Shadow Priest - Disappointing

I'm working hard and don't have much time to post updates, but I continue to raid and play with my new guild and we've taken down the 3rd Coliseum boss encounter, Faction Champions in 25man (and 10man but that was easy :)).

Today we also did a part of Ulduar-25, we spent a couple of hours trying FL + 4 Towers. It's a hard, complex fight, and while the people doing the hard stuff are well practiced, we still didn't manage (10% best try). In the end we took him easily with 3 Towers and continued on our way.

But while I'm winning loot (and gearing up using badges), I'm annoyed at my low DPS as Shadow and I feel frustrated that no matter what I do, I still end up on the lower end of the damage meters. Even an officer who is a much more practiced and better-geared s-priest than me, only made it to about 7th place on the damage meters. That... sucks. Unfortunately there doesn't seem much I can do about it :(

Maybe I should continue leveling my Warlock ;)

Yogg-Saron Down

I haven't posted in a while, not due to lack of playing in WoW but basically due to work pressure and also because I wanted things in WoW to settle down a bit before I wrote about them.

You see, I've left my guild and joined a new one.

I don't want to criticize the previous guild too much - they did after all accept me, gave me a place in raids and let me win loot. However raiding with them felt very much like a "job" rather than a family. Relations with most officers were basically limited to a guild-invite and I felt neither appreciated nor wanted. Nor did I like some of the decisions made by the officers, like looting all plants from Freya's room as well the the Alchemist Cache from her loot to themselves. Well they said it was for the guild bank, but then they wanted members to buy (for gold) flasks from the guild-bank. I don't mind not getting free flasks from GB but taking the plants just for officer use seemed self-serving to me.

Another example of the lack of personal interaction I felt, after a strong raiding start I had to stop raiding for a few weeks due to work pressure. During the time I was not raiding not once did an officer or the GL so much as whisper me asking me what was going on with me. Don't get me wrong I'm not looking to get scolded but I would have expected at least casual interest - when is the new recruit coming back to raiding? Later I learned I had been demoted to social - without telling me anything. The feeling I had was, you're not wanted and not missed.

Anyway, I said a short (1-sentence) bye in gchat and left, followed quickly by talking to a friend about joining her guild, a raiding guild with similar progress to the one I had just left (they had downed Yogg right after the patch). After talking to her I posted an application with her guild and the day after I was accepted.

That was on Saturday. On Sunday I was invited to an Ulduar raid which had Vezax and Yogg left and we took down both, giving me the Heroic Ulduar achievement. That felt good :)

The only regret I have is that they needed a Shadow Priest which means no more raid healing for me - a role I enjoyed and was good at. Shadow Priest DPS isn't so good currently (see Misery's blog for details) in general and more specifically my gear is not so good - it was off-spec gear so my position in the damage-meters was pretty near the end...

Still I'm sure my gear (and DPS) will improve and I look forward to more fun raids with my new guild, who it must be said have a very amusing Vent channel :)

Little Roo

Last night I finally decided to do the Dalaran Orphan quest. I picked up the little Oracle orphan Roo, as I chose the Oracles faction in Sholazar and thought I might as well stick by my faction :)

I thought the chain would be painful and annoying but as it turns out it wasn't too bad - just fly around Northrend a bit. With a 280% flying mount that was not so bad. It was fairly good gold, although at the end I goofed-up a bit and in the Wonderworks shop I bought the zepplin kit (4g) instead of a 'small zepplin' (80s). So I wasted 4g, omg l2read noob :)

I barely ever take out a pet so having the pet Roo (which you get in the mail after completing the chain) isn't important for me, but it's nice to mark another thing "done".

Later that night I tried the achievement in Occulus heroic of killing the last boss within 20min of the first. It went hard, mostly because we missed a patroling drake around one of the platforms who attacked us and killed 2 of us after we landed. But in the end we actually managed to get the the final boss with 2 minutes to spare and having 5 red drakes we should have managed. However I think we used the abilities wrong and we wiped due to a combination of too-low DPS and the small whelps that spawn killing us. I'm going to have to do some reading before I try that again...

