So This Is Cataclysm…

Well, long time no write. In my defence, so many more talented bloggers have been keeping us informed (and entertained), and I really haven’t had anything to add, other than a heart-felt “Is that it?”

Yes, I’m another person who’s underwhelmed with what Blizzard has brought to the table with Cataclysm, and I’m currently spending my time turning my small pile of gold into a slightly larger pile of gold through various machinations on the AH.

I’ve currently leveled Mingle to 85, and she’s decently geared for heroics (only two greens remaining, her wand and one trinket, and wearing the epic crafted healer belt). Her tailoring and inscription are both at 525, and inscription is proving a nice money-spinner with mysterious fortune cards and inferno inks.

Pringle managed to get to 82 in Vashj’ir, and has maxed jewelcrafting and enchanting. Prospecting ore is still more fun than milling herbs, by the way.

Dingle is still sitting at 80, having very briefly ventured into Hyjal, but hasn’t really had much more time spent with her.

Ringle has been through Hyjal a little further, but I just haven’t been interested in leveling her to 84, where she’ll need to be to gain access to the recipe vendors in Twilight Highlands (she’s currently sitting on 490 leatherworking and 511 blacksmithing).

The surprise has been Kringle, who I’ve enjoyed levelling the most – hunters are still the most solo-friendly class. It’s kind of telling that even so, he’s only managed to reach 83 (but has 525 alchemy, and switched from herbalism to skinning to help provide leather for Ringle’s leveling, reaching 525 in that by the end of Hyjal). Kringle’s currently sitting in Deepholm, having completed the first of the pillar quest chains (with a cute pet turtle from BFD).

I’ve also run a Worgen through the new starting zone (and been… underwhelmed by the theme-park linearity and the feeling that you’re along for the ride) and have a Goblin most of the way through their starting zone (also underwhelmed buy most, but not all, of the experience – still a themepark, but occasionally a fun one). All I can say is, they had to make those zones once-only events – when you’ve been through the ride once, there’s nothing to come back to (and I can see the need to go through the ride for new characters to be a disincentive).

Incidentally, who else can foresee Worgen being left in the background while Goblins get thoroughly integrated into the WoW lore in the same way that Draenei and Blood Elves came to be treated after Wrath? (No, I’m not saying “Blizzard love Horde more than Alliance”, just pointing out that they really dropped the ball with Draenei after they dropped them into the WoW lore with TBC, and from what we’ve seen of Worgen and Goblin presence in Cata so far, it’s looking like Goblins will be favoured in the same way that Blood Elves were)

Now, there have been quite a few things that I’ve enjoyed about the post-80 Cata experience – a number of quite fun moments in the various zones, and some fun new mechanics (although I’ve yet to abuse Lifegrip with Mingle). But on the whole, Blizz seem to have substituted the breadth of gameplay pre-Cataclysm (for example, wrath levelling which had multiple paths all the way from 70-80) with a very linear leveling path brightened with the occasional patch of polish and occasional illusion of choice.

Incidentally, I’m really surprised they let the issues through in the final release where if you miss a quest-giver, you’ll find yourself locked out of further questing in a zone until you’ve managed to find the lost quest-giver (with no suggestion from the game that this is the case). I’ve been caught out by this twice in Hyjal, but fortunately haven’t tripped over it in Vashj’ir yet (which is apparently problematic, with the 3d terrain).

I’ve managed to force myself to grind Mingle to 525 archaeology (over several days and many hours, with most of the time spent auto-flying while I read a book or played another game on my ipod touch – thank goodness for Archy, which cut-down on the time-wasting quite substantially), and it confirmed my suspicion that it was going to be less fun than fishing, and mostly just a massive travel time sink. (Seriously, who thought this implementation was a good idea?)

I didn’t have the confidence to do any LFD while I was levelling, and my experiences have consisted of a healing a single run of normal Lost City of the Tol’vir with Mingle – horror stories from guildmates about the new state of pugs (now that healers can’t heal through stupid, and being blamed and/or abused for wipes because of this change) and the challenge of Cata healing (with mana management being the new measure of a healer’s ability) really made an effective deterrent to my giving it a try.

