Murloc Parliament

Keep [Thing] Up and Refresh [Thing] When It Expires, Cast [Ability] When [Thing] Procs, and Use [Other Ability] On Cooldown

Zel — Thu, 16 Jul 2015 20:53:20 +0000

Since coming back to Wow, healing feels different. This seems to be my healing “rotation”:

keep things up, refreshing before expiration or immediately following expiration
cast something (immediately) in response to a proc
cast things on cooldown¹

I am not liking this at all. If I’m spending most of my time robotically keeping things up, casting something as soon as I see the buff proc, and spamming whatsit on cooldown, then I’m not actually making the decisions that Blizzard wanted healers to be making in this expansion (other than the few-times-a-fight use of oh-shit buttons).

The penalties for screwing up the sequence are severe – usually me running out of mana and being sad. If nobody even needs heals, robot actions still need to be performed (resulting in overheal) or things will drop, leaving me in a piss-poor position for when the healing suddenly ramps up again and I can’t afford the gcd’s to reapply all the things.

Now, blizzard had the right idea with talents such as Pool of Mists (Monk) and Echo of the Elements (Shaman). Instead of hitting an ability on cooldown, you have 2-3 charges to play with and there’s more strategery involved in when to weave it in. You’re probably casting these things roughly on cooldown anyway, but have the option of varying it up a bit if necessary.

I wonder if I picked the wrong class. I wonder if healing has just morphed this way for all classes. And I wonder if things were just always this way and I was being dumb and didn’t notice.

except Wild Growth which you should cast almost never, or you’ll be out of mana. It might as well be an “oh shit” button. ↩

© Zel for Murloc Parliament, 2015. | Permalink | 5 comments
Posted in: Druid, Healing | Post tags: Mistweaver, Monk, Resto Druid, Resto Shaman, Whining

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Yo Ho, Yo Ho, A Fiscally Conservative Coward’s Life For Me

Zel — Wed, 08 Jul 2015 13:47:23 +0000

I do not like shipyards.

There, I said it. While I’ve had my ups and downs with garrisons, I have never actively disliked them. Shipyards, I hate.

And this is the thing that everyone hates: You can lose ships. That’s not ok. I won’t even do a 95% mission because even that 5% chance just isn’t worth it. Especially the mission that has a reward of, I shit you not, 195 gold. Yeah, I’m not risking losing a ship to bring home 195 gold.

I thought I’d be able to deactivate ships, like followers, when there are too many. Nope. It’s destroy those suckers, no backsies.

The kicker is that you have to actually leave your garrison and haul ass down to the second table at the shipyard. So I have to send out my idiots on one table and then run to a pretty much identical table to send out naval idiots. It doesn’t take that long but it’s very annoying. I don’t need even more time added to the equivalent of game-chores.

Is there anyone out there who actually likes the cursed things? If so, is there something about the stupid shipyards that I’m missing? Enlighten me.

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Let’s Do The Timewalk Again

Zel — Mon, 29 Jun 2015 14:54:51 +0000

Timewalking is so awesome. It was the perfect mix of nostalgia and gearing. If LFR brings out the worst in people, timewalking brings out the best. I did not encounter a single asshat, and most people were polite and downright chatty.

I get why it is limited time, I truly do. The gear rewards are too good for the level of difficulty (it’s slightly less difficult than a heroic but with gear of a significantly higher level) and if you have something available all the time, you don’t get the crowds to make a snappy queue.

However, by limiting these events, I think Blizzard missed an opportunity to appeal to casual players and new players. This sort of dungeon is a huge deal for people who are leveling. Imagine you are leveling up and joining a guild, and trying to get to know all the guildies. Unless a guildie has a toon within two levels of you, you can’t run a thing together. And leveling happens so fast that even if you are leveling with the same people, it is very easy to get out of sync. Something like timewalking could allow social people to, well, be social. Sure, I ran my main through the event (5 times, for the garrison rewards), but I also ran my level 72 shaman through and was able to easily hold my own in a group full of 100’s and the occasional 90+.

Timewalking would also create a bit of variety. Do you know how many times I ran Skyreach when I was level 99 and all my buddies were level 100? A LOT of times. I would have killed to have some BC dungeons to add to the mix.

I can’t wait until the next Timewalk weekend!

© Zel for Murloc Parliament, 2015. | Permalink | No comments
Posted in: Casual Player, Instances | Post tags: Alts, Events, Gear, Leveling, Timewalking

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Surprise Raiding

Zel — Tue, 23 Jun 2015 15:58:13 +0000

I confess that I’ve basically ignored patch 6.2, Hellfire, and all that crap because I’m still in the process of getting raid-ready that was started in earnest only 3 weeks ago. But last night, the guild leader tells me that we’re all going tonight. All as in me too. And of course I’m undergeared and unprepared.

