So, after that last mammoth of a post, this one will be somewhat frivolous and short.

After rolling again and getting a 47, I wandered over to my priest and pottered around a bit.

She has the [Tattered Dreadmist Mantle], [Haliscan Jacket] with [Enchant Chest - Exceptional Stats] and [Haliscan Pantaloons] with a [Runic Spellthread] on them.  Just a little bit of shiny to make the lower levels a bit easier on a squishy char.  It feels a little weird to be playing her as she’s been my bank alt for a long while – I had to transfer things over to a new bank alt – but I am kinda enjoying it.

I have taken a priest to 30-odd before but I had help and boosting at the time – I’ve never managed to get any other cloth wearers past their mid teens so this will be an interesting experiment.

Yjin

Currently, my Death Knight has just finished levelling in Grizzly Hills – not doing all the quests but doing all of those I liked first time around.  I have slowed down a bit now that I’ve hit Northrend but she’s managed to get to 440 blacksmithing, at least! I really need to get my head down and get her to 80 before I start seriously levelling my priest!

Blog Stuff

I’ve managed to get the recent achievement widget working – it was causing some weird issues before the most recent version – and I’ve taken down my character page as it was constantly ending up up out of date and I might work on a more general ‘about’ page.  Maybe.

/ramble

Dedicated to Kes.

So, dual specs, an issue of contention it seems.  This post was spurred, in the main, by one Big Bear Bottom and, thus Dinear’s post too.

What I took from Dinaer:

• People should pick a spec and stick to it, that used to be a fundamental part of the game.
• That the new system is designed to allow swaps inside instances.
• That raid leaders will force offspecs.
• That hybrids being able to change roles affects non-hybrids negatively.

Forgive me for this rather short summation, but these where what seemed to be the main points of his argument.

What I took from the honorable Bear:

• That it was unusual for someone to have an offspec which they recieved raid loot for.
• That raid leaders will enforce or expect an offspec.
• That non-hybrids will be negatively affected by dual specs.
• That non-hybrids should be compensated for dual specs.
• That raid leaders would choose a hybrid over a non-hybrid, all things being equal.
• That because someone has the ability to play both they will  as good at both roles and thuse useful as both roles.
• That 4 year old information on the WoW website states a class must be one thing so that should still be true.
• That dual specs will unbalance the game.

Like I’ve said, this is my personal take on what he wrote and what seemed to be the gist of the argument.

Before I begin I will state the biases I know I have -

• I am a PvE’er in a progression minded guild.
• I do not do PvP more than ocassionally.
  
• I do not generally PuG.
• I like alts.
• The characters I play most are: Shaman, Druid, Death Knight, Rogue, Hunter.

I come from the perspective, blatantly, of someone who plays hybrids and will benefit from the change but I also come from the perspective of someone who has played non-hybrids and can understand that perspective also.

First, I will start with the points that both Bear and Dinaer brought up on the basis that if both brought it up, it’s a common theme to the argument at hand:

Raid leaders will enforce off-specs.

First off, clearly this is not a problem with dual-specs, it is a problem with the raid leader.  I do not often pug because my views on group leadership often do not tie with pug views on group leadership and thus, I choose not to put myself in the position where I am subjected to the rules of others.  I will not join a group with enforced looting (you can come but if x drops, so and so will get it) and will leave if it is mentioned as a rule.  I will not be bullied into a role I do not wish (oh come on, any feral can tank, just do it or we’ll be here all day) and I will not respec to please a guild.

This is very different from the issue of respeccing because I want to help my guild.  If my guild decided they needed x role and I wanted to try x role then I would offer.  If I did not wish to do it I would not and my guild would not force me.  If your guild would that is not the fault of dual specs.

If you offer your offspec as an availability that is no different to offering it now – except that more might do it and it will be easier.

That non-hybrids will be negatively affected by hybids getting dual specs.

I want to point out here that the big issue at hand is not that dual-specs themselves will negatively effect non-hybrids, but that hybrids having dual specs will negatively effect non-hybrids.

This is somewhat akin to saying that because I have apple juice and you got orange juice, that I am negatively affecting how much you enjoy your juice.  Ok, maybe that’s a little flippant…  The ‘big question’ here is whether my being able to fulfill multiple roles will mean that your enjoyment is lessened because of the effects thereof.  So lets split this up a little bit further.

