About Tuesday

Sorry for missing Tuesday - we had a massive, massive snowstorm (when you live in Wisconsin and they declare a Snow Emergency with capital letters, you know it’s nasty) and I was unable to take a snow day from work because I had signed up for a Women’s Business Conference downtown that day.

I signed up for it in August. It was warm in August. Sunny.

I did not authorize the weather change. I can’t believe they didn’t run it past me before doing it. Heads will roll.

Anyrate, I ended up stuck in a ditch with two delivery men laughing at me while I dug my tiny little car out of the snow with my plastic child’s shovel, wearing a nice suit and stiletto heels.

It took a lot more strength to keep from ramming those heels up their backsides than it did to dig out the car.

A very wonderful and incredibly kind-hearted gentleman DID help give my little car some pushes to get me out of the snow, so it wasn’t a total loss, but by the time I made it home from the convention, I just wanted to curl up with a mug of cocoa and turn off my brain.

But! That was Tuesday and today is Thursday, and that means a new post.

Sons of Who-Der? Eh?

I have spoken to you about the Sons of Hodir in the past and how their rep is needed if you want to get shoulder enchants.

Thank you, by the way, to the commenter who brought the Everfrost Chips to my attention. They’re hard to find, but they are my lifeline with this rep grind. I hate dpsing on my priest. Hatehatehate.

One of the quests that opens up once you reach Honored with Sons of Hodir is called Thrusting Hodir’s Spear.

Most of the other quests can be completed in a group setting - some of my friends and I get together and do the killing/collecting quests together.

I’m All Alone!

Thrusting Hodir’s Spear, on the other hand, is a solo quest. There is absolutely no way to share the success of this quest with a groupmate.

It’s also worth a whopping 500 rep with the Sons of Hodir.

I cannot ignore the value of 500 rep a day, no matter how much it kills me.

The basic gist of the quest is that you get the spear, march out into the snow and toss it at a low-flying proto-drake nearby. That takes no skill - apparently Vonya has been pitching major league baseball while I’ve been offline, because she’s got one helluva arm on her.

You reel the dragon in (again, seriously, where is she getting these muscles?) and you basically cling to his belly while he flies around, trying to get rid of you.

From the point of view of the dragon, this really sucks. You’re flying around, minding your own business and BAM, some bizarrely strong drae in skirts hits you with a frackin spear, reels you in, then grabs on to your belly and starts stabbing you some more.

Sucks to be him.

So there you are, clinging to the belly of a flying dragon. Your spells and abilities are gone - now you have a new bar of abilities. You’ve got to manage your grip while avoiding the dragon’s claw swipes and attacking him. If you manage to get his health down far enough before your grip fails or he kills you, then he catches you in his mouth (yes, somehow this is indicitave of success) and you get two NEW abilities, both of which seem to be some variation on the stabbity-death theme that has worked so well for you thus far.

Assuming you kill the dragon before he crushes you in his jaws, the dragon dies, theatrically tumbling from the sky (you’re still in his mouth, by the way) and crashes to the ground. You leap from his mouth, squeeze the dragon spit from your skirts, and toddle back to the quest giver to get your rep.

I hate this quest.

Why Do I Hate This Quest?

Is it hard? Yes, until you figure out the strategy.

Is that why I hate it? Nope, not at all.

I hate it because the strategy is a NONSTRATEGY.

What does that mean? It means that you are given this array of tools - Grip, Dodge, Stab, Stab HARDER - and it really seems like there should be some kind of plan. You get your grip up, Stab, Stab, he swipes at you with his claws and you cleverly dodge out of the way, and then do the Stab HARDER ability. Rinse and repeat.

The problem is that this doesn’t work. It’s obviously the way Blizz intended the fight to go, given the descriptions on the abilities, but it has never worked for me. I have died every time. Not because the dragon killed me - oh no. With the dodging, I had the dragon’s health down far lower than my own. No, I lost because it took too long and the dragon just flat out dropped me.

How Do I Win?

The winning strategy for me has been thus. Use the Stab HARDER ability every single time it is on cooldown. Every time. Grip a bunch - keep the stacks above 30 (usually I grip up to 55 or so), and stab a bunch.

That’s it. No dodging. Stab HARDER every time it’s up. Grip grip grip, stab stab stab, Grip, stab HARDER, stab, grip, grip.

And when the second phase comes up, just hit both buttons over and over again till the dragon dies.

What the hell kind of strategy is that? Why is there even a dodge button if it’s actually exponentially easier if I never use it? Why are there two phases with unique abilities if success is measured is my ability to hit the buttons fast?

If it’s a button-speed thing, give me one of those mini-games where I just hit the button a lot and it measures how fast I do it. Give me a single button. By giving me buttons that appear to indicate some sort of skill is required to win the fight, you get my hopes up.

By winning the fight with ease just by stabbing fast, I am very disappointed.

*Channels Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg* VERY disappointed.

Today, I am sad.

Over the past week, almost everything I have ever railed against, been pouty about, or whined to you for, has been done to me.

It is as though someone went through all the archives of this place, made little notecards of everything that has threatened to cause me an aneurysm, and then went around handing out the notecards to everybody I group with.

