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.

A ghost Moose makes mount number 191

I want to like archaeology more than I do. In the real world, I love wandering around museums and ancient sites. Recently I saw the Westray Wife otherwise known as the Orkney Venus in the flesh or so to speak. Although I admit I expected her to be bigger than the fridge magnet version someone gave me but instead it turns out the magnet was to scale. In game though especially in Legion, it seems such a chore. I did enough digs to get the 600 bones I needed and then hightailed it out of Highmountain. Luckily enough it also gave me all of the Highmountain display items so now I have no reason to go back, no reason to dig there. I know I have discovered everything and that takes away the magic, takes away what I imagine archaeology is really about. That sense of discovery, of learning something that was once known but is now forgotten.

 

Spot: Saved!

I’d forgotten how brilliant Silverpine Forest and Hillsbrad were since they revamped the zones. Tansy seemed to zoom to level 35. I wasn’t sure whether I’d be able to save Spot at bang on level 35 but thought it was worth a try. As it happened, the answer was yes, level 35 is high enough to breach the wall of Theramore and to tame him.

As it turned out, this corner of the keep has no guards anywhere near and also did a good job of keeping my dognapping (sorry saving) from the eyes of passing Alliance.

Although even when I ventured out into the open, no one seemed at all taken aback by a small Goblin riding off with Spot. No wonder Theramore got destroyed given how lax about security they seemed to be.

Now to level to 110 for the Class Hall and to kill those Alliance peasants who failed to keep Spot (and Theramore) safe in PvP.

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.

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”.

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.

Dalaran Day Care

I really hope Ms Liddie is not Challe mark 2.

The pet cemetery near by and her self admitted need for wine does not bode well.

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).