However, doing a normal run at 85 wasn’t excessively painful, aside from half-expected mana issues (there was just one wipe, but a couple of the dps had a couple of extra deaths while I was trying to keep up the tank). The problem for me is that healing just (as I’m hearing increasingly often) wasn’t fun. The change from “I want to decide who lives and who dies” from Wrath healing to “I hope I don’t run out of mana, and and please please please let the dps remember to run out of the fire” hasn’t been especially entertaining (especially as someone who used to LFD almost exclusively).

Currently? I’m mostly logging in to prospect for, cut and sell gems. And transmute Truegold. And mill herbs for cards and inferno ink to sell. And I’m hard-pressed to raise the enthusiasm to run alts through the new theme-parks level up other characters, as there’s nothing of interest for me at 85. The thought of hardmode raiding makes my skin crawl, and even normal modes aren’t appealing (although I suspect finding a guild which is just running normal modes may be challenging). Heroic 5-mans? Pugging them isn’t something to be done voluntarily (especially as a healer), but I have no interest in guild runs (probably because I still don’t feel comfortable in this guild). Normal 5-mans? My single attempt just didn’t engage me, even though the group did manage to complete it. (I’ve also heard a number of complaints about the length of Wrath 5-mans – do they need to make them quicker? Or is that solely a result of group competence?) Rep grinds? Well, if you’re not doing Heroics, they’re not really needed.

The sad thing for me is, there just isn’t really anything else. I’ve never been interested in achievements (aside from Loremaster on Mingle), I don’t collect pets, and… My dream of levelling more Dwarves lost substantial momentum when I realised that the revamped 1-60 levelling, while a substantial improvement over vanilla, was a lot more linear than I cared for (although not as bad as 80-85 has turned out to be).

I think I’ve run out of interest in WoW again – which is kind of unexpected, considering how much Cataclysm promised. Unfortunately it would appear that much of what it offers has a real lack of replayability for my playstyle, and I’m starting to run into that already.

But hey, it’s looking like there could be some interesting new titles in the near future - DC Universe Online (check out TotalBiscuit’s beta footage of the character creator and starting zone footage if you’re curious) and Earthrise come to mind (along with Rift in about two more months) - not to mention the substantial number of games recently on sale on Steam and other digital vendors (I’m currently knee-deep in Darkstar One and revisiting City of Heroes briefly).

WoW, on the other hand, is just something I’m playing if I’m feeling bored (or more accurately, until I get bored, which isn’t taking long). Cataclysm might have changed the world, but it wasn’t really a change that’s worked for me.

/wave

SAN: New Things, New Dungeons

Post soundtrack: “One O’clock Jump” by the Count Basie Orchestra

So this is what low-level rogue play is like?  It’s been so long I’d almost forgotten.  No poisons until level 20, no Vanish or Distract until 22, even Sap isn’t available until level 10…  But on the plus side, they’ve changed things so you start with Dual-Wield, so it’s all good (or good enough).  Pringle has endured, and at level 34 she’s slowly turning into a real rogue.

There’s one thing that’s really caught me by surprise, and that’s the ease of running these low-level dungeons via the LFD tool.  Since I started leveling Pringle I’ve completed Razorfen Kraul (for the first time in my 5 years of playing), Shadowfang Keep, Stockades, Gnomeregan, Scarlet Monastery Graveyard (which came up 11 times in a row – is that proof the LFD is really random?) and Scarlet Monastery Library.  Having them available on tap (without the need to traverse the world the way they used to) is proving to be a handy way to take a break from questing while still gaining experience.

One useful tip, if you plan on running these, is to keep track of what dungeons you’re eligible for and to go out of your way to pick up the quests for them before you run them.  This can lead to a bit of running back-and-forth for some dungeon quests (such as Stockades or Gnomer) but the rewards can be well worth the effort.

