I’d Rather Be Wowing!

Coming out with title is big challenge, don’t you think? I hope it’s not too misleading :).

Well, let’s begin with some screenies, though not much in quantity.

(1 & 2) I’m closing to completing all the quests in Borean Tundra. Although the area may not be too aesthetically appealing compared to HF, I do enjoy the diversity of inabitants, the story lines and the entertaining quests that I found there. Shots 1 and 2 are meant to give you a “teaser” to the some of them :).

(3 & 4) The first time I travelled to the fishing village of the Kaluak Tribe in Borean Tundra, there’s a quest that send me to another village in Dragonblight. I was supposed to talk to the dockmaster and acquire my method of transportation through him. The dockmaster asked me if I want to take sea turtle there, expecting a unique ride in a turtle, I was disappointed when he immediately teleported me to my destination. I haven’t been to any of the Kaluak village lately (there’s another one in Howling Fjord), so when I went there I was thorougly surprised to see that the sea turtle has been implemented. I especially love the touch of “carrot on a stick” that is being used to move the turtle around. Although you can still be teleported to the other villages (not sure if this is intended), the sea turtle boat is fully functional.

(5 - 9) What can I say, I’m girl - this kinda of things interest me :). I heard about the new hair styles so I thought I modeled some for you. As of today, the new hairstyles is not available in the character creation screen. So, I can only take some screenies for female Draenei in the barbershop. I rememberd that several weeks ago Phaelia posted an article of the supposedly new hairstyles. Comparing the screenies, they are the same style (although it is missing one of the draenei hair styles). So if you are curious to see other race’s hairstyles, check that article out.

***

As you might have known, the last two patches bring you ton load of JC recipes. But especially in the last patch, it introduces you to recipes buyable only with Dalaran Jewelcrafting Token.s Looking through the list of recipes, most of them cost about 5 tokens, where some of them cost about 8 tokens (I think the meta gems). There are about 4 pages full of recipes. Visiting the JC trainer in Dalaran,  he now offers a list of 5 (or 6) quests. Each of the quest ask you to get 2 types of green quality cut gems and an item dropped by random inhabitants of Northrend (Vrykul, iron dwarves, proto dragons, to name a few). Taking one of the quest reveals that it’s actually a daily, and automatically the 4 remaining quests becomes unavailable (dropping the quest, I assume, would give you the whole list again). So from the look of it, you can only get one Dalaran token per day. It is going to take a long time to complete all the recipes. Yay time sink for JC is found :). I am at least satisfied with how Blizzard to go about it. Giving a variety of quests to choose from (it may be become random in the future - like the current cooking/fishing quest), avoids some gems to get much higher values than the rests.

So I took one where I’m supposed to kill any Vrykul for its amulet. Unfortunately, either I am killing the wrong mob, or the quest item hasn’t existed yet, after 15 long minutes, I am not seeing any drops. But traveling to HF is not totally worthless. It turns out that grand master jewelcrafting is now available in HF (not yet in BT), but you cannot learn anything from him until you complete a quest for “Gem Perfection” where you need to give him some raw gems (2 yellow, 2 green, and 2 purple - northrend kinds). That’s a good news, because prior to that, you can only learn new JC recipes in Dalaran. it’s not such a so good news, however, because unless you are miner, few days/weeks into the expansion, expect to see outrageous amout of g for those gems and ores. On the other hand, if you are a miner, congrats on the very good money making opportunities :).

***

It can be surprising what you can learn from paying attention to the general/trade channel. So I found out that, as of today, the next bandage (heavy frostweave) can only be learned through a book. The catch is, the book is a random world drop and it is a BOP. Let’s hope that it won’t make it to live, shall we?

I was a bit curious on the functionality on some of the shadow priest talents. So I decided to play around with the talents while logging it. This experiment is not completely sound, but there are still some things that can be learned. If you are looking for some mind-boggling revelation, you won’t find it here. I think these results just further confirm what has been said in shadow priest forum. Like I said, it’s just for my own curiosity.

Experiment 1 (Twin Disciplines)

So I started to allocate my talent points in the shadow tree, just enough to get VT. As a result, I had to put some on shadow weaving as well. But I carefully looked and marked when and if shadow weaving occurred. I had 1194 pure shadow “power” (this the the value in your character sheet, to further distinguished it with spell damage). To also avoid any changes in my shadow power, I took off my Darkmoon Card: Crusade.

