Update

I’m still here! How about that!

I have now logged 4 years of playing World of Warcraft, and I’m still having fun. When I look back and think on the fact that I’ve been playing WoW for FOUR YEARS … it really doesn’t phase me any. The only thing that’s changed is that in the past year, all but a scant handful of my IRL friends have quit WoW. All I’ve got left are Aenei, Mevessa, and Integra. While I’ve been thrilled to see some of my favorite WoW players come back to the game, IRL Finoria is looking at emptier and emptier flists. I am also sad to see Abigore go, from Shadow Word: Blog, but we all gotta move on sometime.

I’ve been doing a lot of 5mans. I still haven’t gotten the Patient title, nor have I gotten my Perky Pug, but I’m working on it. I stopped doing dungeons as feral and have been working on my boomkin(!!!) gear; I bought my t9 shoulders and an idol yesterday, and am looking at my gloves now. I have about 2010 spellpower buffed in 5 mans. There’s definitely room for improvement there. But being a boomkin is SO MUCH FUN OMFG EVEN BESIDE THE BOOMKIN WADDLE. When Eclipse procs I can hit 14k starfire after 14k starfire after 14k starfire.

I haven’t had much problems with people’s attitudes in 5mans. Even with my druid’s shoddy boomkin gear [which was cobbled together from a few heroics and lucky VoA drops]. It’s quickly becoming less shoddy, but still. I’ve been VERY lucky to have good people to run dungeons with. If anyone from Silver Hand or Frostmourne is reading this, y’all are some awesome people!

My rogue is now level 48 and looks BAD ASS, as she’s dual-wielding Phantom Blades with the Mongoose enchant on both. She’s a lot of fun. I promise I’ll post screenshots soon.

Quick Update

I’m still here, just haven’t been doing much lately. Since Nascent blew up I really had to stop and reconsider exactly whether I was going to continue playing WoW. The Pilgrim meta-achievement and leveling alts have kept me playing. In point of fact, Fin got her Pilgrim title [and plump turkey pet] today! She also owns a full pilgrim and indian outfit [complete with feathery headband bought off the AH] as well. I have a whole bag in my bank just for RP outfits, despite playing on a heavy PVP server.

But then, I don’t PVP, either.

In other news, my noobrogue is 26 and has been leveling as full combat. She’s awesome.

Noobrogue

One of the most important things in playing any toon on WoW [be it alt or main] is how they look. I know, I know. Other people are more concerned with racials, or starting areas, or stats, or classes, and that’s all well and good and perfectly valid. God knows that, if given a chance, I’d have rolled my then-Alliance paladin human instead of dwarf for the bonuses to rep and spirit, and my mage gnome instead of draenei for the bonuses to int. For my other toons, well … Finoria has to be a night elf, she’s a druid, and Lumi was rolled a night elf because a) I like elves, b) she’s a hunter, and c) she was my first toon, so I’m allowed a measure of noobery there.

I’ve attempted to roll rogues many, many times. My highest level rogue ever got to 17 before he languished away on Kael’thas and was then deleted [but Secretive, you were an awesome rogue in your time]. For some reason the whole stealth and combo point issue just didn’t work with me, though I’ve obviously mastered it since then, and I wasn’t used to being such a glass cannon, but that’s what I got for putting all six talent points in the Subtlety tree. Since then I’ve rolled a plethora of rogues and have never gotten them beyond Goldshire before deleting them in a fit of apathetic nerdrage.

I have a feeling that this will change soon with my newest rogue. I rolled her and gave her a name and stood back, marveling at the charselect screen, and thought, I like this one! Just like with Finoria, I rolled a toon I liked the looks of. 33 days /played later, Fin was 80. And since I’ve always wanted a rogue to do nasty things with, maybe this one will take off.

So, with that being said, I’m going to start posting my trials and tribulations with Amerleska the Noob Rogue. School is in.

 

Also: I HATE tier 10. HATE HATE HATE. That is all.

Dear Blizzard,

Can we have the t2 set designers back? What happened to sets that look like Judgement?

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Finoria

Human or Nelf?

Question, gentle readers:

Do I race-change my draenei mage from to human, or do I wait until Cataclysm and race-change to night elf? What do you suggest? I’m thinking human … the freckled face with the big smile, dark skin, and black hair. Not sure what I’d do for a night elf.