Hunters pulling agro, rogues stealth-afking (or collecting quest items while the rest of us ghost-ran back to the dungeon), deathknights deciding they can tank better than the tank and quickly dying, casters of all types grabbing agro from the cleaving mob and then running to hide behind me…

Everything, all of it, it’s all happened since last we spoke. I had a whole paper written about how everything seemed to be better, and how I felt a little silly for complaining so vociferously when suddenly everything was bright roses and sparkly unicorn tails.

*rip rip*

Ptooey on that. Hmph. Someone is messing with me.

What sealed the deal was when the paladin tank ran into the big room of non-elite mobs to gather them together, then aoe them to death. It was fine until he apparently got nervous.

I heard “Doh.” Then I noticed all the monsters were running at me. As I died, I saw the pearly bubble shield around our tank. Nnnnnngh.

The six deaths prior to that (yes, I was being generous with this group - I don’t know why) were just silly mistakes. “Oops, didn’t know they had a knockback, sorry about the adds.” “Whoa, did you know they cleave?” “Apparently if you move with this debuff, it really really hurts.” “I think we were supposed to go the other way,” etc.

But with that whole ‘grab a room full of monsters, get a lot of big heals, then bubble so the monsters immediately turn on the healer’ thing, I dunno. Maybe it wasn’t intentional, but it ended the evening for me. Back for flying around Outland trying to gather herbs and plot the doom of everyone but myself.

And then I went back to Silvermoon to sulk and throw things at the deathknights.

And then maybe I drank too much.

We do not discuss what happened then.  We do not.

What do you do when you’re not out doing quests or dungeon crawling?

The priest class has gone through a lot of changes lately, especially with regards to the talent trees. Let’s take a closer look at those now, from a very broad perspective, so that we have a starting point for actually making detailed talent point decisions later.

There are still three trees.

The Shadow tree is still for Zapping things to death.

The Holy tree is still for healing things to life.

The Discipline tree is still for…like…stuff and healing.

But all three of them have changed in the details, and this is both good and bad.

Shadow

I’m not a shadow priest, never have been a shadow priest, and never will be a shadow priest.

Shadow priests used to be in very high demand because they were the major source of mana regen for raids - the more damage they did, the more mana regen they offered.

Post-Echoes of War, that’s changed.

No longer are they they only source of mana regen. The mana regen they offer is now exactly the same mana regen that two other classes can offer (hunters and paladins). And by ‘exactly’, I do mean ‘exactly’. The amount of regen no longer has anything to do with damage, so a crappy shadow priest offers the same mana regen as a good shadow priest (assuming they aren’t so inept that they don’t keep the spell up).

As if that wasn’t enough, shadow priests find themselves having trouble keeping up on the damage meters along with their other mana-regen counterparts.

This has a lot of skilled shadow priests fleeing the class like rats from a sinking ship.

The tree itself is still sound, solid, well-designed, and the best way for a raiding/grouping priest to do the most damage.

It is no longer the best solo spec.

Holy

Holy is, in my opinion, still the best tree for a raiding/grouping healer priest.  Healing is boosted, new spells to increase throughput, talents that are incredibly useful, and believe it or not, the final holy talent is actually something I’d recommend (and I will, in a later post).

I believe that the holy spec still needs points spent in Discipline to pick up Meditation, at the absolute minimum.

Discipline

Discipline used to be “that other priest tree”.  It was pigeonholed as the junkyard tree - useful for when you needed spare parts, but otherwise kinda useless. At best, it had some decent PVP talents.

NOW, it’s actually a very solid, very viable tree. By giving so much extra help to the Power Word : Shield spell in particular, this tree now gives an excellent hybrid-type spec.

When soloing, there are quite a few excellent talents for survivability and damage output. The boost to certain healing abilities and the priest bubble mean that you can heal yourself, but it also means that if you happen to pick up a PuG group that wants to run an instance, you don’t have to respec.

That’s right, the Discipline tree can HEAL, now. And not just as a nod to keep the people who like to prove that bizarre specs work - the Disc tree is now a viable healing tree, just as it’s a viable soloing and PVP tree.

Crazy, innit?

So What Spec Should I Be?

If you’re raiding as DPS, go shadow. Replenishment may not be as good as Vampiric Embrace was, but it’s still nearly a requirement for raiding. You may not do fantastic insane damage, but that doesn’t mean you’re gimped. Shadow priests do good damage, but they’re not overpowered by any stretch of the imagination.

Personally, I expect shadow priests to get a hefty buff to their damage in the future - I don’t think Blizz intended to nerf the class so much that people don’t like playing them any more. Case in point one of this blog’s own bloggers - Zasp, who no longer plays his shadow priest out of disgust.

If you are soloing and grouping as a dps - I don’t know if I’d recommend shadow or disc.

If you are ONLY soloing - I recommend Disc.

If you are soloing and grouping as a healer - I recommend Disc.

If you are primarily grouping and healing (especially if you’ve hit the level cap and don’t intend to solo any more) - I recommend Holy.

What about Dual-Specs?

Dual-specs aren’t implemented yet. Logically, you would pick the secondary spec that you are most likely to secondarily need. My second spec will be a Disc-heavy build, and I fully intend to see whether or not I can “cheat” and use that to give my guild access to the Improved Divine Spirit buff without trading away my beloved bottom-tier holy spells. Also, there’s a boss fight in Naxx where you only get to heal for three seconds out of twenty - a beefier priest bubble would be awesome in that fight, I think.

