least three targets in the zone, its approaching the efficiency of Nourish.

Finally, I'm all excited about the new Tree of Life, now on a cooldown. All the enhanced spells... so much fun.

Sailor Moon... kin!

I'm not going to test it straight away, but I am looking forward to the balance changes as well. Ranged knockdown and spell interrupt, great! I'm just not as excited as the other trees.

Huntards

I've never had a hunter before, but I'll probably make a Worgen one. Both to test out the starting area and story, and the class itself. It's rather low priority, though.

Water-vendors

I have a low-level mage, which I'm intending to pick up just to test the various new mage specs. Pretty low priority as well, though.

Loladins

So many great changes here. I'll definitely test them out, to see if paladins may actually suit me now. It'd be great to have a single character that can both tank and heal, and so far I've found paladins lacking due to general boredom.

The new resource system, holy power, looks really neat. Now, finally paladins will have to make some choices about how to use their resources as opposed to earlier (where holy paladins spammed a single spell, tanks just used a rotation, and retribution paladins just mashed whatever button came off cooldown first). Not just what to spend it on, but whether to spend it at one, two or three charges of holy power.

Tanking without a rotation, oh, how I look forward to that. Dps with a more depth than just cooldown-mashing, great. AoE healing and more choices while healing. Without even testing it, I am 100% sure that this is a great step in the right direction for paladins.

Interestingly enough, paladins can now (finally?) chain-cast a dps spell, Exorcism.

Preists

(That was intentionally misspelled, by the way)

Lots of neat stuff here. However, priests where already a pretty well-rounded class, so I look at the changes are more of rounding off an already great class, with a few exceptions.

The ability to heal by damaging enemies looks interesting, particularly when combined with a stacking buff and an mana restoring and healing increasing effect. I really wonder how it'll work out. At least healing in 5-mans needn't be boring when you're overgearing the place.

The priestly version of Anti-magic Zone looks neat, not least because it reduces all damage and not just spells. Pretty much superior to AMZ, in fact.

Blizzard is trying to make Holy priests viable for PVP now. Or, more viable, this is probably their third attempt or something. Chastise is back. I never got a chance to test it while it was a racial spell.

Chakra looks like it could be real fun, particularly with Chastise morphing to other spells while chackra'ed. By the way, I can't stop thinking of Naruto each time I hear the word Chakra.

The shadow tree looks polished and neat, but apart from the Shadow Orbs doesn't strike me as anything really new. However, it worked well before, it'll probably work slightly better now.

Rouge

(This, too, was intentionally misspelled)

I've got three RL friends who play rogues, so I keep an eye on the changes here so I can discuss it with them. However, I don't have a rogue, I've never had a rogue, and I'm not even remotely planning on getting one myself.

It does, however, look to me that rogues will be completely and utterly overpowered until the health pools increase. Bypass 50% armor for 10 sec after an opener? Probably a bit broken in combination with the health pools and dps of level 80 characters.

Ehm... lightning-huggers?

Sadly, I don't know any pun on shammies.

I think the changes here will be great. However, I'm not sure how I feel about the class. I do have a 80 which I've had a lot of fun with, and I will probably level her at some point, not least since Jewelcrafting is a great profession for all my characters.

However... I'm not sure I want to spend too much time as a shammy anymore. With that said, if the changes are good enough, I might. In particular, Elemental and Enhancement never agreed too well with me. Resto was good. I'm certainly going to test out the new talents and stuff.

Interestingly enough, I look forward to buffs getting lowered. Shamans had, in my opinion, too many buffs, and they're balanced around having all those buffs. Now that the buffs aren't quite so powerful, they'll need to be balanced around that, which means that they'll be more powerful when buffs are present... translate that to most PVP action.

For Resto, I'm in particular excited about the ability to remove magic, restore mana by casting lightning bolt, improving healing by shocking and 15% improved speed at all times.

I'm wondering if they have or will change Mana Tide Totem. I did read that they intended to change it, but can't see it anywhere. In PVP it's way less effective than every other mana-restoration ability for healers.

I'm still not sure I'll be a great fan of Elemental. I'm not sure how well Earthquake will work. Time will tell how well it'll work.

healthstone-vendors

I've got my level 34 alliance lock which I stopped levelling about two weeks ago. Will test out stuff with her. Honestly, the changes look really great, particularly after annoying myself to death with the old soul shard mechanic... lack of bag space, anyone?

As a low level lock, I'm also excited about getting the specialization spells now instead of having to wait until level 60.

Meat shields

I do have a warrior, retired a loooong time ago at level 34. ... how come I abondon several classes at that level?

However, come Cata, and I intend to make a goblin warrior. Since I don't have too much experience, I can't really tell what changes are good and what's not. But it looks quite interesting.

... and that's not all, folks

I'm also looking forward to the non-class specific changes. Too many to list here, but the spell alerts look particularly good.

Until 4.0, I've decided to get Crusader on my DK, to get the "bank access anywhere on a cooldown" thing. Lacking 5 days of dailies. You may also call me sir-fish-a-lot. So far, some 1200 fish and no turtle.

There's one thing I'll miss, though... the ability to tank as an Unholy DK... but oh well, can't have it all.

Preparing for Cataclysm

I'm spending my time preparing for Cataclysm these days. I did join for a weekly pug once and some random dungeons, but only with the goal in mind to have fun with the group there and then, and that was it.

I'm preparing for my baby goblin warrior. Prepared so far:

• 4 20-slot bags
• 4 16-slot bags
• lots of gold (easily prepared)
• heirloom mail chest and shoulders, for the pre-40 levels. +4 all stats on chest.
• heirloom plate chest and shoulders, for the post-40 levels. Actually, shoulders twice, since I've gotten both the PVP ones and the PVE ones. +4 all stats on chest.
• heirloom haste trinket
• heirloom PVP trinket
• heirloom 2-h axe with Crusader
• heirloom 1-h sword (main-hand) with crusader
• heirloom 1-h PVP sword (off-hand) with lifestealing
• heirloom bow... just for the extra stats
• Prepared a heapload of buff food for levelling. See below.

