Aug 29

It’s all over the WoW blogosphere by now, so I’m sure you’ve heard: there’s been an announcement that a huge change to how raid buffs, debuffs, and buff stacking is going to work. I won’t quote the article here, but you may go read it for yourself.

I really like the spirit of the change. It’ll certainly shuffle some things around at first, but eventually everything will settle down, and the world will continue–raids will down bosses and epics will be distributed and progress will be made and the world (of Warcraft) will be at peace. And stuff.

There was one change that surprised me a bit.

Shadow Weaving: Buffs only self.
Improved Shadow Bolt: Buffs only self.
Expose Weakness: Buffs only self.
Shadow Embrace: Buffs only self.

I was planning on speccing survival on my hunter for the expansion because of the benefit to the raid provided by expose weakness, and with that in addition to hunting party (providing mana/energy/rage/runic power regen to 10 raid members), a survival hunter, while having lower DPS, could provide strong benefits to the raid. It will be interesting to see how expose weakness and similar talents work out in the expansion.

Related posts:

1. Heroic/Raid Saves in 3.1
2. World Event for WotLK
3. What Can a Discipline Priest Bring to Your Raid
4. These are the People in your Raid
5. 15 Reasons Feral Druids should be Excited about Wrath

Aug 28

I’m a strange mix of “hardcore” and “casual,” depending on how you define those two words. I guess WoWWiki’s “dedicated” covers it pretty well. I play almost every day, have two 70s and a small army of alts, and do Kara. But, I’ve never been in a guild that raids on a schedule, had a character with really good gear, been in the top of a PvP or arena bracket or anything else like that.

At this stage in the game (read: just before an expansion release), a lot of people stop doing various things for various reasons, most of it having to do with gear (for those who only care about the gear). Raiders stop raiding, PvPers stop PvPing, and if you’re not a tank, good luck getting a heroic group. So, I’ve decided to sit down and think about where *I* am in my WoW, and what I’m going to do for the future.

Determine a Main

I currently have two level 70 characters: a feral druid and a marksmanship hunter. I also have a 67 warlock that could hit 70 in a hurry if I wanted. The druid has decent gear, some Kara gear with some crafted epics thrown in, just a quest green or two remaining. The hunter is a little bit more green (pun intended), with a couple crafted epics and a Kara drop or two.

I got into my hunter pretty hard when I got tired of tanking on my druid. Seemed like all the groups I were in had folks that could do 1,500 DPS right off the bat, and I just couldn’t hold aggro against it with my gear or skill level, although people expected me to. I think a lot of this had to do with dinging 70 so late in the BC era.

Recently, though, I’ve been playing the druid a bit more, and am really getting back into the swing of kitty soloing, and would be interested in getting back into tanking, especially with the new swipe hitting four targets and associated glyph making things a bit easier.

Really, I’ll always be an altoholic, so “determining my main” really means figuring out which character I’m going to get to 70 first. Since my pally tank is only level 20, and I really enjoy the druid, this will likely be my choice.

Level Tradeskills

There’s nothing worse than having to level up your tradeskills again–unless it’s realizing that you never finished leveling them the first time! I’m a 375 herbalist and alchemist on my druid, but I’m only 362 or so on engineering on my hunter, though her mining is at 375. Some of the engineering goodies look pretty neat, and I need to get the mats ready for my roflcoptor for when she gets her epic mount training.

Which brings me to my last point…

Gold and Epic Flyers

If there’s one thing I can absolutely guarantee will be useful in WotLK, it’ll be gold. The more the merrier. Also, currently, at level 77, you can do a simple quest chain that unlocks Cold Weather Flying, which allows you to fly in Northrend. No expensive training or anything like that. So, the earlier I can get my epic mount training, the better. I think I’m going to get it for my druid first, both because I’m going to level her first, and also because she’ll need a Heroic Sethekk Halls run to get it.

So there you have it! My list of things to do before WotLK comes out. What are you guys doing to prepare?

Related posts:

1. BA Shared Topic: Preparing for Wrath of the Lich King
2. Travel Speed: Travel Form vs. Mount
3. The Death of the Epic Mount Quests
4. Not Joining the Bandwagon
5. The Slightly Deeper End of the Big Kids’ Pool

Aug 27

Since my blog was down for a long time, I don’t think I ever mentioned this, but a friend and I are going to BlizzCon! (There is a third friend that wasn’t so lucky, and we’re awaiting the end of the magic drawing to find out how that goes.) I’m excited, as this will be my first time going, and the mount is pretty cool (though I really want the pally-in-a-bubble).

Although, part of me isn’t sure quite what to expect. I’m just hoping for a lot of cool information, some good times, and a little bit of free stuff.

Related posts:

1. BlizzCon, Here We Come!
2. Blizzcon, Cataclysm, and Stuff
3. BlizzCon: Day 0
4. Blizzcon 2009: Day 1
5. Blizzcon 2009: Day 0

Aug 13

I belive I’ve been able to track my server instability to WordPress–specifically memory usage. I’ve done some things to tune it down a bit, and I’m currently working with my host to improve performance even more. I hope to be back into blogging again full swing before too long. See you soon!

Related posts:

1. 100%!
2. New Theme. Again.
3. Problems with Dual Specs and Action Bars
4. Greetings
5. WoW Bash Lives Again!