Ok, so, this post is terribly late as usual but the madness of levelling and new content and whatnot has distracted me even further.

I hit level 80 around 2am last Friday, deliberately making it a discovery-ding (the best kind!)  Looks kind of awesome getting that ding spell effect in the air, too!

I skipped Howling Fjord and Sholazar so I have something new for my alts to go through - I was rather glad I spent my last level and a half in Storm Peaks as it has some awesome quests and some pretty interesting utilisations of the new quest mechanics and vehicle technology which I might otherwise have left until ‘later’ to do (much like I find it hard to be motivated to do Icecrown after the mammoth levelling session I’ve just completed…).

Also, if I hadn’t levelled in Storm Peaks I might not have nabbed this pretty yet:

If you’re thinking that the [Reins of the White Polar Bear] (really, did they have to specify white?) looks a little small you’d be right - here’s a comparison versus the brown armored mount you can buy in Dalaran (thanks to Grav for modelling with his bear!):

Of course, only  a few days after that we’re all given a baby polar bear!  Khi was as delighted as I was and promptly took a rather nice screenie!

I’m a little overloaded at the moment and now that I’m 80 I’m trying not to overdo it too much - we’ve got long road ahead of us and I see no point in running to the end just to wait and get bored - some might see the road as ending at 80 but not me, nosir.  I’ve done my running, I’ve tired myself out and now is the time to go at a slow and steady pace.  Ok, I think I’ve probably worked that metaphor to death now…

Like many others I also started a Death Knight.  Despite plans to start a little dwarfette, I played around on the beta and came to the decision to roll a draenei.  I know, I know, I love my dwarves but sadly the dwarven animations look rather old compared to the shiny new draenei ones and I really, really, can’t stand the female dwarf casting animations.  I deleted my poor, forgotten, level 11 mage and brought her back as an undead killing machine.  They share looks and names so, in my mind, my mage ‘became’ a Death Knight and I’m levelling her with that in mind.  When I say levelling, though, I mean leaving her to build up rest-xp in Hellfire.  *ahem*

Azmoo also rolled a female draenei death knight and I ran over to meet him to see how closely they resembled one another.   Could almost be sisters, it seems, hehe…

My girl is the one in the middle - she shares a look with the progenitor of the name I also gave her - a female toll warrior I have on Sporeggar - Yjin (silent j!).  I’ll be updating the blog with her profile soon and updating my outdated character page.  I might also add something to th sidebar as I feel having Aurik at the top of the page and doing posts about healing has confused people as to what class I play (I’ve seen a few references to myself as a paladin, hehe).

I’m really in the mood to draw one of my chars doing something cool in Northrend but I’m not sure what yet! Any ideas on the back of a comment and posted below, please! *ahem*

Other than that I’ve been trying to motivate myself to finish off some quests for rep, poke about herbing on my hunter, and do every heroic I can.  I’ve respecced to resto (I was just getting to enjoy elemental, dual specs can’t come fast enough, goddamnit!) but I’m actually gathering off-spec enhance gear again - I’d really like to try it out as it now looks a lot more interesting than I felt it was before.

Enough of the rambling from me - back to playing!

3 comments

I’m back from my weekend away and trying like a madman to catch up (not just in levels, you buggers have been writing a hell of a lot of posts)!  My last post turned out to be slightly wrong - about 20 minutes after I posted it, said friend texted me my Wrath code and off I went into Northrend (Rosi, when can I grabs you for paying infos? ><).  I had a good few hours to play before I left  (until 7am *ahem*) and made it to level 72 before heading off.

I didn’t get to make an obligatory first day out post, sadly, and I didn’t keep up with NaBloPoMo.  I’m rather glad about the latter as I’ve really been enjoying my game time and I admit that the only reason this post is winging its way to you now is because EU realms have down time.  Damned maintenance!

So, the following are some random ramblings about the cool things I’ve seen in Wrath so far!  Go away with yer negative stuff, do not want!

Scenery

The first thing which impresses itself upon you about Wrath is the gorgeous scenery.  Now, anyone who’s been around me long enough knows I absoloutely love my screnshots and, well, lets just say I have Sunday Screenies set for the next year… *ahem* In reality, though, I’m probably going to make a few wallpapers and utilise the rest for the making of shiny posts!

Although I was on beta there’s a lot I didn’t see - I alt-tabbed out of WoW when flying on flightpaths on my pre-made chars so that I didn’t spoil myself and I’m so glad I did!  Some zones I never even saw on beta and I’m running around them drooling and taking tonnes of pictures (Zul’Drak, for example).

New Instances

When I played Vanilla and Burning Crusade WoW I didn’t instance much whilst I levelled and even when I hit 70 I wasn’t one for instancing that much.  Now, though, I’m levelling with the curve, I have awesome guildies who want to go along and everything is so new noone is tired of it yet.  I am loving it!

