Sparkle Barbie and the Argus Adventures

I’d avoided paying too much attention to information about the patch, not necessarily on purpose but the school holidays and Mr Harpy’s work schedule had me out of routine. I knew Argus was coming and that was that so logging on today and discovering that casting anything turns my serious Priest into Sparkle Princess Barbie came as somewhat of a shock.

It’s a shame she’s missed the Midsummer Fire Festival fire work display because this is a pretty good impression of a Roman Candle.

Turning the graphic settings down to the absolute minimum makes zero difference and I absolutely hate it. Now fair enough, I’m not good with change but I also struggle with flashing lights and motion sickness in a lot of games. Warcraft has been one of the few I can play for long periods of time without feeling an overwhelming desire to vomit everywhere but alas no longer. Dpsing is okay and so is single target healing but Aoe healing (the second screen shot is Prayer of Healing) and using Holy Nova has become a nightmare. Plus so much for being able to sneak around battlegrounds and rely on the fact that roughly half of the randoms in there can’t tell the difference between a fence post and a Holy Priest.

In terms of Argus play so far, Draenei spaceships make me nervous, Turalyon and Alleria make me feel like Mother of the Year (I haven’t “lost” my son for a thousand years yet) and I totally share Illidan’s feelings about destiny. Plus Turalyon comments on the Holy Priest weapon, telling you he’s glad to see it out of the hands of the Legion which given most Npcs completely ignore it gives him bonus points.

I also have a small girl crush on Divinius.

Training wings and learning to fly

In one fell swoop I gained mount number 190 and the ability to fly in the Broken Isles.

Flying almost seemed like an anti-climax. I couldn’t think of areas that I immediately wanted to explore, whose unreachable heights had me hankering to suddenly search them out. I even found myself still riding along the ground, having forgotten I could take to the skies almost as quickly as I’d earned the right.

Then I remembered, that area of Suramar which had long tempted me. I assume it’s part of the Nighthold raid but I still wanted to have a proper look at it because it’s on the map.

It’s definitely pretty and I love the fountain with it’s two modes of display but I’m still searching for that special spot. What has inspired me though is the rest of the Suramar quest chain, the idea of Elves putting aside petty quarrels even for a short while to work together against a common foe appeals to me as does sneaking around like a sparkling guerrilla. There is no denying that there is something very rotten at the heart of Suramar.

I might even make myself run the Nighthold when I reach the end of the chain, just to complete the zone of course.

Operation Save Spot

Ever since Theramore was blown to dust and purple ash, I’ve wanted to make a Horde Hunter to save Spot from the flames.  Over the years, I’ve made a couple but they haven’t made it to level 35 required to tame Spot and got abandoned on no longer touched servers. This time though, I’m committing. Spot is being tamed.

I hadn’t played through the Goblin start zone since it was first unveiled so decided to  make a Goblin plus having already abandoned a Troll Hunter and an Undead one I thought something new might motivate me. It took less than five minutes to remember why I hadn’t played a Goblin since that first run through. I am quite partial to the zebra prints and the neon lights but the rest of it felt too much like I was playing another game entirely.

However, she’s now level 16 and counting, in Silverpine making money doing unmentionable and down right dubious things for the Forsaken. Hang on Spot… Tansy is coming!

The Owl and Pussycat

The Owl and pussycat suffered some sort of transformation malfunction apparently and we Priests have adopted the unfortunate result. Oddly enough I have yet to see another Priest riding one.

What is Priestly about this I really don’t know. The glitter trail combines well with the one from my legendary and the one from my staff though. Having tried all three flavours, I think the Holy one is my preferred choice but it’s just a bit too big and unwieldy.

If you haven’t finished the 100 Demon killing quest on the Broken shore, the baby spiders in the Creeping Grotto count and can be aoe’d down really quickly.

Ever since I semi returned to blogging, I’ve been meaning to take part in Zeirah and Cinder’s blog challenge. I see it posted, think “ooh, I could write about x” and then proceed to forget about it for another week. This week however the topic is “Alts” and I’ve never managed to walk away from an Alt focused challenge yet.

Due to my anxiety when it comes to group content, these days I make a character, level it to the cap and then go and level the next one once I’ve run out soloable things to do. This means alts are not something I’m particularly short of. I’m not going to list all of them though because 50 would take up too much space and some of them barely get any playtime.

So in no particular order:

Priest

Snow was my original Priest, she slaughtered C’thun in his lair (well, okay she stood at the back healing a bunch of Night Elf warriors), she mind controlled Death Knights in the original Naxxramas and she stole Troll mojo from the dead in Alterac Valley. She’s dedicated to her faith, cold and a bit too fond of smiting the non-believers.

 

As soon as Gnomes discovered religion, I knew I needed a Gnome Priest. Sprout is hate-filled, fond of blowing things up and mindcontrolling people off cliffs, the bigger the drop the better. It’s debatable as to whether or not, she’s actually discovered religion or been infected by an Old God really.

 

My lowest level Priest, likes to pretending to be a Druid and exploring.

Warlock

Dorrie the little Witch, named for a series of books I loved as a little girl.

