I’ve not managed to find out if there’s anything new happening this year with Winter Veil, but I know that the achievements for the meta have stayed much the same and so, if you’re doing it on an alt, or didn’t make it last year, I figure my

2008 guide to winter veil

achievements, quests and some of the shinies that you can get will be of some use!   If anyone knows of anything new happening this year, or if I discover something myself, I’ll add it to the guide asap!

Seeing all the awesome-cute chibis Baenhoof’s been drawing recently made me want to do my own, and an evening of trying to kill mobs highly resistant to frost spells transmuted into this little doodle:

I have to admit, though, once I got past those my lackluster mage ’suddenly’ seemed to be a killing machine, slicing through enemies with bolts of deathly cold.  Hehe.  Pvp was a lot more fun, too, as I was nearing the end of the bracket… then I stupidly tripped over thirty and became Squishy Mcsquishface the Squishful.  This mage might actually get somewhere, though, she’s now over double the level of my last  one!

In other news…

For the Horde Eastern Kingdoms is, by far, the easier of the two old-world Loremaster achievements – but having done this one, it’s given me the determination to get my teeth into Loremaster of Kalimdor – just over 100 quests to go there.  I suspect, though, that the new patch will distract me away from it for a few days at least, hehe.

Silv got his wings, yesterday, much to my delight – it’s one of those spells which I always felt slightly envious of – especially at screenshot time.  He’s also rocking a very bloody familiar shield… Still, at least it’s prettier than most of the Northrend levelling shields – for which I’ll likely have to give up this one soon.

Also, apparently I still have a really bad case of altitis and shaman-lovin’:

I’ve promised myself to get on a bit with Loremaster before I level this baby-shammy up, though!  I always find the low-levels a nice distraction when I’m feeling a bit over-done on my main, though, so we’ll see how long it takes me to cave and play him s’more.

He’s rocking the cloth shoulders, at the moment, because I got them for my mage and tauren-priest-in-waiting – I’ve enough shards to buy the mail ones now, though, so he’ll hopefully be rocking those as soon as I can be bothered to drag myself over to Wintergrasp, hehe.  I just wish you could buy the chest pieces with Wintergrasp shards, too… re-doing all of the Argent Tourny dailies is not appealing and I’ve too much else to buy with badges.  Oh well, maybe later.

Something Drug mentioned here (an excellent post) got me rolling on actually writing this post – I’d been mulling over it for a while and, whilst it’s mostly spurious personal speculation about class differences I do want to also address an important point. Simple does not always mean easy.  Hell, it needs bolding and bright colours:

Simple does not always mean Easy

I’ma go ahead and quote the direct bit from Drug’s post which is the base on which I want to build.

There is a very common mis-perception: shamans are easy to play. Most of the time, those people point at the few healing tools shamans have and then at the great variety of spells of a holy priest or a tree. This is wrong.

He’s talking about healing, specifically shaman healing, but I think it applies in a broader context and is something which is particularly keenly felt by the non-strongly-thematic part of some hybrid classes – mainly Druids and Paladins but also to some extent Shamans.

Whoa, back up there, what the hell are you on about Aurik!?

The easiest example would be druids.  Druids are, thematically, healers, casters then tertially feral.  Their healing repertoire is decently large and they are strong healers.  Sum durid is make strong hot, if you will.  Some durids, however, can B 4 tank. Tanking druids… don’t have so many buttons.  In fact, tanking druids have a ridiculously small number of actual go-to buttons for tanking to the point where ‘lol swipe spam’ has become a comment I’ve heard from other tanks.  It’s, in my experience, a lot harder to get up-front threat on a druid compared to the other classes, unless you rely on a 3 minute cooldown every pull…

How about Paladins?

Paladins have a decent number of tanking buttons – not out of the box, to be sure (as I’m sure Honor’s has attested though I cannot find the post I was looking for, annoyingly) and even though their rotations can be simplified down, there’s a complexity there that outstrips faery fire, lacerate, mangle, swipe, swipe…  not only that, but they have the, I won’t say benefit, but quirk of having mana-based threat which can be front-loaded.  Whilst ret and prot have clear thematic ‘protectzor and smiter of teh bad guyz’, holy… doesn’t so much.