Twin Disciplines (5 points): Increases your spell damage and healing up to 5%.

Note that TD doesn’t actually change your spell power. So, the number in your character sheet will not change when you put points in this talent. I started with 0 point, kill 5 mobs with just VT, SW:P, and MF. Then I put another point, repeat the same process until all 5 points are allocated. Afterward I parsed the combat log manually (so there may be some human error there).

So far everything looks good and consistent. With 0 points in TD and 3 stacks of shadow vulnerability (6% more damage), my VT, SW:P, and MF ticks for 519-520, 652, and 567-568. With 5 points in TD, the numbers become 554-555, 684-685, and 595-596. TD does increase 5% of the damage done.

With that in mind, don’t you guys think that this talent is too good for being in the first tier (not that I am complaining)? Heck this actually increases our damage, and not just our spell power. I mean, our darkness talent is buried in the 6th tier, and that only increases our shadow damage by 10%. I am foreseeing a nerf for this.  Or hopefully a buff on our end, but what’s the odd on that ??

Experiment 2 (Pain and Suffering)

Continuing from the previous set up, I put more points in the discipline tree to get Meditation. Then I put some more in shadow to get Pain and Suffering. All the additions shouldn’t change damage wise.

Pain and Suffering (3 points): Your Mind Flay has a 100% chance to refresh the duration of your Shadow Word: Pain on the target, and reduces the damage you take from your own Shadow Word: Death by 60%

I’m going to focus on the SW:P because SW:D is bugged right now that it doesn’t actually do any backslash. The common questions in here are:

1. Refreshing SW:P, is it going to interfere with the ticks?
2. Which value of shadow power will be used by SW:P? In other words, if your shadow power changes after you cast your initial SW:P, does it got taken into consideration when it refreshes?

To answer the first question, I compared the number of ticks to the period of the fight and also to the number of ticks obtained from the previous experiment. Each fight was pretty short, only around 12 sec. So we should be seeing 3 ticks with the same spell rotation (VT, SW:P, then MF MF…). With and without PS, in all of the fights, I see 3 ticks in my combat log. So, I am confirming that the way SW:P is refreshed does not interfere with the actual ticking. Looking at the combat log more carefully also shows that SW:P ticks every 3 sec, regardless to when SW:P is refreshed by MF.

For the second question, I equipped my crusader card. So each MF has the potential to change my shadow power from my initial cast. I actually fight a lot of mobs with this setting so I can get some values with the same of number of shadow weaving and an increasing number of crusader stack.

For VT, as expected, the number of damage remains constant, since VT’s damage only take into account the shadow power at initial cast. For MF, the damage increases as the number of crusader stacks increases. For SW:P, it turns out that it acts just like VT, regardless to the the number of crusader stck when it refreshes. So the conclusion is that SW:P takes into account only the shadow power at initial cast, regardless if the shadow power increases or decreases after it is being refreshed.

If this behavior stays during live, this could add a twist on our spell priority so that maximum number of shadow power can be achieved before SW:P is maintained by refreshing MF. I can imagine triggering crits for the imp spirit tap buff through IF and MB/SW:D, popping a trinket that gives you an additional spell power for X seconds, or downgrading some spells just to get max number of stacks, before casting SW:P or re-casting SW:P. In my own opinion, I don’t think this is an intended behavior and it would probably be fixed when it goes live.

***

Well, I was going to make a comparison to the dps increases with the all the new talents and I just realized that I didn’t have a comparable data since I was not using my crusader card at the beginning of the experiment and I was using it at the end of the experiment. So that may have to wait for another day. I need to find something like to Dr. Boom to check all this.

On another note, E just dinged to 74. She just gotten her next rank of MB and MF, but haven’t used it yet. Finally something usable :). I’m excited to try them on.

For the non related shadow priest news, we can now mount in Dalaran, yay. But the mounting is broken in other major cities like SW and IF.

The login screen gets a very surprising facelift that includes a dragon. The map of Dalaran also gets a nice upgrade although the “hole” problem still seems to be prevalent in Dalaran. Thank goodness for Levitate *wink wink*.