The new instances come with new boss mechanics and some old, though I don’t begrudge them those as they’re presented differently.  Every single one, so far, has been utterly gorgeous - either directly looks-wise or just in the wonderful ‘flow’ to the instance - Azjol-Nerub, for instance, is pretty but not as gorgeous as other instances.  The ‘flow’ of the intance, though, and the way it uses spider-web for flooring and a drop-down pathway sorta floored me.

I’m actually looking forward to tanking most of these when I level my druid - even though tanking new instances was one of my biggest in game ‘fears’.  At the moment I’m mostly dpsing on my shammy as we have a lot of healers and only one spot per group.  I have had the chance to heal Violet Hold and Gundrak, amongst others, though and I’m looking forward to seeing more challenging heroic versions as a healer.

New Quest Types

The variation and design of the quests has been staggering.  Though a few are bugged, those that do work have just blown me out of the water - even the ‘kill 40 basilisks and bring me their non-existant brains‘ type of quests have actually been enjoyable as they’ve been sprinkled between other quests and many of them have a twist of some sort.

Every time I’ve come across a new ‘quest type’ I’ve squealed delightedly but tried not to actually say more than “omg cool” so as not to spoil the surprise for others.  I also have to admit being delighted watching people who don’t bother to read quest text doing things so horribly wrong, like the mage BBB mentions.

Reading through quest texts i something I’ve not found to be a significant drain on my time (indeed it can reduce the time you spend looking for the wrong place…) and, despite only having played for three and a half days since the expansion came out, I’m only a little off level 77.

Levelling

Now, I know a lot of people say ‘why rush’ but… I’m really not rushing that much, for me.  I’ve always been a fast leveller and I often read quest descriptions for other quests whilst I run to do the first one.  I kill everything I see and I’ve been joining many, many instance groups so the XP stacks up quickly!

I also know that, if I do miss anything first time around, I’ll see it when I level on my druid, rogue or hunter…

PewPew!

I’d occassionally specced elemental before and completed levelling to 70 as a hybrid elemental-resto spec but this time I wanted full elemental.  Thunderstorm is so incredibly fun and I really like to be able to blast throug hthings nearly as fast as my enhancement brethren (most still out-pewpew me unless I have a nice crit-proc string).

Gear

No, besides the +3 gloves of pwnage being awesome, it’s the +50 boots of oh-dear-lord-I-look-sexy!  Seriously! As Yashima and Leafy point out, the clown effect doesn’t happen quite so markedly in Wrath and the gear is way more spiffily textured.  In fact, despite loving how my Skyshatter gear looks, I’m almost ashamed at its colourful hues when the darker, subtler, sexier Wrath gear peers woefully at me.  In fact, I’ve actually gotten more color-coordinated and matching as I levelled, rather than less!

Anyways, gonna catch some rest now, enjoy levelling or chilling at 80 for those who’re already there!

Back in my livejournal days, at new year, I used to always write up a little post detailing the cooler things that happened in that year - as many people did.  I thought that, at the end of the Burning Crusade era, I’d also like to do a little post detailing the cool things I enjoyed throughout the game these past few years and what memories have stuck with me.

Unfortunately I have a terrible memory and I only started to record my wow experiences around 8 months ago or so and thus my memories will be biased towards those I have easy access to, as it were.  There are some things, though, which have stuck with me from way back then…

To the Sporeggar(EU) community, I thank you.  You showed me that an RP server could be lots of fun and not just all of the bad stuff you hear about Goldshire…  It was the first server I hit 70 on and where discovered my love for druids!  Particularly, I fondly remember Maun, Zaédin and Wicoth whom I spent a lot of time with and whom I did my very first forays into the raiding world.  Maun for teaching me ‘how 2 durid’, Zaédin for being fun to RP with and Wicoth for helping me get my epic flight form first time ’round as well as running instances with me at 3am in the morning!  I know they’ll never read this but if you are from that server and bump into any of them say hi from Mharai.

Whilst I’m thanking people I can only give my deepest thanks to Lightwalkers for taking me in, letting the nublet come along with them, teaching me how to not be a complete nublet and inviting me to become an admin.  I love Lightwalkers, the people in it and the atmosphere.  If you /dkplist me one more time, though, -50 dkp! /hug

I will always remember dying at least four times after a boss has been downed to DoT damage - the first time being in Auchenai Crypts after already being combat rezzed by another druid and being the last one standing.  I ran around in joy and then hit the floor.

Other memorable deaths include our first kill, I think, on Kaz’rogal.  He resisted another rogue’s distract, that rogue vanished but put me into combat and I was swiftly splattered and had to watch the whole fight from the other side of the camp.

