Azeroth blues

Three weeks into the no-raid, no-schedule switch, and so far I’m not missing it much. Granted, I don’t even play WoW nearly as much now, but aside from the subscription cost what do I care? It would be nice to get back to raiding, but after burning out on the Kilrogg guild’s social raiding pressure it has been interesting to see the result. For all that it’s supposed to be social, there isn’t a lot of casual conversation going on. I’m a non-entity in fact, just as it’s turned out before when I burned out on raiding. Not that this surprises or even bothers me.

The only person who contacted me once, did so to exert a little social pressure when the evening’s raid was short on people. I can’t say if they miss my DK, or if that’s just the social thing to say to get a social raider to join the group. A bit skeptical, I kept my responses short and non-committal, and did not raid. I stopped raiding because the raid leaders had issues. AFAIK those issues still exist. I haven’t brought them up with the guild; I don’t think it would do the slightest bit of good. If it did I’d probably end up as a raid leader or officer, and…no. It’s not for me, not again.

Meanwhile, the Garrosh server experience has been much nicer. Although there is an excess of achievement GRATZ’ing, I join in jokingly on occasion and otherwise tune it out. And the Wreck Listers also occasionally just talk; it’s not all requests for help or group invitations. Those groups and raids, of course, Sue and I aren’t a part of yet. Our little trollies are only level 32, although it has been a quick climb so far considering that we only play them once a week. It should be pretty fast until at least level 60 if not more.

Yesterday we explored part of the new Desolace. This zone has gone from a bleak, vast desert with little to do but a series of centaur kill quests, to a zone with a lush jungle in the middle and lots more going on. A fair number of zones got Cataclysmed into, well, much nicer places. (You’re the best, Deathwing!) I especially enjoyed the quest series that ends with your hordie conjuring a flaming hurricane and nuking everyone in Nijel’s Point. I never liked you guys when I had to fly out to the boonies just to go to Maraudon. Face the flaming wrath of the blood elves!

That’s right, I mean real fire! Not the other kind of flaming belfitude.

Since we recently leveled a pair of worgen through Azeroth, we’re making a point to hit some different zones. Maybe we’ll go visit the eastern kingdoms. It’d probably take 4 or 5 sets of alts to try out everything. But I don’t think we’ll go that far.

Ah well. It’s not as if I have completely abandoned the Kilrogg server, yet. The new 4.2 content is much more than just the Firelands raid. It includes new daily quests in Hyjal, and the quest line involving Thrall’s curse and rescue was fun, aside from a few flagged griefers interfering with the quests. It personally involves you in saving Thrall from certain and painful death, and along the way we get to know more about his relationship with Aggra, a female orc shaman, that ends with a sort of marriage proposal. I had previously chalked up the taciturn Aggra as the orc they sent to Thrall so he’d stop fawning over Jaina Proudmoore. (kidding. a little)

It was the sort of questing that would be nice to have more of…but there’s only so much ground-breaking, life on the line plot material one can do, especially in an MMO that for the most part remains static. Games where solo players change the world drastically, I think, will remain single-player on PC and consoles. And even those run out of steam.

Proof of concept

As another exercise in fun with alts, one of my side projects has been to identify and build a ranged DPS alt for the social hordie guild we’re in on Kilrogg. I have to differentiate it from the Wreck List on Garrosh, now that we have some newbies hanging out there too.    I don’t make much noise about the identity of the Kilrogg guild because I am a bit critical of them at times, but I am happy to mention being a very new and low-level part of the Wreck List.

So on Kilrogg, ranged DPS has been a bit scarce for us. The guild has a couple of mages that rarely if ever show; a few hunters of somewhat variable availability; no warlock mains to speak of, but a few alts under construction; no elemental shamans that I can think of at all; priests that mostly heal, and most of them prefer healing; and a couple of druids that either don’t show up or are busy healing. Our intrepid guild mistress is the fairly reliable healer. The healers covet their raid slots, so they don’t do offspec much.

Likewise for me – my DK is in demand, but he’s melee. And if there is one rule for Cataclysm, it sucks to be melee. I cannot think of a single fight that makes it interesting or even useful to have melee. Mobility and range seem to be always preferable.

After the past few days, my latest experiment is finished. And I like balance druids, as silly as the boom-chicken form may be. Since I noticed a bunch of warlock alts in training, I went with the druid just to see if balance DPS is fun to play and adequate on damage. He’s also a decent resto pinch-hitter; I ran him as a healer in an alt raid and seemed to do just fine. Good practice, after training on resto in heroic dungeon pugs. And on Tuesday, I took the boomer to supplement our lone hunter. The rest of the DPS was all melee – a rogue and two warriors.

