Meet Zivanci the Warlock #2

I’ve struggled to get back into World of Warcraft for the past year. Most of my attempts have been failures and I just wasn’t having fun. The game has changed (mostly for the better). I just don’t seem to fit in anymore.

On this attempt to re-enter the World of Warcraft I wanted to start afresh. And try out the new Worgen starting area.

So I’d like you to meet my Worgen, Zivanci.

Note: This is Zivanci the Warlock #2. I did previously roll a Human Warlock over on Argent Dawn to participate in the blogger’s guild Single Abstract Noun and got her to about level 25. I loved Zivanci. My action bars hated her, but I loved her. In fact all my plans to reuse hot keys from character to character were thrown out the window.

Gilneas

I had always been intrigued by the Gilneans since reading Day of the Dragon (set before The Burning Legion destroyed the human kingdom of Lordaeron – I think Deathwing was messing with the human kingdoms then too) and the moody locations and artwork shown in Cataclysm trailer just got me even more interested.

How can a society that has walled itself away from the rest of the world evolve? Survive? I just don’t see how it can.

I had always assumed that the Gilneans had walled themselves in to protect themselves from the plague that ruined Stratholme (leaving aside the whole Arthas incident) and created the Plaguelands. And that they had already been a community with the odd werewolf hiding in their midst.

Then, having walled themselves in, the werewolf Worgens eventually attacked and infected more Gilneans until the whole population had turned. And then there wouldn’t be a reason to keep it all a secret right? So Worgen-ism must be the norm.

Apparently I had that all wrong.

Getting bitten/infected

When you begin as a Gilnean Worgen you are in fact utterly human. I was scouring my interface and spellbook for my shift forms button – it must be there somewhere, right? I was also scouring my menus looking for my pet bar*.

That’s cool. Obviously part of the beginning experience was going to be that magical moment – the moment when you get attacked and infected!

Unfortunately that moment kind of passes you by – there’s no cut scene or long escalating fight with a baddy. I think I walked into a cellar to hand in a quest and an NPC yelled at me from the corner, I killed him with a spell or two and suddenly I had a debuff.

Did I mention that Worgen (presumably from the farms and outskirts of the city) are overrunning the city?

The debuff was a great idea and makes you feel the dread – that you’re running out of time and possibly dying. Several quests later you get abruptly thrown to a cut screen and you are told that you must prove yourself to be more than just an animal. More than a monster. Apparently you’ve turned into a Worgen.

Oh and you’re dependent on a drug to keep your human side in control and the Forsaken are interfering with your supply chain. They seem to drop this quest motivation by the time you reconnect with Lord Crowley (who heads up a gang of Worgens) and by the time you get your ability to switch between human and Worgen form at will. But I felt this story thread wasn’t clearly explained or resolved.

When you wake up as a newly turned Worgen, having lost the city of Gilneas to the Worgen and are now being attacked by the Forsaken (although I’m not clear as to why they’re involved at all), you are somewhere else entirely trying to regroup evacuatees. I think I spent the better part of the next few levels trying to reorient myself on the isle: most of my map was blank but, I think, it should have been revealed in full. Where was the Gilnean wall? Where was the city? Where was I?

This is where I felt the game really reverted back to a formula and you could have dropped in the quests from Northshire Abbey into the small town of Duskhaven. Kill some Forsaken, talk to Granny Smith, gather some wild horses, pick up this forgotten book… the errands seemed so silly and nobody seemed to care that I was both homeless and no longer even human. I was extremely disappointed.

The Shattering

And I think, at some point while I was doing these Duskhaven quests, The Shattering occurred and Deathwing wrecked the world. I’m not entirely sure but I remember thinking that the rain looked like little missiles of fire and there were a lot of earthquakes. However none of the quest givers really ever said

WTF is this? The world is ending! Quick hide in the cellar!

Which, I think, would be my reaction – even though I’d just escaped a Gilnean vs Worgen war zone. To this day I still feel a little ambivalent about my experience of The Shattering. Most of my characters just went to sleep one night and woke up a day later in a thoroughly different world. How do you sleep through half your home city getting burned down and entire sections of the coast breaking off into the sea? I’m pretty sure I couldn’t sleep through that.

Fortunately, for maximum level characters they’re at least somewhat prepared for something big. The elemental invasion and The World Is Ending propaganda quest chains were a nice lead up to a major change.

Zivanci, however, lived through The Shattering. I was online, playing her, when the The Shattering occurred (at approximately level 5 in the Worgen starting zone). And nobody really panicked. It was a huge let down. A missed opportunity.

Missed Opportunities

I think this sums up my feelings about the Worgen starting zone the most. The biggest, most life altering – personal – moments in my young characters life: being attacked, infected and presumably sure that you’re going to die soon or turn into a monster, changing into a Worgen, experiencing The Shattering of the world first hand… they’re all there but not treated and timed well to let you as a player really come to grips with them.

Why is there no quest or even a chat option when I can ask one of my quest givers in Gilneas City about my you’re-running-out-of-time bitten debuff? Surely there was a moment when I could have said

I know you want me to report in with the Greymanes but that last guy you asked me to kill bit me or something. I think I might be dying. Is there a medic on the way to the Greymanes? I think you should send me to a medic?

These things are all kind of mentioned in quests, I think there is one or two quests that mention the devastation of The Shattering but it’s passed over so quickly.

When the Brisbane River flooded last year everyone in the city stopped work and holed up with friends for a week. And I know people who took the day off work to hear which country would be hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Life changing, world altering stuff makes you think about how things were and how things will be different forever after. Zivanci seemed strangely passive throughout the whole experience.

If World of Warcraft had been movie, a telling of Zivanci’s life, the opening act might have started with a war on the city but you can bet they would show you the moment when she gets bitten by a werewolf in full graphic horror. And then there would be quiet, pensive scene when Zivanci would be patched up and reflect on if she was dying, what that meant, or if she was turning into a Worgen, and what that meant.

Maybe she’d get all heroic (I was going to say “manly” there because I cannot conceive of any character except the most close-mouthed Rambo type saying this) and proclaim that it doesn’t matter if she dies, all that matters is saving the city from invasion.

And then, yes, in the thick of the war she might black out and wake up in an unfamiliar place. But the cut scene in the game that handles this moment seams to be more designed to make you hate Lord Godfrey with his reflective glasses and top hat more than anything else. I spent most of the cut scene grabbing for my headphones and trying to figure out why I wasn’t in the Cathedral anymore.

This should have been the most important cut scene in the entire starting zone. And I think it’s wasted.

And when The Shattering occurs? Why don’t we get a cinematic of the waves rising up and swallowing the land? There should be mass panic in the streets. And then people would curl up in front of a fire and talk about what it meant and how everything was going to be different in the future.

Interaction and Quiet Moments

I guess that’s the fundamental problem with the game play in World of Warcraft. You only interact with other NPCs when they’re telling you to do something. There’s never real conversation, and if there were, a lot of players would hate it if it was compulsory and skip it if it were optional.

The format of one paragraph of quest text from an NPC telling me to do something isn’t a very good way to talk about how you feel. It isn’t a good way to debate the meaning of life or anything more important than who, what, where and how.

We can interact only on a very superficial level with the story and big names in Azeroth, yet we can interact on a very real level with other players. There’s nothing in between.

Retaking the City

While you’re regrouping just south of the city you make peace with your Worgen side (we were in conflict?) with the help of the Night Elves, some wells of tranquility, and meet a whole group of thinking, fighting Worgen led by the now, also turned Worgen, Lord Darius Crowley.

Eventually you come around to retake the city with a horde of NPC militia under the command of Lord Greymane Senior. The quest is delivered in the style of Battle for the Undercity but, unfortunately isn’t quite as fun without AOE.

The whole experience made me want to go and watch disaster movies to see it done right. Have you started a Worgen? What did you think? Am I getting too philsophical? Is doing the quests more important than anything else? Am I the only one who felt the lack of conversations and moments of reflection?

;

* It appeared magically around level 8 and then a few levels later I gained the ability Control Pet. I’m still confused. But I think anything that makes Warlocking easier to manage, and by “easier” I mean “less overwhelming” should be encouraged and applauded

The Shadow Priest concept remains strong and sound. But we still need attention.

I started writing a very long comment in reply to Natarumah’s very interesting analysis on the Priest Class Q&A and Expectations for Shadowpriest design in 5.0.

My point of view is a little different. I agree that a lot of creative thought at Blizzard seems to be placed on the healing aspect of Priest-ing. And there are many wasted opportunities for Shadow Priest game play improvement and design. As I spend most of my time soloing content and doing dailies, with the occasional 10 man raid thrown in – I do, occasionally, get to participate in my guild’s “alt” runs – I see our spell and talent abilities differently than players who only raid or PVP with their Shadow Priests.

Natarumah makes many excellent points about the current problems a Shadow Priest is likely to experience while raiding. And he has many creative ideas on how the class could be re-imagined and further developed. Please do read his well rounded post. And then come back and try and understand my impressions and haphazard observations.