I struggle on the horns of a dilemma! Thoughts? Bits of choice wisdom from the fertile minds of you, my esteemed WoW colleagues?

 

Yes, I’ve been reading A Confederacy of Dunces. I am, after all, from New Orleans. Now I return to my regularly-scheduled NaNoWriMo.

Lists

Since I managed to get my new laptop [I'm installing WoW on it as I type this] and since a friend of mine generously bribed me to come backpaid for a month of subscription time so I could play with her newly-transferred shaman, I’ve come back to WoW to find my little corner of Tichondrius a vastly changed environment.

I rejoined Nascent and went on that one ToTC25 raid, if you remember. After that, my account lapsed for three or four days before my friend bribed me to return. I come back to find my guild had imploded. I knew Nascent didn’t have much time left, but I thought the guild would disband due to reasons most raiding guilds disband: differences in opinions between raiders, something happening to the officer core, or a majority of the raiders leaving to seek greener pastures. I had no idea that Nascent would disband because the GM and one of his close IRL buddies would clean out the gbank, transfer servers, and name change. I make a note here that there was eighteen thousand gold in the guild bank, and numerous flasks, recipes, Crusader’s Orbs, enchanting mats, and all sorts of other stuff.

Oh well. We live and learn. This is what I get for being gone for four days! Which leaves me in the peculiar position of trying to gain enough Emblems of Triumph to get my t9.25 pants, chest and gloves before Cataclysm comes out. I’m 5 badges away from replacing my gloves, or 25 badges from replacing chest and pants. Opinions? My armory is here.

Which brings me to the list of Things What Finoria Wants to Accomplish Before Cataclysm:

• Level Melinette to 80 and get decent PVP gear with her, if not attempt to raid.
• Get Annelise to 80 and get to 450 Engineering. DKs on motorcycles are pretty frelling sweet.
• Get Lumizent a spirit beast, by hook or by crook. Preferably Gondria or Loque’nahak. If Amber can do it, so can I.
• Get the “Guardian of Cenarius” title for my druid. She’s a druid. It makes sense.
• Finish up my 4pc set of t9 while it’s still viable. I don’t foresee t10 in my future with the way my guild’s going.
• Get another 70 Crusader’s Seals to get the heirloom staff for my future shadow priest.
• Install WoW on this damn laptop without it having any more errors.

And then we have Things What Finoria Wants to Accomplish Post-Cataclysm:

• Race-change Shoomlah from draenei to night elf. Maybe this will mean I actually play my poor mage.
• Get my worgen shadowpriest leveled, since she’ll have 3 pieces of heirloom gear.
• Consider transferring servers if it’s only G, Rachel and I left on Tichondrius when the expansion comes out.

bbs!

I’m out until the end of the semester! Work keeps a-pilin’ on me. I’ll be back after finals are over!

…or until I get my new laptop and I can’t resist putting WoW on it. The idea of getting more than 2-3 fps in Dalaran might be a temptation I can’t deny!

Needs More Rage: A Respite from Raiding

As most of you who read my blog might have already ascertained, I’ve taken something of an impromptu break from raiding on my druid. After leaving Nascent I enjoyed a brief stint of going ronin. I leveled some alts, ground out some cash and Crusader’s Seals to get those alts heirloom gear (case in point, my deathknight now has heirloom plate shoulders), and generally enjoyed the feeling of not having to commit to anything I didn’t want to do. I did a few pugs of the daily heroic, but nothing too stressful.

I did re-join the old guild I left Nascent for, but after seeing guild drama over my return go from ridiculous to ludicrous to plaid*, I was embarassed enough that I quietly gquit them in the middle of the night and never looked back. (Apparently, 10m Onyxia is serious business.) After that, I was done raiding for good.

Or so I thought. After seeing the patch 3.3 previews over on MMO-Champion and surfing through images of t10 loot there and other places I began to feel the itch to raid again. Unlike most of the other bloggers who I happen to read, I actually did (and do) enjoy Trial of the Crusader, though some of the lore behind it is a little fuzzy — why would Varian Wrynn, who fought for his life as Lo’Gosh, be AT ALL interested in watching a bunch of his own Alliance do the same in the Crusader’s Coliseum? Lore aside, I like the instance and its frenetic pace; the Twin Val’kyr is one of my favorite boss fights, at least in current content. And I’m totally sick of Ulduar. After slogging through a giant Titan compound for five or six hours, it’s nice to just have to worry about one room.