For the rest of my characters, I've fished up Weather-beaten journal to get fish finding skill my druid, shaman, DK and priest. I've also gotten the turtle on my priest. I don't bother on my druid (glyphed aquatic form), but I'd like it on my DK. So far, 800 fish and no turtle there.

I've also skilled up cooking for all to 450. Easy with all the fish I've caught.

What remains? 

• Attempt to win the Kalu'ak fishing contest for the heirloom ring
• Fish up a turtle
• Figure what else to spend my time on.

PS: Bonus point to whoever can figure out how many badges I've spent on heirloom stuff.

The items I never sold or destroyed...

I just got my account stolen, leading to a serious amount of paranoia. It turned out it was my own fault; I had entered my username and password on a phishing site. Some of the phishing mails are good, some are insanely good. This one was pretty good.

Anyway. I just suddenly got mail that my account was suspended because of gold selling. I filled out a contact form, and after about a day, the suspension was lifted and most items was returned to me.

The downside; What a mess. Full cleaning required, please. In addition, I noticed a few items that the GM hadn't restored that I got when I asked specifically for it. I have no guarantee that there might not be other items missing as well. It just comes down to my memory, which frankly is a bit bad with 8 different characters.

The upside: I got a good opportunity to look through my items.

My priest is my oldest character. I had no less than two 16-slot bags in my bag full of technically useless stuff. Vanity items, if I can call it that. I got a chance to see through them now.

Each of them tells a tale. I did sell a lot of them during this cleanup, but there are still some that I can't destroy. I'd like to share the tale of a few of them.

My Gnomish Battle Chicken

Its level is dependent on your engineering skill - it is for example lvl 82 at my current skill, I believe. Anyway, at somewhere around 35 I had skilled engineering all the way up to 300, despite being low level, with the help of materials from guildmates and friends. In battlegrounds, walking around with a lvl 60 battle chicken at level 35 was actually a real threat. Oh, what fun! Since it has a 20 min cooldown, I constantly switched trinkets after each one had been used.

Arena Grand Master

If you don't know, it requires you to "win" the gurubashi arena chest 12 times in order to get it. And I did it long before level 60? How? Well, three ways, really.

One was to ally myself with any horde interested that was there. Before the fight, we agreed on who would loot the chest should we win, usually by /roll. I never fought horde in the arena, for roleplaying reasons. If some horde didn't want to join my cause, I didn't enter the arena until they had died or the chest was gone.

The other way was to go for it at 6 in the morning. Since it spawned exactly at 6, 12, 18 and 24, "all" I had to do was stand up early and get the chest if there were none other nearby.

The final way was combined with one of the other, namely the Gnomish Mind Control Cap. I did sell that one in BC, though, as it was useless then. Of course, sometimes I ended up fighting FOR the one I tried mind control (backlash), but fair enough, that was in hindsight fun as well.

My best memory was when there was a lvl 60 night elf druid who really, really wanted the chest. I stood behind a pillar and watched her kill all alliance left and right. I was only lvl 45, not a real threat to her at all. Anyway: I just leapt into the arena while she looted the chest, and used the cap. Then I looted the chest, while she (mind controlled, like a minion) attacked an alliance player who just had respawned. Naturally, I ran afterwards. Boy, was she angry at me! She chased me for a loooong time. Fortunately, she didn't have epic riding skill, and I had the carrot on a stick, so I eventually outran her.

Imperial Red Robe

This one I bought purely for roleplaying reasons and its looks. I still think it looks neat. I paid 5 gold for it, which was a rather big fortune at that point in my career, somewhere around 30ish, long before I could actually equip it. I used about a handful of times on roleplaying occassions, and even got offered 15g for it, which I refused.

Piccolo of the Flaming Fire

I never got this one in classic. I got it at the end of BC, I think, while soloing a part of Stratholme. It wasn't even intentional, I just aggroed the rare mob and had to defend myself. It's a sort of item I just can't throw away, since it's so hard to get hold of again. But would I really miss it? I doubt so.

Hydrocane

I spent a few hours farming for this one. It was hard for a discipline priest at level 55ish. And in BC I didn't even have a use for it. I finally decided to sell it yesterday. I also sold Azure Silk Belt, which I had made for the purpose of swimming. I figured I can just use Levitate instead to run on the water.

Speeeeed! Gimme what I neeeeed

From my WSG career: Nifty Stopwatch and Skull of Impending Doom. Who knows, these might come in handy again in Cataclysm with rated BGs? I actually got half-way through revered just by playing WSG and enjoying it. Yes, I know a lot of people are exalted, but I also know that most of them painfully grinded it. I didn't play if I didn't find it fun.

Various irreplaceable quest-items

I'm considering selling Barov Peasant Caller. I don't think I'll ever use it, and it's not really great. However, it is irreplaceable. I can find a bit more reason to hang on to Moist Towelette. I used it on my shaman to get Intense Cold. They're less useful for a priest than say a shaman, though. In Cata all healers can remove magic anyway. I just can't help but some day... some day I'll find a use for it. Bah. Highly unlikely. However, also possible with rated battlegrounds.

What do you mean? You SOLD it?

Those mentioned above are what I decided to keep. I sold the rest. I do actually regret not hanging on to my enchanted White Wedding Dress, the one I was "married" in. However, seeing that it wasn't soulbound, I gave it away to another troll who was marrying after me. Oh, fun roleplaying times.

