Adventures of a Dwarf Priest

I haven’t got to log on last week at all, just for a little bit on Thursday while I was waiting for the fedex guy who was delivering my new computer and some on Saturday night.

Speaking of my new computer, it is awesome!  So far it has been pretty easy going with it.  I got it all setup and running SC2 the first day, which looks fantastic turned up full blast   I’ve installed a few other games, STO and Dawn of Discovery.  I got WoW installed but didn’t really get to tackle getting it configured until the weekend.  Then I ended up working again which disrupted that.  In the end I decided to tune my UI a little so I spent a lot of time fiddling with addons.  It isn’t quite done yet but I’ve got a usable UI.

Got in a 25man raid with Inien on Saturday.  I had kind of an annoying headache from working that day but I was bound and determined to do something fun.  Inien keeps trying to resolve his graphics problems in raids.  His card which is just as fast as mine should be rocking WoW but there is some sort of odd bug keeping it from doing it.  We wondered if I was going to have the same problem.  He has the ATI 5870 and I ended up going with the Nvidia 480.  To my relief with WoW settings maxed on ultra the card kept my framerate at a constant 60fps except in the largest of AOE spam where it dropped to about 45.

It looks fantastic fully turned up as well.  I should be ready for any Cataclysm improvements now as well.  With vsync turned on it only pushing the card about 40%.  I initially had ideas of over clocking everything but it is all so fast I’m not sure I am going to even bother at this point   Completed the remaining part of my plan yesterday getting a DVI KVM (which cost way too much) and a wireless adapter for the PC as the internet sharing thing I was doing with the Mac was causing some funky things.  Now I just got to get my keyboard squared away so I can take screenshots

Anyways hoping to have some adventures this week.  Need to try and get the weekly done today and some VOA’s if possible.  Hoping to pick up my 4 piece bonus by the end of the week!

Still waiting on my cataclysm invite, none yet though at least we have had lots of great info coming out lately. The new 31pt talents have been interesting but still need a lot of work. Very interested in seeing how the smite mechanics they added in disc work out. I even got one of my questions answered about it in yesterdays dev chat!

Q. I’m excited about the Smite mechanic in Disc. Are you going to do anything about hit so that mechanic can be effective?
A. We had a talent to give you a bunch of spell hit in a beta build, but spell hit on your offensive spells is a hard sell in the new talent model. But yes, we want to do something about spell hit for the Discipline Archangel specialization, possibly move up Twisting Faith to a tier that Discipline can obtain it in Shadow (so your spirit would convert to hit as Discipline/Shadow sub-specialization).

I’ve still mostly been working only goblin factions lately and farming gold. Also picking up stuff here and there for my future worgen warrior. Decided on a new name for him, Cosain which in Irish means to protect. Also trying to pickup frost badges when I can each day to grab my 4piece bonus and get to the stupid 5500gs so I can try the new ruby sanctum.

I’ve been super busy but still finding time for WoW, but have been neglecting my site recently   If you follow my twitter feed though I have been posting there!  I’ll try to do better!  I’m trying to do too many things right now I think

Anyways some pretty exciting news yesterday about the redesign of the talent system.  They have this whole new system worked out and ready to appear in the next beta push! (Which I’m still not in btw )  I think they hit the nail on the head with this new specialization concept.  Especially the part about making the class FEEL like the spec they choose very early on by presenting them a tree defining ability at level 10.

I was telling Inien again last night that I am glad I have continued to wait to start learning anything about Warriors (my new worgen) with this much stuff in flux.  There is so much changing, from the gear, to the stats, to the talents that its going to be a new game.  Not to mention the world!  Speaking of which I’ve watched a lot of videos of the new world and Blizzard has done an amazing job on the new and old zones.  This expansion has got to be the most epic expansion ever created.

I’m very excited to see what they do with Disc after cleaning it up.  I hope Power Word: Barrier is still there because I still believed that would be a fun spell!  I was also saw mention of Penance being the Disc defining ability given to level 10s, which means we may get something new at the top of our tree which should be interesting.  I just hope they stick with the overall theme of Disc, speed and absorption.

