Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Melfina's simple guide to having fun in PVP for beginners

If you're thinking about dipping your toe into BGs with the new random finder, DO IT! And use this helpful, if extremely basic, guide to make your BG experience fun!

Step 1: Accept you're probably going to die. Make bestest friends with the Resurrection Angel, and move on.

Step 2: The first time you enter any BG you will likely have NO idea what's going on or what to do. This is okay. Following the crowd is not a bad strategy. It's not ideal, but it's not bad. Once you've seen all the BGs at least once, I would highly HIGHLY recommend finding a good guide for each and reading it. Heck, you can do that before you even set foot in any BGs, but that doesn't work well for me personally. It doesn't make a lot of sense till I see them.

Step 3: Put any idiot QQing on ignore. You know, the people who start before the game has even started and keep saying how Alliance/Horde sucks, how this group sucks, how this or that person is an idiot for a piece of green gear. Yeah, IGNORE. They never have something useful to say about what's happening in the battle, so save your sanity.

Step 4: Rogues are evil, as are kitty druids. EVIL! Just saying. Especially if you're a caster, a rogue can shut you down so thoroughly that you go from full health to dead before you get a cast off. If you're playing a rogue or kitty, go forth and have fun (but if you see a baby shammy named Eiunn, please leave her alone. She's developing a kitty druid phobia from being ganked so often by kitties. They were even graveyard-stalking her!)

Step 5: Kill the enemy or heal your allies or both. If you're not a horribly mobile class, I would suggest finding something to guard (like a tower in Eye or Stables in Arathi). You won't get as much honor this way, mind, but it's generally far less overwhelming.

Step 6: Avoid flag-running and vehicles the first time. It is really annoying when someone picks up a flag and has no idea what to do with it, and ditto with a vehicle. Ranged and healers might want to grab a ride on a vehicle though, because healing/pew-pewing is much easier from cover.

step 7: Losses happen, as do wins. The queue for a new random in my battlegroup is darn near instant right now, so go try again. And either way you get honor and with enough honor you can get nifty nifty mounts. Plus epic gems and pvp gear to make you harder to kill! And given the honor boost (Garetia got 5k for an Arathi this morning), it's a pretty quick grind.

Leveling: Because variety makes it less painful...

My guildies podcast will be talking about leveling 58-80 (so um go listen, okay), and that got me thinking about leveling (which I do WAAAY too much of) and ways to switch it up.

First, the random dungeon finder. It's the only way I like playing my mage, and it really does give you a break. Just, um, have some clue before you zone in. Doing things like giving the healer water (and the tank if it's a pally), or soulstoning the healer, or switching out your tanky pet (or blueberry) for a dps one, it generally sets a better tone for the pug. It may not make things run any smoother, but it does tend to put people in a better mood, plus it starts good habits you'll want at 80.

Second, pvp. I just hit WSG on my shaman and well, I hated it with a burning passion. I dunno if the 30-40 bracket is a bad one for shammies, if low-level elemental stinks in pvp, or if I just have no idea what I'm doing. Probably all of the above. But it was a break from questing, and on other toons I've had a blast in BGs, so try it. Worst thing that happens is that you die a lot, get frustrated, and swear off pvp on that toon. And even then, it might be worthwhile retrying later after you get some new abilities or a new BG unlocks for you. I can't stand doing WSG on my priest (required mobility+disc heals=fail), but Eye of the Storm or Arathi, those are great cause I can pair up with a dps and guard things.

Third, the grind. Not grinding for levels, grinding for other things. Rep grinds, rare drops, mounts, and other shinies. It's not the most fascinating way to level, but you can turn off your brain for a couple of hours and just mindlessly slaughter. Things you might want to consider grinding...
Minipets that drop. Granted this list also includes things like the fishing daily pets, but I can't figure out how to filter it. At least it gives you a starting point.
Rep grinds aren't going to be great till you're in the 50s, really. You can use rep beforehand to decide where to quest, but it's not that useful. But once you're ready to hit Plaguelands and/or Silithus, a rep grind isn't a bad way to level. Slaughter undead or cultists and see your Argent Dawn or Cenarion Circle rep rise along with your XP level. Heck, go from Silithus to Zangermarsh, do some grinding and turn-ins (and read wowwiki) and you could hit Northrend with the sexy title Guardian of Cenarius!
Mount grinds tie in pretty closely with rep grinds, but a mount's better motivation than just an exalted rep, really. Get to 70 and hit up Skyguard or Netherwing if you already have epic flight, or go gather beads in Nagrand for talbulks or get the Cenarion Expedition to love you for a hippogryph mount.
Rare drops, well, those could be many different things. Recipes or cloth farming (yes, cloth isn't rare, but it's useful) or a shiny blue axe that twinks love. Maybe even a piece of RP gear or two.

