Hesttia’s (brief) foray into BG levelling

So Hesttia the Enhancement Shaman is 52.  Leveling at 52 involves a lot of flying.  You go to place A, do 5 quests, realize the rest are impossibly high level, then fly to place B and repeat.  So I decided to try some BG leveling.  It was Arathi Basin day, so I gave that a shot.

Epic fail.

1. At 52 you are in the 51-60 bracket.  I’m 52.  The Horde are 58.  I die.
2. DKs are OP.
3. Did you know that if you put the Sentry Totem down you can’t move?  I didn’t.  I never did figure it out during the BG.  I just stopped using Totems.  Not that it would have mattered.
4. Rogues are OP.
5. I can do ok against a caster of about the same level as me.  I have an interrupt and I like it.

The moral of the story?  Don’t do BG leveling in the lower half of a BG bracket unless you are far more patient than me.

Guest post, Hallows End and shameless recruitment plug

Guest post
You can check out my guest post over at World of Snarkcraft – EZ WoW – Solutions for the E-Peen Generation.  I wrote it just after reading some other blogs, and then realised it was REALLY snarky.  Expect to see more extreme snarking over here too.

Hallows End
I am now Morrighan of the Hallowed.  And after me, my husband,  and my friends Wahelen, Gwendolyne and Snipper used every single one of our alts who could summon, so are Wahelen and Ethanuel.  Gz to them.  Last week we hadn’t seen a drop and were all a bit worried, but the last few days saw everything we needed drop.

Gwen and Snipper seem to be going for the achievement on every character.  And they might make it too!

Shameless recruitment plug
Also, one of our ret palas seems to have gone AWOL.  So Forgotten Heroes is looking for a new one.  If you think you’ve got the skills and experience you can apply on the FH website (I know its not pretty, but its attached to a superb dkp addon).

Forgotten Heroes is a progress raiding guild on the Darksorrow-EU server.  We’re looking for a mature and knowledgeable retribution paladin to join our team.  We raid Wed, Thur, Sun, Tue from 18.45 EU server time to 23.00, but theres lots more opportunities to raid on other nights if you want more (we do TotC 25 twice a week, 10 man heroic runs, etc.).  You must be able to use Vent and speak and understand English as this is the main language for the guild.

We’ve currently cleared all normal mode content.  We are 4/5 in Trial of the Grand Crusader 10 man with multiple groups and have had some good tries (read >10% on Icehowl) on Northrend Beasts in Trial of the Grand Crusader 25 – I expect (hope!) it will go down soon.  We’re also working our way through Glory of the Ulduar Raider.

 

Achievement fest, or how a bad night turned good

So last night. Raid invite time comes and where am I? Still on a train. Meetings ran late. I missed the raid. The guild ran ToTC 25.  Realising I was at a loose end I decided to do a few things I wouldn’t normally be able to do on a Wednesday night.

Did you notice the Headless Horseman drops rings?
First I logged onto Arianrhodd to do the Headless Horseman. I had a bonus summon, never having done it before, after having quickly put out the fires in Brill. I went, I summoned, I got the Ring of Ghoulish Glee, I was happy. I now have two epic rings at least! I missed out on the sword, but maybe I’ll try and go back each day and get it and the helm.

The Saviour of Hallows End ACHIEVED!
Bring me the head of … oh wait ACHIEVED!

GNERD inspired PvP
So that being done, I moved on to Morrighan and started looking for some GNERD infused honour kills. I found most of the 50 I needed in WG. It’s the first time I’ve done WG since the limit on the number of people was introduced. Is the lag better? Yes. Is it still awful? Yes. But I got some honour, some quests and most of my kills. Then I hopped into a quick Eye of the Storm. We ran, we took towers, we realized it was going rather well. Then the message came up – Too few players, battleground will close in 2 minutes. But with four towers and a few flag runs, we won in less than 2 minutes. 1600 to 0.

The Perfect Storm ACHIEVED!
Flurry ACHIEVED!

Ulduar Revisited
By then ToTC 25 had finished. The guild was off to Ulduar. The GM was sleepy so he handed over the reins to a fellow officer and went to bed. I replaced him. Wahelen, in his wisdom, decieded to try FL hard mode.

