Assassin's Creed

I told myself that Assassin's Creed was not going to affect my dailies today.

I lied.

I am never going to be geared for heroics >.<

Shared Topic: Confessional

Blog Azeroth proposes a new topic for bloggers to discuss every week. This week is courtesy of Mataoka of Sugar and Blood.

What is one thing, just one thing, you did that was pretty awful in Azeroth, that you wish you could get some kind of redemption or forgiveness for, or even just get off your chest?

This was a hard one for me. If it's not already apparent, I try to be very disciplined in my interactions with other players in Azeroth. So, I've spent most of this week trying to remember something horrible that was my fault. I've managed to unearth two.

1. A while ago, I was in this great social, family guild. We raided a little, but were never had a consistent group and were; therefore, never very good. The draw for this guild was the family element, not the progression... I made the mistake of inviting my Type A, progression driven boyfriend to put his alts in the guild, since it was where I hung out on mine. Worse, I made the mistake of inviting him on a couple of runs with the guild group.

Ultimately it ended with him cussing out the weaker members of the group. He was kicked out, and I left with him, primarily out embarrassment.

Looking back on it, I feel bad that I didn't apologize for the drama I caused, by proxy of inviting him to the guild and the raid. I always knew that it was not the right fit for him.

2. The second incident is pretty similar to that, except it happened between myself and a friend. Honestly, I don't even remember what the fight was about, but it ruined our friendship and I wish I could take it back.

Mr. Wiggles, I Choose You.

Unless you've been under a rock for the past few months you will know about the new pet battle system introduced with Mists of Pandaria. Well, I did my first pet battle this weekend.

For those of you not in the know: the pet battle system allows players to use previously non-combat pets to battle each other using a turn based battle system. You level your pets, capture new pets, battle other players and work towards being a "Pet Battle Master." Does that sound familliar? It should. If there were gym badges it would be Pokemon.

If you thought WoW was addictive before... just wait until you pet battle. I made the mistake of trying it out before I hit 90 and my priest has been sitting at 86% through level 89 all weekend because I could not stop long enough to do some quests. I did; however, capture enough pets to put me over 150. I've been systematically going through zones and capturing all of the unique pets I need in each zone. I'm more interested in capturing them all than I am on the quality at the moment.

Also: I cannot wait to catch a Bandicoon... and call him Socks, that's just how much The Jade Forest still resonates with me

My Collection : [X]
Warcraftpets.com Guide to Pet Battles : [X]

Warcraftpets also has a handy tool to display wild pets by zone, which I have been using.

Shared Topic: The Rules of Me

Blog Azeroth proposes a new topic for bloggers to discuss every week. This week is courtesy of Mataoka of Sugar and Blood.

The Rules of Me: What are your personal rules you wish others would know about you?

When I first read this topic, I honestly didn't think I really had personal rules... and then I thought on it for a minute and remembered the "Code of Conduct" I referenced in my last shared topic and realized that the "Code" I was proposing is tied very closely with my own personal rules of how I would like to be treated by other players. The more I think about it the more I realize how high strung I really am.

Mataoka said in her post, of her rules, "These are not hard and fast rules, by any stretch--take them as suggestions." In my case, I feel like my personal rules, are not suggestions. They are what I use when I interact with others and detail my expectations of them too. Control freak or what?

I feel like most of my issues and rules come out when I'm dungeoning, because I think that the dungeon finder brings out the worst in all of us, so most of mine are going to be written with direct application to dungeoning, that was the only way I could form the feelings into words.

1. If I need help with something, I will ask for it. In return I will not offer unsolicited help. - I've been running a lot of dungeons lately. My significant other has recruit-a-friend so I play the account linked with his and I almost exclusively heal. Lately I've been getting a lot of groups with DPS who seem to think it's part of their job to tell me that they need heals. This only succeeds in pissing me off. If you need heals, I guarantee you, I know that.

2. If you want to talk to me, approach me. I'll like it. - I'm quiet, shy, and unassuming. It's hard for me to be the first one to talk. I love it when people make the first move at friendship, so I don't have to.

3. Friends in WoW or friends on the internet are real friends. Related: People on the internet are still real people. Be nice.

4. When in a dungeon group, know your role, please, act within the parameters of that role and be spec’d appropriately.

5. If I'm standing on a node, fighting, that node belongs to me, don't take it. In return, I will not take nodes from you.

6. Be courteous in dungeons. I'm not there to cuss you out, don't do it to me either. Mistakes happen, wipes occur. There's no need to call someone out. If they're horrible, kick them. If it's the first misstep in an otherwise good group, let it go.

7. I don't usually loot in dungeons. Sorry but telling me I have to loot skinnable stuff makes me want to even less. I'm stubborn, probably to a fault.



I probably took this way too seriously. Oh well.

Leveling Discipline

I've said it before, I was not super excited for Mists and the crux of it was really because of the state of priest healing in early Cataclysm. When Cataclysm hit Disc was in its prime and bubble-spam was in demand. In raid my character felt powerful, and competitive against other healers. Heroics... they were a joke if you had a decent group and if you had a good healer mistakes were survivable.