–Raid Spots

If my druid can tank, heal and dps then why take a rogue or a mage?  For one thing, my druid would have to choose two of those and personally it would be tank and healing so I’m not competing with the rogue and mage anyway.  I could go like another druid I know is planning and have a feral tanking and feral dps spec side by side for just an extra bit of dps when not tanking or being able to pick up an add on the boss which needs three tanks instead  two.  This means I’d still be, as my druid, taking up the same spot, utility wise, as my current raid role – tank with the ability to dps on bosses which do not need me to tank.

Lets take a case study as its the wider effect of this which will make more apparent why I think the issue is a bit of a non-issue:

As a raid leader I have, at the moment, a choice something like: 2 DKs, 1feral, 1 rogue, 1 warrior, 2 Retridins and 1-2 Enh Shammies and I have five melee spots.

Now, going by what bear and Dinaer say, I’m gonna ignore that rogue there and take only hybrids- they can fulfill other roles, dontcha know?

I know that DK1 has a good off-set for tanking and can probably hold adds in any current bossfight and is willing to be an offtank if the need arises, cool, and that Shammy1 and Retridin1 are our top two physical DPSers by virtue of having the best gear and being at almost every raid since Wrath began. I choose them both for their dps and for Retridin1’s good replenishment uptime.  So, I’m left with 1 feral, 1 rogue, 1DK, 1 Warrior, 1 Retridin, one shammy and only two spots.  Who do I give them to?  On a progress night I will choose whomever is the highest dps, most reliable and least idiotic.  I will not take Shammy2 as he barely raids and pulls about 1k dps when the mobs stand in front of him really really still and I will not choose the other retridin for the same reason. The warrior’s dps changes from night to night, depending on the phase of the moon and other such odd factors – he’s unreliable dps.  The rogue is a frequent raider and, although his frequent deaths to whirlwinds are noted, is good dps and generally competent and the druid, whilst only just starting back to raiding and undergeared, is reliable, quick with tactics and pulls more dps than the much better geared Shammy2 and Retridin2 so I will chose the last two, obviously.

This is how things should be picked – based on skill, gear, ability and dps.  I don’t give a flying saucer if my druid can offtank because I have two other available offtanks (the retridin and DK) and I’m not even taking the shammy for heroism because we almost always have one resto shammy who could cover that.

Just because someone can take a role and could do it marginally better than abysmal does not mean a raid leader will even consider it.  This is how I currently have to make these kinds of choices, and it likely won’t change post-dual specs.  I’m not saying there won’t be isolated circumstances but, really, every single dpser is not going to lose their spot because of dual specs.  Its not necessary or even useful to sit a good dpser of any kind just to allow for a fourth or fifth offspec tank / healer which you will almost certainly not need.

As an aside, currently, our top dps is often a mage and we routinely take 4- 5 mages to raids, despite them not bringing any extra buffs after the first one because they are good players and solid signers – again, this will not change after the patch.

– A DPS Issue?

The other thing I’ve noticed is that the arguments surrounding dual-specs are primarily to do with dps.  DPS of a non-hybrid variety worry that hybrids will take their dps spots.  I don’t see many people talking about tanks or healers being worried that their spots will be taken by hybrid dpsers.  Why?  Tanks and healers are harder to find, DPS spots are generally limited?  This might be so for some but, currently, we’re actually having a harder time finding the required number of dpsers!

That aside, some dps seem to assume that healers or tanks all naturally want to be dps.  I’ll let you in on a little secret – we don’t all want that!  What I personally want is to be less useless when I’m ’superfluous’.

As my druid, tanking, what grates me most is being asked to dps on some fights – I’ll not only not be doing the thing I want but I’ll be doing it badly as my talents, glyphs and gems are set up for being hit in the face, not for shredding the arse end out of something.

As a healer, I already dps some fights! Thaddius, Loatheb, anything where the healing need isn’t so heavy I’m up there throwing out lightning bolts. I don’t really enjoy it all the time but I do wish that I could pull more than 800-1k dps – so that I’m not only useless as a healer because I’m not needed, but am also pathetic dps.

DPSers are never useless.  I can’t think of a single fight where DPSers have to sit out or do what amounts to almost nothing the whole fight.  I can think of a few where dps isn’t as important but they’re still there, needed, to do their job.  I wonder how many people who’ve only played pure dps know what it is like to have to sit back and perform a secondary function which is only barely useful?