Balance druids may be overpowered, but he hung in there with his less than stellar gear. Although in just a couple of weeks, it has improved markedly. And although I will never get to see it while he is doing the ranged DPS thing, he picked up the epic shoulders that drop on nearly every Blackwing Descent run we do. They also look enormous on a male tauren, as this Wowhead pic shows.

I believe I can fly – but I won’t test the BWD elevator boss!

Sue just tells me that I’m good at whatever I choose to play, but part of these choices is liking the class/spec – enjoying the game. I have worked on a warlock but the balance DPS seems more fun for me. And since I tend not to dig ranged DPS classes, for whatever reason, might as well play this one for all it’s worth.

The side project will continue in my spare time, as I try to match my DK’s damage with the boomer. The other druid player, who offspec booms and offered to do it, didn’t have much to say after questioning whether or not I could match her output. I think I did. With my alt. Who was gathering dust and just crafting my leg armors until a few weeks ago.

Learning experiences

I was pleased to read the updates on the Greedy Goblin as Gevlon did indeed decide to permit alts in his a-social guild. He also offered some data to suggest that the new Cataclysm experience is no harder than ICC used to be.

I made that prediction myself a while back, and as time passes I think it’s right. Heroic dungeon runs have become easier. Even pugs routinely finish rather than go on interminably. Gone are the raid-length dungeon runs. Even the raids make progress now, and even without my help half the time, the horde guild seems respectable amongst casual guilds as to its progress. That’s good; I don’t want to be the guy they can’t raid without, like the resident guild MT.

It’s never enough for the perfectionists (like the aforementioned MT), but such is life in Azeroth.

On the bright side, I took my holy pally on her first raid, aww! It was a pug raid into Baradin Hold, arguably the entry-level raid, and so I promptly screwed up. I had to adjust for more effective cleansing of debuffs, and the raid had to stand in fire a bit less, no big deal. At least it only took one wipe for everyone to stop with the tomfoolery and pretend it takes some effort. A few more months, and Argaloth will be cake, and they’ll open up a new wing and boss for us to fumble around on.

Kind of bizarre taking Flash of Light off my pally’s main button bar and replacing it with Cleanse. It used to be, well, what holy pallies used. FoL spam no longer. I never use it. Surprisingly, the plain old Holy Light continues to be useful, in spite of what I’d heard. It’s not that fast, it doesn’t heal that much, but if the group can hang on I can cast it all day. And I do.

Still, it is occasionally fun to bust out the Light of Dawn and blast my group with sunshine, or pop Holy Radiance and just ooze healing, or conjure up my rather hostile friend who grunts and yells as he duplicates my heals.

He may be my pal, but he has anger issues. Must be offended that we conjure him up just to keep some folks alive in a heroic dungeon pug.

I like my holy pally. I like the DK more, but healing adds an enjoyable challenge when mad dps bores me.

Rewarding challenge

The Greedy Goblin has piped up today about alts in his guild, and the plight of raids that don’t attract enough of the required roles and have to be cancelled. Naturally, the lack is healers, for him and pretty much everywhere.

At the same time, Gevlon has something against alts in his guild and considers most alt-activity to be ‘e-peening’. People who are just showing off, or bored, or neglecting their mains. And I suspect he is right about a lot of the morons & slackers of WoW, the social types that he finds distasteful.

My alt experience seems different, but I could be wrong. A lot of my alt-play is fundamentally antisocial. Maybe bad business decisions too – I level crafters, so I don’t have to count on other people or buy enchants/cut gems/armor kits and etc. But I also leveled a paladin just to relearn the healing craft, simply because I heard it was so hard (hence the healer shortage).

It really must be hard, because every time the horde guild hits a wall on progression, it seems to be the healers having to adapt to the fight mechanics, and not so much the rest of us. Of course, I haven’t had the opportunity to try out healing a raid yet, because my DK’s DPS is so desirable. I always think I could do better, but it’s just the company we keep. Socials.

Anyway, I have seen Gevlon speak well of doing that which challenges you in this game. And I can understand some reticence over, say, making a priest player ‘go heal’ when they want to be shadow. I wonder if he can find a few people who try out things on alts for the challenge, and if he can set aside his no-alt rule in order to indulge them and benefit his guild. I suspect he will find some more goblinish solution.

A taste for raiding

This week in WoW has been a strange one. Although I have not been raiding with the horde guild more than once a week lately, this week it’s been twice (maybe a third time on Friday, I’m sure they will ask). And although my death knight’s gear suffers from a lack of raids and daily heroics, and is not the epitome of awesome, and DKs got nerfed in the last patch, somehow he still manages to put out the DPS. The guild officers continue to seek me out for it.

Even I was a little shocked at some of it. What is with the Icy Reprisal buff on the Ascendant Council? Cripes. Maybe everyone will DPS like that if they could just stay alive. I have to hand it to the DK, he is good at not being dead DPS.

