In Which Vonya Makes a Silly Decision

The dwarf peered at her, then followed the line of her pointing finger. Nervously, he rubbed his hands together and smiled winningly at her, his teeth starkly white against his mud-spattered face. “Eh?…Ach, tha’s not a fit sight fer ye, Lass. Come, I’ll take ye back ter the road, buy ye a bath ter make up fer me mischief.”

Vonya ignored his ill-concealed hint, staring forward. Three dwarves were struggling with a single animal, a ram of indeterminate color due to a thick coating of mud. The ram (a female, she would guess, though she wondered if females were still called ‘ram’?) was rearing and pulling against the three sturdy ropes around her neck, each held taught by one of the dwarves. A few feet ahead of them walked another dwarf with a large-muzzled gun. Even from this distance, there was an air of desperation and sadness about the procession.

“No, I want to know. What is happening, please?”

Her companion looked down. “Tha be ‘Elda — Esmerelda, ta be more specific. She’s got good lines, best there is, really. We bought her for a song, thought for sure she’d be the perfect match for ‘ol Ruddy there. She’s a mite on the small side, she’d never be able ter carry a dwarf in full armor, but fleet-footed as a dream. She refuses ter breed though, we’ve put her up with four different studs, and she’s attacked them all. Gave ‘ol Sooty a hoof ter the forehead, nearly busted one of his horns.”

Vonya waited a moment for him to continue, then realized that he considered his explanation finished. She disagreed. “So?” There was an edge to her voice that she could not quite hide.

(more…)

When a warrior fights not for himself,
but for his brothers,
when his most passionately sought goal
is neither glory nor his own life’s preservation,
but to spend his substance for them,
his comrades,
not to abandon them,
not to prove unworthy of them,
then his heart has truly achieved contempt for death
and with that he transcends himself
and his actions touch the sublime.

~ Gates of Fire, Stephen Pressfield

Okay, I know this is copping out again, I haven’t even built up a backlog of emails yet or anything. But I can’t think of anything priestly to write about - probably because I haven’t had much time to actually log into the game lately. Seriously, I think I did dailies on my hunter…once…since last Saturday. Remind me again why I thought taking two intensive night classes was a good idea?

Anyrate, I’m lucky enough to have gotten a good email that I think you guys can help out on answering.

I have a question, one you might find silly but one i’m having trouble with.

Currently, with the gear I have, and buffs, totems and potions, I can attain 2038 to healing bonus. My problem is, I don’t see the benefit of a lot of my spells … they seem to be healing as well as they did at 1800 to healing. I’m now starting to turn to battleground gear and arena gear however, with each additional piece i’m trading healing bonus for stamina and int.

Is there a cap off point to the bonus healing? In other words is there a point where bonus healing becomes moot after a certain point?

Your tanks’ gear has probably increased as well - I’ll bet your mana efficiency is better now than if you were to regear back down to your old levels.

However, I can definitely see what you’re saying - it’s really difficult to measure healing efficiency. Why should you choose +heal over some other stat-heavy piece of gear? At what point does it level out, and you can start eyeballing other stats a bit more closely, because you’re not frantic to get your heal up?

As far as I know, there’s not an answer. You get the +heal because healing is what you do - obviously that’s a primary stat for a healer. Increasing your +heal stat is for the harder-hitting content, where each heal needs to be that much bigger.

There is no ceiling - no number where priests can say “okay, I have enough now”. The best we can do is point out our major stats and make sure each one is high. You can’t stack +heal at the detriment of your stamina or you’ll be cannon fodder. You can’t ignore +heal completely, or you’ll reach a point where you’re not able to keep your tank alive.

As a matter of fact, now that I think about it, I’ve been in situations where I’ve outgeared the tank, and it’s obvious. My max-rank gheal is too much - in order to avoid drastic overheal, I have to let their health go down to an alarming level. I downranked my heal there so I didn’t efficiency my tank to death, but it does mean that there’s a noticeable difference if you go back to old content and less-geared tanks with your shiny new purples. (For those interested, it was a mid-Kara geared Pally tank in Heroic Shattered Halls, as opposed to the ready-for-SSC-geared warrior I usually heal. Same player, different toon. Yes, it’s EgoTank, and yes, he has a mid-kara geared-or-better version of every tank available in the game, and a few dpsers besides. The man borders on the divine - he’s definitely not human.)

If your heals “feel” like they’re doing the same as always - if you’re healing at about the same rate, running out of mana at about the same rate, and in general feeling as though you’re not moving forward despite gear upgrades - and yet the content you are tackling and the gear of your tank is increasing - then you’re actually improving at the perfect rate (gear-wise. We shall assume that skill level remains unchanged).

But a calculateable and measurable number where you can say “Okay, no more +heal now” - I don’t think that exists.