I also got rid of the Warden Staff, my classic PVP staff, a long time ago. I caused a druid in my guild to guild quit when he discovered he had it, despite him having farmed and attempted to buy it off the auction house for a long time. I think I paid 150g on the auction house, which was a pretty big heap of gold for that time.

If any of you have any vanity item tales to tell, feel free. I'm all ears.

Look! A diversion!

I suddenly felt the need to write something again. I guess a quick update is in order.

While on a "break" from WoW, I've been playing mainly Team Fortress 2, and Mass Effect 1 and 2. Team Fortress is fun for a while, but it never manages to keep me stuck for very long. Mass Effect was awesome. Played through the first game three times as an adept (since you need to unlock difficulties in order to beat Insanity). Played through the second game once on Hardcore, and half-way again on Insanity. First time as an adept (imported from ME1), the second time as a Vanguard. After I beat the Collossus on Tali's recruitment mission by charging right up to it and beating it in melee on insanity, I didn't find the motivation to play through the rest. Felt like I had done what I wanted with the game.

Anyway. I've been playing some WoW again recently. About three weeks ago, I created my first "real" alliance character, a gnome warlock with a mean faced called Malict (by the way, if she happens to be undressed it is because I've mailed the heirloom robe to my low-level horde mage).

My initial motivation for creating her was that I wanted to experience the retaking of Gnomeregan once it becomes available, first-hand. It has already been greatly parodied by Complex Actions, with a follow-up. I reckon level 10 or so would be enough, but while playing I found that I enjoyed it a lot and just kept leveling for a while.

It was fun and interesting playing a warlock. I've always liked dots when playing dps, and so affliction came pretty naturally for me. I also liked having a pet from my death knight, and warlock pets are even more functional than the ghoul. Since I've never had an alliance character, I could only mail heirlooms, not money. Thus, I had to earn my keep by using the auction house. It was also pretty entertaining in moderate amounts, and I only earned as much as I needed to buy glyphs, train and live "comfortably", not buy equipment.

Being only dps and not having the option to tank or heal was a different experience. Sure, I've dps'ed before, but this time I *had* to dps. I must admit, I missed the possibility to choose between the two. Or three, in the case of druids.

A downside was naturally that I didn't get to play affliction in any instance. Yes, I was specced affliction, but almost all mobs died before I'd gotten even a full corruption on them, meaning I was ruining my own dps by dotting them instead of just nuking them. Almost all trash mobs ended with me channeling Rain of Fire repeatedly.

Seeing new places (or at least, places from a different angle) was pretty interesting. All the zones seemed very ... empty, though. Not strange, I guess. I just missed any social interaction at all. And in instances, most people are pretty silent. Add to that that I had buttons to click almost all the time to keep up my dps.

I spent some levels as demonology, speccing for max survivability for PVP. However, I specced back at 30 to get Curse of Exhaustion and Siphon Life. I loved those. However, at the same time, my survivability in PVP against rogues went down by 80%.

Last night I found I wasn't very keen on leveling Malicit anymore. I was wondering if I should pick up my troll mage Rime instead, whom I've had at level 20-something since the second year of wow. Look at it this way, her name is Rime. Practically every name meaning anything at all in any vocabulary have already been taken a long time ago.

I've thought a lot about what I want to play in Cataclysm. I guess I'll write more about it later.

Liquidatin' mah resources and reading

Since I'm sort of on a break, I decided that I don't need the materials I had stocked up. During three weekends where I only posted on saturday mornings, I sold off most of it, leaving me now with somewhere between 30-40k across my characters. Handy. Not exactly Greedy Goblin-amounts, but enough to fulfill my needs for quite some time. Now my account time has run out until I decide to pay and play again.

I'm eagerly reading all blue posts and information regarding Cataclysm. I'm one step closer to finding out what I want to play in Cataclysm now. I'm just no paladin. I'm probably no priest either. So most likely it will be something like this in Cataclysm, in order of most likely at the moment.

1. 
   Shaman as my healer in PVE/PVP, Death Knight as my tank in PVE and dps in PVP.
   
2. 
   Druid as tank in PVE and healer in PVP.
   
3. 
   Keep all three more or less active.
   
4. 
   Druid as my healer in PVE/PVP, Death Knight as my tank in PVE and dps in PVP.
   
5. 
   Shaman as my healer, Warrior (!) as my tank in PVE and dps in PVP.
   

The last alternative is ... very unlikely. But for the moment more likely than playing my paladin. I've just considered levelling one, probably a goblin, to see the new starting zone and enjoy the new levelling experience. I'll probably play the Worgen starting area too. Possibly as a hunter, never had one of those. And then I can retire after the starting area, unless I fiercely fall in love with it.

By the way, just because I'm not going to play a priest or paladin doesn't mean I won't be envying them sometimes...

Status: Offline, waiting and excited

I've found that I don't have much motivation to play WoW right now. There are just no goals for me to accomplish. The only goal is to see the big, cool fights. However, to do that, I either need to join a raiding force, or I'll have to join a pug that successfully takes down the bosses. Since ICC is self-nerfing, I figure I can just wait a while and join a pug when it has become much easier.

In the end, I haven't found out which class I want to focus on for PVP either. That means I run around with a lot of moderately-equipped characters, none of them really standing a chance against a top-equipped PVPer.

Despite this, I'm not done with WoW. In fact, I'm really looking forward to Cataclysm, and reading every blue post about the design changes. So I'll be playing again then. Until then, the only stuff I do in WoW is getting my seasonal stuff done to get 310% mounts with all my characters. I've looted about 1000 eggs the last two days. I'm not a fun of RNG in achievements. One random pet in one of the eggs saved me for another 100 eggs.

