Here's a hanky. Now go away.

Wow, so people all over the blogosphere are complaining about some of the "dumbing down" of WoW, from lowering the level requirements of mounts to the announcement that Blizzard will put Questhelper-like icons on the map to help people complete quests faster.

To those that are complaining, here's a hanky. Now shut up and go away.

No, seriously. Don't want to be "dumbed down" by having a mount at 20 instead of 30 (or even 40)? YOU DON'T HAVE TO BUY ONE!! Wow, what a concept!

As for the Questhelper-like icons, Blizzard will probably allow you to turn the feature on and off, just like they did for the Talent Point Preview and the Equipment Manager. I doubt that they would put something that huge in the game and not let people turn it on and off. And if they don't, just choose not to use it. Hide your minimap.

See, I'm of a libertarian mind - people should be able to do whatever they want to do, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else and their life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

So some noob runs a bunch of heroics to get enough emblems to buy the T8.5 chest and headpiece from the Emblem of Conquest vendor. So what? How does that affect me? Will it hinder my own performance as a player? Does that keep me from doing what I need or want to do to get better loot, myself? Does that reflect poorly on my own toon?

No.

Shaman 3.2 changes - TOTEMS!

Yowza, the shaman changes are amazing for patch 3.2, if they are to remain as described this early:

We have changed these spells for 3.2. And yes, there are some other changes. The main buff to Chain Heal is likely to come in increasing the jump distance to 10 yards and buffing the amount of healing decrease with subsequent targets to 40% down from 50%. CH, HW and LHW should all be doing bigger numbers when you consider all the talent changes.

We'll try to get the full notes out soon, but even then remember that this is a major "new tier" patch and is likely to have more iteration due to PTR feedback than the last few patches.


We have changed Healing Way to work better with HW and we have changed Improved Water Shield to also work with CH. We also dropped the cooldown of NS to 2 min so that you can HW more often. We'll try to make a post of all of the Resto changes soon.

[...] Improved Water Shield procs will not consume Water Shield charges. The tooltip says something like "as if you had consumed an orb.


There comes a time in all shaman’s lives when they must learn to harness the power of nature and wield powerful totems. As they grow in power, so do the opportunities to use these instruments of healing, protection, and destruction. In the upcoming content patch, Call of the Crusade, the shaman will be able to quickly place totems of each element, aiding them in managing these powerful focuses of nature.

We wanted to provide some insight regarding the upcoming shaman-specific interface addition, the Totem Bar. Shaman will be able to utilize this new bar to manage their fire, earth, water, and air totems in a more accessible and convenient way. This bar will appear on the left-hand side above the standard toolbar, similar to warrior stances or druid forms. The bar contains space for four totems of the player’s choice, one of each element. Clicking the respective button will drop that totem. To the right of the four totems is a button for Totemic Call, which we have renamed Call of Earth. To the left of the four totems is a new ability named Call of Fire which will drop all four totems on the bar at once. The mana cost is the same as if the shaman dropped all four of the totems one at a time. However, it takes but a single global cooldown.

Questing shaman will be able to quickly move their totems of choice forward, while a shaman in an instance, Arena, or Battleground will be able to replace their totems if they have to move or if the totems are destroyed.

Shamans will also be able to customize their bar to set Call of Fire to drop less than four totems if they choose. Access to this functionality is made available at the same level as Call of Earth (currently level 30.) At higher levels, Shaman will gain two additional spells, Call of Air and Call of Water. These function exactly the same as Call of Fire, essentially giving the shaman three different sets of totems that can be placed at once. New key bindings will also be made available for all of these slots.

As with all new content under testing, we want to caution players that, as a new part of the interface, there may be additional changes during the period of the PTR until the release of the Call of the Crusade content patch. We look forward to constructive feedback once it is available for testing.

Using one global cooldown to put all four totems down will be AWESOME. I always hoped for an easier way to manage totems - this seems to be a step in the right direction. Let's just hope that QQing on the PTR will be kept to a minimum, and these changes actually go through.

