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!

I must confess that even though I haven’t been logging much, if any, game time, I almost always skim through my feed read and will read the WoW posts that catch my attention. So many of Lathere and my blogging contemporaries (er… cronies?) have gone silent. Instead it’s a new crop of writers who are catching my attention.

And the one thing that’s most definitely become clear in my mind is that bloggers are writing about the same topics and quandries and general grey areas that have existed in World of Warcraft play since day 1. It’s still relevant. And each new voice brings a new perspective and new circumstances to the same dilemmas.

I wish that I was writing this post in order to announce CASSANDRI RETURNS TO RAIDING. But it would be a lie. I’m not even really writing this to say that I’m coming back to be a casual player. I’m still sitting on the fence.

I almost titled this post as “I’m at Peace”. I have a new understanding of all those government anti-smoking ads that encourage smokers to think about “life as a non-smoker”. You could stick a picture of me up there with “life as an ex-WoW raider” and I would say that the message holds true.

I think of myself as someone who used to play World of Warcraft.

I don’t miss the game at all. I don’t think about what I could be doing if I could just carve out a couple hours of uninterrupted game time. I don’t wish I had the titles that the new crop of dedicated raiders have. I don’t wish I had the gear, or the mounts or any one of those things.

I do really miss the friends that I used to speak to most nights of the week. I really miss what Lathere and I have achieved here: our blog – a place for us to ponder (or rant) our experiences in game.

The problem seems straight forward: in order to be part of the blogging world I need to write about game experiences. Thus, I need to play the game. Play with friends. Play with strangers.

But I can’t quite find a reason to log in. To log in and do… what?

I’m at a loss.

The truth is, I feel that I accomplished everything that I really wanted to during Wrath of the Lich King. I began the Burning Crusade with the regret that I didn’t pick the stupid box up a year earlier and had completely missed the chance to raid at level 60. I began Wrath of the Lich King with the determination to not just be a raider, but to be a serious progression raider who played with the best of the best and saw real achievement.

I did all that. I could do that again if I wanted to.

And I stuck it out when they announced Cataclysm’s release date. I became somewhat envious of players who had taken 6 month breaks mid-expansion only to return and catch me – surpass me – on the gear ladder. I intended to begin Cataclysm with a holiday. And to catch up as Tier 11 was winding down and Tier 12 was beginning.

The floods in January didn’t ruin that for me, but they did force me to quit for a short time and quit quite suddenly.

I blogged in January that we’d lost only the lowest floor – our study – and that we had been spared the worst. I’m still grateful that we can live comfortably, albeit cramped, in our home. But I also misguidedly thought that our insurance policy would finally pay out. I’m not in any financial position to rebuild with my own funds or even to take out a personal loan so I waited and waited and waited for an assessor then waited again for a decision from RACQ. Eventually they called me only to wriggle out of any obligation entirely citing that “rising river flooding” wasn’t part of the package. I have a nasty suspicion that rising river flooding coverage isn’t part of any RACQ package giving them free reign to decline all claims.

Please, I ask that you learn from my mistake: do not trust or pay RACQ to protect your assets.

So, unless I miraculously stumble across a spare ten thousand dollars I will be without a gaming den for many, many months.

That alone isn’t enough to stop me from picking up where I left off and becoming a raider again. But it’s yet another change. Another thing that separates me from the person I was this time last year so eager to conquer Icecrown Citadel twice over, heroics here I come. I’ve also celebrated a birthday, my 29th, and am attempting a pretty major career change. I’ve even cut my hair short.

I’m trying to complete some major achievements in my real life. And that doesn’t leave me with much mental energy to chase after achievements in my virtual life.

I’m not saying that one achievement is more important than another. In the long run who is to say what affects us the most deeply or for the longest time? I might be willing to debate that when I’m old and grey. But I do believe that when we lack the sense of achievement in our personal lives it’s only logical that we try and satisfy that drive with a virtual achievement in World of Warcraft.

You could say I ought to go “casual” but I’ve never really played World of Warcraft in any way than chasing achievements. And back before there was an official achievement system I had my own personal goals: kill this boss, understand the acronyms in that battleground, learn that tailoring recipe etc.

If I play Cataclysm at all, it will still be for the people – the friends and teamwork – and for the raiding.

Perhaps I need to draw myself into the lore of the Cataclysm raiding scene. I don’t know much about Blackwing Descent and Bastion of Twilight. I mean, I’m sure in the recesses of my brain I know a bit about the major baddies who are trying to take over the world. But nothing really springs to mind while I write this.

Perhaps I should draw my copy of Day of the Dragon off my virtual bookshelf. Or pick up a copy of The Shattering: A prelude to Cataclysm. I need a method to reconnect to the game. And I most assured do not feel very connected to my guild or fellow Alliance players on my server. You might think I’m mad to reconnect to a game by reading a book. Maybe I am and my plan won’t work at all.

I do finally understand why players re-roll new characters of the exact same class and spec as their main. I could see myself rejoining World of Warcraft as a level 1 Priest and a level 10 (that’s when you get to specialise, right?) Shadow Priest. I would be relearning the world in baby steps from the ground up. And still inside the very comfortable, if slightly unfamiliar, trappings of a Shadow Priest.