When Cata hit my powerful, awesome priest became what felt like a weak, useless waste of pixels. Forget raiding, I couldn't even do Cata heroics confidently. I understand that Blizzard was trying to reintroduce crowd control as a necessary factor in both group make-up and the thought process behind pulling as well as bring back the idea that mana is a limited resource and that one needed to think before healing. In theory, I'm actually ok with that model. The problem is, in practice the damage tanks took was still spiky and that priests took the nerf to mana efficiency and spell efficacy too hard. If my groups did not have enough crowd control to give the tank one mob at a time it was almost a guaranteed wipe, and if not my mana efficiency was so bad that I needed to stop for water every pull. If a dps pulled aggro, they died. End of story. I did not have enough mana or the time in between tank heals to heal a dps and keep the tank up. In the end I tabled my main, and leveled an enhancement shaman. Honestly, the dps queue time was worth the anguish I avoided.

Yes, through patches the healing game got better. My priest started raiding again, and is still the only one of my toons to have earned "Destroyer's End," but I spent the better part of a year hating my favourite toon and suffice to say I was not in the mood for another expansion to come along and potentially break my class again. I feel like a level 85 character, even if not the maximum level, should still feel powerful. I don't need the games I play to make me feel inadequate.

Now, I'm currently only level 88, classes and work severely limit my play time so I have no commentary on End Game content - raids or heroics, yet, but so far my leveling experience has been pleasant. I've really enjoyed the new leveling zones, both in content and the overall esthetic. I level as Disc because of Atonement, which keeps me healed while I smite things to death and because of the ease of transitioning from leveling via questing to healing dungeons.

I have really enjoyed the new dungeons, particularly the "Stormstout Brewery," once you kill Ook and the Hozen come out and start dancing. That's a riot. I feel like the level of difficulty for a potentially unskilled pug is just fine. Some mistakes will kill you, others just cost me mana. A hardcore group of friends or raiders will find likely them too easy, and that's fine. I feel like dungeons, and even heroics to some extent should cater to the causal audience anyway. My mana efficiency is pretty good. It's not unlimited, nor should it be. My heals are appropriately effective as well. Overall I don't feel overpowered, but I don't feel weak or under powered either.

From what I've experienced thus far I'm excited to see what Mists has to offer us as players, but will have a better idea on the state of priest healing once I too hit the level cap.

Blog Azeroth: Shared Topic "Wow Faux Pas"

Blog Azeroth proposes a new topic for bloggers to discuss every week. This week is courtesy of Ninevi of Flask Half Empty.

A faux pas, noun, \ˈfō-ˌpä, fō-ˈ\ is a violation of accepted social norms (for example, standard customs or etiquette rules). The term comes originally from French, and literally means "misstep" or "false step". (via Wikipedia) Shared Topic: Do you think there any faux pas in WoW? If so, please explain your thoughts or maybe share your own memories and experiences! Feel free to include serious ideas (ie: etiquette in LFD/LFR) and silly ones alike (ie: fashion disasters in transmog)!

Let me start by saying I feel like there is an unwritten code of conduct in WoW, one that all good, respectful players know instinctively. I've given the rules a bit of thought and what I think it all boils down to is "If you wouldn't do it to someone in real life, don't do it online."  

I feel like with the introduction of many of the tools that make WoW accessible to people with very rigid schedules has brought on the consequence of exposing decent, knowledgeable players to more ignorant players who are looking for a free ride in dungeon and raid groups. It used to be that you could only play with other characters on your server. If you had a bad reputation on your server you didn't get into any groups. For example, during Wrath on my server there was a mage who was notoriously poorly geared.  He would spend peak hours in trade chat spamming for an invite for ToC, which was current content at the time. Now eventually he did gear up but his reputation for being lazy prevented him getting invites into raids. These days no matter your reputation, you can get a dungeon group, and even a raid group with no prior screening and with people you never encounter again. This added anonymity seems to give a lot of added freedom to ignore the rules of conduct.

Here are some of the Dungeon faux pas I've encountered:

1. Intentional Non-Tank Pulling. I'm not talking about accidental fear pulling or when a dps switches into tank spec because your tank has been afk for ages. I'm talking about the idiot in the group who intentionally runs off and pulls another group, usually while you are killing a perfectly good group already.
2. Needing on things you don't need. Related: Needing on everything. This applies to the guy who needs on all of the greens "for enchanting" and the DPS who needs on tank gear and steals it from the tank. Easily avoided by asking permission first.
3. Signing up for a tank or healer role, and running as a DPS spec. I know, the DPS queue can be long, but it doesn't matter when you get booted from every group you enter because your cpec in wrong.
4. Starting an escort quest before everyone in the group has the quest. 'Nuff said.
5. Wearing gear with inappropriate stats. The image below was a mage in Heroic Oculus at level 80. For real.