Fourth, dailies. Yes, dailies. While leveling. They offer a good chunk of XP plus some gold, and once you learn them you can generally burn through them quite quickly. Go help the walrus people in Northrend or run the Isle of Quel-danas. You can even pick up some nice gear and get a headstart on those level 80 rep grinds.

So, go forth and do something other than quest! And do listen to the podcast because I know they're covering far more than I am, and will have more tips too!

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Things I'd like to see in Cat: Turning Dailies into Weeklies

Honestly, I am not enamored of the daily system. It feels too much like a chore, which might explain why Lyllea is not drowning in Frost emblems and why I don't have a ton of epic cuts.

Quite frankly I don't always have time to run the Jcing daily, much less the daily random. So I started thinking this weekend, and I came up with a solution that I kinda like...

Weekly Dailies. You get frost emblems for the first seven random dungeons you run. You get 7 quests from the jcing trainer, or the fishing trainer, and you have till server reset on Tuesday to get all or some of them done. Of course, you don't have to pick up all seven at once, you can get one, do it, and then get the next, but all seven are there, waiting for you to do them.

I'd also extend this to profession research. You can do it seven times a week. Whenever. Once you do it seven times, you must wait till server reset to do it again.

And for someone like me, who is a fit and spurt gamer (meaning that I play intensely for a bit, then wander off, then repeat), this allows me to do that. I can set aside a couple of hours and bang out all my "chores" for the week, then wander off to level an alt or work on Loremaster or even go knit.

Blizz does seem to be moving more to a weekly model, so I can hope they'll do something like this.

Friday, March 26, 2010

Pally Loves Outlands (because if I don't spice up the leveling my brain is going to ooze out my ears)

I've been doing a lot of leveling lately, with brief breaks to get further in Black Temple and convince the Netherwing that they really, really like Garetia. And I started thinking about maybe leveling slightly differently. Both Garetia and Lyllea hit Northrend at 68 and both of them have done far more Northrend quests than Outlands. In fact, Lyllea's only seen Terokkar and Hellfire, while Garetia's a bit more travelled, with Hellfire, Zangermarsh, Nagrand and a dash of Terokkar.

So why not level my next alt exclusively in Outlands till I can't level there no more? There are still green mobs for Garetia at 80 (granted these are mostly elites, but they exist!), and it'd give me a change of location and lore. Plus it'd give me a bit of a roadmap for Loremaster of Outlands, which is the part of the Loremaster achievement that is giving me fits.

Thus, the Pally Loves Outlands idea. Adowa, my pally, is 65 and has just about finished Hellfire (1 or 2 quests from the Loremaster achieve). I'm going to keep her in Outlands until one of two things happens... either a) she gets Loremaster of Outlands, or b) she runs out of ways to gain XP. I'm currently pondering which zone to go to next (between Blade's Edge, Zangermarsh, or Nagrand). I'm going to avoid instances because, well, I don't really like to run dungeons on her. Melee dps not my thing, and pally healing is not fun for me. So no XP from instances, all from questing and killing things. Ideally I'll get enough gold to buy her epic flight before the Netherwing quest line no longer gives XP, but she'll still grind with them to exalted because I can think of nothing more epic than a paladin on a Netherwing drake.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

I both love and hate wow_ladies

Okay, so it's mostly love.  wow_ladies on LiveJournal is my go-to place for wow stuff, but they have this weekly thing... UI Monday.

And every Tuesday I go look at the post and the responses and the pictures and get the urge to redo my ui.   Every single week.  Some weeks I resist the urge, some weeks not so much.  This week, well, hello new unit frames and lunar sphere.

this week's post is here and just look at all those gorgeous uis. Good thing I like to tinker, or I would if the server ever comes back up. Here server server server!