I’m considering getting Pringle to 40, buying her epic mount, and then putting time into Mingle so I can try my hand at healing some dungeons.  The idea of playing a tanking class is appealing, as that would get me into them faster, but I just don’t trust my sense of direction in there (at least at this stage) – running around some of those dungeons, you get the feeling they were designed by Escher.

For now though, time to go exploring Kalimdor (as I’m feeling the pinch of being between zones, questing-wise).

/wave

Of Rogues and Oculus

Post Soundtrack: “A Banana Split For My Baby” by Louis Prima

I’ve been working on OldDingle lately, with a view to getting him to 80 and doing a multitude of random heroics to buy Phingle a set of heirloom gear to speed up her leveling.  Sure, it’s not the most time-efficient way to do it, but it’s an interesting experience viewing the leveling grind from a non-dwarf perspective (and an effective distraction).

OldDingle is currently sitting in Thrallmar, having logged off before the server reset with only a half-bar more XP needed to reach 60 and buy a flying mount (which won’t be the undead drake mount pictured).  His gear has been improved by the handful of quest reward greens he’s picked up so far, but it’s still a long way to go to 80 – flying training will help the process, though (although epic flying is still some way off).

With the reduction in expert training and regular flying mount cost that came with patch 3.2.2 (taking them down to 250g and 50g respectively), it was easy to pick up sufficient gold through the AH to cover this expense – OldDingle and Phingle are currently sitting on around 1k between them.  Speaking of Phingle, she’s sitting at level 24 in Tarren Mill, patiently waiting for her heirloom items while complaining about the decor of the inn.  (It’s a good thing she’s the patient type)

Alliance-side, Ringle has purchased her 2nd hippogryph (and is only three more days away from becoming an exalted champion of her fifth and final tournament faction) and Mingle is slowly working towards having enough rep to be able to buy the awesome pants pattern from Ashen Verdict (she has the primordial saronite to purchase it, and only needs 1650 more rep – she’ll also be able to upgrade to the revered rep ring at the same time).  Ringle also has some Ashen Vanguard rep under her belt, but as an alt has had less time in Icecrown than Mingle – she’s picked up the first rep ring, but the second is some time away.

Finally, with the number of random dungeons I’ve under my belt since the patch, it was with no small interest that I came across news that Oculus is to get a loot buff (in an attempt to reduce the number of players dropping group when they arrive).  The extra couple of badges will probably be handy, but the chance of getting the Reins of the Blue Drake is pure icing.  I just hope the chance of them dropping is higher than for the Reins of the Blue Proto-Drake which allegedly drops from Skadi in Utgard Pinnacle – I say allegedly because I’ve never seen it drop, in all the months I’ve run it on my various alts.

It’s actually interesting how much more often I’ve entered an old instance (it usually happens in Gundrak, HoS and Oculus) and one or two people drop group immediately – it’s usually the tank, and equal chance of one of the dps (if I’m on my healer) or the healer (if I’m on my rogue).  I doubt they’ll be adding additional rewards to the other dungeons – Oculus has been unpopular pretty much from launch (my issue with the place was that I never enjoyed the mounted combat), and I think its’ negative reputation has only worsened since then.  With the growing number of people bailing from instances (at least in my limited experience), getting players to stay is a battle I don’t envy Blizzard.

For now, though, it’s time to flee for the safety of my bed before the sun rises – funny how time flies when you’re busy (or attempting to look like you are).

/wave

Leveling Disc – Once More, From The Top

Post soundtrack:  “Come to me” by Koop.

Guess who’s leveling a new disc priest?  No, I’m not leaving my dwarves high and dry – this is mostly a preparation-for-cataclysm-and-thought-experiment kind of thing.

Meet blood elf Phinglezouse, priest soon-to-be-extraordinaire.  Or semiordinaire, maybe.  Almostordinaire?  Yes, it’s going to be disc all the way (mostly because I just like the playstyle*, but with an added touch of “You’d have to be utterly insane to level another priest to 80”).  Helped along with some bits and pieces from the AH, of course, because I’m lazy like that and have a higher-level alt to help bankroll it.