Holy  is often looked at as the red-headed-step-child of the healing classes – the stereotype of a moronic paladin who sits, slack-jawed, pressing one or two buttons over and over is unhealthily prevalent and is a very unfair one, in my opinion (though, I admit, I have encountered the stereotype often enough to wonder… A few good players keep me disabused of this notion!).  Whilst holy certainly has a lot more tricks up its sleeve than it used to, it cannot match the arsenal of priests or druids.  I’d say they were on par, tricks wise, with shamans, but with less of a range to let them shine.

and Shamans?

Healing as a shammy is fun, they have a decent but more limited set of spells than a druid or priest and no defensive cooldowns anywhere near that of a holydin.  They are niche and often misused (as Drug mentions) and fall prey to being in a dip at the moment between Blizzard deciding to buff one side or other of their healing.

Ok, now you’ve stated the obvious can we have a point, please?

Right, point, yes.

I’m getting there.

As I stated at the beginning – simple doesn’t mean easy.

Caveat Lector - this is mainly from my current five-man perspective and raids can be different, but you can take out ‘makes it harder’ and mostly turn it into ‘makes it harder to do as well as’ and it oft hits the raiding perspective.  To summarise the above:

• Tanking as my druid is harder than my prot warrior – I have less skills to use, thus less ways to pull aggro back when I lose it.  Against a boss I lose any advantage of my healing abilities (bar frenzied regen, but warriors have enraged regen) so it’s not like being a hybrid is making up for me having a lack of buttons for one particular spec by allowing me to utilise ones from other specs.  On that point, despite the fact warriors can now charge in-combat and gain rage, bears still have to expend rage to charge.  Hmm.
• Tanking as my druid is harder than my death knight – rage is harder to manage than runes and bear spec doesn’t afford the dps a death knight can put out to contribute to aggro – especially at lower gear levels.
• Healing as my shaman is harder than my druid – despite my druid being undergeared, she can ramp up healing when it’s needed and has more variety in the spells she can cast to cover small or large incoming damage as well as far better mana regen.
• Healing as my paladin is harder than any other class I’ve healed with – I only have a few buttons and I have to use all my class can give me to play well and not lose some DPS on AoE.

Contextual Bias

To be honest, half of this post came out of my annoyance that my low-level warrior can easily hold aggro versus people 4-5 levels above her – my druid just couldn’t.  I’d almost forsworn tanking again because it had become an exercise in frustration wherein I couldn’t generate enough rage to hold mobs, they’d turn to dps, further reducing my rage, I’d maybe get them back on me and then had exhausted my methods of returning mobs to myself  when the next would invariably tear off.  Waiting on a taunt cooldown feels like forever…

On my warrior?  If someone does manage to tear a mob off me I have two stuns, three ‘taunts’, a couple high threat moves and all the while I can spam heroic strike or cleave like it’s going out of fashion because I have so much rage.  More complex, more buttons, hellishly easier to play.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had this feeling – it was very much the same healing through some heroics (say Halls of Lightning) which I’d had trouble with at first on my shaman and yet my not-amazingly-geared druid did in a beat-the-quest-reset speed run with ease.  I had more buttons, more niche spells, better ability to ramp up or down healing.  Again – more complex, but easier.

I don’t know, in retrospect, whether this post is a rant at certain aspects of classes which I just happen to feel particularly frustrated with, but it’s a topic which I figured the rest of you might have some feeling on (and not necessarily the same feelings I have) and I wanted to get down on e-paper exactly what was irking me.  I feel better now.  I love my blog.

<3

On a completely different note, I had an interesting comment in a pug, when someone referred to me as ’she’ (was playing my trollette warrior) after a BoE had dropped and someone had offered it to me.  I refused, saying I’d replace it in a level with a crafted one which was better so they might as well sell it:  “Nah, if he was a girl, she’d have totally taken the shield to sell for herself,  lol’.  Nice to see stereotypes are alive and well in WoW!  Oddly, Sporeggar seems more gender-biased behaviour-wise than Bloodhoof ever did – but I may just have been insulated by the wonderful peoples there.

I’m not raiding…

Ok, maybe it’s not that simple but that’s a good start.  Raiding brought me some of the best times in game – it brought me encounters and teamwork and an ‘omg we finally beat it’ but it’s also brought me some of the worst – elitist attitudes, feeling like I have to stick to one main character all the time, having to get x or y buff for the raid, having to do stuff when I’m not in the mood and, of course, the stress over herding 25 cats around a raid instance.  I also dislike the tiny, incremental progress you get once you’re at the higher tiers of raiding – I can understand why they wouldn’t want you to upgrade by a tonne between tiers but I always loved the feeling of gear up, striving towards a goal of x mp5 or SP, etc. rather than worrying about 1% haste vs. 1% crit.  I’ve never been a hardcore raider at heart – I’ve always loved the encounters and the loot, too, if we’re being honest; but when you’ve seen an encounter 30 times it just gets boring.