–Mage Tanks / Rogue Healers

In one breath they say that they want and think that non-hybrids should be especially good at what they do – that they should excel in their one role.  I would actually not mind them giving rogues tanking but I would assume a lot of people in those classes, since they picked them to be the bestest ever dps, do not want to heal or tank.

They also use the recently oft-abused text from the World of Warcraft sites and manuals which say that mages and rogues should be the best dps.  Well, sure, but then druids, shamans and paladins can go back to only being healers, warriors may only tank  and rogues and mages can go back to being able to two-shot things.   The way things were four, three or two years ago was not always good, to my mind, so why people use the excuse of ‘but blizzard said so in my manual!’ to justify mages and rogues being better than hybrid classes mystifies me.

The other thing which causes me some confusion is the ideal of rogues and mages topping everyone else – since when did hunters or warlocks have any role other than dps in raids?  Surely they are similarly disadvantaged by the changes?  Bear thinks not, using the same logic of ‘but blizzard said so four years ago’.  Sorry, Bear, but I respectfully disagree with that point.  Blizzard said a lot of things back then and have changed a lot of things since which have gone against in your favour – like druids being made not only viable but good tanks.

You cannot ask for one aspect but deny the other – if rogues and mages are to be better than everyone else for that reasoning then warriors must excel at tanking and priests should be a lot better than all other healing classes (ok, so they already outperform shamans and paladins by a large margin but thats an issue for another post..).

Oh and don’t forget, shamans should be able to tank some things again -  the ability to do which, they have removed.  One of my first ever instances was actually with a shaman tanking -it may have only been Scarlet Monastery Cathedral but, still, he was considered a viable tank for non-raid instances at the time.

Arguing that someone specced, glyphed, gemmed, and playing their class as best they can should automatically be worse than someone who plays another class ‘just because the manual said so” is absoloute nonsense in my book – because they have the ability to change to a different spec is just as ludicrous a reason to me.

The Purpose of Dual Specs

The one thing I agree with Dinaer on totally was that choosing one spec and sticking with it was a tenet of the game.  Up until last year Blizzard had been very much against the idea of ‘free’ respecs and encouraged the idea that picking a spec to stick with was an ideal situation.

However…

On the one hand we have the fact that Blizzard is really pushing pvp.  I think they see that as the ticket to making this franchise last, not an idea I’m in love with but, again, that’s totally another issue.  Having dual specs, when first implemented, was said to be to allow people to have a pvp spec so that the pve and pvp aspects of the game would be a little easier to integrate.  I commend the idea even if I would not participate in it.

Dinaer and Bear seem to be looking at it from a wholly PvE perspective, as is their right as, with me, that is where their interest lies (at least, for Bear, I’m afraid I’m unsure for Dinaer).  Either way, they are examining the purely PvE consequences of this change – which is fine but short sighted.

I know several people in my guild (solid PvE players) who will be taking a pvp spec as their offspec.  I also know there are some people, like myself, who are considering a second spec for the same role – I want to try an interesting healing spec but want to be able to change back to my normal spec if the other doesn’t turn out well, this will likely be my personal first use of dual-specs.

On that note, we may say ‘dps only have one role’ but they all have three (or more) specs.  I’ll use my rogue as an example.  Now, as I have evinced several times, I do not really pvp so having a pvp offspec?  Not an option I care to take up.  What I might have, however, is a grinding spec.  When I was dpsing full-time on my rogue I specced into the most effective raid build at the time – combat-swords.  This was an ok grinding spec but I would have loved to have dropped some talents which you mostly don’t need outside of bosses and picked up improved gouge or the talent which makes you walk faster in stealth.  Oh how I missed that…  So, to say offspecs are not useful to non-hybids who don’t pvp is simply lacking imagination.  Wether those little changes are worth the 1k asking price for dual specs is another matter entirely.

To further that, I will find it so much more enjoyable to be able to switch specs as my shaman outside of raids.  I don’t want to dps in a raid, I don’t much like it, but for dailies?  Do  I want another 1kdps almost instantly and be able to do killing based dailies in less than half-an-hour? Yes please!  I love being resto, I can grind as resto if I have to, but I do get fustrated at watching DPS specced players zoom through their quests happily whilst I lag behind, frustrated because I know it could be easier and because half of all dailies are biased towards killing things – an improvement on the 90% of TBC dailies, to be sure, but still not great.