Both ideas sound silly. And if I’d suggested them to Cassandri on the 7th of April 2010 I know she would tell me to stop wasting my time! Then again, this would be the same Cassandri that spent approximately 156 nights in Icecrown Citadel without complaint.

I never said I was perfect

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!

Introducing Caitlin Elisabeth

So the Hots & Dots blog has been very quiet of late!  For those of you who have been following us over the last few months, you would most likely know that I have been getting more and more heavily pregnant and my playtime slowed down this year considerably. On top of this, Cass posted about a week ago that our home town of Brisbane, Australia had been declared a Natural Disaster Zone leaving me without power and Cass’s place flooded out.  In amongst the Christmas and New Year festivities and flooding mayhem my beautiful baby girl decided to make an early entrance into the world!

I believe I’m very lucky – the entire labor was relatively stress and trauma free (aside from being 8cm dilated by the time I got to the hospital – just a tad further along than I wanted to be!) and lasted about 6.5 hours in total.  My partner and I named our little girl Caitlin Elisabeth, and she was born on the 5th January 2011 at 11:11pm.  She weighed in at 3350 grams (7.2 pounds for those of you not using the metric system) and was 50cm long with a 34cm head circumference which is nice and healthy for a bubby born a teeny bit early.

So far motherhood has been a truly wonderful experience, she is a happy baby who sleeps and feeds beautifully and while bringing her home from hospital a day before our city flooded and going without power for 5 days was a challenge (think cold showers, nappy changes by torchlight, working out breastfeeding in the dark etc etc) it made both myself and my partner confident that if we could handle that, we could handle anything.  While parenting has been a life changing experience, it has been nowhere near as stressful, sleep depriving or exhausting as I had built it up to be and here’s hoping it continues that way!

Now that we’re back with power and she’s starting to get into a little bit more of a feeding/sleeping routine, I’m hoping to  be back online and in WoW shortly, albeit in a very casual fashion.  I have vaguely heard that resto druids got buffed (I guess I really should read up on that at some point) and I’m sure there are many other things to catch up on too.  Here’s hoping all your entertaining blog articles accumulating in my feed reader will have me back up to speed in no time!

A quick update on Cass: Cass will hopefully be back at her place and with power in about a fortnight – until then her internet access is limited so probably no posts from either of us for a while!

Caitlin Cradled in Daddy's Hands

The Brisbane River. Photo taken by Dave Hunt, AAP.

Since Christmas I’ve been watching the news coverage as the northern half of Queensland floods. Keeva over at Tree Bark Jacket struggled to get by as major towns and highways were cut off by flooding near her home. I’ve logged into WoW a few times since Christmas checked up with my guildies living up north: they seem to have avoided the worst of it.

Never did I think my own city and my own home would flood. Welcome to Brisbane, Australia.

Right up until Monday night my brother (handy to have a dam engineer in the family) assured me “No, Brisbane will be fine. Do you know how big Wivenhoe dam is?” (and yes, he’s that condecending in real life).

I’ve spent my entire adult life living in a drought, living within strict water restrictions, taking 3-4 minute showers and buying washing machines, dishwashers and shower heads based on their water efficiency. In September 2010 we took a day trip out to visit Wivenhoe dam to mark a joyous occasion: after hovering at extremely low levels (10-15%) for years the dam had finally reached ideal capacity (100%)  and opened its gates to let excess water run downstream.

100% capacity means that we have more than enough stores to run the city’s water works. But the dam can store almost double that amount of water. And that’s what it has been doing. But by Monday night, after months of rain, the dam was at 190% and the Brisbane River was already high. Unexpected flash flooding hit Toowoomba and other smaller towns only an hour or two away from Brisbane. Unfortunately most of the deaths caused by the floods occured that night. Parents died trying to save their young children.

I woke up the next day to phone calls and visits from concerned family and friends. I live not 100 meters from the Brisbane River in one of the suburbs that went under first in the last Brisbane flood (1974). My townhouse is built up over three levels, but like so many modern apartment blocks, they dug down into the ground to cave out that lowest level with room for a garage and study.

I started packing. The internet was the first to be switched off (it’s down in the basement study) and I packed up as much as I could and moved it up a level. At that time I expected only part of the lowest floor would go under.

Only a few hours later the news reports changed. Residents were warned to expect the flood to exceed the height of the 1974 flood. I started the much more difficult task of moving what I could from my main floor up to the bedrooms on the top floor. The lowest level inner city suburbs were already being evacuation. And I wanted to be out of there before they shut my power off.

I feel like I moved house in the space of half a day. Under the water (I was soaked from the rain) I’m sure I was soaked with sweat.

Right now I’m staying with relatives high up in the mountains on the outskirts of the city. I didn’t sleep very well that first night (the high tide was at 3am) so we drove out to see the damage first thing in the morning (not an easy thing when so many roads are covered over or closed off). 

Half of the lowest floor was already under water. With reports suggesting that the river would continue to rise 1 – 1.5 meters higher over the next two days I left convinced - resigned - to the fact that I would likely lose the second floor of my house: the bathroom, kitchen and living room.

