Dispatches from the Frozen Wastes

The cold snows of Northrend are much more my thing than the Outlands were. In fact ive been pretty much blown away by the scenary so far.

Because im that kind of person, even before i got my beta key i had been working on a plan for launch and so naturally as soon as i was patched and ready to go, i put the plan into practise.

I logged my priest and excitedly portaled Stormwind, ive had a harbour fetish ever since i was a little girl and checking out SW’s new virtual one was top of the list. Even though i still cant quite figure out how the water gets from the sea to the canals, i was impressed. The port is huge, adding to the feeling of a huge military mission heading north. I rode around for a bit, taking it all in and then i spotted a flightmaster… yes thats right, you can take an airtour of the harbour. Ive been around 5 times now.

Another day, another beta patch

I havent really been able to test much yet, but here are my highlights of todays patch.

1. Nature’s Grasp is now a trainable spell and all ranks have been changed to 100% chance on getting struck. This coupled with the fact that roots are useable indoors is lovely. Its always been at least one point ive had to find before. Yes, i know its not a pve spell, but its so handy on trash in outdoor instances like ZA/MH and well you cant avoid pvp on a pvp server now can you.
2. *New Spell* Wind Shock: Instantly blasts the target with a gust of wind, causing no damage but lowering your threat, making the enemy less likely to attack you, and interrupts spellcasting and prevents any spell in that school from being cast for 2 sec. Blizzard made on good on their promise of a cheap interupt to replace the fact that we couldnt use rank 1 earthshock anymore. Its still on the global cooldown and shares the same cooldown as all other shocks but as a resto shaman, im primarily interested in being able to interupt and thats all.
3. New rank of Water Shield at 76. 100mp5 plus 400 mana when you crit or take damage should help out balance our mana now that we cant downrank.
4. Glyph of Levitate — Your Levitate spell no longer requires a reagent. Yay, ive jumped off too many things only to realise too late …… EEK NO LIGHT FEATHERS.
5. Cooking: Critter Bites, Use Throw a critter bite to a critter to control it. I forsee endless fun chasing people around with squirrels. Definately a reason to level cooking.

Tamung the TNAK

In a bid for a change of pace we decided to try 2 manning Hellfire Ramparts this morning. I really wasnt sure how far a lv 64 enhancement shaman and a lv 64 prot warrior would make it, but we surpassed my expectations. The trash went smoothly as did the first boss, although he failed to drop anything useful (cloth spell damage shoulders which went into my healing/spell damage set).
We bravely fought on to the 2nd boss and thats when disaster struck. Our battlegroup fell over… so we will have to go back another day, but all in all, it went pretty well.

In other Orc related news, we have completely finished Zangamarsh, half done Terrokar and started doing Nagrand. I also got ganked twice, once in Nagrand by a horrible little dwarf rogue who we could have killed whilst he was afk destealthed and once in Terrokar by a 70 hunter, also a dwarf, who if he hadnt potted or run through a pile of mobs i would have killed. If if if, but it certainly seems that dwarves hate orcs… i feel victimised.

Everything including the kitchen sink

Ive always had an inventory problem. My bagspace seems to vanish overnight as soon as I get beyond lv 15 or so. I just cant bring myself to throw stuff away, after all it might come in useful for something, leveling an alt perhaps (murloc eyes), farming rep (bone fragments), skilling up a profession (solid stone). But how much of this stuff do I actually need, when it comes down to it, very little.

Crucial and necessary items that should never be thrown away.

Number 1
The pvp trinket, otherwise known as the Medallion of Horde/Alliance. Whilst this comes in a variety of flavours, 5 minute, 2 minute with 20 resilience and 2 minute with 45 resilience they all at the end of the day, do the same thing.

Use: Removes all movement impairing effects and all effects which cause loss of control of your character.

Whenever I level a new toon, its the first thing I spend my honor on. Easily optained, this remains in one of my trinket slots all the time whilst Im outdoors as you never know when someone of the opposing faction will decide to be a jerk. Obviously if you are on a pve server its slightly less of a “must have” but in recent times its also been useful in numerous pve encounters, most namely Rage Winterchill and Archimonde. In fact its been so useful on those and other encounters than some high end PvE guilds have been making their members/applicants farm one.