I will never forget another first kill, my first ‘first kill’ in fact - A’lar on the first night I’d ever seen him.  I was terribly under-geared and under-skilled and didn’t dare run after the other rogues onto the platform as I didn’t think I could react in enough time to jump off (I didn’t 100%  understand exactly how his abilities worked back then).  I think I managed to cheekily sit right in the centre-middle of that screenshot. *grin*

I remember my first run in Slave Pens - it was Heroic back in the days when heroics were still a challenge for non-hardcore raiders (no easy pvp gear, no badge gear etc.).  I absolutely hated the place and that one run shaped how I felt towards Slave Pens for a looong time.  Even now I’m not a huge fan of it!  I hope to avoid the kind of terrible introduction to an instance which puts me off it for the future.  I think being more adventurous about instances will probably help in this regard - my first Burning Crusade instance was when I hit level 70.

I remember rolling a teensy, tiny shaman and a similarly pint-sized druid and only a few months later taking both through their first raids - motivation to level them coming from all sorts of places.

The Burning Crusade brought changes which meant I could get one thing which I’d hankered after for quite some time - a ’saber mount!

[The Helm of the Claw] or ‘that bloody hat!’ has been a headpiece which has plagued me throughout TBC - from my druid, to my rogue, to my second druid.  I will never, it seems, be completely rid of that hat until Northrend!

Shamans were a much-scrutinised and visible part of this expansion and I have some awesome memories concerning shamans doing insances in multiples and even one where we had a shaman tank!

When Quel’Danas was launched, myself and a few other guildies logged onto vent together and spent most of the afternoon running the instance over, wiping repeatedly on Delrissa and having a blast.

Some ‘quickfire’ memories.

• Tanking a whole bunch of things for the first time - something I never thought I’d get to do!
• Flight Form.  Instant Cast.  ‘Nuff Said.
• Kodokodokodokodokodokodokodokodokodokodokodokodokodo! *grin*
• Seeing Illidan for the first time…

I remember starting a blog and having this awesome commenter who was asking my opinion about her blog.  I loved that feeling of community and friendship which I got outside of the game but within the community.

/hug

The pre-wrath events continue…

For a slightly shinier version download from here.

Stormwind Harbor Invasion

Thrall duelling Garrosh Hellscream

The Orgrimmar Invasion

Are you excited yet?

I am… *grin*

Ok, this is a shaman post.  More precisely a resto shaman post and probably most non-resto-shamans will be totally disinterested. I will give cookies to those resto shamans who manage to wade through my somewhat lacking evaluation herein of the relative merits of Lesser Healing Wave versus Chain Heal.

Since the patch I’ve been doing a lot of reading (in threads like this one at EJ)- shaman healing, depending on who you speak to, has not changed at all or has changed dramatically.  A lot of people, wishing to hang on to what they know and love, have insisted that all of the new talents are worthless at best, a nuisance at worst as they do not affect chain heal.  Others, though, have suggested that we might or could change our healing style - relying more heavily on lesser healing wave and on single target healing or at least having this as a viable option.

Personally, I’m quite new to healing so I’m quite eager to learn new playstyles in the hope that it’ll improve how I heal overall.

Much of this really is pie-in-the-sky thinking as, in reality, how we are specced at the moment does not reflect entirely how we will be at 80 and the encounters at the moment are somewhat dominated by priests and druids spamming AoE heals whilst their mana pool barely suffers - that, we are told, will change.

However, the point remains that we have a lot of AoE healing and less of the old-fashioned heavy tank healing going on - in our guild at the moment we only have two regular paladin healers and a tonne of druids and priests with myself the sole representative of shaman healing most nights.

Here’s how I’m finding my role, at the moment:  I’m AoE healing with chain heal if people are taking large hits predictably (i.e. Naj’entus style) or are too spread out to be effectively healed by CoH / Wild Growth.  The rest of the time I’m using lesser healing wave.

When I seen the posts concerning LHW (especially glyphed)I decided I’d go try some quick and dirty tests.  Unfortunately the two raiders who usually do our WWS’s hadn’t been able to attend many raids recently so I was stuck for a while with what I can test on my own (yes, I fail, I always forget to start my combat log).  The one thing I could test at least, I figured, was just how fast I ran out of mana when chain-casting each spell.

Results:

• 1 minute 18 seconds Chain Heal
• 1minute 28 seconds Lesser Healing Wave

This is with a mana spring, no mana tide, no potions, no replenishment and straight chain-casting - refreshing Water Shield when it was used up.  The reason for the longevity of the LHW spam is undoubtedly the procs on Improved Water Shield adding just enough to keep be going those few seconds longer - even though I need to refresh it more often and let my mp5 lurch for a second whilst it’s down.  Of course this is under a non ’stressful’ situation with no movement and no worrying about the tank dying if I stop healing to refresh water shield.  Of course, this was pre-T6 2pc so the numbers would likely now be more in the favour of chain heal (realms are down, so  I can’t test it) but even so, LHW is not entirely the useless mana drain it used to be.

When looking at the effectiveness of one heal over the other or how to use them in a given situations we have to look at both:

• mana pool / longevity
• effective healing

The new and exciting boost to  healing for LHW is very much affected by the super-glyph which caused all of this speculation in the first place - [Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave].  This very much ups the healing throughput of LHW and makes it more comparable to Flash of Light.  This makes it a rather nice tank-heal (as they are most often the person wearing my ES in ‘progress content’).

