I would like to introduced our new littlies:

Deva (Cass) Looking like a proper paladin

And Myself, Avenai.... Looking like a Axe Weilding Mage

During our 2 hours playtime our little paladins are questing and gathering (I’m mining and Cass is skinning so there is no squabbling over resources!) around the old world checking out how different some of the quests are and how some things just haven’t changed at all.  While we haven’t done any dungeons Cass is planning on tanking with her paladin and I will most likely be healing considering Avenai is wearing cloth BOA gear in order to get the extra xp (no, I sadly do not have any justice points available to buy new BOA chest or shoulders!).

So far we’ve completed Westfall, part of Redridge and part of Duskwood.  Sadly because the XP gains are so fast when you add up BOA helms, cloaks, shoulders, chest plus the guild bonuses and rested bonus, we keeping running into grey quests before we get a chance to finish things off!

I think we’ve decided to head over to Stranglethorn Vale next to see if the area, now altered, can redeem itself (anyone who has leveled in STV on a PVP server will understand this sentiment!). I would be interested to know from readers who have gone through all the revamped zones,  which ones are really worth completing  as we’d hate to miss some really epic quest chains!

While we are running around questing we get on vent to chat and generally some guildy will join our channel and give us the gossip on whats happening in the guild.  It seems like Cass and I aren’t the only guildies who have had changes to their game play. Vitare has gone through a complete revamp.  All the officers I played with previously have moved on for one reason or another and a  completely new set of players are now running the show.  One of these I’m proud to say is a recruit I found from Twitter! Goodiemania (also known as @Velidra on Twitter or for his blog) has been suckered into officership hahaha you have my condolences.  I’m trying very hard to get him to do a guest post on here based on the experience of going from raider to officer – its a big change for anyone and think its a great topic for discussion!

Its good to see though that the guild is still going strong and while I don’t feel I really know anyone in game anymore I still have Goodie to keep me apprised!

Aside from my 2 hours of WoW time a week I am (obviously) spending heaps of time with my baby daughter who is growing up so fast!  While I’m itching to link pictures galore on here I’m refraining, but will instead direct you to a baby blog that I am sporadically updating for any readers interested in how that’s going.  Feel free to check it out: My Little Sapling, I promise there are heaps of cute pictures and more squee will be added with time!

Deva steps in to handle the encroaching gnolls

It’s worth spending time on interests that you can share with your loved ones. Something you can bond over. Lathere had been asking me (nagging me gently) for some time to play with her and I always seemed to have something else to do. We haven’t quite nutted out which night works best for us both. And we have no ambitions or significant goals to achieve.

But spending a few hours together sharing a fun experience can’t be bad. Otherwise we might just end up having nothing to talk about except Lathere’s little girl, Caitlin!

Of course, once I’d agreed to return to Azeroth together for a once-a-week play session our levels of interest and commitment in the game changed completely. By the end of an evening I’d out-leveled Lathere’s baby Paladin by 5 levels. And it was very hard to stop.

I logged in first. I had a young, confused Paladin going by the unfortunate name Dêva waiting for me on my loading screen. Yes, that’s Dêva with a funky character “e”. I’m not even sure how you type that onto your screen. I know, on my Mac, that I can recreate the name by typing “d” “e” “alt+i” (that’s the bit that throws up a special character on the previous letter) and then “v” “a”. I had to figure that out straight up in order to send, by mail, a Bind to Account cloak to her from the Stormwind Visitor Center courtesy of my bank manager.

What a mistake. I’m so embarrassed walking around under such a silly bunch of characters. I might as well have called myself “Xxxlegolaosxxx”. /shudder. (Where’s that point scoring system that uncovers noobs simply based on name and hairstyle?)

I may have related the circumstances behind the name in a previous post. I’m pretty sure I talked up my baby Paladin quite a bit when I created her. That is, when I birthed her, virtually, full grown and empty headed into an Abbey just north west of Goldshire. Poor race choice you say? I really like being a Human in RL and in game. Sorry.

At the time of her creation a long time WoW player and guild mate, Ultraviolet, persuaded me to believe that if you do a WoW Armory search for a character name that you like, and it cannot present any characters of that name on your server, you can raise a ticket and petition Blizzard to release the name from some strange person’s inactive account and they will… well… just give it to you.

I believed this. And Ultraviolet had just created an alt going by the name “Dan” to prove his point. Unbelievable! A three letter name, a common place, recognizable and easily pronounced name on one of the older Oceanic realms!

I also knew, and this might still be correct, that nonsense characters do not belong in World of Warcraft character names and naming your character with one goes against the Terms of Service. Or something like that.

Thinking to kill two birds with one stone and to strengthen my case to Blizzard, I discovered the name I wanted for my Paladin, checked to see if I could find a character on Barthilas going by that same name, and then created an illegally named character from which to launch my ticket.

As you might have guessed Blizzard were not in the least bit interested in freeing up the name “Deva” and the ticket was closed and I was stuck with my stupid version of the name. At level 10 I was too stubborn to re-roll, or pay, for a name change. It’s my mistake and I’ll live with it.

The loading screen ran for a very long time. A disturbingly long time. I had to force quit the game and try again – this time with all Add Ons disabled – to see Westfall, and Deva, again.

I woke up in a graveyard. I’m not sure what it says about my experiences as a World of Warcraft player that loading in at a graveyard immediately makes me think that in the previous play session I was corpse camped until I gave up and logged out. I started running towards Sentinel Hill, mentally debating if it is even possible to be corpse camped in Westfall (I’m fairly sure it isn’t). and accidentally stepped between a ramshackle army and some ugly gnolls fighting it out on the outskirts of the hill.

In true Paladin style I charged in swung my mace about. Or my sword. I’m pretty sure I had a mace equipped at the time.

After all I may be a driving a lowly level 16 Paladin around Westfall but my brain is full of adventures in the most dangerous dungeons in Outlands and Northrend. Surely these footmen – these Westfall hicks – needed my help! After smacking a few gnolls into the ground I eventually realised that those hicks were coping well enough with the attacking gnolls. You might even say that they had been designed for that purpose. Indeed just as one gnoll hit the ground a new one would run in and attack.