I miss playing at that level, to be sure – I miss MH, BT and Sunwell where I actually felt, sometimes, like my shaman was literally gasping with effort at outputting as much healing as possible.  Even Ulduar, I miss, with it’s kooky fights and beautiful surroundings.  But, in the end, I don’t really miss raiding…

I’m levelling…

In fact, I’m levelling three or four characters as well as their professions.  It feels great.  What do I fancy playing today?  Druid? Cool, lets go blow through some rhinos in a storm of swiping; Paladork?  He needs to level his enchanting, off to get some mats! and so forth.  I think being in a raiding guild, with all the wonderfulness that it brought, made it too easy on me alts wise – there was always a guild bank full of random blues or levelling mats or the like, always someone to ask about specs, rotations etc. and always the goal of ‘get to 80 already’.

I’m dilly-dallying through the game again, enjoying quests I’ve not visited in a while (yay horde quests) and generally taking things slowly.  It’s a shame Spore is such a quiet server now, so instancing is not so easy, but I’m having fun levelling in a way I’ve not had for a long time.

I’m playing with RL™ friends…

Most of my real-life friends who play are way more casual – playing less or levelling slowly, and they give me a perspective that I often forget.  They’re brave in ways I never used to be – one of them, in particular, uses his own specs – never, as far as I know, looking up what’s ‘best’ whilst levelling – he picks what he uses for levelling carefully and with thought and enjoys the process of it.  It’s something I’ve always been ‘afraid’ to do, even whilst levelling.

We’re also able to do silly stuff like 3-manning instances and almost managed to three-man the Ring of Blood at level 66 – only beaten by the last boss after his self-resurrection!  It’s more fun when you do it with friends; you know each others thoughts better and we can chat about it before our weekly DnD game as well as organising fun stuff around tight schedules.  It’s also doubly fun for me as neither of them have been to Northrend yet – I’ll be able to tag along and see their reactions to the cool new stuff which often invigorates how I feel about things which seem, in some ways, ‘old’ to me.

I’m Horde…

To me the Horde has always been home – much as I love Dwarves and Space Squid, I cannot help hankering after the rugged, tribalistic Orc, Troll and Tauren architecture, the glimmering but sad spires of the blood elves and the dark, messy hovels of the forsaken.  There’s something about the ‘Barrens’ music which tugs at me, something about Orgrimmar at night which makes it feel like ‘home’.  Maybe it’s the crickets…

Also, as Pike said:

When I think of her, I don’t think of her as a character in WoW. I think of her as this living, breathing individual. She is of course, not real, but it sure feels that way sometimes.

(you can see how long it takes me to write posts by seeing what I link to /sigh!)

I can’t see my characters as generic, I enjoy playing them and I’ve gained a bond with them.  Though this means I miss my alliance ones, my horde ones have always been there wanting some love, too.  Mharai was my first max level character and, as such, has always held a certain something for me.  I might do a post to ‘introduce’  my hordies, so you’ll know who I’m talking to (especially since at least one of them shares a name with an alliance toon… for now).

I’m on an RP realm…(?)

Sporeggar is barely an RP realm any more (/sadface) but it’s enough of one that if you emote and talk in-character you don’t get too many odd stares.  You can also report people if they bug you about it.  The ‘idea’ of an RP realm appeals to me and RPPVP just makes sense in terms of an ‘always on’ war.  I don’t go around killing people, I’m a carebear, but I believe in the right to do so out-with ’safe’ areas.

Achievements…

Others may not think much of achievements -  they’re points for the sake of points… but it’s not the number of points I care about.  Loremaster is an achievement I always meant to get around to doing but never did.  A lack of love for dps/grinding on my shaman put me off – I can run around as a cat or bear for hours (how I got Ava to 80 I’ll never know…) Also, raiding took up a lot of my online time, and when not raiding, the peripherals of raiding (dailies, or fishing etc.) and so doing more quests just seemed like a chore, not fun.

Some which I’m not doing yet, but will do, such as Guardian of Cenarius, just didn’t seem right for my shaman – and since I was keeping most of my achievements to one character that meant a definite lack of willpower.  Mharai, on the other hand, will be going for that title as her next goal after Loremaster as it suits her and when it feels right, it’s more fun (for me, anyway).

