I’d Rather Be Wowing!

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.

I know that I said in my previous post (although marked spoilers) that Dispersion may be a nice talent after all (given the introduction of potion sickness). That’s before I found out about this: Divine Plea, new spells for Paladin which is learnable at level 71.

So let’s begin:

Divine Plea
While channeling this spell, you gain 50% of your total mana over 6 sec.
5 min cooldown

Dispersion
You disperse into pure shadow energy, reducing all damage taken by 90%. You are unable to attack or cast spells, but you regenerate 6% health and mana every 1 sec for 6 sec.
3 min cooldown

Well, Dispersion generates more mana/health in the longer interval. In 5 min fight, both spells can only be used once, giving a slight advantage in term of mana return to Divine Plea. In 10 min fight, paladins can use Divine Plea two times, while shadow priest can use Dispersion 3 times, giving a slight (6%) advantage to the priest. Divine plea is a channeled spell, like evocation, so it will break on damage. That means paladin won’t be able to heal (or attack) during this time. Dispersion is an instant spell, doesn’t break on damage, allows the casters to move around after casting the spell, acts both like a health and a mana pot, although incapacitates and silences the priest.

Description wise, Dispersion is a spell that gets better with time. One has to wonder though, what is the span of fight lengths in WotLK. We can also argue that 6 seconds of not being able to heal is more risky than 6 seconds not being able to attack. Having a prot pally myself, I am quite excited about Divine Plea. There would be time where I am off-tanking, not receiving damage (hence no mana regen from healing), where this spell would be great to use.

The key thing in here, however, is that Divine plea are trainable at 71, while Dispersion is a 51 talent skill. Is it a good enough spell to justify it as an end talent? Many thinks that, in PvE setting, dps classes shouldn’t get hit, so the 90% dmg reduction is just a frill. Do shadow priest gets the better end of the deal here? Or do we wish we have something trainable- comparable to Divine plea - and get something else (more damage spell or group utility) as the end talent instead?

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 :).

After what it seems to be a ton of tries, we are finally 2/6 in SSC. Technically, this is our second week learning on Lurker. It might be not be the best, but I am happy about the progress. Hopefully we can do this consistently.

In the perspective of what shadow priest will do on this fight, I admit that I probably didn’t do as much damage as I’d like or I’m supposed to at this point. Much of my time was still spent in jumping in and out of water (which I am really lousy at it). But I am getting more familiar with the terrain where I am at, so hopefully I can do better on the next try.

1. Mana, mana, mana. This is one of the fight where you are just challenged with mana efficiency. With MB and SW:D, I pretty much had to chain pots the whole fight. One tricky thing is when and to whom do you sic your fiend. I tried putting it on the Lurker, but between spouts and whirlwinds, I found it hard to find a time where the fiend would last the whole duration. A better alternative, in my opinion, is to put it on one of the guardian that is tanked in the middle island. Now, this is relative on how the fight is done in your group, but I am lucky as to have a guardian that is on the 2nd/3rd kill order to be tanked nearby our island. I dotted it once to get misery ticking, and let it loose. I found it to be a more reliable way to replenish my mana bar.
2. Dps-ing during the water. I stood on the middle outer island. It’s one the furthest away from the platform. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t seem to find a place near my island where I can dps under the water. I kept getting LoS issue. But I found what I can do is, if I just jumped to the front (I tend to stand on the right side of the island), I don’t have any LoS problem. Moreoever, I don’t any problem with being knocked away during Geyser either. I haven’t tried if spout can hit me when I’m just floating to the water (the raid leader would kill me if I died during spout), so I’ve been submerging during this time. But at least I don’t have to “idiotically” try to jump to my platform afterward. Simply jumping a couple of time would bring me floating back.

Unexpectedly, Cord of Screaming Terrors drops. It is a sidegrade to my Belt of Blasting, but I wanted it so I can have a bit more survivability. I also have the highest DKP since I don’t ever bid for anything so far. I knew that I would get the belt if I rolled for it. However, I felt bad that I took it since it would be a better and obvious upgrade for other casters. But I know that I have worst drop luck than anybody else in the raid and if I passed this on, I would never see it drop ever again. So, selfish as it is, I took the plunge. I’m so sorry.

We worked our way to Morogrim. We got our butt whooped on the trashes, funny as it was. Murlocs! That’s all I can say. We gave it one try just to get a feel on the fight. We got it to 80% before all hell broke loose. Not a bad try at all.

I logged in Shattrath and notice that the talent tree is all wiped out. So I spent some time setting them up and visit the trainer in case there’s any new skills to learn. There weren’t any. I made way to Stormwind Harbor after admiring the new Stormwind’s map. The view as I enter the harbor is quite breathtaking except with the small annoyance of noticeable graphic glitches.