Monday, March 22, 2010

Silly RPness

Dear Garrosh Hellscream,

We have a mutual problem in these blue spacegoat people.  Darnassus was smug in its superiority as the only Alliance capital in Kalimdor, content to watch these idiot humans, dwarves, and gnomes complain about really long flight paths while they paid out the nose for the privilege of doing so.  And now, now, another city threatens our monopoly!

These arrogant drain goats must be stopped.  I understand there is some sort of long-standing enmity between them and your people, something about a massacre?  Or possibly leading your race to its doom?  I confess, I wasn't paying attention when it was explained to me.

Perhaps we could come to some arrangement?  You get rid of the drains, I'll kill all the sindorei.  Mana-addicted pansy deviants, the lots of them.

Sincerely,
Fandral Staghelm

PS- Good luck removing your current leader.  I have lots of morrowgrain, and while the strong poison concocted from it does not work on priestesses, I have had some success using it on shamans.

Blog Azeroth topic: If you were given the option, would you post a link to your blog in your main's armory profile?

Anea, from Oh Look, an Alt posed this question in Blog Azeroth's Shared Topics this week. So I decided to ramble on about it...
Answer:
I'd be torn.
The good: more readers, more publicity.
The bad: more spam comments, more trolling
The neither good nor bad: attaching a link to my priest might give the impression that this is a priest blog.   I don't want people coming here just for priest stuff, because, as we all know, I write about whatever pops into my head.  Granted, playing a priest means priest stuff tends to pop into my head more, but I'm still not a really reliable source of all priest info. I can suggest a few good blogs for that sort of thing though.

In fact, linking to a particular character could cause all sorts of misconceptions.  If the toon has all sorts of raiding achieves, but the blog is about leveling alts or ui customization or hardcore rp, well, that could be bad or at least confusing.  And what about those who don't really have a main, per say?

And then there is the idea of more readers.  I like it when people read what I write, I really do.  But I'm not sure I have a thick enough skin to deal with some of the stuff the popular bloggers do.  And then there's the problem that I write for myself.  I learned that a long time ago with fiction writing, if it makes me laugh it did its job.  Anyone else enjoying it is just a lovely lovely bonus.  Now I've modified this a bit with blogging.  I try to make sure that my topics are interesting to other people, but I still talk only about stuff I find interesting, and I don't choose my topics based on what I think others might like.   This is why I don't have a set topic for my blog, because I am interested in lots of stuff in wow, and I hate being limited.

I think it'd also depend on how much control I have over it.  Can I set permissions so that you only see it if you're logged into battlenet, or only if you're a guildie or play on my server?  I'd be much more likely to do it if I had some control over who saw it.   In fact, I don't think I would do it unless I had some way to set permissions.  So, probably not.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Leveling and heirlooms

Ret pallies, ridiculously op in Outlands?  Yup, and also ridiculously fun.  I have fallen back in love with my pally, and it's a good thing.  She can solo group quests of my level, even if lay on hands is on cooldown.

In an effort to actually get somewhere while leveling, I've decided to concentrate on two toons at a time.  I have 3 currently wandering around Outlands (a pally, a druid, and a dk), 2 hanging out in the 30-40 bracket (mage and shaman) and 2 languishing in the 20-25 range (warrior and rogue).  Since I only have two sets of heirlooms (cloth and plate) and I keep misplacing them by mailing them back and forth, it only makes sense to pick two toons and go with them till 80 or I get bored.   So my paladin is sporting the plate shoulders of ridiculous while slaughtering all of Hellfire, and my shaman has converted to the rat skull look while wondering if whole-scale slaughter is really the solution to Stranglethorn Vale's problems.    

The heirlooms may not be the best-looking gear ever, but their flexibility is wonderful.  The only toon that neither the cloth nor the plate really works for is the rogue, and she's got a dagger and the leather chest.  

In other news, I have something to pimp.  Leveling Azeroth, a new podcast.  And no, I'm not just mentioning it because they think my blog is awesome.  I know these two, and they are both very informative.  

Friday, March 19, 2010

YAYAY!

So um, I generally try to be good about tooting my own horn, but given the amount of time invested, I hope you will forgive me.

