I love five man instances best out of all the different “ways” that this game can be played. I’ve also got the great fortune to have a steady group of friends who also love it, and are incredibly good at it. As such, we bring you the anatomy of a trash pull - our style.

This is how WE, as a group, handle trash pulls. Based on comments I’ve gotten on previous entries, there’s a lot of people who feel very strongly that assisting is old-school. That it’s dead, buried, and long cold.

With all due respect, that’s a load of bullhonkey.

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An Egotistical Reader wrote in asking some questions about roleplaying in Warcraft, and how to deal with the inconsistencies of the medium - how to explain the Warcraft-specific problems of characters constantly dying, bosses never staying dead, that sort of thing.

Now, although I know a lot of roleplayers, have spent a goodly amount of time in a heavy roleplaying guild, and am currently in a guild that encourages roleplaying I tend to view it the same way I do pumpkin pie.

I don’t like pumpkin pie. But I can see why other people do, and I certainly don’t think it’s odd or abnormal to like pumpkin pie. I know a lot of people who like pumpkin pie, and I can look at recipes and pick out some that I think I (If I liked pumpkin pie) would love to try. And I will happily make the pie, knowing that I won’t be eating any of it.

I don’t personally roleplay. But I try not to make fun of people who do, and I try to help those who like it when I can. I found out that I much prefer writing stories, books - roleplaying is not similar enough to suit me. I have seen a great many different philosophies on how to roleplay in Warcraft - everything from “let everyone do what they want” to trying desperately to set up guild-wide events that aren’t so scripted that characters feel like they’re about as useful in a scene as the lamp sitting on the table next to them. I’ve seen guilds that work through stories on an episodal basis, allowing each character to have their day in the sun, and I’ve seen guilds that split off and quietly roleplay without involving the majority of the guild.

I have enough personal gripes, snipes, and complaints about “bad” roleplayers to fill a dozen blogs, but I thought I’d give you a little background on my personal roleplaying to help explain why I asked a friend to answer the questions for me. I thought it’d be kinda silly for me to answer such good questions, when I myself don’t live by the answers.

So I enlisted the help of Sykora, my old guildleader from the days when I was in a heavy RP guild, and she responded for me.

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Thursday is, as many of you know, Ego day.

It’s also Thanksgiving, and the date of a very important Packer game.

Stuffing myself with too much food and screaming incoherently at the tv screen trump Ego posts, so there’ll be no second post this week.

Hopefully, ya’ll will be too busy stuffing yourself and screaming at your favorite sports team and whatnot to notice.

I have a lot to be thankful for this year, and I plan on enjoying every drop of the holiday. May yours be full of good food and good company, and free from stealthed gankers, drama-queens, and loot whores. (And rival ninja villages attempting to kidnap you with classified-ad thugs for hire.)

Happy holidays to all of you, and I’ll see you here next week, same Ego time, same Ego channel.

Most of us have been there. We have real life friends who play the game. Maybe they picked it up on their own, maybe we pressured them into picking up the game so they could spend time with us. Maybe you didn’t realize they played the game, and both of you have toons on different servers.

Hearts filled with happiness, you transfer a toon, you reroll, you (both of you) do whatever you can so that you can play together. You imagine how much fun it’s going to be, to play with your friends. No more loot whores, no more drama, no more dying on solo quests. Together, you will make an invincible team, and your enemies shall be crushed before your might.

…and then everything goes wrong.

Why? Why does it -always- seem to go wrong? You get along so well in real life, why should the game be any different?

Disgruntled, disappointed, and demoralized, you stop playing together. Sometimes you stop being friends, and sometimes you stop playing the game.

I’ve played WoW for a very long time, and I’ve been in this situation more times than I care to remember. As a result, I’ve had a lot of time to think about why it fails so very often, and also why sometimes, almost miraculously, it works.

There are three elements to finding a good playing buddy. I’m not necessarily talking about guilds here, although the general ideas can be applied on that level as well. Here, I’m talking more about the people you play with. The people you quest with, the people you instance with.

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Today’s post, if it happens, will be exceptionally late - my workload this morning was far greater than anticipated and I haven’t even had a chance to begin thinking of a topic.

Just keeping ya’ll updated, so’s you don’t worry too much. I have not been kidnapped by ninjas from a rival village. You may rest easily.