I put up with it for now because I love my spec, I love healing, but why should I be punished my whole play time for something I want to do when grouped and a role which is maximised for grouping?  Some people would tell me to group for dailies but, between having an odd schedule (I usually do my dailies right in the early hours) and not liking to have to bother others for my own needs, I don’t do so well with that idea.

Loot

Loot is an issue many people feel strongly about and, as I mentioned above, I don’t stand for pissing about with it in a selfish way, that’s just not cool.  Wanting loot is not inherently bad – its a way of measuring your progress and a little ‘ding’ once your character has had his last big ding – hitting 80.  Wanting loot at the expense of others happens frequently because often multiple people need the same item.  Wanting loot which you are not going to immediately use and would be of more use to someone right now is dickish.

If someone takes an item off of you for their offspec when you need it for your main spec then that is a problem with the player, not the system.  If you group with them again and they do the same thing then that is a problem with your attitude, not the system.  If you do not state clearly when in a pug what the loot rules will be or have it made clear to you before you begin and then an issue happens which you don’t agree with that is, in fact, partially your fault.  I’m not saying you’re an idiot or naieve, just that you cannot entirely blame someone else for assuming something different to yourself.  You can blame them for being an arse, but, again, not the fault of the system.

I will often ask if I can take a resto offspec item for my druid on runs – but, of course, only if it is not needed by the healer.  I am happy to roll against another person who also wants it for an offspec.  This is natural to me.  Lightwalkers has been, as long as I’ve been in it, a guild who would rather offer an offspec upgrade to someone than shard an item.  When you get to the point where you cannot use all of the shards in your guild bank  for people’s enchants (goodness knows how many void crystals we had in there when WotLK hit), it doesn’t make sense to waste loot.

Get to the damn point!

I like dual specs, I’m not totally enamored with how they are being implemented but I can understand why they are being created that way – random roadblocks being put in simply to serve as a barrier or annoyance will do only that, annoy.  I fully expected them to change this but I honestly thought it would not be until after dual specs had been on live realms and people had complained.

Dual specs allow hybrids flexibility but I don’t think they will affect non-hybrids in as strong a way as some people are evincing and I do not believe that it calls for some form of  ‘compensation’  to those who do not have a different role spec – hybrids have been able to perform multiple roles for years, all that is changing now is that they are able to switch with less pain.  I know some people have always thought that hybrid should mean lesser but I have never agreed – having to play second fiddle to  a warrior tank who barely bothered to enchant his gear or learn tactics has made me somewhat militant on this subject – if I try my best I  should be able to compete on an even basis in my chosen role at the same level as others in that same role.

The time and dedication it would take to be able to do as well in two specs as one at the flip of a coin is to be lauded.  It’s also, to my mind, an improvement over systems whereby guilds will sit a certain player out so that they can get the required group setup and furthers Blizzard’s idea of take the player, not the class.  If I choose 25 people I stick with them – if that means doing Razuvious with four healers because we had no shadowpriests than so be it.  If, once dual specs are out, I can ask one of the hybrids to switch over to healing then thats nice but I won’t choose them specifically to do so and I won’t demand it of them.  One of our shadowpriests, when we first did Patchwerk, helped with healing – we didn’t take him for that but it happened – I guess he was screwing some non-hybrid out of a spot then?  No?  Why does dual-speccing make any difference then except to make people who already have to sit out or do something other than their main raid role more effective?

If you read through all of that you deserve a cookie.

/cookie

/hug

Thanks to Bear and Dinaer both for giving me something interesting to write about – I’ve been champing at the bit to write all week but nothing had come to mind which I could really get my teeth into until this evening!

Namthe tagged me so I figured I’d be cheeky and use it as my Sunday Screenie, too!

One of my first 25-man raid nights with Lightwalkers, judging by the gear – I think I took the pic because there were notably more dwarves in the raid than usual!

[Pink Murloc Egg] arrived today – sent from Vaneras, no less! I was thrilled to find out that, despite warnings otherwise, my new murloc friend was account bound and so I now have a whole herd (swarm, gaggle?) of baby murlocs across all of my alts.  The second picture, annoyingly, was taken seconds after the wee bugger had stopped dancing – damn me not being fast enough at swinging the camera around.