But someone up there is looking kindly on me. I woke up this morning with the news that the flood had reached its peak and not risen as high as expected. With a mere 20 centimetres to spare my main floor is entirely untouched. That’s the depth of just 1 step on the staircase. Talk about a close call!

I can’t tell you how happy I am. This is probably the difference between covering the costs of repairing the flood damage with my insurance… and having to find tens of thousands of dollars to make my home livable again.

I wont be able to return home until it’s safe and the water has completely receeded – hopefully by the start of next week – and then I’ll be looking at a few weeks before my suburb is put back on the grid and the power comes back on. Gosh knows how long it will before I can have my electricity and network cables fixed – they were all wired into the floor that is flooded – so I doubt I’ll be back to blog or play WoW for a while yet.

Finally I just want to say that we’re lucky, as a city, that we had as much advance warning as we did. I felt that I salvaged as much as I could. Most people have been very helpful and, as far as I can tell, most people evacuated long before the police were called in. I hope we don’t see nasty behaviour such as looting (I know 3 people have been arrested, but hopefully that’s about it).

It’s estimated that 13 000 – 20 000 homes have been flooded in the city alone. Please open your hearts and your homes to those who have been displaced.

*Updates*

Most of the wreckage was moved out of our lowest level on Friday and Saturday the 15, 16th. Volunteers are everywhere … making me wish I hadn’t worked so hard to clean up myself (my friends and family had pretty much done most of the work by the time they arrived). One of my insanely organised neighbours is calling in favours left right and center: we had a generator (for power) and a high pressure water hose on Saturday which was amazing.

It’s a bit unknown whether or not I’m covered under my insurance policy but I’m not too worried because the government is forcing all insurance agencies to accept claims. I think they plan to step in and pick up some of the bill if they insurance companies refuse to.

My “untouched” main floor is covered in muddy foot prints and it’s driving me crazy. Yet I’ve discovered that I’m happier when I sit on my messy, empty, ground floor without power than when I’m staying with relatives and have access to hot water, cooked food and the internet. “Home” means so much. 

There’s something wrong with the power in my group of townhouses (the primary?) and also at the street level. No electrician can start to evaluate my place until Energex rebuild whatever is wrong on the street level – at the earliest 1 week away. Lathere (one suburb away, and high up) is still without electricity. The houses on the other side of the street to her have power!

There has been some mad, but inventive, brainstorming sessions on what could be done to really flood proof the townhouse: everything from one way drains to water tight walls and doors. The truth is we’ll probably just rebuild what was lost without many improvements simply because it’s cheaper. Which is boring and uninspired.

Oh, yeah, the only material that really comes through floods well is concrete and solid wood.

One of my favourite Mount Hyjal quests. I don't think I'll ever get tired of Just How Stupid Are Ogres quests.

I am one of those people who reads quest text from beginning to end before I hit the Accept button. I don’t know when I became one of those people. I know I didn’t start out like that.

I’ve also noticed a disturbing new habit that I’ve developed since the release of Cataclysm: I talk back to NPCs. (The quest givers seem so surprised when you are able to complete a quest it’s insulting!)

I wanted to savor the new parts to the story as I leveled from 80 to 85. And I also really like to run dungeons – almost as a mental brake from reading questing – which probably explains how I can be level 83 and only now just completing the first questing zone: Mount Hyjal.

My gear hasn’t changed. The mobs haven’t gained more health or learned how to hit back harder. The only thing that has changed as been that number: my “level”.

With each level up I drop about 1500 dps. Instead of picking up a couple of mobs and using Psychic Scream to hold them for a few seconds until death (don’t worry, it’s glyphed) I now need to throw out a steady stream of Mind Flays to finish off an enemy.

Vampiric Embrace isn’t enough to keep me healthy. I need to use Power Word: Shield, or ditch Shadowform momentarily to heal myself before I can go on. Even at level 82, before I was popping extra heals, I was starting to run short on mana: cycling Dispersion and Shadowfiend as soon as they came off cooldown.

At level 83 I picked up my wings. I always thought Archangel was designed to give us a much needed, on demand, burst ability. But right now I’m popping my wings as soon as they’re available – even if I’ve just left combat and my party is running to the next group of enemies – just to recoup some mana.

I have to eat and drink whenever I can find a safe spot to stop. I have to drink before a boss pull in a dungeon. I’ve been shying away from Mind Sear and Mind Spike simply because they cost so damn much to cast.

I ran out of mana killing the final boss in Stonecore the other day: barely scraping together 7000dps and unable to AoE the last packs of Devout Followers while I waited for Shadowfiend, Dispersion or Archangel to come off cooldown.

I know this is the game readjusting me to what I’ll be able to do at level 85: with each level you need a ton more stats to get the same output. But it’s certainly no fun becoming weaker with each level “up”. And it’s particularly biting that the new UI tells you “You have become more powerful” when, in fact, the opposite is true. And it’s only going to get worse.

There’s something absolutely un-fun about it.