First there was some debate about what FL hard mode was. For some reason a couple of people were convinced it was 3 towers up. This is because they couldn’t see the achievement for four towers, which only appears after you have killed 3 towers. /facepalm

Then we decided to do Dwarfaggeddon. Try one – epic fail. People killed dwarves they shouldn’t kill. We took out the spider bots and the giants our biker brought back and waited a few seconds before we tried again.

Dwarfaggedon (25 man) ACHIEVED!

Then we had a couple of fail tries on FL. The most irritating thing was that it showed up what people cleared didn’t know how to do. Given we had some warning that we might try FL this irritated me. A lot. Added to that someone decided not to die and I died twice just trying to use the teleporter. I was not amused. The tactics for FL are not that hard. People weren’t messing up on Freya’s adds or Mimirons flames. They were failing to understand being launched from a Demolisher! I’m a terrible raid leader because I always expect people to be prepared. If they don’t understand tactics – ask. If they haven’t read the tactics beforehand – why not! I don’t expect to down things fast, I don’t mind wiping. But I feel we should never wipe because of something you could have read on Wowiki.  Action point for all raiders going back to Ulduar hardmodes: go back and reread the Ulduar tactics. Its been a while and the hard modes need you to understand not just the hard mode mechanic, but also the original tactics!

More explanations.

Then the turning point came. Then finally we had a good try. We wiped because the second team launched too soon. And then, on try 4:

Nuked from Orbit (25 Player) ACHIEVED!
Orbit-uary (25 Player) ACHIEVED!

Some people got more than that too!  Credit for this kill goes to a few people. I want to mention Girion, who did awesome amounts of DPS as a Demolisher driver. Also Hitmerules and Cheesygrin who did a great job there. But in particular Wahelen, who remained calm throughout, who had faith we could manage it. Wahelen is unflappable in the face of failure. Hes encouraging, praises gradual progress, explains calmly and does a great job of leading raids.

More dwarf killing
Then we moved on to Razorscale and decided to kill some dwarves. One tank took the guardians, some ranged took their health down to a low enough level. Then she landed and we let her take them out. That’s when the bug became evident. Not everyone got the same number of kills each time. Consequently, by the time he enraged not everyone had the achievement. We came back, screwed up stupidly and while we were all lying dead on the floor he killed another batch of guardians. And all of the rest of us got our achievement.

Iron Dwarf, Medium Rare (25 player) ACHIEVED!

Apart from one. Hitmerules still needed 1 dwarf! So in our kill we carefully selected a victim, got him the achievement, took it down and got the speed kill achievement for the few very new people who didn’t have it. Credit for this one has to go to Elfbabe and Melanai who masterminded it. Elfbabe in particular did a great job telling people when to dps the guardians, when to stop and getting them in place.

It was the most fun we’ve had in Ulduar for AGES. It was great. It follows a 6% try in TotGC 25 Northrend Beasts and having cleared everying in TotGC 10 apart from Anub with two raid groups this week.  It seems after all the changes FH is finally starting to gel and the progress is coming.  The Ulduar achievements maybe are helped by us being OP.  The TotGC ones aren’t so I’m quite pleased with them.

And the icing on the very large chocolate cake – getting to tell the GM that while he slept we managed all these achievements. Its like the time he missed the guilds first Yogg kill because he had to go and rescue someone on a boat. I replaced him then too. Mwhahahahaha!

And just to finish off the night, with yet another Eye of the Storm victory (it was the daily – that’s normally the best chance you have to win anything on my realm as Alliance):

GNERD rage ACHIEVED!

Reported for spam.

Why I miss the 0.3% wipes

Generally I like Wrath better than TBC.  I definitely like the accessibility of raids.  But there is one thing that bugs me.  We don’t really get those 0.3% wipes often any more.

In the arms of Kologorn
Last night, for reasons best know only to himself, our raid leader decided we should try and get the achievement to kill Kologorn without killing his arms.  Its not part of the Glory meta so I was a bit miffed.  But whatever.

We got it.  The trick is that when he drops people he yells ‘Oblivion’.  If you really control your dps you can save 3-4 sets of people by dpsing the right arm after they get swiped.  Every time you hear ‘Oblivion’ go back to the chest fast.  Don’t DoT him.  When the arm is on about 15% stop doing this, shufty the melee over to stand under the left arm where they won’t hit the right so often and dps while you still can.