In the meantime, I've tried playing a bit Team Fortress 2. While it's fun for a while, it's not a game that keeps my interest up for long. I've also borrowed Zelda: The Twilight Princess for Nintendo Wii, and Mirror's Edge for PC. Just something to play when I'm bored. It's nice playing single-player games for a change. By the way, I loved Portal. The actual portals was a nice gameplay idea, however the story was what really enthralled me. It was just pure awesome. And the song at the end? I'm still listening to it on Youtube several weeks after I played through the game. Portal 2, come to me.

I've also decided to start a D&D 4th edition campaign using Google Wave. I'm playing in two others already. That will certainly be a challenge to me. Did I mention I'm not a native english speaker?

I'm trying to keep the blog to WoW-stuff, so I don't think I will blog much about other games (applies to both computer and roleplaying games).

I've earlier tried to comment whether announced changes are "good" or "bad". In my opinion, practically every change is "good" because it is intended to improve the game. Even if class A gets nerfed and I love class A, I think it's a good thing that the balance has just been improved. I could say whether I like or dislike a change.

Today's first news, that Death Knights will be tanking only as blood, is a mixed blessing for me. I've really enjoyed tanking as Unholy and splatting corpses all over the walls. However, I can still do that by subspeccing into Unholy with my tank spec. In the end, I think I'll like the change.

I know that Blizz will improve druid tanking some. My sincere hope is that they'll improve it a lot, allowing them to actually have an interesting and challenging inherit mechanic for tanking. The rage change was a nice start.

I'm so looking forward to hearing the rest of the changes that will be announced the next tree days.

The World Event Menace

It's been a while. More than two weeks, in fact. I've got two major reasons for that, apart from the looming reason of laziness. And some trouble with blogspot. Using Chrome helped.

First, I've been unable to sit much in front of a computer for medical reasons. Second, I've been busy with the World Event stuff recently. Which is the first thing I'd like to discuss.

The World Event Menace

I've got a bunch of characters, as you may have guessed by now. Of which I "invest" in five of them. One for each healer class, and a death knight. That does not mean I try to get every one of those top-geared. Just that those five are the "mains" I switch between. My usual pattern is a few weeks on one "main", then I switch to another for a while. Since I've rolled my DK, I've done the daily random heroic each time with him, but I've spent a lot time on various healers too. I like tanking, but I also enjoy healing.

Anyway. When Cataclysm arrives, stuff will change... again. Equipment gained today is useless tomorrow. Doesn't matter if I've gotten a full tier 10, it will be replaced within a month anyway. Thus, that's only a temporary investment. Very handy and necessary to get the job done, but not something I hoard for the sake of it itself.

Crafting materials will also be reduced to dust-collectors, with a few exceptions. Some special items will still be worth making, such as the item that grants an extra gem socket on a belt. Some special items will be worth making for others that doesn't have them already, such as the tailoring flying carpets, the engineering turbo-charged flying machine, non-combat pets... but it's mostly useless.

Gold in itself will still be valuable. However, it will suffer some amount of inflation. 5k gold in one year is most likely the same as 1-2k gold is today. Still, it's worth selling stuff that's still valuable to get gold for later.

Profession skills are somewhat useful. The actual recipes/patterns/design will most likely be less used, but the skill points make it easier to get to top-level again. However, the first skill points for each new expansion is ridicilously easy to get anyway, so it's only a minor help. Some recipes will still be worth selling, though, especially for levelling up. The exception is Inscription, many of the low-level recipes there will be useful forever.

For achievementcollectors, very few of those go away, and so they're useful in themselves. I care very little for achivements for the sake the achivement itself. I do care some for "internal" achievements. That is, goals and challenges I overcome and feel I've achieved something myself, not because of another 10 points on the achievements page. Successfully beating a hard mode boss you've spent time mastering would be such an achivement.

Vanity items, such as clothes, fireworks and all that junk that's filling a bag in your bank is worth exactly as much next expansion as today.

But... one thing will be useful... Oh so useful. 310% flying mounts. Getting quest done faster, spend less time travelling. Makes looking for metal nodes or herbs easier too.

However, since I'm not in any serious raid force, there are only two ways to get a 310% mount. First, a random drop from certain raid bosses. Second, the "What a strange, long trip it's been" meta-achivement for doing most world event achivements.

Trying to get one of those rare mounts from various bosses are practically a waste of time. In the first place, it has a 0.2% chance of dropping 25-man mode only, and then you've got to win the following raid roll. Even if you raid the same boss every week, you've still only got a 10% chance of seeing the mount actually dropping, and then you haven't even started the raid roll!

My own conclusion is that I've got to do the World Event stuff on all characters that I want to someday get the mount. Sadly, when WotLK launched, I didn't know about the reward and couldn't care less for the achivements themselves, so I got started kinda late.

My shaman just got her Violet Proto-Drake. She was my main at the time I first started doing these achievements, May last year. I started doing it with my druid as well when the Fire Festival event started, meaning she lacks only two world event meta-achivements now, Noblegarden and Children's Week. I started doing stuff with my death knight on the Hallow's End event, so he'll be done with the Brewfest this year. Finally, I just started doing the meta-achivements with my priest and paladin. Since neither is level 80, they couldn't get the Love is in the Air meta-achievement (requires you to enter Naxxramas which requires level 80), so they'll be done around this time next year.

Doing the achievements with all my characters is a huge time-sink. Fortunately, I've combined most of them with reading manga (History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi, an awesome manga on mangafox.com) while travelling, making it much less annoying to get it done.

I feel sort of forced to do this. Since I know myself, I know that I'll be switching back and forth between my characters a lot later too, that's why I "need" to get it done with all of them. There is no time when I feel more addicted to this game than this during these events. Bah. I'd rather want to skip it, yet I still do it. How important is that 10% flying mount speed increase worth, really?

Current status for each of my characters:

Kirba (shaman)

Done with the entire world event stuff. Yay!