For the rant section of the post:

I don’t know why people think it’s necessary to jack up the prices in AH. It’s not like the gold you earned in beta got carried over. What it does is just preventing people from testing the contents, especially the crafting contents. Thank you though for everybody that put up reasonable prices for mats and quest items.

Also, all these news about new recipes - like the new tailoring embroidery - just confused me because not all of them are implemented yet. Sites that reporting all these things should make it clear whether the information is data mined or live in beta (or maybe I just need a better reading comprehension).

Dinged to 73. And I’m still in Howling Fjord. At this point, each quest gives me about 20k experience point. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, still no new spells for this shadow priest. Instead, E learned Greater Heal and Flash Heal. Her gears are still unchanged. But, some of the trinket rewards are starting to look pretty sweet, especially with the generous helping of spell haste such as in this item: Horn of the Herald. One thing for sure, I am seeing a lot of gears with spell haste.

So E decided to be brave and doing some more exploration outside of her comfort zone. From Dalaran, she started to head East toward Icecrown Glacier, but there’s no open path to there. Then she started going toward Storm Peaks on the north. As soon as she steps in the zone, she gets the special “blizzard debuff” and got teleported back to Howling Fjord. Grrr ><.

My death knight finally stepped out to the real world after completing her final quest. She just 1/2 bar toward 58 now. So she still needs to do some questing in Azeroth before being able to step into the outlands. The final quest was not disappointing, both in the lore perspective and in the experience. I do, however, have a complain about it. Being the last quest and the only quest that you can do, I don’t think Blizzard should make you wait for 8 - 10 minutes without nothing else to do. So basically, to start this quest, you have to talk to an NPC. But if the “event” already started, you have to wait for the event to be done before he respawn. If you are not lucky, you’ll catch him just when the event is initiated. Once he respawns, it will take another 5 minutes for the event starts again.

To be honest, death knight overwhelms me. There are just so many things in their three trees that they all just seem to blur together. Plus all the new “energy” concepts. That’s why it took me this long to just finally complete their starting quests.  I guess I am one of those who learns slowly. Starting a character with that much freedom just confuses me. But I’m sure that this may be exciting for other people. One thing for sure though, you can pretty much get away from understanding the class from smashing some buttons together. At least at this early levels. They are just that good :).

It’s kinda slow going. I wish I can spend more time in Beta, but I just have too much things going on right now.

Well, I finally got the taste of the first dungeon in the game, even with two server resets along the way :). Basically, I got to run this place three times. The first two, we’ve only reached the 2nd boss, and only the third time, the server was stable enough to allow us finish the dungeon.

My impression of it is that it is a pretty short dungeon. The grittiness of the dungeon reminds me of Ramparts and Blood Furnace. With the exception to the last boss (which probably more due to our unfamiliarity to the fight), it is pretty easy. Before making such a general sweeping remark, let me say a bit about the group make up. I actually went there in two different group (the first group stopped on the first server reset but didn’t pick it up afterward, the second group stopped and picked up after the other server reset). On my first group we had a well geared paladin tank, a priest healer, a mage, a warlock, and of course me. On the second group we had a paladin tank, geared only in blues and greens, a paladin healer, a rogue, a death knight, and me. In any of the group, we don’t have any difficulties or any need in resorting to using cc (the rogue actually offered to sap on the 2nd group, but quite frankly, it’s not actually needed).

The pulls are pretty simple too. They generally comes in group 2 or 3. There are some group pulls, but it consisted of one elite and multiple non-elite (these are the only undead pulls in the instance). The group itself made up of melee and casters. There are a lot of shadow damage in the instance, having a group with shadow protection certainly helps. To the question to the roll of shadow priest in here, people in my group seems to take me along just for the mana generation (hint to the two pally tanks in both group). On the second group, it is actually explicitly mentioned that having spriest helps pally tank not to drink so much. The question is, do they realize that VT is nerfed and they just don’t care? Do they realize it and still think that it’s useful? Or, the worse case, they don’t realize it at all? I also noticed that Paladin’s Seal of Wisdom occasionally return about 100 something mana to me. That’s compared to my 13-15 mana return per MF/SW:P/VT ticks after the nerf. Hmm…

One thing to get used to, also, is not having to refresh SW:P. Especially not having my mods available to me, I felt uneasy for not having to pay attention to SW:P debuff icon on the boss. I think I mistakenly refresh it just because I’m so used to the duration in which I have to redo the SW:P. After a while, I’m beginning to enjoy this change of spell rotation. Since having a pally tank, I can just dot everything and refresh them with MF. Love it! Plus, I only have to keep track of my VT debuff. Also, I noticed that the debuff icons are now differentiated with size, where debuff inflicted by you will have a bigger size compared to the other icons. It’s a good improvement.