What was good, was the excitement of a 0.3% wipe.  With people dropping like flies and only one tank and a healer up, they died and the fight was over.  And I realised that those fights were something I missed from Wrath.

The secret of Wrath raiding
Don’t die.

Thats it.  If every single person manages to live, 85% of fights, including hard modes go down.  For the other 15% everyone needs to live and do good dps/healing/etc.  Just don’t die.  For progress guilds on hard modes death=wipe.

I don’t really like the hard mode mechanic much.  The fights tend to be gimmicky and repetative.  They either aren’t different enough or have an added gimmick that makes them a bit silly.  I really hope Blizzard can find a better way.

The other thing the hard mode mechanic does is make the difference between a success and a wipe much wider.  Someone died?  Take the wipe.  Most wipes are quick.  The 0.3% wipe is something you see so rarely because if everyone lives, its a kill.

I really dislike this.  TBC raiding managed to be challenging without requiring this.  I remember these low % wipes.  Lots of them.  While you pushed the edges of an enrage or how many people died or whatever.

What I would like to see
More hard modes where success wasn’t defined soley by keeping 25 people alive for 5 minutes.  Maybe players have to successfully do something, or even you know you are going to lose some players but have to work through it like the Kologorn achievement.  All of the gimmicks are belittled at the moment by the need to keep 100% of players alive.

I don’t really want the fights to be made easier.  Just different.  Its quite hard to explain.  The challenge, when you first went to see him, of Gruul was not 100% survival.  It was keeping enough players alive to kill him before he was too much to handle.  Make the hard modes more challenging in terms of what players have to do and the hoops they have to jump through.  Don’t just add one little gimmick and insist no one dies.  Then, since the challenge lies here, make the deaths a little  more forgiving (losing 1-2 people from 25 should not necessitate a wipe).

Not to make the fights easier.  To make them more fun.  Wrath wanted to get rid of 15 minute boss fights.  I would like to get rid of 30 second forced wipes in Cataclysm.

Altaholism

So now I’m no longer an officer I have some time to spend on other things.  I’m indulging my Altaholism at the moment.  Trial of the Crusader/Onyxia and the Emblem changes are such that both my alts can raid.

Akandra the Discipline Priest
I did Trial of the Crusader 10 on Akandra the healer.  I can feel the difference healing on her as opposed to being on Morrighan.  Probably because I used to have on Akandra what I now have on Morrighan – that kind of instinctive experience with my class that means when the going gets tough I can pull out all the stops in a split second.  Knowing instantly where my buttons are and what does the things I need.

That being said, no one died from my failure apart from me.

It was a clear, a success and a great deal of fun.  And as some of the blogs I continue to read and my Horde experiences remind me, not everyone has waltzed around and cleared Trial of the Crusader even with their mains.   So I am very please to be able to go with my alts.

Plans for Akandra – Trial of the Crusader 25.  I took my main to our alt run this week as she didn’t get in on the main run.  But hopefully I will this week and then I can bring Akandra to the Friday run.

Enalla the Feral Bear Druid
Now for me its the other way around.  Trial of the Crusader was my nostalgia moment, healing on my priest.  I never did Onyxia at 60.  But my friends Rincmaster, Uvejret and Wahelen were putting together an Onyxia run so I offered the services of my suite of characters.  And knowing me as they do, they let me bring Enalla my feral tank to what I called Enalla’s First Raid (which is especially nice considering Rinc loves to tank so thanks especially to him).

It was a one shot.  I tanked the lady herself.  It was HUGE fun. I loved it.  Special thanks go to Mokelok, Lela and Morningblade for controlling their aggro so well.  Yes I know I need a new weapon.

Plans for Enalla –  Ulduar 10 to start with.  With a new weapon I could also manage Trial of the Crusader 10 most likely.

Arianrhodd the Frost Death Knight
I’m just trying my hardest here to get her some gear.  Without the kind of support that a large and friendly guild like Forgotten Heroes its much harder to gear up.  Right now I am busy upping my weapon skills after the dual wield switch and farming rep, rep and more rep.