To get the achivement Charming, I've joined a lot of heroic dungeons as dps. I find Elemental a lot less stressful now. I believe it's the same with almost any dps spec, you'll get used to the "rotation" (or priority system) if you practice enough.

Healing 5-mans is just trival for shamans. Not that it's hard for any class, but Earth Shield + Healing Stream Totem will cover practically all damage taken by both the party and the raid. For ease of convinience, I've glyphed Healing Stream Totem. 500 health to each party member every 3 sec? That's 2.5k every 3 sec, or 833 health per second.

I've also started to see how powerful Chain Heal can be. The problem, though, is that it requires a good knowledge about the positioning of the raid. Hit a hunter at max range, and you'll get no bumping at all. Melee are almost always safe bets. Tanks in particular. I often cast it on myself during raid damage, both to heal myself up but mostly because I always know who is within range of myself by looking around.

It seems to me that Chain heal has higher throughput than most other forms of raid healing. I guess Prayer of Healing can outpace it, but since it only targets one group, chain heal have a higher probability of hitting targets that's in need of actual healing. Good organization of the groups or knowledge of who does what (in effect, a stable raid group) also helps. Well, rogues, death knights and warriors are always in melee, but any other class can be almost anywhere.

I found that it was much faster doing quests to get Charming. I could - barely - solo a 5-man quest in Icecrown as Elemental. Much easier as Restoration, but a bloody lot slower. Questing in itself is awfully painless as a 'mental shammy, though. No downtime, not much running (the mobs run to you once you hit them), lots of cooldowns to blow if you're feeling threatened or just bored.

Ayeba (druid)

Done with this world event. To get Charming done with her I spent two instances dps'ing. However, I found that kitties aren't generally the killing-blow scorers. Bears are actually better at it. Kitties might be better if you're working hard on timing, but if you're working towards optimal dps they don't get too many killing blows.

So, I spent a lot of time tanking with my druid to get all the charming stuff and then all the elders of the dungeons. You know what? AoE threat for a druid is rather low. Even spamming swipe until my fingers bleeded (macroed with Maul so I get single-target threat too), dps would regularly pull aggro on one of the AoE targets. To get aggro on all, I had to tab through the crowd to get in mauls everywhere as well. Good thing I'm fast on my taunt-finger. Granted, many dps were better equipped than me, but still...

Like Kirba, I ended up soloing and questing to get Charming done. Not only because it's faster, but also because there were some quests in Icecrown I'd like to do just for the lore. I easily soloed the questline with the Scarlet Onslaught, including the end-boss. I think it was even easier than on my death knight. The 4% of your maximum health heals (Improved Leader of the Pack) every 6 sec just rocks too much combined with low incoming damage (relatively) and the higher health pool of druid tanks.

Vigan (death knight)

On the topic of the world event thing, Vigan is the one I've done the least with. Not because I'm not interested, but because I can do that while waiting in LFR or for battlegrounds, something I don't do too much with the other characters. Yay for 20% speed increase from talents. Just lacking Azjol-Nerub of the dungeon elders, gotten the rest through random daily heroics.

I'm still enjoying tanking as a death knight. Will respec to Blood soon to test it again with the changes to the talents in 3.3.5. Two pieces of Tier 10 should help on AoE threat as well, especially if I throw in a glyph as well.

Regarding PVP, I've gotten kinda dis-hearted. Great survivability, but not enough pressure. Without a healing debuff we got lots of trouble in arenas against any team with a healer. Rather than go get a tank class with a MS debuff (warrior), I've shifted more towards being a healer. Than someone else can bring that debuff. Or I can go with a caster team or something.

Zuna (priest)

Lacking Kalimdor, Utgarde Keep and all the high-level dungeons. She's level 77, so she can enter almost all of them now. After those are done, I won't play her more for a bit. The other characters of mine interests me more.

I've found I'm in need of a lot more practice before I can master the shadow rotation. Particularly on trash; How many mobs should there be before I ought to use Mind Sear over single-target dpsing the mobs? There's also something about the shadow stuff... it's just not as cool (in my mind) as throwing lava and lightning around.

Mirlei (paladin)

Done with the season except for the high level dungeon elders. However, she can't access them yet because she's only level 74, so I got to level a lot if I want to get it done this year with her.

Though I played her to get some healing done, I ended up with a tank and a dps spec. It's just much easier to get groups as a tank, and much less annoyance involved when I control the fights. So many bad tanks out there... Interestingly enough, I pull 1.5-2k dps on trash groups. Granted, that's AoE, but unmatched by almost any other dps at that level. I'm sorely beaten (as I should be) on single-target boss fights, though. The curious thing is that I don't have a single heirloom item, enchant or gem with her, while many of the other dps are way better equipped than me.

I could spec tank and healer, but I'm on a PVP server and want to level painlessly. I even got drafted in as dps in a group once recently. That was quite the intresting experience. I'm learning the retribution stuff, but it seems to me the most effective is to use Crusader Strike every 3rd GCD and weave the other abilities in-between those. Perhaps every 4th GCD with decent amount of haste to push the GCD down to 1 sec. Further, Seal of Command seems to be the trash-clearing seal while Seal of Corruption (since I'm horde) is the preference for boss fights. When tanking I just go Seal of Corruption all the time for the ton of extra expertise I gain from the glyph. Can't beat that.

I've had some fun using my abilities in a high-level dungeon (for me). I joined Drak'Thron Keep as dps at level 73. We got three groups at the same time, and our healer wasn't exactly top-notch. So I tossed Hand of Sacrifice on the tank, blew Divine Sacrifice and healed like crazy, judging to get up mana and stunning and silencing to reduce incoming damage. A bit earlier I had tanked the raptor boss after the tank died, successfully. If Divine Sacrifice and Hand of Sacrifice actually stacks when used at the same time, that's a crazy amount of damage reduction.