The following is not meant to be a guide. It’s just what my impression on the boss fight in general.

1) First boss consisted of an undead caster, along with 4 caster minions. The pulls are done separately. After finish engaging with the minions, the fight with the boss will initiate. The boss itself will summon a wave of skeletons that would ressed themselves back when died. The boss attack mostly consist of shadowbolts. But the more annoying one is called ice tomb. Every once in a while, it will put a character into an ice tomb for 15 sec. It doesn’t seem to discriminate tank either (not sure whether it’s the case that the tank losses aggro of not). 15 sec of inactivity (and get damage inflicted on you) is a bit long, in my opinion. Being entombed multiple time makes you not being able to enjoy the fight. I think BoP (or should I say HoP) breaks the ice tomb. Not sure if dispel/cleanse does it too.

2) The second encounter consisted of 2 bosses. One is caster and the other one is melee. When one is downed, the other will ress him back. But you only need to kill each boss once, the ressed boss will automatically died as well. Shadow priests (and shadow spec warlock) are gimped against the caster boss because shadow damage get cut into 1/2 against him. But it’s more annoying than hard.

3) The third encounter is the final boss. To be honest i don’t know much about it except we almost wiped. It went really fast but a bit chaotic. The first time we killed him, a Valkyr ressed him back (see the pattern here?). The first round was almost too easy. But when he came back to life, it’s like he’s a whole different animal. He does a bunch aoe damage (shadow too). One of the group member said at the beginning of that fight that it’s going to be like the shattered hall, that he would call out for drakes to help him. But we never saw it happen. Don’t know if we just kill too fast or something?

So as the reward, us casters get a fancy new ring :). The other blue ring is from a previous quest. As you can see, they are not bad rings overall. It’s almost as good as the epic ring in Kara level.

It’s another time for some picture stories.

(1&2) It’s my favorite area in Howling Fjord so far. One thing to notice, although my pictures don’t capture it so much, is the beautiful graphic of the fire. Not only here, but everywhere…from the camp fire, blue lantern fire, etc. Back to the area, when you come closer, the area turns all red, just as shown in (2). I thought that is a really nice touch.

(3) We interrupt the tour in Northrend to bring you the Death Knight flying mount (possibly?). I don’t know, I’m not a big fan of it. I think it looks funny instead of intimidating.

(4) The dragon in Ember Ledge flew me to Coldarra, passing Nexus along the way. The design of it is amazing. I just wish I found the right angle to capture it. The area surrounding it is heavily populated with Dragonkins - flying and roaming around.

(5&6) I’ve shown you my favorite area in the game so far, now I bring you my favorite creature (so far). These are also found in Coldarra, wringling along the crevices of the earth. I always have soft spot with transparent creatures :).

(7&8) The sleeping dragon turns not not to be peaceful after all :(. A quest sent you to talk to him, which he doesn’t appreciate it oh so much, showing his tenacity by spitting fire. Lucky I wasn’t not in front of him ><. All in all, he is still such a pretty dragon and he’s still willing to lend me his assistance (along with a threat).

(9&10) Introducing D.E.H.T.A (Druids for the Ethical and Humane Treatment of Animals) - and one of the new game’s debuff :). So, if this Rhino Bull chased me around, even when I’m not doing anything wrong, should I run away instead of fending myself? Luckily this only happens in the plain area of Borean Tundra. Can you imagine of we no longer can kill rats? From picture 10, you can gather who is D.E.H.T.A arch nemesis. No other than Mr. Hemet Nesingwary. So far, I haven’t seen any sight of him and the wanted poster mentioned that he was last seen in Nagrand. It will be amusing if he got moved to Northrend too, just like what happened in the last expansion :).

