Of warlock trainers and fairytales

Having leveled a variety of characters, one thing that has always bugged me has been the disparity of training offered across the continents. Take priests for example, everyone loves a priest and thus you can walk into any of your faction’s capitials and find people willing to train you in the arts of light and shadow. Even Druids, those dubious types who spend more time frolicing around with fur on than doing anything useful, can increase their learning in 3 out of 4 capitials.

Then we come to Warlocks, ok I admit we aren’t most lawabiding citizens cup of tea, but neither are rogues. However when it comes to training, it seems that the Alliance of Kalimdor seem to suffer from the forlorn hope that if they pretend warlocks don’t exist, we will all vanish into the twisting nether. No trainers can be found within the leafy confines of Darnassus nor within the twisted metal of the Exodar. Ok, perhaps its a little understandable that demons make the Draenei a tad uncomfortable, I wouldnt necessarily want my wicked relatives showing up occasionally in a whiff of fire and brimstone either, but it wouldn’t hurt the Nightelves (much) to turn a blind eye to tiny encampment hidden away somewhere within their tree.

However, in the absence of warlock trainers within the Alliance settlements, remember that if questing in Kalimdor you don’t need to brave a sea journey in order to study. Ratchet, that truely dubious goblin town can along with several complelely seedy and no doubt warlock pleasing services offer you all the training you require.

Who wouldn’t want to train from this adorably evil looking gnome anyway? I think it would be worth traveling all the way from the Eastern Kingdoms just to have her impart her knowledge.

Shame they gave her a tower rather than a house with chicken legs though. When I was a little girl my favourite story was that of Baba Yaga, told to me by my mother, who in turn had learnt the story as a little girl from her grandfather. Thus as soon as I spotted this NPC, I was straight back to being a child again, curled up on my mother’s lap listening to her voice conjuring up the dark forest lit only by candles gleaming from within skulls. It may come as no surprise that I had nightmares involving being chased by a creepy little shack on chicken legs, I could hear them scratching at the dirt behind me as I ran but inspite of all that, I still loved being told that particular story at bedtime.

In short, remember if you are leveling a warlock in Kalimdor you can train in Ratchet.

I has a talbuk

Finally exalted with the Kurenai. Although my other priest (undead) is exalted with the Mag’har, I hadn’t noticed the non armoured white version before and I rather think I like it. Nagrand was so lovely and peaceful this morning, it really is one of the prettiest zones ingame.

I’m getting so excited about the patch, especially since I noticed on Warcraft Pets that the first pet accessable to Nightelves from the Argent Tournament is the cutest little tree. Also only really raiding one night a week is getting a bit boring, really looking forward to new and hopefully challenging content.

Yes, this post is purely an excuse for posting that screenshot, but its not my fault. Its 8am on sunday morning and I haven’t made it to bed yet.

A demon speaks – Gaklop’s take on the Friday Five

Todays attempt at the Friday Five is brought to you by Gaklop

The Imp uncurled itself from the bed and waved a “paw” in the general direction of the chair.

The Mistress is “indisposed” right now.. too much to drink last night, but I’ll do my best to answer your questions.

What color are your Mistress’s eyes?

A reddish shade of amber. If she’s being a hundred percent honest, she would admit that with each passing season, they become less amber and more like mine. However, being honest to anyone isn’t something which occurs to Madam that often, and being honest to yourself, well that sounds like a fools game even to me. I read somewhere that pets and their owners often become alike, so it can’t be that bad can it?

The demon looked up slightly hopefully.

Er what is your Mistress’s skin like? Does she have freckles, tattoos, or other noticeable markings?

A tattoo on her right shoulder, its tiny bunch of flowers that represents her family. She had it done whilst drunkenly sentimental. I think its pretty but if you try and tell her that, she throws things and swears. Whilst sober she pretends it isnt there. The only other distinguishing marks she carries are a series of horizonal scars on her lower back, the unfortunate conclusion of an early run in with authority in general and the SW guard in particular. She doesn’t like talking about that either, I think shes embaressed that someone whipped her, doesn’t really go with her selfpromoting image as an evil warlock. Either that or it was for something really lame like stealing flowers rather than summoning a doomguard in the orphanage which is what she claims it was for.

The Imp considered the matter for a moment before glancing back up.

Am i doing ok?

Absolutely fine. How does your Mistress smile?