Anyway…

This is a sort of ‘where I’m at’ post.  I know most of you will skip over it, and that’s fine – I use this blog partially as a journal so I don’t forget these thoughts and I can store good memories for when I need ‘em.  For those who have gone through it, you’ll know where my perspective is coming from in future posts!  Also, perhaps, it can help a little with those others who’re sitting and feeling in a bit of a rut at the moment - sometimes you need to step back and re-evaluate why you’re playing the game and what you actually enjoy.

Replayability has always been something which interested me, which drove me to look more critically at, particularly, the Holiday events.  It seemed, when I first started looking at them, that there was no reason to re-do them after the first time.  I did some of them multiple times because I enjoyed them but there was no drive to re-do them after the first couple of times unless they gave rep or XP and that meant sometimes you were the only, lonely person trying to save a Reindeer or suchlike.

Then along came achievements.  Huzzah! More people are doing the events, the whole server is aware that something is going on and the usual humdrum rhythms have been interrupted by ‘LFG HH!’ etc.  “But wait!” you cry, “it doesn’t count, they’re only doing it for shiny achievement points and epic lewts!”.  So what?  If it gets people out into the world, sampling the content made for them and trying something they otherwise might not then I’m for it.  Of course, it brings the usual drama when phat lewts are involved but, on the whole, more people are taking part in holiday events.  Wonderful.  There’s nothing more fun than doing silly things with friends (again).

Reruns?

So, right, more people are doing it, but where does replayability come into that?  Well, a good number of people have now ‘finished’ the ‘Long Strange Trip’ achievement and… aren’t bothering any more – unless they have an alt who wants epics, or a shot at a rare mount / pet.  Despite the fact that buckets were added to Northrend there was no achievement added for collecting them.  I was a little sad at this (if, partly, because it meant I had to check places which didn’t have buckets!) but also because I wonder if that’s going to be ‘it’ for the current holiday achievements.  Now, I’ve heard they have said they won’t add any more towards the Proto-Drake, which is all fine and sensible to me… but is there any reason to not add more frivolous achievements to the Holidays, just to keep people interested that bit longer?  Something for those to do who’ve ‘done it all before’ or to point people in the direction of the newly added content which is otherwise not necessarily noticeable (like the buckets)?  Now that we’re looking at an expansion being out by this time next year, there’s no reason for them to add any of the things they put into Northrend into the achievement system.  It’d be old already.

Is that ‘it‘ for holiday achievements?  Shall people begin to ignore any that they’ve done already?  I hope not.  Certainly a fair number of alts are seeing the content – but when achievements are account wide will that still happen? Now, I’m not totally blind, I don’t think there’s only doom and gloom and noone is doing achievements – there are still a fair number doing them this year but I’m wondering about next year.  Blizzard has put in place a nicely updatable system – they only need to upscale the level of the holiday boss and add the basic badge vendor rings / trinkets / cloaks etc. and whoop, updated event – that’s cool, that’s sensible – but I’d like to see one or two new holiday achievements per year – maybe an updated Long Strange Trip with some sort of silly title or somesuch.

Like the continued adding of pet achievements – something more to work on for those of us who love holidays as much as achievements!

How-and-ever…

The changes made to the holiday’s in wow within the last two-three years have been phenomenal, but some others could still use some work.  Whilst I’d love to see some holidays made bigger – speak like a pirate day or day of the dead celebrations – I can understand why you also would not want to pack too much in: sometimes when you’re raiding etc. holidays can feel like a bit of a burden (especially if they come with a boatload of achievements and you’re a completionist).  However, there are some big gaps in the holiday year where it’d be nice to have small events or added extras.

What else?

I know this will seem silly to most but it’d be nice if the ‘events’ dropped some form of neutral currency.  This past week I’ve seen a horrendous number of rings laying on the ground; the trinkets at Brewfest less so but once you’re on your 5th caster/ healer trinket in a group with three plate dps… It would be nice if, for instance, they dropped a BoA reputation commendation or a ‘current dailies’ badge i.e. Champion’s Seals – even if only one per day given when you hand in the quest.  This not only gives people an extra reason to go if their mains have ‘done it all last year’ or outgear the rewards, it also gives incentive to rerun it if you’ve already got ‘epic mount / pet’ and means that if the rewards aren’t diverse enough such as in the case of 5 of the same item, that people still get something for heading along there.