Erinys, my very first character on my own account. Crossroads camper, it’s a shame tents weren’t in the game at that time, Tarren Mill Terror and soul shard hoarder.

The name says it all. She hates everyone, especially human males.

 

Mage

Fire Mage, funeral rite enthusiast and cat lover.

 

Demon Hunter

 

Death Knight

Snow’s older deader sister.

Hunter

Hunter whose sole purpose is to “rescue” Spot the dog from the flames of Theramore by taming him.

My angry Gnome hunter who was made for mechanical pets but somehow decided that live (or at least alive at some point) pets were better than robot ones.

Druid

Harvest Witch, fortune teller and gardener. She likes nothing more than stealthing around the ruins of Gilneas tending to her roses.

My PvP resto Druid who needs to finish leveling.

My Troll, because everyone needs a Troll.

Monk

These are the characters that I spend the most time playing around with.

Favourite Places – Highmountain

The Stuff of Nightmares

I’m not sure which is worse. This

or this

Either way, I might be having nightmares tonight.

 

I got the Fal’dorei egg whilst doing my Withered Army Training tonight. On a unrelated note it seemed so much easier than previously, Mr Harpy kindly suggested that perhaps I’d just learnt to play but I’m erring more towards “they must have nerfed it”.

Heroic Efforts, Good Luck Raptors and “that” hit of Adrenaline

Running Black Rook Hold last night I finally figured out what stops me running dungeons like “normal” people. It’s not the healing aspect which is why I can heal in pvp with zero problems (other than I attract Horde like ladybirds to marigolds) and it’s not even the fear of falling to avoid standing in fire during combat. It’s stuff like this:

 

Brings me out in a cold sweat every time.

We’re now 5 dungeons down of the 8 available to us. If I had to rank them in order of my favourites it would go something like this:

• Halls of Valor
• Maw of Souls
• Black Rook Hold (too much trash)
• Eye of Azshara

The scoring criteria takes looks, easiness (for doing with 2 people) and general feel into account.

I can’t really place Darkheart Thicket because I haven’t done it on Normal, just on Heroic. With hindsight, it probably wasn’t the smartest Heroic to pick for running with just two people and it took us a couple of goes to figure out how we would deal with the nightmare/paranoia overlaps on the final boss. A paranoid tank and a silenced healer really doesn’t work well especially when there is only the souvenir raptor left undebuffed.

That feeling when the Shade of Xavius finally bit the dust was the same hit of adrenaline I used to get when raiding, that feeling which physically effects you with shaking hands. I could potentially get addicted to it again. I don’t mean raiding per se, but perhaps Karazhan isn’t the impossible dream I thought it was.

Slightly insanely the plan is now to see if we can finish running the other three dungeons we’re missing and before trying to complete everything on Heroic. Then perhaps this weekend actually branch out into playing with player controlled characters rather than just the souvenir raptor (awesome as he is).

A Learning Curve

I learnt several things yesterday. The first of those things is that I’m a terrible Mistweaver Monk.

I hadn’t really played her since the pre-patch which brought so many changes but either I haven’t properly looked through her spell book and am missing half a dozen useful spells or I’m doing something very wrong. I got my artifact and am only level 99 but it felt way harder than doing any of the three Priest artifact weapon chains.

Secondly I discovered there is a real dust problem in Dalaran. Having acquired the weapon, I felt my Monk needed a change of hair colour to match her outfit so wandered off to the Barbers. Having accidentally clicked on the rug, I came out to discover an infestation of bunnies running around.

Then when sitting down to take a screenshot of said bunny, I noticed a floating Pepe hanging around next to me.

All in all, a rather lucky day made perhaps even more important by the fact that it was World Suicide Prevention Day yesterday and that it’s nothing short of a miracle that I’m still here to write about the joy of something so insignificant as finding a little orange bird in a video game. I know I’ve talked about depression before but one thing I haven’t admitted is that my postnatal depression almost killed me. I remember those feelings of emptiness, of believing that my son wasn’t real and the despair… I could have drowned whole continents. Yet whenever I tried to seek help I was dismissed, patronised or told that there was something fundamentally wrong with me because of the “unnatural” feelings I had. In the end, I reached a point where I felt not only was my life pointless but that I was already blighting my son’s. Killing myself before I did him any more harm seemed the only logical solution.

My life was saved by the kindness of a passing stranger* and so I’d like to pass that on, please if you’re feeling depressed and that you don’t see any point going on, talk to someone. The one lesson I’ve learned in all this madness is that the way we see ourselves is very often warped and twisted like a fairground mirror and that to get a true picture, we need to see ourselves through someone else’s eyes.

*(and also the amazing support of Mr Harpy who never gave up on me)

Squatters Rights

As part of my Class Hall chain, I was invited to Light’s Hope Chapel. The “Class Hall” envy set in approximately three seconds after arrival.

It seems that Priests are just like vampires, once across the threshold, we’re virtually impossible to get rid of.

Snow and her Moonkin/Feral Druid experiment pet creature are staying put and from my Underbelly experiences, it’s going to take a lot of Paladins to evict her.