His feet make the most amusing squelchy pitter patter as he runs…

/squee

For whatever reason, this past week I’ve been playing my Death Knight.  I guess now that I have my shaman and druid maxed and geared a bit, plus Aurik at 77 for ease of farming ore, I can now sit back and play whatever.  Originally I had intended to play my hunter when was done with those three but I was feeling a bit burned out when it came to Northrend – I was missing the ‘warmth’ and bright colours of Outlands.

My little Death Knight hit level 70 in Netherstorm whe I was just finishing off the first round of quests from Area 52 (where I realised there was a barbers and couldn’t resist getting Yjin a haircut).

But why stop there, I thought, I don’t have to go to Northrend yet if I don’t want to! So I didn’t.  I finished off Netherstorm – hitting 71 – and then went on to do about half of Shadowmoon Valley -  what I could of it without doing all of the group quests.

As soon as I hit 70, though, I also started doing dailies.  Why dailies? Well, the quest-hub on Quel’Danas is all very compact, the mobs are over level 70 and I just like the Island.

These quests (click for bigger image) listed give 8% of XP at level 70, take about 45 minutes and are in the lovely setting of Quel’Danas.  I managed to do three rounds of them whilst levelling from 70-72 and actually dinged 72 on them.

Here are the zones I did from leaving the Death Knight starter zone until level 72:

• Hellfire Peninsula
• Half of Zangarmarsh
• None of Terokkar
• Most of Nagrand (skipping several group quests)
• All of Blade’s Edge
• Most of Nethestorm (again missing the harder group quests)
• Half of Shadowmoon Valley
• 3 x Quel’Danas Dailies

I have a feeling that if I’d done Terokkar I could likely have stayed in Outlands longer but by the time I was getting to the end of level 72 levelling in Outlands was beginning to feel a little slow.  A lot of people seem to dislike Shadowmoon, too, so if they want to stay in Outlands longer I’d reccomend doing Terokkar -  I love how the zone looks but I just don’t like the quests!

Caveat – As you might notice, I’m using the [Polished Spaulders of Valor] – most of my XP was coming from quests but I’d guess the extra 10% counted for a fair bit of XP along with any rest XP I had, both of which would go quite a way in extending the ability to level in Outlands.

If you do decide to stay in Outlands I’d reccomend getting a flying mount – even just a slow one for now – as it makes many of the quests in Netherstorm and Shadowmoon easier to do.  As soon as Yjin hit 70 she grabbed her flying skill and was scooting about on a (very, very slow) carpet!

I never noticed until taking these screenshots that Draenei female’s tails stick out of the back of their cloaks in the crouch position.  Hehe. Their feet also stick out underneath carpets, for that matter /grumble.

Eventually, though, I’ve had to take the plunge and bring my little Death Kight ever closer to meeting her maker…

Tired, unable to sleep, I checked the front page of WoW’s European site where I found they’d put the winners up for their Valentine’s Day card competition.  The first picture which loaded as a winner? Yours truly’s entry. /flabbergasted!

Competition Winners Page

/glee

I was waiting on the Trasmutation book spawn for Higher Learning and, with two resto druids and some pets, created my own little performance team!  Eventually we were joined by a hordie death knight, too.   I have so many silly screenshots of ‘waiting for the damn book to spawn’ but they’ll come in another post.

Some of the Lightwalkers admins being a bit silly – Gravlax (gnoam), Indigo (hooman) and myself in Danrassus in our event finery.   Mages, festival gear and mirror image make for some silly screenies.  When we got bored of chmoozing the Darnassus guards we moved onto Stormwind to find another admin – Bob – who turned himself into a blood elf and joined in.  No luck getting him to wear a dress though /sob.

Some more random but kinda cool screenies – myself and Indi’s paladin alt (whom she was letting me sprinkle with flowers for the achievement) and then a randomly cool, if slightly sinister screenshot of me in the dark whilst standing next to a Storwind guard.  The Light of his lamp gave off a really interesting shadow effect!

Well, no, not really.  I don’t like seeing anyone nerfed but tonight I had a bit of an eye opener.  Let me not get ahead of myself, though.

Setting the Scene

It was a warm and sunny afternoon in Dalaran when a plaintive cry was heard in the officer channel of Lightwalkers.  “We’re short a healer.” “Bleh I dun wanna go to Naxx(10) on my shammy QQ” *pause*  “I can respec resto on the druid, though?”.

Ok, so maybe not quite like that but you get the gist.  A healer was called for and I decided to offer my druid.  20 minutes before raidstart.  When I was still specced and glyphed for feral tanking… and only had gear I had grabbed whilst levelling.  Cue mad dash and frenzied crafting over 4 different alts.