My verdict: Dont leave Shattrah without one.

Tick Tock

So I was doing my early morning forum browsing and I spot this:

With the release of Wrath of the Lich King approaching, we wanted to provide you with some important information. In preparation for the expansion, we will be issuing a new content patch in the coming weeks. Much like the patch made available shortly before The Burning Crusade’s release, this content patch is designed to bridge current game content with that of the expansion and will contain some exciting changes and additions. We have outlined some of the larger features scheduled to release with the patch below:

New class spells and talents. Ok good as long as they fix them all first. Its going to be interesting trying out new things in pvp situations as well as getting to play with the characters I couldnt copy to the Beta. Although I would hate to be trying to kill KJ or get Gladiator rank with all the new talents/spells throwing the balance yet again.
Barbershops in capital cities. Great, Ive really come to dislike my nelves hair. Both my priest and druid have the same long straight hair which seems really unpractical, especially for the druid, what with all the shapeshifting.
Zeppelin towers outside of Orgrimmar and Tirisfal Glades. Not too exciting
Stormwind Harbour. Yay, its my new favourite place to hang out so doing on live when talking to guildmates etc will be great.
In-game guild calendar. Good, our guild are currently trying to make us use GEM which i hate.
Hunter pet skill revamp. Cool, not too excited about that, primarily because I slack at leveling hunters. Mine is just too low level to get anything fancy.
New profession: Inscription. Now the dilemma, do I drop any of my 70s professions for this and if so which one. We currently dont know huge amounts about inscriptions which makes it hard to decide. For example, you can make scrolls, which arent BoP, a teleport thingie which works like astral recall returning you to your Hearthstone location on a 15 minute cooldown which is BoP and of course glyphs. On the whole though im fairly excited about this and will at least farm a lot of low level herbs even if i just sell them when the patch goes live.
Two brand-new Arenas featuring challenging new layouts, terrain hazards, and moving obstacles:
Orgrimmar Arena.
Dalaran Arena. I always get the ruins of lordereon so im not too bothered about this. But on the whole more content means more choice which is a good thing.

Over all, as Im currently neither a hardcore PvPer or PvEr, im pretty happy with all of it.

As mentioned above, this is not a comprehensive list, just some of the major highlights. We’ll post the full patch notes as soon as they’re available. Regarding Inscription, please note that all Burning Crusade players will be able to select Inscription as one of their two professions and level up to a skill level of 375 with it. Upon the release of Wrath of the Lich King, players who purchase and install the expansion will be able to continue leveling in Inscription and the other professions beyond 375.

then I panicked. I really thought we had more time….

An Eagle Eye View

Even after playing for so long, it seems there are still things for me to discover. Despite having leveled 4 alliance toons to 70, Ive never noticed the eagle before.

Alterac Valley Blues

Ive always loved AV, right from the start when it was a 24 hour zergfest, when casting even the tinyest heal at Snowfall graveyard was guarenteed to get you splatted. Ive played it happily through its many manifestations, when breaking into the Horde base was a slow painful process, one death at time, but what never ceases to amaze me is the fact that despite it being ingame for so long, most people dont seem to understand how to play it.

Happy days are here again

There is a new beta patch on the test realm and my favourite note so far has to be:

Mace Specialization (Arms) no longer stuns enemies, and now generates 10 rage.

No more badly timed (from my perspective naturally) skilless stuns from nabs who dont have pummel or kick shortcutted. Obviously there might be maces with a stun effect as a passive but I can cope with that.

My second (yes I know this has been in since the beginning of beta) favourite thing is:

Ghostwolf works on water again.

They’re creepy and they’re kooky, Mysterious and spooky

It seems that the Addams family have relocated to the Howling Fjord. Have to say Im loving the look of the WotLK. The gothic, mad scientist look of the Undead area is just beautiful in slightly creepy fashion.

Mounts, mounts and more mounts, part 2

The Orclings finally hit 60. Its taken a while and now Im relieving how painful Hellfire is for 2 melee classes. Its half tempting to respec to elemental but my gear just isnt up to it at the moment.
In other news I got a spirit of competition on this toon as well, although it was about as far from the spirit of the Olympics as you can possibly get… zerging 11 alliance with 40 horde. Ah well, it helped us get our matching Frostwolf Howlers.