‘Testing’ Further

I know, calling it testing is a travesty.  I have no control numbers, have respecced, have played differently and was pretty damn ill tonight when I tried (running to the bathroom a few times between tries, erp Xx) but I did find some interesting changes nonetheless.

The first few bosses in Sunwell are a pretty good test of variability in healing, in  my mind, as they requires heavy AoE healing and also some strong tank healing.  Brutallus, in particular, was a fight we’d had trouble with last time we tried (successfully downing him but having a really hard time keeping the tanks alive).

This was where I particularly wanted to test how well my mana regen could cut it with the new ’style’. This week’s fight was a lot smoother, which I attribute to having an extra Paladin as well as people being a bit more ‘aware’ of the fight but I did feel that I ‘made a difference’.

Spec

I made a bit of a mistake when I respecced a little too quickly back from elemental after a weekend of pew-pew.  I forgot Riptide - realising where that extra talent point had come from when one of the other shamans mentioned it.  D’oh.  However, I had been feeling like I had been abusing it - using it as a crutch heal and not really thinking about when and where it would do best just “omg damage, instant heal!”. Whilst this is cool in a 5-man there’s really little need for it in a raid - especially when you can have a 1.4s (or lower) healing wave hit a target before they die at a much lower mana cost.

I also, perhaps controversially or perhaps just idiotically, didn’t spec for [Improved Healing Wave].  Why? Well, for one, I know I’ll be respeccing to elemental in a week for levelling so I can really play with my specs for now and secondly because… I never use Healing Wave.  Since I was going for what I’m calling my ‘tank haelz spec’ - that is focusing on improving LHW, mana regen and crit alongside a strong Earth Shield, I missed out Healing Way.  I’ve never liked that talent, if I’m honest, and the lack of downranking makes keeping it up tedious.  I do not like to be ‘locked in’ to maintaining a stack of healing like that, either, especially when I’ve got some newly discovered versatility in my healing!  I’m not saying I won’t go back to it when I have more points but, at the moment, talent points are thin on the ground and I wanted to play with something different.

So, I picked up [Totemic Focus] instead (which I’d previously not bothered with) because despite, yes, 5 minute totems, high mobility fights in large areas require you to reposition your totems and some fights require different totems to be placed at different times.  I was going for uber-mana-efficiency, remember.

I also picked up one point in [Imp. Reincarnation] which I was torn about.  On the one hand, if everything goes well, then it’s a total waste of points.  On the other I’ve helped finish two first kills by rezzing with nearly half mana and health. I really, truly, from the bottom of my heart wish they’d make this baseline.

2 points in [Imp. Water Shield].  I had read some ideas on putting only one or two points here to negate the problem of constantly having to refresh water shield constantly - it goes off, but  not often enough to make it a major nuisance.

[Cleanse Spirit].  We have the option to pick up another tool which means we become valuable secondary or even primary decursers.  This was a nice backup for Kalecgos, though I have a feeling that, dependent on how the raids are in Wrath, I might rather have that point elsewhere.

[Blessing of the Eternals] for the crit - the bonus to Earthliving is not something to sniff at but not really incredible.  Still, not bad for 2 points.

[Ancestral Awakening]… well, it’s based around all of those crit heals I’m going to be doing so why not? In  practice, though, less than 1% of my healing comes from AA if I’m only raid healing.  Still a bit undecided about it but I might switch these points to focused mind or something - again, though, FM is very situational.

[Tidal Waves] is nice and will be nicer with 3.0.3 (which goes live on EU realms today).  A chain heal when there’s heavy raid damage going on and then a nice, fast heal for a tank or a low dps.  This was really nice for Mount Hyjal and literally a lifesaver in SWP a few times (especially with no bloody Riptide!).

[Ancestral Knowledge] + two points in [Improved Shields] rounds out my current build.  Although that second point in shields should have been in Riptide I don’t begrudge it now.

Oh, and no [Healing Grace].

Tier 6

With the ‘easymode’ tier 6 instances now in effect I’ve come into some shiny T6 tokens pretty rapidly - shoulders and head are mine, gloves I already had (one for each spec because no-one else wanted them).  I have a very good healing helm but the tier 6 would be a bit of an upgrade and would work me towards that 4-set bonus.  However, with all of the above mentioned I began to wonder.  If I have elemental gloves and an elemental headpiece, whilst also giving some desirable stats (more crit etc.) would give me a two piece t6 elemental set bonus to play with.  You know, the insane one which gives:

Whenever you have an air totem, an earth totem, a fire totem, and a water totem active at the same time, you gain 15 mana per 5 sec, 35 spell critical strike rating, and 45 spell power.

That’s some nice set-bonus! I decided to buy the elemental headgear and use this setup (2pc T6 elemental) when I was primarily using LHW so as to gain the extra crit and mana regen.

