Murlocs, Mudfish, and Carrots, Oh my! March 31, 2009

Recently I’ve been trying to do the Fishing and Cooking dailies available in the World of Warcraft for something extra to do with my time each day. I’ve found them rather entertaining and giving me some sort of a “Purpose” to log on rather than just to raid. Anyways, for four days straight I had the same Outland Cooking Daily, Dalaran Cooking Daily, and Outland Fishing Daily. During all this I thought to myself, ‘Wow, these are so random…why can’t this happen with the Crocolisk fishing daily? /facepalm.’  Anyways! Onto the point, I have decided that with these four days of experience with these dailies, I would blog about them, no brainer eh? Let’s begin.

Fiyahh!

I shall start with explaining the daily I received from Dalaran repeatedly, Sewer Stew. Now this quest is rather simple, all you have to do is collect 4 Crystalsong Carrot’s, and 4 Chilled Meat. The only thing I found annoying about this is that, the carrots are nearly impossible to see on the ground, at least for me. Unless you play more zoomed in than I as well as probably having better graphics, the only way i notice them is with the sparkly loot lights. xD — These carrots are easily found all along this river. Having only one stack of chilled Meat to use for several things, I had to go out and farm some more after these 4 stew making days. I found a particularly wealthy meat wise spot in Howling Fjord, I’d like to share with you! The rams all outside of Camp Winterhoof dropped 1 chilled meat almost each kill. After collecting these materials, easily just use the item given with the quest, (Stew Cookpot) to create Vegetable Stew, and deliver it to Ajay Green.

Now for the daily given to me by ‘The Rokk‘. Stupid goblin , I had to do the quest Super Hot Stew, 4 times in a row. /growl. This quest requires me to cook 2 Mok’Nathal Shortribs, as well as a Crunchy Serpent, using the Cooking Pot provided to create a Demon-Broiled Surprise, this has to be cooked over the corpse of an Abyssal Flamebringer. This quest lacks explanation because it annoyed me every time I did it, moving on!

Now onto the fishing daily! The One That Got Away, is the quest I had to do four days in a row. This one is rather easy so I didn’t have any issues with it. All i’d do is Fly to Garadar in Nagrand, and fish within that lake right above the town. Pretty easy quest, although that World’s Largest Mudfish can take a while to fish up sometimes.

Fishing

Okay so, my friend and I have recently registered to the Tournament Realm in an attempt to do enough games for our very own Murloc pet! We were hoping to get another known friend to come with us but we failed at that. So we have picked up a random person and started our games. We got to 125 and plan to get to the 200 mark very soon. This is all so exciting I can’t wait to see what else is in store for April. To be honest, this post isn’t how I pictured it, way to brief and everything but..It will have to do.. /shrug. Take care :3

So much change. March 24, 2009

With the new Patch, 3.1.0, on the Public Test Realms, I can’t help but look into the changes for my main class. I won’t be going over every spec changes but just focusing on General/Discipline changes for now. My reviews are mostly just my opinions and what not nothing to statistical here.

