This Week

I’ve been a bit slack on the posting front this week, mainly because I was grinding my arse off in order to try and get a kara run, but alas, my gear still wasn’t up to scratch (need to find approx +100 sta somewhere).

So between matt grinding for my whitemend set and doing a bunch of Sunwell dailies I haven’t had much time for anything else.

Which reminds me, I drafted a post Monday evening, but never got round to publishing it

Dailies are quite new to me, I’ve never been a huge fan of them, a lot of them are quite time consuming, and so I just don’t do them. That was until I came across the daily hub for Sunwell, great group of dailies, can all be done within an hour, perfect little rep grind. Im doing it on both toons atm, and the 250g for 2hrs work comes in handy too.

Are you a daily’oholic or just grind whatever you need at the time? What do you think of the sunwell dailies, should all dailies be that simple?

Gearing

Quite busy at work today, but time for a quick post.

I was reading Dwarf Priest earlier today, and hes updated his loot table following patch 2.4. There have been some interesting movers and shakers since the patch, but this is still one of the most reliable sources for priest loot (imo).

Whether you’re preparing for raiding, or in the middle BT, this list summarises what should be in and around your “I’ve Gotta Have it!” list!

If you have the time, also read his calculations behind this it all, very interesting reading, but also quite heavy, so you’ve been warned.

One Last Thing

Just before i get back to work i wanted to tag the following blogs that ive been reading today. All very insightful and interesting to read, and i'll be sure to update the blogroll when i get home from work..

http://kestrelsaerie.us/
http://pugnaciouspriest.wordpress.com/
http://egotisticalpriest.com/

Raiding Spec's

Raiding specs

I was reading a post over at egotistical priest about different talent specs for different roles in the game. I’ll skip past the more obvious pvp/solo builds as they should be pretty self-explanatory. (May do a pvp post a bit later).

We then get to the stuff im particularly interested in which is the “instancing and raiding”.

The gist of it is that for 5 man instances you should have a holy or hybrid build, but once you get to raiding you’re expected to be shadow. The caveat in this post was that they’re only summarising what they have read on the boards and every priest is different.

That’s all well and good, but it highlights to me that guilds just aren’t looking for holy priests anymore, and that just doesn’t sit well with me. I haven’t raided post TBC, so I cant comment personally, but surely holy priests still provide value in raiding, other than just for spirit buffing?

Out of Touch

Reading the recent comments on the blog im starting to realise more and more that ive lost touch with WoW, but more specifically priest mechanics!

I thought that i knew it all when it came to my class and my role in groups. More and more this is becoming unclear to me.

Ive noticed increasingly that groups dont seem to look for a holy priest! There are so many capable healing classes out there now to do the job we used to do so well.

Is there space for four healing classes on wow? Are holy priests becoming obsolete? Will there be another shift in power before WOTLK?

that was a lot of questions, maybe they were more rhetorical than anything, but i would like to think that there is still space for holy priests on warcraft.

Pre Vs Post Burning Crusade – A Healing Comparison

So I posted in the middle of the night that I had just done my first stint of healing on my priest since the release of TBC. However I just wanted to talk a little more about how the game mechanics seem to have changed.

See before the burning crusade I would run instance after instance, but no matter how well geared I got, healing a five man could still be quite challenging from time to time. Flash heals were a priests bread and butter, we simply didn’t have the time to cast greater heal, that extra 1 second cast was the difference between a wipe and a boss take down.

I’ve read a lot of blogs about peoples healing styles, but generally now the flash heal has become obsolete in boss fights (although still a legitimate tactic for trash), and no matter how many times I read this, I still couldn’t really believe it. Until last night.

Now, this could have been because my tank was particularly well geared (although I suspect he was in kara gear, possibly pre kara), but damage taken seemed less intense. By that, I mean there were very few damage spikes, where I would have to rush for a shield or a flash heal. Through the trash I just used renew with the odd flash heal, and for boss fights I did the same, just replacing flash with greater heals.

I probably need to run some more instances before making any real judgement, and im sure that in burning crusade raid battles healing will be just as intense as when I first ran BWL, but to me it feels like damage mitigation has been buffed to a point that healing a tank has become even more sustainable without real strain.