Results

The figures for both Brut kills looked something like this:

The first is the fight on which I was using chain heal primarily and with gear with a little less crit rating.

The second fight I’m using t6 2pc elemental and crit gear and using lesser healing wave primarily.

Although my heals per second were reduced using mostly lesser healing wave (but as you can see, still using chain heal when appropriate) I did output more overall healing though the difference was negligible.   My overheal was up a little (as expected when tank healing) but I almost doubled my healing on our Paladin tank (from 185,820 to 272,003) whilst gaining a small increase on our warrior tank (178,518 to 195, 660).  Although these also reflect a slightly longer fight (the second kill was 18 seconds longer) I do think that the increase in healing is too big a difference to be brought by time alone.

The side effects of using lesser healing wave, too, were interesting.  As a lot of the new abilities happen on-crit for LHW, HW and now Riptide they played a much bigger part in the ‘lesser healing wave’ trial.

Ancestral Awakening with chain-heal spam made up less than 1% of my healing.  With LHW as my primary heal it made up 4% of my healing - not quite making up for the loss of ’splash healing’ from chain heal but certainly not something I consider a terrible side effect.

The death in the first try was deliberate, sort of.   I got the flame debuff and ran out of mana whilst healing from the flame spot.  I told the flame healers to let me die as I had reincarnation up and could get mana back by rezzing myself.

Despite the above, I ended the second try with more mana and it’s clear to see, looking at the WWS, why. From the first attempt, water shield was my fourth highest source of mana - providing 2,564 mana over the course of the fight.  On the second kill, with 2/3 Imp. Water Shield and 2/5 Imp. shields I regained 4,917 mana from water shield - over half of what replenishment also gave me.

I didn’t feel refreshing water shield was a big issue - using it every time I had a spare moment as I’ve always done out of habit (I reflexively tap that key when on all characters now…).

So…

Chain heal spam gives you a little more splash healing, it is the king of your raid healing arsenal and will be a very effective tool.  Even when full specced to take advantage of the new abilities via lesser healing wave I used chain heal 27% of the time and up to 60-80% on splash damage fights (like Felmyst).  Chain heal also spreads Earthliving Weapon more (and I only just now notice that I likely forgot to imbue it on the second Brut kill… something about it being an imbue means I forget it where I would never have forgotten mana oil, bah).

Lesser healing wave is now a viable and strong heal which can be utilised to effectively tank heal.  Whilst giving up on a little AoE healing and efficiency you gain more mana back and still have a little AoE healing going via Ancestral Awakening.

Why Bother?

Why even look into all of this now, it’s a bit useless, right?  In my mind, not really.  Yes, numbers and fights will change between now and 80 but by then all shamans will be able to pick up all of the new talents if they wish and will have to learn to use them.  I’d like to be ready to start the new ‘raiding season’ running.

TL;DR

Lesser Healing Wave spam seems like it could be viable and even preferable on some fights. Learning how and when to use it over chain-heal is a skill which any shamans not from pre-TBC should learn and they should understand how it will affect how they use the new talents and skills they’ve been given.

In 10-man healing this variability is going to be the bee’s knees - you got a druid or priest with you?  Let them handle any low level splash damage with their AoE’s and small top-off heals whilst you tank heal.  Have a paladin?  Throw out those beefy chain heals and Earthliving procs.

And, yes, I know I’m a terrible theorycrafter but I did enjoy being able to look at something other than chain heal and I’ll probably do some stricter and more controlled testing when I hit 80!

I’ve been terribly bad and not done a ‘Sunday Screenies’ post for almost four weeks now! Terrible slacking on my part due to being busy with playing and other things but I have a few nice screenies to share.  As the title suggests, the screenies below are from Wrath - I’ve been playing about on the beta and taken some shots which I’ve been reluctant to post until now.  With the big day on the horizon, though, I thought I’d get in the mood and post the few screenshots I’d taken which turned out well.  There are none pertaining to quests or events - just some nice scenery shots.

Still, for those who wish to remain unspoiled…

Read more

I’m sorry, I know I’m not nearly in the majority about this subject but, as such, I feel I have to shout louder than the lot of ye’ about it. *ahem*

I’m talking about the post 3.0.2 “omg the instances got hit by a nerf bat and we all hate it, wah!” stuff that’s been going around.  Something like here, and here. My take on it is more like what BBB(BBBBBBB) says here.

I’m a little saddened to see attitudes like this:

Considering how easy it went I’d be surprised if we didn’t kill Illidan pretty soon. Which of course is fun and nice in one way, but still I can’t help feeling slightly disappointed. Will we get any more epic raiding experience at all before the expansion? Maybe in Sunwell. That’s my hope. Because if Sunwell isn’t better, this patch was the end to raiding in TBC the way that we knew it. Now it’s not the real stuff. It’s badge and gear farming. That’s the sad truth.