Failed PuGs and starting over

So we've all got them - stories of failed pugs that ended in disaster, and maybe one or more folks on your "never want to play with them again" list. My story falls into the latter.

When I was level 75 on my shaman, I decided to pug regular Gundrak. I already had dual-specs, but I had not had much practice on my second (resto) spec. Healing, as I have found on my priest, sucks for people that don't enjoy it. And so, of course, I hated it on my shaman. Priests have 896129846 spells at their disposal, shamans have four. Yes, four. Chain heal, a smaller single-target heal (like Flash Heal), a larger single-target heal (like Greater Heal), and Riptide (a HoT that heals for a certain amount in the beginning, and then ticks). There's the dinky totem, but .. well, doesn't heal for a ton. And meatball shield goes on one target - usually the tank. But that's it - the "oh, shit!" button consists of one instant-cast ability kind of like inner focus, and another that increases the amount healed or something. So you press those two and the Greater Heal equivalent (or the chain heal), and that's how you save someone. Not very fun ...

Anyhoo, I put myself into LFG as a healer or a dps, and counted myself lucky when someone whispered me asking me to heal and invited me into the group. The pally tank was 76, a hunter was 77, a dk was 75, and a dps warrior was 80. I thought "piece of cake".

As soon as I got into the instance, the dps warrior goes, "just keep me up, I'll take everything down." My first thought? "Oh, shit."

My opinion, as a healer, is that the tank is a tank for a reason - they have the mitigation and avoidance stats to take less spike damage and take damage less often because that's what they're geared for, which allows room for a healer to be able to keep them alive during a fight. The dps are expected to do the damage while the tank maintains the aggro. Therefore, my meatball shield (the earth shield, for those that are shaman-stupid like I once was - each ball heals for a certain amount when the person with the shield gets hit) stays on the tank at all times.

Right?

Wrong. The dps warrior is grabbing aggro off of everything - running in before the tank, not letting me drink between pulls, etc. First boss is the snake boss, and of course the dps warrior has aggro the entire time, with me frantically trying to keep him alive as he's taking lots of spike damage due to the fact that he's not, of course, geared to tank. My meatball shield is on him at this point, while the actual "tank" of the instance does around a mediocre 400 dps and the warrior is doing around 3k dps. The warrior takes too much damage, I run out of mana, and he dies. The tank picks him up, I throw my earth shield on him, and we finish the rest of the fight with zero difficulties.

The warrior says, "why didn't you keep me alive?" I bit my tongue and said nothing.

I sit and start to drink, and then notice that the warrior is at half-health ... he's pulled the first group of mobs in the next room. I jump up with little mana, race into the next room just in time to have the warrior die again because he's got two of the three mobs on him (the tank is tanking the third mob). The tank picks up the other two, the hunter and dk finish them off with, again, little to no difficulties as I keep the tank healed with very little mana.

The warrior says, "yeah, that makes sense - don't heal the person with 3k dps. Just let him die."

And that is when I leave the group, but not before saying, "okay, obviously I'm not healing correctly, so just go on without me." I hearth out, and get a whisper from that warrior. "Learn2heal" he says. "Your dps doesn't matter if you're dumb and pull before the tank," I say. "I'm four levels above him, he can't hold aggro over me," he says. "I feel sorry for your raid leader," I say, and then put him on ignore.

That blowhard is still on my ignore list to this day, which is rare because only two others sit on my ignore list for various pug reasons. I don't mind pugging, I've met some nice people through pugging and actually have found people for our guild that way, but still .. what a hassle.

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On a side note, I have lots and lots of alts. I've decided to start a new Horde (I know!) alt on a different server. I may just play a priest, because it's what I know, but maybe not. No money, no friends, no Bind on Account shoulders (damn you, Blizzard, they're BIND ON ACCOUNT, not bind-to-faction-and-realm!). Just me as a nub.

