So, as usual, this post is coming terribly late /sigh

I had the wonderful fortune, last time I was pottering about on the beta realm, to bump into a fellow EU-ite blogger!  Just as I was wandering through the leatherworking trainer’s shop I ran past an oddly familiar female human priest.  Cue a double take when I realised it was none other than Sephrenia from Guild Mum.  Oddly enough I’d just commented on her site saying I’d like to see her around on the beta if she was figuring on doing anything fun!

We chatted for a little bit, but I had to go grab some things on another char and made my farewells.  Since Softi was on and also chatting back and forth I suggested we make a wee channel for the EU bloggers instead of struggling to play about with a million whispers (multi-tasking, whassat?).

So, for any EU bloggers who happen to be on the beta, if you want to chat we’ve started a chat channel: eubloggers (yes, we’re terribly imaginitave *ahem*).  It’s not often we’ll get the chance to hang out together on one realm so I’d love to see anyone who happens to be about!

I don’t often rant here - in fact, I shy away from it like some sort of plague.  I do this as I know my rants tend to be very different to my usual writing form and, often, get slowly angrier as they progress.   However, I ask your forgiveness in this matter as, in reality, it is only my wish to put my point across vehemently which makes my wording so extreme or my writing a little more emphatic than usual.

So, what is this issue that has me irked, annoyed and agitated?  Well, at the moment quite a few things concerning the beta and people scrambling to denounce specs and classes as OP / UP before they’ve even had a chance to mature or even be completed.  Most of these I will not defend overly as I also do not know what will happen and arguments where both sides are based on speculation are generally somewhat… pointless?

One particular argument is one which is mostly based around personal feelings and beliefs (of which I have plenty experience *ahem*) is that of ‘Big Green Blob Syndrome’, or, “omg all the classes are losing their uniqeness /crai”.

My view on this? Mostly complete and utter nonsense.  Gaining a similar buff to a class or an ability which overlaps a now available buff does not make one class more or less unique than another.

The reason I’ve seen cited for these changes, by blue posters, is to make it so that you do not have to rely overly on stacking one class or deny a friend and good player a place on your raid team simply because they do not enjoy or have the gear for a ‘good’ raid spec (boomkins, retridins, MM hunters, frost mages for example).  Now I know you may wail and cry that there are examples of these specs already raiding and doing well but I have not yet heard of a guild who stacks boomkins - feral or resto are more useful for the ‘class benefits’ - in this case, battle res, innervate etc. - and the benefit of bringing two along is negligible - improved faerie fire cannot stack and the aura competes with the better buffs an elemental shaman could bring in their place, for example (alongside self res, a full set of totems, heroism…).

So, allowing a lot of classes to share buffs or simply making it so that similar buffs don’t stack no matter what the class is means that you only need “some dps, one with an AP booster, some tanks, one with an armor / AP reducer or slower, and some healers capable of… healing” rather than “we need at least two shamans, two priests, one warrior, one paladin tank, one survival hunter, two rogues, three warlocks and two mages minimum”.  The direction they are going in will allow for more freedom of choice for the player and for the raid as a whole.

You should be able to play with your friends and you should be able to play in a spec you like competitively. Burning Crusade was a step towards that (Wow, druids, shamans and paladins don’t have to be healers all the time?) and I’m hoping Wrath will continue the trend.  In fact, in my opinion, this allows for a far greater degree of individualism than if classes were restricted to one or two ‘amazing’ raid specs with the other being left in the dirt.

Crossover does not equal cross out, for example:

On my Shaman I rely heavily on +healing and mp5, holy Paladins in my guild also rely partially on these.  We both heal, use shields and choose similar ‘extras’ (rings, trinkets, food etc.). Does that mean we lack flavour compared to each other?  I don’t think so.  We’re very different classes.  If I gain a good, fast single target heal worth casting it still doesn’t make me a Paladin and a Paladin gaining some multi-target healing does not make them a Shaman.  Big mechanics - like totems and blessings, magical shields versus elemental shields, mitigation versus off-spec dps will always make these two healing specs feel very different.