Yup, 2 Higher Learning achievements, two Kirin Tor familiars.  This brings Garetia to 83 pets.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

There is no topic, only rambling.

Yay, I have internet again.

So, stuff....

When did they speed up the casting time of Holy Light? It's now faster than Smite. So yay I don't have to wait till I have Borrowed Time to cast it for max dps, but wonder why they did that? And yes, I have figured out how to do max dps as disc. Fear my 1.5k dps!

I also have a new belt and new gloves and some shiny achievements. My raiding alliance ran ICC 25 and got all the way to festergut and got him down to 10%. Basically we've hit the "need more gear to dps better" bump.

And while discussing gear, this tier 10 thing. I've been avoiding tier 10, partly because the stat bonuses are not so shiny, and partly because I'm uncomfortable with this changing of the bonus. I think I'd rather keep my 2 piece tier 9 (and since I'm now running toc 25 weekly I can get the trophies to make it extra shiny) and go for non-tier frost stuff. Like the cloak or my new belt. And it's not like I'm drowning in frost badges (because I am fail at running a daily heroic), so I figure I'll be fine. Still want another piece of tier 10 shadow though for the shiny shiny stats.

While I'm discussing gear, how bout to hit? If a piece has to hit on it, I have a problem. I want int and spellpower and crit and haste, and so do cloth dps. If there's a stat upgrade drop with to hit on it, I more or less have to pass on it, which I'm not thrilled about. Some of the bis stuff (I'm using Bob Turkey's bis list) has to hit. My current plan, such as it is, is to fight for a piece with to hit on it only if it's a big upgrade. And if it comes up, I will say as much.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Dear RNG,

While I really appreciate the lovely spellpower leather drops you've been giving my druid of late, I can't help but notice that you seem to think I am feral. I am fairly certain that the Satchel of Useful Goods has never, in 8 levels of dungeon running, given me anything with int and or spellpower. Please notice the complete lack of claws and the overabundance of leaves and drop gear accordingly.

Thanks,
Monera

PS-> I am not going feral. You can't make me. Druids are for broccoli and boomkining (at least when I play them).

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Brief Pimp Post

I found new blogs. Okay, so this should not be a shock, since I joined Blog Azeroth, but these two are really good. Thus the pimp.

This one actually reminds me of my blog, so go read and follow it!

A Healadin's Tear This one is written by a servermate, and the blog is quite good, even if she is a horde. :)

The Mana Regen Game

I was wandering around the blue post roundup on wow.com, and came across Running out of mana was never fun. Ghostcrawler's remarks were interesting, but what I'd really like to talk about is mana regen in healing and dpsing.

Now, when I got to 80 on my hunter, I was marks. Marks was rather horribly mana-inefficient at the time. As in sting, chimera, arcane, aimed, hey look there went a quarter of my mana pool. It was a challenge to do as much damage as possible given this limitation. I figured out which bosses in Naxx had mana pools and used Viper Sting + Chimera shot on them to get mana back. I spent a lot of time at the test dummies figuring out how to get the most mana back in the minimum amount of time with Aspect of the Viper while in combat. It was a fun challenge, but not an overwhelming one. If I failed at it, well, my dps went down. That was it.

As a healer, if I run oom, people die. If I have no mana, I am a useless priest. This means the mana game is no longer a game, and I do everything possible to make sure I don't need to worry about mana. Now, I have Solace, which gives me mana regen every time I cast a helpful spell, so I don't worry much. But I remember the not-fun days, where I was always worrying about mana, in addition to worrying about healing, where I was standing, and if I was doing okay or not. Healing's a higher-stress job, so having more worries is understandable and as long as the fun to worry ratio is good, I'm not going to stop healing.

But is there any way to make the mana game as a healer like the mana game as a hunter? From what I've seen, holy pallies do have that. They basically manage their own regen dynamically, and that's what I want as a priest. Hymn of Hope and Shadowfiend are all well and good, but I want something more. Don't know what, exactly, but I'll continue to hope that Cataclysm has it. Until then, you can have my Solace of the Defeated when you pry it from my cold dead hands.

Monday, March 8, 2010

So you want a cool rep title....

what are your options? How hard are they to get? And which ones are in jeopardy with the coming of Cat?
Never fear, I'm here to answer all those questions.