(11) New mount? You wish! Well, that’s actually not the right skin for that creature either (it’s supposed to be a mammoth, which I think will definitely looks cooler). Anyway, this is part of the quest, where you actually fight while riding a bull mammoth. To be honest, it’s still feel a bit clunky. But I can’t deny that it’s a lot of fun (and it certainly beats the regular kill X quest). I would have taken a shot of the control menu too, except the graphic for it is still glitchy.

(12&13) Don’t you think that just looks plain awesome? One of the quest in Howling Fjord lets you to control Harpoon to destroy some buildings and dragonflayers. The following quest, sent you back by travelling the harpoon itself. The best part is, you can do this as many time as you’d like (as long as you keep the controller with you). This is one of the examples where Blizzard have somewhat allowed convenience when traveling.

(14) This is the first daily quest that I found in Northrend, available to be picked up at Westguard Keep (Howling Fjord). It’s one of the bombing quest type, except…it’s not fun at all (at this iteration at least). The travel is about 3 times as long as the bombing quest in Isle of QD. With just one other person doing the quest, I could only finish 1/3 of the quest goal. Don’t even want to repeat that considering the length of the travel itself. I hope this gets refine. The upside however, Alliance gets to use the Zeppelin (they actually have a goblin on hostage, and yet the goblin still offering Zeppelin ride).

(15&16) I hope that this is one of the interactions with well known NPCs that Blizzard have been promoting. One of early quest in Howling Fjord allows you to enter spirit world and we got to meet, no other than the Lich King himself. Do you notice the health point that he has? That’s like 9 digits in total. In this quest, you are not meant to engage him. However, you’re in for a treat (and a death) if you did it anyway. I have to admit that it’s one of the most enjoyable death in the game so far :). Too bad I’m so shadowy that I can’t see it too well (in 16) what he did at me.

(17) Just want to say that some of these achievements are amusing. I can’t wait to complete them.

One thing to keep in mind from whatever things that I posted in here is that, anything can still change. For example, as I went back to Borean Tundra (still haven’t gotten enough FP to allow me to go directly from Dalaran to Valiance Keep), I realized that they have fixed the mounting and the docking problem in Stormwind Harbor.  No more being forced to walk and no more splashing to the water. Now, if only they would change the non-mounting policy in Dalaran as well…one could only hope.

Another recent change is how the entry point to Dalaran (teleporting crystal) is accessible only for level 74 and higher. Basically there’s a quest, opened up when you are level 74, that leads you directly to Dalaran. Within Dalaran, there’s a quest to use the teleporting crystal from inside Dalaran to outside, and from outside to inside. The teleporting crystal outside would only then  be accessible if you have used the inside teleport stone. Confusing? Well, I bound my hearthstone over in Dalaran. So far this change haven’t affected me from hearthing back to Dalaran. This seems to imply that the use of summoning and porting would be the way to get into the city prior to level 74. I talked to another player, under 74, who have went to Dalaran prior to the change but didn’t bind himself there, and he is currently unable to enter Dalaran from the outside using the crystal (even though he has already used the teleport stone from inside). I hope that this conflicting things got sorted out.

Digressing a bit here, so Dalaran gives you port access to every other cities. The cities in Azeroth are (and will) still be visited because of the trainers and auction house. I wonder if there’s any reason at all to go back to Shatt? Maybe that’s why they put level restriction in Dalaran?

Going back to the topic, some of the animals in Borean Tundra also get a face lift. Actually, they just received the proper skin, which made me realize that maybe my lack of appreciation of this area is because it feels more unfinished and buggy compared to Howling Fjord.

This and that

1. E leveled up to 72. She learned the next rank of Binding Heals, Holy Fire, and Fade. Still nothing new to play with. Leveling is still a breeze. I am beginning to like the new shadowform (pushback resistance) more and more. I have to get used to not always putting up PW:Shield and use VE instead, unless for multiple pulls. To my pleasant surprise, I was able to solo a 3-man quest, a level 72 elite :). I honestly think that it wouldn’t have worked without the pushback resist. VE heals me enough to somewhat compensate for the damage when shield debuff is still up and fear is in cooldown.

2. No fishes in the water yet :(. Which is kinda funny when I see the Kalu’aks fishing in them. Do they know something I don’t?