However,  if need be I could single-target heal or they could raid heal without gimping the raid.  If we only have 8 paladins available for one evening why should that stop us from just saying ‘lets go!’?  Having similar skills across multiple classes simply means that a big glaring gap in their toolset (using the above example) as a healer has been reduced a little, allowing them to fill a healer spot rather than just a ‘paladin’ or ’shaman’ spot.

More specifically, having only certain classes able to ‘cleanse’ certain debuffs means having to build a raid around those classes for specific encounters.  Having these sorts of abilities as available from certain talents (without adding them as general class skills) means being able to have each specialist-spec have a tool-set wide enough to not be a burden simply by playing a class and spec they enjoy.

This is why I am supportive of the efforts to spread the love around, talents wise.  This is why I am glad they are doing so and why, I hope, others might begin to see all of this in a more positive light.

After half writing this post I noticed that Rohan at Blessing of Kings touched on another aspect of what I was trying to say in his post on the new buff system:

I think that, on the whole, this will be a good change for the game. There are some posters at EJ however, who feel that this will lead to a new form of raid stacking. Essentially, you figure out the minimum number of characters to cover all the buffs and debuffs, and then stack the rest of the raid with the flavour-of-the-month DPS class.

This is a possibility. However, in my view, there are essentially two types of raiding guilds: guilds which have access to multiple characters of every class and spec; and guilds which don’t. Maybe the first type of guild will stack, but they would have stacked anyways. But this change will make life a lot easier for the second type of guild, allowing much more leeway in recruitment and raid make-up.

I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment - hardcore raids who must have optimal setups will find a way to ‘exploit’ the new system.  Other guilds, who are more based around friendships or friendly, more paced raiding, will be able to raid more comfortably with an un-balanced number of one class or other.  I refuse to believe, at the moment, that granting buffs and abilities to multiple different classes will mean a loss of uniqueness for that class.  I believe, in fact, it does almost the opposite - allowing any one person to play their class in the spec they enjoy with the knowledge that they are a positive force for their raid group and friends.

Ah cannae say ah find the sight o’ the knickers o’ some big blue demon aw that appealin’ but Jhai seems tae be somewhat pleased a’ this picture she took.  Somethin’ about action shots an’ dreams and… well, ah don’t really want tae know why that lass is so keen on gettin’ hersel’ hit like that.  Druids, eh?

SQUEE I got to tank Prince, I got to tank Prince!  *ahem*

I know the screenie this week isn’t too amazing to look at but it marks a big achievement for me.  There are bigger bosses, there are badder bosses, there are more complex bosses to tank and we got about the easiest infernal drops you could hope for last night… But I TANKED PRINCE.  One of the main reasons I got so irked with my first druid / guild was being asked to sit out and dps whilst a warrior tanked.  I am not hugely fond of kitty dps (though it is growing on me now…) but I love tanking.  I wish you could have a section in the new achievements window to list ‘personal achievements’ - this is one I’d add.

I also tanked Attumen (I’ve only been on midnight before), Moroes, Maiden, Illhoof (had only done Kil’rek before) and Nightbane - and my guildies had to listen to me squeeing about tanking them each time, hehe.

This post brought to you by Anna Corp™.  The idea of the Friday Five RP questions intrigued me when Anna first posted them - I’m a fan of RP within and outwith World of Warcraft - but I wasn’t up to getting my thoughts together last week in a coherent enough form.

This week, though, I am in a writingful mood and the questions tickled my imagination enough that I decided, what the hey, lets have a go!  I’m going to go with Avarix for this first one as, despite being on a normal realm, I still assign character to my… characters.  It’s a good way of keeping myself amused whilst grinding but I don’t go nearly as in depth as  I would when making an RP character.  Doing these questions allows me to flesh out the little ponderings I’ve had about my various characters.

When is your character’s birthday?  Does he/she know?

Avarix is a springtime child - he was born sometime around the Azerothian equivalent of April 3rd.
What is your character’s favorite place in the world?  Why?

Avarix has lost all sense of Draenor as his home.  Destruction, pain and fear are all that are in the mind of the young Draenei when he thinks back to his time there.  Thus, it is in Azeroth that he finds himself seeking new and peaceful places.  His ‘apprenticeship’ under Nobundo, as with many others, has brought a new appreciation for the land and all it contains.