Gone are the days where Flash Heal is a priests only hotkey, healing just became a bit more interesting.

How did Healing change for you after the burning crusade?

Respec'ing and my First TBC instance as a healer

Very busy night tonight, it was my first burning crusade instance with Cav, and while it was only Old Hills Brad (OHB) it was nice to feel relatively in control of everything. Werent any really hairy moments and went pretty smoothly. We'll ignore the fact that we then went on to do BM and failed miserably, and focus on the fact i had a good night.

No new loot, although as i was healing i got around to making Primal Mooncloth Robe which is very nice.

As i now intend to use Cav for healing i took this oppurtunity to try out a new spec, and think its pretty good, its a Holy/Disc Hybrid so should suffice for the time being.

hopefully this was the start of something new, interesting, and progressive, but we'll see.

WOTLK To Hit Before Christmas 08

Its no cast iron guarantee, but we now have our biggest indication that WOTLK will hit our shelves before the year is out. Whilst no official release date has been announced, Vivendi yesterday released their statement of account for the first quarter of 2008, which stated

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, is scheduled to be released in the second half of 2008.

Given that this statement is provided to all share holders in the company you can place some reliance that this is there “anticipated” release schedule, although I still think this will slip into Q1 of 2009.

I guess only time will tell on this one, but watch out for an official release date in the next few months.

Maximizing the Day

I spent most of last night working on the blog. I’m relatively happy with the outcomes although I need to do some work with feedburner in case anyone out there wants to subscribe to this. Any thoughts on the layout, things missing etc are welcomed!

In terms of this whole blogging business my main concern at the moment is how to fit it all into the day. By the time ive got home and done all the relevant housework it doesn’t leave me much spare time. Im going to try and start reading my feeds at lunch time, posting before I go to bed and fitting in everything else in between.

How does everyone else juggle their work life, social life and blogging? It seems impossible

It’s a big bad world

Before the burning crusade, I was a fully fledged, full time, got no life, raider! I would consistently spend 40+ hours a week playing wow, and a large proportion of that time in MC, BWL, AQ, ZG, and the remaining few hours grinding to pay my repair bill.

Interstingly, whilst I think I’ll rant about it later I just want to mention it in passing. The amount of people that have never heard of Molton Core and Black Wing Layer is astonishing to me, I bump into more people that haven’t heard of it than have. I can deduce from this that over 50% of the current wow population (on my server at least) are completely new to wow since TBC!

Anyway, back to the topic in hand.

Since TBC was released I have pretty much solo’d my way to 70 (on two toons). On Cav I still don’t even have my kara key, and shes supposed to be my main. In total I think ive run maybe three of the BC instances, and even then I was probably being carried a little bit. This brings me onto my dilemma……

My guild is currently recruiting for some new raiding healers, which is really enticing to me as I really want to see the content. My girlfriend is being supportive of this idea (in theory) at the moment, although I don’t want WoW to cause any unnecessary problems (past experience tells me it will). So all that said, whats stopping me? Ive decided it’s a fear of failure.

See I used to be an MT (pre-tbc), and I always though I was ok at it. Of course I haven’t done any group (let alone raid) healing since that time, and im a little worried that a) I wont be able to hold my own, and b) If I am crap the illusion that I used to be pretty good will disappear.

I think im going to try and arrange to heal some heroics this week/weekend and see how I get on, if its positive then maybe I’ll sign up for the next kara run….

I think I need to talk to Lois about this a bit more though, I can see myself being sucked back into this more and more each day (hour).

Show me the Money

Whilst browsing the AH last night it struck me that the value of some pre-tbc items is ridiculous atm…. For example a stack of thorium bars are currently selling from 40-50g!!

Admittedly I then spent an hour grinding thorium to earn some quick cash, but even then its still excessively over-priced.

This got me thinking!! What pre-tbc items are selling at inflated prices on your servers??

Family First

So no warcraft tonight, other than taking a few screen dumps for the blog. My girlfriend has had a rough couple of weeks so im going to cook her favourite meal tonight and relax on the sofa (put the laptop to bed by 7… promise!) for the evening. That in mind, I think I’ll have the laptop in the kitchen while I cook, so I can work out what my immediate WoW objectives are, and then start to progress them on Wednesday.