She doesn’t. Glare yes, frown yes, but smile no. Smiling is for happy people, not those who consort with demons, thats what she says. Although I’ve seen her smile sometimes usually when there is fire involved, but if she catches you looking she looks stern straight away.

All the time, his gaze darted around the room, paying particular attention to the door of the ajoining room.

How does your Mistress carry herself when walking around? What is her posture like?

Arrogant in public, after all, warlocks have something to prove right. In private though, her shoulders slump back a little and her haughty air dispates. If you promise not to tell..

the demon leaned in, whispering

I think she pretends to be arrogant, I mean shes not that bad for a warlock. I’ve heard all kind of horror stories, demons being sacrificed regularly, turned into shields and used for all sorts of depraved pleasures. I don’t want to go into details, its enough to make a Imp blush. So all in all, I think shes not as bad she tries to paint herself.

Describe your mistress’s hands.

The Imp looked quizzically for a second.

Short nails, the opposite of mine. Long fingers, which are good for incantations. Always traces of blood and other such things under the fingernails, in our line of work completely cleaning up is impossible. I can smell it on her, that slightly metallic flavour of other creatures blood mixing with that wildflower perfume she insists on wearing. She tries to make me wear it too you know, says I smell of rotten eggs. Pffff, humans.

The demon looked indignant. Then a sudden noise from the next room had him cartwheeling in panic.

You need to go, if she finds you here she’ll banish me and probably set you on fire, shes not a morning person at the best of times and hungover…..

Nerves getting the better of him, he lapsed into demonic as he ushered the visitor from the room.

Semi Afk musings

Random thoughts are random.

• Glyph of Hymn of Hope — Your Hymn of Hope lasts an additional 2 sec. (Old – Your Hymn of Hope provides 3 times the normal amount of mana per time, but its duration is 50% shorter.) –  So rather than making a glyph improve an ability, lets figure out the one thing that people hate about it, in this case the fact that you are standing around doing nothing for 8 seconds and design a glyph that makes it worse.
• The sea turtle mount. It looks way too cartoony and I can’t really see the point of it other than posing at the flightpoint in Dalaran. You can’t fish from its back and why would anyone with access to an epic flying mount  wish to swim at 133 percent when they could fly over the waves at 280 percent. Now a small fishing boat that you could fish from and sail around from pool to pool would be awesome. Naturally it would have to be a multi passenger mount, 2 would be ideal but I would settle for 1. Mounted towards the rear it should have some kind of keg attached, so you and your passengers could always grab a cold drink and perhaps a fish basket, where you could place stacks of fish to save on bag space til you made it back to port.
• The Immortal mark 2 or the Ulduar version. I can’t help but think its a bit dumbed down. Doing it on a boss by boss basis makes it so much easier than having to survive a whole reset and yes, it will lessen drama and frustation when on the last boss someone manages to suicide in a completely stupid fashion but I liked the challenge of trying to do perfect runs.
• Priest T8 Healer 4P Bonus (Class: Priest) — Casting Power Word: Shield also grants you 250 spell power for 5 sec.   –  Yes its an improvement on the datamined 15, but not by much in my book. As a holy priest, my four piece is basically a really expensive spell power trinket that only lasts 5 seconds… its pretty hard to get excited about that. Yes on fights with lots of AoE damage incoming predictably you could go for shielding yourself and then casting a PoH with extra ummph and of course 10 percent more crit from the 2 piece so it will have its place, just a situational one. But when I compare it to both the resto druid and resto shaman, both of which enhance class defining abilities (hots in the case of the former and chain heal for the latter) I feel a bit underwhelmed, as neither the druid or shaman set bonuses are at all situational. Plus, the druid one is gorgeous looking with lots of tiny little detail.
• The arena sets on the other hand are all hideous
• Leveling casters at low level is unbelievably painful. 3 dots and a shadowbolt and thats half my little warlock’s mana gone. Luckily I have my little semi afk renew bot trustily by my side. Shame I keep running him into walls and getting him stuck on random fences though.
• Voidwalkers make really bad tanks at low levels. Wanding can out aggro him on single target mobs, imagine what packs are like. I spend more time tab targeting and organising him than I do actually dpsing.
• Why is there 2 quests for Horde warlocks to get their succubus, one starting in Ogrimmar and sending you around the Barrens and Stonetalon, the other starting in Undercity and requiring slightly more trekking than the former, a trip to Arathi and to Silverpine. Yet gnomes and humans have to make their way to the Barrens, always a fun place to hang out as a lv 20 alliance on a PvP server.
• Westfall has really amazing skies at night, they seem so velvety. Just like being in the Canadian prairies, obviously without the evil harvest mechanicals.