First and foremost I do think that a big reason that developers don’t try and “fix” Shadow Priest game play is simple numbers. People still play Shadow Priests. Many players choose to play Priests. DPS Priests and Warriors never seem to fall out of favour with the player base. Numbers indicate that there is no problem with Shadow Priest-ing. So why change it?

If it ain’t broke…

Every single 10 man raid that I’ve done this expansion (and I think, at most, that’s about 10 or 15 raids) I’ve been one of several Priests. And often not the only Shadow Priest. Priests, in general, seem to be abundant.

I do believe that a lot of design focus is driven by numbers right now. Blizzard are likely worried about getting a certain percentage of players into the normal modes of their next raid zone. They’re worried about getting a percentage of players through the hard mode of their next raid zone. They’re worried about losing subscribers. They’re trying to meet KPIs.

When almost all the Rogues in Azeroth put down their swords (or daggers if you like) and choose to play as a different damage dealing class the developers notice. I still remember the scarcity of Rogues at the start of Wrath of the Lich King and Blizzard responded by revamping the Subtlety talent tree and put the OP feeling back into Rogue game play. (Sure, it was nerfed with the next major content patch but for weeks you’d run into Rogues boasting about their Honor Among Thieves combo points or crits or whatnot). Even though they didn’t receive a straight up boost to their damage output, they received some talent revisions that made players feel powerful once again.

Shadow Priests and DPS Warriors usually see a different scenario: a patch is released, a spell is fine tuned or new content is available, and suddenly one of our abilities becomes noticeably glitched. And if it glitches in a way that we can exploit, or results in us topping the damage charts, heads and shoulders above Mages (or Rogues), we’re quickly brought back into line.

But I wouldn’t still be playing my Shadow Priest if they didn’t still work. I’m not talking about damage output numbers. Something about the spells, the abilities, the utility buffs we provide, something… still feels very, very right. The Shadow Priest isn’t showy. But many of the Shadow Priests that I’ve played with – often players who have only recently picked up the class/spec – very nearly slip into role playing without much prompting from me. Pretty uncommon to find on a PVP server.

I’m convinced that Shadow Priests really inhabit their avatars. They are their character. Manipulators of the mind. The ones who rejected the healing side of our nature. The black sheep.

Or perhaps only a Hunter would recognise another Hunter as deeply immersed in the class as they themselves are. Who knows?

Mind Spike

The one place where I have to disagree with Natarumah is on the topic of Mind Spike.

I adore Mind Spike. I rarely use it during raiding, sure, but it’s my go to spell for dailies and solo content. I don’t think that I used Mind Spike very much during leveling but now that I have gotten used to it… it’s perfect for taking down a level 85 mob. The Mind Spike x 3 + Mind Blast + SW:D combination will take down 9 out of 10 mobs. Most will go down before reaching for SW:D if you get a critical strike. It’s fast, and you take little damage simply because you can bring down your foe often before they even reach you.

I really like it. Even though I picked up Cataclysm to see my Priest sprout wings and to save the day with Leap of Faith… I am more impressed with Mind Spike than either of those other new-with-Cataclysm abilities.

Juggling DoTs… and Buffs

Unfortunately I’m not particularly impressed with the implementation of Evangelism and Empowering Shadows. I don’t think Evangelism (eventually consumed by Archangel) is particularly intuitive to understand. I don’t understand it. Frankly I think I need to consult some external game resources to understand how to use Evangelism and Archangel to best effect. Playing the game itself doesn’t really teach me enough.

I should feel powerful when I cast Archangel, but I don’t. I actually feel that it throws all my carefully juggled buffs out of whack. And I spend the duration of Archangel trying to get all my buffs back up and running instead of simply kicking ass.

Frankly I think I spend way too much time watching my stacks of Empowering Shadows and Shadow Orbs when I’m in combat. I can’t imagine playing with the default UI and staring at the rows of buff icons.

Managing your Shadow Orbs is too random and uncontrolled. I have come close on many occasions to announcing out loud on vent “Can we pull in the next 5 seconds? I’ve got an Orb right now! I can’t afford to waste it!” and I’ve also come close to complaining verbally at the – far too frequent – occurances of terrible bad luck when the constant tick of a single Shadow Word: Pain and the constant casting of Mind Flay doesn’t produce one single Shadow Orb for the entire 15 second duration of Empowered Shadows.

I may have held my tongue so far but I can promise you that my internal monologue goes something like this “okay… just a few more seconds before Empowering Shadows drops off… been a long time since I cast Mind Blast… how is it I still don’t have an Orb? I need an Orb! What another Mind Flay that generated no Orbs?! I need an Orb! What? Is that the 5th or 6th Mind Flay that didn’t generate…” while I watch Empowered Shadows drop off. Terrible RNG happens much more than it should in regards to Shadow Orbs.

The slow build up of our damage dealing is worse in Cataclysm than ever before. I thought the intention with Cataclysm was to reduce the Shadow Priest damage ramp up time by removing Shadow Weaving. But I’d take Shadow Weaving back over what we have now. Shadow Weaving stacks could be built up immediately and with predictability as you launched into a fight. And unless there was an extremely lengthy phase change with no combat you could easily build up Shadow Weaving and then mostly forget about it.

And just focus on DoT uptime instead.

Class balance

I’m not sure what to make of the plans for 5.0. I still think we have some awesome things going for us as a damage dealers especially compared to our cloth-wearing cousins: Mages and Warlocks.

Our DPS seems to be on par. That is no small thing and not to be dismissed.

Mind Sear is freaking awesome in my opinion. I adore that we can now cast off a tank or friendly target. In fact I wish more of our abilities could be thrown on a friendly target. I’d love to have Psychic Scream fear 3-5 mobs in a 8 yard radius around a tank, or a healer.

Our crowd control isn’t good enough for a damage dealer and I still feel that I drag down a 5 man group in that regard. We can reduce damage (Scream) and occasionally interrupt one mob (Horror) but we can’t tie up a mob indefinitely unless we resort to Mind Control which is clunky and disorienting and is usually a DPS loss. It also makes your own avatar very vulnerable and no matter how well you plan your MC there’s going to be a chance that another enemy mob will charge your avatar, launch an AoE attack in the general vicinity of your avatar or otherwise lay a fire at your feet that will put you in a difficult decision: break MC and potentially unleash that mob on your healer or yourself, or wait and see if your avatar can survive the “bad” that you’re unable to move away from.

Mind Control is going to need some serious improvements to turn it into a workable method of CC. And even then I can’t imagine it being anything other than slightly awkward.

I do feel that in raids I am more resilient (so to speak) than Warlocks and Mages. The immunity to damage granted by Dispersion means that you can live through almost anything other than a boss beating on you without cease. Vampiric Embrace seems to keep my health bar somewhat stable. Levitate shouldn’t be forgotten either.

Leap of Faith and Missed Opportunities

I do feel that Evangelism + Archangel were designed for healing Priests and – in its dark from – is mostly confusing as a Shadow Priest. It’s an opportunity to feel powerful and it totally misses the mark. It could be an on demand (ok, there is some prep work required) I Win/Burn Phase button.

Leap of Faith removes Shadowform and I can’t agree more with Natarumah on this one: it’s a lost opportunity to approach this as a healing utility spell that only a healing Priest would/should use. Why can’t a damage dealer be raid aware enough to pull a friend out of danger? I think Leap of Faith could save a life if Shadow Priests weren’t actively discouraged against using it in the same way we are discouraged to drop Shadowform and heal.

“Leap of Faith will continue to have a facing requirement because healers should not just be staring at health bars but should also be paying attention to the raid environment.”

I’m not sure if Blizzard are stereotyping Shadow Priests and damage dealers as being selfish, damage meter hogging whores or if Blizzard are slighting healers for not being more aware of their surroundings. I think all Priests might have been insulted with that reply in the Q&A.

***

What do you think?

Do you feel the same way about your Shadow Priest? That, deep-down, we just work as a concept and a spec? Do you feel we have been largely forgotten while the focus has stayed on Discipline and Holy Priest-ing?

Approaching Hodir: Aug 2009

You may have heard this fact quoted in serious discussion about World of Warcraft: According to Malcolm Gladwell, 10 000 hours spent doing an activity (before the age of 21) is all that is required to become a “virtuoso”:

showing masterly skill or brilliance
a virtuoso performance _source

The average World of Warcraft player spends quite a bit of time in the game. To many it becomes something of a part time job: voluntary and unpaid, unfortunately. Play for a good few years and you could very well have approached that 10 000 hour mark.

Do you dare type /played right now to find out?

I first heard this fact quoted because I follow – and watch – a lot of the TED lectures. And, since I’m a gamer and avid World of Warcraft player, Jane McGonigal’s mostly upbeat short lecture on how Gaming Can Make a Better World really resonated with me.

It’s nice to think that, while I may never be a brilliant violinist or pianist, I might have some kind of special skill in something, even if it is a game played by millions. Actually I quite like the notion that many otherwise ordinary people – like me – might also be secret World of Warcraft virtuosos.

But there’s something that nags at me. And maybe a real artistic virtuoso could throw their two cents into the conversation (although, frankly, the idea that an artistic virtuoso from another field might also be reading this WoW blog seems highly unlikely).