First, Ambassador. Get exalted with all 5 home cities. This has gotten easier since the Tournament, but there's still a bit of leg work to do. If you're allergic to jousting, your options are questing and cloth turn-ins. There's probably going to be at least one faction (Gnomer for Alliance, and I think Thunder Bluff for Horde) where you have to do cloth because the quests aren't enough. Farm up some runecloth, you're going to need it. This one isn't hard, just time-consuming. On the plus side, you can get a ton of mounts, giving you a leg up on Mountain of Mounts.

Second, Bloodsail Admiral. You've got to get friendly with the Bloodsail and hated with Booty Bay. You get a nifty hat and a pet. This one's just grindy. Possibility of being affected by Cat: medium.

Third, Guardian of Cenarius. Garetia's currently working on this. You need to get Exalted with both the Cenarion Circle and the Cenarion Expedition. For Circle rep, there are some quests, as well as killing Twilight Cultists in silithus, doing world pvp (also in Silithus) and running both AQs. For Expedition, run Underbog and Slave Pens or turn in Unidentified Plant parts till honored, then quest and run Steamvaults. You can also grind ears in Borean Tundra and turn them into to Dehta. If you can't solo Steamvaults, or don't have someone to duo it with, this is really not fun. Steamvaults is 3k rep per run more or less, so beg, borrow, or steal someone to come with you if you need to.
You have some nice possibilities with this grind, including mounts out of the AQs and blues/greens from the instances. Possibility of being affected by Cat: fairly high.

Fourth, of the Ashen Verdict. Get exalted with the Ashen Verdict in ICC. Run ICC and/or do rep runs of the trash. You can get recipes, a really nice ring, and um, other stuff? Possibility of being affected by Cat: low insofar as Cat's unlikely to change the grind, but it's going to be much harder to find people to go with you.

Fifth, of the Shattered Sun. You must be exalted with the Shattered Sun offense and do a quest and it'll cost you. This one involves lots and lots of dailies on Quel'Danas. Possibility of being affected by Cat: low

Sixth, Argent Champion. Get exalted with the Argent Dawn and the Argent Crusade. Run Strat (or Scholo, but Strat has a mount drop) with the Argent Dawn trinket and/or kill old world undead for Dawn, and wear a tabard/quest/do dailies for the Crusade. My priest can solo Strat in disc (it's slow but completely doable) so this is likely the most accessible of the titles involving old world rep. Possibility of being affected by Cat: medium. I'd get exalted with Dawn before Cat, just in case though.

Seventh, the Diplomat. Go from neutral to exalted with Timbermaw Hold, Sporeggar and the Kurenai / Mag'har. Now this one is a big grind. You can combine some of the Sporeggar rep grind with the Cenarion Expedition one (Underbog is full of Sanguine Hibiscus and you can get them from bog lords in Steamvaults too if you're an herbalist) Sporeggar has a pet and the Kurenai/ Mag'har have awesome land mounts. This is a really grindy one, and be aware that you want to get to Revered with Timbermaw through killing alone, saving your rep turn-ins for Revered to Exalted. Timbermaw's a great way to farm runecloth, so you can get some work done on Ambassador while you're at it. Possibility of being affected by Cat: fairly high, so get Timbermaw done now. Again, you'll be doing at least one of these grinds for mountain of mounts, so might as well go for the title.

Eighth, the Exalted. Raise 40 reputations to Exalted. So, if you've done all the ones above, you're at...15 exalted reputations. Expect to spend a long time working on this one. Possibility of being affected by Cat: Almost guaranteed. Get working on those old world rep grinds now.

Ninth, and last, the Insane. So called because you have to be insane to have gotten it. Earn Exalted status with Booty Bay, Everlook, Gadgetzan, Ratchet, Darkmoon Faire, Ravenholdt, Shen'dralar, and Honored with Bloodsail Buccaneers.
Massively grindy, expensive, and if you're doing this, I'm impressed. Worried for your sanity, but impressed. Possibility of being affected by Cat: pretty much guaranteed, given that these are all old world rep grinds.

Blog Azeroth topic: How will Cataclysm change your game?