The battle could go on forever, seeming to favour the Alliance but actually completely unchanged. World of Warcraft programming at its best?

It was about that time that I realised that I was in Sentinel Hill. This was Westfall. And I hadn’t loaded in at the graveyard because I’d been corpse camped or run down by one murloc too many. I had loaded in at the graveyard because while Cassandri was spending her last days before the Cataclysm drinking champagne in The Park, Deva had missed it altogether. Slept through it entirely.

And Sentinel Hill isn’t the same place I remember.

For one thing, there’s a Paladin Trainer living in the Inn. I found out about Sister Darnhald the hard way, or the “old school” way. I just typed in [General] chat “Is there a Paladin trainer in Westfall?” and got a fast reply back “Inn”. Whoops. She’s not even tucked away in a cellar. She’s right there next to the Inn Keeper.

Westfall isn’t the same either. And once I learned some talents and some skills with Sister Darnhald’s help I ventured out and discovered just how much it’s changed…

But more on that another day!

Now that Caitlin is getting a bit older I’m finding that I have a spare hour generally at some stage in the afternoon where I can log into WoW.  When I first realized this I was really quite excited I’ve missed having some “me” time and I’ve really missed my guild and friends online.  This excitement unfortunately didn’t last very long when I realised that:

1. I have no idea how to play a resto druid anymore
2. None of my online friends appear to play in the middle of the day
3. My entire guild seems to have turned over since Cataclysm came out and I feel like a complete stranger

Overwhelmed

I was lucky enough that I leveled to 85 and had the chance to run a few normal dungeons before I went into labor.  This wasn’t enough however to ingrain in me the new way of healing pre baby break.  Since I leveled Lath I played her in order to raid as a healer.  Shes always been raid ready and spent all of Wrath running the latest content on heroic level.  To now find myself coming back into the game at the end of the first tier of raiding content in leveling blues and greens, no spec (they must have all reset since boxing day) and no clue what I’m doing… its all been very daunting.

How Am I Getting Back Into The Swing of Druiding

I’ve decided I’m not logging back in until I’ve had a chance to do some research.

I’m not too worried about relearning specs and spells as I’m sure that reading through theses blogger guides will get me off the ground.

I do need a game plan on how to get the best possible gear I can through quests, rep and normal dungeons as heroics through the LFD tool may be a bit longer than I’ve got time for. Just thinking about aiming for gear at that level hurts me a little bit, I’m so used to aiming at the top of end of gear rewards its really quite a big adjustment moving back down the spectrum aimed at casual play.

Or Not….

In the end trying to read guides off my iPhone while breastfeeding was getting a little too much.  I’m shelving Lath for the time being and have decided to level my priest from 80 – 85.  Questing is something I can do for 5 mins or 1 hour so I don’t have to worry about neglecting Caitlin should see wake or need a feed etc.

Guild Stuff

The priest leveling idea is also helping me with my main dilemma – the part that has probably kept me not interested in WoW the most over the last 9 weeks.  My guild.  I’ve been in Vitare for just under 2 years and have had a blast with a splash of drama added into the mix.  The problem is that I’m no longer a raider which is what the guild revolves around, and I’m no longer really free to play at night time (hoping this will eventually change!) and I’m feeling pretty much like an outsider.  So many new raiders have joined and so many of the players I journeyed through Wrath with have left, that I almost feel like I’m in a new guild.

Part of me is wondering whether I would be better off moving away from an Oceanic server and joining a US timezone server where my daytime play is evening time for most players.  If I want to get back into raiding it would also give me more opportunity to find a family friendly guild that has short raid times but still maintains quality and progression – this just doesn’t seem to exist on the Oceanic servers.

Suggestions/Ideas Are Welcome!

For those mothers who breastfeed and managed to play shortly after birth how did you manage it?  I know some people have said breastfeed at the computer…. I just don’t think I have a set up that will work with that not to mention that Caitlin is a squirmer, I think she would bump her head a million times if I even tried.

Do you think its worth considering a move or should I wait it out for when night time feeds are less frequent and her sleep patterns more regular?

Lath (Still here albeit in a much less regular capacity!)

xoxox

PS – This post ended up taking me 4 days to write /sigh.

PPS – Cass still has no study from the floods!

This story takes place inside Hellfire Citadel...

Tam prompted me to relate a little story, a small moment of glory (oh the glory!) when he blogged “this is probably quite obvious to anyone with a serious alt habit but it’s interesting to see the way transferable knowledge operates in WoW.”

I had a revelation. Yes, a revelation. In Shattered Halls.
I’ve been loving playing my Mage. I didn’t much in the beginning. In fact, I was well and truly bored until around level 60 when all the good stuff starting coming my way: my water elemental – my partner in crime! and I think he deserves a proper name – and a whole bunch of free procs: free Fireball! free Ice Lance damage! free stun!

Actually playing the Mage had really cemented one truth in place: I love casters. I just love them. That’s why I can’t pursue my baby Paladin, or Death Knight for that matter, with any real effort. I know that even if I dabble with all three specs I won’t play a level 80/85 melee (Ret or Prot) or a healer (Holy) with any real dedication. And that’s why I rolled a Warlock on Argent Dawn instead.

Before I tell you about this revelation I had playing while playing the Mage I want to tell you how I go about wrapping my brain around new class abilities as I learn them.

I started playing a Rogue. And like all newbies, I played with the Blizzard default UI. I leveled as Assassination, and switched to Combat at level 70. Basically my keys were set up something like this (to this day they haven’t much changed)

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	0	-	=
	Instant strike	Finisher	Stun				Drop threat		Oh shit!	Oh shit!	Oh shit!

I don’t think you can get match abilities when you go from a Rogue to a Shadow Priest, but I tried. As I learned each new Priest ability I tried to match it to a similar Rogue move and bind it to the same key.

In the heat of battle, I often reach for the same keys to do the same kind of job – drop threat, hide, cast an instant spell, absorb damage – regardless of what character I’m playing.