3. I think that Blizzard is trying hard to give different twists to the regular kill X and fetch thing quests. In Howling Fjord, especially, I really appreciates how convenient it is to move from one quest area to the next. I hope that the trend continues (and hopefully extended to Borean Tundra as well) throughout Northrend.

I’ll try to put up more screenies tonight.

Today, I’m gonna do something different. Instead of rambling with stories, I’ll put up some screenies and comment on those instead. Mind you, though, I’m not such a good pictures taker.

(1) When traveling to Amber Ledge in Borean Tundra, the big dragon caught my eyes for two reasons. First, the area around it was really bare, but where he lies, it lushes with flowers and vegetations. It reminds me of a spot in Wetlands. Second, he’s an actual flight path master! Unfortunately, I am not sure if it was because of the server lag, but I couldn’t brought up the fly path map upon clicking him.

(2) The shapes of mailboxes always amuse me. So is the case with Dalaran’s mailbox. This picture also reminds me to comment about something that I kept forgetting to say. Draenei got a new idle animation, and I must say it annoys the heck out of me (I know some people that like it though). Instead of looking left and right, they do a shoulder movement like the have a cramped shoulder or something.

(3) One of the early quests in Howling Fjord brought you to Utarde Catacombs. After going through loop after loop, this is the first sight of the hallway that just takes my breath away. The angels are similar to what Death Knight’s area have. I just think it’s gorgeous. There’s also another “fun” quest in this catacomb. Ever want to run across a room full of ghouls? You can do it here :).

(4) I am not an engineering. And ever since I did a quest for some dwarf in Ironforge, where he sent you to Azhara and had you travel to landing pad after you finished gathering some items, and when the copter came by and you actually thought you would fly with it (you won’t though), I’ve been wanting to ride on a copter. I got my wish. One of the quest sent you to an Explorer’s league area, but you can take a copter there (it’s a one way trip though ><). A shadow copter? It’s just an icing on the cake.

(5 & 6) This burning ship is one of the notable view from Valgarde in Howling Fjord (alliance side).  Up ahead is the town itself. Nothing much to comment from picture #6, I just especially like the view there.

(7) So the copter flight is quite lengthy. I was busy admiring the view until a red elite tag shows up on my screen, which quite frankly, frightened me a bit. I missed the shot where he jumped out of the water. Currently he is a ?? level to me (and I’m 71).

(8) Borean tundra has mammoths in part if its landscape, Howling Fjord got Shoveltusk instead. After being transported to the Explorer’s league, I was presented with two dueling Shoveltusks.  I also appreciate the aurora  borealis that graced the open sky. I might end up liking Howling Fjord area a bit more.

(9) Missed Fel Reaver? Never fear because we have a Storm Giant instead. He’s an elite 80 Giant that roam around the area near Explorer’s league. Although he doesn’t have the whirly machinery sound like Fel Reaver, you won’t missed it when he’s nearby. My screen literally shakes to identify his arrival. I personally loving the impressive detail in his design.

1. Went to the barber just to check out how it works. I was a bit disappointed that there weren’t any new hair style (yet). As a Draenei, I can change my hair color, hair style, and my horn style - each with an increasing cost (about 3g, 5g, and 7g respectively).  There’s a bug where when you get off from the barber chair, you are automatically zoomed in to your character, until you manually zoom out from it.

2. Dalaran map is finally available. I explored a little bit more and found a path to the sewer area. There’s a banker, poison trainer, warlock trainer, and shady dealer, and arena vendor (and probably the battleground and arena master) there. It does make Dalaran a bit bigger than what I originally thought, but I don’t know, it doesn’t have the same hecticness and busy-ness (in terms of npcs) when compared to Shattrath. I kinda missed the wide open air feel of Shattrath too.

3. So, now we have potion sickness? Who the heck comes out with that idea? Basically when you popped up potion (I tried mana pot), you will get this debuff (cannot use more pots) until a few second until you are out of combat. The implication is that you will be able to use only 1 pots - any kind of pots at this point - per boss fight (unless there’s ooc moments). We can argue that in the perspective of shadow priest, this will make us a bit more available, since mana regen is even more needed. It is also makes the nerf to VT feel more painful :(. On the other hand, if this potion sickness debuff thingy makes it to live, it would make our dispersion talent has a much higher value in PvE setting.

