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On healing in Cataclysm

20-Dec-10

I know I’m rather late to the party, being a slow and nosy sort of leveler lately, but I’ve hit 85 and gone on a bit of a dungeon spree with the guildies. Not everyone’s quite geared enough to make it into the heroic queue, so it’s all been normal, but that’s given me enough confidence and spare offspec drops to give healing a whirl. I have to say, I do enjoy it a lot more than Wrath-style healing. Having something approaching time to make decisions turns healing from a frantic game of whack-a-mole to a more strategic game of conservation and planning—sort of like a slower RTS, I’d say, with your attention demanded in a number of areas, but time enough to /think/ before the decisions must be made. The new spells also are intriguing: Unleash Elements gives you a second instant heal and a boost to your next direct healing spell, while Healing Rains can be extremely powerful if the whole party’s taking moderate AOE.I could actually see myself as a primary healer if my guild needed it, something I would never consider in Wrath.

I have noticed a definite trend towards more complex fights in the dungeons, with some very fascinating mechanics: a sky dragon who controls the winds, for example, will have you either massively sped up or slowed down (attack, cast, and movement) depending on if you are upwind or downwind of him. There are mobs in the Vortex Pinnacle that cannot be fought, but instead feign while being watched, leading to healers staring at them while we fight the other trash and then backing away before moving on. We have purposely never read strategies on these bosses, relying on common information (don’t stand in it, pick up adds, that sort of thing) and quick glances at tooltips to learn the encounter, which is always such a fresh feeling. Wipes have been rare, and frequently hilarious; we guessed poorly that the giant maelstrom of shadowy death that the crab…silithid…/thing/ in Grim Batol puts out needed to be run away from, instead of heading into the center, for example. However, our skill and the still somewhat forgiving environment of normals has made learning things this way quite reasonable.

Overall, I’ve been very much enjoying the new endgame, and I’m looking forward to raiding.

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The world literally falling apart can keep you busy

14-Dec-10

I realize it’s been getting close to a month now since you heard from me and I can assure you I’m doing rather well. Doing better than just well actually. I’ve been keeping busy at work with a major project that’s actually quite interesting (albeit frustrating at times) and when I haven’t been dissecting and piecing together code into something resembling a coherent website, I’ve been playing lots and lots of WoW as you can imagine.

As of the Shattering, Kazi and I took full advantage of the new race/class combinations and rolled a bunch of alts. I now have a new tauren priest (who ICly is Anuniaq 2.0) who is being protected by Kazi’s new tauren prot paladin. I kind of scoffed originally at the tauren pallies’ racial mounts but I find now that they’re growing on me more, the level 20 ones more so than the level 40 ones. After some half-hearted grumbling, Kazi convinced me to try out smite healing on my disco priest and I have to say…I thought healing was interesting before, smite healing makes it even more fun! And more amusingly, I’m often 2nd or 3rd on the DPS meters thanks to heirlooms and spam-smiting. 😉

I also rolled a troll rogue (after a failed troll druid who only made it to level 5) to go with Kazi’s orc mage, only to decide I want an orc warrior instead to instance tank. So the group then evolved into my warrior, Kazi’s mage, and one of our friends who we managed to convince to finally make an alt,  so he created a troll priest to heal our sorry arses.

Saraku has joined the ranks of holycows as I switched his race to tauren. There will be some RP stories to come about all of that once I go out and buy The Shattering novel and figure out what the hell happened in the year (or is it 3 years?) since the Cataclysm actually happened. I really do wish they hadn’t glossed over all of it in-game. I feel like I’ve missed whole sections of my characters’ lives, especially Niqora’s.

Once Cataclysm actually came out, I was saddened to find out that my Collector’s Edition preorder was shipped on December 7, instead of arriving on the 7th. Despite me protesting that I’d be fine without it for a couple days, Kazi bought me the digital version and I was able to play that night because of him. What a sweetheart. <3

The first thing I did was buy old world flying and archaeology so I could begin my digging frenzy. Because of Kazi’s work hours, we weren’t able to play until the weekend and we had decided beforehand to quest together on Niqora and Kazimierz. So we spent the work week leapfrogging each other in experience through archaeology/mining/cooking and fishing dailies until the weekend. Then…we quested our hearts out together. 😉

So far we’re just shy of level 84 and have made our way through all of Vash’jir and the majority of Deepholm. The quality of the quests have just floored us and the scenery is completely and utterly amazing. Getting a free seahorse mount is epic. Being able to play as a naga both made us wish that nagas were a playable race. >.> And the cut-scenes in some of the quests are a fantastic idea! Both the zones have just been…wow. And I am eagerly looking forward to seeing the other three. All of our alts will likely be put on the backburner until we’ve at least gotten to level 85.

As a guild, we’ve managed to max out Bloodriver’s leveling every day so far, and we’re not by any means a large guild. Quite a few people are already at level 85, so Kazi and I are hoping to catch up with everyone this weekend and start running dungeons with them to gear up. I’m also really excited to start raiding come January, as we’ll be splitting our raids into casual raids that are open to everyone like before, and progression raids that are made of select members who have proven their skills and who will tackle current content. I am definitely ready to wipe over and over again in the name of progression. 😉

There’s a debate currently going on over which loot system we should use for our progression raids. We’ve been using Suicide Kings in the past and I’ve seen very little complaints about it. However, DKP has been suggested for the progression team and it’s been met by some backlash. It seems that half the members have never been in a raid that used it and the other half that has thinks it’s a horrible idea. I personally have never seen it in use so I’d gladly welcome any comments about DKP here.

As I only plan to get even more preoccupied as the month wears on (including Kazi coming to spend Christmas/my birthday with me! GLEE!), I wouldn’t expect too many updates here. There’s just too much to do and so many things to see right now!

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Cataclysm: Extremely First Impressions

7-Dec-10

So I’ve been able to play cataclysm for…40 minutes now, and I’ve focused on two things: OMG flying in Azeroth, and the new secondary profession, Archaeology. So far, it’s been pretty interesting, though I’ve just dipped my toe in the waters, so to speak…only twenty skill as of this writing. Thoughts below, in no particular order:

This takes a /long time/ to level. I’ve been at this 40 minutes and I’ve canvased the length of Kalimdor already. The artifacts are three to a zone, and the zones are random, so you’re going to have to move a long ways. Being a speed-buffed class while mounted/having a 310 mount/both will serve you very well.

The mechanics are interesting. You enter the dig site, and you use Survey, which will pull up a surveyor’s gear with a blinking light on it. The color and frequency of said light shows the distance to the artifact, while the direction of the scope indicates the rough direction. It takes a bit of learning to figure out how far it’s telling you to go, but once you get a feel for it the artifacts come quickly (which are unearthed when you Survey at the proper location).Once you have three digs done at a site, it vanishes and a new one appears.

The artifacts are of a bunch of different races, indigenous to the locations you’re digging. If you focus, you’ll get the items faster…but if you don’t, you’ll likely get your skillups faster.

Holy crap, it gives a ton of XP. 5500 XP per dig at level 80? Pretty damn fast XP. Also, some of the sites are glitched and will give you all three fragments at a single location, so make sure you survey right after you’re done unearthing!

So far, an interesting profession, with about the same leveling speed as, say, fishing. I hope I can find some of the more interesting stuff to show as examples soon!

EDIT: Apparently, completing an item gives you 5 skill points and the item itself, with a little box in your profession window with some lore tidbits. Nifty!

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