Patch 5.0!

Been tinkering with things since the patch, and so far this is what I've come up with:

• The talent trees are awesome but all kinds of confusing too.
• I keep finding myself taking the same talents on different toons (druids/hunters/death knights/etc.). Not sure how I feel about this yet.
• Every time Lark's Dire Beast summons a tiger, I imagine it's Tuah. XD
• Druid stag form is the awesomest thing ever and I love Blizzard just for that.

I got inspired to do a little random taming today, so Lark has 2 new(ish) pets. First, sis's pally came with me to Blackwing Lair, where Lark's corehound Fauth found himself in a new skin. This was kind of a last-ditch effort to see if I keep him, since he's been on the list of "will release if needed." Still not sure if I'm keeping him, but I'll see how I like him this way in the meanwhile.

After that, I checked Petopia and noticed that the Black Stalker, who hadn't been tamable in the beta, was now flagged as being tamable. Since I wasn't sure when I'd be able to get some folks together for SSC, I went ahead and headed over to Underbog to check.

I've liked this name for awhile, but never found a pet that it clicked on. I think it suits this fella pretty well, though. Again, not sure if I'll keep him since he is kinda "buggy" and bugs creep me out a bit, but for now I'm waiting and seeing.

Wyrmrest-Zuuluu has been getting some leveling love. He's up to 13 in 2 days, with comparatively little playtime, and I'm having fun with him. I'll have to write something up for him sometime; he's been getting stuck in my head almost as bad as Rheugan at times.

And... stags. Have I mentioned I can't get enough of the stags?

Rheugan- "I'm watching you..."

 

Lathenil

Pitch

Pitch and Kyraine. Yes, he's sitting while she's riding him. Lazy thing. XD

The only annoying thing is they jump in the air when you hit the spacebar- in order to rear up like Pitch is doing, you have to do the /mountspecial. Good thing I already have it macro'd.  >.>

Rheugan's been running LFR again the last couple days, mostly testing to see if the new loot system might be kinder on him. It hasn't- every boss kill so far has given him some gold and that's it. Guess all I can do is keep trying, right?

I've gone back to camping for a blue Madexx for Booggah fairly hard-core again, in fact I'm trying to stay up tonight to watch for him. Sis tamed him earlier on her worgen Maxwill (red this time!), so I have a timer, and I'm off tomorrow so I can sleep late. I just hope he doesn't spawn in green again... or black. Knowing my luck, that's probably what he'll do. XD

I've still been playing Star Wars:TOR as well as getting back into LotRO a bit. My guys on Windfola just got themselves a bigger house, since I ran out of space to put stuff. The summer festival is going on, too, so they have a hammock for the yard and Elgo got himself a new horse. I still want to do stuff on Laurelin, too- hopefully I don't get distracted until it's too late. >.<

That's all I can think of for now, and I have camping I need to get back to. Til next time, Happy Hunting!

Catching Up

I have no idea what is with the spam comments I've been getting, but wow. Seriously, guys, go find someone else to pester.

I have been extra busy with 4.3 since it came out. Pitch, Lark, and Rill have all been getting runs through the new 5-mans, and I'm planning on starting Turron through them as well (if he has the ilvl, can't remember right now). Lark's raid has spent 2 weeks in Dragon Soul, and we have the first 3 bosses down! Unfortunately, everyone so far has forgotten to get kill screenshots, but I'll get some and stick them up here eventually.

RP has slowed down somewhat, though the Riders "big" storyline is still going on. Everyone's been so busy with the new stuff, however, that I don't mind so much.

Rheugan has been keeping himself busy. I've been on him whenever I haven't been on the afore-mentioned 3, and he's been questing and archaeology-ing his way along. Which brought this result.


I now have 7 max-level characters. My sister still beats me, though. >_>

I'm now taking him through the gearing-up process, although I'm not sure what I'll wind up doing with him. Right now, I just want his ilvl up enough that he can run any dungeons I want to. I've started having tentative thoughts on maybe making him my raiding main in the next expansion, but that is a definite "wait and see."