4. At 71, E learned the next rank of inner fire. Again, a bit dissapointed that it’s all there is to it. Aside from Dispersion (which with the talent tree route that I’m using, I won’t get until 2 more level), the next new spell is not until 75. That’s a pretty long hold out, don’t you think? I noticed the new mana regen system that they now have. I honestly thought at first that it was a bug, until I read more reports from MMO champion. So now the mana value is updated every 0.1 second. I guess I can understand why a lot of people like it, but appearance in the interface wise, it’s too busy for me.

5. After travelling to IF to train the new spell (plus buying new mount cause who knows when they will get around to fix that mount problem), I headed to Menethil to catch the boat to Howling Fjord. The boat ride seems a bit long than normal. That’s maybe because the boat actually passed the dock, go forward to make a turn, before finally docking. I imagine people would start jumping down as soon as the dock is within sight. Picked up a few starting quest in the area. The quest reward seems comparable to the beginning quest reward’s in BT.

I don’t know if it’s me, but the quest in Howling Fjord seems more fast paced than in BT. First off, you were asked to help the defenders to ward off some invaders (12 to be exacts) which is just a few step away. They just came wave after wave, and if you positioned yourself just a bit further than the rest of the defenders, you will end up getting multiple mobs after multiple mobs. There’s also the prisoners rescue type quest that gets a  bit of a twist. The prisoners that you rescued actually fight with you for a few minutes afterward. Unfortunately, they don’t make enough damage to be useful. But it is still a nice touch. I’m gonna reserve my opinion to which starting area is better until I got more sample of quest.

Dinged and the server broke :(.

The new beta patch brought us mount/pet as spells. I was looking forward to it. This morning I logged on and found that…they are broken. Clicking on my mount gave me “no charges left” message. I noticed a nearby night elf riding along with his mount, so I messaged him. It turns out the only way to fix the issue right now is to buy another mount. Oh well, I guess I’m gonna be stuck without a mount until I hearth back to Dalaran (then to exodar).

There’s a bit change, with respect to shadow priest, in the new beta. The cooldown on dispersion has reduced to 3 min. Worth it? Still haven’t decided yet. I need to hit dungeons soon. Upon redoing my talent tree (it got reseted again), I realized that Twin Discipline modifies Spell Damage, instead of Spell Power. So technically, even if it doesn’t modify the bonus damage stat, it should increased my bonus overall by 5%. I need to give it a test.

Still couldn’t clock in too much time in Beta world since Northrend (the area) is so terribly laggy. I am not whining about, since I know it’s in Beta. Just a bit of what I did during the weekend.

1. Created a draenei death knight. The starting area is kinda bleak, but what do expect from being a “death knight”. Your are bound to your home area until you done some fetching/meeting people quests. For no effort at all (except reading the quest log to know which teleporter/stairs you are supposed to take), I get a cool sword and a runeforging ability. Runeforging is almost kinda like doing enchant to your weapon. You got about 6 choices to begin with and with 1 level into the character, I don’t know when you are getting other runeforge choices.

As a tangent, I love the look of death knight. Even when I level E in Northrend and encountered other death knight, they just have a certain aura in them where they can be easily distinguished to other classes.

Anyway, if you’ve been keeping up with other reports of Death Knight, I’m sure you’ve known that you started with 0 talent points. As you complete quests, the talent points slowly trickling in. At this point, I’m have enough points to allocate until the 4th tier on my talent tree (I’m only lvl 56). Allow me to say one thing on the beginning quests, they are evil. Not evil in a sense that it’s terribly hard to do (there’s one quest that get the exception, I died 5-6 times doing it, I hope they nerf it a bit - not a lot mind you, because I love the challenge), but they have an evil feel to it. For example, one of the killing quest sent you to kill civilians that basically cowers in fear and not strikes back while you are attacking them. Not.fun.at.all (for me at least). I don’t know about Draenei doing evil stuff.

Another thing that I love in Death Knight is their unique class skill. Up to once every 10 minutes, when you died, you get an automatic res (an “angel” comes flying in and ressed you). That was pretty convenient. I want to have that to all my characters…hahaha. I’ve also been playing with the Raise Dead spell, but still couldn’t figure out how I can raise a ghoul from a humanoid skeleton (if no skeleton available, it will consume a reagent instead). I was standing next to a skelly, but I still consumed my powder. I have to look into it further.