My key binds for Cassandri have changed over the years but some of the “matches” have been around for years. For example, my Priest’s Fade (even when it was crappy in BC) took my #8 key in the same place I keep my Rogue’s Feint. Both are threat reducers. And Every Man for Himself (or Escape Artist on my Gnome) goes straight on the Equal keybind whenever I start up a new character.

If I don’t follow through and put, say, an instant attack where I have a utility spell … then you can end up doing something like pulling Faction Champions with Shadow Word: Death instead of buffing. Which is something that I actually did, because on my Discipline UI, I had moved SW:D onto a key that was perfectly harmless while playing Shadow spec. That was one of the most embarrassing moments in my virtual life.

Of course, classes are different enough that you can’t always do a direct translation. But nevertheless here’s my keybinds character to character:

Key binds across DPS classes

And the common theme for each:

1. An occasional, but important attack/spell. Part of the rotation.
2. Almost always an instant. My opener.
3. And occasional, but important attack/spell. A nuke. Or cool down spell.
4. Stun/Slow
5. AoE
6. AoE
7. Utility spell
8. Drop Threat!
9. Pet/Utility spell
10. An occasional, but important attack/spell. Part of the rotation.
11. Oh shit!
12. Oh shit!

During combat I reach for 1, 2, 3, 4 and 0. That’s where you’ll find my cast rotation spells.

I almost always open up with #2. And it’s almost always an instant spell, or a DoT. Shadow Word: Pain, Corruption and Flame Shock are all on #2. Blizzard automatically placed Corruption elsewhere and gave me Immolate on #2 instead. However, in my mind Immolate is more comparable to Vampiric Touch (both with a cast time, both DoTs).

I’ll confess I bought into the “Mages are easy” mentality that gets thrown around. And you can kind of understand why: I usually start hitting 1, 2, 3, 4 and 0 the moment I enter combat on my Mage after playing another character of mine. When in fact I should be just hitting 2, 2, 2, 2, 2 etc.

Unfortunately I was slightly worried about the mental lull induced by Mage-ing. Anyone can hit their Frostbolt button over and over again. How is this teaching me to be an excellent Mage? As I approached level 80 I was starting to get pretty damned worried that I might need to head into a battleground to really master the Mage.

I don’t worry so much about that now.

It had been almost two years since I’d been to Shattered Halls. Caesandra (my Mage) and Pixii (Lathere’s Warlock) had been sent there by the dungeon finder. I had forgotten a lot about the dungeon in that time. Lath and I argued about what could open the door to the first boss (she had never gone by way of the sewers – to which I pointed out that I had always been around to unpick the lock). I did remember that ranged had to kill the first boss when he started whirlwinding… because he wasn’t going to stop. I couldn’t remember how threat worked for the ogre boss, and ran around like a crazy gnome trying to stay both in range of our tank’s taunt, and out of range of the angry ogre/s.

After eating dust on that boss I didn’t really have any expectations, or high opinions, of my own performance.

As a group we took a few steps into the final corridor to approach the last boss.

And I heard our tank get sapped.

I was already running away as I hit Frost Nova, exposing the enemy assassin from stealth, and freezing him in place far enough away from everyone else in the rest of the group that he couldn’t do anyone any damage. The sap wore off and the tank picked up the mob.

Not only did I identify the sound of the sap, I pulled out the reason for it from my memories of Shattered Halls: remembered that there are stealthed mobs in the lead up to the last boss, and that they always incapacitate the tank (or whoever they spy leading the way) and then proceed to stun and slaughter the very next member of your party.

And, if all that wasn’t enough, I automatically reached for the very best spell on hand – on my alt Mage – to deal with it. I could have blinked away and saved myself, I could have Arcane Explosion-ed or AoEed to expose the Rogue and bring him out of stealth. I probably could have even used Cone of Cold + Polymorph to expose and render him harmless.

One spell. At the exact right time. Used when my party members weren’t in harm’s way (if a Mage Frost Nova’s something right next to you they enemy will just hit whatever it can reach… usually an unsuspecting healer).

The human mind is an amazing thing.

I never really ran Shattered Halls back in the day with a Mage beside me either. I don’t think I’d ever seen a Mage deal with that exact situation in SH using Frost Nova. And certainly I don’t think any other class that I play has an ability similar to Frost Nova.

Yet I still knew to reach for that key, that ability. Oh it was glorious. I think I almost fell off my chair as I started to think about what I’d done.

(Lathere didn’t seem to appreciate my genius).

One run of Botanica (and a couple extra levels) and I could be a Master of Potions.

Leveling isn’t really my thing. Alts aren’t really my thing. So it’s no surprise that leveling a new alt takes me, well, a really really long time.

Lathere stopped playing when Pixii (Lathere’s Warlock) and my Mage were just coming into the Burning Crusade dungeons around level 60. Like Pugging Pally – Pixii and Caesandra don’t quest. We do instances and that’s it!

I was quite happy to leave Caesandra sitting around level 60. At level 55 I had set her hearth to Cenarion Hold in Silithus. That’s where I go to farm Essence of Air and traveling there is the most annoying part. Then it occurred to me that Caesandra had maxed out her Herbalism skill (300) and picking Mountain Silversage while I farmed Essence of Air wasn’t earning me points. I traveled to Outlands, flew to Honor Hold, and visited both the Herbalism and Alchemy trainers. A few vials later and I had reached 300 Alchemy too.

Great! Now I was well and truly ready for Outlands. To celebrate I did a lap – on my level 60 flying mount – around Hellfire Peninsula. And stopped to pick some Felweed. And some Dreaming Glory…

But no. I wasn’t going to level Caesandra without Pixii. And flying around herbing and not sitting in the Dungeon Finder queue seemed counterproductive. So I stopped herbing.

Well I tried to stop. Unfortunately I seem to consume huge quantities of Felweed (the most available and generally least expensive Outland herb) in my quest for Insane in the Membrane and Exalted Darkmoon Faire. So when the Auction House was all out… I would log onto Caesandra for just a little while and gather some herbs.