I'm going to chronicle my journies as I pug and quest my way to 80 on this new toon. I'm not sure what realm (or what kind of realm, I'm not familiar with the workings of a pvp realm, though, so I may try one of those. If I do, I'm doing a druid, hands down.) Anyone that has an inkling to make some suggestions about which realm to start on, please feel free to comment. If I interact with you, you'll probably get a mention on here. I'll make sure to name the realm, the character's name, the names of the folks I encounter, and various other details as I level my toon. If you'd like to join me, also feel free to speak up. I may start another blog to chronicle those "mis"adventures.

And yes, I know it's been done before. :-P

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I hate my work firewall, by the way. Every once in a while, another one of my favorite blogs will start to be blocked. A while ago, it was Egotistical Priest and Mystic Chicanery. Later, it was Tank Like A Girl and Skeleton Jack. Now? Fear.Dot.Win! No, Abi is under the firewall! :-( It really sucks, as my only blog-reading time seems to be during work (er). The word "g-a-m-e-s" (don't want to be firewalled on my own blog, so I'm taking no chances, hehe) is blocked, so if you happen to see that word on your site and want to change it, maybe I could start reading your blog again? ...

I need to update my blogroll, too, as I've discovered the joys of several more blogs that I read daily. I'm just lazy - I'll get to it one day. All I have to say is .. I have a great big crush on Jong.

How to: A guide to "running" low-level players through instances with your priest

So I have two accounts (is that legal? lol) and the second account is linked to my boyfriend's main account. Triple xp is awesome, and what makes it the most awesome is that 1. it doesn't use up your rested xp, and 2. running instances is the fastest way to level up your linked toons. That being said, in the past couple of months, I've been "running" low level instances and helping these linked toons get to 40 pretty quickly.

This is a quick guide for the Alliance side (sorry, Horde - I just don't have any easy equivalents for Stocks or Deadmines - Wailing Caverns is a bear of an instance) low-level instances and using the fastest route for getting linked toons to level 40.

Levels 1-10: questing

Unfortunately, there are no quick ways to get to level 10 other than questing. Simple enough, though - you'll get to level 5 before finishing even half of the starting area quests, and level 10 before you get to the dreaded Westfall/Darkshore/Loch Modan/Bloodmyst Isle areas. When you get to level 10, head to ...

Levels 10-15: Deadmines

With a level 80 priest, Deadmines is a breeze (well, I'm sure it'd be with any class). Each large "room" will be one pull - bubble yourself and proximity-aggro (run right on top of them, or close to it) everything in each room, don't stop, get to a part where you can line-of-sight everything around a corner, wait until those damn mages get to you, and then Holy Nova everything down. Yes, Holy Nova - at these low levels, Holy Nova is fast and easy (instant cast) and does sufficient damage to where you only need to spam it a couple of times (at Deadmines, literally two times to kill the elites). Once you are level 15 after two-three runs, go to:

Level 15-25: Stormwind Stockades

This instance can literally be completed in two pulls, though the second pull is a bear because the mobs knock you down. Keep yourself bubbled and run into each room up the first hallway, the room down the hall, and then go to the left into each room, keeping yourself bubbled the entire time. Do not attack anything, just keep yourself bubbled and use proximity-aggro again. When you get to the last big room with the three offshoot rooms, have your low level toons run to the big room while you gather those three offshoot rooms - in the last room, when all the mobs get there, maybe three Holy Novas should do it. Second pull just involves the last hallway - you will probably get frustrated because of all the knock-downs, but there's nothing you can do about those short of skipping that hallway altogether and just resetting the instance. Make sure you pick up the red bandana quest (from Lower City) as well as the kill quest outside of the instance from the guard guy - if you looted the letter off of Van Cleef in Deadmines and turned in that quest to the guy in the house beside the Stormwind temple, then you should have a third quest for Stocks that involves killing the main dude in there. There are two other quests for grabbing "the head of ____" (different prisoners), but one is in Darkshire and the other is in Lakeshire, and really .. takes too long to run to those. :-P

Anyway, when you get to level 25, you know where you're headed next ...