Once you reach that level of mastery… what next? Are you always a master? Is it possible to lose your mastery without practise?

You see, I’m fairly confident that I’m past my peak. If I did attain the level of mastery required to be considered a virtuoso of World of Warcraft at some point (let’s disregard the fact that I’m well over the age of 21!) I’m certainly not as brilliant a player as I once was.

One expansion and many patches and over six months of no practice or play has definitely been a setback.

The only real metaphor that works for me is comparing skill and proficiency in the game with athletic ability. I have some of that (athletic ability, that is) and it’s something that I’ve had to work very hard at over a long time. It’s hard not to talk about artistic ability without running into arguments about talent and how talent contributes to mastery. You can have the same problem when talking about athletic ability. But I can honestly say I have zero talent in that area. Any mastery I have, I worked at.

Over time, and with lots of hours of practice, I can see that I’m better: I can run faster and for longer. Presumably if I ran and practiced long enough, I could reach some level of brilliance. But if I stopped running for six months I wouldn’t be able to pick up where I left off and perform at the same level.

Nobody expects this of athletes.

So is this expected of an artistic virtuoso? Is this expected of a World of Warcraft virtuoso?

I’m just not sure.

I received a bit of flack from readers since returning to WoW and writing for the blog. Because I tend to be vague about stuff that I say that I mastered years ago, and because I’m so clearly a novice right now in the game, my credibility seems to be in question.

I’m OK with that. It seems to me that for some players, they can reach the level of a virtuoso and maintain that level of mastery for years. And perhaps they are writing from that view point: having reached that level of mastery they have not wavered or had a set back that makes them doubt their own skill. And they cannot even imagine that, once attained, they might one day lose that proficiency.

However, I am most certainly at a different place. I am past my peak. I can say, for certainty, that I reached my peak as a raider at some time between Trial of the Crusader and Icecrown Citadel. And if I have any doubts, well I have game play footage of my raiding from most of those tier and earlier ones too. And I can see far less errors in my decision making when I watch footage recorded at my peak vs my ascent or decent from that place.

For example I always get caught up watching back our Hodir (I Could Say This Cache Was Rare) capture. There’s a moment when I’m not gathering additional damage buffs by stacking for storm power or standing near a comfy fire and every single time I watch it I think:

that’s a wasted moment – why didn’t I move into a better position?

only to see – before the thought has fully formed while I’m watching the capture – my past virtual self spring into action and step right onto a safe zone because Flash Freeze is imminent. I had the next move lined up way in advance. And I knew exactly what I was doing at the time.

And even if I didn’t take a break from the game at the start of Cataclysm I knew that my skill level wasn’t at its best anyway. Too much farm content at the lull in Icecrown Citadel progression and too many changes to the Shadow Priesting game.

As a guild we hit a point where we snagged on Heroic Professor Putricide for months and months. This meant that the earlier bosses were well and truly farmed and didn’t require much attention. And the final bosses were on normal and also didn’t pose too much of a challenge (although I don’t want to imply that you could AFK through the Lich King encounter).

But I’m pretty sure paying attention for one night of the raiding week while working on progression content and repeating familiar content the other 75% of the time didn’t keep me at the top of my game. I know I got lazy. Perhaps you did to?

There’s a fairly simple model floating around regarding MMOs. The play trend is described as so:

Novice -> Mastery -> Burnout -> (presumably quits game and picks up another game)

I don’t think I ever described myself as “burned out”. I certainly never reached a breaking point that made me consider deleting my characters, my account and unsubscribing. I never stopped subscribing – even during my break.

Like many others, I have played the game with varying degrees of commitment and mastery for years. I’m certainly not the first player to take a long break and return to the game. And I’m sure that some players have come back even stronger after a break.

Maybe the more realistic model looks something like this:

Novice -> Mastery -> Break -> Novice -> Mastery -> Repeat!

or you could take it a step further and look at mastery closer to training for sports:

Novice -> Training -> Mastery -> Off season break -> Training -> Mastery

I like that cycle I think because the most satisfying feeling is breaking from “training” mode – when you’re aware that you still have room for improvement – into “mastery” mode when you feel powerful as a player. When everything seems to come easily and anything is possible.

What do you think? Do you think attaining the status of a World of Warcraft virtuoso is like learning to ride a bike? Once learned, you are always that proficient? Do you think it’s something that you have to practice to maintain?

Lathere and I face down Akil'zon with the help of our guild

If you follow Lathere and I on Twitter you probably read our despondent tweets a few nights back where we lamented the general sea of impatient and unkind players found via the Dungeon Finder.

After being carried through Throne of the Four Winds Lathere was wearing purple coloured glasses (if you can imagine such a thing). And the best place for us to get gear right now? The Heroic Zul’Aman and Zul’Gurub dungeons. And before we can qualify for the Z Heroics we need a bit more gear from normal Heroics.

Isn’t it odd how even between dungeons, normal or heroic, there are still different shades of difficulty?

And fresh from a 6-9 month gap, we had forgotten how unfriendly and punishing other players can be.

We queued for a Random Cataclysm Heroic and landed in Blackrock Caverns.

Step 1
Blackrock Caverns: Heroic but easy

We made a big mistake: we behaved like ourselves. This means that I, mistakenly, took time to say hello to people in our groups. Lathere almost immediately announced:

“This is the first time I’ve done this Heroic”

Or words to that effect. I chimed in:

“Me too. So any tips or reminders would be great.”

What I really wanted to say was: I will probably remember most of the boss tactics – from normal mode that is – after we’ve pulled each boss but having a quick little reminder before we pull will help me recall and perhaps do a better job. And I’d like to be told what is different on normal mode.

Our tank’s response was simple:

“Then we’re fucked.”

I thought that was a little extreme. Perhaps we should be grateful that he didn’t just leave the party immediately? No, wait, I think I would have preferred that.

Lath was quick to defend us “We’ll be fine. We’re not idiots!”

He went on to say something like “if DPS don’t know how to handle the beams on the second boss there’s no point”.

I was on Vent with the third member of our party, a Mage from our guild, so asked him what the tank was talking about. I did actually remember that boss – Corla, Herald of Twilight – quite well from normal mode when I was leveling:

In normal mode she she has two Zealots – one on each side of her – and when the fight starts they get struck by a steady, continuous beam (the purpose and origin of which escape me). The beam can be intercepted by a player simply by standing between the source of the beam and the NPC.

If the beam is not intercepted properly the Zealots turns into a giant ugly Patchwerk looking thing and promptly eats your healer – face first – and then the rest of the party.

I remembered this fight well and also remembered intercepting the beam back at level 80/81. Two players are required to intercept two beams.

In Heroic mode it’s three Zealots and three beams. Ideally you would have two ranged DPS intercept the two outermost beams and someone in melee intercept the middle one. If you only had one ranged DPS – or a more capable healer than melee DPS – you could ask your healer to take a beam, too.

I asked my friend, our Mage, over Vent:

Don’t you just have to watch stacks of something? Like you can’t take 100 or something?

I should point out here that our friendly Mage was on an alt and usually plays DPS as a Warrior. His advice was something vague about “get out before 80″.

This seemed straight forward enough and I was optimistic as I volunteered to take the far right beam on as my responsibility. The tank took the center one and my friend, our Mage, took the leftmost beam. I played cautiously and – since those stacks of the debuff ticked up so fast – strafed out just after 60. Taking in lag meant that my stacks were close to 80 before the beam broke from me.

Soon as it wore off I was back in there. And out before 80 again. That’s when things went wrong: my Zealot morphed into something big and scary. I knew something had gone wrong. And that it was my fault. But I was perplexed: exactly what should I do differently next time?

We wiped. I tried to explain what I had done over vent – hoping for someone to quickly grasp my mistake and fill me in – while we ran back.

Too late. Our tank left the party but not before leaving with a word of advice parting shot:

I suggest you learn how to do this before doing it on heroic.

How maddening! We replaced him and tried again with a new tank. This time around I had a chance to read the tooltip of the debuff and adjusted accordingly. The limit was 100, not 80 and getting out at 80 (not before) was a breeze.

Solved! Much easier than juggling Netherspite’s 3 beams, that’s for sure!

Am I behind the learning curve? Am I to be expected to get it first time? Am I expected to read up and study for each Heroic before I queue?

Maybe. That’s a shame. Learning first hand is so much more memorable. I don’t think I would even remember if I just read about it.

Starting the Heroic like that wasn’t enjoyable. I don’t think I relaxed completely until it was finished.

Afterward I found myself staring at my list of dated, but otherwise hard won titles from the last two expansions. Just to remind myself that I am a good player even if I am a little rusty and inexperienced with the ways of Cataclysm.

Step 2
Grim Batol: Normal but as difficult as normal gets

For the next few days we scaled back to queuing for the Random Cataclysm dungeon (non heroic that is). At level 85 “Random Cataclysm dungeon” means apparently means “Grim Batol“.

Lathere and I are overgeared for it and there’s not one upgrade for us there. But I diligently tried to pay attention to each boss ability, storing it away as practice for Heroic Grim Batol (which Ive actually done already a few times right after hitting 85).