And soon enough I rejoined the Dungeon Finder queue just to break up my herbing spree.

Now I’m level 66.

And I’m well and truly ready to become either an Elixir/Flask, Potion or Transmutation Alchemist. Unfortunately I can’t do that until I’m level 68. But I’m motivated.

I have already gathered all the Outlands herbs that I need to get to 450 Alchemy and I’m about to start herbing Goldclover on another character to make sure Caesandra can breeze through the early stages of Northrend Alchemy as soon as she is ready for it.

Alchemy is the carrot-on-a-stick that is dragging me all the way through the levels. Not the promise of reaching level 80. Not the quests. Not even the dungeons. Certainly not the gear. But the profession… yes.

Caesandra is my first Alchemist. And I use Flasks and Potions as much as any serious raider (read: a lot).

I’ve been mentally debating the pros and cons of each Alchemy specialisation for days. I’m not really planning on using Alchemy as a money-making enterprise, more for the convenience of not having to go to someone else. And I think the most inconvenient product for me to get hold of these days is Potion of Wild Magic.

I don’t think there are many Potion Specialists on Barthilas. So I think that’s what I want to be.

However, as I understand it Potion of Wild Magic isn’t trainer taught – it’s discovered. The best way to get hold of this recipe is to create stuff as an Alchemist. I don’t want to make lots of useless trainer taught Potions. And I don’t want to make lots of useful Flask of the Frost Wryms … but without the possibility of proc’ing extra Flasks.

Instead I think I’m going to do something a bit more like this:

1. Do the quest to become a Flask Alchemist
2. Level to 450
3. Create lots of trainer-taught Flask of the Frost Wrym
4. Discover Potion of Wild Magic (and Potion of Speed?)
5. Pay the gold penalty to swap to a Potion Alchemist
6. Create lots of Potion of Wild Magic and enjoy the procs!

There’s one last problem to factor in:

The three different level 68 specialisations each have their own quest to complete. Most Alchemy guides suggest you complete the Transmutation quest and then pay to change specialisations because the Transmutation quest is deemed the easiest. You need to farm Primals in Outlands, but all in all, it’s easily solo-able.

The Flask/Elixir Specialisation quest requires you to run The Black Morass. The quest requires:

• [Essence of Infinity] ×10 from Rift Lords/Keepers in The Black Morass (Caverns of Time)
• [Elixir of Major Defense] ×5
• [Elixir of Mastery] ×5
• [Elixir of Major Agility] ×5

Black Morass is a level 70 dungeon. This is a problem because the Dungeon Finder prefers to drop players on the cusp of a new expansion in the new expansion instances instead of the “end game” dungeons. So at level 58 I never found myself in Stratholme (Classic), and instead was pushed into Hellfire Ramparts (Burning Crusade).

I expect that at level 68 I will not be placed in Shadow Labyrinth, Tempest Keep: Botanica, Mechanar or Arcatraz, or Shattered Halls or The Black Morass (all end-game level 70 Burning Crusade dungeons). I expect that I will be running The Nexus and Utgarde Keep.

Completing Black Morass is also a problem because you need to unlock that dungeon before you can queue for it in the Dungeon Finder. You need to have completed the Escape from Durnholde Keep instances first (level 65-68). And in order to unlock that you need to have traveled to the Caverns of Time in Tanaris and do an escort quest.

I’m currently the perfect level for Escape from Durnholde Keep. And I’ve gone to Caverns of Time to unlock it. But the Dungeon Finder still sends me to Auchenai Crypts (slightly too easy) and Setthek Halls (slightly too hard). In every one of my groups I ask and remind players to go and unlock the Caverns of Time instances. So far, people are acknowledging the reminders, but nobody has actually done the quest except me.

Becoming a Flask/Elixir Alchemist might not be easy, even with the Dungeon Finder. And I believe you need to complete The Black Morass at couple times depending on how lucky you get with drops.

Becoming a Master of Potions requires you to also run a dungeon: Tempest Keep’s Botanica. This quest requires:

• [Botanist's Field Guide] from High Botanist Freywinn in The Botanica, Tempest Keep
• [Super Healing Potion] ×5
• [Super Mana Potion] ×5
• [Major Dreamless Sleep Potion] ×5

WoWWiki suggests that you complete the Potion Master quest over the Transmutations quest as the easiest option.

It may be worth considering taking Potion mastery, as you will generally make all the needed quest items in the course of leveling Alchemy, and then switching to Transmutation or Elixir.

And it looks as though [Botanist's Field Guide] has a 100% chance to drop if you’re on the quest. So you need only do this dungeon once.

Using the Dungeon Finder this might be the easiest of the three Alchemy quests to complete. It’s likely that I’ll be making [Super Healing Potion] and [Super Mana Potion] anyway as I level Alchemy. And I’ll have probably picked up quite a few just by killing mobs.

Botanica doesn’t need to be unlocked. And as long as I’m willing to wait a bit longer I should be able to choose a Specific Dungeon instead of the Random Dungeon.

However I feel that Potion specialisation is the least exciting specialisation to have while leveling from 375 to 450. That still leaves me wondering if I should temporarily switch to Transmutation or Flask/Elixir specialisation when I reach 450 Alchemy and am waiting to discover Potion of Wild Magic…

It might cost me 300g (to unlearn Master of Potions, and then relearn it later) but at least I will be keen to use my profession.

Or I could farm the materials for Master of Transmutation and keep that until I discover Potion of Wild Magic… I did always hope to recraft my Frozen Shadoweave set… and I hear that Master of Transmutation is the most profitable at level 80.

Still undecided! What should I do?

Will you forgive me for using a non-standard character?

Starting the Ravenholdt grind made me realise that, without even knowing that they had started, I’ve finished auditioning my characters for the starring role of Cassandra’s Main in Cataclysm.

I’m sticking with the Shadow Priest!

My Mage hasn’t reached max level yet but I’m fairly confident that I’m not wired to play a Mage. I love my casters, but the Mage really is a glass cannon. I’m just not sure I can really get into that part of the game play. I also get pretty impatient when I have to stand around while someone – OK, usually me – is lying on the floor waiting for a resurrection.

