The Quiet Before the Storm

I have noticed a definite lull in the game lately. Ruby Sanctum came out and haven't seen a lot of people loading that one up, not like Sunwell was for BC. I almost think people are just getting tired and have been waiting with bated breath for what is to come in Cata. Has Blizz ramped it up too much? I wonder.

I will admit I am looking forward to the changes that are coming and I have enjoyed reading some of the different posts that beta testers have put up but I think they may have flooded the market too soon. Maybe they are worried about people leaving especially with Star Wars: The Old Republic hitting stands some time next year. Maybe they just couldn't keep it in any longer and like giddy little fan bois they wanted to spread the word about their work.

On a toon note, I have been working on Crannoc a lot more lately. I thought I could go back to Airdrigh but there just isn't much of a call for healers as there are for tanks. Could be just me but it seems that every time I queue up for a random as a tank I get in right away. As a healer? Well in no way is the wait time as bad as a DPS but it is still quite long. Not exactly sure why that is but can only assume that people are exploring healing more with their alts than tanks, granted it is much easier to gear up a healer and to go into an instance and heal than it is to tank said instance. I am enjoying tanking and my sister and bro-in-law are getting back into the game so that is helping quite a bit too.

Ah well time to head back into it. Hope to talk to you all again real soon. :)

New Site

Seems Battle.net has been revamped a little, not sure if everyone has it, or if it just happened to me lately or what but must admit I am a little lost without. Ah the joys of change. I keep checking in to see if I have a beta invite yet and so far...no luck. I have been keeping up with some of the changes that are posted on the wow.com site as well as following the pwnwear.com blog whose author is in the beta. FYI pwnwear.com deals with dk tanking which if you don't know has been of interest to me since I leveled Crannoc and have been playing him lately. Just don't see as much call for healers as there are for tanks so figured I would help fill a role that way.

I am a little flighty when it comes to my toons and do have a habit of switching from one to another. I enjoy playing Airdrigh my shaman but like I said not much call for them since it seems that everyone is leveling a healer alt, but not that many want to tank. Did a full clear of ToC last nite that went very smoothly, fastest I have ever gone through there in my whole WoW carreer. Healers and DPS were top on and we only had one wipe that was on the first set of bosses, the pvp part even went smoothly which was unusual. Picked up a tanking ring out of there that was a definite upgrade. Hope to get into ICC with him some time and see how I do against the first 4 bosses minimum.

Side note. Been checking out Tankspot.com, and watching The Weekly Marmot. Pretty informative webcast though a little biased in that one plays a tankadin and the other plays a priest for the most part. They do have some interesting perspectives especially since they are trying out the Beta. Hop over there if you find the time and check it out.

New Talents on MMO-Champion

New talent trees were released tonite in the beta and they posted them up on www.mmo-champion.com at www.wowtal.com. I took a look at them and played around, they still have the points setup for 1 per level so it takes a little planning, just remember you need 31 in the tree you are specializing in and then you get the other 10 whereever you want to put them.

Here is what I am thinking. http://www.wowtal.com/#k=fvvFmh9X.9mn.shaman

New Changes!

Amazing how the game can be in such a flux during beta, and how people can get so perturbed by that fact. I must admit I am very curious how the new talents will shape out, and from the looks of it those in beta are getting a chance to look at it tnite. Hopefully we will have something to play around with by morning. :)

Cata Resto Spec

Was playing around on the wowhead.com talent calculator and have changed the spec that I plan on. This of course is up in the air due to it only just starting beta but thought I would put it out there.

http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#hVZVIZxceuIcoVzRfuAu

Cata NDA Lifted

As I am sure most if not all of you know the NDA has been lifted and Cataclysm has moved into the Closed beta. How does this affect me? Not much, I will keep playing my Shaman and DK, though I am curious to see the changes to DK tanking since it is supposed to be down the Blood Tree. I will say that I applied for my guild for the 10 player contest they had going on earlier, highly doubt we will get invited but one can always hope.

Side note I got Crannoc into ToCr on Monday for the weekly Raid and did ok at tanking it. Was with a warrior who had prot as his 2ndary. Died on the worms when they had gotten loose and I pulled them both on me til the warrior could pick them up. The raid then burnt the worms down and the next boss. Lord Jarraxus was interesting as I was the OT and picked up the maidens and the infernals as best I could. Got a nice pair of bracers out of there, running a fair amount of randoms on him yet.

The Beginning and the End. Hmm Sounds Dramatic

Had an interesting night last night. Got home from work around 1035, 1040 at night, gave the wife a kiss we chatted and then grabbed a couple of glasses with some mature drinks in them and headed downstairs to the office to load up the game. Loaded up Ventrillo and first thing I saw were that our friends were logged in along with another guildie who has been missing due to playing something else (thbbbtp.) Said hello and loaded up my lvl 72 warlock to help my friends. I get in and ask them so what do you want to do? They were a little indecisive so I asked do you want to run the instance for Howling Fjord which is where they are leveling. "Sure!" I get so we all get ready, I ask my wife to load up someone to fill out the role we needed here, she brings her lock as well.

We queue up using the LFD going for UK in particular and zone into the instance. Buffs, cookies and soulstone done and time to start. Our group comprised of 2 level 68 druids, healer and tank, a 68 unholy dk, a 72 affliction lock and a 73 destro lock, interesting group. First pull, no problem we get the 2 guys down. Second pull we wipe due to some inexperience with tanking and healing. Come back in, take them down and move smoothly onto the forge area. We get the first pull off pretty well, 2nd pull healer wasn't ready when the tank went in and we ended up wiping after I manage pull aggro, stupid DoTs. Needless to say this is so much different than running the heroics that I have been doing on my shaman which is basically a face roll. We make it up to the first boss after working on the healing rotation for the druid and some cooldowns for the tank. We try to take the boss down but can't quite coordinate the group to make it happen, also I think we need to work on leveling up the 68s to 70 and see if we can find them some good gear to use as well. Since we were power leveling them through Vanilla and BC content I think they missed out on some of the good gear for their level. Once they hit 70 I am planning on running them through Kara with my DK and see what drops in there.

That was the beginning.

We then get invited into a pug for ICC, loaded up my shaman for healing and the wife loaded up her shadow priest, took a little bit to finally get the party together but worked it out in the end. Raid was 2 shaman, resto and ele, 2 hunters, 2 pallies, holy and prot, 2 dks, frost and blood, a mage and a shadow priest. Not too bad, mostly casters but that is what I am used to. We moved in and things went smooth, only 2 healers, Holy pally was keeping the tanks up while I took care of the raid and back up healed the tanks. Made it through 2nd boss, Lady Deathwhisper I believe and pally tank d/c'd, he loaded back up into our vent and tried logging into wow and wouldn't let him at the game servers. I remembered running into this before so told him to do a ipconfig /release, /renew that worked and we were off again, it did take us about 15 min to get it all figured out and to get him back into the game. Got through the ship part and hit Saurfang, he was like a brick wall, we just couldn't quite get him down, wipe 1, wipe 2, wipe 3, I had been up since 8 the previous morning and 3am was coming on fast, wipe 4, "Ok guys I am going to have to call it a night.", "No please just one more time we can get him.", "Ok one more and that is it.", we take him down. Everything just seemed to pull together right and made it through pretty well.

Thus ends my story of the Beginning (Utgarde Keep) and the End (ICC). Take it for how you will. Laters all and keep your stick on the ice.