Posts I want to write

• Shamanic healing
• Challenge of non-heroic dungeons at the appropriate levels
• Dee Pee Ace

Confessions of an altoholic

I've always been weak for female tauren. I'm sure Freud would've had something to say about that. Like the female dwarf, they aren't sexy to the point of being extreme. They are ... cute, in their own way. What's more, they are, along with female dwarfs, the least populated gender/race combination in the game. I've always enjoyed being a bit underdog.

Anyway, I wasn't going to write a full post about my psychological relationship with my characters. However, I was intending to write down in which order I've played the various classes.

My third character ever was a female tauren druid. My first two were a white-haired female gnome mage, and a dark-skinned female dwarven priest. I reached level 12 before deciding I'd much rather be horde. The druid made it to level 30, then I deleted her because I had built up quite a bit of bad rep with my temper. I decided that I wouldn't let my temper get the better of me in 5-mans with my next character. It took time before I managed to fulfill that decision, though.

My next character was a troll priest, Zuna. At this time my wife started playing, and made a troll rogue. After getting Zuna up to 60 - which took almost two years, I was a primary roleplayer at that time - I decided I wanted a druid again and rolled Ayeba on a RPPVP server, and levelled her alone when my wife and I couldn't play together. RPPVP servers didn't exist at the time I created Zuna. I got her to 60 right before Burning Crusade. My first raiding experience was raiding Zul'Gurub with Zuna.

When BC hit, I created Tirvin, my paladin. Again solo. For some time he was my main, then I returned to both Zuna and Ayeba. I never managed to decide whether to stick to Zuna or Ayeba, and so I took turns playing each of them. My wife stuck to her rogue all the time. Got them both to 70 right before the end of Burning Crusade.

When WotLK hit, my wife was almost done with WoW. She had a druid at low level which she played with my paladin. We got them as far as level 61, then she more or less topped played. I left Zuna at 70, played a bit with Ayeba up to 72ish, and left her alone. Then I rolled an orc shaman, Kirba, and got her up to 80. After having Kirba as my main for a while, I decided I wanted a tank, and leveled Ayeba to 80. Kirba was put on the sideline, Ayeba was my new main.

At some point I picked up a low-level paladin on another server and levelled her to 71, and abruptly stopped. I also got my taste of a serious raiding force. They needed a shaman more than a druid, so I played a lot to get Kirba up to date on equipment, dashed through Trial of the Crusader 10-man, and wiped several times on Mimiron hard mode. My one night of raiding.

At this point I created my Death Knight, Vigan. Played with him a bit, and loved it. Leveled him fairly quickly to 80 and made him my new main.

Now I'm at another crossroad; Which character to pick up again as my healer?

My options:

• My druid Ayeba. She's already geared for healing the new heroics, making it faster.
• My shaman Kirba. She's geared as well.
• My priest Zuna. She's level 73 now. However, I've played with her a lot earlier, it was almost nostalgic when I ran a few dungeons with her again.
• My paladin on the other server at level 71. Not Tirvin. I need to keep Tirvin at that level in case my wife wants to start playing again. In which case she'll most likely want to pick up her druid rather than her rogue, as she seemed to enjoy healing more than dps.

I have healed, and enjoyed, all the healing classes in various stages of the game. What to do now? I'm not sure. In fact, I'm very unsure what to do.

I'll be creating separate posts outlining what I like and dislike about the various healer classes. I'm fairly certain I've done that earlier. However, I consider myself a bit more experienced now, and have had some viewpoints changed.

Your daily heroic addiction-shot

This post is based on a nagging feeling I've had lately. Let me take it from the start.

Let's assume we can divide the player-base into three parts. On one end, we have the hardcores. I define them as players logging on every day. It doesn't matter if you're not actually raiding or doing arenas or anything, you just log on every day to do whatever you like to do in WoW.

On the other end of the scale, we have the very casuals, who just log now and then. They don't spend much off their time when they're not logged on thinking about WoW. They might be pure RPers, or just level alts (or mains) very slowly. They have no goals such as "become level 80, down a specific boss, obtain a specific item".

On the middle end, you have the group of moderate casuals. They log on regularly, but not every day. They have goals, and might even raid. However, they have a measure of control over their game-time and are generally not addicts.

Enter the daily heroic

I belong mostly in the last group, the moderate casuals. At least used to. Okay, I've always had a lot of playtime on release of new content, but generally. Now I'm feeling I belong more in the first group. Why? Because I feel I lose something if I don't log on every day to do the daily heroic random. Somehow, it's gotten worse in patch 3.3. In 3.2, I knew that whatever gear I acquired with Emblems of Triumph were much easier to get in 3.3, and it was a lot of places dropping them. VoA, Onyxia, Trial of the Champion...

I like doing the daily random heroic, but I don't like the fact that I feel forced to play every day. The "forcing" is of course all in my own mind. It feels like it's pushing me further into WoW-addiction.

The end of the line of casual upgrades

Enter 3.3. Emblems of Triumphs available for farming.

Fast forward a few weeks to today.

I've got no further upgrades to look forward to as a tank.

Not true. I do have a few left, but the list is incredibly short.

1. Farm the new heroics, hoping to get a Battered Hilt and then win the following need roll by everyone. I mean, it's worth so much that anyone will roll need even if they already have it to sell it to someone else, just like any BoE epic. In effect, I can do it as long as it is fun, but I don't have any desire to farm every mob in there just to increase my chance of it dropping by 0.01% per run.

2. Fly around and get Titanium, smelt Titansteel, and get crafted BoE gear that requires Crusader Orbs, purchasable with Emblembs of Triumph. However... titanium is a rare spawn node... Bah. Boring. I do grind sometimes on off-hours, though.

3. Buy stuff. Always an option. But then I'd have to grind gold. Bah. Boring. Can quest, though, there are some storylines it would be neat to finish before WotLK ends.

