You can’t go home again… can you?

After much soul searching, I couldn’t justify going Night Elf…the human racials are just so much better for both PvP and PvE. I made the original Erinys without even knowing that Priests had racials of their own beyond their race (I was watching Scooby Doo instead of reading the game manual whilst Mr Harpy installed) and went purely on looks. This time I’m trying to be a bit more grown up about the whole thing (maybe) and this is my compromise because I couldn’t quite make myself go Dwarf for fear ward.

I ended up making and reserving names for my Priest, Druid and Warlock, the first three characters I played in vanilla.

Mr Harpy’s work colleagues have a guild which we are going to join and we’ll see how it goes. Will definitely have to be more casual than it was the first time around, no more raiding at 4 am now.

I think I’m excited but also a little bit scared because what if it is rose tinted glasses and I hate it. I know I’ll miss transmogrification, I hated odd combinations of clothes and there are definite utility aspects as well, such as pets/toys etc all going into a collection rather than a bag that would be handy to have.

On the plus side though, I can’t wait to visit Southshore, to quest through Duskwood when Stitches roamed the highways and to get my sprite darter hatchling in Feralas. To sit fishing by Loch Modan when it was still deserving of the title of “Loch” and to hang out in Auberdine.

 

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.

Arathi Blizzard: Brawling in the Snow

I’ve really enjoyed this week’s PvP Brawl. As a healer, the lowered visibility is great until of course six enemy melee pile out of the fog. It’s also created much faster paced games with less defending and a lot more aggressive play which suits me. Our last two games we ended up winning 5 nil as the ice over the water and the blizzard seems to encourage people to put aside the “now defend” attitude and get out there, trying to take bases before the enemy can respond. We also had some great 2 and 3 versus 4 to 5 fights using the visibility to hide from the enemy especially casters and of course playing the bait to drag any defenders away from the flag so it can be tagged behind their backs works really well with the weather conditions.

Plus and perhaps most importantly it has snowmen!

In the winter, it would be fun if this was a permanent option from the list as I think it could quickly become my go to map. Playing this week also got my second Priest exalted with the Arathi Basin faction which was her 55th exalted faction. It’s always nice when you get a reputation achievement whilst standing over the corpse of an annoying Paladin who seems to have made it his afternoon’s work to follow you around smacking you in the face with a large sword. Holy Priests definitely feel like they are in a great place in PvP at the moment, lots of options and decent damage, for example I’m almost 100 percent sure I would have beaten a warrior in a 1 versus 1 had not Mr Harpy’s mage and a passing Demon Hunter turned up to rescue me

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.

The Call of the Scarab

I really wanted to like these mini holidays but having tried out the Call of the Scarab, I’m struggling to see the point. Yes, there are now lots of people in Silithus again but other than that, it seems to lack focus. It was good to run AQ 40 again as I hadn’t been back for a while but it just highlighted the difference between the game then and the game now. Having to wait for Shield Wall cooldowns when we were pushing for server first kills on Princess Hurhuran is vastly different to two-shotting her on an undergeared level 95 Disc Priest. That said killing C’thun did put a smile on my face even though he went down in the duration of the average sneeze.

I also got around to collecting the Oracle set so Sprout now looks like this:

She also got exalted with the Cenarion Circle as an added and unexpected bonus. I gained almost a full level (95 to 96) from arrival by doing the world quests for the two AQ dungeons and also by doing a couple of the quests for the giant bugs which spawn in the hives which is decent gain, especially when compared against the alternative…. questing in Draenor.

Silithus is an underappreciated zone, I know I had forgotten how pretty it can be under a full moon so perhaps reliving our past glories was a sensible choice for the first micro holiday, I just wish that the Call of the Scarab had slightly more to do as part of it. The race to show your flag at the gates seems to be region wide too and I think we’re outnumbered, certainly we’re outnumbered in terms of people who are interested in taking part. I like being able to wear the Twilight cultist outfit over your own regular clothes, but a transmogrification set that could be farmed and/or sold on the auction house so that people unable to log wouldn’t miss out would have been better (I want the hood!).

It will be interesting to see how the other micro holidays play out and whether participation in them increases or decreases across the year. So far in terms of providing an interlude in leveling for a character high enough to level to solo the dungeons and do the world quests without dying, it’s been fun but my two level 110’s have found it a bit lacklustre, possibly because pvping over “lol sand” didn’t excite me at the time.