Priests

• Abolish Disease: Now cleanses a disease every 3 seconds, down from 5. Duration reduced from 20 seconds down to 12 seconds.
• Devouring Plague: This spell now has a new icon.
• Divine Hymn redesigned: You recite a Holy hymn, summoning the power of the Divine to assist you in your time of need. Heals 3 nearby lowest-health friendly party or raid targets for 4960-5208 every 2 seconds for 8 seconds, and increases healing done to them by 15% for 8 seconds. Maximum of 12 heals. The Priest must channel to maintain the spell. Cooldown increased to 6 minutes, up from 5.
• Divine Spirit is now trainable at level 31.
• Holy Nova: Mana cost reduced approximately 20%.
• Improved Holy Concentration removed.
• Hymn of Hope redesigned: You recite a Holy hymn, restoring hope to those in despair. Restores 3% mana to 3 nearby low mana friendly party or raid targets every 2 seconds for 8 seconds, and temporarily increases their total maximum mana by 20% for 8 seconds. After the effect expires, the mana is lost. Maximum of 12 mana restorations. The Priest must channel to maintain the spell. Cooldown increased to 6 minutes, up from 5.
• Mental Agility, Inner Focus, Shadow Reach, Shadow Focus and Shadow Affinity now all affect Psychic Horror.
• Prayer of Healing: This spell now heals the target’s party, rather than being limited to just your direct party.
• Shadowfiend: Health scaling increased. Now receives 30% of the master’s spell power. Mana return increased to 5%, up from 4%. The Shadowfiend now returns mana when its melee attacks land, rather than when it deals damage. No longer has a 75% reduced chance to be hit by melee, ranged and spells. Movement speed normalized to player movement speed. Tooltip revised.
• Talents
  • Discipline
    • Divine Aegis: Divine Aegis effects will now stack, however the amount absorbed cannot exceed 125*level (of the target). It will also now take into account total healing including overhealing.
    • Improved Divine Spirit: This talent has been removed.
    • New Talent: Improved Flash Heal: Reduces the mana cost of your Flash Heal by 5/10/15%, and increases the critical effect chance of your Flash Heal by 4/7/10% on friendly targets at or below 50% health.
    • Grace: This talent no longer decreases damage done to the target, but the duration has increased to 15 seconds and the healing bonus has increased from 2% to 3%. This affect now cannot be applied to more than one target at a time.
    • Improved Power Word: Fortitude: Now also increases your total stamina by 2/4%.
    • Meditation and Improved Power: Word shield have changed locations with each other.
    • Meditation: Now grants 17/33/50% of mana regeneration while casting.
    • Mental Agility: Reduced to 3 points (4/7/10%), down from 5.
    • New Talent: Soul Warding: Reduces the cooldown of your Power Word: Shield ability by 4 seconds, and reduces the mana cost of your Power Word: Shield by 30%.
    • Penance: Damage increased approximately 30%.This spell can now be cast on yourself.
    • Power Infusion: This effect now has a new spell effect.
    • Renewed Hope: This talent also now allows you to proc the Renewed Hope buff on all party/raid members every time you cast Power Word: Shield, reducing damage taken by 3%. Lasts 20 seconds.
    • Unbreakable Will:Increased from 3/6/9/12/15% to 6/12/18/24/30%.

Now i know this is a lot to go over, but hopefully i can add some insight to these changes even if they are completely biased by my own mind and thought process. I’ve italicised the changes that I’d like to express my opinion on, hopefully this won’t be to much to go over! The priest class is getting a lot of things changed and new additions which will in turn change our playing styles, even if just slightly for some (And it seems like all healers.)

–The ‘Hymn’ changes are something I don’t quite understand why they are getting such a mechanic change. Divine hymn for example if I wanted to help out with healing the tank, I’d have to run up to them and channel this. Not every encounter would allow me to freely do this and not sure if it’d be all that worth it. I haven’t been able to get onto the PTR and test this spell out thoroughly but I personally like the current state of having the in capitation available. The only thing concerning me with Hymn of Hope is..what do they consider “Low” mana? And would this happen to me if I were to be “Low” on mana?..I’m sure it would but would that also cut off from the 3 players it would affect? I need to test these before giving opinions on them../sigh

–I love the new Prayer of Healing change as to how it can now affect my targets party instead of just limited to my current party members. As a discipline priest raid healing isn’t our strong point, but it is do-able! Within a heroic, group healing is rather easy. Since all I have to worry about is us 5 + pets. In a raid setting, I have been asked to raid heal and have done it effectively. This usually involves lots of spamming flash heal and requesting certain group make ups to make prayer of healing more efficient, but now it actually has potential outside of just my group! Crazy talk..heh. Shadowfiend has some odd changes coming to it, I get quite a bit of mana now back from the way it works hopefully will still be the same. His lower chance of being hit being removed concerns me..hopefully it will last longer in pve as well as pvp.

–Improved Divine Spirit being removed is understandable but I’d still like that Spell power bonus to be elsewhere. Not only did I bring a spirit buff to a raid but as well as a small boost to caster’s spell power. I will miss this little perk of the buff /sniff. Grace only being able to be applied to one target at a time is a ‘nerf’ to disc healing in my eyes. Since holy has much larger heals than us, Grace helps us keep up. If this is only limited to one target our healing targets will have to be prioritized a lot more than they are now.