I’ve found having this character an incredibly useful experience.  It reminds me of how hard things are still in this game for some players.  It makes me feel even more angry when I see people complain about ‘welfare epics’ and ‘raids are too easy’.

Plans for Arianrhodd – PuGs and lots of em.  Especially in 3.3 with that PuG achievement out there.

Levelling
I am levelling two characters at the moment.  Morrighan the Blood Elf paladin with my husband and his hunter, Hesttia the Drenai shaman on her own with a full set of Heirloom gear.  Both are in their 40s and on the last run up to Outland.  Hesttia will probably have to spend longer in Azeroth, levelling her Engineering.

Plans for the levelling characters – get them both to 80.  I will definitely try some PvP levelling too on Hesttia – probably in the last run up to 58.

In other news …
Morrighan had some tries on Anub’arak on 10 man hard mode last night.  For my first time on the hard mode version it was good, I only noob died once.  We tried with just two healers, but thats not enough.  What we need to down him is 3 good healers, 2 good tanks and 5 dps good enough to ensure we only had one burrow phase.  We had a few problems with crashed login servers, etc. and never quite got enough tries once we had that setup.  But he will die.  Our very first attempt was 9%!!!  And it wasn’t the only one where he went low that night.  Its close.

Standing down as an officer

I made a very hard decision this week and stood down as an officer in my guild. Why? So I could spend more time with all you lovely readers! At least in part. I enjoy writing this blog and I would like to have more time to spend on it.

What you give as an officer
Time. Being an officer takes a lot of time. Time in which you could be playing the game and doing other things. The game has vast amounts of content I would like to do. I want to get more achievements. I want to improve my alts and do some things with them.

However, its hard to do achievements when there are constant demands on you. People want to talk to you about things, ask you to do things for them. You also get asked to arrange things, to lead raids for other people, regardless of what you want to do. I found this last problem in particular was gaining a lot of momentum.

Also, people don’t like to hear no. If I’m in a heroic, they can’t understand why I can’t instantly relog and craft an item for them. If I would rather not lead a pug raid, I get told ‘oh but its easy’. Which always made me want to say back ‘if its so easy, lead it yourself’. But as an officer, no matter what happens, you have to remain polite and calm. I was finding that increasingly hard to do.

What you get back
There are two main features of this – job satisfaction and a sense of control. I enjoy making the guild work for others. I would lead raids I didn’t always want to do, knowing that it was for others. I used to lead some Friend/Alt raids, until the demands of progress raiding took over and meant I didn’t have time any more. Seeing the guild progress and knowing you contributed to that is very satisfying.

Also, I got to help try and shape the guild. I could object to things I didn’t like and try and make the guild a good place to be.

Balance
There comes a time, however, when what you get back is no longer compensating for what you give up. Real life has thrown me a few curve balls and I find I just don’t have the patience for the drama any more. I just can’t find the will to talk down that person who will just quit the guild if they don’t get a raid spot. It’s just a game, and other people deserve that spot too. I can’t find the energy to argue with yet another player who can’t understand that other peoples play times and aims don’t coincide with theirs.

It reached the point where I felt like I was being treated more like an NPC than a human being. That’s the time to quit.  I know that my RL frustrations were affecting my level of tolerance in the game, but still a bit of empathy goes a long way.

That’s not the whole story of course. But as an Officer, there are things I just won’t talk about publicly. Another plus is that I don’t have to feel like that now. Its my blog after all. I’m not an official representative of FH any more.

The moral of the story: don’t take your officers for granted.

Brave new (blogging world)
I have a post about the ret pala changes in 3.3 sitting on my laptop just waiting for a chance to be uploaded! And a post about enchants, enhancements and professions that should go up soon too.

What else would you like me to write about here? I know I have some readers (WordPress tells me I do anyway). What do you want to see here?

September in pictures

Just a few little pictures that show how much fun WoW can be … and how beautiful despite the stick it gets for the cartoony graphics.  September has been a busy month!

Raiding
FH has made some nice progress in the last month.  After getting a largely new line up over the summer, its taken a little while to gel.  It started, for me, in 10 man Ulduar where I got Iron Council on hard mode to add to my Hodir and Thorim.  The guild has also done a lot of 10 man hard modes.  Freya is also down, and Trial of the Grand Crusader 10 is cleared up to Anub’arak by one group and Twin Valkyrs by the other.  Unfortunately all on nights I couldn’t attend due to pesky RL commitments!