Certainly not in the sense that a hunter can say “Okay, no more +hit now”.

In Which Vonya Makes a Friend

Vonya lay still for a single, achingly horrified moment. She was covered in sticky, smelly, clinging mud. Covered. She felt the wet strands of her hair slap against her face and when she opened her eyes, all she could see was brown. She could feel the revolting substance trickle down her bodice. She closed her eyes again. Surely this was all some sort of nightmare. A horrible, horrible nightmare, but when she opened her eyes she was still planted tail-first in mud.

Shuddering, she drew herself to her feet. She wiped at a glob on her chest, but her mud-covered hands only smeared more of the sticky goop across her skin.

Nothing could be worse than this. She would rather be staring into the wicked eyes of Shadow Priest Sezz’iz again, feeling the terror of the knowledge that she was utterly alone at the Temple of Zul’Farrak and unable to cast even the smallest spell — rather that, than to be here, now, covered in so much filth and muck that she despaired of ever being clean again.

Her inner litany of honor and duty began anew, and she felt the slightest trickle of manic laughter build within her. All hail Vonya, Draenei of the mud, queen of the muck, friend to the sheep of the Alliance!

Her eyes wide and wild, she turned her attention to the dwarf, certain she’d find him trampled and a crazed ram glaring at her with those wicked rectangular pupils.

(more…)

This is mostly just a link, and thus doesn’t count as a “meat and potatoes” type of entry.

Curse Gaming Preview of Shattered Sun Offensive Content

An excellent source of information, and I don’t know about you guys, but I’m all giddy at the upcoming content. <3

Another series of emails sitting in my inbox that need good responses. Names omitted to protect the curious - they can “out” themselves if they wish. =]

(more…)

In Which Vonya Dreams of Soap

Befriend them. You will be an emissary of our people. The honor you gain is the honor of the draenei people, and your work and accomplishments are done not only for yourself, but on behalf of our entire race.

The pale draenei stumbled over an unseen stone, barely managing to catch her balance and avoid falling face first into the hock-deep mud of what had been described to her as “one of our smaller ram paddocks, bein’ not jest a wee bit further up tha road.”

Thirty minutes ago she’d been riding along the road to Thelsamar, dreaming idly of a long, relaxing bath at the inn. A bath with scented bubbles and a bar of the soft soap she’d purchased from a Kaldorei herbalist in Darnassus. She could almost smell the sweet and earthy scent of the soap cake from anticipation alone, like an entire garden in full bloom held neatly in the palm of her hand.

Again she tripped, her hooves striking something solid and completely hidden in the muck. Her guide turned back and offered some advice. “Ye’ll want ter be watchin’ yer step there. We be nearin’ the grazing grounds of the herds, and thar may be a few land mines, if’n ye catch me drift.” Deciphering the thick accents of the dwarves was difficult enough, she had yet to capture the knack of reading their emotions as well, and couldn’t -quite- tell if he was laughing at her. She did, however, pay more attention to her surroundings, avoiding some of the suspicious bits of terrain that were rather obviously not mud.

How did she get herself into these situations?! All she wanted was a bath! Was that too much to ask?

(more…)

Severe tangent alert on this.

This post is so tenuously related to the blog that it’s absurd, but it amuses me, so I’m going to post it anyway.

Posted on a Monday so it’s not cutting into your regularly scheduled Ego time (filled with posts that have actual content).

Anyrate, I found a perfume called “Ego” - made by a small-scale perfumer company that operates mostly online called Possets

Their Ego perfume is described as follows :

Ego is harmony and proper balance, spiked with chocolate fun, there is a calm contemplative side to Ego and a complexity which goes so well with the self assured and not too sweet mode of thought. You could easily wear Ego to the PTA without having people think you smeared yourself with a Mars bar, and you would be able to smile happily while enjoying the more earthy and grounded tones of your scent. Characteristics: Lavender, foody, sweet, unisex.

It’s often described as chocolate and lavender, and to me it smells like very expensive flavored pipe tobacco.

I love it. It’s a very grounded scent - soothing and calming. Wearing it, I want to slow down and savor my day a little more. Sort of a “what’s the rush?” feeling. Definitely not something that’s peppy and energizing, but is instead quite calming. Makes me think of a library - or of sitting in an old overstuffed-leather chair and reading a heavy book while fat raindrops rail against the windowpanes and the gentle flicker of a candle keeps me company.

It’s my creativity scent - it makes me want to write.

Possets has a ton of other really great scents (I’m currently going through the three sampler packs I ordered so I can find the scents that I want to upgrade to full bottle size) but none of the others are cool enough to have such a fantabulous name. I mean, come on. Anything called “Ego” -has- to be good, am I right?