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.

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.

The Mists Have Receded

Mists of Pandaria has finally launched. Here is a picture of my new baby Monk.

I have to say that I was lukewarm about Pandaria since it was announced. I don't really like change and Mists proposed a lot of new changes. I have not gotten to play a whole lot yet, I have school and work to deal with. but my priest is about half way through smiting her way through the Jade forest and my Mistweaver Monk is nearly level 19 and so far, talent system aside, I really like this expansion.

Mists received a lot of criticism about Pandas, the Asian theme, and there were a lot of "Kung Fu Panda" references thrown around. Honestly from what I have seen so far I think it is beautiful. From the expressions that my new little panda makes to the cherry blossom trees that I saw on the Wandering Isle. Thus far it is beautifully crafted.

As for healing on the Monk, I don't have much commentary. At level 19 I have only one healing spell. It works well enough. I like that my auto attacks heal, feels reminiscent of my priests atonement healing, and it gives my little Panda something to do while waiting to heal somebody. I've been mostly questing though, the lack of energy limiting my attacks is nice but my decision was based largely on the poor quality groups that I've been getting in the dungeon queue. I mean come on people, the game has been around long enough for DPS to understand that the Tank is the only one who pulls. Clearly some people think that group etiquette is unnecessary in low levels, and to avoid slapping a disclaimer macro up that says "No heals for DPS that pull. No Rez either." or simply acting on that philosophy, I have chosen to quest, disappointing but it saves me grief and frustration.

Mists of Pandaria, a talent system

People often ask me, am I excited for Mists of Pandaria. Until recently, I would have said "Yes, I'm just not sure about that talent system." Two weeks ago the new talent point system was implimented, the one that gives you six talents instead of 31. While I am sure that there was mumch thought put into this new talent system, I have to admit that it falls kind of flat for me. Intead of being something that brought in new, and exciting options for customization it feels more like the illusion of options to me. Yes, you get to pick one of three things; however, those three options are all relatively the same for the more part. For example, the first set of talents you get as a priest are all forms of crowd control. To me, that says "Blizzard wants you to have crowd control, pick one." All of the talents feel situational. None make me feel like my priest is more powerful, because none make her more powerful. This lack of power really just makes me feel like talents have become oversimplified, oversimplified to the point of becoming nearly obsolete.

Another thing that I don't like about the newly implemented changes are the changes to the spell book. I liked the way that the old spell book looked. It is harder for me to find my spells while swimming in a ten page disc spell book.

I want my spell book back. Also, my disc priest wants her Divine Hymn back.