I think that is pretty much all that's been going on. Holidays are crazy, and general work stuff is not helping, so no idea how frequent blog posts will be until after it's over. Til next time, Happy Hunting!

Patch 4.0- Priest, Shaman, Warrior and Feral Druid

I've played around with several of my previously-neglected toons and feel like I have a good feel for them now, so on to the next bunch!

First, feral druids. Pitch tanked a Patchwerk run earlier in the week, and it looks like my bear-tanking fears have been unnecessary. He had a little bit of the DPS jumping the gun before he really had the mob, and large groups gave him a bit of trouble with swipe having a CD now, but overall I'm content. Bears are still fun.

Taurros has hit the Headless Horseman a couple times, and while that's not the best fight to judge DPS and performance, he still did pretty nice. Not outstanding, but his gear is still awful so I wasn't expecting too much. I'm planning on hitting some heroics with him and/or Pitch to get a better idea of how kitties are doing.

Priests- firstly, keep in mind that Quae is shadow, and will remain shadow for the foreseeable future, so no healing opinions here. Shadow DPS is still fun, but I haven't seen much of the goodness that is Shadowy Apparition yet. Numbers-wise, she's still doing about the same as she was pre-patch, but that's been the norm for most of my toons so that's fine. I still haven't gotten her her dual-spec, but I may try it out once she hits 80, just to see what priest-healing is really like.

Shaman- Dear Blizzard, I miss my spirit wolves! That's my only gripe about Rajast, really. I got him up to level 60 so he could get them, then had them just long enough to get used to them. On the plus side, he's now 66, so he'll get them back pretty soon.

Enhancement shaman has been interesting, but in a fun way. His rotation stayed pretty much the same, and his numbers haven't changed much, but it somehow seems more.. interactive? I dunno. Also, holy flip mana bar! I ran him through 3 dungeons, and he didn't have to drink once. Whatever they did to shammies' mana regen, I love it.

I saved my warrior for last for a reason. Turron is a tank first, DPS second- that's why I've been spending his badges getting his prot gear instead of upgrading his DPS set. But his experiences with tanking have left me irritated and frustrated. According to the Panzercow, the new Vengeance ability is supposed to be a major part of our threat generation, but as he points out it takes some time to build up. Meanwhile the DPS is laying into the mob/boss/whatever with impunity, leaving poor Turron running around trying to regain aggro that is hopelessly out of reach. Now granted this has been against the Horseman? But if this is how tanking is going to be, then I'm scared to death of trying to tank a heroic with him, in his current gear.

Take, as an example, the last Horseman kill I did with him. The top DPSer was a shadow priest that did over 4k. He tanked the boss. The entire time. I think the Horseman might have glanced at Turron at some point while I was madly taunting and shield-slamming? But that was about it. And looking at Recount afterwards and seeing my little warrior sitting at 500 DPS for the fight just made me want to find a hole and curl up in it. Seriously, Blizz? DPSers? Could you give him a bit of a break?

Or I could just leave him as DPS and lol-Mortal Strike my way to his gear. Right now, Arms is making up for Prot's failings. Chain-critting for 6k+ in his wimpy DPS gear? Yes please.

Patch 4.0- Hunters, Druids and Rogues

Okay, I've had time to play with a few of my guys now, so let's try this again, shall we?

Hunters first off, because duh, hunters! Lark was my first to get specced/glyphed, though I only did her BM spec. Her second spec is remaining blank until I decide to go MM again or else give Surv a try. BM.... well, first thing is I MISS MY LAZERKITTY DANGIT! The heal that spirit beasts have now is... kinda useful? Maybe? But I haven't had an occasion where I needed it yet. Komah's dps is still up there, however, so I'm fairly happy with it anyway.

I ran Lark in a couple heroics and then the weekly raid (Patchwerk) so I could get a feel for it right away. Her dps on trash.... was sad. That's all I can say. She went from little over 3k dps to maybe 2.5k. Bosses were better, and other bloggers have said that it's just because hunters need time to "rev up" a bit now and trash just dies too fast. I think I agree. Patchwerk was the real test, after all, and since we were, uh, kind of 5-manning it (>.>) I had an excellent opportunity to test it.

