Re-Rollin

Now that Mal is back (a million smiley faces) I've been working on some characters on a new server with him. Having a fresh start has worked wonders on my "WoW stress" level. I'm actually having gameplaying fun again, not just "working through challenges" fun. I want to spend some quality time with my new toons, and I didn't want to feel like I was taking advantage of my rank by not playing but still having officer priveleges, so I offered to step down as an officer. Px basically said not to worry about it, since it's summer and not much is really going on anyway. I have mixed feelings about it, but I'm just going to run with it for now.

One of the other officers gave up his position a few hours after I tried to because of bank drama. I asked him to take it easy on the gems in front since he has access to the whole thing as an officer. We've got uncut gems he can have cut into whatever blues he wants, I was pretty fried that 7 of the perfect green ones I grabbed from the AH to "share the wealth" just disappeared. He was asking who complained, and no one did, it was just me doing my bank thing. I've seen him do "suspicious" transactions before, but I left it alone because he was an officer. Most of the gems reappeared immediately, which I did not ask for. I'm not sure why he didn't use them right away.

I haven't seen Krom in weeks due to my new schedule. I also have mixed feelings about this. I do wonder how much of my wanting to reroll has to do with what happened with him. Then again, it's not like we're ever online at the same time, so that doesn't really matter. I think I just finally hit "burn out" with being max level, at least for a while.

U L O S E

I popped in on Zully last night just to see what was going on. The second I logged in I got a whisper from Px asking if I wanted to come to H Naxx. They were on Saph, so I figured I would join them. I got beamed in, everyone was ready to go, and off we went. There was just one small problem:

I was still in Disc/Shadow PvP spec when the fight started. Oops.

Fortunately, I was "sixth healer" because they had a spare empty spot, so I wasn't exactly necessary. It was really interesting being on raid heals and not being able to cast circle of healing. Once I realized what had happened I just dug in my little troll toes and started shielding like crazy. I really wish I had a wws of that fight, heh. I'm sure I was doin it rong, but we only had one casualty so it was all good. I was shocked at how few mana issues I had.

I got myself into the correct spec for Kel and was put on 6'oclock raid heals. Everything was sailing along just peachy until after the adds had been out for a while. I'm not super familiar with the fight, and I wasn't even entirely clear on who was doing what since I had just joined the raid 10 minutes prior, so I can't tell you what happened, but a few of our dps died. Then another one. Then a DK and two warriors went critical. Next thing I know it's chaos. People are dying, adds are running everywhere, I'm an angel, and Kel is evilly chasing down our ranged dps. Everyone's yelling because Kel has 35k health and dropping. He finishes off all but one Shaman. He's at 10k and dropping fast. For two eternal seconds it's just him and the Shaman. The Shaman wins.

Epic.

3.2 Patch WTF?

Well, they're trying to make PvP better. Some of the changes confuse and frighten me, but at least they're trying.

Let's see now...

Battlegrounds
Experience in BGs? Well, I guess that was coming what with Warhammer and some of the other RPGs having ways to level purely through PvP. I think it's only a small subset of people that will do this, and they made it possible for twinks to turn it off, which is good. It essentially makes a "twink bracket" since people with xp turned off will only be matched together. These changes are great for alts that want to mess around in BGs while leveling, but I bet the wait times for the 19,29,39 brackets is going to go way up for those not in the twink crowd. It also lets you start building up your point bank early by doing the BG daily while leveling.

They're trying to get people to defend the flags. It sucks that they have to bribe people not to play like idiots, and I think it's going to backfire. Get ready for the longest turtle games you've ever played. It's a good thing the BGs this applies to have point timers. I can't imagine how long old AV would have taken with this in place...

They added a timer to WSG. Thank god. No more honor farming.

Arenas
They're taking away current season gear for 2s teams. That makes me sad inside. That basically kills the entire 2v2 bracket. I think I died a little on the inside.

They took away the special alchemist "trinket" that allows insta healing in arenas. No more free cookies.

General
Sliding scale for riding, giving everyone riding at lvl 20. They're trying to push people through the old content faster, which I generally agree with, so I think this is cool. Ghost Wolf and Cheetah Form are still useful in that you don't have to slow down to do your farming or run away from an enemy, and in BGs you can carry the flag in form.

All Northrend badges dropped will be conquest badges. Yay, now I can FINALLY get some valorous badge gear running raids that I can fit into my schedule, and maybe even get a little Ulduar badge gear, and high level raiders with nothing to use the conquest badges for can trade them down for artifact gear. This will be patched in with the new raid which will use different badges, so I think this is fair. People doing OS10 pugs still won't be able to have the most current cool gear.

Priests
More mana regen adjustments. They've been trying to make Mana part of strategy again, and it didn't work last round, my mana pool is still basically unlimited in raid gear, so I'm not surprised.

Not a fan of getting my aoe healing reduced, but with the change allowing PoH to go to any group I see this getting abused. Inspiration change basically keeps the buff from getting ridiculous with all the crazy high armor tanks now. No biggie really, again reduces healing power a little but I don't think this will hurt as much as it seems.

Interface
The new shammy bars sound cool. It's about time they took away losing all that bag/toolbar space

I think Blizz is trying to kill Questhelper. It's probably for the best, but I hate to see one of the best addon developers get kicked in the crotch. That must hurt.

Higher potion stacks. Less trips to the bank, woot!

Super Secret Blizzard Arena Rating Scale

I managed to do some more arenas with Crav the other day. We lost. A lot. Miserably. We managed to win 1 game out of about 30. Despite that, we actually increased our rank by 45 points. That confuses me, but I guess that just means that we were up against teams that were winning more than us? I don't really care, as long as we keep at it we should have better luck.

I got myself a new computer. Finally. I've been complaining about my old one long enough. I'm downloading all the patches right now, looks like it's going to take a while. I can't wait to log in and set my graphics to ULTRA! Woo!

Now if only I had an Ulduar run to test out my newfound blazing computer speed on.

Oh yeah, and I'm ditching DSL for Cable tomorrow, so that will be about 10 times better as well. So much for WoW being a cheap hobby.

Well let's see:

There haven't been any gear update posts, because I haven't done any raiding
There haven't been any shaman posts, because she's been parked in Silvermoon City since the trade cartel post
There haven't been any warrior posts, because there's nothing really exciting about leveling from 78-80. I did unlock Hodir.

I have a lvl 20 Druid now on my friend's server. It's fun, and the people I've done lowbie pugs with have been really nice.

Mal's been going through some drama getting his account back. Yes, he has it back and he's going to play again once the high speed internet is installed. I'm excited, but I'm containing myself because I've had enough disappointments with WoW friends that I don't believe it's really going to happen. Then again, I didn't think we'd actually keep in touch either. I've encouraged him to come over to the server I'm building my Druid on. I recreated EnM. Not sure if it will be sad or feel like home. We'll see.