It seems too early to make a judgment call on the actual spells and “rotation” itself. Right now I’m a Blizzard, Blizzard, Blizzard, Fire Blast Mage and I’m pretty darn sure that it won’t remain that way by the time I’m level 80. At least, I sure hope it doesn’t remain the same. Because the only thrill mid-combat at the moment is the very real possibility that my next critical strike could mean my death. And that’s not the kind of fun I’m looking for.

I spent a lot of time giving the Shaman another chance. I had the opportunity to raid a little bit with her as both Elemental and Restoration and I just don’t think I’m particularly good at either. Elemental is tons of fun in an instance, but I feel that all the goodies are taken away in a raid boss fight setting. And I can’t really compete, numbers wise, in either spec.

I found myself tagging a Heroic Deathbringer Saurfang video I captured as “watch Dopz and I slaughter a Blood Beast!” on our guild website. Dopz is a Warlock in our guild, and I don’t know much about Warlocks but he’s usually forced into some crappy buff spec to boost everyone else’s DPS. Demonology perhaps? And Warlocks are another DoT class, so I expect his ability to do burst damage is about on par to mine: awful. In the competition to kill our Saurfang Blood Beast before all the other DPS pairs in the raid I consider us to be the underdogs. Yet we can win that race.

I also like to boast that it’s my well-timed Divine Hymn (cast right when Healers are at a breaking point in the last few percent) that saves the day and wins us a kill in Saurfang.

Why would I even think to play any other class when I enjoy the one I’ve got right now so much?

I enjoy running into low flying Vile Spirits as a big glowing shadow ball – usually with a tank protected by Shield Wall hot on my heels. I look for opportunities to get hit by the Council’s Empowered Flame Orb. I like seeing those inflated green Vampiric Embrace numbers fly around my screen in Blood Queen. I even hope that one day I’ll equip Trauma just to see if I can heal a Heroic purely through damage dealing in Shadowform.

I can’t give that all up. And for what? A bit of burst? Some “pure” DPS? Heroism or totems? The chance to play a Gnome?*

The Achievement system is both wonderful and awful. During the auditions I shied away from working on Achievements. If I were to swap mains I’d never get to scroll through my titles or ride around on a rare mount earned by completing a difficult achievement. Now that I’m sure I’ll be playing the Shadow Priest for more than the next few months I’m willing to devote my time and energies towards Insane in the Membrane.

I don’t believe in swapping mains during an expansion. And I don’t believe in raiding the same content on more than one character. So this is actually a pretty important decision for me and one that I would only make once every couple of years in the lead up to a new expansion.

Are you auditioning for a new main for Cataclysm?

* Yes, I know I could race change to a Gnome Priest in Cataclysm but I would never inflict that kind of identity crisis on Cassandri or myself. She was born a human, she’ll die (retire?) a human.

Fire Nova sends a blast wave out from your current fire totem

Let’s lighten up a bit this Friday and think about something a bit more fun and lighthearted than raiding formats: Alts!

When I turned my Restoration Shaman into an Elemental Shaman I threw myself into it 100%. I stopped queuing as a Healer and suffered the longer wait times for the chance to play as Elemental and become familiar with the Elemental abilities in my spell book. I like to take the dungeon time on a new character as an opportunity (I can’t use the word “journey” without sounding like a contestant in yet another reality TV show) to experiment and really try and learn how to play well. The Emblems are a nice bonus, of course. /wink

I guess I had completely tuned out when 3.3 was released and they changed a Shaman’s Fire Nova Totem by turning it into a spell, instead of a totem long forgotten in our spell books. The new Fire Nova is an AoE spell that sends a blast wave of damage out from wherever you dropped your fire totem. It’s such a cool spell! I can’t believe I didn’t know about it, and use it, for weeks.

It’s a lucky thing I found out about it at all. I was reviewing an Elemental Shaman application and was a bit surprised to find that thinking (and theorycrafting) talents and glyphs for Elemental Shaman had changed a bit since I first activated Dual Specialisation. I was definitely behind the times. A few articles I read made mention of the change to Fire Totems in patch 3.3 but nobody seemed to come out and just say: “Wake up! There’s a new AoE spell for all Shaman!”.

Then I stumbled across a demonstration of Fire Nova:

[youtube TJYqlQUFkDc nolink]

How cool is that?

The new Fire Nova spell slots in nicely into whats-not-on-cooldown-right-now? rotation. But the strange thing about the Elemental Shaman, to me anyway, is that you don’t really have different cast rotations for different situations. Single target or multi-target you still end up casting pretty much the same sequence: Chain Lightning, Flame Shock + Lava Burst and Lightning Bolt.

What I mean is that both the Priest and the Mage feel like they have a definite toggle switch when they go into AoE mode. If it could be translated into a macro I think it would look something like this:

#showtooltip Mind Sear
/RW AoE Time!
/emote says no time for DoTs now!
/cast Mind Sear
/cast Mind Sear
/cast Mind Sear
/emote can’t believe there’s still one mob alive!
/cast Mind Flay

And, please, don’t actually make that macro. The Elemental Shaman kind of sits somewhere in the middle, treating all fights like there are 2-3 enemies present. And god forbid there are multiple mobs hanging around that you’re not meant to kill.

Combine Fire Nova into a cooldown based rotation with some slightly tricky situational requirements you actually end up with a pretty interesting spell to use. Before hitting your Fire Nova key you need to consider:

1. Do I have some kind of Fire totem down?
2. Where is my totem and are the mobs within range of it? If it is too far away is it worth dropping a totem closer, using a global cooldown to do so, in order to use Fire Nova?
3. Will 3 or more mobs be hit?

If you’re going for max DPS – in other words, standard operating procedure for Heroics – you can place down Magma Totem at the feet of your mobs, cast Chain Lightning, then hit Fire Nova while Chain Lightning is on cooldown. That’s three sources of AoE damage: Magma, Chain Lightning, Fire Nova.