Just a quick update on what I’ve been up to lately.  I’ve mostly been working on my gold supplies and farming rep for my non-exalted factions.  I’ve also tried to keep a slow and steady income of frost badges coming.  I’ve managed to get my two piece bonus on T10 and pickup a few other odds and ends.  I am working towards getting the 4 piece bonus then I’ll likely go for one of the trinkets or the tailoring patterns depending on how things are at that point.

I managed to get the new pet they put on Ahune before he went away, and also bought the two plush pets baby Gryphon and Wyvern.  I know it is a sickness   Every once in a while Inien goes with me to beat up the folks in ZG to try and get the last Raptor I don’t have.  I also do a lot of fishing in the sewers still for my rat.  I still have a few pets I need to get other places, like the phoenix in MGT.  I’m currently running with 124 pets now, woot!

This week has been crazy for me!  I’ve been going into work early(even for me!) doing some upgrades to prepare for a big upgrade next week.  So even though I was stressed and could really use some WoW time I was too tired usually to play   I got on tonight though and played a little, talked to Inien on skype.

I did my random first thing, Inien had just finished so I went alone and ended up in someones already started UP.  It is interesting how you get dropped right on the group now, I don’t know when they changed that but it is convenient.  I’m going to guess the other healer left because they couldn’t deal with healing the tank.  At first glance I couldn’t tell who was the tank by HP because we all had about the same amount.    It turned out a really poorly geared Feral DPS Druid was tanking in a Cat spec, and Cat gear

This of course made things interesting to heal but I didn’t have a problem keeping him alive, I am after all awesome   The Shaman in the group was asking me if it was hard to heal him, and I just said it was “interesting”.   The Shaman seemed impressed with my healing ability and kept asking questions about my spec and gear.  We made it through the instance though, no one died and I got that out of the way.

I then went to my Argent Tournament dailies which I’ve started doing again.  Inien was doing them too and we did some of them together.  I was able to get enough seals tonight to get my 25 Talbard and get that achievement!  I found out after I did that one of the guildies has been trying to catch up to my achievement score, I have the second best in my guild and the only reason I’m behind is because I don’t raid as much   So now I’ve got to step it up to hold my 2nd place   Going to have to try and knock out some of the easy ones I still have in general and maybe PvP and Fishing.

Ok,  now onto my big worries.  Inien kept reminding me nothing is close to being done, and I realize that but I see too much thought behind the new Disc tree to not be worried.  It looks to me at first glance they have refocused the tree back towards PvP again!  You can see the talent preview over at MMO-Champion.

I’m talking of course of Atonement, Penitence, Evangelism, and Arcangel.  They are great names, and even cool talents they allow you to do some damage and be healing as well. It is unclear to me if this is thought it will work in PvE or not?  It could be interesting but I don’t think they have ever mixed those two things for PvE before.  Atonement could be interesting letting you heal the tank and melee dps with some of your damage.  The more I thought about it after talking to Inien the more I began to see it as modeled after the damaging healers in some of the MMOs that have come out recently.

So basically now I’m more fascinated than stressed out about it and wish I had a beta invite to try it   With the changes to Disc and Holy, it is possible to get all the new Damage talents in Holy and Disc, all the way to the increased range.  So now I’m thinking you could go with a Disc build that looks like this and it might be an interesting PvE build where you would be tossing out damage and heal/shields.

BETA, where art thou!

I have been reading the WoW forums more lately despite the usual headache it can give you some times.  I ran across a post in the Cataclysm forum that Zarhym replied too. The title was Cataclysm: WoW Killer.  Now when I first read that I thought it could be both a positive or a negative post, of course this is the WoW forums so I knew it must be negative.  But I’d like to take a second to argue the other way.

World of Warcraft has been the number one MMO for quite some time now.  From the very beginning they managed to bring an audience that no one dreamed possible.  Since those early days many MMO’s have come out to try and recreate the success of WoW, or to some how take some from it.  Every time a new MMO is about to release there is all sorts of forum posts about how it is the next WoW Killer.  Warhammer Online was one such game which everyone was sure would bring WoW down, as was Age of Conan.   These games would always show some limited success but WoW lived on.  All the things that makes WoW great, they just couldn’t match.  It was hard for them to compete against years of fine tuning that WoW has done.

