KINGSLAYER!

Lyllea is a kingslayer! Two tries earlier this week, then a one-shot tonight. Beautiful kill, and congrats to Rere as well. And thanks to Murderotica for bringing me along! I bubbled everyone over and over again, and it was a blast! So yeah, now I have defeated every boss in Wraith but some of the ones in Ulduar. Go me.

BETA: wow, a fresh 80 is painful...

Well, after having beta issues, I finally got the druid transfered and logged in to see how a fresh 80 in fresh 80 gear will handle the new zones.

Not so well, as it turns out. Monera (who's been renamed on the beta server) is a moonkin, and by the time I'd managed to kill my first earth elemental, she was at half-health. Now, granted, she's a caster so she's a bit squishy, but that seems wrong.
Here's her talent tree, which I didn't research at all, and she may not be glyphed. I kinda forgot to check.

So the lack of glyphing may be one problem, and my ignorance of the new boomkin rotation is another. As far as I can tell, instead of Insect Swarm, beam of light from sky, Wrath till eclipse, then switch to starfire, it's now....
pick one dot (since dots now add arcane or lunar energy), then wrath or starfire till you get an eclipse, switch to other dot and spell, repeat....

Here we see me practicing at a dummy. I'm going to play around with this a bit, but I may end up going feral for leveling again. This makes me sad, cause I like boomkin, but seriously, one mob reducing me to half health isn't really viable.  Of course, when your first quest rewards you with....

those, it might not be such a problem. And for comparison, yes, Lyllea is wearing the shadow tier 10. That green is almost an upgrade, and that's the first quest in Hyjal.

and yes, Lyllea is now a belf. One of the most entertaining things about the beta is that they're testing all the paid features as well, so I get to fiddle with races and changing from Alliance to Horde and stuff. She was even briefly a gnome, till I remembered why I don't play gnomes (can't stand being short in game).

BETA: Looky at the new UI stuff (and a couple other random screenies)

I got to play around some more in the beta. I had transfered some premade characters, and *gasp* they actually showed up. So without further ado, I give you...

The New Glyph Interface. I really like this. It's actually easy to find the different glyphs and you can see all your choices, and yes, this makes glyphing MUCH easier.

Blizz has also incorporated a Power Auras Classic bit to their UI. Here we see me being alerted that um, I should Frostfire because I have some buff that makes it free... I like the highlighting of the ability on the bar as well, it's a nice touch.

And here we have the current state of the female worgen.... I'm really not sure about the pink box, I was rather hoping for blue.

And last, EYE CANDY. I'm not saying where this is from, but it's gorgeous. Trust me, just wow....

YAY!

Yes, I totally staged my ding shot. Hit Storm Peaks till I was very close, then wandered back to do one of the druid quests.  Then hit the trainer, spent 380 gold (obviously I forgot to train for a bit there), and am now trying to figure out boomkin and tree gearing while equipping the few purples I had saved up for her.

But mostly, YAY! Next up, getting enough emblems to get actually useful idols, and maybe reinstalling Pawn. Also, tree healing at 80, can I keep a tank up? More on this as I learn....

Random Happiness

Dragonhawk Fire Breath: Now increases the enemy's magic damage taken by 8% for 45 sec., 30-sec. cooldown.


Yay, I have a reason/excuse to bring my beloved Eriador to raids, rather than the wolf. My hunter can be a special snowflake again, yay!


Yes, I know I'll be giving up dps to bring a cunning pet. And yes, depending on how focus ends up, I may hate playing my hunter in Cat, but for the moment, YAY! I missed my pretty dragonhawk.

Leveling the druid

I want to like the druid.  I really really do.  But I've run into this slight problem...
Been there, done that, bored to tears.
Leveling via questing? Done it. Seen it.  3 toons at 80
Leveling via dungeons? Practically memorized all the Northrend dungeons and still should be running them daily for badges on two toons.
Leveling via pvp? Wait, haven't done that yet. Or not really. And hey, the Call to Arms thing is NOT Warsong. Let's go see if this is something vaguely entertaining.  Let's try as feral...