Quick thoughts on Battlegrounds

Since hitting level 110, I’ve been doing quite a lot of battlegrounds. Yes, Demon Hunters can quite frankly go and do something obscene with their ranged interrupt and the next Retribution Paladin who thinks it’s in any way amusing to /lick or /kiss whilst stabbing me with their Blade of Justice can just take a running jump off the Lumber Mill (with or without the aid of mind control) but over all it’s been a lot of fun.

Healing versus one or two is okay, healing versus 3 or more hitting you a lot less so. I found myself missing Spectral Guise and Fear because whilst Mind Control is great one versus one or even in larger scale combat when no one is hitting you (won the Lumber Mill quite a lot by throwing their non Priest healer off the cliff) it’s pretty useless when every melee in range is thumping you. I’m currently talented in Shining Force for more throwing power and it definitely boots people a long way if you’re up high when you cast it but unfortunately is pretty useless if you aren’t up a cliff or a tower or standing next to the edge of the map because everyone just bounces right back at you.

My new favourite PvP toy is the tailoring cloth chests. Having colour coordination is so important if you want to win. It’s even better when you convince your entire raid that they want to dress as Dalaran Citizens.

The Honour talents annoy me slightly though, I don’t like the idea that I have separate talents for one area of the game which don’t apply in others but that’s minor compared to the annoyance of having to farm Honour to gain abilities like Inner Focus which I’ve previously had although to be fair, if it still makes “that” noise…the Priest Class Hall would be a nightmare if you could use it anywhere outside PvP.

I have a definite hankering after the various Prestige rewards so in-between hoping for a nerf of interrupts (or a limit to how many melee are allowed to hit me at any one time), I will be hanging out at the Lumber Mill, taking towers in Alterac Valley, lurking by the edge of the map in EotS and because Holy Nova is so going to get nerfed soon bouncing in the middle of Kotmogu holding an orb whilst confetti-ing people to death.

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 Weapon for All Seasons – The Three Priest Artifacts

I’m now level 105 and possessor of all three Artifact weapons available to Priests. My experiences of the quests might be slightly different to most Priests as I did all three quest chains as Holy but if I had to rate them, it would be as follows.

The easiest by far was Shadow. No annoying NPCs standing in burning floors, demon goop or anything else dangerous to their health. I also liked the outdoors element of the chain, where you could group up with other Priests if you wanted/needed. In fact, I think this was my favourite over all quest, even the dreadful “Scottish” accent of the Dwarf couldn’t ruin it. I love the snarky evil talking blade, it’s a shame it’s not a staff though or that it can’t be transmogrified into one as I’d love to use the Anathema skin.

Priest Specific spells needed: 1 – mass dispel although Holy Nova worked just as well at killing them.

Next on my list would be the Discipline artifact. Again I liked the fact that I could group up with another Priest on the outdoor elements and that it wasn’t all purely instanced. I’m possibly also slightly biased by the fact that my experience with the Beta was a lot harder (Thanks Azuregos…who clearly hadn’t forgiven me for killing him once a week for 18 months in vanilla and did nothing to help me during the middle part of the quest) than it was on live. I’m guessing if you are actually playing Discipline, you do the end part of the quest with a bit more finesse than my Holy Priest did but if it works, it works right?

Priest Specific spells used: 2 – levitate and mind control

 

Finally Holy, the first quest I completed and my least favourite of the lot. I hate Jace Darkweaver with a passion and sincerely hope if I ever have to group up with him again, he’s learnt to stay out of the fire by then. I think that’s a big part of my issue with the chain, how I can I be a hero if I need a motley bunch of minions to carry me to my artifact quest. Yes, I’m a healer and group part of play is a huge part of that but the Protection Warrior artifact weapon doesn’t exactly have you tanking for a party, the way that the Holy Priest quest has you healing people. I think that made it a bit bland compared to some of the other artifact quests I’ve done, for example the Assassination Rogue one.

Priest Specific spells used: 2 – levitate (because I could) and resurrection

All in all a lot of fun and provided a good break from questing/doing profession based things.

Totally Unnecessary Picture of Snow hanging with Azuregos