Level 25-40: Scarlet Monastery

Now, I was lucky enough on my priest to get my hands on the three-person Grand Black War Mammoth from Vault runs, so it was easy-peasy for me to run the low level toons to Southshore and even to Chillwind Point for those flight paths, and on to Scarlet Monastery. I read on WoWWiki that you can enter all four wings of SM at level 20, but I like to wait until 25 (because Stocks is so quick and easy, of course).

Start with Graveyard, of course - pull the entire upper courtyard in one pull, have your low level toons stand back by the instance portal, line-of-sight everything into the hallway next to the instance portal, and go to town with that Holy Nova. Second pull, of course, is the entire crypt area - have your low level toons wait right down the first staircase while you gather the entire crypt.

After one run of Graveyard, it's on to Library - same thing, have your low level toons stand back. This area can be done in maybe four pulls. Grab that key and it's on to Armory.

Armory is literally three pulls - easy as pie, just make sure to keep yourself bubbled, line-of-sight pull everything, and viola!

After the one run of Armory, it's time for Cathedral, which you will remain in until the low-level toons (who should, by now, be at 28-29ish) get to 39-40. With a priest, this instance can be done in three pulls (I've tried two pulls, but it didn't work - too many mobs.)

Bubble yourself, have the low level toons stand near the instance portal at the beginning of the hallway, and start gathering up the hallway's mobs as well as all of the mobs in the lower courtyard. I usually keep my finger poised on the Decursive box for easy removal of the mage mobs' frost bolt. When you've got them all (by proximity-aggro, again), run back to the beginning hallway and go just inside of it, in line of sight of the low level toons (have them move closer). As soon as those mages get in the doorway, Holy Nova everything (it'll take several of them).

Second pull is the upper courtyard - I have the low level toons stand on the other side of the bottom of the stairs from the waterfall part of the fountain, and I line-of-sight pull everything to the bottom of the waterfall.

Third pull is not a proximity-aggro pull. Instead, have your low level toons stand in the fountain on the top courtyard level. Bubble yourself and run straight in to Commander Mograine - as soon as you're within range, stick a DoT (I prefer SW:P) on him and run back out to the courtyard, JUST on the other side of the door (another line-of-sight pull). When you aggro the boss, you aggro everything in the cathedral building. Beats proximity-aggroing! Holy Nova that mess down, kill the two bosses quickly, run back out, reset, go back into Cathedral, and repeat your three pulls.

Congrats, that's your strategy for easily getting to level 40! (After that it becomes a little more tricky - as the mobs get higher in level, the pulls take longer - I prefer at this time to switch to my enhancement shaman and kill things as I come across them in groups, rather than big pulls like with the priest.) I do Zul'Farak next (I just do the quests from Gadgetgazan and that Carrot-on-a-Stick one) and then move over to Dire Maul east. I've gotten our main linked toons to 46 this way so far - will probably remain in Dire Maul until 52ish, and then move on to Stratholme/Scholomance.

On the Horde side, I have a level 58 deathknight that I've used to power-level our toons through quests (Blood elf world, we both hate the other Horde starting areas) to about level 15, and then we started our runs through Shadowfang Keep. They are at 21 now - I'm unsure of whether to stick with SFK until 25 (and then on to SM) or hop over to Blackfathom Deeps until 25. Any suggestions? SFK is taking a long time on each run, in my opinion - not nearly as efficient as Stocks or even Deadmines. Then again, the DK is 58 while my priest is 80 .. I'm sure that plays a big part.

Anyway, hope this helps for power-leveling some low level toons through some of the low level instances by using your priest. I also have a question -

How would a warlock do it? My main Horde toon will be a warlock, and I'm unsure of how to do big pulls on it - no bubbles or anything, and even a pet to get in the way. When your lock pet kills something without you touching it, there's no loot, right? Do you still get the xp for the kill? Could I just let a pet loose through a low level instance (like the Voidwalker), and when it has aggro of a lot of mobs, call it back to me and kill the mobs with that nifty aoe warlock fire spell? I'm unsure ...