He has travelled to places that some humans, gnomes or dwarves would not dare tread, seeking guidance from the elements and it was this search which led him to his favourite place - Mulgore.   The soft, rolling, grassy plains, the high ridges and spires of earth on which the Tauren make their villages, and the sheer presence of the elements around the spiritual Tauren brought about his love for this place.

A close second would be the high spires of Thousand Needles - where the earth rises to meet the winds.

What kind of sense of humor does your character have (if any)?

Avarix has a rather wry, sardonic sense of humour - usually aimed at himself or the seriousness of those around him.  He knows he has a habit of being very ‘grandiose’ when he speaks about the elements and is still new enough to the teachings to feel that, perhaps, he sometimes is overeager to explain, talk, and expound about them.

Is your character introverted or extroverted?

Avarix is a little introverted - he does enjoy spending time with others but he’d rather sit at the back and listen than be at the forefront of the conversation.  He is a little shy around his new allies - hoping he will do nothing to disgrace himself, his people or his calling - and so is a little more relaxed when in the company of other shamans and Draenei.

What just irritates the hell out of your character?

Despite being very calm about most things, it pains Avarix to see the lands desecrated or destroyed - not just because of his newly found shamanism - but also because of the destruction caused wholesale by the Burning Legion and the effects thereof.  He has seen the destruction of his homelands and sees that the same is going on in Azeroth at the hands of those who should know better.  Willful destruction for profit is one of the few things which can cause the otherwise usually placid Shaman to see red.

Anna also linked wordle.net and I just had to have a go!

The winds bring voices of change, a new ally in the fight against the demons…  I did not know of what they spoke until tonight, when I beheld the glory they had sent me.

Much like when I finally got rid of a monstrosity of a helm on Aurik, it is with great joy (but a little sadness) that I announce saying my final goodbye to my [Crystal Pulse Shield]. Snagged when my shaman was in his sixties and worn with a great pride as soon as I hit level 69, it has served me well through countless Karazhan’s, the odd Magtheridon and even Mount Hyjal and Black Temple.  It did not quibble as I hoped, weekly, for the [Triptych Shield of the Ancients] but simply did as best a it could to help me heal my allies in battle.

Crystal Pulse Shield, I salute thee.

The time for us to part ways has come, though, before the battles I face become too hard for you to bear. You will always have a place in my heart and a bank-slot set aside.

Tonight, I gained a new ally in the fight, a stronger model which can withstand the might of the legion as I strive, still, to bring the power of the earth and life to bear within my allies. The [Bastion of Light].

Being the newbie shaman-around-town I’ve also gotten my paws on some [Sun-touched Chain Leggings], [Stillwater Boots], [Helm of Soothing Currents] and [Skyshatter Gloves].  To say my stats have been given a bit of a bit of a boost is quite an understatement!  I’m looking forward to raids, now, trying to learn new skills and finding new ways to utilise old ones.

I’ve also been playing with resto spec on the beta (I had been full elemental to try playing with Thunderstorm) and I am heartily enjoying it.  Things are a-chaging but instead of being scared, I’m looking forward to playing with all of my new shinies!

I promise I have some non-looty posts in the works - this week I’ve not had much time to sit down and write and, when I have, I’ve been a bit too tired to do so properly.  /hugs to you all.

This post details the druid epic flight form quest.  If you do not wish to be spoiled for it then please look away now!

I can’t seem to get my blog to cut in feed-readers so I’m going to add a nice, big, shiny picture so that you can hopefully remain unspoiled if that is your wish.

Read more

I love Nagrand - it’s a place I could (and have) happily spent hours grinding in.  When I was working on my next post (it’s a big one, hence the dearth of other posts this week) I took this screenie and I kinda like it - the beautiful hills and waterfalls of Nagrand slowly being eaten into by the Forge Camps!

Seems ah’m hangin’ up mah boots fer a while and going back tae Ironforge tae dae some er ’secretarial’ work.  You know, stuff tae dae wi’ documents and ‘filin’ them right’ and stuff. *Ahem*

I blame The Bloggers.  I really do.  It’s all their fault.  All those resto druids and shamans, holy paladins and priests. They’ve changed me.

