Look, RP Stuff!

I was working on my baby priest (now 22 and hitting Hillsbrad, and Silverpine was epic, if troubling), and was inspired. She's on an RP server, and I do want to find an RP guild for her at some point. So here, the first entry of Ameldia's Journal.


Entry the first (though why I'm writing this is beyond me. I suppose it will be interesting to look back on my early days.)


I got asked the other day why I adventure. I suppose they were expecting me to say that I wanted to destroy the living, or serve the Dark Lady. I guess "well, it's something to do" isn't a common answer.

But there I go again, dropping into the middle of things. Sorry, when your unlife (or whatever you want to call it) starts that way, you try to ignore the importance of beginnings. When you don't have one, it stings a bit. Okay, a lot.

I'm Ameldia. Or at least I think I am. But does thinking I am actually make me so? It's questions like these that would keep me up at night if I slept. Am I supposed to sleep? You'd think they'd have a course or something when they raise you, but no, it's go get this and go kill that. Not so helpful.

I'm forsaken, or that's what they tell me. I know I'm a corpse, brought back by some unholy thing. I know the Light burns, but it's a good burn. I rather like the pain, it's nice to feel things. I don't remember anything, really, from life, but I miss feeling things and tasting things.

Physical description, in case you might care what I look like. I'm a bit taller than average, though I tend to slump (something about decay of the structures of the spine, I think). My hair is clean, if oddly-colored (I really doubt I had blue hair in life). My elbow and knee joints show, a common affliction, but other than that I'm quite well-preserved. I also have a baby lich thing that follows me around and occasionally frosts things. He gives me the creeps but I can't seem to get rid of him. My fingers are generally stained with ink, as are my robes. I suppose I'm decent-enough looking, for a decaying corpse. What are the beauty standards for us, anyway?

I have no idea who I was in life, so I'm trying to figure out who I am in death. It's as good a way as any to pass eternity, I suppose.

3 Things I Think Blizz Should do to Make Leveling Better...

3 Things I Think Blizz Should do to Make Leveling Better...
1) stop trying to force us to Northrend, Outlands, or Vash/Hyjal with better XP. Quests and kills should give you the same XP whether you're in Borean Tundra or Netherstorm. It's all old content, and let's face it, most Wraith babies have done Northrend to death but may not have ever set foot in Shadowmoon Valley.

2) Following on from 1, BC heroics should give about the same XP for a run as Nexus or UK. Wraith heroics should give about the same XP as a Cat normal. Again, it's all old content, and doing this would allow for more variety in the 70-75 dungeon range. I was doing BC heroics with my mage, but given that at level 70 a BC heroic gives me less than half the XP of a UK run, it makes more sense to run UK for the 4th time, sadly.

3)The gear gap at 80. I've run into this twice now. Cata normals require better gear than you get questing in Northrend or running dungeons to 80.  That needs to be fixed, it's really stupid to run dungeons to 80 because you'd rather run around Dal looking for Higher Learning books than quest, then suddenly be unable to run the new dungeons that are the only ones that will give you decent XP. I'm hoping that the new 80 gear sets are to help with this.

I know why these things exist, they're to force us into the new content. But the content isn't new anymore, so why keep the rails? Yes, when Cat came out it was a good idea to nerf Wraith heroic XP, but Cat's been out for almost a year now. Give us a bit more freedom, Blizz!

One Amazing Night

Horde-side is turning out well for me. Last night just ended up being an AMAZING night and I have screencaps to share! (the day started off horribly, so last night was extra awesome as a result)

First off, I'd signed up for a Light of Dawn run (LK 25 heroic) that had been advertised in the achievements channel.  We actually had 25 people, and lost more people to the elevator boss than any other boss before LK. One wipe on LK, and a new title (and a bunch of achieves) was mine!

Then the same raid leader (who was awesome and if you can go on a run Creacher's running, do IT!) said he was doing an Ulduar 10 drake run. We all know I've been lusting after that drake forever, so I was in. It was a spectacular group, and we ended up doing Yogg+0...

Razorscale's achieve (which we saved for last since it's really painful at 85)

And then went to say hi to the Observer

I won the quest thing and got to make the Dal skies all pretty!

And got my new buddy to top it all off! Oh, and some ulduar tier. I will defn be going on these runs again, it was a lot of fun and SQUEEE MOUNT OF SHINY!

Old Lyl, New Lyl

Old Lyl...

New Lyl

I'm not overly thrilled with the tightly pulled back braid, but it was the only nelf hairstyle available and it didn't  feel right for Lyl to go through a transporter/orb accident and turn into a belf and completely leave her old self behind. Yup, that's my IC explanation for how she became a belf. Right now, she's oscillating between trying desperately to hang on to her old life and working out how to embrace this new life.

I did go to TB on her, and was only focus-fired once! And my new guild does pvp nights, so I'll be healing in BGs more. I like doing that, provided my face doesn't get melted repeatedly and quickly, which more actual pvp gear should help with.

So we'll see how it goes. But is it just me or is it way easier to navigate Orgrimmar by flying mount than on foot?

Firelands Nerf

So, the nerf to Firelands. I haven't talked about it because we've seen so little info on what exactly they're planning to do. I'm also trying to sort my own feelings out on the matter. But there is one major point I've seen that I agree with.