I fired up my browser and scrambled through my druid bookmarks to find:

• Resto4Life’s Pre-Raid Gear Lists, Part I and Part II.
• Tree Bark Jacket’s guide to setting up Grid for HoT Tracking.

30 minutes later… (yes, I was late, they let me off with it on account of the respeccing and whatnot) I was standing inside Naxx trying to configure Grid and find an unbound button for nourish, wild growth and nature’s swiftness.

My Résumé

I note here that I have never raid healed more than once on Jhai and have instance healed only twice.  Ever.  Go me.  Still, I was fairly confidant not totally panicking as I am not new to healing itself, knew what kind of damage to expect and healing tactics for the boss fights for non-shammy healers, and had been reading some of the three million resto druid blogs out there.  This was not entirely spur of the moment thing, either, I had wanted to give tree-druiding a shot for a while and this just seemed like the perfect jump-start chance.

So, after those 30minutes, I had scraped up this kit:

[Earthgiving Legguards],  [Earthgiving Boots], [Sun Rock Ring], [Blood Sun Necklace] (yes, I had no better jewellery /sob) were crafted by Jhai and Aurik, [Sash of Jordan] was promptly bought from the guild bank (which reminds me I need to actually put the payment in, forgot after the raid, whoops!) and Avarix sent over a pile of enchantment scrolls.  Although my tailor did make some leg-patches I managed to forget to grab them from the mail before being summoned to Naxxramas.  Bugger.  On top of that, although I had a [Ymirjar Physician's Robe] in my bags I forgot to equip it all run. Double Bugger.

I had five TBC items and two very-low-level Wrath items on for the majority of the run.

I did not expect to see this at the end of the night:

Really.  Both of the other healers outgeared me by far – both in mostly Naxx(10) level gear.  I haven’t raided much with Griz but I’ve healed alongside Valeris plenty and her numbers are usually not far off Avarix’s in terms of output – I know she’s an excellent healer, despite her claims to the contrary.

Oh… and I dps’d one fight and was dead for half the other.

What in the nine hells?  Why is it that a resto druid in not-very-good gear can outheal a resto shammy and paladin in much better gear?  It’s not skill, I don’t have any.  I forgot I could go into tree form for the first five minutes of the instance (i’d forget my head if it wasn’t screwed on, to be honest).

As you can see, it wasn’t just that I was mindlessly spamming Wild Growth – it is my highest heal, but only barely.   I did not have many mana problems, though I did keep my innervate for myself and we did have replenishment from one shadow priest.  Usually I suffer horribly on Naxx(10) as my shaman – if I’m not guaranteed good uptime on replenishment  I end most fights gasping for water or strudel.

I am confused.  This doesn’t seem fair.  Do druids scale worse with gear or something?  If not particularly I’m beginning to see why spirit regen might be getting nerfed a wee bit…

I know meters are not the best guage of healer skill or ability but nonetheless they show ability to output vast oodles of healing – more, in this case, than seems ‘fair’ for being so undergeared.  Ah well.

I snagged a few upgrades (I tried to pass on everything spellcastery as it’s still my offspec but some pieces would have been sharded otherwise) and ended up with a little more healthy stats at the end of the raid.  This also includes a few ‘goodies’ I snagged myself off the auction house once ‘d had the time to sit and poke at R4L’s lists again.

Druid vs. Shaman

I found the change in style rather odd.  The most noticable was on fights like Heigan where I usually can’t heal during running except riptide and the occassional Lesser Healing Wave (oh and I don’t die from one hit of the fire on my shammy *ahem*). On four horsemen I tanked a boss easily – I could not do that on my shaman as, when I tried, I was taking too much damage whilst running which I couldn’t outheal.

It took me a little while to get used to stacking hots before damage hit but I got into the swing of it eventually – though I had to train myself not to abuse the instants so much as I felt they were running me out of mana too quickly.

Some things felt similar, though – I have at least one familiar button in Nature’s Swiftness and the mix of tank and raid healing abilities was present – if skewed in the other direction slightly.

I cannot wait for dual-specs – I love feral tanking spec as my druid and it will always be my ‘first love’ druid-wise but I did rather enjoy sitting back, chilling, and throwing some hots.  Even if I did feel horribly OP.