• General Chat is amazing. How can so many people spend so much time debating nothing. For the last two days the same group of people have been fighting over whether multiboxing is legal or not, with all kinds of wonderfully random arguments supplemented by attacks on each others parentage, gender and sexual preference.
• All flasks recipes will now create 2 flasks for the same amount of ingredients but now last 1 hour instead of 2. – Have to say I hate this change. I’m an alchemist so I loved popping a 4 hour flask on and just forgetting about it. Now I know I will have to refresh my flask at least once during a raid, probably more on progress stuff which personally I find annoying.

Clara and the Ambusher

The forest of Elwynn seems so idyllic, lush pastures untouched by the ravishes of war. Both people and wildlife wander freely, still going about their daily businesses, fruit is still farmed, horses still shod. However if the passerby, hurrying perhaps to Stormwind or the amber meadows of Westfall were stop for a second and have a closer look would they perchance see something sinister lurking underneath the canopy of green.

Every day Clara Charles wanders down to the well to draw fresh spring water and every day, something waits, stealthed, a blade drawn for her.  Which naturally raises the question, what could this innocent if not slightly vacant looking blonde have done to deserve this? She doesn’t fight or scream, merely succumbs to her fate as if its to be expected. Does that mean a guilty conscience lurks behind that placid facade? Did she once work as an SI.7 assasin, inflitating and slaughtering Defias by the hundred, that would perhaps explain why this Ambusher seems so set on drawing blood. Perhaps his motive is more personal, a lover scorned or left jilted at the altar. Could it be as simple as a quarrel over water rights? Possibly but the well is unguarded, the Defias could easily steal as much as they wanted when its untended.

I suppose we will never know for sure, but this little pantomine plays itself out daily, the hunter and the hunted meeting down by the well. Personally I like to think that once upon a time, in happier days two young lovers used to meet down by the well, sitting by the benches and talking whilst sharing a glass of sparkling spring water. Now, sworn enemies they re-enact their courtship with entirely different aims in mind. Where once their lips would kiss, now a knife, so gently and so quietly caresses her where once his hands did roam.

Today, at least however, the play came to a slightly different end. Clara was rescued by the Stormwind Chapter of the Azerothian Society of the Preventation of Cruelty to Slightly Vapid Human Females.

101 things to see and do

Take the flight around Stormwind Harbour.

No, it doesn’t serve any real purpose. Its total fluff and thats what makes it so awesome.  Mr Ironwing and his team of rather bored birds will take you out for a spin completely free of charge, you get a closer look at the lighthouse, to fly over the shipbuilders all working hard and to see all the little details from the air.

Considering it only takes a few minutes, its definately well the worth the effort  next time you are passing Stormwind. Obviously its marginally more tricky for  the Horde, but since its free, all you have to do is run a lv 1 human to the  harbour.

I admit to being a little biased however, as I already find the harbour one of the prettiest places to hang out and relax in. In fact, if there was ever to be playerhousing introduced, I think I would happily be saving up for a waterfront property overlooking the docks. With your morning Honeymint tea you could sit on the cobbles just outside the front door watching all the hustle and bustle. New convicts arriving, under armed guard. Brave little adventurers setting sail for dangerous new lands and young Nightelves arriving for the first time in Stormwind.

Link to the first post in the series.

Herbs for breakfast, lunch and dinner

Alts are a funny thing. Mine tend to come to me in dreams, complete with names and personalities clammering to be made. Naturally some shout louder than others, in this particular case, loud enough to wake the dead. Even with my eyes closed, I knew exactly how she looked and as I dreamt, her story played out in front of me.

So, introducing Teasel and Cilantro, wannabe gankers. My evil little warlock is on the left and on the right is the Gnomeling’s little priest. After all, every warlock needs her very own healer right? The funny thing is we both made the characters completely separately and yet we ended up with the same face.

Flying High

Another day, another rep complete. I always liked these flying bugs, not too big, not too flappy, just about the right size in fact.