One of the nice things is that by having a holy/disc dual build is that I won’t necessarily NEED a second set of gear. If I had shadow as my secondary spec, I might need some +hit gear. The extra +spirit on my holy gear isn’t going to be as useful as MP5 would be for my disc spec, but that’s okay.

The merging of healing and damage into a single spellpower stat works to our advantage, even if it does complicate the gear decisions we need to make. I will cover identifying healer gear in another post.

How does someone argue with logic? You can’t completely disregard it in favor of what you may want or believe in.

I’ve had a rude awaking. I got so caught up in what I was doing that I did not notice how our guild’s  Deathsquad had changed. We went from a physical damage stacked raid to a caster heavy stacked raid. This is a bit flow-of -thought, but stick with me its also kind of a history lesson mixed with a bit of going over what happened in my mind and why…here we go.

Mana battery, Mana battery, why must there be a Mana battery? Sure, I was the Mana Battery in our raids before. I felt it was needed for bear runs, had one and at the time I was really REALLY REALLY enjoying the Shadow Priest class/spec. But she always had a bad air about her, she was rolled in a dark, dark time that I try not to think about.

You see, I was all alone on Zasp. Biding my time I needed somewhere to raid, play, pass the time…however you’d like to look at it. I didn’t expect a raiding guild to pick up my Rogue that late in, so I power leveled Genuflect, got nearly every craftable tailoring epic, found someone who wanted a mana battery and proceeded to kill raid bosses.

When the Ego Crew came back I returned to them and we set out to acquire a flock of bears. (Flock? Herd? hell with it a Fleet of Warbears!) It made logical sense the mana battery would be more of a boon to the raid group than a second Rogue. Our Main tank being a Prot Pally would mean 5% Spell Damage, that much more threat and near infinite mana, not only for him but for the healers, the shaman, the hunters and the boomkin.  It was needed in my eyes and well worth it, but I still elected to get “my” Armani War Bear on Zasp instead of Genuflect.

Then the changes to Shadow Priests came and I really wasn’t feeling the spec anymore, not to mention I was never happy with my Trash DPS. So post 3.0.2 I switched to my pally, Nyisa and converted her to Ret, ran around doing stupid amount of damage and being the (at that point) unneeded mana battery.

See the unneeded portion made me think switching back to Zasp would be sweet and easy, since we still planned to have a phyiscal damaged stacked raid.  To help that logic along the other Rogue had elected to switch to a Warlock, I bring the armor debuff on Zasp and we had the prot paladin for JoWis and blessings, it seemed like a smart idea.

But it was a trick! (get an axe)

Judgement of Wisdom was bugged, we’d been “accidentally” double stacking it and the mana return to dps was in the full retard range. Top that off with returning double the mana what it was supposed to and well you get the idea.

Oh but thats not all! Whats behind door number two, Johnny?!

One of our hunters quit, the one that was planning on playing Survial for Replenisment if needed and the other swapped to a Deathknight. We picked up a Mage to replace the missing hunter, bringing our DPS group to Warlock, Boomkin, Mage, Enhancement Shaman and Feral Druid. Our tanks being Prot Pally of Doom and a Death Knight, with a Resto Shaman and of course Vonya healing on the Priest.

Right. NOW we have only one pure melee dps class. The DeathKnight deals both Phyiscal and Spell, just like the Prot Pally and more so lately Enhancement Shaman. Also notice there are two people out of the 9 who don’t use mana. Hell, if you wanted to be super technical the Feral Druid does have mana bar too, just not all the time.

So guess what I am doing? Sure, logically the “Major Armor Debuff” will be missed but there will be a bigger boon from having Blessing of Kings, Replenishment, Judgement of Light, 3% Damage, and some nice “Oh Shit” buttons. It’s hard to argue this logic as someone who enjoys min maxing as much as I do. Even if I’d prefer playing my Rogue it’d be silly to choose to ignore this option.

So my free time has been spent leveling Nyisa instead of farming on Zasp. She’s almost 73, and it’s been a bit silly what I can solo, I’ve forgotten how overpowered they still are, and with Divine Plea I haven’t had any mana issues with the changes to Judgements of the Wise. I’m hoping to be 80 here pretty quick, to catch up on the gear so I can be a bigger boon to the raid.

Sunday, Vanguard’s level 80s step into Naxx for the first time. I’d expect some posts from either Vonya or myself on the matter. And speaking of posts - I had one for Last Week, but it wouldn’t have been on Wednesday due forgetting that I was leaving my home to visit Family for Thanksgiving. And since the magical editing gnomes were also busy, no one was their to make sure my post was readable, I simply elected not to post it. [Edit from Vonya : I am NOT a gnome! *stomps hoof angrily*]

While I claim that there will be Rogue discussion in my posts, I don’t know how frequent it will be due to him no longer being my main. I can promise that I’ll do my best to post something each Wednesday, hopefully for your enjoyment.

With luck, the Logic Train will leave me be in peace for a bit.

As everyone who’s ever level-capped knows, the end of the fight for XP signals the begin of the fight for…pretty much everything else in the game.

Especially if you already know for sure you’re going to be raiding.

That’s right, my friends.

Rep grinds.

Thankfully, they’ve made rep-grinding a lot less painful in some cases.

Tabard

Most factions have a tabard. Unlike Burning Crusade, where a tabard was just something you used to cover up hideous armor (or something you never wore, because they do not and never will look nice with robes) - in WotLK, wearing a tabard converts all of the rep gains from level 80 dungeons into rep for that tabard’s faction.