But it’s not all bad news. Around the time that most of my guildmates (and perhaps the battlegroup?) were reaching level 85 I was still queuing for Blackrock Chasm. I healed a few runs early on. The queues for DPS were 40-50 minutes long. And there were quite a few occasions when I would get through that 40 minute queue only to be dropped into a near complete dungeon: when other DPS had dropped out post-wipe. I’ve come into Vortex Pinnacle to wipes right before the final triangular-lightning-grounding-totem mobs and wipes in Stonecore before the last boss.

5 minutes of XP gains for a 50 minute queue? No thank you.

In an act of desperation I logged onto my Mage to see what the Random Wrath Dungeon queues were like for Damage Dealers. I thought they’d be horrible. Surely everyone would be too busy leveling their mains in the new Cataclysm zones and dungeons to muck around with alts and Wrath of the Lich King content?

Well, I’m happy to say that I was wrong! Hello 10 minute queues. I ran dungeons back to back and went from 78 to 80 in record breaking speed (well for me anyway).

The funny thing is, at level 79, I went to the Auction House and bought up a set of uncommon Cataclysm cloth armor. For a couple hundred gold I think I tripled my stats and damage output.

Now that was a level up that didn’t lie: You have become more powerful. Yes, indeed.

Cataclysm Quests

For all this complaining, I am liking the quests in Cataclysm. But I don’t like how linear the quest progression path is becoming: it seems very anti-MMO to me.

When I started playing World of Warcraft just finding the good quests was part of the fun/difficulty/intrigue. I liked that you could run into the backwoods of Eastern Plaguelands and find some farmer standing there with a pitchfork and a shiny exclamation mark above his head.

Perhaps it’s because they’ve used more phasing, I don’t know, but there seems to be a set order in which you can complete quests in Mount Hyjal. And it seems the most glaring when you make a mistake and – god forbid – don’t realise that you’re carrying around a core pup that you need to “activate” (I mean, really, how is it possible to carry a giant dog in your bag and not know about it) it and feed it the meat also in your backpack – and suddenly your Twilight Hammer Trainer won’t talk to you anymore. I was left foundering for several seconds trying to work out why, after handing in a quest, my Trainer didn’t want to give me a new chore and, in fact, none of the NPCs in the area had anything to give me.

Of course by then I was jolted out of the story long enough to discover that I had done the hard part of a silly, mostly unrelated quest, but not technically satisfied the criteria and hadnt actually handed it in at all. Apparently not feeding meat to a corehound is enough to halt the recapture of Mount Hyjal.

When I first read Save the Wee Animals I immediately turned to my roommate, lover of Hello Kitty and all things cute, and said “you have to do this quest in Mount Hyjal”.  She was part way through her first quest zone, Vashj’ir, and asked me:

Can I just come and do that one quest? Or do I have to do other stuff first?

Honestly, I didn’t have an answer. Even though this quest has so little relevance to the overall story of reclaiming Mount Hyjal from Twilight’s Hammer and Ragnaros and Deathwing something tells me you can’t just fly in and pick up where to start.

Most Memorable Quests

Look! I'm right in the cinematic!

The entry into Mount Hyjal is breathtaking: you start with a quest that flies you over the entire zone to survey the damage. I snapped up a beautiful screenshot of Ragnaros and Deathwing chasing after me as we flew away from Sulfuron Spire.

I felt like I had been dropped straight into the cinematic!

There are so many run of the mill quests in Mount Hyjal that I just loved for the tiniest little reason. Sometimes it was just a quest name that made me smile (Fighting Fire with… Anything, In the Rear With the Gear) or when the quest givers disagreed with each other (Ysera’s response once you’ve spent a fair bit of time hiding a Night Elf gone bad by taking him into The Emerald Dream “Alysra’s decision might not have been the wisest, Cassandri“).

I also loved Salome’s greeting when you first meet her to hand in Fact-Finding Mission:

What, Omnuron calls this a ‘fact-finding mission?’ Bah! Facts are best found on corpses. Let’s do some damage.

Salome understands us gamers, that’s for sure! Unfortunately I found the Sethria’s Roost quests near impossible to complete. There were about 10 Horde and I squished into a little 30×30 yard area waiting for mobs and armor scraps to spawn.

As usual, I love any quest in which I get to go out into the field and save fallen heroes (or Trapped Mammoth Calf as the case was in Borean Tundra). And, as usual, it was a little bit painful to then head right back out to pick up arrows and simply step over any near-death Wardens that happened to get in your way (nobody is that heartless!).

Absolutely the worst quests by far were the ridiculous flying+jousting quests in the second Flamegate. I suck at anything that requires that much three dimensional coordination. Spamming a button to simulate beating your wings might be an accurate interpretation of what it’s like to fly as a bird but it really just felt like I was trying to space jump with too much gravity pulling me down.

Seriously, whoever came up with that quest chain sucks. Might have sounded good in theory but it’s really not fun at all. No wonder they give you a pet and an achievement to compensate you for your troubles at the end.