These were straightforward runs. I rejoiced in the no-pressure but party-friendly use of Psychic Scream and Psychic Horror. Lath stopped paying attention to her mana: she had more than enough to play comfortably.

Step 3
ZulAman: Heroic and difficult

When we approached Heroics again Lathere chose the dungeon for gear (Zul Aman and Zul Gurub) on the proviso that our group and our tank were from our guild.

With a small amount of nagging and peer pressure we were able to talk some “old school” guildies into a ZA run (I say old school because these are the tiny percentage of players that were in the guild when Lath and I raided).

Oh my what fun!

I was mad keen to see what had happened to ZA: had they mangled it? Split it into pieces?

There’s no easy answer except to say: it’s so much like before. I actually know that instance better than I know any of the Cataclysm content. Which is saying something: I was no expert at ZA the raid and I’ve forgotten a lot in the last 3 years.

Most of the boss abilities seem to be similar although there is some rather major differences between old Nalorakk and new Nalorakk. I guess that makes sense: that fight was very much about two tanks working in tandem and juggling their threat at key points. Now players juggle their distance from Nalorakk to juggle occasional charge/swipe attacks from him.

Akil’zon doesn’t just force you to react to a Thunderstorm anymore – now his swooping birds actually try and pick players up. I’m pretty sure they didn’t do that before.

I teased Lathere something fierce as we approached the gauntlet to the Jan’alai boss. In the Burning Crusade we called on Lath to trap approaching Scouts before they could run to their drums and summon extra groups. Her timing was always so poor (like casting it after multiple, alarmed requests from us over Vent, usually by then they had already reached the drums!) we eventually took the responsibility away from her. Crowd Control is probably not her strongest point.

In saying that, I nearly wiped us on the Jan’alai boss simply because I didn’t realise the Hatchers would die with so little damage. I one shot on the Hatchers while our Shaman was killing the other and then saw our tank running towards my side to tank the hatched birds. Well the birds that would have been hatched if I hadn’t accidentally killed the Hatcher so fast!

Hex Lord Malacrass was a breeze and those Spirit Bolts made me itch for Circle of Healing.

Zul’jin has been replaced by a new last boss Daakara. The concept was much the same however in that the final boss channels the ability of each of the four animal avatars – bosses – already defeated.

Anyway, to make a long story short (too late!) ZA was so much fun. And I felt so comfortable there. In my element. I felt powerful too, although I’m sure that’s because my teammates were doing most of the damage, but that’s a topic for another post.

Oh yeah, and Lath healed just fine!

Step 4:
Zul’Gurub – Heroic and damn difficult

The following night, fresh from our success in Zul’Aman, Lathere and I queued for a Random Z. I’m going to call it the Random Z queue from here on out since both of the instances start with that letter and I can’t remember exactly how they are grouped.

While Lathere and I had some experience with Zul’Gurub (we used to run it with guildies before they were ready for Karahan just to get the raiding hook in) we didn’t run it at level 60.

What I do remember of the instance seems to have been changed completely anyway. You could argue that there are still Trolls in ZG but I think that’s where the similarity ends. Fortunately we dragged a third guildy, Velidra, along with us and asked him explain the important stuff over Vent. I think he may have regretted his decision by the end of the night and I do feel quite bad about that.

I can only think about how much worse it would have been without him!

Lathere confessed that we were new to the instance. We followed along closely and I stuck to my Dungeon 101 basics: kill what the tank is killing. I also clicked all those cauldrons. Because it seemed to be the Thing To Do.

The bosses all blur together in my memory now but I’m quite confident that we avoided the common mistakes/pitfalls. Sure, if I was more familiar with the instance I could have played better. I probably avoided stuff that wasn’t that harmful and took spell casting gaps where I need not.

Our tank left group without a word after the first boss. Coincidence? I hope so. Our replacement tank left after the second boss. As did a Damage Dealer. Coincidence? I doubt it. But he didn’t say anything either so I don’t know if it was something we did wrong (or something we weren’t doing… like high enough DPS?! I’m getting anxious thinking about it).

Our third and final tank decided to stick it out. We also picked up an Enhance Shaman to finish the run.

There was a bit of a kerfuffle before the Zanzil when I raced right past a group of enemy Trolls and pulled them without seeing them and realising it. I take the blame for that: it was absolutely my fault and hopefully one I won’t make again. This caused us to wipe entirely – Lathere and her heals were miles behind and our tank was quite far ahead of me.

We wiped on a trash pull soon afterwards again. And we really, really struggled to get the last boss Jin’do the Godbreaker.

I understood the concept: Chains that need killing, but first you have to lure the ugly giant to jump on you (while standing near the chains) before you can harm the chains. I didn’t quickly grasp the danger of what I think of as Shadow Crash (but everyone in the party described them as fire which confused Lathere and I just a bit) and also didn’t immediately understand that standing on a Chain inside it’s immunity bubble makes it impossible to see that you’re being pelted by Shadow Crash.

Lathere was even more in the dark and on each attempt just got wiped out by incoming damage and adds (spirits/ghosts) half way through.

After our second wipe the tank typed:

Do you know how to do this fight heals?

Lathere was pretty frustrated and I was pretty upset (I find referring to someone by their class or role is incredibly lazy and rude – they are real people after all). We explained that we were new to the dungeon and having it explained on Vent.

I think his reply was:

 zzzzzzzZZZZzzzzzz

And we got it on the next go.

From the Achievement spam it turned out that our Enhance Shaman, myself and Lathere were all new to the dungeon.

Step 5?

I thought we did pretty damn good. But even Velidra seemed a bit frustrated by the run “that took a lot longer than it should have”.

I am sincerely grateful for the help from guild members. I am sincerely grateful for the patience of other players who we encounter in the Dungeon Finder. I am even somewhat grateful to the impatient and rude players we encounter in the Dungeon Finder.

But I’m really, really tired of feeling this way in my groups.

I’m tired of feeling like I’m not good enough, or somehow am the weakest part of the team, somehow dragging down the run into something slow or hopeless or pathetic. I hate feeling as though I need to be carried. Feeling as though I am being carried.

I want to feel as though I contribute my fair share towards our success.

I need the gear from these Heroics. I’m using the Dungeon Finder to get that gear. I’m open to suggestions and encouragement and instructions ”priest, you take the right beam and get out before 100 stacks” but there seems to be precious little of that going around.

Nobody wants to tell me what to do. They just want me to give up and get out of their way so they can be finished – and rewarded – faster.

The shoe is on the other foot

Part of the agony of being in this weak, pathetic, pleading position is that I’m just not used to it. For years I’ve landed in dungeons as the most geared, experienced, knowledgeable player.

But I can promise you I never, ever, treated my fellow team players with disrespect or impatience. No matter how green they were (like being asked where my Tier 8 came from from a fresh 80 when Ulduar was the new big thing!). I knew that the dungeons I was in were designed for new level 70s/80s (as the case may be) and not for raiders. I was trespassing on their territory and not vice versa.

I like playing with new players. They bring enthusiasm to the game. It’s easy to get jaded when you’ve seen the inside of the dungeon a million times. A new player brings a fresh look and often gets you to see something odd that you never noticed before.

Playing with a new player is a chance to pass on your own tips and shortcuts.

Am I in the minority? Has it all been spoilt by raiders who are forced to run these dungeons because of the (presumably still relevant to raiders) rewards?

I refuse to believe that. Raiding doesn’t turn you from a patient person to an impatient person. Raiding doesn’t make you rude to strangers. If anything it should make you value teamwork over all else, it should make you better at networking and social situations. It should make you patient.

I don’t know what to do anymore. I can feel myself becoming more and more isolated and unwilling to play with strangers.

I was anticipating the launch of the Raid Finder but, honestly, I don’t think my ego could cope with it right now.

A quest giver (and hand in) who travels with you. I like.

I had a little spare time to play the other day so I branched out from my daily Heroic Steamvault run to try something new. But what to do? I left so much partially done when I stopped playing after the January floods that I’m often at a loss to know where to start.

I inevitably have these thoughts “what to do?” when I’m standing in the heart of Stormwind when I’m contemplating logging off for the night. It seems as though everyone in the city is busy: chatting, negotiating or otherwise playing with A Purpose.

I want one of those.

My quest log is full of half complete quests from Twilight Highlands at the moment. I had some thought a few months back to finish my achievement there (I’m going through Achievement withdrawal at the moment and the space underneath “Cass’s Recent Achievements” isn’t an HTML error – it’s a reminder that nothing I’ve done is recent enough to qualify for the widget!).

But I’m not keen to reread all the quests in my log to try and recall where I am in the Twilight Highlands story. About all I remember of the zone is that there are a bunch of Dwarves who drink a lot and keep losing their family members in the middle of a war zone.

It’s hard to have sympathy for stupidity.

Suddenly the giant yellow exclamation mark on the Hero’s Call Board in the middle of the Stormwind Trade District has appeal.

Blizzard posted up Hero’s Call Boards in each major city at the start of Cataclysm – well the last patch of Wrath - to lead players to new questing zones as they leveled up through the Cataclysm zones. They also seem to use the board to hand out quests that introduce new patch content.