I miss the wipe nights already.

and

It was rather ridiculous, really. The difficulty is gone, and with it some of the enjoyment. We still have some new content to poke at, Sunwell, which I expect we’ll see soon, and I expect some challenge there, but to have Illidan in his previous form stolen from us is somewhat disappointing.

from Larísa and Namthe - two bloggers whom I respect greatly.  It’s not only them but one or two guildmates who have mentioned a similar “Oh, it’s terrible, I hate doing this” sort of attitude.

This whole scenario reminds me a lot of the whole 2.4 situation.

Yes, it is easier, much easier.  Ridiculously easy for people who are geared for it and who were on the verge of completing the content.  I know, in my heart, that Lightwalkers would have gotten down a pre-nerf Council this week and might have had a few shots at Illidan.

However - those few guilds still raiding will understand when I say that it’s been hard to keep people coming back to those raids.  We were struggling to fill that 25 man group every week and might not have even been able to go to Black Temple two out of three nights for lack of a tank or healer.

Personally, I got to do something I wanted to do since I started raiding - stand at Illidan’s feet.  I have now seen all of Black Temple, I’m happy even if it is ‘post-nerf’.  We’re going to visit Illidan tomorrow night (we had no FR tanks so we didn’t try him more than for giggles on Sunday night) and we might take his nerfed rear down.  We’ll get to see Black Temple to completion.

Raiding is for fun.  There’s no fun in no challenge all the time but this is not meant to be challenging content any more.  This is also not how new content will be.  This is the time to go, kill some bosses, get some nice levelling gear and complete those achievements.  This is a time to run through a raid instance without the trials, tribulations and stress usually associated with them. Instead of crying about lost chances please think of looking to these next few weeks as a time for fun, rest and relaxation before the new ‘raiding season’ starts again in a month or so.  It’s also a very nice way for dps and tanks to try out their new specs and make tweaks without sacrificing their raid viability to do so.

As stated by BBB:

Suddenly, it was as though we had finally been given that feeling that Tier 6 raiders have long known… the joys of fighting something you know very, very well… with the power to hand it a serious beating… but without making it a 3 man snoozefest.

I can’t agree with him enough - whilst I won’t be patting myself on the back if kill Illidan tommorrow night I will still enjoy it!

It’s jumpin’, there’s a buzz in the air, people are feelin’ stirrin’s deep doon and its like some sort o’ adrenaline rush goin’ aroon.  Old friends are poppin’ up, people are goin’ back to their roots… Everyone’s heard that there’s somethin’ brewin’ up north and they’re sortin’ their afairs.  It’s excitin’ but ah’m no half feelin’ that ah could be doin’ wi’ a quiet corner and a wee pint an’ a hauf.

Pets, mounts, achievements, inscriptions, new pets, new talent trees, new spells, new addons, new layouts, new everything!

On top of that, every five minutes someone asks “what’s a lexicon of power” followed shortly by “and where do  I find that?”.  Inscriptions are making stupid amounts of gold on my server (especially the few minors available) and people are asking a million questions about the who, where what and why of them. Oh and people complaining about the spam caused by people getting achievements.  Especially when you take 10 people to do the Leeeerroooyyy! one and everyone’s achievement hits the guild at once…

Things have been utterly crazy.  I know it’s all a little ‘old news’ now but, personally, I’m only just coming off of the new-content high!

And then they decided to hit us with Hallows End, too.  Evil buggers! More on that in another post.  On that note - expect a little pick-up in posting from now on.  Despite a rash of unfortunate circumstances and busyness combined with a little bit of writers ‘doubt’ I am slowly working myself back into the writing saddle (and dear god how many metaphors did I murder there?).

Coherency, right.  Well, this post is a quick roundup of the smaller things which won’t get a post of their own in the coming few days or so.

Patch went pretty nicely for us Europeans - most of our realms were only an hour late coming up and, although we’ve had a few outages, and a little experience of the mount and pet bug (where they ‘disappeared’) things have been otherwise relatively less failurefull than the usual major patch.

Oh, except the ding every two minutes as everyone completes an achievement.

Haircut Stuff

Matt challenged people to post their changed ‘do’s’ so here are the three I changed (I can’t bear to change Aurik - there’s no hairstyle which I think looks better on him).

Avarix

Went for a very similar look here but I wanted a floofier ponytail as I was sick of the current one I had ’sticking’ to my back.

Jhai

Jhai’s let her hair out and grown it out a bit.  Was getting a bit tired of her ’schoolgirl’ look - something I hadn’t anticipated when I made her (the look, not the geting tired of, ahem)

Dryn

At first I was going to leave Dryn as-is but I decided, screw it, he needed a change and, to be honest, I’m glad I did. Of course, 7gold+ seems a bit steep for getting someone to tie your hair back!