Can I say that curse word now?

Instead of logging off and leisurely watching tv, thehusband finished up legendary ring apexis grinding while I gemmed up and calculated necessary resources to make my trinket (I should have them when I log on tonight, if my alchemy minions haven’t been slacking off). Dinner time tonight will no doubt be a last-minute cram session while Twig rolls her eyes.

Why am I even writing this? There are videos to watch! Guides to read! Later!

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When Not Raiding

Zel — Thu, 18 Jun 2015 15:13:40 +0000

Between gearing for raids and raiding, I also did random stuff around Azeroth.

Can I have a flying mount just like this?

Seriously, boomkin look just about adorable in any conveyance.

I was flying around getting the parts for my music box. Why? Eh, why not. It’s not usually the kind of thing I bother with but I was pretty tired of the music while fishing.

I got to steal a boom box from some crazy dancing orcs. They were not happy when I took it and they proceeded to pound on my face. I was laughing so hard I had trouble remembering any bit of rotation with which to kill them.

To celebrate my descent into common thievery, I went to my garrison and drank some goblin nitro fuel. According to the tooltip, it will set you on FIRE if you go near fire, but I did not believe it. It does in fact set your head on fire and it hurts like hell.

I was embarrassingly close to dying in a fire.

© Zel for Murloc Parliament, 2015. | Permalink | No comments
Posted in: Druid, Quests | Post tags: Boombox, Boomkin, Flying, Screenshots

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Raiding Occurred

Zel — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 20:37:47 +0000

I’m saying “raiding occurred” and not “I raided” because the latter statement would imply that I contributed to the raiding. I completely did not.

I am always out of mana. Obviously, I’m undergeared, but the mana situation this expansion makes me think that they are purposely trying to annoy me.

The party line: “[W]e still want healers to think about their mana when deciding which heal to cast, and so the mana costs and throughputs of many spells are being altered to give players a choice between spells with lower throughput and lower cost versus spells with higher throughput and higher costs.”

What it means: “Here are all these cool abilities. Just kidding, you can use them maybe twice per fight or you’re in the wonderful world of running on fumes.”

We must translate from Bullshit into English whenever possible.

© Zel for Murloc Parliament, 2015. | Permalink | 4 comments
Posted in: Druid, Healing, Raiding | Post tags: Epic Fail, OOM, Resto Druid, Whining

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Twig’s Ideal Man

Zel — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 14:47:11 +0000

Twig says:

“Boys are stupid.

“… except the ones that are really good at video games…

“… and don’t use swear words all the time.”

I win at parenting!

© Zel for Murloc Parliament, 2015. | Permalink | One comment
Posted in: IRL | Post tags: Other Games, Parents and Children, Twig Notes, Zel Swears A Lot

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Cause I’m a Rocket Cat

Zel — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 17:09:36 +0000

Guys, look, I’m flying in Draenor!

I miss Rocketbare.

© Zel for Murloc Parliament, 2015. | Permalink | No comments
Posted in: Quests | Post tags: Flying, Kitty Druid, Screenshots, Zel is a Moron

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Peons Be Lazy

Zel — Mon, 01 Jun 2015 13:06:42 +0000

As you may have read, I have loved smacking peons ever since the orc starting area. While I was disappointed that in my own garrison the guards had to do the smacking for me, my first quest in Nagrand was to smack the shit out of some lazy peons who were lounging around instead of building my future outpost…

They were out fishing…

… or sitting around

… or sleeping

… or making googly eyes at the innkeeper?!

No time for love, Dr. Jones!

© Zel for Murloc Parliament, 2015. | Permalink | No comments
Posted in: Quests | Post tags: Horde, NPCs, Screenshots, Zel is a Jerk

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Oh Right, The Studying

Zel — Fri, 29 May 2015 13:56:49 +0000

One obvious disadvantage to being a raiding newb so late in the game, besides lack of gear, is that everyone else has had months to practice the same raid encounters. I suspect patience with noobs who don’t know the mechanics is pretty low.

Today, I start raid prep (I’m only level 98, but as Gerald says, “we must be ready”).

“I am invited to a party”, Mo Willems is the author, go get this book for your kiddo, for realsies.

Cramming the info from 10 raid bosses into my brain all at once won’t be a problem, right?

© Zel for Murloc Parliament, 2015. | Permalink | 3 comments
Posted in: Raiding | Post tags: Raid Preparedness, Zel is a Moron, Zel Swears A Lot

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