I was quite surprised when you were asked to make a moral choice in A Bird in Hand: to kill the misguided leader of the harpies or let her go free. The cynical part of me was convinced that, whatever I chose to do, the game response to either choice would be identical. I still dithered over my choice for a good few seconds anyway. I’ll let you guess what my decision was

I thought A Prayer and a Wing was one of the most ridiculous quests I’ve ever been asked to complete: let’s try and bring our All Things Flying Goddess back to life and then get her to fight for our cause. And the best way to do that is to summon and kill the guy she’s been with for the last 10 000 years! (Of course it’s all okay because he’s gone “mad”).

A few quests tripped me up.

The most embarrassing one was failing – and dying in the middle of a no danger zone – the Twilight Hammer IQ test. I never noticed that my action keys had been replaced so I could use 1 for a “yes” response and 2 for a “no” response. Instead I fumbled around for a bit and typed out “/say yes?”. I died pretty quickly. The punishment for not hitting the right 1 or 2 key is pretty severe.

When I came back for a repeat I was really getting into the swing of it. My question set went something like this:

1. Is fire hot?
2. Do rocks float in water?
3. Is fire hot?
4. Do dogs bark?
5. Is fire hot?
6. Do liars speak the truth?
7. Is fire hot?
8. Is fire hot?

… and by this point I was seriously hoping that they were trying to recondition my brain to think that fire was, in fact, not hot and give me a follow up quest to /hug the fire elemental that I had run away from in my earlier training sessions.

Alas the correct answer to the question “Is fire hot?” remained “yes”.

I also fumbled my way through my Graduation Speech and to this day I have no idea how you’re meant to know what to say. I think I leaned heavily on “Incite”. I did love how Cassandri(damus) was able to spout absolute nonsense for a good 5 minutes and nobody seemed to notice. I also really loved the tooltip on “Pander”:

These people are insane. You need to play along with it.

The blissful moment right before I charged in...

I failed spectacularly in the epic fight (Cassandri, Cenarius, Malfurion the Good Brother and that Shaman guy) against Ragnaros. You see, I stood side by side with Cenarius as Ragnaros started mouthing off and Cenarius never told me he was tanking. Yep, a second later and Ragnoros becomes attackable and I’ve proximity pulled him.

Ragnaros lifts his mace thingy. Cassandri has died.

I never even saw it coming.

Since it looked like the quest was going to fail only after a good long while I abandoned it, recovered my body, flew back to pick it up again, and then reentered the gate into the Sulfuron Spire. Except when I re-entered Cenarius and Rag were going at it and Cenarius was already on half health. I stepped up, hoping that I could get the quest completed anyway.

I dodged the lava waves, I killed the adds attacking my teammates when the UI warnings came up and told me to do so. I hesitantly dropped Shadowform and threw some Greater Heals on Cenarius when the warning came up to heal Cenarius (what, they’re customising quests so hybrids have to heal now?). Anyway, between the DPSing and healing and form switching and lava dodging it wasn’t long before I was out of mana and out of options. I was a bit peeved, a bit confused and very surprised when I successfully completed the quest anyway.

I’m still not sure if I was meant to heal Cenarius or not. Can’t the game detect that I’m a Shadow Priest?

__________

ps. Perhaps juggling your mana is fun for healers. But it really isn’t fun as a Damage Dealer. It really isn’t. Using spells as though they are Shadow Priest mana pots instead of potential damage boosts sucks. That is also not fun.

Afraid to leave Nordrassil?

It appears everyone around me has been mad keen for the Cataclysm release. Guildies are trying to level to 85 as quickly as possible, workmates took time off for the launch, my other half was determined to get realm first herbalist (which he did by the way) and my brother is aiming to make as much cash as he possibly could off the auction house.

And then there is Cass and I. Cass didn’t even bother to get a copy of Cataclysm on launch day and I only got it because my other half picked it up and installed it for me on his lunch break.

When Wrath of the Lich King was launched we did things very differently. We lined up at the midnight launch at EB Games, installed the game and started questing that very night. We took time off work, had our talent trees worked out; gear sorted and a loose plan of how we were handling the leveling process. When we woke up after a couple of hours sleep the next morning we were already past the main leveling pack (after a dangerous trek north of Howling Fjord, cutting across Grizzly Hills and into Dragonblight) and a group of us were both questing and dungeon-ing the entire way to 80.

Even if I had planned things in a similar fashion for Cataclysm I think I would have been thwarted for a number of reasons. First off, this expansion was released at 6pm AEST right when workers were coming home and peak playtime for Oceanic servers. Secondly, the expansion came out a little later in the calendar year meaning the teenagers were running amok – damn those school holidays – with literally nothing better to do than fill up the servers and cause havoc.

When WoTLK was released if you weren’t at work you could easily get on with perhaps a 2 minute wait time during the day. The real queues started approximately 3:30pm when the school kids were arriving home. Cataclysm is released and when I get home at 6:30pm, I’m in for a good 2 hour wait for server access. Apparently the queues are no better during the day this time round with at least a queue of 2000 waiting to get in.