Achievements Stuff

Whilst I will write an extended post on my thoughts on later, I was quite pleased to have achieved one particular goal not long after the patch:

• Ambassador of the Alliance

Of course, I’m equally saddened that I didn’t quite get:

• Shop Smart, Shop Pet Smart

48 pets… and probably hours of grinding red whelps in the vain hope one would drop for me.  Of course, I was delighted to have grabbed a Firefly (something I’ve wanted for ages).  I’m hoping to grab myself a [Sinister Squashling] and a [Magical Crawdad Box] (another pet I utterly adore) to make up the last two.  Of course the latter requires several other achievements to come first, such as Master Fishing!

Hunter Stuff

Talking of pets, Dryn spent a whole lot of time hanging around the Barrens after the patch. I had been checking over my usual pet-lover-haunt to pick which of the nice, shiny new pets I wanted.  I picked out a nice Netherskate and went off to tame it.  When I was browsing, though, a familiar face cropped up.  Takk.

Now, Takk and my hunters (yes, multiple, I keep starting them and abandoning them around level 20-30…) have a long history.  My first ever WoW char, even before Aurik, was a Moo Hunter called Ouranosin.  He made it to his 21st level before I rerolled to play with my other half on the alliance side.  I had seen the raptors the game had and thought ‘hey those are funky, I wants one!’ and saw that Takk, a lovely, black skinned raptor, would make a perfect companion to my pure white bull Tauren.   It took me a looong time - Takk was a rare, hit hard and fast and I was, to put it bluntly, a noob.  The kind of noob hunter who is up there alongside their pet hitting with their weapons! /sigh

The next few hunters also aimed for Takk but all ended up getting something else (Ghost Cat, Tallstrider, Wolf) as they bypassed the level to get Takk.  Dryn has had a Tallstrider (Aoi) and then a Carrion Bird (Horizon) as his main pets as well as, briefly, his ZG tiger (Monsoon).  Sadly I had to let Monsoon go but I just wasn’t feeling close to him as a pet - cats aren’t really my thing.   I took him to STV and let him go before continuing on to Ratchet.

Cue spawn point camping, ala BRK. 3 days later and Dryn got himself a new companion and I’m glad I did.

The auto-level was the factor that spurred me to go after him now - I couldn’t have levelled him enough before with how little I play my hunter- but level 65 is a fine level of pet for a marks hunter who pretty much only grinds and I now have a companion who I’m truly happy with - and in a small homage to the kitty I’d had to let go I’ve named my new raptor Typhoon.

I also have to say that since the patch I’ve been enjoying my hunter immensely… He’d always been my ‘gather bot’ character whom I didn’t bother to gear beyond lucky drops (*coughspear*cough)  and I hadn’t really ‘enjoyed’ the hunter class so much but now I’m really feeling the love - I have a tonne of new toys and, I must say, misdirect, readiness, misdirect, is just insanely nice when you have a slightly lesser equipped tank and some t6 dps!

Look ma, I’ma big hunter now! *ahem* ( big thanks to those in BA chat who helped me spec him on patch day!).

Epic Stuff

No, not the wearing kind, the skill kind!  I’d been dithering for a while about getting Avarix an epic mount.  My shammy is my main now but he’s still fluttering about on a slow flyer.  He has no gathering skills, though, and rarely ‘goes anywhere’ as he’s done questing etc.  However, the last few days have shown how annoying it is to be stuck back on a slow flyer for questing and so, when I went to pick up the trick-or-treat candy in Shadowmoon Valley I couldn’t resist and spent the windfall I’d made from inscription to pick Avarix up a shiny new mount.

All I can say is wheee~~

I’m sure I’ve forgotten something I meant to add here but I’m too eager to begin a few other posts I have in mind to work on this one too long *ahem*.

European servers have gone down now and we now begin our long, arduous wait until the realms are back up.  Given the worries some of the guys over the sea are having I think I’ve resigned myself to not seeing our realms up until late evening tomorrow but when they do… well…

Apprehension

I’m a little scared, to be honest.  Change is always a little worrying - so much to learn, so much to do!  This patch brings with it new specs and talents, a new profession (along with a new set of considerations in the form of glyphs).  I will have to respec 4 level 70’s and hope I get it right, and I will have to glyph them all up appropriately.

I will have to re-do all my addons and find replacements for the ones which aren’t working.  I will have to deal with rethinking how I heal and how I conserve my mana.  I’m going to have to relearn to tank, too, on the druid  and to dps effectively on my rogue.  I will need to learn how to work my hunter too, but I’ve never been much good at that anyway *ahem*.

Then there’s learning inscription and stocking the gbank with enough for everyone!

Elation

On the other hand, I’m excited.  So many new changes, so many things to explore and wonder of all wonders replayability concerning old content with the brand spanking new achievements systems.  There’s nothing more fun than running around doing ‘old school’ stuff with yer friends in game.  Like spamming /chicken together for 20 minutes…

Spending time with friends doing these old achievements is something I’m majorly looking forward to - putting achievements into the game four weeks before Wrath was a genius move - it gives people something to do, other than twiddle their thumbs, until the expansion itself hits the shelves.

My characters can have their first haircut since they were conceived and my bags will no longer be stuffed with pets and mounts.