Randomly…

Male draenei look ‘interesting’ in little black dresses.  Screenshots are in the works along with a few other, interesting, Valentines themed pictures.  *grin*

The Lunar Festival has wound down and, just when you’re starting to feel the post-event blues, the Love is in the Air event begins! Azerothian Valentines is no simple festival of love, but a mysterious series of events leading to sinister revelations about the nature of everyones sudden devotions!

Valentines in Azeroth is, for the most part, about the giving and recieving of gifts – to your loved ones, to your cities and even to strangers!

Blizzard’s own page on the festival can be found here.

Achievements

We can’t really fool anyone now – achievements are the bread and butter of ‘Holidays’ in WoW. As much as I enjoy the in game events for what they are, and the silliness they entail, I can’t also help but feel the replayability (my favourite word on this blog) is boosted by the rampant achievement hunting. It doesn’t take much imagination to see that boosting involvement in this way will boost ‘attendance’ at such events and that greater participation will make people feel there’s more things ‘going on’.

How will they keep that feeling up when everyones got one years worth of events achievements? Who knows, but I’ll be interested to see if they’re using it as a stop-gap until they have time to develop further content or whether they will expand upon achievements yearly as they once expanded upon the events themselves.  So, without further ado…

• Fool For Love (Alliance) // Fool For Love (Horde)

The sub-achievements for Fool For Love are almost identical for both factions:

• Heartmender
• Flirt With Disaster (A) // Flirt With Disaster (H)
• Nearest and Dearest
• Nation of Adoration (A) // Nation of Adoration (H)
• Sweet Tooth
• My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose
• Shafted!
• Lonely?
• The Rocket’s Pink Glare
• Fistful of Love
• Be Mine!
• I Pitied the Fool

A pretty standard list here, with the obligatory ‘pvp based’ achievement (which I will do in conjunction with setting out great feasts for double-achievementification!).  The ‘Fool For Love’ achievement page on wowhead contains some good tips for the various sub-achievements all listed together so I suggest you check it out before you begin!

There are also some achievements available which are not needed for the Fool for Love seasonal achievement:

• Lovely Luck Is On your Side
• Perma-Peddle

Quests

The Love is in the Air questline begins with Dangerous Love (A) // Dangerous Love (H) and spirals through the event, eventually leading you to Arathi Highlands and a discovery about the silly goings on!  Remember to click on the cauldron beside the quest NPC after talking to him to recieve one of several event outfits.

Gift Giving (A) // Gift Giving (H) – How to get gifts for these is explained below.  If you have terrible luck getting rockets, arrows or petals to use for your achievements this is a bonefide way of getting them – you also get an hour-long buff when you complete the quest which is different depending on the city where you hand it in.

But How Do I Do This Pledge Stuff?

It’s a pretty simple system, but it can be a bit confusing when you consider the amount of stuff you’re going to have in your inventory.

I created a visual guide to pledging for those who’ve never expressed their love to a cities worth of guards and shopkeepers before!

First stop is your local innkeep (or friendly barmaid) – any innkeeper with a heart icon above them will do.  From them, you need to buy the following:

OR

PLUS

Once you have the required items, use either perfume or cologne and go find a guard or citizen with a heart over their head – I’ll use one of Stormwind’s finest for this example – and tell them how much you really care for and apprecite them! Of course, they want to show their appreciation too, so they’ll return your gift with one of their own:

This ‘Gift / Pledge  of Adoration‘, a present which can contain all of the ‘big goodies‘* from the event, will give you a debuff called ‘Adored‘. This will last for one hour and whilst you have this you can only get ‘cheap‘ presents by giving your love tokens to NPCs – which you want to do as these still drop items you will need.

So do it again.  And again…. and… again...

Of course sometimes, if they catch on to your loose affections, they might not return your feelings in the way you had hoped.  In fact, they might break your callous, pledge collecting little heart!

This requires you to find a ‘friend’ with a bracelet, who’s willing to use it upon you to unbreak your broken heart with their friendship.

This shouldn’t be too hard, given that there’s an achievement to use the frienship bracelets – just remember to return this in kind if you can.  Friendship bracelets come from the bigger gifts / pledges of adoration.

Making City Pledges

So, you’ve gone the rounds in your city, chatted up guards and shopkeepers and you have a huge pile of random stuff.  What now? Using Stormwind as an example again:

Cologne versus Perfume!?