On a side note, its now Twilight Vanquisher Erinys, or at least it would be if I didn’t hate the whole concept of titles. It was nerve wracking to say the least, I have always hated content I wasn’t there for the wipes on, prefering to learn with everyone else so if you make a stupid mistake, at least five or six others will have made similar ones. However it went without a hitch, I dodged every flame wall (got to love DBM yelling “RUN AWAY LITTLE GIRL”) and managed not to stand in any void spawns.

Thursdays Thoughts

The tier 8 set bonuses are out. I originally intended writing a really whiny qq post about how much the priest ones sucked. Then common sense kicked in and I decided the four piece really has to be a place holder so for the time being I’m holding on to my really bitter thoughts about whoever came up with that idea.

• Priest T8 Healer 2P Bonus — Increases the critical heal chance of your Prayer of Healing by 10%.
• Priest T8 Healer 4P Bonus — Casting Power Word: Shield also grants you 15 spell power for until cancelled.

The 2 piece is ok, although I would have prefered it on pretty much any heal bar Prayer of Healing. Prayer of Healing is too situational and too much of a mana hog to be spammed out all over the place. Which is probably why they put the crit on that spell rather than any of the more used ones (however, priests who now need lots of crit for mana regen, do get the lowest amount of any of the crit based healing class from talents), either that or Ulduar is going to be another Sunwell in terms of AoE damage. Although whilst raid buffed in my current gear I’m sitting around 27 percent crit as is, add 10 percent to that and 40 percent crit on Prayer of Healing shouldn’t be too hard to reach. Which makes the glyph of Prayer of Healing more tempting as well increasing PoH’s desirability as your go to AoE heal assuming you get to stand still whilst casting.

The four piece on the other hand is hardly exciting even if we assume that 15 is missing a zero. Looking at our raid makeup for tier 8 content, it looks like we will be running with at least 1 disc priest in every raid, who naturally will be doing the bulk of the shielding, so I don’t really want to be in the position of casting a shield on myself every so often in order to grab a bit more spell power. Duration is also an issue, its unlikely to be as long as the shield is active as that will really vary depending on whom you cast it on. Suddenly shielding the tank would become pointless as one hit from a raidboss could knock it off, but shielding yourself 30 odd yards away who is taking no damage would be equally pointless but obviously for the opposite reason. Do you either use PW:Shield for its mitigation purposes or as a spell power trinket? If its until cancelled, then you would shield yourself as soon as you logged in and spend the rest of the day running around with the extra spellpower so that seems unlikely too. I really wish they wouldn’t release stuff until they had the numbers accurate or at least the mechanics sorted out and if thats the correct figure/wording I’ll be growling in a corner somewhere all day.

Which leads to my big issue at the moment. Priests are the only healing class with 2 trees which whilst having the same role in raids, i.e. the prevention of deaths are so very different in their spell usage and methods for preventing said deaths. Which means every set bonus we get things which are fairly lame for at least one spec and in some cases both. Given that Holy and Disc really are very different, both in regards to the spells within the trees and the raid roles to which they tend to be assigned, I really wish that we could have 2 set bonuses, one for each spec. Obviously only one of the two could apply at any one point in time so it would have to linked to your current talents, but that way, we all stand a chance of getting something tasty, like for example the Prot warrior/Resto druid ones which seem fairly overpowered and spec defining.

More cheerfully, it seems the new incarnation of Divine Hymn is completely overpowered and fully deserves its 6 minute cooldown. I’ve seen screenshots from the PTR (which I’m too lazy to download the current build of) showing 17k crits. Yay, but does this mean Tier 8 Hard mode content is balanced around having mulitple priests using some kind of Divine Hymn rotation? As much as I want to be overpowered, having a smart ability which can basically heal half a raid to full seems if I’m being a bit honest, a little over the top perhaps. Obviously we will have to wait and see, but in a guild like mine, where most of our healers are in fact priests…… trivial much?

Mitts is now half way through lv 54. We spent 2 hours this morning running around Felwood and Winterspring, every single rare spawn was up and we saw a grand total of 5 people. No competition for any mobs, no threat of being ganked but somehow it was just too creepily quiet.

Winterspring, empty or not, is still one of the prettiest zones in game.

Friends with the Mushroom Men

What a wonderful thing a high population server is, no more trying to drag the gnomeling around the Underbog for shiny blood red flowers. Just a quick trip to Stormwind, and 100g later, I’m exalted with the mushroom people. They liked me so much, they entrusted me with a baby sporebat and one of their awesome fungi tabards.