The harbor has several docks. Here comes my first annoyance, you cannot mount up in dock area. I really hope this is a bug, otherwise it is incredibly frustrating with the long walk to the end of the dock. The most left dock leads you to Auberdine while the most right dock leads you to Borean Tundra in Northrend. Unlike the dark portal that basically limits you from entering the outland until you are at least level 58, I am left wondering how this boating system works to chase away the low level players. At this point of the game, the dock to BT is definitely evil (another bug). The boat, you see, is not quite “attached” to the dock. So you have to do a jump to the boat, otherwise you’ll plunge to the water and have to swim to the other end of the dock and walk back in (see how no-mount policy can be really annoying). You’ll bound to miss on the boat when it happens.

I was in PvE server, and there’s certainly some server issue in Northrend. Because of that, I couldn’t play as much as I would like too. I did however manage to complete several quests nearby. In at least Kara (and badges) gear, the mobs definitely didn’t give me any problem at all. Two of the quests rewards were a weapon and a trinket. The caster weapon has about 170-something spell power and the trinket has 38 haste and 149 spell damage over 20 sec on use. Still as not good as the scryer blade and the icon trinket, but the trinket at least, is definitely pretty sweet for a green item. This seems to suggest that my gear would probably get reset-ed pretty shortly into the game.

Few tidbits

• Learning first aid is back to the “traditional” manner, as in visiting the trainer and learn it from them instead of buying first aid book. I like that a lot. Learning master first aid costs 100g, and learning the Frostweave bandage cost 8g. Unlike in outlands, you can learn the new bandage right away, which I think it’s very nice.
• Some of the achievements are open. On E, I reached about 500 points of achievement, but still very low percentage in completion. Some of the achievements are awarded properly (exploration, skills, etc), but achievements from killing bosses in instances have not been awarded. I wonder if Blizz haven’t recorded such achievements quite yet.
• Mana regen during casting seems bugged right now, with it awarding 4 mps instead of my regular 60 something mps (I just realized that’s maybe because I don’t have my Meditation talented quite yet, but that still seems a bit low).
• The quests option when you first enter Northrend seems a bit sparse. It does opens up a bit after a few quests down the road.
• Your spellbook interface now has a new tab called glyph. Still not sure how to use that yet.

I know it’s a bit late for this big huzzah, but we just found out yesterday. Blame it on Corro that never checked his email. It turns out that one of his old friend (ex-roommate) works for Blizz now. And he was kind enough to remember how much Corro loves Blizz games. So, he sent us 2 keys.  Unfortunately we won’t be able to start until later tonight. For the sake of people who doesn’t want to be spoiled with beta information, we would be a big beta spoiler tag on the title (although the content itself may not exactly be an important spoiler).

I’ve read other people posted about this problem before. I also briefly mentioned my apprehension in my previous post. Say you have more than one level 70 characters. Although you probably like all of your characters, one of them bounds to be your favorite, aka, your main. But for some uncontrollable predicament, your other character may be more needed for your guild’s needs. Especially if your main happens to be a dps class and your other characters happen to be a tanking or a healing class. Note that this is a bit different than having to respec your character to fulfill other rolls.

So, this is my dilemma. I raid as shadow priest in our guild alliance. We are currently at SSC. Because of all the badges rewards and craftables, my next upgrade on this instance is not until Lady Vashj, which we won’t see until much much later. In the 10-men end, however, our guild (along with a few of people from our guild alliance) routinely tries to clear ZA. My shadow priest has been eyeing some upgrades from here, more notably the caster cloak, ring, and the hood if we are able to get Hex Lord Malacrass. However, due to the lack of tank in our guild (there are two other tanks in the making, one of them is our hunter’s alt where he prefers running as his hunter), I ended up having to bring my protection paladin as an off tank. This solves our problem of always starting our run late because of having to scout for an off tank in LFG channel (and all of them seems to want full clear).

Aside from running ZA and Kara, my protection paladin does not have a place in the 25 run. Besides, I do prefer running instances with my shadow priest instead. As a result, my paladin, after exhausting the badges reward, has no other clear upgrades and my shadow priest, won’t have any upgrade until a long while because they are “stuck” at their respective instances.

The only solution that I can think of is to pug ZA with my shadow priest. But trying to fit another run into 5-nights-raid-a-week is not very appetizing nor convenient. I could try putting down my feet and say that I want to do ZA with my shadow priest. But, that would be incredibly selfish and our guild would progress slower in ZA because of the constant rotation of off tank. Having to bring my shadow priest would force rotations in our dps roster too.

Maybe I just could not win.

Too busy to think of good and well-thought post.

I hate blatant favoritism.

So is the case with alliance guild drama.

How some people is just so lucky with loots simply boggles me.

Epic netherspite battle with 11 dead bodies at the end of the fight.

I accept the fact that I would never top the damage meter again.