In other news my Warlock hit level 50 but I haven't had too much time to play with him since the patch. Having switched to Demonology the new pet (Fel Guard) is nice but the advantage of having him is offset by having weaker DoTs compared to Affliction and most importantly no mana back ability from Drain Soul, meaning I am constantly struggling with mana, unlike Affliction. Am considering switching back to Affliction, will see...

Patch 3.2 First Impressions

I'm liking it :)

Mind you, that's not a totally positive thing - it means I don't love the patch, as I feel the new instance/raid leaves much to be desired. I've covered this previously but I'll summarize my feelings - it's nice to have a new instance, but I just don't feel an instance composed of nothing more than a round room is worthy of the title of a "raid instance". Not when compared against the likes of everything from Molten Core, through Karazhan, Naxx and Ulduar.

Still, there's plenty to like about the patch. I love the profession boosts, the new epic gems, everything. It has breathed new life into all professions.

I've done the new 5man in both normal and heroic versions and I would categorize the normal version as fast, fun, easy enough to be nearly impossible to wipe, a very good place for people just dinging 80 to go to. The heroic version was much harder, my PuG wiped several times. Yet the GY is very close, you can even enter the room mid-fight (bug?) and the wipes were mostly about us not knowing the tactics - first time there, and the bosses have different abilities in heroic. Compared to some other heroics it is very quick and not too hard, and gives very good loot.

There are a TON of new daily quests in the Argent Tournament for my priest, so getting more gold should be very easy.

I bought the +10xp chest for my Warlock and mailed it to him, I hope I will feel the difference while leveling. I'm also looking forward to getting the 100% speed mount.

That's pretty much it. I'm tired, but pleased. Today I took the time to enjoy the patch and the rush of new content, however over the next few days I will continue to work hard, so not much game time for me, alas. Still it was worth it and I'm very happy with the fact that I have plenty of new stuff to do now :)

Dinging News

So many updates, hence the strange subject :)

First of all my efforts with Solidfaith doing low-level quests and grinding the daily Argent Tournament finally paid-off - he's now dinged exalted with all the city factions. He's also exalted with the Silver Hand and champion of all the factions except Gnomergan (holding off on turning that in till the patch, for extra dailies = more cash). This means that once patch 3.2 arrives I will be able to buy the new heirloom Bind-On-Account +10% XP chest for my Warlock using the Champion badges, which is very nice :)

In other "dinging" news my Warlock hit level 47. At this point I stopped his mad rush upward long enough to power-level both Mining and Engineering. Mining is now at 227 after buying a few gold ores and tons (200?) Mithril Ores. Smelting Mithril is still green so theoretically I could still level my Mining even further, but it's not really worth it - I can probably much more easily (and economically) mine my way to 230 at which point Truesilver smelting will be available for further power-leveling.

Using all the Mithril bars from the mining power-leveling I leveled my Engineering, when I hit 245 I made myself the best item I have so far got from Engineering, a head slot item called "Green Lens". This is actually, despite the name, a blue-quality item and apart from the standard 10 stamina is created with a random enchant - I got +29 spell power which is very nice and should last me quite a few levels. There are also a few nice trinkets available from Engineering but since I'm using the heirloom trinkets, I don't think it is worth the hassle - the nice thing about BoA items is how they scale with my character leveling.

Anyway all of this leveling is done mostly very late evening after I finish working for the day - still not raiding due to working late. So considering the amount of time I have to play, I think I'm doing not bad at all :)

I'm currently questing in Tanaris but will probably soon visit some other areas, like maybe Searing Gorge - tons of quests there if I recall correctly. At ~50 it's off to one of my favorite areas in the old world - Un'Goro Crater :)