Blog Azeroth Shared Topic: No Favourites

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

A few weeks ago, I noticed logging onto some characters seemed to be more irksome than others, it dawned on me that there were a few who never, ever seemed to be a chore to play. My question is, (and yes, you need to have more than one character over level 1) which of your characters do you always look forward to “seeing?” But the real question is why? Perhaps think of this from a role playing perspective, that this character has a personality, play style and demeanor that inevitably just works. I’d love to meet them!

Wow, this one was so difficult for me. Not because I can't pick a favourite. That part is easy - priest. Hands down. No contest. She's my highest level character, has the most hours played (hours is less embarrassing than days or weeks), the most raid progress, and before they became account wide the largest collection of mounts, pets and achievements on my account. It's safe to say that everything I do on WoW, I do first on my priest.

It's the second part of this topic that I find hard to put into words. Why? It's hard for me to explain the attachment I feel for this particular character, and where I don't roleplay at all I don't see her as a separate entity apart from myself but rather as a part of myself. Telling you why she is my favourite requires introspection, and it's hard to tell you why I feel such an affinity for this particular character. I'm sure that part of it, probably a big part actually, is class.

I can't remember if I've talked about this here yet, but I have not always been a priest. I spent at least my first year, probably closer to two years now that I think about it in Warcraft, as a rogue.

She's changed many times since I created her, but this is actually my original character currently masquerading as a worgen. I actively viewed myself as having a rogue main up until well into Burning Crusade. I had always been curious about a priest alt, but making the transition to healing from melee dps was a big step for me. It was a step I eventually made, and have never looked back, at least not for long.

Fundamentally, I feel like everyone in WoW has a class that resonates with them the most. If not a class, then at least a role. From playing her, I learned than I am a healer. More than that, I am a priest. While I have many alts, that I enjoy playing, I always come back to my priest. She has become for me something like a pair of well loved, perfectly broken in sneakers - I am most at home in Azeroth when I'm playing her.

While I'm sure that class has a great deal to do with why she is my favourite, I know that's not all there is to this. Part of it, I'm certain, is also in her name. I've gone to great lengths to preserve her original name and even when Cy moved servers I stayed behind. I cannot imagine her having any name other than Hemoglobin. It's irrational, I know but it's important to me.

In short, there is no one reason why this is the toon I idle in Stormwind on - I have characters on more active servers that would entertain me in trade much more than Staghelm does. In fact, I am logged in, idling while I write this. The words come more freely if I'm logged in idling while I write.

I'm not sure how to wrap this up... so here is an unrelated picture I drew in Marketing.

For those unfamilliar with Trogdor the Burninator you can check him out here through this link and if you like the doodle, check out my flikr, link on the right.

And a Happy New Year

With welcoming in the New Year tonight we also say goodbye to the holidays. I'll admit, I'm relieved, even happy to see them go and ready to go back into my normal routine. If there's one thing I can get behind, it's a good routine. I swear, I'm only a little bit of a control freak which I think is partially why I love healing so much. You'll notice that I elected to sit home and write on my blog rather then go out and get belligerent drunk, that's partially the control thing.

Anyway, with the return of normal day to day life both Cy and my parents will go back to working their regular hours and I will be left with more peaceful hours like the ones I'm using now to work on writing. Obviously, I can't speak for anyone else but I find it so much easier to put my fingers to the keys and post something when I'm alone. When Cy is home he always wants something from me be it doing dungeons or that he's hungry and wants help in the kitchen so I don't get the opportunity to sit down for an hour and work on new posts. When my parents are off mum always wants me to come over. She likes having me in the house, even if we're not doing anything together, which is fine but I never get any work done. Most of all, I will be glad to go back to school. I miss my lunch hours which have always been set aside for the reading, commenting, and replying to my own comments. I feel utterly lost without them. I miss my friends too, and I am anxious to see the new class rosters as there are some people I would like to see both in my class and not in it.

A few quick updates from the past few weeks. I'm now 1/2 of the way to owning my own Mr. Bigglesworth. I would be 8/12 but I've been running with Cy and we've agreed to run the dungeons until both of us finish the achievement and as such the pets that both of us need, both of us roll on. We run all four raids together and then I run AQ to Visidius and Molten Core, just the Harbinger solo. Also, I got my feral vermling by securing 250 unique pets.

I've been gearing up my priest I'm 10 ilevel points away from being LFR geared. Really the more I heal heroics the more I love Disc again. I can hardly believe that there was a time I felt I would never get into the absorption style of healing but gee, I just love it. I was sad to read that in 5.2 they are removing Spirit Shells ability to benefit from mastery. I understand that they need to make other stats attractive to Discipline, I just feel like scaling it back might be a better option than removing it altogether (this is just an opinion based largely on the rhetoric used in the description of our mastery and not at all on any actual numbers). Another note on the 5.2 changes, I really like the spell Holy Fire, mostly because it gives a nice little dot and breaks up the tedium of always spamming smite. It irks me that it's being trashed and consolidated into Power Word: Solace because nothing will ever make me give up mindbender. I really like my mana regen to be passive and not take up time I could potentially use for healing people. On a more positive note, I will happily take the buff to Angelic Feather so thank you for that Blizz.

A few notes on the New Year.

I'm sure everyone is doing this, but what good is a New Year if one does not make plans for it? Did I mention yet that I absolutely love plans? Oh and lists, I love lists.