All up, not quite as impressive as the damage from a Shadow Priest’s Mind Sear, but then again, who cares? It’s a hell of a lot more fun, and more of a challenge, to pull off!

There’s one little problem. Mobs like to stomp on my totems. If I place my 4 totems in advance, dropping Magma from the word “go”, often it’s already been killed when I go to hit my Fire Nova button. This is an even worse problem for me when soloing – presumably because my totem so easily out-threats me early on. I think what I need is a macro which will place a new Magma totem if I don’t have a current Fire totem. Any suggestions? Is that even possible?

The strange thing about Fire Nova, well when paired with Magma totem, is that your Magma totem kind of requires you to run into melee range before placing your totems. The range on Magma is only 8 yards, so there’s no point in standing safely at 36 yards, dropping it, then winding up a Chain Lightning. I mean, you might was well skip Magma and go straight for the “passive” spell power buff from Totem of Wrath which will cover everyone in 40 yards.

The speed of your average Heroic pushes me to play like a melee spell caster. I keep pace with the tank, stand right next to the Rogue and drop my four totems, including Magma, right on the mobs. Then, instead of wasting time running back out to the healer, I just stand still and start casting. So far, this hasn’t gotten me into any grief. There isn’t as many deadly, whirlwind-ing enemies as you might first think. I think the range limitations would annoy me in a raid, but in Heroics it’s quite fun to pretend to be neither melee or ranged… and be something strange in between.

Once I sort out some kind of Fire Nova macro which checks for an existing Fire totem I’ll be set. Any tips or tricks would be most appreciated. This Elemental Shaman still has a lot to learn.

ps. Spell travel time sucks.

It's not by coincidence that I'm posing in a graveyard

I tried. I really did. I waited until I had gathered more than 200 Emblems of Triumph and bought my Tier 9 set to see if it would make a difference. It didn’t. I still struggle to heal as a Restoration Shaman. I’m always a step or two behind the rest of the party. I’m looting mobs from the last pull. I’m drinking. I’m 10 yards out of range.

I’m pretty sure that it’s not the spec at fault – it’s me.

Even though I gave up on the Shaman a few months back I didn’t stop reading all the Restoration Shaman blogs that I have subscribed to. I think I was still looking for an answer, convinced that I had missed some crucial “rotation” or combination of spells, which would explain why I was so bad at playing this spec.

All that reading has paid off. I think I know why I couldn’t play the Restoration Shaman. It’s because I played a Discipline Priest first. My approach to healing with the Shaman was warped.

Why am I giving up on the Shaman? I think it comes down to two problems: no mobility and no damage prevention.

Riptide is the only instant heal available to a Restoration Shaman. And it’s on cooldown. That means that it’s the only spell I can cast to heal you while I’m moving. If we all need to run out of something nasty, I have to wait until I’m in the clear, then start up a Chain Heal or Lesser Healing Wave, then 2 seconds later you will get receive said heal.

If we all need to run out of something as my Priest I have 4 “instants” at my disposal. I can Renew (which I swear is more powerful than a Riptide tick) or send you 1 tick of Penance. I can hit you with Prayer of Mending and instantly heal you for a huge amount or I can Power Word: Shield you for an instant 2k+ heal (and that’s just from a glyph!) and then effectively pause your dropping health bar until I can fire off a party heal or a full Penance or Flash.

A Lesson from Pit of Saron

At about the time I was giving up on Restoration I was fortunate enough to be grouped up with a Restoration Shaman for Pit of Saron while I was playing Cassandri as DPS. I ran the instance with our healer set as my Focus target. I was open minded – perhaps here was my chance to learn how to play from another player, spell for spell.

As we approached the first boss I wondered how the Shaman was going to heal this. I can’t imagine a fight more difficult to heal as a Shaman. Lots of movement. And party members need to be spread out to avoid the rock throw which means that Chain Healing isn’t an option. As least we had Frost Resist Totem.

We wiped.

This is how I approach this fight as a Shadow Priest:

AoE off the boss to kill his adds at the start. DPS the boss until he has thrown a few rocks. When he goes to forge a weapon, run behind a rock to line of sight him. Your debuff is probably around 10-13 stacks by now. As soon as the debuff wears out, run back out to try and refresh Shadow Word: Pain before it expires. Wait til he forges a new weapon (around another 13 stacks), run behind a rock to LoS him.

The Shaman blamed the group for the wipe: “You didn’t LoS enough. You can’t let it get to 10 stacks!”

In every other run I’ve done we’ve all waited until the weapon forging – usually every second rock throw or so – before dropping the stacking debuff. Right or wrong, this means that every other healer that I’ve played with during the previous 20 runs or so could manage to heal through about 13 stacks of the debuff: Druids, Priests and Paladins.

On the second attempt we huddled and LoSed the boss after every single rock throw which gave the Shaman just enough time to get off two chain heals while we were stacked. Our health bars remained in the 30-60% range the entire fight. In the end I helped heal. My Shadowfiend and Dispersion won us the kill. Everyone else was dead.

I do think that fight is particularly punishing to Shaman. But the experience further cemented in my mind that other Restoration Shaman, not just me, struggle to keep green bars full in instances.

The Dungeon Finder Mentality

The players who run Wrath of the Lich King heroics are not approaching combat with the same mentality as my groups did when I first started healing as my Restoration Shaman in Naxxaramas/Tier 7 days.

In one of my first blogs for HoTs and DoTs I talked about how easy/difficult I found each of the Wrath Heroics to complete while healing as my brand new Restoration Shaman. I concluded by the end, when I was wearing all the ilvl 200 Epic faction rewards and Epic Heroic drops, that I was now over-geared for Heroics. How times have changed!

My party would listen to me when I said that they needed to group up around me for Chain Heal. They listened to me if I asked for a mana break. They declared “good job!” if I struggled to heal through a boss but somehow kept us from wiping. Even back then I struggled the most with heavy movement fights like Telestra (Nexus) and the Collusus (Gundrak).