So what’s the harm in me raiding again? I thought. Nothing will have changed, and Nascent is blowing through 10m and 25m ToTC (and Onyxia, too) like it’s nothing.

How wrong I was. Nothing had changed, really, and I mean that in the most literal sense of the word. While Nascent may have been blowing through ToTC like pros, it was done at the expense of every guildie or pug who wasn’t pulling 6k DPS or wasn’t in i243 gear or who suffered with 4-5 fps in a full 25m raid environment. I prefer to raid in an environment where Vent is not an inhospitable place. That might be a lot to ask of a “progression” guild, as Nascent styles itself to be, but making your raiders feel bad and guilty is not the way to lead any sort of raid. I don’t care if it’s Icecrown Citadel or Molten Core. (This is one of the reasons that while I feel I’d make a great raid leader, never – not ONCE – have I expressed the desire to do so.)

Tonight’s raid saw us one-shot everything up to Twin Val’kyr; we managed to beat down the Faction Champs with a minimum of trouble, although things got hairy once or twice. For some reason we couldn’t muster the coordination with Twin Valks and their Twin Pact, which started off the snowball of QQ. Anub’arak was a joke; we didn’t have the DPS to down him, though we managed to get him to 90k before he enraged on us and one-shotted our new tank, who has 51.7k health. Though there were a myriad of reasons as to why our raid wasn’t working, makeup being a major factor, the raid leaders, the Powers that Be, decided to call it and sulk their way back to Dalaran, moaning and whining about DPS. Not even pulling 2k DPS in a place like 25m ToTC is one thing. Doing 3.6-4k DPS is another. When is it not enough? Where is the line drawn? Am I just too casual for this guild? I haven’t seen much info stating that 4k is too LITTLE for anything, especially when you have several guildies who can easily pull 7k out by rolling their faces on the keyboard.

I’ll add here that back in the heyday of my raiding with Nascent, when I all but had apartments in Ulduar, I was averaging 5.2-3k DPS a fight, and sometimes up to 6k on fights like Ignis. I haven’t raided in about six weeks, though, so pulling 3.6k DPS on a fight that requires a lot of movement – and when I’m averaging about 6 fps – ain’t all that bad.

You have to carry some people sometimes. And eventually, the people that are being carried, or at least helped out, will learn, and will learn to play their class, and will in turn help the rest of the raid out. It’s a give-and-take situation. It’s not just a give.

I’m officially in raiding retirement again.

* They’ve gone to plaid! Yes, it’s a nerdy reference. This is a WoW blog.

Ding! Grats.

Quick post — but I just got my first caster 70. Mel makes my second 70 aside from my two 80s. And, as befitting a warlock, she dinged by completing the quest in which you have to torture the Beryl Sorcerer. I guess that should tell me something about her character.

Tier 10 Set Bonuses (sexytime!)

Quick update! From MMO-Champion again. Some of these are pretty frelling sexy, if I do say so myself. I’m just going to post the ones that are important to me.

Druid
Feral

• 2 Pieces (Feral): Your Swipe (Bear) and Lacerate abilities deal 20% additional damage and the cost of your Rip ability is reduced by 10 energy.

• 4 Pieces (Feral): Your Enrage ability no longer decreases your armor and instead decreases all damage taken by 12%, and the periodic damage done by your Rake ability can now be a critical strike.

These are some sexy talents, especially for cat DPS — Rake being an integral part of our rotation. The 2 piece set bonus from t8.5 already allows us to gain Clearcasting from periodic damage crits. If t8.5 would be at all viable mixed with t10, I’d never wear anything else.

Though I only bear tank in a pinch, the fact that Enrage no longer decreases armor helps when you’re doing fights where a high dodge all but gimps you. It means I could essentially spam it for a rage boost every time it came off of cooldown and not have to worry about a damage spike. Swipe and Lacerate hitting harder means that druid tanks are still going to be among the best for holding single-target aggro.

Balance – I rarely use my balance talents despite having a fairly nice (if a bit cobbled together) Balance set, but I might start going boomkin for heroics, or even just for general leveling funsies come Cataclysm.

• 2 Pieces (Balance): When you gain Clearcasting from your Omen of Clarity talent, you deal 10% additional Nature and Arcane damage for 6 seconds.
• 4 Pieces (Balance): Your critical strikes from Starfire and Wrath cause the target languish for an additional 5% of your spell’s damage over 4 seconds.