So far my impression is pretty positive. I can’t wait to play it further.

2. Traveled to Dalaran. I started in Borean Tundra. I have to walk east to Dragonblight area. That area is simply amazing. Especially the temple located in the middle of the area. Even with not top of the notch graph card, I can feel the grandeur of the whole building. I am not gonna build too high of expectation here, so I’m gonna stop writing about it here. Anyway, the travel up to the temple is not very hazardous. However, you would still need to travel up north to the Crystalsong Forest. The north area is littered with elites that I try to stay away as much as possible. There are still some glitches in the snow, that sometimes it’s hard to notice if there’s a crack on the snow (where you can drop down to the tunnel). But I managed to travel to Crystalsong without any death. The map in Crystalsong Forest is not done yet. Thanks to the chatter in general channel, I managed to figure out where to go. I don’t think that the area is done at all, as it seems underwhelming compared to the other two areas. Anyway, when you enter Crystalsong, just follow the road toward west. After a short trip, you will find the Dalaran teleporting crystal.

So summary on how to reach Dalaran: from Borean Tundra travel East to Dragonblight. In Dragonblight, travel North to Crystalsong Forest (there wont be a convenient path that leads you there). In Crystalsong Forest, travel west.

Dalaran doesn’t seem to be very big and it follows the same circular arrangement as Shattrath and IF. All the skill trainers were there. I learned the next skill up for JC and Tailoring but the trainers themselves didn’t teach me anything. I guess I need to hunt for the recipes, if there is one at least. When I was there, the place seems a bit empty. It may be because it’s not all done yet. There’s a room full of portals as in the case with Shattrath, with ports to all the major cities, including Shattrath. And you can bind your hearthstone conveniently nearby.

3. I respec E back to get up to 3 points in Meditation. I just can’t simply live without it. As a result, I don’t have enough points to get Dispersion back. I did try Dispersion a bit during leveling, and so far it has been underwhelming, unfortunately. I love the graphic for it, but it does feel a bit short. I just treated as my other mana pots, after my fiend and Symbol of Hope. What I did next is just tackle some quests in Borean Tundra. I think I clocked in about 3-4 hours total - and that’s with searching the location of the quests around - and I am 1 bar short to 61. Of course, they are mostly done when I sitll have a double experience. If nothing is changed from now to live (which is highly unlikely), it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be a significantly long grind to 61.

Mobs die really fast, and there’s no quest reward that replaced my gears yet. Even with some of the 2 person quest, I can one-man it without breaking much sweat. Let me talk a bit about the reward items so far. For casters items, they are still generally broken into 2 categories, one with crits and one with spell hits. They are loaded with either tons of stamina or tons of int. While my purple gears have higher spell damage, the new gears blow my gears away in term of stamina and int.

I don’t know what I was thinking originally, but spirit tap and the imp spirit tap don’t stack (that makes sense). Let’s recap a bit, imp spirit tap gives you 50% more spirit and 50% mana regen during casting when SW:D and MB critted. The regular imp tap gives you 100% more spirit 50% mana regen during casting when you did a killing blow. So anyway, the use of SW:D for killing blow, even when it crits, just simply gives you the 2nd buff, instead of having the two buff turns on at the same time. It makes sense, I just stupidly think otherwise. During leveling, imp spirit tap doesn’t seem to be very useful, as mobs usually die really fast with just MF (which is more mana efficient). With 208 spirit, and fully spec into Twisted Faith (30% spirit turns to spell power), I got about 70 something more spell damage for 15 sec (I have the exact number, just don’t have it with me).

I know that imp shadowform comes with 70% pushback resistance. I still have problem in keeping MF going if I have more than 1 mob hitting on me. So, I don’t know…I fully agree that 100% pushback is too overpowered, but it’s hard if your bread and butter leveling spell is channeled.

4. Flight path is still kinda a mess. Having to grab FP in Dalaran, Dragonblight, and Valiance Keep (borean tundray), I found that the VK is not connected to the other two. Talking about FP and dragon, you’re in for a pleasant surprised :).