It’s nice to see that the guild has sorted out whatever healing problems they had early on and is progressing decently — for a casual guild that has trouble fielding a single 10-man, much less with a dedicated group, anyway. Granted, I affect that dedicated group by, well, allowing my own sense of ‘hardcore’ to atrophy.

And yet I couldn’t help being a little pleased to participate in their first kill of Maloriak, and see how the guild’s ranking has improved. Being 6/12 in 10s is nothing special, really. The Greedy Goblin’s guild is up to 9/12 with no attendance requirements, but they seem to have more participating raiders, more inventive tactics, greater skill.

I was amused to read today about them tackling the two-mob pack in front of Magmaw with one tank and succeeding. That pair of mobs is designed for two tanks, of course, and punishing for a raid that only has one. But, no attendance requirement, and they mean it! More interesting were the comments on the ‘farm raid’. I guess that by going more often on Tuesdays, it’s what I end up doing. And in a social guild, they have no tools to handle or punish failure, as the goblins and the hardcore guilds do. I have even less incentive for progression raiding than I used to.

I guess I was just that bored yesterday, to go in for a second day.

As for tonight, it’s wolfie day and we may get the worgen duo up to level 58. This week or next. Outland beckons! With its comical mismatched armor and silly quests.

Diminished drama is a relief

Although Sue and I are still on a low-key raid schedule, the pressure has gone down a bit as the horde guild seems to have solved its healer problems. They’re downing a few raid bosses now, and I’m sure that makes them feel better about raiding.

Sue’s not raiding at all, and seemingly content to not even try. My DK is still in demand, but with just one 10-man running, the demand isn’t ridiculous. There is no talk of a 25-man raid. They never had enough people back in Wrath, and they certainly don’t now. Pug raids are mostly a thing of the past now, what with guild perks and achievements. So no more 25s for us. I won’t miss them.

Not raiding 3 days a week has freed us up to play our worgen more, play horde alts, do other things than WoW. I put almost as much time into my pally as my DK lately. I’ve even healed a heroic Stonecore with guildies, which lets them know that I’m a functional healer, if not perfect.

After healing many regular dungeons and a few heroics, I’d have to say that Blizzard was successful in one respect: making healing more interesting. Certainly with my belfadin, spamming one heal spell endlessly is a thing of the past. Sure, in heroics there’s a lot more of big heal spam…but aside from those moments of panic, as a healer I have more tools in the box and more reasons to use them. Having to pick the right tool for the job means no more Flash of Light spam. Approved!

Still, on a regular dungeon, the urge quickly becomes to speed through it, the faceroll, and the pally keeps up pretty well. It helps to teach me efficiency when the pulls are nearly nonstop. Bad as pugs are, they are still teaching tools for me. Heroics are still dangerous, and no doubt will be for some time…but if I don’t try them, I’ll never be ready for raid healing. And it was made out by the guild raid healers to be such a chore that I want to give it a try.

This is all about finding the challenge in our casual, low-key way. And besides, they have no consistent holy pallies right now. Gear is there for the taking!

Everything old is new again

Well, most of it…not Outland. But in our side projects in WoW, the speed-leveling worgen and a goblin I tried out last week, I find it’s almost a shame that so many of my toons are already level 80. I’m enjoying the low leveling experience much more than the endgame.

With three level 85′s in the bag now (one or two more to go), the total lack of variation in leveling has become a downer. It’s not as if Hyjal and Vashj’ir are the two optional starter zones. To run the endgame efficiently, you need to at least dabble in both, so you have access to the various rep factions and their faction vendors. While I suppose you could skip them entirely, the rewards are so nice and so easy to get that it’s silly not to.

Past that, you have a reason to hit every zone beyond that. Deepholm introduces you to Therazane. Uldum has the Ramkahen. Twilight Highlands has the Dragonmaw (or Wildhammer for alliance scum, heh). Not to mention all the dungeon discoveries. There is no skipping Borean Tundra, or Grizzly Hills, or leveling down different paths on different toons to get some variation.

On my second alt, the pally would-be healer, I ran most of Hyjal because I liked it, ran enough of Vashj’ir, maybe a third to a half of the Deepholm content, barely touched Uldum, and at 85 I don’t see much reason to quest anywhere but Twilight Highlands except to goof off or hit Tol Barad for its useful dailies. The rest of her leveling was from healing on random dungeon pugs, which accounted for a lot.

And then on the other hand, we have the worgen duo. Playing one night a week together, they go fast. We have thus far decided to play out the Kalimdor Experience, in that you can level up into the 50s entirely on one continent or the other. At this point they are mid-40s and they are trucking along. Tanaris or Felwood next. We’ve skipped a few Kalimdor zones, even. Heirlooms alone make it so fast. If they were in an active guild it would be even quicker. We have to do a little extra herbalism on the side just so the profession skills keep up with our levels.

