Blog watch: Maei's a Bastard Edition

So when I'm at work working where I work, I don't get a chance to eat nice food. My so-called 'friend' Maei, however, is still a small child who never goes to school and instead taunts me with stories of the delicious noms he has throughout the day. He's posted an (admittedly very funny) video about it that's completely not accurate.

Oh, he has a new WoW blog by the way.

~Reala


PS. If he offers you a sandwich from under his shirt, avoid eye-contact and politely decline.

Tier 12 armour viewer: How shiny are YOU?

WoWhead has a really neat 3D model viewer for the tier 12 sets - you choose your class, race,gender and even colour of the set. I miss the high level armour sets tool that the official site used to have but this looks like a great alternative.

~Reala

Click the Flamewell: 4.1 and 4.2 PTR impressions

Having had a bit more of a chance to play without as much danger of a RL sleep debuff wiping my group, I feel that I now can give some proper opinion on the latest live patch.

4.1

I like the Guild Finder, but it feels like it should still be on the test realms in it's current state. Not because it's buggy, but because it feels decidedly incomplete. An addition of specific weekday requirements as well as the ability to use it while guilded are, in my opinion, essential - with the addition of guild perks pretty much everyone's alts are guilded too, I had to make a new character to check out the guild finder. I also would make it not possible to leave the 'description' part of guild entries blank - the other information provided is as useful as seeing the guild plate above someone's head. Similarly I would like to be able to call up more information about a guild that looks interesting, such as an introduction and links to websites.

I have benefited from the Dungeon Finder's Call to Arms a couple of times, never with very good loot but nevertheless a good incentive. Queue times have been lightning but I'll be interested to see how they're affected once everyone's settled into the patch.

"A dead player can now be resurrected by targeting them using the Party or Raid Frame even if they have released. No more hunting for corpses." THANK YOU.

I''m thoroughly enjoying endless Chakra. Holy now feels like there's specs within specs as it's less of a Chakra dance, which promoted more swapping between them (or accidentally setting off Sanctuary in 5-mans because you forgot your Chakra was up when casting PoM pre-pull. Not that I ever, ever did that). Similarly the removal of another unnecessary refresh in the form of Inner Fire is welcome. I haven't had a chance to use the new and improved Sanctuary, but it's pretty.

It's good to finally get to run the Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub instances, I haven't been playing long enough to have done them at  70 so they were an entirely new experience to me. I feel they're a good addition to Heroics both visually and mechanically, but I think we'll see a some similar nerfing down the line. Most bosses are fine but I find the end bosses easier than a few of the others which doesn't feel right.

4.2 PTR

There's only one thing I really want to talk about in this early stage of the next patch's PTR presence: Cauterizing Flames; the healing priest 4-piece set bonus for tier 12.

Lightwell 2? Flamewell? I'm going to need more abusive macros. Lightwell remains a Holy priest's most theoretically effective ability, I'm sure you can guess what the operative word is there. In fairness I've seen more and more lightwell-aware players recently (Lightaware?) but do they need yet another thing to click on? Or will it encourage clicking good stuff ass a matter of course? We shall see.

It's an interesting addition for disc though, which reinforces my impression of disc (which I play as for dailies but not in groups and occasionally in raids) as a heavy utility spec with Inner Focus and Pain Suppression and talents which proc. It's no bad thing, in fact these little tricks are what give disc it's charm, especially now they're (slightly) less of a bubble-bot.

~Reala

Saga's 20 days of WoW challenge: Day 9

I'm back! But still not over the jet-lag. So it's just as well the next installment of Saga's challenge is an easy one! And apt, in fact, as it was to do with the 4.0.6 PTR patch notes.

I intend to give my impressions of the 4.1 patch at some point this week, because I have opinions. However, every time I've played WoW for more than an hour since I got back my head slams the keyboard and makes a loud snoring kind of noise, and I can't heal like that (I'm not a Paladin after all *snigger* *snort*)

Day 09 – Your first post

Click the tooltip to view the post. It was the first boss nerf we'd seen in Cata (after all the spouting about HCs meaning to be hard in Cata) and Holy priests got Chakra for 60 seconds up from 30 - I'm already used to endless Chakra so 60 seconds is laughable and 30 is just sadface.


~Reala