It’s kind of the place to go for quests that don’t really logically start anywhere or from anyone in particular. And, I suppose, it’s hard to argue with the convenience of having the board right there. Clearly visible from the mailbox and auction house whenever you log in or out.

I picked up all the quests off the board. I wasn’t sure what was “new” and what should have been done levels ago. I just decided to do them and enjoy myself.

It didn’t take me long to remember that the first quest in a quest chain doesn’t really clue me in to what the rest of the chain is going to be about. They all start off simple enough – go talk to that bloke a couple streets over – and 20 minutes later you’re chasing a panther on the other side of the world for its left eye.

Quests tend to have short, cute, simple or funny names – and because they’re all short, simple and often cute and funny I have a hard time remembering quest names entirely.

What my brain is really trying to do is:

1. read through the title and quest text
2. logically connect the start of the story with a major event that I know is part of the game (eg. an Alliance ship sinking off the coast and down in Vashj’ir)
3. mentally jot down the “real” destination – not the first hand in but the general area or zone where most of the questing is going to be done
4. figure out what to do for the first quest and where to go to hand it in

I think this is why people skim read quest text. It’s too hard to get immersed in the story when you’re trying to pick the simple facts out of a wall of text. Perhaps they need to give us more information in the Quest Log. This is what I’d like to see:

Level – Quest ———————- Zone  —————- Chain —- Chain Zone ———– Type
[85]       Marcus hates trolls!     Stormwind              1 of 6        Stranglethorn Vale    Patch 4.2
[84]       My brother the dwarf   Twilight Highlands  3 of 4        Twilight Highlands    Cataclysm
[1]         Put out the fires!          Outlands                 1 of 1        Outlands                   Holiday

Oh yeah, and a space for me to jot down notes so I can remember what the hell I was doing when I begin my next game session.

Because I was overwhelmed and confused by my mishmash of quests I instead grouped them by looking at my map:

…I have to fly to there to do that one … but I could just stop off on the way because there’s a ? on my map over the harbor… I don’t want to get distracted … but I’d have to stop there eventually anyway…

Anyway that’s how I ended up talking to Bwemba, a troll, at the Stormwind Harbor. Not because the quest that led me to her sounded the most interesting (I could care less about Trolls and they way they talk annoys me greatly*), but because it was time saving to visit her first.

Efficient.

Having picked up her follow up quest (telling me to head to Stranglethorn Vale) I filed that away and looked back through my quest log to find the next closest hand in – by proximity.

I had already forgotten what group of trolls Bwemba represented (Darkspear… or Zandalar?) and which group she was worried about in Stranglethorn Vale (still not sure but I think it’s Gurubashi which should be easy to remember cause I’ve been ganked around that evil PVP arena many times) and well and truly forgotten what the original quest I had put aside in order to stop by the Harbor to talk to Bwemba.

Questing isn’t difficult to do. But it is difficult to follow.

At any given time you can have 5 to 25 different small stories to follow. And you only get the story in small pieces spaced out over perhaps an hour or maybe even days – if you’re juggling many, many stories.

The best way to follow the story is to have one, just one, quest in your quest log and follow it faithfully. This will probably cause you to fly all over the world and back many, many times just to talk to the right people. And you’ll be given next to no money or experience for your troubles.

With multiple quests going the glowing yellow question marks on your map are, for the most part, distractions.

Guild chat? Trade or General chat? Distraction. Background chatter. Heaven forbid you have real people in your real life trying to chat to you too. You’ve got no hope!

It’s really a miracle that anyone can follow a quest plot at all. Give me a book and a quiet room any day.

I flew out to Stranglethorn Vale with my attention sharply focused on just following this one Troll quest chain. I freaked out in the skies of northern STV – I was being followed across the sky! I soon realised that, having stepped into the right zone, my quest giver was going to follow me side by side throughout the entire chain. In spirit form nonetheless.

This is how to quest. I’m not sure exactly how killing a mad panther (also impersonating another panther using his evil mojo spirit form!?) and adopting its now orphaned cub helps sort out the Zandalar or the Darkspear Troll clans. But gosh it was fun. And it wasn’t tedious at all.

I didn’t have to fly out of my way to do any quest hand ins. Each quest just flowed on from the quest before. And it was damn handy having Bwemba alongside me to quickly finish up one quest and roll it into the next.

Not once did I have to read back over my quest log to ascertain my objective. Not once did I get lost or fly to the wrong place only to find that I was missing a quest item.

It just flowed. The chain even contains something of an Escort Quest (your companion is one of Nesingwary’s buddies) – and your escort can keep up with you even while you are mounted and he is on foot! He even lets you lead the way!

Originally I did feel somewhat slighted that I, as a Human Priest, had to bring along Bwemba, a Troll Priest, to fix up the ill soldiers at Fort Livingstone. Couldn’t I have done that? I’m as good as any Troll Priest damn it – even if Holy isn’t my preference!

And I could have used a few heals from Bwemba while I was defending the Rebel Camp. Three minutes is a long time to be out of mana! But otherwise I was glad to have company in STV. Even from an NPC.

Say what you will about World of Warcraft but over the last six years I think they’ve come a long way in quest design. There’s no comparison between this chain – strung together it’s at least 19 quests but feels like 3 or 4 – and the original Green Hills of Stranglethorn from classic WoW.

*I couldn’t agree more with Commander Sharp (the guard who introduces you to Bwemba in Stormwind Harbor) when he says:
(a) Why don’t these trolls just deal with their problems on their own?
(b) These trolls have just shown up demanding our help.
(c) I can barely understand what these trolls are trying to say.

Throne of the Four Winds (Picture by MMO Champion)

I hopped onto WoW last Friday night expecting to do some BC raids in preparation of the next patch and transmogrification.  Instead I found myself heading back into the raiding game thanks to an old raiding buddy, Dopz, who was determined to help me get some gear and up my average item level (post Friday it was sitting at 330 which I believe is one step above abysmal). Unfortunately we didn’t have any tanks online who were willing to help so we had to PUG them + 1 extra DPS.  And that’s how I found myself sitting in front of some genie dudes in Throne of the Four Winds ready to heal some big baddy bosses in my extra fail gear.

What I discovered pretty quickly was that gear or no, healing is like riding a bicycle – it doesn’t matter what the blizzard developers change once you’ve done it long enough it’s all muscle memory.  After healing for what feels like forever, I was back to my old ways in no time.  Even after 9 months I could still remember all my click casts in Vuhdo (well except for dispelling but that’s another story!) and it became clear to me that I still love raiding and drove home how much I miss it.

We started the first boss which is 3 (I only ever saw 2 but I’ve been assured there were 3) little genie/efrit things and we wiped.  This was sad, but the good news was that I wasn’t the cause hooray! We subsequently came back (after I accidentally flew to The Vortex Pinnacle) wiped again, and I was probably part of the cause this time.  We had changed platforms and I was now on the dude that does steady AOE damage.  This was much harder for me to keep up purely because my gear was well below optimal and I ran out of mana!  Our raid was not going smoothly so far and I could feel impatience from the PUGs – we were at our limit of issues before we lost someone.  And typically that’s when the baby woke up and needed a feed.

Roughly the same time Caitlin woke up, Angelya from Revive & Rejuvenate’s little Sproutling woke as well.  I think the two of them had planned it in advance it was that well timed! I felt terrible but I had to AFK – babies and their tummies come first.  My partner knowing how much I had been enjoying myself, wipes and all played as me just to keep things going and while Caitlin had a marathon 30+ minute feed I discovered on Twitter that they did kill the boss and the 2nd one without us nursing mums. I even got a nifty new belt – Gale Rouser Belt of the Wavecrest and a Spiritcaller Cloak which I think the guild “donated” to me or was a gift from Goodiemania?  I’m not quite sure it was getting late by that stage and I’d just been in a dark room for the last 30 odd minutes so was half asleep myself but either way I was grateful for it!

As we got ready to do a heroic dungeon, we were all set and Caitlin woke again this time needing a nappy change and full bedtime routine to calm her down again.  And that was the end of my night.  I felt really bad – I had managed to pick up loot without actually doing anything other than make people wait around for me.  I had become that player.  Every guild/PUG has one and in my past life as a heroic level raider I couldn’t stand them.  In fact players like these were exactly why I joined a raiding guild in the first place – who wants to PUG a raid just to stand around waiting for that tank to get the phone, or that healer to brb?

Now I don’t have one of those dream babies that go to bed at 7pm and wake up again at 7am in the morning.  I don’t have a bub that is remotely like that and most of the time I and quite ok with it – I know it won’t last forever.  Occasionally though it would be nice to know that I could definitely play for a 3 hour period straight without having to worry about getting up to give her a feed.  I know there are a lot of WoW players with babies that managed to keep up raiding while looking after their young ones and I am in awe, unfortunately I am just not one of them.  So I’m not quite sure where that leaves me.  I got a taste for raiding and its going to be hard to go back to farming old school raids/dungeons now, but I can’t commit to any type of raiding schedule without being the player that makes everyone sigh in frustration.

I guess its back to leveling and solo play for Lath again.