My reason for bring this up is I believe Cataclysm is THE WoW Killer.  Cataclysm will finally be the one game to one up WoW.  You might say to yourself, well “Laneer Catalcysm is WoW.”  However if you have been following the info coming you can see just how much they are changing.  Yes there will be some aspects of our old game there, but everything about WoW is pretty much changing.  They are modifying nearly every item, changing quests, the landscape everywhere, spells, talents, trade skills.  Nothing in this expansion seems to be escaping the great cataclysm.

Now this is just my opinion, but I think this is all for the better.  Admittedly I am a Blizzard fanboy, but I think the success of this game speaks for itself.  I am very impressed with all the refinement coming in Cataclysm.  I admire Blizzard very much for taking on such a monumental task such as this.  I am not sure that any other company would have been gutsy enough to try and do so much at once.    I have enjoyed WoW going on 6 years now.  It has come a long way from those early days with each expansion building on the next.  Cataclysm seems to be a compilation of all the lessons learned from each stage of WoW.  So without a doubt I believe we finally have a WoW Killer.

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

The WoW Killer!

Had just enough energy for a quick 5 man tonight.  Though 5 mans these days are so boring if it isn’t any of the 3 new ones.  On occasion I’ll get in a group with a poorly geared tank that makes it more interesting but usually I stand around lol  So today I thought I’m going to see if I can beat any of the DPS.  So in between healing I used every trick in the book to do some DPS as Disc of course.  I managed to beat the hunter, and came close during the instance at beating the Warlock, but in the end I couldn’t do it.  I was proud of myself at managing to do 15% of the damage WHILE I was also healing

Also wanted to make a quick longer comment on the new badge changes that Blizzard has posted for Cataclysm.  My first thought was about time!  It seemed the current system was getting ridiculous and if they kept this up we were going to have all sorts of crazy named badges hehe  Its also a pain if you want to get a different item and have to down convert your badges like 3 times for heroic stuff.  It seems like a well thought out plan.  Especially how each time they release a new tier of gear they convert your uper tier badges to lower tier.  This will keep people from hording and get you spending!

It is quite amazing at how many systems they are changing.  I’m really excited and just a tad worried.  My worry lies only in the fact that so much is being changed that testing of it all has got to be a nightmare.  I imagine that there will be a lot of tweaking, more so than normal even when Cataclysm goes live with this many changes.  It’s all good though!

I managed to get on yesterday only long enough to run a quick random.  I was totally worn out from being up till midnight the previous day after being called by work.  It was an interesting run actually.  We had a bear tank that had the highest GS rating I’ve ever seen, and over 60K HP.  He made a mad dash through that instance and we completed it faster than I thought possible.  He skipped the first boss which never even occurred to me They brought down Mr Drake ride immediately too, I was impressed

Things have been very interesting since the announcements about the upcoming raid changes to Cataclysm.  So much whining it is unbelievable, actually I think it is believable because the vocal community is a bunch of whiners   I wonder if Blizzard predicted this or not?  I’m guessing they must have assumed a certain amount of vocal disagreement.  Some of my favorite arguments are:

• It will destroy my guild
• No one will ever do 25 mans anymore
• Why even include 25 mans
• Blizzard is just catering to casuals

The funny thing is the last time they change raids they said the same things.  Just like they said Cataclysm will be the death of WoW, and all previous expansion were going to do that as well   Anyways the most interesting part is everything Blizzard is changing is save guilds if anything.  Lets you do the content you want, with the people you want.  You don’t feel forced into trying to make 25 mans work, and if you have the people for 25 mans you can do it, and gear more people up faster.  I don’t see the issue, and find it funny people can’t see it benefits everyone casual or elitist

As I mentioned before my favorite part is first that you can do the raids you like, I prefer 10mans over 25 by a HUGE margin.  The 25s are just not fun for me, I don’t care how good the gear is.  Second I kind of like the shared lockouts myself.  You don’t feel compelled to have to do both to try and get extra badges.  People will have time for their alts now   It is obvious they had to do that if they were going to make the gear the same.  The other thing that kept coming to mind is that they intended to try and make the difficulty of 10 and 25 man as close as possible.  So the elitist shouldn’t complain they are catering to casuals because they want it to be equal.  Obviously getting 25 people in sync is still always going to be harder than 10, so they are doing a few things to help with extra badges/gear.

