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. Read More »
Why won't you /bow down before me?!
In the fallout of the 25 or 10 man raiding arguments flying around the World of Warcraft blogging community I find myself thinking about prestige. The prestige of being part of a successful 25 man guild. And if, indeed, there is any prestige to be found in raiding at all. Is it something we make up in our own minds?
I don’t think anybody out and out said “25 man raiding guilds are more prestigious” but I think that’s the underline belief. That successful 25 man raiding guilds command respect, that their successes are recognised and acknowledged by others on the realm/battlegroup/world and that they have greater influence. The reverse implies that 10 man guilds and their successes go unrecognised.
If you believe all that is true, how do you, as an individual character wandering the streets of Dalaran, advertise that you are a member of this prestigious 25 man raiding club? Visible e-peen meters aside, there are lots of tells:
- the clothes we wear
- by our title
- by our guild tag
- by our achievements
Perhaps I just have my head in the clouds, but I find it very, very difficult to spot the elite 25 man raiders from the crowd. But I’ll bet most people feel much the same as I do: these days everyone is, well, kind of the same. Read More »
Blackrock Depths Prison satchel time!
When the Dungeon Finder was released Blackrock Depths was one of those ridiculously long Classic dungeons that became split up into more manageable pieces. Unfortunately, someone decided that the best way to chunk down an instance that spans 12 character levels (48 – 60) and includes 20 bosses was to split the zone into two parts: Prison, covering 1 boss, and Upper City, presumably covering the other 19 bosses.
Makes no sense to me either. But we’ll work with what we’re given.
After struggling through Sunken Temple it was something of a relief to be dropped into Blackrock Depths to complete a super quick run and receiving a satchel 5 minutes later. Then I, and my groups, became dissatisfied. These one boss BRD Prison runs were just too short. I started dragging my groups off to kill some of the bosses wandering the corridors nearby.
This guide will actually cover the starting area of Blackrock Depths and should give you a nice, quick, four boss run with minimal trash kills. We’re going to clear the Halls of Law, Ring of Law and then finally head south and kill High Interrogator Gerstahn for a satchel.
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Changing Raid Sizes, from Classic through to Wrath of the Lich King... and into Cataclysm
A few days ago we got to look into the crystal ball and see the future of raiding in World of Warcraft. Developers released this announcement which outlines how they intend raids and progression to work in Cataclysm. Most of the changes left me feeling pensive about Cataclysm – I can’t help but feel that all the things I love about raiding are slipping further out of my grasp.
I was happy to hear that they intend to release a lot of raid content out of the box and include more than one, mid-size, raid instance in the first raiding tier. Finally! Perhaps this time they might get the raid length/time commitment right.
I loved running Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep in the same lockout week. Naxxaramas with a quick jaunt off to kill Sartharion in Obsidian Sanctum always felt more like a diversion and hassle than a proper change of scenery. And Naxxramas just went on forever. Especially in a PuG group.
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Sunken Temple is a maze. From the moment you zone in you must choose between 4 doors.
Sunken Temple is evil. I’m convinced the designers enjoyed creating a maze that sends you off in spiraling staircases every which way. Only Sunken Temple would present you with a dilemma the moment you zone it – 4 doorways: which do you take?
Unfortunately there’s no wrong answer. They all tend to branch into multiple levels so you can usually get to where you want to go (eventually) by taking pretty much any door. Oh, did I mention that, like Gnomeregan and the Oculus, this is a vertical maze?
Oh goody.
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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. Read More »
posted by
Lathere on the 19th April 2010
Ancient of War in Zangamarsh: The new Tree of Life?
OK it creeps me out a teeny bit when I write a post about how I personally envision things changing… and then I read a short paragraph from Blizzard that sounds eerily familiar. Read More »
No respect.
I once wrote that I would be really disappointed if, after infiltrating Icecrown Citadel, my first view of Arthas would be him sitting alone on the Frozen Throne. I wanted him to be surrounded by thousands of ghouls or something like the most annoying Death Knight you’ve ever seen.
Yet that’s exactly what we got once we reached the Frozen Throne. To ruin the moment even more, our 10 man wasn’t exactly… serious and dedicated at that moment in time.
I distinctly remember taking the newly-created portal up to the Frozen Throne from the Upper Spire while our 10 man group was trying to hold the run together. Someone was AFK. Someone else was back in Dalaran. One of the tanks wasn’t responding over Vent. It was really late at night. Read More »
posted by
Lathere on the 15th April 2010
How about this for the new Tree of Life artwork?
So I’ve calmed down a little bit since first reading that Blizzard intends to remove Tree of Life as a Druid shapeshift form. But a glimmer of hope still remains – there’s a small chance that the new version of Tree of Life might be even cooler than being a tree 100% of the time (ok, a very, very small hope glimmer).
Maybe Blizzard will manage to implement it in a totally cool and wonderful way that will make turning into a tree even more special than it is now. Perhaps there are ways to lose permanent Tree of Life form without totally sacrificing our identity as Restoration Druids.
I’m not the only one thinking about it either. As I was thinking about this topic Keeva, Beru and a veritable forest of trees have been writing on the same topic. Read More »
Welcome to the future!
I read the Priest Class Changes for Cataclysm (MMO Champion link for when the Blizzard one breaks) right after they were released. I was standing at a target dummy in Stormwind messing with my UI and it was a quiet afternoon when a guildie asked me if I had read the post. I read it. I thought: oh well that’s not great, not too bad either. And went back to making my ForteXorcist Spell Timer match the exact width of Quartz.
I counted myself lucky when, a day later, Lathere totally freaked out that Tree form might be taken away from her. At least they weren’t removing Shadowform or something!
During last night’s server maintenance I started reading what all the blogging Priests, mostly healers, thought of our class changes. I never intended to post on the two or three Shadow Priest changes mentioned. I hate doing news pieces for the blog – I always feel like I’m under some tight deadline to get things out while its is still relevant. But after I left my 2nd lengthy comment I discovered that I actually had quite a lot to say.
And I felt that someone ought to comment on the Shadow Priest changes. And since there are only a couple of Shadow Priest blogs out there… here goes. Read More »