OH GOD NO! I now remember why I don't pvp on the pally. I dislike melee dps in dungeons, I hate, loathe, and DESPISE it in pvp. I'm a keyboard turner (and a keyboard dpser but a mouse healer), and I have issues with positioning and switching targets. Needless to say, kitty dps is probably not the way to go.
So, let's try boomkin.  OMG, this is awesome.
So far I've gotten her to 79, run Wintergrasp (I got almost no XP, but lots of honor and it was fun and I managed to kill 80s!), and spent an inordinate amount of time in Isle.  If it's the weekly, the queue at peak times is almost instant, and win or lose I have fun and get decent XP.

I have noticed that there is apparently only one way to win...
take workshop, take docks, hit east gate.  This seems to be the default Alliance strategy.  Occasionally you get people suggesting we take the hanger instead, but workshop/docks seems to be default.  I'd kinda like to do a BG where we do docks/ws/west or main gate, just for a change of pace, but I keep getting yelled down every time I suggest it.

I was worried that I'd be vastly underpowered, but such is not the case. I get a decent amount of killing blows, and for not really knowing what I'm doing, I seem to be doing okay. I mostly dot then wraith like it's going out of style. I may throw out the occasional heal, but mostly I blow stuff up with the power of Nature.  It's surprisingly satisfying.

I'm even trying to figure out a pvp boomkin spec, and considering gearing her for pvp once she hits 80. I won't be doing Arenas any time soon, but I like BGs, and it's a nice change of pace.  Plus, extra honor means extra epic gems which means more gold which means Lyllea gets that shiny drake sooner and then I can get Garetia some better gear too.

Of course all this depends on what happens with raids. Currently Silver Dragoons is 5/12, and we don't need extra healers.  Tanks yes, dps, yes, healers no.  I dislike holy pally healing, so if we end up needing a backup healer, the druid would be pressed into service. She may get pressed into service anyway, since we have at least two hunters in every run and crit chickens bring sexy buffs.

In other news, character transfer is still nonfunctional in beta, so no heirlooms for me. I'm now experimenting with a gnome priest, mostly to see their new area.

BETA: Whee, Worgens

After finally getting enough of the beta downloaded to allow play, I rolled a worgen. Male, since the female ones aren't available yet.

The starting zone is quite good, but um, OH GOD the female voices. It's sad, cause it's great otherwise but the awfulness of those voices completely destroys immersion for me. Hopefully they're still working on that.  Blizz, just saying, if my first thought upon hearing a voice is "Why is she trying to combine Cockney and Drusilla from Buffy/Angel and doing it badly?" well, the accent is not good. Dunno what it was supposed to be, but not good.

My human face is apparently trying to disguise itself as a Forsaken. Yeah, that 5 o'clock shadow's a bit out of control. But you can switch back and forth between forms while character-creating, which is very nice.  Oh, and text in pic is spoilery. Sorry, that was the least spoilery human pic I had. But here he is in worgen form, and other than the pink in his muzzle, I quite like him.

I still die a lot as a rogue, but I don't mind so much. And I'm hoping my toon carrying bags and heirlooms will be transfered soon so I can kit this rogue out. I went subtlety, and have no idea what I'm doing beyond... Sneak sneak sneak, AMBUSH, sinister strike/eviscerate, mob dead now. Just can't be caught out of stealth.

I also rolled a troll druid and tried that for a bit. Didn't get to form levels, and well, having done the troll starting zone recently in vanilla, I can safely say that the first few levels are completely different. After that, it seems to be pretty familiar. At least they increased the crawler mucus drop rate. Hate that stuff.

And yes, everyone's going "oooh Gnomer" but my plan is to do that this morning. Way too crowded last night.

BETA: a picture to distract you...

I am frantically getting ready for DragonCon, writing a fic that's due today at midnight, and generally in panic mode.

So have a pretty picture to distract you from lack of content. Ooh, and ammo has been removed from the game. Of course I'd be much happier if the Launcher didn't crash on me, but the process keep running in the background. It's confusing and annoying. Guess I should go search through the beta forums for info on that, but with what time?  Must write! MUST!