I was, however, there for this one:

I was so very proud of this one.  Before the summer we took down XT-002 but its been a bit of a struggle since then with the changes in  the guild.  It seems we’ve not settled down.  Yes, I know we all have better gear now.  But whats best about this is we weren’t actually trying the hard mode.  It was an accident!  You’ll notice we got Cheese the Freeze too.  This is the key to Hodir hard mode just as no one going insane was the key to Yogg.  The key point of all Wrath raids – don’t die!  We’re now working on Iron Council and Thorim in 25 man and I expect those to follow fairly soon.

And then there was that new raid:

This was my first try in there and we got these achievements by a mile!  She never even cast a deep breath!  But then Onyxia is a celebration rather than a progress raid.  And it is fun.

Pirate Day

This is Morrighan flying against a clear blue sky (as a pirate)

And standing in front of a brilliant sunset (as a pirate)

And dancing with my husband

Brewfest

Unfortunately Brewfest achievements seem to result in a lot of screenshots rather like this.  Fun though.  It all ended up looking like this:

And just for fun…

Tindal, the fat-hungry-dwarf healer, looks like hes taking  a well deserved break

Trial of the Crusader

This week, for the first time, we had access to all the bosses in the Trial of the Crusader and Trial of the Grand Crusader.

Wednesday 10 man
So, come raid time, the officers were faced with a choice of what to do.  We had around 30 people available to raid.  Cutting any of them out for a Trial of the Crusader 25 seemed cruel, so instead we decided to take three 10 man groups.  We jiggled them about, pulled in one friend and set off in three fairly even groups.  My group featured a pala (Phaese) and druid (Wahalen) tank, a disc priest (Noela), a resto shammy (Alaka), and a druid healer (Warheart, who is normally a boomkin).  We then had a mage (Uverjet), a lock (Sephriana) , an elemental shaman (Tammi), a frost death knight (Mokelok) and me!  The other groups were similarly balanced and the race was on!

We spent about 10 mins adding some new gems and enchants to the druid tank, who had gotten some recent upgrades and not had a chance to fix them up.  He doesn’t tank often, and hasn’t tanked in a formal raid before for us.  Then we got going and everyone did a great job, one-shotting everything including Anub’arak.  Despite that 10 minutes we were the first to get the clear!  Gratz all.

We decided not to go on to do three Trial of the Grand Crusader groups.  We knew there was only an hour left and felt if we locked in 30 people in three groups, the likelihood was we wouldn’t be able to get all three up again later in the week.  Instead we went to Ulduar and had a laugh.

What it looks like when it all goes wrong (or the risks of pugging Trial of the Crusader 10)
I know Trial of the Crusader is not hard, but it feels good to be able to put three or four groups through 10 man each week, upgrading gear, giving raid experience and generally having fun.  Those 10 mans have also made our 25 mans better, with everyone knowing what they face when they come in.

That being said, I’ve seen Trial of the Crusader fails.  Last week I got invited to go to a 10 man group on my druid alt.  It was with a decent guild, but I knew this group were struggling.  Now, firstly, that was insane just to start with.  The druid has improved her gear no end, but was still lacking the ability to hit over 3k dps at the time (now managed 3.8k the other day to get Consumption Junction in Drak’Tharon Keep by just burning down the boss).  So, off I went with my crappy druid and we started on Northrend Beasts.

And we wiped.   And wiped.  It took quite a few attempts.  The problem seemed to be healing.  Both tanks seemed solid and skilled.  The dps was probably a bit lacking, but that wasn’t what wiped us.  Dead tanks was.  Eventually we made it though, and Enalla got her second raid kill (behind Sartharion).

On to Jaraxxus.  And the wiping began again.  This time, because the Incinerate Flesh debuff was not healed off.  In the end we got it because me and the other druid kept stopping dps to heal the damn thing.  But we managed it.  2 bosses down.

Faction Champions proved the end of I though.  This requires lightning reflexes and superb healing, not to mention strong dps that can take down the healers fast.  We lacked these so we ended it.  I know a lot of people complain that Trial of the Crusader is too easy.  But the reality is, its not that easy for everyone.