Happy hunting!!

Define Casual

Its been less than a day since I resubbed and im already feeling the burn. Everywhere I go on the interweb I read about casual wow players, and every time I read this I wonder… what is a casual wow player. Is it not raiding that makes you casual, is it only playing 2 hours a week, or is it less than 10 hours. Is it purely based on time spent in game.

I only ask this because after less than one day resubbed, and three hours of gameplay im hooked.

Im not casual, I don’t just play when I can, I want to play it now, tonight, tomorrow, next week!! Whats worse is im writing this post sat at my desk at work. Ive spent all day thinking of wow (whist managing to do some work), and yet to my fellow players, friends and guildies, I am classified as casual!!!

Now, im going to close down the internet and do some work, and pray that I can find a wow / life / work balance before the week is out.

Warcraft is important to me, its in my blood, but im not going to let it consume me this time….

Introductions

EDIT: Before you read this, know that I wrote it in Late January 2008, around the time that I started blogging for my own benefit. I always intended to publish it online, but never got the time. Since this was written I have had a 3month absence from wow! However that’s all about to change!!! Enjoy this…. My first post, and the many more I intend to make in the coming months!

Firstly, Welcome! You’re either here because ive told you to check out my blog, or you’ve unknowingly stumbled across me. My name’s James, although my friends around Azeroth will know me more commonly as Cavalla. (or if you know me from outside of WoW, more likely, wondeboy).

It took me a while to decide what I was going to name my blog, and what I was going to talk about. See I spend a huge percentage of my life working and sleeping, the other 30% of time is spent on hobbies and my significant other. My girlfriend and I met on warcraft some time ago, and about 18months ago we started dating. Now we live together and that’s really when my life began…ok…. this sounds very soppy and not really what I had planned at all…

Misty I love you, but for now back to the blog.

As you can probably gather I’ve been playing warcraft from the word go. My first ever character was actually a gnome warlock, but given my lack of mmo experience, I couldn’t really get to grips with the vulnerability of a caster, and so I re-rolled a nelf warrior. Tayend and I got to about level 45 together, until I got bored. I think it was around that time that I started to play other consoles and other games, and I just didn’t have time for wow anymore. So I quit…

Fast forward 6 or so months and I was missing wow, I was still keeping in touch with my old guild, the more I spoke to them, the more I wanted to return…. One night, completely out of the blue I re-subbed, and re-rolled, this time with Cavalla my human priest… Levelling a second time round was actually quite refreshing, going to new places with a new toon. It all seemed to happen so fast though, within 10 days play time I was level 60 and I wanted more….

We set up alliance with other guilds, we wanted to hit all the new content… and eventually there was an official merge of guilds, my old Guild, the one I loved so much, was gone… The Defiance was no more…… It was getting to that point again, I was losing my love of warcraft…. Soon after I quit for the second time, but that wasn’t the end of the story…..

This time I went completely cold turkey, I didn’t look at a warcraft website or talk to my old friends, I just went …. It was the best for everyone, but it changed nothing. Within less than two months I was back again, and to a mixed reception… There had been some recruitment in my absence and they weren’t that happy with the way I waltzed back into the guild…. None the less I came back pumped and spent many a night battling away at new content in MC and BWL (which I will mention in my first “proper” blog).

The Burning Crusade Came and went, I levelled Cav to 70, she got her flying mount, blah blah blah… My girlfriend I then stopped playing warcraft for a while, I cant remember why exactly, but we did. We got on with our lives, bought a flat together and that was it.

Until a couple of weeks before moving day… All of a sudden I wanted wow, and I wanted it now! 6 months later an its January 2008, and im still playing warcraft, all-be-it, differently to how I used to. I don’t raid, I play for fun, part time if you will. Originally when I came back Cav got all the attention, getting her some new gear, doing some quests, having fun…. Then I took Tay from 60-70… mainly because the 70 grind is awesome in outlands, and now im playing my hunter Masahashi and my Warlock (the one I first started) Treacle.

So I guess that’s a not so brief summary of who I am (wow-wise) and where I’ve come from… My original plan is to update this as regularly as possible, I guess we’ll see how it goes…

Chow!!