Lark's final DPS for Patchwerk was about 4.5k. Yea, ain't complaining about that.

So! Hunters- seem pretty cool. I did a little bit with Kaled and Khaotic too, and I'm still pretty happy. Khaotic went back to Surv, all I did was pound on a training dummy for a bit, but she managed a bit over 1k DPS even with being focus-starved most of the time. Kaled went through some quests, no training dummy for him yet, and he and Vysaka the worm did very well. Stuff died super fast, no low-health problems, and worms are Best Tanks Ever. (Ok, maybe not but I still love them.)

Booggah did nothing but run around collecting old friends. I'll try to get him into a heroic or something some time, because he has to level BlackHide the raptor now. Samahe the rhino, being a tank pet, will get leveled up the hard way I think. He just needs 1 level anyway, so shouldn't take long.

That was about it for my hunters, so next up is druids. First off, I uh, haven't really done anything on any of my ferals yet. I'm a baddie. Alanon, however, got enough attention to make up for it. And Shaur will get some leveling attention at some point, so I'll see how she does then.

Boomkins are fun. Not that they weren't before, but still. Alanon's DPS seems to have gone up, even without any gem changes or reforging attempts. I may play around with reforging a bit, haven't decided yet.

Resto was what had me worried the most, to be honest. I shouldn't have worried at all. He healed with a holydin for another weekly-raid run, with no deaths and lots of big green numbers. Efflorescence is too much fun. I have to confess that I spammed Regrowth most of the time- I felt like I was back in vanilla, in a way. I really need to learn the rotation and stuff for it. Nourish.... isn't as much fun as before. The cast time seems really long, about the same as Healing Touch, for a lot less mana but much smaller heals too. So yea, a lot of Regrowth spam with Rejuvs and Swiftmends thrown in.

Now on to the last one for this post- Rogues!

I went ahead and did the faction-switch a few days before the patch, so Zuluu is gone and Rillian is in his place. I've RP'ed him some already, and he's fun if you don't mind the slightly-jerky-type. *ahem* But more on that later.

I specced Rill Assassination after a lot of "stare at the talent page and wonder what the heck I'm doing". Now I wish I'd done it before. Assassination is fun, rogues are fun, sheesh, I think I love the patch for that reason alone. I've gone from thinking about deleting him to wanting to play him all the time.

His rotation? Cheap shot, backstab, mutilate, eviscerate. If the mob isn't dead then, it is after a couple more hits. Throw in some lucky crits, and sometimes he doesn't even get the evis off. I ran a random dungeon with him too, and while he wasn't super-DPSer, he didn't do badly considering I was still learning what stuff did. And the fact that he's geared in all quest greens. I, uh, really ought to do something about that. >.>

This is what I wanted in a rogue- a sneaky toon that Kills Things Fast. When Zuluu got to Northrend, leveling turned into "Take 30 seconds or more to kill one mob, repeat 3x, then stop to eat/bandage." It was, frankly, a grind in every sense. Now, Rill can kill 20 mobs or so without taking much damage, so long as I'm careful with what I'm doing. He's still squishy- he wound up vs. 3 mobs at once and barely came out alive- but most of the time things are dead before the stun wears off.

So to sum up rogues? Thank you Blizzard, I needed that.

And I know they'll probably get nerfed eventually, but for now I'm going to level up Rill as much as I can, and enjoy it in the process. Also? He got to revered with Cenarion Expedition already, and between farming ears in Borean and duoing Coilfang instances with Alanon, he'll have his hippogryph very soon.

That's about all I can think of. I'll try out Turron, Davoss, and at least one of my ferals in the next week or so and do a post for them. And Rill is inspiring some RP posts (finally!) so I'll probably have one of those up soonish. So til next time, Happy Hunting!

Patch 4.0- Initial Response

HOLY FLIP WHAT DID THEY DO?!?!?


More to come once I've picked up my jaw from the floor. And relearned what all my buttons do. And figured out my spellbook/talents/all that stuff.