This is great news if you do a lot of instances.

This is fabulous news if you are, for example, the Jewelcrafter for your guild, and all of the different factions have a JC pattern at exalted that is the PERFECT pattern for SOMEONE. And if you happen to be a holy-specc’d priestess who absolutely cannot STAND dpsing as a priest. (Even respecc’d, I hate dpsing as a priest. Hate. HATE. I am a healer. I heal. If I want to pwn things, I’m going ezmode. That’s why my alt is a hunter. Everyone clicks with different things. Priest dps does not click with me.) Soloing quest lines? Are you INSANE? No.

Vonya has a lot of rep grinding to do, and since I spend about 90% or more of my in-game time inside of instances, I’ve been taking huge advantage of the new tabard system.

But which factions are most important for a healery priest?

Son of a Hodir!

First and foremost, the Sons of Hodir rep HAS to be done. There’s a very long quest chain that begins in K3 called “They Took Our Men!”.  To even open up the SoH as a rep, you have to complete this quest chain. It’s very long. VERY LONG. Bring a sammich and a soda, you’ll need it. And if you’ve got other raiders in your guild who happen to be frail healers with an aversion to dpsing, it’d be awfully nice if you took them with you.

(Thank you, Noq and Kyoka)

That quest chain will get you to roundabouts friendly with SoH. Normally, this is good news, as you’d get a tabard. Not with SoH though, nuh uh. No tabard-cheating for this little priestess.

Dailies. Three of them. That is the ONLY way I can find to get my SoH rep up.

Why does it matter? Why should I bother?

Because the Sons of Hodir are the only faction in the game with EVERY SINGLE SHOULDER ENCHANT.

That’s right. Most raiders are also min/maxers - we want to have the best gems, the best enchants, the best consumables - and that means that everyone wanting a shoulder enchant is going to have to grind this rep out.

The first shoulder enchant for me (Lesser Inscription of the Crag) is available at honored. I might hit that the day after tomorrow. The second shoulder enchant is available at exalted. My brain already hurts. I try not to think about how long that’s going to take.

But Wait, There’s More

Additionally, the holy priest HELM enchant is available from Wyrmrest rep, but they DO have a tabard so it’s not nearly so painful to grind out for an instancer. It’s called the Arcanum of Blissful Mending, and is available at revered. They also have s a drake at exalted, along with some epic shoes that are generic “caster” rather than specifically for healers or specifically for dpsers. (No spirit, no MP5, and no hit, but a socket).

Walrus-People!

For those on a time budget (and who may or may not be jonesing for a penguin pet), there’s a caster mace available from revered with the Kalu’ak that is pretty goshdarned shiny. There are upgrades for it pre-raiding, but I haven’t seen them drop yet.

See, now you can pretend your obession with helping sea cows find love is motivated by logic instead of heart-stoppingly adorable penguins.

Totally Unrelated

Thank you guys for your patience last month. I completed NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and am now 50,000 words of a manuscript richer! When I finally get it polished enough to be read without causing spontaneous subdural brain hemmorage, I promise a link.

First thing first. Someone recently mentioned envy, and writing something up about it. Personally, since I have absolutely no experience with the emotion, I’m looking forward to reading about the problems you common people face with your common…emotion things. This also serves as a reminder that their idle chatter will not be considered idle chatter, and people will now be constantly harassing them about “that envy post”.

I am a devious person, oyesIam.

Second thing, completely unrelated to the first, so don’t get the wrong idea. It just happened to come to me just now. It’s really for your benefit, because I’ve noticed there are some people out there that seem intent on defending themselves against my ire, like there is any defense when I see The Dumb right there in front of me. C’mon hunters, rogues, fury warriors, deathknights, paladins.  You know there is The Dumbness and it is strong with you.  Grr.  (Paladins, I hate you simply because that one retadin in my group yesterday decided to start the instance event while the warrior tank was off “trying to get that level so [he] can train”. It was silly, but I was willing to wait. Until the event started, begun by our retadin friend. And then the paladin asked where the tank was. I stopped explaining the strategy of the fight, explained where the tank was, and then stepped out of the instance before the monsters swarmed my little party. I said good luck and wandered off. Stupid paladins…)

NO! That’s not what I wanted to talk about. Druids. That’s it. Druids. I hate druids. Stupid druids. It’s dumb. I don’t mean the cats, the bears, the silly boomkins.

It’s the trees. I hate them. They don’t pull agro, they don’t feign death and kill me, they don’t charge into a herd of monsters and then tell them where I’m hiding. And they can’t kill me in the battlegrounds. I don’t think. At least I don’t recall being pummeled to death by a tree… you would think I would remember something like that.

They heal things. And I hate them for it. I mean, in the Nexus, with that big ice-cube dragon? I bet they don’t even realize that if you stand still, you get this “I am totally not wearing enough clothing for this place” effect that hurts. And it stacks up. No, they don’t even know it exists, because they’re always bouncing around anyway. Sproing sproing, boing heal heal boing heal boing group heal sproing. It’s like a rogue, only…useful.

Apparently they were nerfed, recently, too. Except guess what happens when you hit a TREE with a NERF STICK.