Caitlin has also been participating in some baby boss fights as part of Nymphy’s Cutest Little Babies in the World of Warcraft series.  Anyone wanting a few moments of pure squee should check out their adventures here:

The Cutest Little Babies in the World (of Warcraft)

The Cutest Little Babies in the World (of Warcraft) – Part II

And because I’m a proud mum and its been about 8 months since I posted a photo – here is my little girl @ 9 months.

Caitlin rocking the 80s vibe (photo taken by Instagram)

The Steamvault: Have you been doing it wrong too?

I’m currently clearing Heroic Steamvault each day for a chance at the rare tailoring pattern. The helm model that I would like to own for my future transmogrification look comes in two items available to me, as a Priest. The Battlecast Hood is one of those items.

The Battlecast Hood pattern eluded me, and Lathere for that matter, all the way through the Burning Crusade. It drops off the very last boss in The Steamvault, a level 70 dungeon and like many tasty patterns of the era its chance to drop in Heroic mode is higher than its chance to drop in Normal difficulty.

The Level 70 Approach to The Steamvault

I spent quite a lot of time in The Steamvault during the Burning Crusade. I do remember lots of important things about the instance and some not so important things. I know that the first Naga boss, Hydromancer Thespia, insults you by calling you a “warm blood”. I remember quite keenly the exact position of the chest you open to retrieve part of the Karazhan attunement key quest even though I only did it once or twice myself.

At the time we most certainly did not have dungeon maps. Click your map shortcut while inside The Steamvault during the Burning Crusade and you would have been presented with a map of Zangarmarsh helpfully reminding you that you are, in fact, still inside Coilfang Reservoir. No kidding.

These days The Steamvault has a map. It’s actually quite helpful and shows me that the first cavern you walk into is huge and that there are three bosses. It doesn’t tell you what order to kill those bosses or how you should get to them.

The Steamvault dungeon map

When I returned to The Steamvault at level 85 I came back without a tank. It’s easily solo-able. I’ve actually never played a tank.

I started clearing mobs just in the same fashion that I would have with a group at level 70: hug the right wall and kill the giant marshy dudes. Soon you reach a pivotal point. You have a pack of 5 Naga on your right, guarding a corridor entrance and behind those 5 are a smaller group of Naga that patrol said corridor. I know this well.

This was often the first wipe for a group of level 70s. If you took a step too far away from your hug-wall position you risk pulling extra groups. The Naga groups are filled with a nasty mix of melee and spell-casters, some of those spell-casters will heal and some will fear you to hell and back if you let them. The general method of dealing with this tricky spot was to kill both the 5 Naga protecting the corridor and then quickly kill off the patrol (someone would inevitably pull them anyway) just to create some breathing room.

You see, I never once, ever, actually went down that corridor with a group. You would only clear the entrance but instead of turning south to follow the corridor down you cut clear across to the north side of the cavern and kill the previously mentioned “first” boss. I never questioned this. I certainly never questioned why we would hug the wall and then madly dash to the opposite side. I just assumed, as a new player is likely to do, that we were following the most direct and efficient path through the instance.

After killing the first boss, and clicking the weird Naga organ looking thing behind her, you then jump into the lake and swim down a winding tunnel, do a near 360 degree turn up a winding ramp and head left to kill the “second” boss. Again activating the weird Naga organ looking device behind him.

Then you backtrack most of the way and hang a left and-

You Are Facing the Wrong Way

This is when I realised that something was off. From this point on and towards the now unlocked last gate/boss of the instance all the mobs are facing the wrong way. They are expecting you to come from the other direction. They are not involved in some kind of RP. They are not yelling at their slaves. They are quite simply set up to be approached from the other direction.

How did I never notice this?

All this time… The Steamvault has been designed so that you clear these mobs from the other side of the corridor. It must be designed that way. If the designers intended us to approach the instance in the same manner that is commonly held to be the one true way they would have faced the mobs towards an approaching party of heroes.

I wish I could put some kind of spin on this (you know, we’re sneaking up on these stupid, unsuspecting Naga) but finding these mobs facing backwards just pulls me right out of the game play. Whatever the opposite of immersion is… well I’ve felt it. Felt it while staring into the back of these Naga.

Level Design

Something has clearly gone wrong. Well, not “wrong” but not as intended. Clearing jumping into the lake and swimming up a tunnel is some kind of shortcut – although not one I would recommend if you can’t turn into a mutated seal or walk on water – and perhaps there is a more intuitive, slower, method to navigating The Steamvault.

Fortunately for me – and you! – I have had many nights since to ponder the map of The Steamvault.

For starters I don’t believe that hugging the right wall through the first cavern is necessarily the intended method of clearing the start of The Steamvault. Frankly you can’t see shit. Your camera, no matter what distance you like to set it to, is always covered in moss and shrubbery. The walls aren’t straight which is mildly annoying. And it’s very easy to step right onto an enemy mob. And that’s at level 85! I’m sure I must have proximity pulled at least once doing this at level 70.

Unfortunately center of the cavern is patrolled by a group of fast moving Water Elementals. And I think this explains so much of how The Steamvault came to be Hug The Wall Vault. At level 70 you had to use Crowd Control to get through an instance like The Steamvault without losing your tank. And having mobs that will heal and/or fear you just make that even more important. But, at the time, Elementals were immune to near abouts all methods of Crowd Control. I think Druids could banish them or something but I only ever ran with Druid healers and usually asking your healer to CC was asking for no heals and certain death in the near future.

So in order to avoid a group that couldn’t easily be CCed, groups started killing off the Naga packs and giant moss lurkers (or whatever they are!) on the right side.

I did eventually take that corridor to the right (instead of dashing across to the “first boss” across the lake front) and cleared the way, face-to-face with my enemy. Surprisingly, it leads to the locked door sealing the final boss away from sight. But you can follow the path further and clear to the “second boss”. This way all the mobs are facing forward.

Could this be what was intended? Clear the center of the main cavern, turn left/north and kill a boss, walk south and enter the corridor go past the final gate and continue on to another boss.

Either method leaves you to backtrack. In fact the path I describe directly above contains quite a lot of backtracking. It sure as hell contains a lot more enemy Naga than the one used in practice.

And why create a way to swim to the mechanical “second” boss if you don’t want players to use it?

Knowledge Transfer

All these leads back to my hazy thoughts on knowledge transfer between players. I may not have been at the forefront of dungeon goers at level 70 but I certainly wasn’t months behind the rest of the server.

And even if you factor in all the reasons why it was hard to share knowledge:

1. No cross-server dungeons
2. No Dungeon Finder
3. General unwillingness of tanks to tank for anyone outside their guild
4. No call-to-arms
5. Player trend to invest in one main and not alts

I can’t quite figure out how I learned my method of clearing The Steamvault. By the time I joined a group, and I don’t even remember the occasion, someone in that group already knew the way and I followed them blindly. That someone must have been a PuGed tank (possible but unlikely) or perhaps a more knowledgeable guild member who had PuGed with others.

I Blame The Internet

Blizzard have long pointed to the advent of knowledge sharing amongst the raiding community as a reason for the divide between memories of difficult raid content and actual difficulty of more recent raid content. The argument goes something like this (numbers below are made up):

At the time of Molten Core:

1. Only 5% of players were experienced with the raid content in Molten Core
2. There were fewer servers and overall much fewer players
3. Guilds had not yet established long histories of credibility and authority
4. Thus less people have first hand experience that they can turn into a boss strategy guides for other guilds
5. Thus even fewer people knew whose strategies and guides were worth following

At the time of Icecrown Citadel:

1. Close to 75% of players are experienced with the raid content in Icecrown Citadel
2. Less than 2% of current players are both experienced with the raid content of Icecrown Citadel whilst also having played in Molten Core in its day
3. There are more servers and high subscription of players
4. Many guilds are established and have long histories proving their credibility and authority
5. Many people are experienced first hand and are knowledgeable enough to put together a thorough boss strategy guide for other guilds
6. Easier to establish credible guides and to watch them first hand from video capture

And of those 2% that experienced both raiding environments they compare the learning curve of figuring out their own strategy (Molten Core) vs following sensible suggestions from world firsts posted online within 24-48 hrs of the raid content being released (Icecrown Citadel) and mistakenly decide that the encounters in Molten Core must have been harder than the encounters in Icecrown Citadel.

I can see the reason in this argument and I think it’s absolutely correct – there’s just not a scarcity of raiding knowledge anymore.

And the only difference between the two scenarios is that we’re much less isolated to the knowledge available on our own server, the knowledge handed down to us from a Class Leader, and the knowledge that we learn for ourselves.

We take it for granted that bloggers and top players will share their knowledge, share their strategies, share their raid composition and share their expertise.

Dungeon Knowledge Transfer

And I think if it’s true of raiding, to a lesser extent, it’s true of the 5 man dungeon content too.

Although I do think that it’s almost taken for granted that guildies will consult another guild’s strategy guide before attempting a new raid boss (and I think that’s a shame). I don’t think it’s expected that players read up on a new dungeon before trying it firsthand.

While there are huge amounts of boss strategies for raids out there, Wowhead does a pretty good job of explaining how to defeat a bosses inside a dungeon. I guess dungeon bosses are just easier all around: less risk, less reward, less abilities, less phase changes etc.