I know, I know ‘have my cake and eat it too’ but there you are.

Grouping

Also, for goodness sake Blizzard, make it easier to group for these things – trade spam goes up 100% at the start of these events as there is no ’seasonal’ setting for the LFG tool – I can only hope something in the new LFG tool will fix this, otherwise it’s an irritating side-effect of the current system.   I don’t mind running to Slave Pens, Blackrock or Scarlet Monastery, but trying to organise a group when everyone is looking in different places (general city, general tirisfal, trade and sometimes even in the LFG channel for this event).

Oh, and I’ve not even seen the Horseman’s mount drop once so far. Hmph.

This week, I’ve been playing my Death Knight – whilst I already have a max-level DK, and I have a tank-ish off-spec for her, she’s never actually tanked anything.  I never really wanted to tank on my death knight and she was my ‘dps toon’.  So, new Death Knight, all kitted out with a tank spec, not bad gear, etc.   I had two different pugs, both of which didn’t get past the first few pulls, but one was amiable, and had a good outcome, the other did not.

First pug, Utgarde Keep -  got invited by a guy (DK) who’d tanked a Coilfang instance I went to.  He’d respecced, though, and I guess saw me in LFG and invited away.  Off we set – my aggro was a bit clumsy and mobs were flying everywhere.  The DK, warrior and mage all gave me some tips, encouraged me and, when we broke up the group due to dying on a trash pack (not sure what was going on there)  they still gave me some encouraging words and we all figured we’d try another time.

Come today – I had grabbed myself some cobalt gear to boost my hp / def a bit and figured I’d try again – I was happy about the idea, looking forward to it.  This time, Nexus.  Paladin (level 75) didn’t want to come help summon, he was questing.  Fine, not unusual.  Got there, summoned, got in.  First pull, paladin pulls.  I take it off him, blah de blah.  Second pull,  paladin runs ahead when the healer’s not there, and pulls… I eventually get them all.  Third pull… I’m guessing you’ve got the pattern.   I asked him to please let me pull.  “If you want me not to pull then go faster”.  Off he runs and pulls… whilst the healer was low on mana.  “Pull again for me and you can find another tank”.  Next pull…  /leave group.

The first group made me feel a little more confidant, the second so annoyed I ended up logging off.  People talk about death noobs and suchlike, but how the hell is someone supposed to learn how to tank if the others in the group act like asshats?  And people wonder why they can’t get tanks for dailies, too…

/sigh

Don’t even get me started on ‘LFG VoA, link achieve’ stuff.

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!)

First, a minor rant I want to get out of the way…

I love events, a look over this blog should tell you that – I also like achivements – I find them fun – I like that they encourage me to seek out certain things and do silly stuff I might not otherwise have tried but I am getting a bit tired of the holiday ones. Now, don’t get me wrong – I still like the little dings of the achievements there and I don’t mind a little extra work to get them done and spending maybe an hour or so more on an event than I might have done otherwise but achivements have meant my holiday fun is being ruined by people who don’t give a shit about the event but want the achievement points or the proto-drake.

I’m not really talking about the spawn camping, the egg-stealing and general asshattery going on. Shit happens, people do stupid things for pixels, whatever.  That I can deal with or write about and thusly feel better.  What I really, really dislike is none of those.  It’s comment like so:

“this holiday is shit”

“I don’t want to farm these stupid eggs”

“omg this is so boring”

I can even understand that they might not enjoy an event, that’s fine.  But I really, really, don’t want to have to listen to it constantly.  It’s like coming to my birthday and saying ‘hi, this party kinda sucks… you only have jelly and no ice cream’.   If you’re determined to have a bad time, you will and by sitting whining about it, you’re affecting my ability to have a good time too.  There are ways to express dislike which are less ruinous of others fun, in my opinion – “I don’t like this event, it’s a bit grindy for me” is better than “this sucks, I cba”.

Even better, you have the choice not to do it at all.  You want your proto drake?  Noone is forcing you to do it – there are other ways to get a proto drake.  It’s like you’re farming for the time-lost and whining about it not spawning fast enough or never being there when you go – stop doing it or stop whining about it.

I actually was personally enjoying the event – I did camp a small spot, but mainly because my wrist got sore after running in a circle for a while.  Whilst I was there I ended up chatting and doing silly stuff with the others who had settled down to guard their little patches and chatted away quite happily, commiserating their 8th dress or celebrating a bunny pet.