Some of the new zones have been fascinating in their novelty. Just lately, we hit the revamped Thousand Needles, starting with the lake where the Shimmering Flats used to be. What to do in all that water? Step one — make a boat! So our werewolves cruise around in their own speedy little boat-mounts. They also use here the same buffs to swimming and underwater running speed that are employed to make Vashj’ir fun. No seahorses though.

Likewise, the quests in 1K Needles were a radical change, with Alliance actually having things to do other than visit the Flats, buy some ice cream, check out the pod race, and hunt turtles and such. It’s not just for Horde anymore.

Not all of the Kalimdor Experience has been so novel. Dustwallow Marsh is relatively unchanged, with the exception of some plot advancement and of course the big road the Alliance built across the marsh to support their invasion of the Barrens. But then, they had recently updated the Marsh with the addition of the goblin town Mudsprocket, so it’s fine.

All told, I am not looking forward to hitting 58 on the worgen and going through the Dark Portal…levels 58-80 are going to be a step down as we go through the previous expansions, and through the learning processes of the Blizzard devs in turn. It would be too much to ask that they ‘break Outland’ and rebuild it, at least for now, but I hope they do one of these days. We’ll go from new and interesting questing that puts the character into the world-changing story to collecting poop.

It’s my guild, it’s every guild

This gave me giggle fits after seeing it on WoW Insider, so I may as well inflict it on my friends:

It is my guild, it is every guild. And I have been in a few guilds to see it over and over. I can’t quite figure out which category I fit into, though…I think I qualify for several! I’m definitely not Billy. And don’t say Altoholic, because I am a responsible alt-meister. Even if I do have about 8 80′s or so. Maybe 9…no. Definitely 8. And some of them are alliance.

1. Know-it-all? Could be…
2. The Legend? Only Sue can tell.
3. Mysterious One? This reminds me of Sue at times…
4. The Couple? heh. no comment.
5. Lore Freak? Eh, maybe.

And, well…the ventrilo simulation is priceless. Say something hot! Oh wait, she’s 13 and probably the guild leader’s daughter.
/shudder
/perv

Winging it v.4.0

When the big patch landed yesterday (with four extra hours of maintenance), it provided an interesting evening trying out specs, sorting out the new inscription system, and testing out a few characters in a random heroic.

The unholy DK was just…damage bwahaha! Ridiculous, spectacular damage. I almost felt bad for the tank in that heroic. My rogue with a new assassination spec was hitting pretty hard too, though not quite as ridiculous (and I could misdirect some of the threat).

I saw all the healers in Dalaran showing off their new shiny terrain-based heal spells, quite the lightshow, and decided to try out my old undead priest in healer mode before logging out. Not bad either, until the last boss in heroic Forge of Souls put its damage link on me. I got a share of the damage the dps was dealing out.

Doomed for eternity!

Instant death. Surprisingly, even after killing me and one of the dps with Mirrored Soul, the tank and two dps still killed the boss. We seem…a bit overpowered.

So enough of that for one day. I’ve probably made a thousand gold overnight, not even trying, just posting up a few glyphs for auction. Speaking of ridiculous — the demand! Also, it looks like our raid lockouts were reset, so the horde guild may have to battle its way back to the Lich King. If they do, I might be able to go with the DK…and piss off the tanks with his ridiculous dps. Then again, I doubt I’ll be alone in that.

We should form a club!

Well, at least stuff like this reminds me that we’re not alone in our misery, heh. That may be too strong a term. But one of my favorite WoW blogs I Like Bubbles (now with less bubbles, but that’s ok) seems to chronicle the adventures of the horde guild we’re in.

It hasn’t driven me to drink, but then I don’t drink booze.

Actually, the grind on Sindragosa-25 wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Most of the raids I went on seemed to learn about chained ice tombs before too long — with the exception of a few morons, and then I suppose the RL is tasked with deciding what to do about those. Once the raid could reliably reach the last phase it was just a matter of learning all the ways one could screw up, as usual…times 25 raiders.

Now the horde guild is tackling Lich King 25, which is probably worse. And I’m not taking my death knight on them either. I’m still going on the raids with a decent alt, my rogue; but the DK is on his own adventure in futility.

I’ve done the math. I know it’s unlikely to impossible that I can gather 50 of these shards before Cataclysm hits. I now have three; I’d have to pick up about six a week for the next two months to make it. But what else do I have to do right now? Not even bother? Go fight LK-25 over and over on the DK instead? Go fish? So I might as well try. All I can do is fail, which I expect from the get-go.