It’s probably a good thing. I think I’d prefer to turn to a stranger in a 5 man and ask: “How do we defeat this boss?” and get a simple, straightforward reply that takes no more than a couple of lines of text.

It still doesn’t tell me what the original walk through of The Steamvault was. It doesn’t explain how the very first groups – with no outside knowledge – cleared their way through. Which way did they go first, instinctively? Which bosses did they kill first? Did they figure out the organ/gate unlocking mechanism? And it certainly will never tell me how we got from that to the widely accepted Hug The Wall + Water Walking approach that I take each and every night.

ps. No pattern yet

So surely I would remember off by heart the “glory days” of my early raiding and my hard sought after weapons? Nope.

However, because I’m sentimental and also because I used to be a graphic designer (probably more of the latter than the former) I do have visual, eye candy, memorabilia, pre-71-Disenchanting:

Cassandri's BC Gear - click to enlarge

I particular enjoy reliving the complexity of the level 70 gemming system for Shadow Priests.

What I’m really wearing is all the Mage gear I can get my hands on that isn’t specifically equippable by Mages and only Mages.

That said, if a Frost Mage rocked up in Frozen Shadoweave to raid he would have been laughed out of the room at the time. Mostly just for being a Frost Mage. Unfortunately not for being a Mage.

Ha! I don’t think I’ll ever tire of Mage jokes.

By the time I put together this wallpaper they had already homogenized stats in the move towards Wrath of the Lich King. A lot of those item were sought after initially for their +Shadow Damage. I spent most of level 60-70 grinding the materials for my Frozen Shadoweave set in preparation for level 70 raiding. I’m sure that’s a big part of why I love the set so much.

The Spellstrike Hood, Belt of Blasting and Darkmoon Card: Crusade are all crafted item. However, they do require some pretty tasty materials available only to raiders and the wealthy. I remember having these items, I remember valuing them. I remember some of the materials.

What I don’t remember is pretty much everything else: everything that was purchased with Badges of Justice. Even though I would have put in scads of raiding hours to accumulate all those Badges (or Emblems or Valor Points or whatever they’re called now as Currency) but once the shopping was done I didn’t really care about those items anymore. I certainly didn’t remember their names.

This led me to think about what I could remember from Wrath of the Lich King. Surprisingly, I tend to remember weapons and trinkets. And I think I know why: these are the items that, in a DKP system, I had to wait a very, very long time to get. I never won a weapon or trinket on a roll. I was never the only one in the raid who could use an item, or wanted it. I always had to fight and, more often, wait patiently in the wings for the healers and other casters to get through their wishlist first.

I remarked to a guildy only a few days ago that my strongest memory of ICC was waiting patiently for the Phylactery of the Nameless Lich to drop not once, but twice for our raid. This was one of the few items that very few classes and specs wanted – great for Shadow Priests – all I had to do was wait for the other Shadow Priest, an officer, to get it then the 2nd one would be all mine.

My luck being what it was, I only just got it right before the end of Wrath of the Lich King. About 6 months of hardmodes before I saw that reward. Now that’s how you come to value and apprieciate an item.

Both Badge/Emblem and raiding items are purchased with currency: really the Badge/Emblem system is just Blizzard’s way of putting in a DKP system across the game that’s not tied to one guild. You gain currency or DKP by spending time and killing difficult bosses. You spend currency by purchasing items.

So why do I value one – DKP bought gear – over the other – Badge purchased gear? It must be the chance to drop.

I think when your goal is to purchase an item for 100 Emblems or 1000 Valor Points while you’re earning those Emblems or Valor you stop thinking about the item and just start thinking “I need 22 more Emblems”. When it’s a boss drop you spend the entire raiding week thinking “Please let this week be the week that Dislodged Foreign Object drops… and even though Orlith has way more DKP than me, please let next week be the week that Dislodged Foreign Object drops again… and it will finally be mine”. /evil laugh

Just repeating the name of the item so many times mentally makes it easier to remember.

Of course it probably helps that four or five others in your raid group are coveting the same item. It becomes desirable, spoken about in hushed tones, because everyone wants it.

Perhaps they should randomise the Emblem/Valor/Justice Points vendors. Make it so that only 4-5 days out of a month they stock Mercurial Vestment. And I’m not talking about a set schedule. Waiting for the Darkmoon Faire is annoying and tedious.

What do you think?

Here are some other gems (well, my appreciation of these things might be greater than your own) that I found in the same folder:

Cassandri early 80 Naxxaramas Gear (HoTs & DoTs launch)

Lathere stats and gear at the end of BC

My rogue in her level 70 gear

Technically I could be wearing hot pink pants under this robe.

I’m in full transmogrification planning mode right now.

Lathere and I, with the help of two very geared guild-mates, did a quick run through the BC raids last night. We went right past our bedtimes (oops). It’s 7.30am now and I’m running on a couple hours sleep but, even without the alarm set, I always seem to wake up at the same time anyway (goddamn work alarm!). I hate that.

Running the BC raids last night (for those who don’t believe I used to play a Rogue in BC here’s a flashback) splintered my focus and got me trying to finish all my raid sets. I was very confused. I don’t think I got one item in the end. I had most of what dropped in the bank! I spent a good hour thinking I needed boots for all my sets, only to be reminded that, duh, boots aren’t part of Tier 4 and 5 five piece sets.

So I’ll point out some basics to remind you, dear reader, and myself.

Pieces in an Armor Set

Blizzard tend to stick to a trend here and usually pick the major five armor pieces.

Check out this link and you can quickly see on Wowhead’s Priest Armor Set page that the majority have five pieces to the set, but there quite a few three piece sets – my tailored Shadow’s Embrace set is one of theses – and the rare six piece set.

In Classic/Vanilla/Level 60 World of Warcraft the sets tended towards more pieces and I’d say that, with the exception of Zul’Gurub and the AQ sets, the standard was six pieces in a set or more.

By the Burning Crusade/Level 70 the five piece set was the norm. Originally Tier 6 (Black Temple and Mount Hyjal) only included five pieces but they added to the set with extra, smaller, items when they released their end-of-expansion raid zone, Sunwell Plateau.

In Wrath of the Lich King/Level 80 five pieces per raid set was consistent. They also stuck to the same shared class tokens (more on that later). I presume that they’ve stuck to this formula in Cataclysm/Level 85.

Regardless of what set you choose to collect you’re going to need to fill out a smaller set with accessories. Otherwise you’ll be running around in bare feet, like me!

Visible Armor Slots

Unless you’re completely a numbers man, or woman as the case my be, you’ve probably noticed that your character doesn’t actually look like they’re wearing a necklace or rings on their fingers. Not all armor slots are visible and contain 3D models that adorn your naked, virtual, self.

There’s no need to collect the non-visible items. I’m sure these will be greyed-out or disabled on the future transmogrification screen.

1. Helm: Visible (optional – in display you can always Show or Hide)
2. Neck: Not visible
3. Shoulders: Visible, extremely so
4. Back: Visible (optional – in display you can Show or Hide)
5. Tabard: Visible (although if you’re rocking an awesome set I wouldn’t cover it with a Tabard)
6. Chest: Visible, extremely so
7. Bracers: Not visible
8. Gloves: Visible
9. Waist: Visible
10. Legs: Visible; Not visible if you’re wearing a robe in your chest slot
11. Feet: Visible
12. Ring 1 & 2: Not visible
13. Trinket 1 & 2: Not visible
14. Main hand: Visible
15. Offhand: Visible
16. Ranged/wand: Visible (you might hit need to hit “x” to see it in hand though)

Basic information, yes, but important!

The most simple set of visible armor for a caster class would contain:

• Caster Basic: Shoulders, Chest(Robe), Gloves, Belt, Shoes, Weapon

The helm and cloak would be hidden using the Display options and the robe would cover mis-matched pants.

The most simple melee visible armor set would contain pants:

• Melee Basic: Shoulders, Chest, Pants, Gloves, Belt, Shoes, Weapon

 The Rules

As Klep pointed out in a comment on my previous post the only rule to transmogrification should be “awesomeness”. That means

• YES: making a set from different expansions
• YES: wearing a set that you never collected when it was current and all-the-rage
• YES: wearing items that were intended for another class originally (I’m looking at you Mages and Warlocks here!). As long as you can equip it, go for it
• YES: wearing a set from Cataclysm

I’m going to focus on raiding armor sets on this blog because, frankly, I’m not sure how easy/difficult it is to get hold of the old PVP stuff. I have a feeling it’s impossible to collect past Arena sets because the currency has been discontinued.

Resources

There are some great resources out there, and I hope I can be of assistance to other Priests reading this blog in the future. A guildy pointed me to:

www.DEAzeroth.blogspot.com

They have a visual guide of every single Staff, Shield ect available in game. At first glance it doesn’t look like enough but I could be wrong! An amazing resource for selecting your weapons by looks alone. I’m not sure if they will be tackling armor, too.

www.wowhead.com

Wowhead has had a nifty feature tucked away for the last year or so. When you browse to an item (for example: Collar of Cho’gall) next to the Comments tab you should be able to see a “Same model as…” tab too. Clicking that tab will show you all the other items in the game that, while they have different stats and names, use the exact same 3D model and colouring.