Nothing. Apparently. Bringing a doucheknight tank from something like 25% life to full, in a couple of seconds, and not even using any cooldowns? How’s a priest to compete? I don’t have anything instant-cast except renew. Or holy nova, I guess… pfwoooshplosion! Geeze, how embarrassing.

I have shields, though! You might be saying that right now. Yeah, I have shields, and my crit-heals even have another shield component! But who needs shields when you can heal a tank through whatever? Bah, sadface. And they have some huge armor thing, too. I mean, the whole bark thing, that makes sense. But they’re already wearing leather, what do you want? Their bark should have, like, a time limit. And charges. And they should call it “that lame priest armor spell that most priests forget about because it’s got a time limit and charges”.

Also, they have bling. So unfair. My earrings can not compete with the giant seashell necklace bling.

Anyway. Druids. I hate you. Stupid trees.

I’ve been seeing a lot of scrubs in my pug groups lately. The sad part is that most of them could be decent, but they keep making scrub mistakes. So I, in my benevolent way, will educate you once again in how to make things easier on your pug.

When you first hit up the LFG tool option thing, you can put in a little message at the bottom. It shows up when people hover over your name in the listing of “Who wants to get beat up so I can do my nails and maybe heal you?” It’ll show where they’re wanting to go, too. Like this:
———–
Drak’Tharon Keep
The Nexus

dps-boomkin
———–

So this means the druid is looking for those two places, and will be transforming into a huge, goofy cowbearowl thing. What this also means is that you don’t have to whisper them and ask if they’re a tank. Or you could. You could even ask them if they’re a healer. Personally, I put things like “Healinator!” or something like that. It shows I am fun-loving and carefree and a silly silly blood elf who has sparkly magic to make you feel better, ‘tee hee’.

Another thing to do to make the whole process less painful is to be pro-active. Especially if you’ve been designated the leader, either by fate or lazy coworkers. Keep an eye on the chatter of people looking for a group, and also glance through the handy LFG tool itself to see if there are people sitting idle and waiting for you to adopt them and offer them a home and a place to get the snot beat out of them. Look for the little messages like I showed above, it’ll save you time. Also, ask people before you invite them to your group. They may have a few places they want to go, and they may know someone in your group. They may know them in such a way that convinces them they’d rather go anywhere else but where your group is going. Giving this option is polite and saves you heartache later, when they see the person they have reviled since baby troll school.

The last thing you want to do, again, especially if you’re the leader, is to sit around and hope people come to you. Screaming out that you need this or that, constantly, without actually looking, is equally stupid. Plus annoying. I hate you for doing that. No no, I realize you haven’t done it YET, but if you do it in the future, I hate you now.

I’m that good. Pre-emptive hate. Oh yeah. We blood elves hated the Horde before we loved the Horde. I was for Kael’thas before I was against him. The swiftboat pirates will - wait, what?

Oh, right. Get ye to the summoning stone! Get there and chill out, waiting for the next person to get there, so you can yank everyone else through the ether and shove them into the air beside you. On the other hand, if you think you may be the only person heading to the stone, and you predict that you may be standing there quite a while, it may be time to do a calculation.

What is the expected time you’ll be standing, alone, beside the meeting stone? Is this length of time perhaps longer than it would take you to find a new group, perhaps one more interested in the dungeon than in ‘finishing this one last quest’? Will the last person to the group be the first one to the stone, and thereby initiate that pervasive feeling of irritation and high-strung bitterness that can only come when you realize everyone else in the group was counting on you to be the sucker and waste your time while they take out a few more monsters. “Lawl, thanks for the summ- hey, how come I am in Wyrmrest? I don’t have any flightpoints to here, and my hearthstone is in the bank!”

Have a nice run. Watch out for the dragons.

ps: have you noticed how many skeletons are down in front of the entrance to Wyrmrest? I finally realized it was not some epic battle that happened there. It’s the people running away from kobolds and dragons and things, who then soar off the side of the glacier cliffs and fall for about a mile to smear themselves on that path of the Titans. Splort. Night Elf pizza.

I suggest everyone sit and practice their first aid or something, there on the doorstep, and watch to see if it happens while you’re there.

Stupid tree druids…

(Note from Ego : guest post from one of our commenters, Shatter, helping me squeak out some more time to finish my NaNoWriMo novel before the end of the week! If he had a blog, I’d link it for you.)

As a long time proponent of the fact that Blizzard doesn’t care about its lore or its RPers, I’ve been forced to admit that Wrath of the Lich King seems like a game made just for those two types of people – loremongers and roleplayers. With all of the raiding content being cleared in three days, it’s clear that they didn’t aspire to create a game that was so difficult the people that wanted to learn about their lore would be incapable of seeing the final pieces to the puzzle, and with the fact we can’t fly until 77 well, you have to assume that they want you to take your time and soak in all the brilliance that is the story of this expansion.

Initially, as a pessimist, I was worried about this expansion. The zombie event was fun to me but they pulled it early because of whining and that made me fear Blizzard wouldn’t go full-tilt again, or they’d water down aspects of the expansion to keep people from returning to Mode QQ. Much to my relief, though, this game provides for me what TBC did not at all and Classic only did at one point of the game – excitement. It’s like for the first time we’re actually trapped inside of a war; a series of battles that range from zone to zone and lead up to the raid instances in a way that just embarrasses TBC. Who is the only person we saw build a story to their fight in TBC? Panthaleon. OoOoO, that was so inten… zzz… oh, sorry. Yeah, so intense.