These days tanks will not wait until I’m in range before pulling. Tanks will not wait while I regain my mana. Party members believe that it’s ok to stand in Flamestrike and be healed through it. Party members believe that if you want to stop in order to drink, you’re a bad healer. Party members believe that if everyone’s health bar is under 20% when the boss dies that you’re a bad healer.

Warped Thinking

It’s not so much that I’ve been spoiled playing the Discipline Priest (or maybe I have, they are pretty cool), it’s just that the way I approach healing is warped.

Discipline feels very aggressive to me, almost devious. You can quickly throw out a huge series of instant casts: shield, shield, shield, Prayer of Mending, Renew and then have a nap in the corner. Or better yet, skip the nap and hit “f” and Penance and suddenly you’re DPSing the enemy with your healing spells. Or you can just wade right into melee distance and Holy Nova while you run in circles like a mad man: healing and dealing damage at the same time instantly.

There’s a type of insanity to Discipline which I love. And it’s the only reason I hold a tiny amount of love for PVP in my heart – because this spec is so suitable for the battlefield mindset. One moment you might be struggling to keep you and three other friendlies around you alive and then the next moment you’ll realise that your teammates need a bit of help in order to finish off that enemy Paladin … and so you help bring him down with a fast Penance followed up by Shadow Word: Death. (And we all know that, just like a murloc,  if you leave a Paladin with less than 10% health he’ll run away only to return with 5 of his friends looking for revenge – and with a full health bar too.)

I think a Discipline Priest enters combat, and builds healing threat, slowly. We can enter combat with our “heals” already in place. We have a bit of time before our Prayer of Mending goes off. In the Burning Crusade that Prayer of Mending heal threat wasn’t even attributed to the Priest, it was attributed to the healed target. Most of the time that first bounce would be attributed to the tank thus helping them build threat at the start of a pull. I’m used to having a few seconds to myself at the start of combat to orient myself and get into a good position before I need to start casting.

Priests are encouraged to take breaks while healing – we’re not built to spam cast one or two spells without pause for the entire duration of a boss fight. The Priest heals selectively, casting the right spell on the right target at the right time. They are encouraged to take pauses and conserve their mana pool. I believe, although I’m no expert, that this might be what Blizzard are getting at when they say that Discipline needs some work to be ideal single target healers – they can do some amazing things to mitigate incoming damage, but they can’t deliver their heals at the same steady, sure pace that a Holy Paladin can. A few seconds without heals and your tank can be dead. And a tick of Renew ain’t gonna cut it.

I believe I’m guilty of not adapting my approach to suit my Restoration Shaman. Perhaps I need more time away from the Priest, as Discipline anyway, before I should try Restoration again.

I think I would be better served spam healing my targets before they take damage instead of losing precious seconds at the start of combat. I think I need to stop trying to get into the “ideal” position and instead make do with wherever I happen to be when combat commences. I think I need to get heals on my tank (small ones perhaps) as they’re still picking up adds, instead of waiting until I’m sure they have them all neatly standing in one spot. I think I need to treat my spells as a “rotation” get into the habit of casting a set sequence instead of waiting to read the situation, then determining which spell to cast, and then casting it. I think I need to stop worrying about mana conservation and overhealing.

I think I need to work at being a bit more steady, a bit more predictable. I think the only way to “proactively” heal is to make sure that I always have heal about to land.

Do you think I’m on the right track?

Thank God for Dual Specialisation

Well all this reflection has been motivating. It’s been months since I healed as my Shaman. I haven’t completely given up on Restoration, but I’m pretty sure it’s not the healing spec for me.

At the moment I’m giving Xata a second chance by using her secondary spec: Elemental. But my adventures as an Elemental Shaman are a topic for another day, I think!

Plate is shiny

I’m currently in the process of putting together a list of Bind on Account, aka Heirloom, gear list for a baby Paladin. I’m thinking of leveling a Paladin, not because I have any intention of playing a Paladin at max level but purely for leveling fun.

I’ve been enjoying leveling the Mage using the Dungeon Finder but I’m getting just a bit tired of the lengthy dungeon queues. Time to roll a hybrid.

I’ve been doing some research. I want to make sure I buy the very best BoA items around for my Paladin. Eventually – around level 40 – I expect I’ll need a tanking and healing set. I won’t be queuing dungeons as Damage, so I don’t really intend to put together a high DPS Retribution set. If I go out in the world to complete a few quest, well, I’ll have to just wear my tanking/shield gear. I somehow doubt that there’s much difference between DPS and tanking items at lower levels.

In doing my research I was quite surprised to find a lot of conflicting opinions about the best weapon and best enchants. I think this is mostly because some of the newer weapons (the Maces in particular) were released sometime after Wrath of the Lich King. Anyway, here’s what I consider to be the most suitable items. I’d really love to hear what some more experienced Paladins think.

Both of the weapons are 1 hand weapons which frees up my Offhand item slot for an appropriate Shield. Is it worth purchasing a 2 handed weapon to equip if I need to complete a couple quests on my own?

Tanking set

I was surprised at how poor the trinket choice was for melee DPS and tanking characters. There is no Attack Power trinket. The Inherited Insignia would be somewhat handy to get out of nets and other movement impairing effects (although I think I’m going to be playing a Human, so there’s no need). The Swift Hand of Justice haste trinket is useful for all classes to some degree.

Would I be better off equipping the spell power trinket? Do Paladins benefit from equipping spell power for dps or tanking?

The enchanting options are quite interesting and I imagine the choice comes down to personal taste. Fiery Blaze Enchantment is a great option, I believe, but you need to complete a quest around level 40 to earn it. Until then you can either choose to remain enchant-less or you can choose one of the other options that I’ve listed. Most comments that I’ve found seem to favor Lifestealing over Crusader and then recommend choosing the flat stat gain from Agility or Strength after level 60 (the point at which Lifestealing and Crusader being to diminish in power).

I think I’m going to aim for the Fiery Blaze Enchant just because it’s something that I would never have thought of using. Furthermore, it won’t cost you any gold.