You might imagine the choice is simple here – just grab whatever and use it – but this simply isn’t true.  In many cities the guard balance is skewed and,  simply, you’ll be  able to ‘talk to’ more guards if you choose perfume – with the exception of Darnassus where the balance swings the other way!

*Big Goodies

So, what event-only items can we get our greedy hands on?

For the WoW fashionistas, theres the usual round of festival chic fashion.

• [Lovely Purple Dress]
• [Lovely Red Dress]
• [Lovely Blue Dress]

• [Purple Dinner Suit]
• [Red Dinner Suit]
• [Blue Dinner Suit]

All of the above come from the Cauldron near the quest NPC after you’ve completed the event questline.  Another, rarer dress drops from the gifts / pledges of adoration rather infrequently:

• [Lovely Black Dress]

This item does not bind to a character and thus sellable or tradeable to your other characters.

The other rare items available from the pledges / gifts are:

• [Romantic Picnic Basket]
• [Truesilver Shafted Arrow]
  

The first being a summonable picnic basket with parasol which creates a little heart buff over yourself and other people when they join you by clicking on the item.

Lastly, there are the bouquets:

• [Bouquet of Red Roses]
• [Bouquet of Ebon Roses]

These are needed for one of the sub-achievements and the Red Roses are easiest to get – soloable by most people level 70 and above.  Personally I found the Dire Maul boss which drops it to be the easiest to reach without killing things – as a resto shammy I like to avoid killing trash as it simply takes so much longer even when its low-level mobs.

These are so much fun to use in a raid but you have to actually equip them to use and wait for them to come off the ‘on use equip cooldown’ to come off before you can use them.  This, combined with a 5 minute cooldown makes them less randomly fun than the loose petals but you can use these bouquets throughout the year.

Take the time to enjoy the Love is in the Air Event – it’s the last for a couple of months in the Azerothian calendar!

<3

A lot of this information is gleaned from experience at previous Love is in the Air celebrations, so if there are any changes I’ll see about rectifying them asap as I actuall get around to doing them this year.  Any comments about such are welcomed!

Edit: Fixed the image from 4x item to 5x item :)

Edit2: Added the Lovely Luck Is On Your Side and perma-peddle achievements!

Larísa wrote a post today about how the starting zones in Northrend are feeling a little underpopulated at the moment and how that affects how we play.  This is something which had actually become apparent to me recently, both within and outwith Northrend.  Larísa has stated that it was expected that Outlands would be so quiet and I agree on this point – I knew, intellectually, that Outlands would be so quiet once we all moved to Northrend but I don’t think I had really conceptualised it.

Outlands

The true realisation of it hit me this week when I walked into an area in Nagrand and saw a ’spawn’ happening.  I’m not sure if everyone will have seen this odd effect but it seems to have become common from some time mid-TBC where, on walking into an area, you see mobs all walking out from a mid-point as if they have just spawned.  I couldn’t find the blue post which I’d read before regarding this but it generally happens when you’re the first into the area for a while.

I’d never been that alone in Outlands.  Even with the large number of people rolling DKs or levelling other alts the place is just deserted in a way the old world never seemed to be.  Don’t get me wrong, the old world is pretty damn silent but, for me, its always been that way, it never felt jam packed full of people because I started playing after most people had gotten their first character or two (or five) to 60.

Outlands had always felt crowded to me.  Mains, then alts, then people doing various dailies or farming whatever – most zones were pretty packed.  Hell, even the bots contributed to the feeling of not being alone.

Northrend

Northrend felt rather overcrowded in the first few weeks.  Positively packed but, with the exception of Dalaran, Sholazar and the air surrounding Naxx everything already feels rather quiet, as Larísa has said.  The game is so much more interesting when you bump into people even if, like me, you’re not a huge fan of grouping with random strangers.

I wonder how much of the feeling of population spreading in Burning Crusade is from the latter half – where there were dailies added which pushed people into lower level zones and how much was based on the late levelling of alts (caused by the xp reduction for levelling) which pushed up mat farming and / or the number of people doing those dailies on their alts.

That’s all a bit speculative, of course.  Northrend’s occupation has only just begun so who knows where and when people will spread out.  Once people run out of their levelling ‘nest eggs’ will they start to farm more?  Will we have a ‘Netherwing’ or ‘Quel’Danas’ style hub which wish push people all over the continent and into other areas?

Here’s hoping.

/ramble