1. I'd like to be able to make a blog schedule, one that I can realistically commit to that includes some sort of weekly or bi-monthly segment. I'd really like to do some sort of recurring segment.
2. Level. At the very least I'd like to have my DK and one of every healer leveled with the exception of my paladin who is currently being geared for Herald of the Titans because that is more important than leveling her.
3. I'd like to work on a new blog layout that's not just a stock blogger layout or at least some new images for it so it looks a little less like stock.


As a final note, I'd like to thank everyone who dropped by this past year, and I hope to see you all in the new one.

Doing Heroics

I once said that I would never be geared for heroics.

Looks like I lied.

Again.

 I haven't done many heroic dungeons yet, but the few I have done have surprised me. They aren't impossible. They are doable. Dare I say it, they are even fun.

Allow me to make something clear, new heroics... maybe even new max level dungeons are what puts me off of new expansions. Ever since Cataclysm hit and I couldn't heal through one group, much less a whole heroic, I've become a little bit wary of new dungeon content. I am pleasantly surprised that Blizzard learned from the travesty that was Cataclysm and did not make heroics so punishing that they were un-fun again.

That's not to say I found it easy, I have pretty much the baseline required ilevel and have an average skill level. If it was easy for me, I would have been disappointed. If I were an exceptional player, I would probably find them too easy.

I've made it through all of the dungeons I've gone through with minimal mana starvation and only one or two party member deaths which were all due to lack of attention paid to mechanics on their part and not really because of my lack of skill or mana.

I am so pleased that I can complete them without A) going holy or B) ripping my hair out in frustration. I've been reading lately that a lot of players find that Disc output is lacking (maybe it's just for raids?), but I was able to keep my group up adequately and; therefore, have no real complaints except that I still want my Divine Hymn back without going Holy. I feel a little bit lost without carrying it around in my back pocket in the event I fall behind, get stressed, and want a get out of jail free card. I'm sure that will pass though, I still have plenty of toys in my toolkit to play around with.

I still need to work on using Spirit Shell optimally, but I think that will come with time.

Also, LFD has given me decent, non-douche bag groups lately. I didn't know those existed, but am thankful, I needed a break especially after learning that I'm being forced to work both Christmas, and New Years. If I could afford to quit... Anyone want to hire a poor college student trained pastry chef?

I'm trying not to dwell on that.

I suck at not dwelling.

I would also like to draw your attention to my blog roll. It seems that it only took me two months to learn how to make one, and I'd love it if I could get suggestions for awesome blogs to put up there. Priest related, or WoW related, doesn't matter, anything that's worth a read.

IntPiPoMo - Birthday

What is IntPiPoMo you ask? International Picture Posting Month. It is a yearly event, put on by Angelya of Revive and Rejuvinate through the month of November to coincide with NaNoWriMo.  For more information, or to join in see this post.

It's my birthday today. In keeping with tradition that one must get presents on her birthday, I spent a bit of my gold hoard and bought myself a couple of yak mounts. Oh man are they cute.

New. Favourite. Mounts. The stirrups sit a little low for me though.

I just can't get over them. I wish they could fly, so I could ride them all the time.

I also hung out a while in Kun-Lai, to get some pictures of wild yaks. I found this little family and a couple of lone yaks too.

Aww. I just love them.

13/50

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.

Escort Quests in Dungeons Suck

For the past couple of weeks I have been leveling a new disc priest on a new server and have until now leveled completely through dungeons (the exception being levels 1 through 15) and have thoroughly enjoyed my time spent playing disc from the ground up. That is, until I got put in a group for my characters first run of Razerfen Downs. For those of you not familiar with the dungeon there is an NPC Quest giver named  Baelnistraz who gives out an escort quest, this would be fine if the quest were sharable; however, since you must accept his quest and then exchange it for the escort quest it is an unsharable chain and a huge pain in the butt and it is safe to say that none of my characters have successfully completed this quest. It's just too irritating.

Now, I'm the first one to admit I'm trying to level this character quickly, so this afternoon I decided to pick up the quest - the first one - the one that starts the chain. Directly after that someone started the escort part. I'm pretty easy going so I shrugged it off and saw it as an opportunity to get a little more exp and maybe a few scraps of cloth. The feral druid (read: kitty druid) did not take it this way, and immediately starts demanding that the escort portion be shared with him. Of coarse the quest is a chain and cannot be shared.

I should also mention that in groups I am the token quiet one. I sit back and heal. I have little to no interest in socializing with groups that are not on my server who I will probably never encounter again.

So, in true "quiet one" style, I sat back and let the drama deal with itself and did not get involved. Or at least, I thought I didn't. About halfway through the escort encounter I found myself back in Brill, where I had just purchased my new undead ponies. Apparently my silence had made me guilty of starting the quest, when I didn't even have the quest to begin with.

I know that getting kicked wasn't my fault, they were upset at not being able to complete the quest and needed someone to blame and I was easy to pin that on. It just... well, it upset me. Other than this I cannot remember the last time I was kicked from a group, and I usually equate being kicked with being bad and it's painful to feel like you weren't good enough, even when you've done nothing wrong.

Rationally though despite however much I hope that group wiped after kicking me it wasn't really their fault that they kicked me either. Ultimately it was a design flaw that got me removed from that group. If the quest were able to be shared that druid never would have mistaken my silence for guilt, because it wouldn't have mattered who started the escort.

Also: when things go wrong, it is not always the healers fault.