Chain-Healing
What am I talking about?  About a week or so ago, now, I changed my main to my shaman.  I had been getting tired and bored of stabbing things from behind - I don’t know why as I’ve always loved melee.  A couple of times, however, we were short on healers for Mount Hyjal and I offered my shaman - he’s decently geared with quite a few of the T6 quality badge loot and the pick of Kara epics (still no bloody shield though /bitter) - and was taken along.

Wow.  Just… WOW.  There was a thrill and of  a new sort. A few subs like this and it had gotten to the point where I was actively hoping a healer would drop out just so I could go heal.  When I realised I was doing that I figured it was time to ask for a main change.  It might seem weird so close to Wrath but the guild is currently a little short of healers and heavy on melee dps and here I was with a reasonably geared resto shammy and wanting to chain-heal!

I have to say - it really has put the thrill back in raiding for me.  If you’d told me a year ago I’d actively seek out a healer role I’d have laughed.  If you’d said I’d give up a melee dps spot to do it I’d have laughed doubly hard.  Yet here I am. What has changed? No clue.  I have just found that I really, really enjoy healing and that, in a raid, it engages me far more than roguery does.

Even if most of what I seen in an evening looks something like this:

Hyjal has come alive again for me - every boss fight is not the same old dps cycle, the same old trinket clicking, the same old… old.. *snooze*.  Now I have to pay attention to totems, mana, incoming damage.  Each time I heal the same boss different people take different damage and everything is so new and exciting.  I guess the other thing is that I actually feel like I make a difference.

Doing a fight like Kaz’rogal where you’re staving off mana-reducing deuffs and still having to heal your little heart out is amazingly fun.  Every boss fight feels like a small triumph - more so than whittling away at a ginormous health pool over the course of five to ten minutes.

So, what now?

Of course, that doesn’t change stuff around here.  Aurik is and will remain ‘me’.  He is the personification of my real life self - short, dumpy, scottish, hyperactive and, of course, huggable! *ahem* This has never been a rogue blog nor one which shies from posting about alts so all you might find is that any ‘I went to BT and saw this boss, wow’, posts will be shamany rather than roguey.

Durid is for haelz!

But, that’s not the only healing I’ve been up to…

Yes, the tree is yours truly.  Embracing my new-found enthusiasm for the healy side I grabbed a respec to go heal for the budding young paladin tonk you see here.  I could have healed normal ramparts as feral but I really wanted to try things tree-style with all of the available bells and whistles.  It was a blast but perhaps a bit too easy an instance to judge if I’ve been tempted away from my feral side…  I had to respec the next day to tank some instances but my respec cost at the moment is very low so I might jump the fence a few more times!

I’ve managed to pic up some pretty nice epics just from doing some heroics where noone else wanted them so I’m sitting at around 1k healing already on my druid.  My spirit is a little low, though, as is my mp5 so I’m working on that.  I’ve also not enchanted anything yet - though as I don’t expect to be healing anything difficult I think I’ll see if I can grab some more healy gear whilst tanking before I start grinding out those primal lives.

Oh and I started playing my paladin again a little bit…

a third healer in the making?

7 comments

Through the hard times and the good.

I have to celebrate you baby…

- Fatboy Slim, Praise You

Wow, just wow.  Wow.  Did I say WOW yet?

WOW.

Welcome to your 100th post edition of /hug!

I can’t believe I’m at 100 posts and I can only offer immense thanks to those who drop by, read and comment once in a while!

I started this blog back on the 5th of February.  I had no real goals regarding writing about a particular aspect of wow but simply said: “This is a blog about me, WoW and what I like about it.” I wanted to share, I wanted to become a better writer and I wanted to play with making pretty pictures.  It took me a little while to get into my stride, to be able to write posts shorter than a small novella and to figure out how to make those shiny images sit correctly on the page, though.

Blogging about wow has increased my love of the game - I investigate things more now, I get linked to things concerning aspects of the game I never realised.  I’ve made some new friends via blogging and learned an awful lot.  I can’t thank the Blog Azeroth community enough - not only for bringing me to all of those bloggers, but also for giving me awesome post fodder.

So, what are you getting for this special (to me, anyway) post? This is a post about growth, about goals and personal achievements and the biggest ‘growth’ factor in WoW is our characters.  Whether we have one or five we have all made that journey from level one up.  Thus, I went searching through my archives and dug up some old-school screenshots of my characters when they started their journeys.