Healing Set

Fortunately for me I have both the Mail spell power shoulders and the spell power mace from when I leveled my Shaman. It may seem like a lot of effort to purchase gear for 2 sets but, to be honest, I have nearly all the items for my healing set already.

Also, if you’re an excellent fisherman the Dread Pirate Ring awarded to the winner of the weekly Kalu’ak Fishing Derby would complement either set. But somehow I doubt I’m going to win this event!

Jumping ahead while Pixii (Lathere) is falling behind

Caesandra (my Mage) and Pixii (Lathere’s Warlock) are actually the first two characters we’ve tried to level together. I started playing World of Warcraft about one month or two after Lathere and her boyfriend started and not only could I not close the level gap – I was always about 10 levels and two zones behind – I didn’t feel any need to. I think I can confidently say that I leveled all on my own the first time.

I started the Shaman, Xata, because my brother also wanted to roll a Shaman. We had a terrible time of the early levels and I honestly don’t think I could have done it on my own. We were codependent: we both tended to die ridiculously fast if we tried to go it alone. I lost interest around level 55 and eventually told my brother – level 58 and waiting for me to catch up – to just go on without me. That was the end of that leveling duo.

Caesandra is level 46. Pixii is level 42. This leveling duo is falling apart.

I started playing Cassandri when a friend of mine was leveling a Warrior. That was the closest thing I’ve had to a perfect leveling partnership.

We tended to log in and play at similar hours of the day so it just started making sense that we would quest together. So that our Quest Logs didn’t get too far out of sync, I got into the habit of questing through two similar level zones at once – one I would complete on my own (eg. Un’goro Crater), the other together with my questing partner (eg. Felwood). It wasn’t until we reached Outlands that I started putting in more play time than my friend. I hit level 70 when we were still questing in Nagrand and he was level 67.

You’d think a Shadow Priest/Warrior combination would be ideal – someone to take damage, and someone to kill stuff then heal everyone back to full health – but in practice it wasn’t. The melee/ranged DPS pair was quite irritating. I was forever waiting for my Warrior friend to get into melee range, else he’d be running all over the place trying to catch the mob heading towards me. And if I let him start DPSing before me, the duration of my DoTs was pretty much wasted. He would try and gather a couple mobs in sequence, but I still usually pulled mobs off him and the whole threat-juggling thing was more annoying than just soloing playing the Shadow Priest was. Sometimes we’d just each pick a target in the same general area – really just sharing the kill XP – and this seemed to work out best for everybody.

Of course, this was back in the day when threat was harder to gain (and drop, for Priests), Warriors took ages to kill stuff on their own and Bind on Account gear didn’t exist.

A Mage and Warlock, two ranged casters, both cloth wearers at that, sounds like a bad idea. But it’s actually turned out to be quite compatible. We can both open up on our target simultaneously from a safe distance without rushing in and accidentally pull additional mobs. I bring a good CC and Pixii brings a decent tank to the mix. Our only real problem is that neither of us can heal – I do get a lot of mileage out of Dampen Magic though – and more importantly: neither of us can resurrect. Lathere has tried to overcome this limitation by picking up and leveling Engineering for the Goblin Jumper Cables.

Now that we’re hitting the Dungeon Finder pretty much non-stop, the lack of a resurrect isn’t a real problem. The new problem is that neither of us are playing hybrids. If ever there was a time to play a tanking or healing hybrid, this is it. Instead we’re stuck with frustratingly long queue times as a pair of DPS. And we watch in frustration whenever we come up against a tank or healer that’s doing such a bad job we can’t help but wish we could take over the controls ourselves.

Occasionally we’ll be paired with an ambitious group that think the Mage/Warlock duo is ideal. You’d be surprised at how often I see:

“Pull more we’ve got a Mage and Warlock. Pull more!”

in our Party chat as the third DPS or healer tries to see how fast we can clear the entire Scarlet Monastery Cathedral. I have to say, these are my favourite types of groups – the ones where the tank and healer are keen to push the limits on how many mobs they can keep under control and how much damage they can heal through. And what DPS doesn’t enjoy seeing scads of yellow numbers popping up all over the screen? I’ve never leveled with an AoE spell before.

Outside of experience gains from the Dungeon Finder we’ve been doing very little questing. I like to do all the individual class quests – the Shaman and Rogue quests were essential. And that’s where it started to fall apart. I out leveled a Mage quest by mistake and only realised that I was meant to pick something up in Scarlet Monastery Library when the Dungeon Finder wouldn’t even let me choose that dungeon as an option. In an effort to ensure that didn’t happen again I headed over to Tabetha in Duskwallow Marsh and became her slave for a night, completing anything tagged as Mage in my Quest Log. And to break up the monotony of questing, I queued myself in the Dungeon Finder.

A couple dungeons later, Mage quests complete, I had somehow gained a few levels on Pixii. I wasn’t worried, I was sure Lathere would catch up soon enough. After all, or so I reasoned, I had used up all my rested experience gains and she hadn’t. A day or two later, because I wanted to finish my Uldaman map and guide for the blog before I out leveled it too, I queued and completed Uldaman a couple times too.

Caesandra is level 46. Pixii is level 42. The Dungeon Finder wants to send me to Zul’Farrak and Pixii to SM Cathedral. I got in a lot of trouble for creating a level divide. And for causing technical difficulties: we can’t queue using the Random Classic Dungeon option anymore.

If this partnership is going to work and take us to level 80 (or 85 as the case may be) I need to take a break from Caesandra. And not just until Lathere has time to play her Warlock, I need to wait until she’s had time to run a few dungeons without me. It’s not just about play time, I need to wait until she wants to play the Warlock without me.

I’m convinced that a month from now I’ll have all but given up on the Mage and forgotten how to play it when Lathere will be mad keen to play the Warlock again and then she’ll out-level me. I guess we’re not mentally in sync.

Because really, any leveling duo will work, regardless of character class, resurrection or not, hybrid or not, if the two players behind the characters feel like playing the same amount of hours and at the same time. Equally motivated with near-identical play schedules? That’s a heck of a lot more difficult than it first sounds.

What sacrifices have you made in order to level up with a friend? Tips?