Since I know that I won’t be able to raid, at least until I’ve settled into a routine with bub, I was very keen to level at my own pace and relax. I have been in a questing mood and was looking forward to doing all the quests in the new areas, actually taking the time to read the quest information and seeing exactly Blizzard had designed for us. This didn’t really go to plan when I quickly realised after arriving at Mt Hyjal that for every 1 Alliance player questing, there were 100 Horde. Quests that took me 5 minutes on the Beta… I couldn’t even find a spawned mob for to kill! I gave up and walked away to make some dinner hoping it would quiet down after an hour break.

I came back and while still busy I could go through the quests with less hassles. I did occasional get ganked for absolutely no reason other than I happened to be on my own: a poor lonely Alliance player in the middle of a Horde playground. The biggest problem being: if one Horde decided to go you, another 10 within the vicinity would decide to lend a helping hand as well. 277 gear and healing spec still just doesn’t cut it against that many opposing players.

All in all things was going well until it was time for me to go Into the Maw. There were no more than 10 alliance players in here and the second last quest objective, Cindermaul, was being camped out by at least 200 Horde players. I tried being patient. The Alliance tried sticking together but it was all for naught. At a 2 minute res timer I gave up and hearthed to Nordrassil ready to call it quits for the night. I was only about 60% into level 80 and my mood was not improved when I turned around and found out that my other half was only just trailing behind me in XP from doing Archaeology and hadn’t experienced a single run in with my mortal enemy: the Horde teenager.

Things got better at Nordrassil where I picked up a quest that took me straight to the final leveling hub for the Hyjal area. While there were still quite a few players around, I had made it past the main leveling pack and did this zone without any problems at all. I even ended the night on a high note by getting a neat little vanity pet from the flying jousting quests. I will happily admit I really sucked at flying and jousting all in one!

I’ve decided based on my experiences that doing leveling the casual way is just like raiding the casual way – horribly inefficient and for the main part much more frustrating. I’m starting to think that if raiding is going to be out of the question for me in this expansion, that a move to a PVE server is looking more and more likely. Or alternatively I might just give in and go Horde and join the teenage crowd. You all know the saying, if you can’t beat em, join em!

3 DoTs. Couldn't be easier, right?

Dusknoir, who has been playing his Shadow Priest to level 85, has given me lots of food for thought in his latest post. Frankly, since the game was patched with our Cataclysm talent trees and mastery I’ve been trying to play my Shadow Priest at level 80 the way that I’ve played her during Wrath of the Lich King.

Well it’s time to come to grips with the Cataclysm Shadow Priest play style. And we have nearly all the tools and time at our disposal to perfect our spell casting while we level up.

In Part 2 I’m going to help you (and me) come to grips with our Mastery: Shadow Orbs and Mind Blast. In this post I’m going to try and break you of six years of conditioning and teach you to recast your damage over time spells early.

If, like me, you’re a NW (Non Warlock) I strongly suggest that you head over to Cynwise’s blog and read his post about Warlock DoTs in Cataclysm. There are lots of diagrams, I promise. I’m going to just look at how the new Damage over Time approach applies to our Shadow Priest spells: Vampiric Touch, Shadow Word: Pain and Devouring Plague.

I’m going to try and give you diagrams too.

Breaking the Habit

Prior to the release of Cataclysm Shadow Priests strived for 100% DoT uptime. That hasn’t changed. We want our DoTs to be up on the target all the time, reapplying our DoT the moment it runs out.

Old model: Reapply too early and you will overwrite and “clip” your previous application of the DoT, wasting a damage tick and wasting your casting time (when you could have been casting something else) and wasting your mana. Inevitably there would be tiny gaps of time in between applications. Frankly, I was usually pretty happy to get to about a 95% DoT uptime.

New model: Blizzard have been kind to DoT casters and Shadow Priests. Now, in the same manner that you can queue up your next spell while still casting your current spell, you can queue up your next application of a DoT.

If, for example, your Devouring Plague spell has just 1 more tick of damage to dole out before expiring, a new application of Devouring Plague will allow the first application and its last tick to play through before starting in on the new duration. It won’t clip your last tick.

Recasting a little bit early will give you 100% DoT Uptime

Theoretically this allows for 100% DoT uptime. And, as aspiring master Shadow Priests, we should work very, very hard to play just that precisely.

Aim: Cast after the 2nd last tick but before the last tick and before your DoT expires.

Recast too early – before the 2nd last tick – and you will clip off the end of your first DoT application. Recast too late – after the last tick – and you will delay the first tick of your second application and lose DPS.

So the next question you should probably ask is, if the last tick occurs right as my DoT expires with 0 seconds remaining, when does my 2nd last tick occur? How do I know when I have entered the ideal recast window of opportunity?

Ticks, Haste and the Countdown

If you love ForteXorcist as much as I do, you can easily configure your Spell Timer to display the tick intervals on your DoTs. In fact, the diagram above was retooled from a screen capture taken with ForteXorcist monitoring my Devouring Plague applications.

At level 85 Haste will not effect the duration of our DoT spells. They will remain constant regardless of the amount of Haste Rating you equip on your gear. Instead Haste Rating will increase the number of times damage is dealt during your DoT, and, in the case of Vampiric Touch, Haste Rating should decrease the time it takes to cast the spell.