I hope a few others will do this too -  find the earliest possible screenshots of your now super-cool 70’s! Kind of like your mother embarassing you in front of your friends with your baby photos, mwuhahaha!  So, 100th post and Sunday Screenies all in one.  /score

Oh and I forgot in my last post (I pre-write them) to say a big HELLO to Leafy! He’s taken refuge from G-Drama to come visit Softi and I on Bloodhoof.  /hugs  I think Softi and I both scared our guildies with all the squeeing…

Seems like only yesterday she wis runnin’ aboot Azuremyst playin’ wi’ moths and jumpin’ off cliffs.  Then she got herself intae Outlands and finished her Druid trainin‘ an’ started tae learn how tae tank wi’ her face… Noo the wee scamp has been makin’ friends and got herself all sorts o’ new shinies.

It’s been a busy week for druidlet Jhai - since the all-druid Kara romp.  I’m working on a whole lot of things in order to get her a little more ‘ready’ for Wrath.  She won’t have the time to gear-up as substantially as my Rogue and Shaman have so I just want to make sure she has what she needs to start out fresh with on the next levelling push.

It’s important to me, personally, that I ‘vindicate’ my druidness.  I am a druid at heart, I love druids and I talk about them a lot bot here and in guild.  I sometimes get the feeling the ‘real’ druids (those with a druid as their main’ see me as somewhat of a nublet annoyance and that I need to prove myself to them.  It doesn’t help I’m totally under confidant about my abilites (this is not constrained to my druid, though) so I always shy away from pushing myself towards doing groups.

I had dreams and hopes on my old druid.  I had wanted Earthwarden, and I had wanted the Gilded Thoriumweave Cloak before I moved and started playing with Aurik.  It’s become a somewhat happy/peaceful thing for me to get these things on Jhai as it’s like fulfillment of old dreams.

Anyway, enough of my cheesy soppiness.

Factions

• Cenarion Expedition - Exalted! I got my [Earthwarden].  2H Maces > Staves. Tabard, too!
• Kurenai - Exalted! [Cobalt Riding Talbuk] I really like the white armored one but Mharai has that.
• Shattered Sun Offensive - Exalted! Almost every neck (except the boomie one) to play with.
• Aldor - Exalted! Well, once I had my necks I had to be able to use the fun procs, right? Access to the shoulder enchants is nice, too.
• Keepers of Time - Revered.  Well, at least I can get to Tanaris easily now?

So, via factions, I’ve gained a few nice upgrades.  These are all the really easy ones, though - I wouldn’t mind grabbing Lower City, The Sha’tar and Honor Hold revered / exalted just so I have access to some recipes, glyphs, tabards and nice items for both main and off sets.  Although Wrath is coming soon-ish the beta has shown that a lot of the really nice TBC items won’t be replaced for at least a little while and I’d like to be able to comfortably instance on my way up!  Oh and  I wouldn’t mind Sporeggar / Ogri’la rep for the pet…

Skills

• Cooking - 330 and on its way up.  I need to go around and get myself recipes so I can cook all of the meat I have kicking about in various toons bags.
• Fishing - Ugh, I think I’m sitting about at 245 or so? I always enjoyed flitting about and fishing on the druid, though, it’s a lot faster than re-mounting for all of those little pools of fishing in mountain ponds.

What Next?

So… what else do I want to work towards my ‘druid v2′?  First of all I could do with boosting my dps gear.  Oddly enough, lately I’ve been asked to dps rather than tank a few times and I feel more than a little sub-par as I’ve gotten most of my dps from quest /crafted gear.   I have a few nice pieces, no doubt, but other bits are a little lacking - I need to get my fuzzy butt into Black Morass and see if I can get my trinket, for instance.

Epic flying form I could get… but I’d like to actually have some gold so  I can buy, you know, repairs?! Hehe.  Maybe if I spend a little more time on dailies and less time putting about trying to avoid them now I’m exalted.  I could also finish all the quests I have in SMV or do the Ogri dailies instead to avoid boredom.  As soon as I have a decent cushion I’ll see about getting myself epic pidgeon form.

Oh, and I need to go PvP and get myself some s2 gloves.  /sigh