4. Join pug raids, particularly Onyxia 25-man, Icecrown Citadel, TotC 25-man, TotGC or VoA. Hope for some drops. I'm actually geared enough to tank ICC 25 now.

5. Get 2 frost Emblems of Frost every day from the random heroic, and 5 from the weekly raid. Slowly upgrade stuff. Next will probably be the +226 stamina trinket. 2.5k extra health? Now we're talking.

Meanwhile, I'm spending my Emblems of Triumph on ilvl 232 PVP gear. Joining an arena team now ... about time. I've got the solution to my schedule problem: I'll join a 2vs2 and 3vs3 with the same two guys. When I'm not available, they'll go with their 2vs2. When all are available, 3vs3. Then I don't need to drag down any arenamate relying only on me.

PVP strikes back

I had, for quite a while, neglected a part of WoW I really used to love so much. PVE has lots of fun factors. In particular, I love the cooperation required to bring down bosses, and the excitement of succeeding together. However, playing only one aspect of the game will burn it out faster than playing all aspects.

With the "birth" of my death knight, I played a bit PVP along the way. And heck, what fun I've missed!

While levelling up, my DK has the heirloom PVP shoulders, heirloom PVP trinket, heirloom chest and heirloom axe with Crusader on it.

BG 50-59 was a bit of a joke. More than half of all players joining were death knights. In fact, it was joked that "whichever side has the most death knights wins", something that proved painfully true for all rounds I participated in.

Come 60 and lowest level in BGs. Interestingly enough, I didn't feel underpowered. Quite the opposite, it felt "just right". Most likely because of the superior gear I had for my level (DK starting area blue gear is about equivalent of lvl 65 greens, I think). Of course, I was feeling a bit squishy, so I played all the time in frost presence.

Here's the thing: I don't like following all the stupid sheep that races towards the stables, Balinda or just mindlessly fights in the midfield in Warsong Gulch. I stick around in our base to defend our flag in WSG, I stick at a base in AB and defend it, I try to keep Galv alive, get our towers back and prevents stealth caps in AV.

I'm used to playing a healer. What happens when a single healer sticks around a place to defend? Well... at best I can survive until my mana is all gone. That's the limitation of my abilities.

As a DK, I'm able to succeed on my own. At least some of the time.

Now, I've hit 80 with my DK. There are a few problems.

I'm painfully reliant on a good weapon, and I'm STILL running around with my heirloom axe. It helps a lot being unholy -- I did 4.5k dps in quest blues in the Onyxia 10 pug I joined. Superior AoE, anyone? With a bit of luck, a new weapon will drop sooner or later in TotC heroic.

I still only have two specs to play around. I want three (at least). PVE dps, PVE tank and PVP. For the moment I don't have all that good tanking gear, so I've got PVE dps and PVP. Considering tanking with my PVP spec. It has Toughness, Magic Suppression, Anti-Magic Zone, Bone Shield and even Glyph of Anti-magic Shell, so I'm only lacking Anticipation, Blade Barrier and Improved Icy Touch of the core tanking talents. I can even afford two points in Imp Icy Touch in my PVP spec without losing anything important.

Other than that, I'm gearing up my third character. At a point I got really tired of it and switched back to my shaman for some PVP. It took less than a single AV to recall what I liked about my DK.

1. The get-out-of-jail-free cards. In particular Anti-Magic Shell and Icebound Fortitude, but also Strangulate and Chains of Ice. Together, they allowed me to survive for quite some time alone with an enemy. Except retribution paladins, bloody annoying bastards. They stun me for 5 seconds before I got the runic power to get off either AMS or IF.


2. Just being a tank. Standing around defending a node in frost presence, and a rogue fires up his arsenal at me. But hey, I've got tons of armor, I can survive for quite some time. Compare that to a shaman, even with a shield, whose only defense is trinketing out of a stun or die before the stunlock is up. Well, almost.

I like being a tank in PVP.

Delicious cookies! All mine! Muhahahahahaha...

... and another blog bites the dust?

Yes, it did. I ought to have made a post telling you why I stopped blogging.

However, I'll start again. This time with a slightly different focus.

What has happened?

Something like this:

• Played my shaman for a while, gearing her up for raiding (3.1). Did some pug raids, lots of fun.


• Got tired of only healing, wanted to tank again.


• Fooled around with a paladin for a bit. Got it to 71.


• Returned to my druid, levelled it to 80.


• Geared up my druid for raiding. Lead a few Naxx-raids.


• Applied, got accepted into a raiding force. Pretty serious 10-man force with good people. However, they were full on druids and wanted shammies.


• Geared up my shammy again (3.2)


• Raided one night. Found out I can't do it and function normally at work the night after. Bed at midnight, up at 6 AM. I'm a zombie half of the following day.


• Got a bit depressed. Considered stopping WoW entirely.


• Returned to my druid for a bit, played a bit without any specific focus. Tanked some pug raids, including Koralon 25 right after he was added.


• Tried a death knight. Got hooked.

Status quo: DK at 74, fairly speed-leveled. Having fun meanwhile, though. Had a few short breaks to the seasonal stuff. Knowing myself, I will sooner or later want to return to healing. Which class? Don't know, thus I do the seasonal stuff on both my 80 healers (druid and shammy).

So, future stuff will most likely be centered a bit around death knights and leveling stuff. Not much raiding stuff to be expected here, I'm afraid.

I'm going to spend a bit less time writing each post. I expect a post a week, sometimes more often.

Journal of a shaman equipped with frost resistance totem

These are gathered experiences from my levelling in Northrend. I don't know how many of you have interest in soloing experiences anymore, as "everyone" is 80 now. I'll justify it saying that there will be plenty alts levelling through Northrend.