–The new talent, Soul Warding gives our ‘Overpowered’ shields a lot more viability in a raid setting, granted the targets will be taking damage. Since this spell was never to low on the mana costing side, lowering the cost will help incredibly. I know for one I use my shield as often as I an combined with Glyph of Power Word Shield and Borrowed Time talents, plus with the new patch Serendipity is being changed as well to affect the shield differently, I forsee lots of bubbles in my future!

–Penance now castable on myself?! Finally!!, In pvp I hate not being able to use one of my most effective heals on myself, made no sense to me from the begining. Although the animation seems to have issues, Light trying to fly out of my hands and back to me at the same time /cringe. Power infusions new animation is also delightful on the eyes (: I’ll let you see it for yourself come the new patch.

– I don’t think I have to explain “Renewed Hope” (See above ) It will clearly be amazing. =)

That’s all for my views on things, hopefully nothing to controversial lies within this post! Now time to go watch a movie, -Poofs away in a puff of green smoke- (:

Gaining Reputation. March 17, 2009

Upon hitting level 80, I realized I haven’t done any Argent Crusade or Ebon Blade quests. I put off getting these tabards for a very long time and I had hit Exaulted with the Kirin Tor as well as Wyrmrest Accord a long time ago. I haven’t been wearing a tabard for months and today I finally hit that Friendly mark with the Argent Crusade and bought the tabard required to gain reputation with them within heroics. Now this isn’t really a new thing for me, but seeing the “You have gained XX reputation with…” popping all over my SCT during a heroic again is rather refreshing. They don’t feel so pointless anymore. I don’t have any alts to give BoA gear to nor do I need any of the gear myself with the Emblems of Heroism so badges aren’t really something I would do heroics for. Now comes the grind of getting Argent Crusade up to Exalted as well as finally acquiring the Ebon Blade tabard. On another matter, I finally got enough Battleground ‘marks’ to obtain my Black War Mount! I hated deciding which one to get, since getting 30 of each took some time I had to be careful of my decision. I finally decided upon the Black Warstrider (:

Yay for Burdz?

I must say, I’ve never had a Hawkstrider mount of any kind before and I have fallen in love with this one. Their animations are a refresher and something new aside from my Undead horse and Large Mammoth. In my opinion, the worst battleground to get these marks from was Alterac Valley, not many people seem to do this at 80 anymore.

I have had some luck as of late gear wise on my characters as well! My priest has gotten The Impossible Dream, and her Valorous Robe of Faith. I was very happy to get these two items, now all I need to get is my tier 7.5 shoulders! Dreams seem impossible sometimes. /sigh Anyways, my hunter also got two pieces of deadly gladiator from Vault today, pretty exciting times. I have also been trying to quest to gain some gold to get my epic flying mount training. My priest doesn’t have a very good way to make money so questing is just about the only option I have. Right now I sit at about 2.2k gold..Hopefully within a week or two I will be able to purchase the amazing flight speed of epic proportions! -dundundun!!- Until next time, my WoW life seems rather boring as I finish this up. -shrug-

Out of the Element. March 10, 2009

To be honest, This will be a very short post. I have been sick for a few days and still not feeling 100% better. This has hindered my brain into coming up with something to blog about! Anyways, I have decided to transfer servers. Now I know this has ruined my blog name…I renamed my priest Luthie and forgot about the consequences this would have. /facepalm. I don’t plan to end my blog, I just plan to still go on by the identity of snug, and hopefully be accepted for this.

I transferred my priest onto a Role Playing realm. I was tired of the community on my old PvP server and felt like I needed a change. Now this change will take some getting used to, but I like it overall. On this server, more people seem friendlier rather than “Elitists.” I have been trying to get into the Role Playing scene as well, but on the horde side role play seems to be limited to within guilds / silver moon city. I can’t join a raiding guild and a role playing guild, so I’m doing my best to find roleplay elsewhere. This is rather new to me, but I think I have handled it pretty well. I have multiple outfits / a description /character personality, etc etc.

I am also looking forward to the developments of CYOA coming a long, I need to start brainstorming with them /nod.

/Sigh.. March 4, 2009

My Internet was messing up yesterday..Wouldn’t let me online and still won’t work today, great another postponed…post xD.