Priests

* Blessed Recovery: This talent can now trigger while the Priest is sitting.
* Blessed Resilience: This talent can now trigger while the Priest is sitting.
* Chastise (NEW) is now available to Dwarf and Draenei priests at level 20. Chastise causes Holy damage and incapacitates the target for 2 seconds.
* Circle of Healing: The base amount of healing from this spell has been reduced along with increasing the bonus it receives from bonus healing effects. Characters with more than 1338 healing will see their Circle of Healing heal for more than previous patches. Characters with less than 1338 healing will see their Circle of Healing heal for less.
* Cure Disease and Abolish Disease range increased to 40 yards.
* Divine Spirit: It is no longer possible for a target to simultaneously have Divine Spirit rank 5 and Prayer of Spirit Rank 1 icons showing at the same time.
* Elune’s Grace (Night Elf) effect changed to reduce chance to be hit by melee and ranged attacks by 20% for 15 seconds. There is now only 1 rank of the spell.
* Fear Ward is now available to all priests at level 20. Duration reduced to 3 minutes, cooldown increased to 3 minutes.
* Fixed a bug where the global cooldown was triggered when shifting out of Shadowform.
* Focused Will (NEW Discipline Talent) - After taking a critical hit you gain the Focused Will effect, reducing all damage taken by 1/3/5% and increasing healing effects on you by 4/7/10% for 8 seconds. Stacks up to 3 times.
* Holy Fire: The tooltip on rank 4 has been adjusted.
* Inner Focus will now properly affect Lightwell Rank 4
* Inner Focus: This effect is now properly consumed by casting Mind Soothe.
* Meditation (Discipline) increased to 10/20/30% mana regeneration.
* Mind Soothe: This spell will now consume Inner Focus.
* Mind Vision: Now consumes the Inner Focus buff when cast.
* Pain Suppression (Discipline Talent) is now usable on friendly targets, instantly reduces the target’s threat by 5%, reduces damage taken by 40% and its cooldown has been reduced to 2 minutes.
* Prayer of Healing, Circle of Healing and Holy Nova (healing effect) now gain additional benefit from spell damage and healing bonuses.
* Prayer of Mending: This ability will no longer be overwritten when the new Prayer of Mending would do less healing.
* Power Word: Fortitude, Divine Spirit, Prayer of Fortitude and Prayer of Spirit mana costs reduced.
* Power Word: Shield now gains additional benefit from spell damage and healing bonuses. Base absorb values of ranks 10, 11 and 12 have been reduced.
* Shackle Undead: This spell will now always be removed correctly if multiple Priests overwrite each other’s Shackle Undead.
* Shadow Word: Death: Resilience no longer reduces the backlash damage from this spell.
* Starshards (Night Elf) is no longer channeled, costs 0 mana, is now a Magic effect, lasts 15 seconds, causes damage every 3 seconds and has a 30 second cooldown.
* Starshards: The damage per tick of this ability no longer changes during the duration of the effect.
* If you are in Shadowform and try to use an ability that my not be used in Shadowform, you will leave Shadowform and use that ability. This can be disabled with /console autoUnshift 0
* Silent resolve: This talent now benefits the triggered buffs from Blessed Resilience, Blessed Recovery, and Martyrdom.

Aside from a few tweaks to talents that I, as a PvE healing priest, do not have, there are a few very important priest changes to note in 2.3.
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Well, now that we’ve spent the last way-too-long on things that are generalities, let’s do a bit of a flip and talk about specifics of priesting again. What can I say, I like to mix things up, keep you on your toes.

What talents should you, the healing priest take? There are a lot of options. Some of the options that I label as “useless” are must-haves for a different KIND of priest build. I’m focusing here on the priest who is spending most or all of their time healing for groups or raids. (bearing in mind that I can only advise healers up through the raids that I have been on - if something becomes incredibly useful in Black Temple or SCC, I cannot confirm it, and so I will not.)

I am going to walk through the ENTIRE healing tree. I’ll only grab those talents from the Disc tree that I consider to be “key” talents. If it’s not mentioned, it’s because I don’t really care that it’s there.

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Before you ask, that title is totally kosher.

Really.

Here we are, finally at the end of Part 1 and Part 2 of the epic saga that will surely dwarf Star Wars in its…umm…epicness.

(Hey, I’m working on zero coffee here, gimme a break)

Right, so let’s set the scene. You’ve been in the guild for a long time. You’ve established your role, your place, and your friends. Then you log on one day and you see a new name in the guild roster.

The emotions here can range from curiosity to excitement, from irritation to just flat out not caring. This article isn’t really for the guild members who are curious and excited. You guys are already likely to welcome the newcomer and make them feel at home.

This article is more for the people who are more jaded. It’s for those who view newcomers with irritation and mistrust.

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I want to thank every single person who responded to yesterday’s query, I got far and away better responses than I could ever hope for.

The general consensus was exactly what I’d hoped for - If I want to write about cats and coffee, I’m not going to -offend- anyone, but most of you are here for the WoW stuff.

Since I created this blog for the WoW stuff, that’s totally cool with me.

I do, however, know my limits, and there’s no way I could produce a solid month’s worth of WoW related posts without the latter half being reduced to one-sentence placeholders.

So! I shall refrain from joining NaBloPoMo this year, and I’ll take that extra time and work on my webserver or one of my five-and-a-half-frillion other writing projects I’ve got.

A guildie issued a challenge for me to write more WoW RP posts for our guild boards than he does. And I’ll be damned if I’ll let him keep that smirking face! As soon as I find a plot, he’s toast.

…I know I left a spare plot around here somewhere….

But! Thank you, each and every one of you for weighing in your votes. I salute you all! And if the patch doesn’t come out on Tuesday, I might even do something shocking and abnormal, and finish the New Kids on the Block series.

…Remind me never to start a multi-part post without pre-writing them all again….

*winks*

(Eek, and now I need a new sidebar image. *ponder*)

Okay.

TJ totally crossed the server line to badger me into joining her in the madness that is NaBloPoMo - an attempt to cause bloggers’ heads to explode through daily blog quotas.

One blog a day. For the entire month of November. It’s enough to make even the most courageous blogger fall to their knees and quiver in terror.

So here’s the deal. I’ve been attempting to keep this blog at least mostly warcraft related.

With a post-a-day requirement, there’s no way I could even fill in the non-T-days with warcraft-related reminiscences.

So I’d end up blogging about my trips to the coffee-machine at work, ranting about my dislike of shopping, regaling you with tales of my overly-protective cats….

…basically, a whole bucketful of non-wow stuff.

Obviously, Tuesdays and Thursdays would remain sacred and devoted to serious posts about the game.

But every other day would be like those booths where they blindfold you and then make you stick your hand into a box, then let you pet a bunny, feel the rough bark of a treestump, or land you wrist-deep in a bowl of pistachio pudding.

Would you guys prefer the blog at least attempt to retain some semblance of a theme or purpose? Or are you prepared for the pot-luck posting that would await you for the rest of the month, should I join this band wagon of insanity?

Comment with your votes!