Speeeeed! Give me what I neeeed

Compared to pretty much everyone else, I've levelled pretty slowly. But if you only look at actual playtime, it's pretty good. All of it has been on rested XP. And this time, unlike the last (Outland), I'm only levelling one character, Kirba. Last time I levelled both my priest and druid, switching them every now and then when I got too annoyed with the other.

It feels slightly awkward that I've only finished Borean Tundra, with about 20-30 quests done in other zones, and I'm already half-way to 80.

Money money money

As a lot of others have pointed out, Blizz is trying to empty our pockets by every mean possible. Some of it can't be avoided, like spending 150 gold training (and I'm exalted with Orgrimmar) my lvl 75 spells. Others can be avoided, though. Some of the ways I've tried to save money:

• Obviously only repair and buy reagents at a fraction with which you're exalted. Orgrimmar in my case.


• Limit the number of flight path usages, by planning a route that involves very little flying. Of course, this might sometimes take extra time, so it's a balance there. For example, with my hearthstone set to Dalaran, I've plenty of times taken a portal to Orgrimmar and the zeppelin to either of the starting areas to save money. It's kind of extreme, though, and not something I do too often. Rather boring to wait for the zep. If I'm in one of the southern Kalu'ak towns, I'll use the boat instead of a flight if it happens to be there at the time I arrive.


• Except for my gathering skills (mining in my case), don't train tradeskills until you're honored with some fraction. I'm almost honored with Warsong Offensive myself.

There's also the flip side of the coin, making money. While I did earn 2k gold selling glyphs when 3.0 came out, I'm not usually much fan of hanging at the auction house too much. That leaves a few other ways:

"Normal" questing. Yields a pretty stable income, but nothing spectacular. Most of it will be going down the drain when I hit 77 and have to buy Cold Wheater Flying.

Dailies. Not too different from questing, really, except that they're slightly faster since you know what you're supposed to do.

Green BoEs... Sent those I can use to my alts, those that I expect to have a use for to a bank alt, and those that I don't think I'll be able to use at all to disenchanting. What to do with the disenchants? For now, they're stored. Later, perhaps they'll help finance my epic flying mount.

Resthancement

I've levelled to 75, about 3/4 of the time as resto, the rest as enhancement. Been respeccing to resto for each instance, there are never healers around. Not that I mind too much, means I always get a place in a group. I'd like to try dpsing as a shaman sometime, though.

I felt like a friggin' glass cannon as enhancement. Next time I go enhancement, I'll drop talent points in Anticipation and Toughness to counter that. I don't think I ever died, but I don't like seeing my health bar leap up and down as I take damage and use my Maelstrom Weapon stacks for instant heal.

Static Shock was not my cup of tea. Spesifically, the lack of Water Shield meant I only had Shamanistic Rage as a mean to get my mana up again. It's a raid/group dps talent, as far as I can see, less useful as a soloing talent.

Now that I've reached 75, Kirba just got a new spell at her disposal. Lava Burst is pretty hefty. As resto (with spellpower gear), it crits for about 2.7k. Nice. I was planning to respec sometime, but I think I'll just wait for 3.0.8 and the free respec.

I must admit, though, that I felt a bit envious hearing that a pally friend of mine crit for 4.5k on Holy Shock used offensively. Wow. That means 3k non-crits, instant, every 6 seconds if you want to. Seriously... overpowered, if it's true. My Earth Shocks hit for about 1-1.2k on non-crits. Looking at the tooltips, I can see that Holy Shock is more powerful. I can only guess that's because it can be used both for damage and healing, while I've got Earth Shock and Riptide on two different 6-second cooldowns.

Fanclub stuff

Thanks to the D.E.H.T.A. quests in Borean Tundra, I've gotten a nice boost to my Cenarion Expedition rep. Only half-way to Exalted to go.

I've been doing the Kalu'ka dailies when I can, so I'm already Revered. I don't know why I bother so much with them, but they're very likable. And since it's entertaining, that's good enough for me. Thanks to that, Cuttlefish Tooth Ringmail is waiting for me in one level, Totemic Purification Rod in three levels. And if I should reach exalted, I don't mind getting Pengu and the fishing pole.

Misc stuff

Astral Recall rocks while soloing. I can recall to Dalaran, go to Orgrimmar and do whatever I want, then hearth to Dalaran again and catch a flight back to wherever I want to.

Glyphed Water Walking rocks as well. Very nice whenever I'm close to water. Makes some quests ridiculously easy. Ride out to the quest mob, kill it, rebuff and ride back.

Fire Elemental Totem rocks like heck. Drop the totem, Earth Shield the elemental, make sure to damage all mobs at least a bit, and just pull wildly. I've pulled around 10 mobs at the most, and downed them all. Fun.

Speaking of Earth Shield, While I've been resto, I've tossed it on any horde I've met. They seem to appreciate it. I always buff those I meet as priest or druid, so it's nice to have something to offer as shaman too, sort of.

I've missed Glyph of Water Mastery a bit since I dropped it. I think I feel the difference in mana regen.

Is it just me, or did they recently add the feature that gives an arrow on your radar to the quest you've marked in the quest log? Only works for a few quests, but very handy for those it does work for.

Evil plan to take over the world

• Keep up my dailies and whatever other Kalu'ak quests I find until I earn exalted with them.


• Do Warsong Offensive quests in Dragonblight until I'm honored with them, then go train my professions. Won't take long, only got 500 rep left until Revered.


• Howling Fjord. Don't want to miss out the story. Hope I'm not doing something stupid, like killing the fun for my alts when I next level there.


• Respec to Elemental once 3.0.8 hits. Preferably test it as dps in an instance. Perhaps test it as a healer as well in an non-heroic instance.


• Keep levelling, obviously enough.


• Do some instances. No stress, though, I'm probably going to see the inside of them quite a lot as heroics.


• Have fun. Highest priority.