Recently a friend and I have been trying to do some pvp. I respec’d to a 2v2 arena spec and we tried our hand at 10 games to get some points. We could only get into the 1500′s nearly 1600′s but our team combo , Priest//Mage, isn’t the best. This team comp. requires us to out skill/outplay our opponents and make 0 mistakes. We have to time our CC’s, I personally have to focus on Healing us, Mana Burning, Help with the dmg, Know when to crowd control, know when to run off and drink etc. etc. This wasn’t so easy for me seeing as this is the first time I’ve taken pvp seriously since the expansion. We used to run 10 games just to get some points, me staying my pve spec and whatever talent choices my mage friend had at the time. This wasn’t so bad, I have about half a pvp set complete, the resilience helps me stay alive but not nearly long enough to make it count. (nerf burst please…)

When we were playing our games last week, all we ran into, every team, EVERY SINGLE TEAM! Had a resto shaman…I think there was 2 games out of about..25 that didn’t have a resto shaman. We eventually learned how to deal with this, depending on the situation / arena / other opponent, we had to Crowd Control the shaman and kill the dps, or Crowd Control the dps and kill the shaman. We had to time our fears/sheeps perfectly and take advantage of their mistakes. I think we ended up winning 3-4 more than we lost, nothing to accomplishing but we got more rating than we normally do. Once we get more gear I’m sure this would be a bigger success! We did some games after the reset had happened, and this time every team had a rogue. As some of you may know, rogues are just a Cloth wearer’s nightmare right now. I can survive them but not forever. If my partner doesn’t help me deal with it I’d die even faster. Of course, if I had 900+ resilience this would be a different story. I was only running with 494 at the time /shrug.

Overall, arena’s are fun to do with a friend who doesn’t get mad at mistakes and doesn’t take it as serious as others. Granted we did take them serious, but not so much as other people. I finally grinded honor for my pvp trinket (the new level 80 one) — Now time to lose 28 AV games for my Black War ____ (<-Can’t decide what mount I want yet..)

PvPGearz x)

On a side note, Samodean has started a thread about Create Your Own Azeroth, over at Blog Azeroth. I hope that what I can bring to this project will be substantial enough (:

(Once again..sorry this was a day late -_-, Stupid ISP)

New Arrangement. (08) March 1, 2009

“How was your 2008?” A simple question asked by Samodean of Hardcore Casual. Granted I am a tad bit late on replying, the post had gotten me into thinking more about my past years experiences. I realized 2008 had ups and downs but overall still provided the fun aspect of WoW for me. (Obviously since I’m still playing..)

At the beginning of 2008, my only real “main” for me was my mage, Topz. I have been playing a mage since Pre-Tbc and the class always will probably attract me. I never took burning crusade seriously on my mage. I’d do dailies, try to get a Heroic Magister’s Terrace group for a chance at the mount / pet and generally go play an alt or log out when that was finished. Pretty boring WoW time, I jumped across alts and couldn’t decide what to do to make the game more enjoyable. After a few months of accomplishing mostly nothing, there was a time where I quit Wow.

I stopped playing for a couple months and was trying out some other MMO’s. None of them had made enough of an impact on me to post them here now, wouldn’t want anyone looking at those horrible games -twitch-. I eventually got back into wow, trying to pvp on my mage while leveling alts. An amazing part about 2008 is that, I actually managed to get another character to 70. (This was amazing for me) I started playing my hunter in August, and had hit 70 sometime early October. This was pretty accomplishing for me (/Grin?) I’ve never not liked hunters, so having one of my own was exciting. I played this character a lot more seriously than my mage at the time. I did heroics, got gear for karazahn did Tier 4 content. (Mags/Kara/Gruul/Za). Raiding was really fun to finally try and do. I wish I could have gotten farther but I did wait really long to even begin trying.

The pet aspect of my hunter is what draws me in so much to the class. I planned out all my stable slots before even getting level capped and well I love my hunter. (:

The best part of 2008 by far had to have been getting my hunter to 70, and enjoying the game with it. My hunter is now a “Scribe” and a viable character for me to play when I feel like shooting people …/cackle 0.o

(I didn’t level my priest until this year…nothing to post about that character in this D:)