Things are really getting exciting with Cataclysm now as this new information comes out almost daily.  Come on Blizzard, I want more!

I was very excited to read the new proposed raiding changes for Cataclysm.  As someone who really enjoys a good 10man raid, and really doesn’t for 25 man it is good news!  The problem I have with 25 mans is it marginalizes my contribution to the overall victory.  I can see the effect of my healing when I am one of 2 or 3, but not when I’m one of 5 or 6.  I also hate all the slowness that comes when dealing with 25 people over 10.  Having 10 is much more manageable and is always more fun to me.  For me anyways it has never bothered me that the gear was slightly lower in level. I still wouldn’t care either way, what I like most about it is they are not making people feel like they have to do 25 anymore.

If they make it to where you can do the 10 or 25 bosses depending on what you have on an encounter basis, that will be even nicer for certain guilds.  I’ve recently been able to participate in some guild 10 mans and had a lot of fun.  Yesterday I joined in the end of a 25, and well didn’t.    I applaud Blizzards decision to go in this direction and look forward to these changes in Cataclysm!

I just wanted to take a second to weigh in on the recent talk over the new items added to the Blizzard store.  It seems that some people have got increasingly negative towards Blizzard over the sale of this mount and I’m not sure why.  Blizzard had up to this point been selling non-combat pets without too much fuss.  In fact I bought Lil’KT and the Panderan Monk back when they first came out. Blizzard donated half the proceeds on the monk for a time to charity which amounted to over $1.1 Million.

Later they added in the two new plush toys which game with in-game versions.  I guess not much complaint over this because you got something physical for it in addition to the in game pet.  I want to get these for the in game pets, but I haven’t yet.  Part of my enjoyment in the game is collecting the non-combat pets.  I do have a limit though on what I’d pay, I think Blizzard found it.  For instance, though I would love to have the TCG pets, I have never bought any of the cards because they range from $75-300 and that is just silly for something that isn’t real.

Blizzard has said from the very beginning they will never sell anything that is for more than cosmetic purposes.  Though people are starting to wonder if the corporate heads are going to pressure someone into doing something different but that will never happen.  It doesn’t have too, and I think the horse could have even been a way to prove that.  Based on the queues that were seen and the demand, it looked as if Blizzard made $3 million or maybe more off the horse that first day.

Now to those that say Blizzard is greedy for selling these, this is a reminder for you.  You may not think about this often, but Blizzard is a business.  Businesses exists to make money, I’m not sure why it is so insulting or surprising that Blizzard exercises one of their ways to make money.  In fact you should be happy when Blizzard is successful.  The more successful they are the more quality content will come out of the company for us to enjoy.

Blizzard is being very careful about how it exercises this revenue stream if you notice.  They could just as well have their artists make 100s of pets and mounts and stick them up there.  I think the impact would be lost however and they would not be able to generate the kind of money they do from doing a more limited number of quality options.  So I don’t expect them to release a flood of items any time soon.  A new pet or mount here and there is probably all you will ever see, so stop your whining and don’t worry about it!

Took a quick break to check out MMO-champion to see what was up and saw Blizzard upgraded the Armory.  They added some neat features, including a 3D view of your character modeled with all your gear along with a RSS feed of your recent activity.  It shows stuff like Achievements, or Achievement Criteria, Boss Kills, and when you aquire an item.  This seemed like a pretty neat thing to put on the site so I added it under my armory profile.

It is nice to see Blizzard continuing to develop the armory and is surpassing anything any of the other MMOs were doing, and used to charge you for even!

It is probably asking for too much but it would be nice if it showed things like when you aquired a pet, or mounts since these are things people collect and are proud of as well.