TOO SOON
Summer's never a good time for raiding guilds, or at least it's not for the ones I've been in. People go on vacation, do more family stuff, and generally aren't as available. This means less raiding. My former raid group actually went on hiatus for a couple weeks because not enough people were around. So, patch 4.2 comes out to now, that's 11 weeks more or less. Now, we raided 2 days a week, so that's 22 days minus 4 days which equals 18. 18 days and 2.5 hours of raiding per day, that ends up being 45 hours. That's a rough estimate of how much time I've spent in Firelands, and it doesn't seem like that much.

In that 45 hours, I've helped kill (in the order I killed them) Rhyolith, Shannox, Beth'tilac, Baleroc, and this week we downed Alysrazor. That averages out to about 9 hours per boss. Does that seem right to you? Now, most of that time was spent working on Rhyolith and Alysrazor, not because they were hard but because my old raid team died and I ended up in the other one which raids for longer periods of time and had started with the "easier" bosses.

9 hours per boss. 9! And it's important to remember that Lyllea is not well-geared. I hit Firelands in almost entirely 359s, but I don't farm valor and she's still mostly wearing that same gear (yes, I'm lazy). I remember struggling for a long time on Magmaw (my date for his achieve is early Feb, and I believe we started on him in early Jan).  I know we struggled on a couple of the other bosses as well (Halfus and Council of Wind, I still hate your RNG), and I very, very much doubt that if you averaged out all my raid time over the previous tier, stopping when Firelands came out (and I was fairly well-progressed at that point, with every boss but the end ones down), that you would come up with 9 hours per boss. In fact, let's do some back of the envelope math on that...
Jan 1 (we didn't start raiding till after Christmas)- June 28 is 27 weeks.  Roughly 135 hours of raiding. The average ends up being 16.8 hours per boss. That still seems short, but until I did the math I wouldn't have said that. Plus, that's still over 4 raiding days per boss.

So, based on my back of the envelope math, I don't think Firelands needs a nerf, at least for me. I've progressed further in less time than I did last tier, and certainly don't feel like I've stalled. It also worries me a  bit. I do NOT want Firelands (or the next raid) to be a repeat of ICC in terms of content spacing. I'd be a bit less worried if heroic modes in Firelands were more like they were in Ulduar, or if heroic mode tier 11 dropped gear as good as Firelands normal. That way we could have options! Get bored with Firelands normal, go try tier 11 heroics!  Plus, helm and shoulder tokens. Of course, they'd still look like urinals (stupid tier 11 shoulders for priests), but I suppose I can put up with them for a bit longer.

Now, I'm not against nerfing content to allow more people to see it, I just don't like the timing of this nerf.

DragonCon Pictures

I took pictures at DragonCon, and here you go. Think of it as a RL screencap post... I worked for most of the con, so not as many pictures as I might like.

A toddler running away from a shark. It was a robotic blimp shark, very cool.

Lumiere from Beauty and the Beast. The clock guy was also there, but I didn't get a picture of him

Me with Lucius Malfoy. If you're wondering why I look hot, well, that outfit's made of upholstery fabric.

Bob and Carl, Sci-fi janitors. If you've never seen their video shorts, go check them out. Hysterical.

A female Captain Jack Harkness in a GREAT coat.

Worgen

Spacegoat

Kick-arse Horde bracers

Human, but still a great costume

Great tabard

Troll

Alice in Wonderland set

Bearded Disney Princesses. Because I need to share the HORROR....

Malcolm Reynolds being awesomely overdramatic with a friend of mine. We may have spent a good chunk of one night searching out Doctors for him to hug. It was surprisingly fun.

female Iron Man.

Rogue and Gambit

Captain Jack and me

The Priest Plan

I do have a plan for my new Forsaken priest. You see, I never really leveled a priest properly. Lyl was leveled via Recruit-a-Friend to 60 in combination with Monera. It was fun, and at the time it was the right thing to do, since I had massive issues leveling a priest normally. Lots of horrible, horrible death, going oom, and generally not enjoying it.

I know they've vastly improved the leveling in Cat, and I've had a blast exploring bits and pieces of it Alliance-side. Hence, my priest plan rules...
1. Must get loremaster achieve/finish the zone story for every zone I do until I hit Outlands.
2. Must try leveling as disc and/or holy. Probably going Atonement smite. I'm thinking once I get dualspec I'll go disc smite/holy. In the long term getting more familiar with holy can only improve my healing skills.
3. No heirlooms. This is not a hardship since I'm on a different server from my heirlooms anyway.
4. No dungeons till 60. Then I can go dungeon-crazy if I want.
5. Occasional PVP is fine, but I must remember the point is to see the new questing content.
6. Only one gathering profession, since again, questing!

This toon isn't completely on her own, since I have a DK and a troll druid over there, but that's more to avoid the pain of not enough gold to train than anything else. I ended up with a Forsaken because a) I keep hearing how awesome the new Forsaken experience is, and b) I haven't really played one before.

Now, if you want to play along at home, here's a more general set of rules. The goal is TRY NEW STUFF!
1. Must level primarily in a way you haven't done before or in zones you haven't done since Cat hit.
2. Must level as a spec and/or class you haven't leveled before, or haven't leveled in a long time.
3. No heirlooms with XP gain.
4. Only one gathering profession.

See, simple enough, right?

Now if you want to make it more complicated, you can
1) run with a different UI layout from your main
2) see how far you can get leveling in only whites/greys
3) have the toon be completely self-sufficient, no influxes of cash from DKs or the like
4) go for ambassador!