Devouring Plague ticks at different Haste amounts

If we take the example above, let’s look at it again with 5% Haste (any high level Shadow Priest in Shadowform would benefit from their own Mind Quickening buff), and with a significant amount of Haste Rating from gear (in my Tier 10 gear set).

You can see that with more Haste the recast window of time shrinks as damage is inflicted more frequently in the same period (24 seconds for Devouring Plague). This is the challenge of the well geared Shadow Priest: adapting and becoming more precise.

Devouring Plague

In the example above Devouring Plague deals damage 9 times over the course of 24 seconds. There is a 3 second gap between each tick (8 intervals between 9 ticks). In the Hasted example above Devouring Plague deals damage 12 times over the course of 24 seconds. There is a 2.18 second gap between each tick (11 intervals between 12 ticks).

When to recast Devouring Plague

I use ForteXorcist’s countdown timer on my Spell Timer bars. This means that I can see the time (in seconds and tenths of a second) still remaining on my Devouring Plague. So the number to keep in my mind when wearing my current gear is 2.1 seconds. If I see my Devouring Plague with less than 2 seconds remaining I should recast Devouring Plague on that target.

What makes Devouring Plague unusual is the restriction that dictates only one target can be afflicted by your Devouring Plague disease at a time.

If you cast Devouring Plague on one target, and then only a few seconds later cast Devouring Plague on a second target the first DoT immediately drops off. That said, I think it wise to only recast Devouring Plague early (just before that last tick) if you intend to remain on the same target. If you wish to dot up a different target with Devouring Plague I think it best to let your current Devouring Plague run its full duration and expire entirely before you recast.

Shadow Word: Pain

Shadow Word: Pain lasts 18 seconds. With no additional Haste from gear it deals damage 6 times over the course of 18 seconds. There is a 3.6 second gap between each tick (5 intervals between 6 ticks). With 39% Haste Shadow Word: Pain deals damage 9 times over the course of 18 seconds. There is a 2.25 second gap between each tick (8 intervals between 9 ticks).

Unlike Devouring Plague we don’t (or shouldn’t) need to recast Shadow Word: Pain to keep it active on our target. Instead we cast Mind Flay on our Shadow Word: Pain afflicted enemies to reset Shadow Word: Pain.

Talented we have only a 60% chance to refresh Shadow Word: Pain with 1 Mind Flay. If you’re DPSing on just one target this is fine: you’ll Mind Flay your target many, many times within 18 seconds. If you’re focusing on another target and only swapping back to a mob in order to refresh SW:P that 60% chance makes things much harder to predict. I know that in the last few weeks I’ve had many a SW:P DoT expire because Pain and Suffering hasn’t worked.

I think a more sensible approach would be to anticipate that you will need to cast two Mind Flays in succession to guarantee (or near abouts) a refresh of Shadow Word: Pain.

When to refresh Shadow Word: Pain with Mind Flay

Theoretically it is possible to start up two Mind Flays inside that optimum window before the second last tick. Honestly, I don’t think this is going to work well in the actual game – especially once you take lag into consideration! Clipping a tick or two of Shadow Word: Pain isn’t a huge DPS loss or waste of resources: after all, casting Mind Flay is a nice chunk of our damage on its own.

I think I will be target switching back to my Shadow Word: Pain targets once SW:P has about 4 seconds remaining and lining up two Mind Flays in quick succession. Only once I’m sure that Shadow Word: Pain has been refreshed will I switch back off.

Vampiric Touch

Vampiric Touch is our only DoT that has a cast time to reapply. We need to take that into consideration and start casting just that bit earlier again. Naked with 5% Haste, Vampiric Touch deals damage 5 times over the course of 15 seconds. There is a 3.75 second gap between each tick (4 intervals between 5 ticks). In the 39% Haste example above VT deals damage 7 times over the course of 15 seconds. There is a 2.5 second gap between each tick (6 intervals between 7 ticks).

When to recast Vampiric Touch

If we factor in the time it takes to cast Vampiric Touch (1.39 seconds at 5% Haste, 1.04 seconds at 39% Haste) the point at which we can recast Vampiric Touch is actually quite early. With 3.5 seconds still remaining on my first Vampiric Touch in my current gear I can start casting the second one safely.

A Discovery: The start of your DoT is padded

ForteXorcist tends to morph the positioning of ticks on its Spell Timer bar in the second or two after you apply a DoT. I assume that it calculates the positioning of each tick given your current amount of Haste immediately after you cast.

This led me to question how accurate the display was. I assumed that a DoT would tick immediately on application and then always tick as it expires. With this assumption my Spell Timer bar mislead me and I often counted 1 additional tick that, according to Recount, didn’t exist.

I went back to basics. I applied one DoT, just one spell, and actually counted the number of times WoW popped up a damage number. I soon realised that most DoTs, in fact, do not tick immediately after application. But they do always tick just as they expire. I believe this is the new way that Blizzard have approached their Haste calculations.

For example, at 5% Haste you get 5 ticks out of Vampiric Touch. Now imagine that at 6% Haste you tip over into the next bracket in which you get 1 more tick in the same duration.

Being just under a Haste tipping point (eg 5%) sucks

In the first example there’s a good second or two of wasted time before your spell even starts to do damage.