Raids will be made more interesting from tomorrow, too, with new synergies coming in to play and the ‘nerf’ to HP most of the raid bosses will be getting!

Mixed Feelin’s

I really can’t wait to see the effect some things will have in play.  Although I have been on beta there’s a whole different side to this sort of thing when you’re actually playing it, on live, with all of your guildies in a raid - even if just a fun one.  I’m not looking forward to the million questions in general and trade (though most of my chars have trade channel turned off) but I am looking forward to being able to sort out some shiny new glyphs for my guildmates! Mixed feelin’s.  Perhaps tommorrow will bring more solid ones (like hate as I wrestle with my addons)…

Achivement Completed: “Create a spam post due to boredom whilst the servers are down!”

*ahem*

Well, ah huv tae admit.. ah’m fond o’ havin’ a wee critter or two aroon’ the hoose.  Especially mah wee dragon - it’s like a part o’ the family, ken?  Still, seems some types are goin’  a wee bit overboard - the headquarters here is overflowin’ wi’ a’ sorts o’ critters!

Things have been a bit quiet around here, I apologise.  Between a bad cold and some in-game activities (like running all over the world in search of pets) I’ve not had time to post.  Hopefully things should return to normal some time next week when my cold will hopefully subsided and I’ll have oh-so-much I want to talk about!

So - pets! I’m a bit mad about them - maybe not so much as some but I likes to hoard and napture any I can get my paws on.  Each of my characters has a signature pet or one which means something particular to them, or is special to them even if only by virtue of being ‘first’.  Mharai had her [Magical Crawdad Box],  Avarix has his [Scorched Stone], Jhai has her [Captured Flame] and Aurik has his [Sprite Darter Egg].

Overachieving

Any others who are pet mad will know of the new achievement in Wrath which requires you to collect 50 pets.  But what about those who like pets and maybe have a few stashed here or there and maybe want to quickly make up the difference, or those over-achieving completionists who must have every achievement available but have never really been into pets before?

I just thought I’d post some quick resources and tips for those who don’t already have vast collections, much as I did not before last week.

Two of the best places to get pet information are, undoubtedly, warcraftpets and the wowwiki page on small pets.  Both have comprehensive lists of the available pets and their relative rarity.

You best ’starter set’ will come from getting all faction starter pets - they require no rep, only the time to go and grab them from whichever hermit, crazy lady, random vendor or emo undead guy happens to ‘breed’ them.  A trip to your own or the neutral auction house means you may also be able to grab some cross-faction pets and if you have no luck with this then you might consider a post on your realm forum asking some people from the other faction to list them.

Most of the rest of the pets available, though, require rep, grinding, or quests.  Some simple ones would be the chicken quest in Westfall (available to horde with some alliance help), and going to The Deadmines for a green wing macaw.  Harder quests include the Lower Blackrock Spire Worg pup / Spiderling quests (soloable as a stealth class or those classes with some form of survivability - I did it as a resto shaman, aggroing only three groups and each time using an elemental to save my rear) and rep grinds such as Sha’tari Skyguard (which has very few dailies and only small increments from mob kills.  Getting a firefly, hyacinth macaw or any of the dragons will take some considerable grinding unless you’re lucky.

Reputation / Skills

Now is a good time to do some dual purpose grinding - Exalted with Sporeggar and Sha’tari Skyguard both give access to pets (plus tabards) and hunting whelps has such a wide level range that you can almost always be skilling up skinning.  Want that white kitten from Lil’ Timmy?  Get your fishing pole out and get some skill points whilst you wait for him to spawn!

Gaining fishing skill means you can have a shot, eventually, at catching Mr. Pinchy and you might as well do the Crocolisks in the City fishing daily if it pops up as that gives you yet another chance at a pet which you cannot get from any other source.

I’ve gained almost 200 skill points in skinning, 50-60 in fishing and gotten a faction exalted just whilst going for this achievement and I expect to get another faction soon - I’ve also seen bits of the world I’ve not seen for ages.

Cross Faction Sales

This is the time for many enterprising individuals to make a pretty penny by grabbing some pets and travelling to their local cross-faction Auction House.  Even better if you are able to get a hold of them and sell them at an even higher price on your faction auction houses to avid collecters!

Critter Collections

I know a lot of people recently have been posting their various hoards of ore or herbs and the like so here I offer my hoard: pets! I have two sets - pets for my druid and pets for my shaman - and this screenshot is now a few days old so I’ve added some engineering pets to it as well as a white kitten carrier.  This of course does not include the around 12 or so pets each character has in their bags / banks so both characters are well on their way to the achievement come patch day.  You don’t even want to see our guild bank after three of us decided to put some ’spares’ in for other guild members, hehehe.

Only a few days left until the patch, though, so you better be fast if you haven’t started your collection!  Wrath should make it a lot easier to meet the 50 pets needed, though, so if you don’t want to run all over the world doing silly quests and sillier grinds then you might want to hold off.  Happy hunting!