You know that feeling you got when you walked into Ashlam Valorfist’s camp in Classic? Yeah, that same excitement that you’re done with the precursors and now about to really get into the game? Well, they made ALL of Wrath feel that way. From start to finish you’re IN it and your character isn’t just collecting 5 stones for someone to make a… thing that takes 5 stones. You’re helping the war effort and knocking Arthas down a peg or twelve.

Wrath of the Lich King has brought back the RPG feel to WoW, in my opinion. We land on the shores of Northrend and we’re already in the middle of a fight be you Horde or Alliance (I’ve played Alliance more, but the Fjord for Horde was under attack by the North Fleet). More importantly than that though, Blizzard is doing what I wanted them to do and forwarding the stories of the WoW-created characters into WotLK (and ending some. Alas, Abbendis, you were my first Blaumeux). I won’t spoil anything but quite a few characters that we knew from the past resurface in different places, and that alone is the kind of throwback you need for any epic story to truly be epic – heroes from all over coming together to make a final drive against an evil that has plagued the land for quite some time. I’m surprised there hasn’t been a Naaru stationed in Northrend, but I suppose Blizzard wanted to leave a lot of that for Outland (even though as far as I can tell, the threat there is finished. Illidan dead, Magtheridon dead, Kael’thas stopped, and the Gronn brought under control).

Beyond the fact we get an actual cinematic in the game (which is awesome), there are some quests that make me feel like I’m playing Secret of Mana or some other SNES classic. Hell, the music in Sholazar Basin + the creatures you find there are beyond nostalgic to me. I have a feeling that Blizzard saw the errors that came with TBC and rectified them in an amazing way. I haven’t felt out of the loop at any point in the game, and as Team Shaman burns through more content we’re pulled deeper into the story and lore that exists. Granted, I think Mistryza will pull out my heart and crush it if I mention Alexstraza one more time, but it’s not every day that you get to see the Dragon Queen standing around in mageweave, outside… in a coooold area. – I mean, yeah! It’s just very detailed and the amount of lore characters we are introduced to with Wrath is enough to make me feel like this could be WC4.

And that’s the truly amazing part (thanks to phasing), the story is MOVING forward! In TBC we had probably two story shifts… Kael’thas’ betrayal and Kael’thas death. In Wrath, as you complete content the areas change and you’re rewarded with knowing your addition to the game will have a lasting effect on your character.

Dalaran in and of itself, from the epic music that plays to the fact they set it up like an actual city is by far one of the most alluring things I have seen in this game, and while I cannot say that I don’t wish I could fly, at the same time I know it adds more to the city feel if everyone has to walk around instead of zipping about. Shattrath was just a bad time, bad bad time, and I’m glad that they didn’t remake the Exodar’s lack of navigability. It’s a nice change of pace, definitely.

Then of course, there are the Death Knights. As someone that has loved Scourge lore since forever it’s amazing that I didn’t level a DK first, but I wanted to wait so I could enjoy all the lore that came with it. I will say that the little bit I did play was fun, and having done some of Naxx long ago the people you see in the quest lines make them even better. I was hoping they’d throw in a story for the three Horsemen that weren’t Mograine, but you can only take so much from something I suppose. A book would be nice on them.

So, anyway, I suppose what is important in the end is that Blizzard has given the RPers a reason to stop saying “Blizz doesn’t care about us!” If you play this expansion and you don’t feel Blizzard thought about you, then you should just quit the game and try something else. The hope that this game presents is amazing, especially since they’ve even incorporated things have been asking for (Hello, Vehicles? What’s cooler than riding on the shoulder of a Titan’s weapon while slaughtering scourge, frost wyrms, and all kinds of baddies?), and makes you wonder what future expansions will hold. Guild housing? Cross factional communication? I admit, after Wrath I feel that I may just stick around and find out.

I have a confession.I, Hannelore, was wrong.

I had high expectations. Perhaps I expected too much.

We’d been through a lot, together. We’ve seen the Earth Princess, then jumped down a thousand feet to battle her pet alligator for shoes. We went on to battle Liches, from Razorfen to Scholomance. From Un’Goro Crater to Winterfall, from Tranquillen to Booty Bay, we have adventured and fought and clawed our way, at last, to Northrend.

And then you went and lost your damn mind.

Hunters. Seriously. Dubya-tee-effffuh. I stomp my foot at you in frustration. Stomp stomp! Both feet! Stuh-stomp!

/break for mana crystal

Right. Wooof. Yes. Alright, everyone else, this is for you too. I don’t want you to feel left out.

Quick note about working with other people.

Just because you survived, does not mean “it’s fine”. What is it with everyone suddenly getting attached to this phrase? It’s not fine! It’s not! Stop thinking it is! Your healer is not throwing a hissy fit just because they’re having to heal! I like healing. Healing is fun. If I tell you to stop doing something, and even go out of my way to try and explain why? Do not laugh at me!

The tank was doing great. Even the overzealous fury warrior was doing alright. The boomkin beside me was rocking the starfire and wrath and pewpew and whatever it is owlbeardeers do. The only one left was you, Mr Hunter.

I have felt guilty about my hunter hate in the past. I have tried to reconcile our differences. I shoot people in the back of the heads to make them feel better. You shoot them in the face to make them feel nothing. We’re still shooting people, this should be a common interest! “I like shooting people.” “Hey me too!” “I baked cookies!” “I love cookies!” And then there is smooching or something, I dunno.