I joined Blog Azeroth. They have this nifty shared topic thing, and one of the currentish topics is "How will Cataclysm change your game?" And there's the original suggestor's response.

Well, Cat has already changed my game. From the moment they said "hunters, no more mana for you," I realized I needed to have at least one more 80 so that if hunters get completely boned, or if I hate focus with the burning passion of a thousand stars, I have other options. Now, I'd already gotten an RAF account and was leveling a druid/priest pair, and the Cat changes just offered more incentive. And now, Lyllea (my priest) is my main, Garetia (my hunter) is my lvl 80 alt, and I've got a druid, a pally, and a DK slowly wandering through Outlands, just in case priest healing gets gimped. I don't think it will, but it doesn't hurt to be prepared.

As far as the new stats, I dunno. I think it will make my game slightly more inconvienent, since it's sounding like dps caster gear won't overlap with healy caster gear anymore, and that means two full sets of gear (three if you count pvp). Not so sure I'm thrilled with that.

More than anything, Cataclysm just provides me with more incentive to get things done. I am a procrastinator of the worst sort, so having a deadline helps me get things done.

There are things I'm really looking forward to, like rolling a warlock Alliance-side. I'm not a big fan of humans, and well, gnomes squeak, so warlock's the only class that is horde-only for me. I should probably figure out how to free up a character slot for that.

I'm also looking forward to the zone updates. Goodness knows, I've no desire to level through the same zones over and over again, and yet this is what I've been doing. The dungeon finder helps a bit with this, but let's face it, you have to do something while you wait, and there are only so many games of Peggle I can play.

Bad start, but great finish

It was a good night.
First, I got to dps a Sarth 3D zerg on Garetia. She got 4 achievements at once (the 3 twilight ones and the one for staying out of the fire). That also got her enough emblems to get another piece of tier 9. Yay 2 piece bonus of awesome. I still need to replace her chest and legs and cloak and just about everything else, but at least her gloves and shoulders are good to go.

Then it was time for Old World raiding. Sadly, no one but me and Slack showed up, so I dragged his level 63 arse through Underbog instead. He got some nice drops, including a shammy relic and some awesome pants.

And then, as I was cutting gems for Slack's new pants, a call went out over the raiding alliance channel. They were losing a healer in their alt TOC25/Ony 25/weekly raid, so I went. And I got new pants. Two pairs, one for heals, and one for shadow. I also got enough triumph to get shadow tier, but I got a new wand instead (it was a bigger upgrade for both specs). I'd already broken my tier 9 4 bonus (because tier 10 shadow gloves dropped in a voa run and man those stats are beyond awesome), so I figure I'll try to hang on to the 2 piece bonus instead, or at least until Blizz figures out what they're doing with the tier 10 bonus. I do need to figure out shadowspec gearing beyond "am I hitcapped?" though. Looks like I'll be hitting shadowpriest.com and doing some reading.

All in all, it was a nice end to a week that hadn't started well on the raiding front.

Friday, March 5, 2010

Something I'd like to see in Cataclysm

This was all inspired last night by Matticus tweeting about the celestial horse obviously being a priest mount. It got me to thinking about other classes getting their own mounts and what they might look like. I tried to make sure each class had something unique and cool and something we haven't seen in game before. Ideally you should be able to tell what class is approaching you from quite a long distance away based on their class mount (if that's the mount they're using). Sadly, I didn't quite manage it (stupid horses being so iconic), but I welcome any ideas anyone else has!

Druids-> Well, they already have a travel form and two flight forms, so all they need is an epic ground mount. I'm thinking a recolor of Reins of the Raven Lord would be cool. Green maybe? Or you could get a dryad to ride on or one of the huge tree guys. Or summon something from the Emerald Dream.

Hunters-> So, I have a crazy (but cool) idea. Now we all know the most iconic thing about hunters is their pets. Now imagine getting an item that allowed you to turn one of your stabled pets into a mount. How cool would it be to go riding around on a spirit beast or a corehound? To keep this from being overpoweringly cool, you'd only be able to use the item on one pet at a time and that pet would just be a mount, and could not be used as a normal pet (but would still take up one of those valuable stable slots). But it would allow all those hunters who tamed a really cool pet to show them off, even if they aren't the greatest pet for dpsing.