Phingle is currently sitting at level 19, with Herbalism and Inscription learnt.  Her sugar-daddy is OldDingle, who’s now level 54 (with Enchanting and Skinning).  Total bankroll between the two of them, around 340g when the server went down earlier this evening.

Talents at this stage are pretty minimal – there’s only 10 points to allocate at level 19, and nothing fancy for a few levels yet.  My picks so far:

Level	Talents
10	Spirit Tap (1/3)
11	Spirit Tap (2/3)
12	Spirit Tap (3/3)
13	Twin Disciplines (1/5)
14	Twin Disciplines (2/5)
15	Twin Disciplines (3/5)
16	Twin Disciplines (4/5)
17	Twin Disciplines (5/5)
18	Improved Power Word: Fortitude (1/2)
19	Improved Power Word: Fortitude (2/2)

Her dps rotation right now is pretty much what you’d expect from your average low-level priest:

1. PW:S on herself
2. Smite to pull her target.
3. SW:P on it while it’s running toward her.
4. Mind Blast.
5. Then she just wands it to death.  (Don’t underestimate wands; they’re mana-free dps, and they make for a great way to start regenerating mana before you engage your next target)
6. …
7. Profit!

Old internet memes aside, it’s a pretty straight-forward routine – single-target pulls, and if an additional target blunders in, she uses Psychic Scream where possible, puts SWP on the new target, and finishes off the original target.  Self-buffs at this stage are PW:Fortitude and Inner Fire, along with the inscription-made Intellect scrolls.

Time for another quick list, this time tips for new characters

• It can be worth taking your new characters to the blood elf or draenei starting zones when they’re just getting started, as they zones make for a much less irritating leveling experience than the vanilla starting zones.  (And the gear from Tranquillien rep is a nice bonus on horde side)
• Casters should always buy the best water you can get for your level.  (It helps to actually buy a stack or two when you’re still the level before you can use them, so you don’t forget – and you invariably will).
• If you’re leveling a priest, it’s a lot easier if they have the best wand you can get for their level.  (I might do a quick post on what/where, if I don’t forget or get sidetracked again)
• Bags!  Four netherweave bags for a new toon are the gift that keeps on giving.

That’s probably going to be it for this post – I’ll probably do another one when Phingle has something interesting to talk about (the 20-29 stretch would likely do).

/wave

* – Disclaimer:  My playstyle (and leveling style) aren’t designed for efficiency, or speed, or ease of leveling – indeed, if you want to level a priest fast, shadow is likely your best option (I’ve been told my bloody-mindedness is part of my charm).  So I’m sharing on the off chance someone discerning out there might find something in this to be useful, not because I think it’s fast or easy (or even fun, sometimes).  Offer void where prohibited by law, and probably causes cancer in rats.

One In-One Out, One Out-One In

(In a move inspired by a little something that WoW.com sometimes does, and also because of how much I want to introduce other people to music I love, I’m going to offer a soundtrack for this post:  “Fuoco Fatuo [performed by Koop]” by Nicola Conte, from volume 4 of the awesome nu-jazz compilation series Saint-Germain-des-Prés Café)

It’s been an interesting few days.  Not only has my shiny new (or at least, reclaimed) troll rogue made progress towards Outland, but I’ve also stumbled into a new raiding guild for priest Mingle.

Dingle v1 has managed to move from level 40 (on Saturday) to 48 (late last night), and I’m almost finished cleaning up the half-finished quest chains in his log.  It’s actually an odd feeling, visiting all the old zones and doing all these new quests there.  (I’m doing it without following any leveling guides, although I have found it necessary to look up locations for some of the more obscure “kill npc X” quests on Wowhead)

In a similar theme, I’m tossing up whether to hop onto the undead mage who’s sharing Dingle’s server, or rolling a new horde priest and spending some quality time in the Blood Elf starting zone.  I’m also actually sorely tempted to put some money into a name and possibly gender change for my troll – a new name would make referring to him less unwieldy to reference (“Dingle v1” lacks a certain charm), and I’m not really a fan of the male troll character model.  However, I have to watch my budget at the moment so it might be some time before I can get around to this – and I’m seriously considering bringing Fingle (and her transmute) back to Dath, which would be another expense.

