long time no see....

Due to popular demand the blog is back! At least until I forget to maintain it again.

Its been over two months since my last post, and valerius’ first adventure into Northrend raiding, and a lot has happened since then.

Although I do not attend the 10man raids at this time… mainly due to my own personal raid restrictions… I have it on good authority that naxx is well and truly on farm status! This goes pretty much the same for the 25man, although we do have moments of madness, mainly when seeking achievements :P

Sartharion is also on farm in both 10 and 25 man, although that is without drakes!

With drakes it is completely different, and in fact the only real challenge we have yet to conquer.

Malygos, Malygos, Malygos!

Last week the guild successfully downed him in 10man, again I was not present, but it was great news for the guild!

Last night was the 25man version. Essentially it is exactly the same fight, however in my view it is much harder on 25man. You are relying on so many more people to understand the fight than in the 10man, and that’s what makes it tough. The encounter itself is fairly straight forward once you understand it, but you cant afford to have anyone not pull their weight.

A final note on malygos, and actually, this is a healing related comment!

You do not need CoH to heal malygos… we managed fine last night without it, and we will again in the future!

Valerius do Naxx

Right then, I’ll get right to it.

Last night was out first foray into the wrath-raiding content. It was an eventful night and probably surpassed all of our original expectations on how far we would get.To summarise, we cleared the whole of the spider wing, and then took down the first boss in the plague wing (although I don’t know if that’s its actual name). From a boss encounter point of view they were all quite interesting with their own individual quirks.

From a healing perspective (which is the reason you’re here), we took two priests and a shammy. This felt about the right level of healing, although im sure we can reduce this to two healers once we are better geared. The only boss that seemed to give us real trouble was Maexxna, mainly due to her raid wide cocoon effect, which relied on our HoT’s to keep the tank up. For one reason [tactic] or another we couldn’t keep the tank up whilst she was enraged. A quick change of tactics seemed to resolve this, and on we went.

All in all it was a very successful initial foray into Naxx and one that we are going to venture into again tonight to refine our tactics. All being well we may even get to see a few new encounters [fingers crossed].

Interestingly, on a personal note, my new healing spec seemed to work a treat. When accompanied by raid buffs, my mana regeneration was very good, and although I could probably use a little more intellect and spellpower it all felt pretty good.

welcome back?

Well, its certainly been a while since my last post. I wont give you a long list of reasons for my absence, its predominantly down to my own laziness, but also the fact I hadn’t really been playing my priest in the build up to wrath.

However!!!! Things are about to change. Northrend is here and with it a youthful exuberance for a game that can sometimes become tiresome. I have [as have most of you] been playing wow to death for the last 10 days and have worked my way up to the dizzy new heights of 80. Selfishly I did this in shadow which created a lack of healers in our guild, but that’s all about to change.

As of last night…. I AM HEALZOR!!!!!!!

Yes that’s right folks, I am back to my healing roots, and to be honest I loved it. I did a couple of runs last night just to get my trigger finger used to it all again, and it was fantastic…. Forgot how little I pay attention to the actual encounters though, and more about those 5 health boxes on my screen, which at times can be a little boring.

Anyway, I hoping to try a few heroics tonight and test my healing ability in those.

Also, I will try and become a frequent poster again if I get time. Im currently trying to work out a wow/life balance to suit everyone, which may mean less blog time [if that’s at all possible].

For now I leave you with something from Anna that really cheered me up this cold winter morning… enjoy and I’ll speak to you soon

On the first pull in Northrend, this dumb tank brought to me, a Blue drake evaded in a tree.
On the second pull in Northrend, this dumb tank brought to me: Two orphaned mammoths and a Blue drake evaded in a tree.
On the third pull in Northrend, this dumb tank brought to me: Three squawking robots, Two…
On the fourth pull in Northrend, this dumb tank brought to me: Four talking murlocs, Three…
On the fifth pull in Northrend, this dumb tank brought to me: Five Fountain Coins! Four…
On the sixth pull in Northrend, this dumb tank brought to me: Six rabid wolvar, Five…
On the seventh pull in Northrend, this dumb tank brought to me: Seven angry Vrykul, Six…
On the eighth pull in Northrend, this dumb tank brought to me: Eight loot crazed hunters, Seven..
On the ninth pull in Northrend, this dumb tank brought to me: Nine creepy spiders, Eight…
On the tenth pull in Northrend, this dumb tank brought to me: Ten Kvaldir pirates, Nine…
On the eleventh pull in Northrend, this dumb tank brought to me: Eleven ghouls a-grinning, Ten…



On the twelfth pull in Northrend, this dumb tank brought to me: Twelve Lichking cutscenes, Eleven ghouls a-grinning, Ten Kvaldir pirates, Nine creepy spiders, Eight loot crazed hunters, Seven angry Vrykul, Six rabid Wolvar, FIVE FOUNTAIN COINS! Four talking murlocs, Three squawking robots, Two orphaned mammoths and a Blue drake evaded in a tree.

Priest Racials get the Chop

I read through this post a number of times, and I wanted desperately for my feeling of anguish to come out, but instead the post seemed to fall apart. It has no real structure and adds no real value to the ongoing debate, which is why I almost pulled it, but none the less, here it is.

A topic of much discussion today is the demise of the priest racial talents. Interestingly the views on this change aren’t as split as I had envisaged. The volume of people excited about being able to train some of these previously unobtainable spells is overwhelming. It leaves behind a minority of people such as myself who are left both shocked and maybe even a little distressed by the news.

I appreciate that we were the only class to have such unique abilities, but isn’t that half the beauty of our class. Every single race of priest was unique, we all had our own abilities to bring to the raid, and this in itself could change the tactic for any one fight. I still recall the days before Fearward was a non-racial ability, and how important it was for every raid to have a dwarf priest to hand.

I have felt an increasing trend in wow recently and more and more I find myself not playing my priest because of it. We now have 4 healing classes, and if you were splitting them over 40 people it wouldn’t be to bad, but over 10 and 25 it limits peoples chances of raiding. I understand this isn’t commonly a problem, but it bothers me, it bothers me that so many classes have become so flexible in the game, that it has removed the speciality of a class, and yet Im not always able to do the sole job I was designed for!!!

… I have gone completely off topic.

Admittedly I too am excited about the new expansion, the new talents and the fact I will now be able to use some of the previous locked racials, but I also mourn for those spells that have been lost, and the uniqueness that they brought to our class. In a world (of warcraft) where things are becoming ever more linear, surely its this uniqueness that adds character and value to not only the priest class but the game itself!!!

Wrath Release Date Finally Announced!

Mark it in your calendars boys and girls, the 13th of November is Wrath day (sorry I couldn’t come up with something more catchy). So what does this mean? It means that approx 10million people will be doing exactly the same thing come midday on the 13th……..

….. you got it one…. They will of course all be looking at the same “world server is down” screen!!!

Ok, so im sure that wont be the case, as far as I can remember the BC launch went off without a hitch (other than some dodgy disks), and Wrath will be no different.

What this news also means is that I have a lot to do in the next few months. I want to get my gold reserves up to at least 40k if that’s possible, and I’d quite like to build up my herb stock in the coming weeks.

Of course the most time consuming thing is going to be levelling my shammy between now and wrath. He’s only level 12 or something at the moment, and I don’t have much spare time, so my aim may well be to get him to 60 pre wrath, but we’ll just see how it all goes.

So, today’s question is…. What do you want to achieve before Wrath lands this November?