But you! YOU. Grrr! You are like the poster-child for the people that Thrall sent north just to get you out of the genepool. “Maybe if they become a zombie, they won’t breed…” I’m sure there was an entire, late night meeting about this. “We need strong warriors to go north and fight the Lich King!” “Hm, we could also do with a few less nubtards, Thrall.” “Good point, send them along too.” And then they ate lizards or whatever it is orcs snack on while discussing such deep concepts. Grody.

I guess what I’m saying is - how have you survived?! How did you survive puberty? Grade school? Birth?

Nnngh!

/break for mana crystal

Alright… Alright… Um. Oh, right. It’s not so bad. The rest of the little group was fine. Maybe they were a little soft-hearted, but people always seem to have a bleeding heart for those ‘special children’. The sin’dorei hide them in the back room and allow them to be productive members of society by making … things. I don’t know. What is this, an ash tray? Flower pot? Both? Stupid children…

So after I told you for the third time that volley was a bad idea when we were having trouble keeping agro on one person, and we wiped twice due to the complete chaos of all those monsters running everywhere - I let you die. No one else died. No one else got under 50% health or something. Do you know what you did? Volley. Before the tank even got there. And you kept doing the volley thing. Pewpewpewpew! Your dying words were “Anyone have a damage chart? Bleurrrgh!” I don’t know how to spell that last part. Use your imagination. Orcs die funny.

The fury warrior felt bad for you, said it was her fault, even gave you money for your repair bill after I resurrected your hoary corpse! Grrr. And then you did it again! Volley! Then when the arrows stopped falling … you must have noticed there were still badguys moving around, so - Volley!

What is wrong with your head thing!?

/break for mana crystal

I um…can quit any time I want to…shut up. Shut UP.

Why am I in northrend with people that act like they are new to carrying weapons? How desperate is Thrall?

…Or does he just secretly hate me…

I bet it’s that Jaina wench. I’ve said some unfriendly things about her, and there are rumors that she and Thrall… Hm.

Oh, you people are still here. Well then. Have you noticed anyone apparently losing their mind on the Zeppelin ride north? LOOKY LOOKY I HAVE A BOW!! LAWL.

/break for mana crystal

These little Blizzard bears are sooooooo soft…yes you are. You’re a soft little bear. Soft - little - zzzz….

Setting the Scene

Vonya’s still not quite level 74.

When she entered Northrend, she was wearing mainly badge gear, with a smattering of Zul’Aman and Kara pieces, augmented with a few five-man bits and the shoulders from Gruul.

She was well geared, but certainly not geared out of BC content.

Upgrades vs Sidegrades

As we quest and instance in Northrend, I am still not seeing what I would traditionally term “upgrades”. 

I AM seeing quite a few things that I might call “sidegrades”. Gear that is similar to what I’m currently wearing, with boosts to some stat or another but with some drops in a few other stats.

I’ve been hemming and hawing, dancing from hoof to hoof, trying to decide whether to take the sidegrades. It’s an especially disconcerting decision because in almost every case, I’m looking at significant stam and int boosts with a drop in spellpower and some drop in mana regen.

Ten spellpower here, eight spellpower there, another fifteen spellpower there…it all adds up, and the numbers I’m seeing would make BC-Vonya cringe.

Northrend

But that was BC-Vonya. Northrend is a brand new game. Stats are weighted differently, talent changes mean that traditional strategies are, in some cases (such as downranking) completely thrown out the window.

It’s new. Fresh.

I know that if I just hold off, I’ll start seeing geniuine upgrades and not just sidegrades. The difference will be clear instead of muddy - the benefit obvious without a whole lot of face-squnching and hurried mental math to try and weigh the benefits against the losses.

But I have made a decision, and I thought I’d share it with you.

The Decision

I’m taking the sidegrades.

I’m not taking anything that’s obviously a downgrade, but I’m taking a lot of very shady, iffy sidegrades. From now on, if I spend more than a minute trying to decide whether the Northrend gear is better for me than my Outland gear, I’m going to take the new gear.

Why?

New Game

Partially because of what I said earlier - it’s a new game. The weights are different, the talent changes still have my head spinning, and this gear was developed specifically for Northrend content.

My old gear was developed for Burning Crusade content.

Does that mean the new gear is intrinsically better? No, not necessarily. But if Blizz is throwing items with 20+ more stam on them, and 8 less spellpower, maybe they’re trying to tell me to expect a lot of AOE damage. Maybe they’re telling me that I’ll need my mana pool boosted, with that 15+ int upgrade, even though I lose the MP5 I had on the previous gear.

Blizz would probably be the first to tell you that they aren’t perfect, they don’t know it all.

But they’re practically shouting this to me, and I am going to listen. I will trade, cringing and unhappy, my Outland gear for the new Northrend stuff, and put my character in Blizzard’s hands. 

I’m hoping they don’t drop me.

Elitist

The other reason is a bit more…egotistical of me.

Maybe this gear really is a downgrade. Maybe my old, awesome, shiny, fabulous, glittering gear is better than this stuff.

…what are other priests out there using, kleenex? Hell no! They’re using THIS gear! This gear, that I’m so torn about turning to, they’re gobbling up like the true upgrades they really are.

And then they’re turning around and healing the pants off these instances I’m running.