Mages-> I'm thinking a water elemental for ground mount, and a fire one for flying. Or a large version of the Kirin Tor familiar. Some sort of levitate and a speed spell could also work.

Paladins-> Pegasus. Pegasi? Winged horses. Their ground mounts would stay the same, as I really feel they fit the class well.

Priests-> This one was hard. Obviously they should have wings of pure light (or shadow) for the flying option, but for ground? Mostly when I think of priests and mounts I think of mules, which aren't very epic or cool. Maybe a ball of light (or shadow)?

Rogues-> Something sneaky, like a Fel Reaver! Okay, those are only sneaky in Outlands. Hmm... Well, some sort of shadowstep teleport would be awesome, and fit the flavor of the class, but that wouldn't be a mount. I'd say a big cat because of the prowl bug, but nelves already have cats. Maybe a solid black cat, like a panther and you can stealth while mounted (but you go slower)! A chameleon mount would also be kinda cool. Flying-wise, a glider would be very stealthy, especially if it was painted the colors of the sky.

Shamans-> Earth elemental for ground, air for flying. I was also considering some sort of flying totem, based on the totem art for each race. Both could work. Ghost wolves would also be an option.

Warlocks-> A felhound mount. You know you want one. And for the flying mount, a smaller version of one of those winged demon guys from Hellfire maybe? I can't really come up with a flying demon that seems appropriate. Maybe a winged snake of green fire?

Warriors-> This was the other really hard one. A warrior is such a broad archetype, and most of the obvious mount options have already been done. So what about a chariot? Or a jeep-like contraption, but that doesn't really work for all races. Flying-wise, I think an armored drake would be the way to go.

And I like the mounts DKs have, so I wouldn't change them except to get rid of the screaming sound when you summon the ground mount. I do not like that sound. But, I suppose I should throw them a bone and they could have skeletal drakes.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Grr


No, we did not get him down. We're trying again tomorrow, and hopefully I will be less fail. Not only did I die every phase 3, but I managed to die in phase 1 twice. Go me.


So after repeated wipes, I switched over to the druid and found a great place to level weapons skill. It's in Moonglade, and you can see that tunnel in front of my character? Well that tunnel spawns a phantasmal lasher and then an npc kills it. All you need to do is whack it while the npc goes to town and watch your weapon skill soar. Plus, you don't even have to move. My druid might actually have decent weapon skill levels soon, thanks to this.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Druid vs Priest healing

My baby druid went broccoli. And then I healed some dungeons. And then I got a hot tracker (hotcandy in case you were wondering) and healed some more.

Druid healing is different. Not bad, just different. It may have something to do with the fact that I haven't reached the bottom of the resto tree (I figured I should get the balance talents first), but it's kinda panic-inducing, mixed with periods of boredom.

So let's lay out the difference...
As disc I shield the tank, start POM bouncing, and if the dps takes damage I shield and flash heal them. The tank may get a penance or greater heal, but mostly everyone gets flash heals.

As a tree I hot the tank. Then I wait to see if I need to use a Rejuv or a Healing Touch. I hot the dps as needed. My healing touch casting time varies for some reason so that makes my life a bit more interesting. And I run into mana issues (Innervate is the best spell ever) and I'm overhealing like crazy. The mana issues are a gear thing, I know.

Both disc and tree are best if you can think ahead and predict the damage. I'm not so good at this in 5 mans, since it requires me to actually remember fights beyond run out of the ick. If I ran the instances enough, I probably would retain the "ick about to happen, shield/hot!" information, but who wants to run Outlands stuff that much? But tree is kinda brain-hurty in that I have now been trained to DO SOMETHING when a health bar starts dropping. But if there's already a hot there, I don't need to do anything unless the damage is greater than the hot's healing. And that just seems wrong.

Now, this is not a critique of tree healing at all. I kinda like it, other than the panic bit. It gives me time to go get that yellow dot (ooh herb!). Plus I can pull of miracles in tree that I couldn't have in disc at the same level. One tank and one idiot dps trying to tank? It's a problem, but no longer a "oh god we're all going to die" problem. More of a "grr, I liked having a full blue bar and will you stop trying to kill the nice mage along with you!" problem.

But boomkin is more fun. Heehee hurricane and stuff is dead.