This leads me to believe that however Blizzard have spaced out ticks across the static time duration of a DoT, they’re doing some rounding to keep the intervals to say, half second possibilities instead of tenths or hundredths of a second. Perhaps it’s possible to have DoTs tick at:

5 seconds, 5.5 seconds, 6 seconds, 6.5 seconds = interval of half a second

but not possible to have them tick at:

5 seconds, 5.95 seconds, 6.9 seconds, 7.85 seconds = interval of .95 seconds

The Haste Sweet Spots

In this article I’ve compared Haste at 5% vs Haste at 39%. Is it likely that Shadow Priests will be raiding with a 39% Haste at level 85? Eventually, yes, I think so. I haven’t done any investigating of gear for max level Cataclysm Shadow Priests just yet but with each new maximum level cap the amount of Haste Rating needed to provide 1% of Haste increases quite a bit. This means that once I reach level 85 I might need double the Haste Rating that I have now to get even close to 39% Haste.

It looks like early calculations are saying that 128 Haste Rating at level 85 is an increase of 1% of Haste.

Extra Haste Rating might not result in a steady, gradual improvement to your DPS. If you knew that equipping just 1 more point of Haste Rating would give your DoTs and additional tick (instead of a bunch of padding/wasted time) – you would do it whatever it took to get that 1 point. Reforge, re-gem, whatever!

However I think it’s safe to say that each of our three DoTs (Shadow Word: Pain, Vampiric Touch and Devouring Plague) are likely to gain extra ticks at different Haste points. After all, each has a different duration.

Amounts of Haste that will give you an extra tick of damage

This means that even if one of your DoTs isn’t quite getting that extra free tick at your current Haste Rating, perhaps one of your other DoTs is. And the steps between Haste “sweet spots” probably isn’t as big as you’d expect.

The three DoTs gain additional ticks as you increase Haste

And if you’d still like to know precisely when Haste will give you an extra DoT tick here are the tables from Nysem posted on Elitist Jerks:

TLDR?

Worry about Haste, but don’t worry too much about it! Every point is likely to help one of your three DoTs… and if nothing else, your Mind Flays will be faster.

Lil Ragnaros, Singing Sunflower, Moonkin Hatchling and Mr Grubb

I had pretty much decided to completely close the doors on WoW. I hadn’t logged in for over a month, strange pregnancy hormones have me thinking about babies and nurseries  pretty much every waking second of my day and I had no idea how far off the Cataclysm launch was let alone bothering to pre order a copy.

Yesterday this changed.

My new cubicle neighbor at work is a WoW player. I know this because I overheard him begging to have time off work for the Cataclysm launch (his boss has just started playing the game as well so he clearly felt quite comfortable telling her his reasons for wanting time off).  After chatting to him for a bit about his WoW history and healing priest, I was inspired to have a look at my reader and see if anything exciting had happened in Azeroth over the last 5 weeks.

And that’s when it happened. I discovered the Moonkin Hatchling had been released in the Blizzard store. 

I wanted it… I wanted it bad. The thing is, I couldn’t very well justify purchasing a pet (even if half the money was going to a great cause) if I had no intention of opening up WoW ever again.

I then discovered that there were other vanity pets now available through quests: the Singing Sunflower looked particularly cool and Mr Grubbs… well let’s just say I’ve always had a fondness for mini ugly things, to me they are nothing short of adorable.

I had to log in… the lure of the vanity pet was just too strong.

Sadly I didn’t get my Sunflower last night. Between being constantly ganked by idiot horde teenagers who have most likely just finished school and clearly had way too much time on their hands, and a server shutdown I didn’t quite finish the final phase which rewards the pet.  I’m sure tonight this can be remedied and I’ll move onto Mr Grubbs.

On the personal front for those who have been asking and are interested.

Pregnancy. I really don’t particularly like it and can’t say I’m someone who has “blossomed” while with child. In fact I would say that I pretty much feel like a beached whale or perhaps a hippopotamus depending on if I’m waddling around or lying down.

I am also unfortunately one of 8% of pregnant women who have gestational diabetes for their final trimester. This is incredibly annoying seeing I’ve never craved chocolate or fruit juice so much in my life. Thankfully I ate fairly well to begin with and have been able to manage things without really changing my diet at all (sans the fruit juice and chocolate obviously). I am also anemic, another fairly common third trimester symptom simply rectified with a daily iron supplement. This all means that I’ve been moved into a “high risk” category of pregnancy and now see both my normal obstetrician and an endocrinologist fortnightly on alternating weeks.

Because I’m managing it well I get to deal with all the unpleasant parts like the fortnightly blood tests, the 4 times a day finger pricking but I sadly don’t get to have a 3^rd trimester ultrasound to see my little girl again. Talk about unfair!

I’ve also discovered that somewhere around week 28, some hormone must have been released that now makes me find pastel pink adorable and cry at everything from TV commercials as well as episodes of Glee and The Zoo.

In any case, sometime within the next 5 – 6 weeks (dependent on if I’m induced because of the diabetes) my little girl will arrive and I’m sure it will all be worth it!