Everything changes!

For Christmas, please God, give me a talking Murloc and change my ISP into a nicer lot of people. kkthxbai.

Ok so, I have been slack. Sorry. I have been enjoying myself with WOTLK and a couple of RL dramas that I just didn’t even think to update anything – anywhere. Add to my ISP woes (which has been there ever since what, June and still remains unresolved), I have a right!

Firstly, I have switched servers on one of my 3 main priests. With the change in jobs, I would have virtually no time to play as per American raid times. The question was which server? I really didn’t know. In the end, I chose to join a server where a couple of real life friends are, and crossed my fingers for the best.

I guess I will always remain a hordie – draenei was just so not me that I couldn’t get myself going.

That all said though, I recognised some people may wonder why I have that many priests – and all heading towards the holy tree (or already are there). Well, nerfed or otherwise, I have always been a healer through games. I find that hard to change now, and swatting flies with swords (or other weapons) just don’t interest me. I find it extremely challenging to be a healer, and now that we all can’t just easily sit back as much anymore (according to other souls), I really welcome it.

With WOTLK, there’s alot of new things to be seen and experienced. One of the biggest things that affected me as a priest the most were:

• The change in Spirit vs mp5: I believe the change hasn’t affected much other healing classes (healadins are still screwed), however the benefits in Spirit now pretty much made mp5 useless.
• Change in racials/uniqueness: Personally, I really didn’t care much for the uniqueness of each race. Call me stupid or what not, this change didn’t hit me hard enough to miss anything. rather, I am glad to have obtained Hymn of Hope, different as it maybe from when I first used it as a Draenei.
• New Talent Trees: This one was the biggest confusion of my life, for many reasons. As some theorycrafting has suggested – here, here and here and more – having a 14/57/0 talent tree is probably the best raid healing spec to go. The thing is, while i respect some of their opinions, especially elitist jerks, I can’t fathom the need to chuck 57 points into holy and only 14 into discipline.Futhermore, while I understand there’s a change now in tanks’ threat generation, I am still not confident enough to lose silent resolve entirely. In these 2 days that I have been playing with groups in easy instances, the amount of threat generated by me is weirdly enormous. So I’m settling on this talent tree until I can see what raiding looks like. and of course, for the mental agility. then again, the tanks I have been with, bar one, have been full of fail.
• Prayer of Mending now generates threat. Previously, one of my ways of “helping” the tank build threat was to throw PoM up and then fade so as to lessen my threat. Looks like that aid just went out of the window.
• Spellpower now covers both bonus spell damages and bonus heals. The only bad thing I can think of is idiots who would try and snatch an “obviously for heals” gear for themselves with some really reasonable excuse.

I know huh, “welcome to WOTLK, Ani, like a whole month later”.

Funny thing is, I have stopped missing flying around by myself just. For the endless questions though, here’s the info:

You can’t fly in Northrend until you are 77 and have acquired Cold Weather Flying, at a wonderful cost of 1000 gold. The trainer is in Dalaran, right opposite the FP. I can’t wait to get my Flying Carpet though.

Levelling wise, as you have noticed, I am incredibly slow. RL shit aside, I just felt crap when I levelled with my main priest. Life can be so sad, you know, when you are friendless in the digital world. not.

Anyways, based on 2 different levelling scenarios and perspectives, I have come to the conclusion that:

• Borean Tundra is best done with friends. While there are just “few” (i guess people would debate that) group quests, the area is huge and quests require you to travel the whole distance, with plenty of quests and lots of aggro mobs every step of the way waiting to whale on you. and when I say friends, I don’t mean go pick up a random that will annoy the shit out of you in 5 minutes.it is not a very friendly environment with shitty people.
• Howling Fjord, while looking similar in size, has more “compact” quests. Quests don’t require you to travel too far from sources and are more easily managed, sans the stupid The Giants’ Run quest, which makes me want to bite whoever thought that quest line up – and it’s not because it makes you travel either.These quests are, in my humble opinion, more solo friendly.

Quest rewards wise, both sides of the new continent has something to offer in terms of gear. XP wise, Borean Tundra seems to offer more at the end of it (considering all 150 quests!!!) than Howling Fjord does. When I first did Howling Fjord, starting at 70, I walked into Dragon Blight at about 71.5, as compared to my second time where I started at 68, and enter Dragon Blight at about 72.

However, the better advice is, do both sides. For one, when you enter Dragon Blight, you would have a slight edge over the mobs. it’s only just a little bit, it is still worth it though.

Fun quests of note: The toy truck quest in Borean: Plains of Nasam and the quest where you insult a mob’s mother: Adding injury to Insult.

Let me just end this with a couple of pugging stories:

Priest: LF1m, Heroic Utgarde Keep!!!! PST!!!

Paladin, lvl 72: Can you wait?

Priest: (repeating request)

Paladin: CAN YOU WAIT?!?!

Priest: (repeat)

Paladin: Wait! and I will come tank for you!

Priest: ???

Paladin: Wait for me to level! and I will come tank for you!

*facepalm*

I ran Old Kingdom with my guild and a pugged Frost DK for a tank. Gear wise, the tank isn’t too bad. However, he can’t seem to keep threat, and insists he’s no AoE tank. Fair enough, some people just can’t the heat. However, he deemed it necessary to tell us, a group consisting of lvl 78 shaman and lvl 76 rogue, how to do each and every boss.

It was a relief to finally finish Old Kingdom, until 2 intances later, we met up again with the same Frost DK.

Who promptly decided to teach us every boss again.