As I see it, holiday’s are a social occassion – many people are pushed into a smaller area and are completing the same thing at the same time – they are meant as chances to get together, have fun and bump into people we wouldn’t usually.  If you are so jaded that you cannot see your way to having fun during an event which turns you into a bunny, or asks you to wear silly clothes, or run around planting flowers in the desert or chasing female orcs then I suggest the problem is not the event, but you.

Anyway…

Pretty in Pink with Pets

I had gone to Shattrath to see what the daily fishing quest was and, because of things I’d been doing just before that, both my hearthstone and my astral recall were on cooldown for another few minutes.  Since I was sitting around doing nothing I figured I’d take a few pictures of my new brood and erm wardrobe.

Bunny ears look rather oddly like they should be part of a male draenei’s body… Taking a picture of a rabbit whose ‘idle’ behavior is to run around is no mean feat – he just wouldn’t sit still! I really like the Dun Morogh cub – the proportions and colour are cute and, of course, who could not love the sapling – your own personal dancing treelet!  It’s possibly a good thing that Shattrath City is so quiet these days with how much I was cavorting about.

Shadow Priesting

When not doing my argent dailies i’ve been taking a little time to play on my baby priest – she hit level 40 and I gleefully snapped up shadowform – I’ve always liked the effect it has and how it turns mounts into shadow-mounts, too.  I’m not too sure I like the fact it turns my black stallion’s feathers an odd pink colour, though!

Pot Luck

Finally, I found these nodes in borean tundra when I was doing my fishing daily.  One was moonglow cuttlefish, the other deep sea monsterbellies!

This week has been pretty mad – between running 10 and 25-man  Ulduar and all of the new quests available.  Lightwalkers has taken down Flame Leviathan with one tower up on both 10 and 25.

…but this didn’t leave us with enough time to kill XT on 25 (yes, I know he’s not the easiest next choice)  with some tactics changes we hope to deconstruct him next raid.  Unfortunately our raids are short so we don’t get a long time to work on bosses.  It was some solid progess, though, and I really am enjoying the challenge again – especially as a healer, things are hellishly hectic! *grin*

Dual Specs

When not doing raids I’ve been taking part in all of the other new things 3.1 brought us – two of my characters have dual specs though I haven’t even utilised Jhai’s second spec as can’t decide whether to go cat-dps, boomkin or resto as my offspec! Probably it’ll end up being whatever people need first.

On Avarix, I’m completely in love with dual-specs – rocking a pvp-elemental which is also nice to grind with for offspec.   It’s so nice not to take an age just to kill some mobs and dailies have just become trivial by comparison to what I had before.  Of course, I’ve already made the mistake of forgetting which spec I’m in – I was thinking Grid was copletely broken as it wouldn’t let me Earth Shield people.  Luckily I realised the actual reason for this before we engaged the boss! Hehe.

Fishing

The RNG seems to have been very much in my favour these last few days with the fishing daily.  On the first day all I got was a price of junk glass but on the second?  A [Jeweled Fishing Pole] and a  [Tiny Titanium Lockbox].  For those not in the know, the lockboxes seem to often contain the new epic gems – stormjewels and, true to form, I picked up a  [Rigid Stormjewel] alongside a few other blue-quality gems.  Talk about score.  I sold the gem for a silly amount (seriously, who pays 400g for a gem?) as I wouldn’t use it.  Sadly, I won’t be able to use the pole in higher fishing areas as I have a fishing line on my [Mastercraft Kalu'ak Fishing Pole] but I spent plenty of time fishing salmon and musselback sculpin with it for the guild’s quota of fish feasts.  I am amused at my big male draenei using what looks like a Cardcaptor Sakura weapon.

On that note, [Fish Feasts] are not longer BoP, thank goodness! I hadn’t noticed this in the patchnotes so it came as a pleasant surprise when we were pondering what to do with the over-500 fish myself and another guild fisherman had stuffed into the guild bank.

Why so many fish?  Well, we were both wanting a [Sea Turtle], of course! I’ll let the picture say it…

There is a completely unsubstantiated rumour that people are finding a higher drop rate when having the Ghostfish fishing daily and fishing in Borean Tundra [Musselback Sculpin] pools.  I wrote this off as spurious but, oddly enough, guess when I got mine? One of the guild’s other prolific fishers also got his in the exact same circumstances – though we had both been fishing for hours prior to that.

Now off to do another round of dailies…