The Jade Forest

I mentioned last night that my priest has been doing the Jade Forest Questlines. I particularly enjoyed the SI:7 quests, the ones where you play as the SI:7 Agents.


Mostly, for the dwarf and racooon bits.

It gets a shout out later on during the next quest line with this reward:

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.

Draw me, like one of your French Girls

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.

Mandatory Introductory Post

First, a little about me. I am a twenty-something five and a half year WoW veteran (read: addict). I currently main a disc priest: however, I also have a shaman, rogue, and druid at max level and a plethora of other lower level alts many of which I'm likely to discuss at some point. I typically run through PvE content although I am currently making forays into PvP with my rogue, a totally infuriating adventure considering I am utter shit at killing other players.

Things you're likely to read about here include: class specific things (primarily priest oriented but I will likely touch on shaman and rogue topics as well), healing in general, possibly some beta stuff, and anything else in WoW that I feel like talking about.

Anyway, welcome, I hope you enjoy your time here.