On the raiding front there’s been an interesting development.  I hopped on oldguild vent on Sunday, and a friend popped in who’d switched guilds and in conversation the question was raised about if I was looking for another raiding guild (after I mentioned my failapp).  After giving it a little thought I decided to accept, and a minute after joining I was sent an unexpected invitation for a guild 10-man.

So I found myself running ToC10, VoA10 and Onyxia10 that evening with some small success and only one definite fail (healer heal thyself!) and one maybe fail (if the dps dies it’s their own darned fault, right?) on my part.  (As an aside, I’m not really good at switching specs mid-raid as I tried to do for Twins, which was my personal fail of the night)

Anyway, last night was my first newguild 25-man raid, and I was summoned in to find myself looking at Mimiron.  Turned out, the guild hadn’t actually downed him before, so when we one-shot him there was much celebration on vent.  (It was messy as heck with a good number of dead players littering the floor at the end, but one thing I’ve noticed is that this a guild with some pretty impressive dps)

We moved on to Vezax, and three-shot him (yay for the advantage of ToC gear!).  A healer also picked up the 30th fragment he needed for Val’anyr, to much acclaim from guildmates.  This also set the bar a little higher for the encounter with Yogg, with the decision to attempt it without Mimiron’s buff in order to complete the hammer.

Anyway, we then moved on to Yogg, and I got to watch them putting together an strategy to get through phase one.  Very different to the one I know from oldguild, but we reached the second phase more than once before we stopped for the night.)

So far the new guild looks promising:  competent raiders (and great dps), effective leadership, and a nice balance between effort and humour during the raid.  I’m going to give it a couple of weeks before I look at moving my alts across, but this could well be the guild I experience Icecrown with.

Well, time to get back to leveling (having done my gem transmutes for the day and finally been rewarded with a new fishing rod from the daily).

/wave

Oh, one last thing: Munchies over at The Munch Land blog is giving away a couple of authenticators – if you don’t have one, I'd recommend popping over and expressing your interest in the form of a comment on this post (you have until December 18th).  Go for the giveaway, stay for the priest posts!

But Vacations Don’t Last Forever

Well, maybe I’m not taking as much time off from 25-mans as I expected.  Due to an unexpected reduction in raider numbers (and another unexpected increase in raiding numbers after another Dath’remar raiding guild stopped raiding, and we picked up a few new faces) I’ve decided to get back into the game.

I have to admit, after just a couple of nights off I’m happy to get back to it (and the possibility that the new raiders will stand in the fire less than some of the old ones is appealing as well).  I might take the occasional night off in future (raid numbers willing), but for now the vacation’s over.  (It was kind of novel while it lasted, brief though it may have been)

We had a less than optimal run last night, thanks to low numbers (as well as some undergeared new raiders), but we managed to get Ignis, XT, Kologarn, Iron Council and Auriaya down anyway (even though our lower-than-normal dps meant we actually hit Auriaya’s enrage timer, which was kind of embarrassing).  Still, considering we were also 24-manning a lot of it, we pulled through better than we could have.  Next week’s raiding could be very interesting.

I’ve put a couple more levels onto Snowfall, but she’s just not as enjoyable to level as my dwarf army has been.  I’m not sure if it’s the blood elf aesthetic, or just the complete lack of friendly guild chat (which is to be expected, not having a guild horde-side).  It’s an unusual experience though, to be leveling somewhere completely new (as I haven’t leveled a horde-side character since pre-TBC).  I guess I’ll see it goes.  (I could just go back to my nelf druid, and see if playing her has jelled any more for me, but my enthusiasm is fleeting)

The last couple of days have been largely non-fishing ones, due to the fishing daily being in Wintergrasp – nothing kills the mood quite like PvP getting in the way of your otherwise solitary and enjoyable past-time.

Ah well, time to publish and then pretend to be productive.