Sunday – 25 man
So Sunday came and 25 man was in our sights.  We romped through the first four bosses with only minor hiccups and plunged into the depths to face Anub’arak (side note – remember to start taking repair bots to raids again).

Our 25 man tactic worked a little differently.  Keeping two adds per tank was a bit risky, but killing them all meant we lacked dps on the boss and he enraged on our first attempt.  So we compromised.  When the first two adds arrived, the tanks took one each.  Melee stayed on the boss whilst ranged nuked them.  If they could be tanked close to the boss to get the additional damage of Divine Storm, etc. they were.  Then the tanks held the next two adds while we nuked the boss.

I think he went under three times, which is ok as long as your healers start using their mana abilities early and rotating them (priests casting Divine Hymn, Shammys with Mana Tide).  Two submerges are better and we were very close.

When he tripped into 30% we made a mistake.  It looked like the adds took a few seconds to spawn, so we thought we could take him from 31% to 30% when he came back up before they arrived.  Thats not the case so we tripped him over 30% with 2 adds up.  That was ok.  Just bring some ice down next to the boss if possible and stand them next to the melee.  I think next time we’ll not risk the 3rd submerge if possible.  We popped hero and boom he was dead.

I got a new ring from Northrend Beasts – Band of the Violent Temperament to go with my Carnivorous Band.  That leaves me with non-hit rings, but I might buy the Emblem of Triumph one when I drop some hit elsewhere.  With 30 badges available from Trial of the Crusader, they soon build up.

8 easy steps to becoming an expert in your class

Everybody knows one person who knows everything there is to know about their class.  You envy them.  When a loot drops they know if its good or bad.  They know whats going to happen next and plan for it.  They know all the hit and expertise caps.  They know how sets should differ according to racials.  This is how you become that person!  All you need is an internet connection and some time to read up.

1. Go to the Elitist Jerks  forums. Click on your class under Class Mechanics and start reading.  Every single class has useful information in this section of the forum.  The wealth of information there is phenomenal.  In particular, most forums have guides written by various members relating to gameplay, builds and statistics.  The Retribution Guide for 3.2 for example has information on rotation, stats, mechanics, talents, glyphs, gems, consumables, professions and gear.  Also in the paladin forum you can find links to Redcape’s DPS spreadsheet, Rawr and alternative gear lists, etc.  Bascially each forum is a one stop shop for the best information out there and most info is kept up to date.
2. Check out class/role specific websites.  Theres probably one for everyone although I don’t know them all.  Good examples would be Plusheal, Tankspot, Shadowpriest.com, Maintankadin and the Druid Wiki.   Just try out some search terms in Google and see what you can find.
3. Read blogs.  You can go to the Twisted Nether Wiki to see a list of blogs organised by class.  When you find a good blogger check out their blogrole for other examples.  If you only have a couple just bookmark them, otherwise you could pick up a free Reader like the one Google offers (which I use) to track them.  I pick up my blogs on my iphone, giving me something to read on the train.
4. Keep track of whats coming up in the next patch via MMO-Champion.  All the key information you’ll need (from Blizzard forum posts) will be posted on the front page there and you can use that to know if something key is going to change and if you have to prepare for it.
5. Now you’ve got a lot of information.  You need to start keeping references and notes to try and make it into a coherent whole.  As point 4 suggests, things change a lot.  You need to keep up to date and you need to remember what you’ve found.  You can use bookmarks, write notes or do whatever else it is you like, but make sure you record where the really good information lives so you can go back to it.
6. Share your information.  Talk to people in your guild. Give advice, tell people whats coming in the new patch and whats the latest feeling about a talent or stat.  As you tell people things, they will respond with yet more information.
7. Do a quest!  Well, actually, answer a question.  When friends ask something you’ll find explaining it to them helps clarify your understanding of it.  And if you don’t know the answer, then go look it up so you better understand your class.
8. Write about it.  Once you have some confidence you know what you’re talking about, then consider writing your own blog.  This will hopefully be another source of questions, feedback and links, all the while enhancing your understanding of your class.

