So, I’m back playing WoW and, hopefully, writing this blog.  As with before, don’t expect any set schedules or particular topics – just my usual ramblings interspersed with holiday commentary and alt-antics.  I hope the wow blogosphere, both readers and writers, can welcome me back into their grasping, devouring embrace once more!  Thank you for the welcome backs on my Brewfest post – makes an ol’ dwarf feel loved.

The biggest difference to my playtime is that I’m not raiding – it’s not that I don’t want to, I do miss it – but the stress wasn’t helping me feel better, the attitude of people had become terrible and I’d rather do ten-mans with a good, cheerful group than slog through 25-mans just to do normal modes and have some people whine all night that it’s not done exactly as they’d like.  Since I’ve been back I’ve been on a few 10-mans with Lightwalkers – much love to ‘em.  Some day I’d like to actually finish Ulduar – I hate the idea I’ve not seen the last two – especially since we were working on Vez when I stopped playing.

What to do, then?

Well, first off:  when I was telling a few lapsed WoW players about Cataclysm they decided they had stopped playing long enough and would start again.  We all used to play together on Sporeggar EU so they decided they’d come back to their characters there and we would make Death Knights so that the one person who hadn’t gotten past their 30s on that server could make it more swiftly to see Northrend.  However, me being me, I decided that I’d get my paladin up to speed – 3 DKs is awesome for chewing your way through quests but you’re still two short for an instance.  With two Death Knights and a Paladin, though…

I managed to die in a fire at the end there simply because I’m not used to paladin cooldowns yet (oops) but otherwise the run was pretty fun – it was challenging in a way a 5-man run of the same instance is not.  It actually felt rather epic – between me cooking food buffs and handing out enchants, Dreich making scrolls (and giving me some bloodthistle omnomnom) and Ieyasu making potions we were loaded up on buffs – Dreich is blood and Ieyasu is frost, so we had the buffs from both specs as well as my blessings.

Healing as a paladin is odd - I’d respecced not long before the run and only had one healing glyph in (I now have two, thanks to Dreich).  It really does feel a lot harder doing 5-mans as a paladin, but I found the same of discipline until I started to learn my ‘extra abilities’ better.  Also, I’m pretty sure I forgot to use Beacon like ever.  It’s like that Naxx run where I forgot to use tree form for the first 10 minutes.  Memory overload fail, oops.

As you can see – our lucky blood death knight got the polearm everyone and their aunt wants on his first run – lucky bum.  I also walked away with some additions to my clown suit – I need a tabard to cover that chest: running around an RP realm with an Alliance crest on my chest… Also, yes, cloth trousers:  yes, yes they have spirit.  However they also have three gem sockets and replaced str/stam ones I was wearing.

Hopefully next week we’ll make more of a push towards Northrend and get ourselves through a few more instances!

(forgive the screenshot width but my new laptop is very widescreen and cropping them looks odd!)