Scanning this list is the best way to find the most attainable piece of gear that looks the way you want. My example above shows me that there are 5 items in the game that will give me the look I want for my helm.

Collar of Cho’gall: This is a drop from the first boss in Gruul’s Lair. We cleared this zone with 4 last night so this is definitely a go-to option. You can only clear this raid zone once per week though.

Arcanist Crown Mage: This is ruled out for now because I can’t wear a Mage class piece. I’m not sure if transmogrification, once implemented, will let you transmogrify to something in your possession… or only something wearable. For now I’ll play it safe and not upset any Mages.

Battlecast Hood: This one is crafted. Which sounds easily attainable. Except that I know the pattern is an extremely rare random drop from the Burning Crusade level 70 heroics. I don’t think it’s farmable. And I never got it. If you can find a tailor on your realm with the pattern you might be paying a hefty crafting fee (and finding some tricky mats). If you’re playing on a newer realm don’t even bother.

Hood of the Arcane Path, Hood of the Royal Wizard: Possibles. Should be soloable, BRD isn’t my favourite grinding spot though.

Mage-Collar of the Firestorm: This is from Heroic Blood Furnace. I don’t think this would be fun to solo. And it might be difficult to convince your friends to come along. At least clearing Gruul’s Lair will offer up quite a few Tier 4 tokens.

Sharing Tier Tokens with Other Classes

If you’re pugging old raid zones it’s probably good to know a bit about the Tier Tokens before you get there so you don’t miss something you want.

For the level 60 World of Warcraft dungeon and Tier sets (Tier set 3 cannot be obtained because old Naxxramas was thrown out when new Naxxramas was brought in) most of the Tier will just drop, ready to equip. For example, when you kill Golemagg the Incinerator in Molten Core, he might drop this item:

Robes of the Prophecy
Binds when picked up
Chest, Cloth
222 Armor
+45 Stamina
+10 Intellect
+17 Spirit
+10 Fire Resistance
Classes: Priest
Requires Level 60
Item Level 66
Vestments of Prophecy (0/8)
(3) Set: -0.1 sec to the casting time of your Flash Heal spell.
(5) Set: Improves your critical strike rating by 28.
(8) Set: Increases your chance of a critical hit with Prayer of Healing by 25%.

A Priest in your group – or you – can loot this item and equip it. 1 piece closer to your Tier 1 set.

However by the time you get to the end of Classic WoW, the ZG set comes to mind but it’s no longer available, Blizzard implemented shared tokens for Tier gear. That means an item will drop that is flagged as equip-able by 3 or 4 of the game classes eg Warrior, Druid, Priest. These can be traded to the right vendor, usually in the major city of the expansion or near the raid zone itself, for your class Tier.

For example, you might kill Curator in Karazhan and see this drop:

Gloves of the Fallen Defender
Binds when picked up
Classes: Warrior, Priest, Druid
Requires Level 70
Item Level 70

This item, once looted, can be taken to a vendor in Aldor’s rise or Scryer’s Tier (depending on your loyalty to either team) in Shattrath and traded for:

Handwraps of the Incarnate
Binds when picked up
Hand, Cloth
295 Armor
+50 Stamina
+26 Intellect
+33 Spirit
Durability 55 / 55
Classes: Priest
Requires Level 70
Item Level 120
Incarnate Raiment (0/5)
(2) Set: Your Prayer of Healing spell now also causes an additional 150 healing over 9 sec.
(4) Set: Each time you cast Flash Heal, your next Greater Heal cast within 15 sec has its casting time reduced by 0.1, stacking up to 5 times.

You’ll note that this vendor only shows you your own classes Tier options. I don’t think it’s possible to purchase another classes’s Tier items: you can only buy what you can equip.

Cassandri in level 70 gear, current gear and future transmogrification set

I must be the last player to catch the news that Blizzard intend to bring transmogrification to World of Warcraft.

While I’ve not really been playing much (cough – not at all – cough) I have kept on top of my feed reader. I’ve been reading about World of Warcraft. I’m sure I’ve skim read at least 10 posts that mention “transmogrification”. And I just kept thinking that:

I’m going to transmorg my latest pair of gloves!

actually meant

I’m going to crudely turn the blue polygons on my latest pair of gloves into a greenish snot colour instead

Hardly inspiring stuff! But that’s not what Lathere promised me at all. I popped over for some tea, cake and baby cuddles (not necessarily in that order) last Friday.

“I’m surprised you’re not mad keen on the whole transmorg thing… I thought you would be jumping at the chance to wear your Frozen Shadoweave set again. But, technically, still have your latest gear on.”

I was outraged. You can do that?! Nobody told me you could change the armor model to something else entirely!

I didn’t even wait to go home. I logged in from Lath’s place. Unfortunately I then remembered why I’ve accomplished so little in the game since reaching level 85. I don’t really know anything about the game anymore. I don’t understand what people are talking about in General chat (although I’m fairly sure that BOT doesn’t stand for Botanica anymore). And I don’t know the people in my guild.

I guess I should be grateful that I’m still in a guild! This continually surprises me – whenever I do log in the first thing I do is hit “j” to check that I am in a guild. Ok, that’s a lie. The first thing I do is hit “o” and then after a bit of confusion I hit “c” and then I remember that the Guild stuff is its own window and has its own shortcut now. That’s when I hit “j”.

I have weird stuff in my bags. I don’t know if Dragon Flank is worth keeping, selling or auctioning. And it’s a million little uncertainties like this that paralyze me. I have to think hard to determine if Eternal Earth are from Cataclysm or Wrath of the Lich King (Wrath, I determined). Frankly all my game knowledge, one expansion to the next, has kind of muddled together into a great big grey cloud that’s almost impossible to get really, useful, data out of.

I wandered around Stormwind for a little bit. I tried to seek help from a city guard but they didn’t seem to be able to point me in the right direction. I walked up to The Cathedral to say “hello” to my priestly trainers. They were very keen to scrub my mind clean but they didn’t seem to know anything about transmogrification.

Like a noob I did those Stormwind call ins on horseback… because I keep forgetting that you can fly inside a city these says. /sigh.

I didn’t really want to ask strangers (guild members or otherwise) where to go to begin the magic of transmogrification so I just skipped straight over and headed to the bank – AKA Cassandri’s Wardrobe – to try on a few outfits.

If I can wear anything, what do I want to wear?

The single most stupid decision that I have ever made in game, and I’ve made some doozies, was disenchanting my Shadow’s Embrace set in favour of extra bag space when I was level 71.

Thought process at the time: I’ll never need this again.

Stupid Cass! After finishing off The Insane at level 80 I planned to recraft the set for sentimental reasons.

But did I just think about doing it or did I actually do it? Well it turns out that I did a bit of both. Nearly all the materials were there in my bank bag – including 20 shadowcloth and 20 primal waters.

I spent Saturday night grinding some extra Primal Shadow on Void Ridge in Hellfire Pennisula. This was a job that I could comfortably do. I knew where to go. I even remembered the approximate drop rate of Mote of Shadow.

It didn’t pass my notice that I was, essentially, trying to live in the virtual past. I’m not proud of that. I should be jumping head first into Cataclysm content. At the very least I should have queued for a Cataclysm heroic while I grinded BC materials in a BC zone. Why didn’t I try and get a group to check out the Zul’Aman heroics? A part of me is interested to see if Harrison Jones still comes to open the doors and how else ZA has changed.

I didn’t even take my guild mate’s offer (since some people I knew had logged in as I was heading out of  Shattrath - and on that point I cannot remember which characters are Scryer and which are Aldor supporters – argh) to be summoned in to meet Ragnaros the New Raid Boss.

While I was grinding BC style I was confronted with the fact that I no longer know how to play Cassandri. I dithered over whether or not to Mind Sear. I remember reading something about it channeling off friendly targets. Did I also read something about it killing the mob you cast off?

My Shadowy Apparitions were bugging the hell out of me. I don’t want to think of the number of times I thought “what’s is that th?- oh that’s right”. My action keys were lighting up like a shopping center at Christmas time. Since when does a Shadow Priest proc so many other spells?! It’s quite Mage-like. Although, to be fair, perhaps it’s very Wrath Mage-like and Mages are something else altogether now.

To make a very long story short: I got my mats. I flew out to Shadowmoon Valley and crafted the last pieces of Shadowcloth (no cooldown on Shadowcloth creation now) and was soon enough in possession of all 3 pieces of Shadows Embrace. Bound to me on Equip.

Only to find out that the Transmogrification feature has only been announced by Blizzard. It’s not going to be implemented in game until some future, oh god let it be soon, patch.

Not to worry! Now I’ve got a bit of time to track down the matching belt and helm. And then I need to pick out, or find, some awesome looking staff. Because even though I’ve always preferred the dagger/mace+offhand combination, a staff certainly looks more impressive.

Would it be wrong to mix generations? Benediction (60) with Shadow’s Embrace (70)? Probably.

So… anyone for Magtheridon’s Lair? Epic cloth gloves LOCKED.