Patch 3.2 – how it all worked out

What I like:

• Releasing one boss a week on Trial of the Crusader – gives you time to savour those victories. They’ve been pretty easy so far for my guild, averaging about 3 tries to down a new boss. It also means that by the time heroic arrives we’ll be practiced on the kills and that will help a lot. I prepare the tactics each week so I’m going to write some up here.
• Trial of the Champion, or as I call it, alt-loot-heaven. Saturday night a group of us decided to farm it on normal for trinkets. I took my little druid Enalla who is now 80 and got some very nice loot. Still missing the Armor Pen trinket from normal and all the pretties that heroic holds for my new feral druid.
• The badge changes. I don’t care if it means everyone has my head. You know what? Good for them. Its a great change for new players and a great change for alts. As someone who came to serious raiding late in TBC the Sunwell patch was the only reason my guild managed to get into BT and MH when it did. We could never have made all that gear up in tier 5 raids in time. These patches aren’t an evil plot to persecute those with shiney loot. They’re designed to keep the pool of players who can support middle to high end raiding large enough to be viable.
• Druids. As I said, Enalla is 80. It makes me appreciate the faceroller comments about paladins a little more when I play her. You have to be properly behind mobs, not just in the general vicinity. Easy on a boss, harder on large groups of mobs whent he tank is running around. I get the feeling this will make me a better paladin. I can also appreciate the difficulty in getting and keeping things running, which is not easy on a druid.
• I got my first piece of gear from Trial of the Crusader – Armguards of the Nether Lord. A big upgrade from Bracers of Unrelenting Attack although I currently need a hit gem to be capped.

What I don’t like:

• I’m a little disappointed that Trial of the Champion is as easy as it is. I, like many others, was hoping for another Magister’s Terrace. For those who didn’t play in TBC, Magister’s Terrace on heroic was hard. Even for those in full Kara gear. I can remember failing to kill Priestess Delrissa and her band of evil buddies on multiple occassions. That being said, I am aware that I find Trial of the Champion easy because I’m overgeared for it. I was reading Big Bear Butt’s blog this morning on the train and hes clearly had a much harder time of it. However, with the new badge changes that won’t be an issue for long.
• Its taking me some time to get used to the paladin changes. I’m still not remembering to change my Seal as often as I should and I find the need to get and keep up stacks is meaning I’m losing some of my utility. The rotation is more comfortable after a week or so of raiding than it was, but I’m still finding I have big gaps with nothing to use.
• New General Vezax. It took us several wipes last night before I remember reading about a change to him – he casts Searing Flames more often. We rejigged our interrupts for a kill, but it was pretty irritating at the time. He now casts searing flames more often and our old method – two alternating interrupters of any class that can interrupt – failed. Instead we went with a rotation of three. However, my rogue and enhancement shammy tell me they could probably do it alone as their spells lock out the fire school for longer. I suspect this might also mean you need two interrupts on 10 man, which we never needed before. Also, with our DK tank being nerfed, we needed to use some other saves for Surge of Darkness. DK > Pain Suppression > DK > Blessing of Sacrifce > DK > Pain Suppression > etc. got us through with ease. It just needs to be a save that reduces damage rather than saves from death (i.e. not priest wings).

What I’m looking forward to:

• I have a tier 9 token. We have a new dkp system for Trial of the Crusader. All existing members got a small amount of started DKP based on their attendance and DKP earned over the last 60 days. I took a gamble and spent some of mine on this now, thinking it will cost more later. I spent 10 of my 15 DKP. I’ll let you know how that works out. Now all I need are the Emblems of Triumph to buy it. I currently have three pieces of tier 9 (I’m using the Steelbreaker’s chest for my expertise cap) in Head, Legs and Hands. Hands have expertise and Legs have hit so I think I will buy the shoulders. The Paladin shoulder token from Yogg rarely drops and is going to cost more DKP than I have on the Ulduar system, so I intend to buy that. That means I need 45 Emblems of Triumph.
• Should I buy the tier 8.5 chest for the set bonus? Not yet sure. Expertise has taken a nerf but the cap is still a good thing.
• Getting the new gear lists up so I (and you) know what to go for.
• Respeccing my druid with two specs – bear and cat.
• The promise of a new Onyxia. Can’t wait. Must go kill her and get the achievement on my paladin before they remove the old her.