/wave

Contemplating Change, Leveling, And A Meme

Well, 25-man raiding is slow and…  not really fun, to be quite honest.  I’ve had a chat with an officer about my dissatisfaction raiding on Mingle, and have decided to take a couple of weeks (while I continue to raid) to think about what I want to do next.  (I’ll be passing on loot in Ulduar as well, as it wouldn’t be right to take loot that other people can use if there’s a chance I may be not raiding on that character)

Unfortunately there’s no openings for another tank, with one of our old guildmates returning his gnome warrior to the game.  (He’s a far better tank than I am, and a nice guy, so I’m not complaining about it)  I’m trying to come up with ways I can get raid time (in some capacity, probably outside of the guild) on my warrior, but options are pretty limited.  I might have to go raid-hunting, and see if there are any guilds who’d be willing to take a tank from outside their guild, and who raid on nights I’m not raiding on Mingle.  Possibly a bit of a reach, but I’ll see what I can find.

Speaking of Dingle, she has ventured into 10-man Ulduar again, and has another boss kill under her belt.  Most of the raid members are from another guild, and we managed to kill FL, Razorscale and XT-002, but Ignis and the Iron Council proved too much for us.  Sadly, Dingle has no shiny tank loot to show for it (although she did pick up a dps helm that would otherwise have been sharded – I really need to gem and enchant it at some stage).

My tanking inexperience showed itself with two bosses during the raid, both bosses we couldn’t get past.  First was Ignis, where I finally realised my taunts were ineffective if I hadn’t first damaged the target – I was on construct duty, and at the start had trouble keeping aggro on the constructs long enough to get them into the scorches.  I also caused one wipe when I wasn’t tanking the construct far enough into the scorch, so it wasn’t picking up the debuff that turned it molten.  By the end, though, I’d worked out what I had to do (and was doing it correctly, as best I can tell).

With both of these issues worked out (to my satisfaction, at least), we were left with issues with dps (we only had one character capable of enough burst damage to kill the molten constructs, who was unfortunately very attractive to Ignis, and kept getting hot-pocketed) and main-tanking (a DK who was having problems getting positioned correctly, and kept getting the scorches positioned either too far from the pools needed when killing the constructs, or positioned too close to the healers/dps who died pretty rapidly when accidentally scorched).  Eventually the raidleader threw his hands up in despair and we moved on to XT (who we one-shot).

I had a brief positioning issue with the Iron Council, where I was tasked with tanking Steelbreaker at the start, and didn’t pull him out of his damage-amplifying rune quick enough on one attempt, but in general the group just didn’t perform well enough get any further (although it was getting pretty late at that stage).

Other than that, I’ve been putting some time (and gold) into leveling Kringle over the last few days.  He’s currently about a third of the way through 79, and should be 80 today if I don’t get distracted (which is pretty likely).

Some time fishing on Kringle yesterday means he’s now officially a fisherman – which by my standards means he has the 200 points of fishing skill required to equip and use his Fishing Pole.  That gives me 6 characters I can do the fishing daily on, which is about the only daily I’m doing regularly currently (apart from the cooking daily for Fingle and Kringle, who are both working towards the 100 Dalaran Cooking Awards achievement – they’ve both passed the 50 awards part, and are on the home stretch now).

But before I get back to my leveling, here’s a meme that caught my eye.  (Snagged from Mend Pet)

The instructions:

1. Go to “wikipedia.” Hit “random… Read More”
   or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
   The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2. Go to “Random quotations”
   or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
   The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3. Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
   or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
   Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4. Use photoshop or similar to put it all together.

And what did I end up with?

The first album from BNS Turag.  Brought to you by random wikipedia links, a quote from Socrates, and a photo that felt surprisingly appropriate (well, to me it did).  I’m not going to do the ‘name people to continue this meme’ thing, as I’m just not really into that, but if anyone reading this wants to give it a try, put a link to your results in the comments.  (I’d love to see what other people come up with)

Time’s passing, so I guess I should log on and get Kringle to 80.  (That Nesingwary 4000 he has in the bank is waiting to get brought out and equipped)

/wave