So what, I’m too good for the gear that other priests are using? Just because I managed to hit more end-game content than they did in BC? 

Why should any of you listen to me prattle on about how to heal in Northrend if I’m not even wearing Northrend gear?!

That’s like a wealthy housewife telling you to save money by firing one of your extra gardeners. Gee, thanks, that’s helpful. Now how about some advice from someone who actually knows what it’s like to pinch some pennies?

How about some advice from a priest who’s doing the same desperate dancing with the Five Second Rule that you are?

Summary

I’m taking the side grades. And I’m going to heal those instances, heal those raids, learn the new rules of this class, and I am going to ROCK at it.

Why? Because priests are the best healing class in this game.

That’s a pretty opinionated statement, but I’m a pretty opinionated person, and when I say it, it’s absolutely true. There might be one or two other healing blogs out there that would disagree, but if Phaelia from Resto4Lifewere to say that druids were the best healing class in the game, I’d nod and raise my glass, one healer to another.

Is my decision the right one? Who knows? It’s the right one for me, I know that. Whether or not it’s the right one for you is your call.

So what about you guys? How are you approaching the gear in Northrend?

I keep promising to post and I keep failing. I blame myself for not having just stuck with what I should have stuck with the whole time.

Stuck with what you ask? My Rogue. It’s the only class I never tire of. I can play for days on end without even going “man I wonder what this other class is like”. It’s the class that I feel at home on, I just know how to do what and why and when and feel I do so pretty well.

If I do say so.

I was running around on a Ret Paladin before the expansion playing Mana Battery again. The first weeks of OP were fun but got boring fast and felt like it took virtually no skill to play in PvE content, again this is my personal feeling. Oh, I know not everyone will agree with that, but when your rotation is “First Come, First Serve” it seems a little bit silly. (FCFS means as soon as an ability comes off cooldown you use it.) And if you’ve taken offense to that I’m sorry just remember it’s my opinion, and not anyone elses. People were kind enough to let me switch back to my Rogue. For that I’m grateful.

I’ll be focusing more and more on the Rogue, trying to find that niche of a money making scheme in Northrend. Much like the days of Mana Tombs in Buring Crusade or further back yet farming the Arcanite Reaper Pattern in Blackrock Spire in the Vanilla WoW days…Oh yes I will makes me some cash!

Last time I found the cash cow (Mana Tombs) before I even stumbled across the idea of farming on the internet (yay me!). While everyone else was doing the Mechanar Chest Farming which Blizzard eventually fixed, I was in Mana Tombs having a blast. Once I find the new cash cow, I’ll be sure to share. And from the taste of the expansion so far, these past 6 days, it looks like we’ll need it.

Of the dailies I have seen or bothered to do this far, the max gold I’ve seen rewarded is 4g and 40s. Even the old Outland dalies have been fixed to that amount. Even the lovely “Gather Nether Residue” I could do via mining nodes which gave 18g and some odd silver has been removed completly from what I can tell. Maybe it’s bugged?

I dropped my Rogues Leatherworking in favor of Skinning. At first this was to make some cash off the AH, but it turned into funding my guilds Off Tank’s Leatherworking. He’s of course sharing the benifits with me and often tells me how awesome I am. I’ve also been dontating all my ore to fund Ego’s Jewelcrafting as she doesn’t have a miner either and threatened me with doom if I didn’t do it.(Mostly kidding, but not really. No kidding, but seriously. I need HALP, she’s after my SOUL!.)

I am now kicking myself in my ass for not doing my dailies on all 3 of my 70s like a diligent person and having close to 20,000g by the time expansion hit. While it would have been nice, I just didn’t feel like doing it at the time. To busy hanging out and goofing of to bother. Now I know I’m only 74 and things may change at level 80, but I haven’t seen anything about it. We shall see. Gold has never really been a problem for me, but I usually have a plot already started by now.

I will add that I have been mining Thorium in my free time. Seems as if a lot of people need the ore and are more than happy to pay the 40g a stack on the AH. And until they stop doing so I will gladly go to Silithus in my free time and continue to supply. Pro-Tip!:if you have a miner and are bored or leveling with friends and don’t wish to get to far ahead or just need the cash for those freaking expensive skills, go bum around in Silithus for a while. Assuming your server is like mine and Thorium is the most expensive ore on the AH, regardless it will sell.

My Rogue is 74 and as to my first impressions about the expansion? It sure is pretty. I can “see” why they didn’t want us flying past everything untill later in the levels, cause you’d miss a lot of cool looking stuff. And man oh man some of those instances are just stellar. My personal favorite, going of the whole instance would prolly be Ahn’kahet: The Old Kingdom. If I was just to pick a room it would have to be where you fight Grand Magus Telestra in The Nexus. All those Runes are sooo cool.

I give mad props to the Art Team this time around, I actually spend time looking at my surroundings rather then running past them at top speed. The armor so far has some pretty cool models but as usual soooo many of the new models are reused over and over agian. I know it’s not easy to make everything unique but they could mix it up a little bit.

So far I’m enjoying this expansion. I hope everyone else is too.

See ya next week.

I promise otherwise Ego has permission to “punish” me.

P.S. - Kwane pointed out all Rogues should be steller dancers as all we ever do is count “One, Two, Three. Four, Five, Finisher.” And for this I hate him, mostly because I can’t argue agianst it.