Warlock

• 2 Pieces: The critical strike chance of your Shadowbolt, Incinerate, and Corruption spells is increased by 5%.
• 4 Pieces: Each time your Immolate and Unstable Affliction spells deal periodic damage, you have a 15% chance to gain 12% spell haste for 10 second.

Hunter

• 2 Pieces: Your Auto Shots have a 5% chance to cause you and your pet to deal 15% additional damage until cancelled.

I don’t suspect I’ll be doing much with my poor hunter in the way of raids for t10, but that’s still really nice – especially the “until cancelled” clause. It reminds me of the Rapid Fire/Beastial Wrath 3:2 macro that I sat and spammed on countless Prince Malchazzar fights in Karazhan.

Obligatory 3.3/PTR Post!

Because the people over at MMO-Champion must never sleep, there’s a bunch of new information up about the PTR and the new patch, so I’m going to pick through it and offer what grabbed my attention:

Tier 10 Armor Sets: We’re to tier 10 already. I remember when getting tier 6 was a big deal. I remember the rush I felt when my hunter — my first raiding toon — got her first piece of tier 2. These are some sets that are up on the PTR, though one is just a partial set. I expect the warlock set to be scary, given the rogue.

• Death Knight – I like it. It looks efficient and geared for war. No bare midriffs or any of that — no frills. Exactly how I imagine DKs would prefer it.
• Druid – I don’t know how I feel about it. I like the faceplate, but not the weird horns; I like the shoulders, but not the belt buckle. I’m about 80% sold on it.
• Hunter – Sold on everything but the boots. I don’t actually mind the rhino horn on top of the helm. Actually, if you could find a big enough bow, you could probably use a t10 geared hunter as a projectile.
• Warrior – Hell to the yes. It has a very vrykul/King Ymiron vibe to it, and I’ve always liked that.
• Rouge – What the christ. This is super creepy. The shoulders are missing from the PTR files, but even without them I do NOT want this sneaking up behind me.

Bonus Screencaps: Jaina Proudmoore gets a makeover. I like everything except the makeup and purple nail polish. Lore-wise Jaina’s supposed to be kind of a plain Jane, and while this isn’t SO bad, she’s a little too pretty. I didn’t know nail polish existed in Azeroth — maybe it’s a blood elven thing. Also, if they have done this to Koltira Deathweaver, I quit the game, and I’m not even Horde.

To try and cut back on the frustration of juggling several emblems and badge types at once, Blizzard is making Emblems of Triumph the core badge used; new content and heroic daily and raid quests will drop Emblems of Frost, which will be the highest value badge in the game.

“The current plan is to make Emblems of Triumph the standard emblem, so everything that drops Emblems of Conquest would be changed to Triumph and then the new raid content would drop the new highest emblem along with things like the heroic daily and such.”

Another thing which I’m pretty sure I’ll like, playing a warlock and occasionally a resto druid (and a shadow priest come Cataclysm), is the concept of haste rating affecting HoTs and DoTs. This looks like it will be accomplished through glyphs for Shadow Word: Pain, Corruption, and Rejuvenation.

“For 3.3 we are talking about introducing three new glyphs for Shadow Word: Pain, Corruption and Rejuvenation that would allow these spells to tick faster with the more haste you have. There are glyphs of Corruption and Rejuv already, and we’re not sure how we’re going to resolve those yet. For Shadow Word: Pain, we are likely to rename the current glyph to Glyph of Mind Flay, remove the old Glyph of Mind Flay, and increase Mind Flay by 10 yards in the base spell.”

The trade off for ultra-fast HoTs and DoTs is having to cast them more often, but with my warlock, if I can blow someone up with a fast and hard cast of Corruption, I might not have to cast it twice. Sweet.

Now the only thing I’m looking for is a reduced cost for epic flight. Melinette got her Tome of Cold Weather Flying today, and split the 500g cost between herself and Finoria, which means I’m broke again. I’m used to it by now, but if I ever want to get myself an epic flier for her, I’m going to have to run the Argent Tournament bankrupt or hope a friend feels generous. Being able to fly in Northrend at level 68 IS nice, but having 50g to my name until I can quest myself up some more isn’t so hot.

However, the more I quest with Fin, the closer I get to my Dignified Headmaster’s Charge, and the sweeter it’ll be for my worgen come expansion when she gets all of Mel’s hand-me-down heirloom loot.