I hate losing ideas.

I had a few things I wanted to post about that I thought were really cool... and now I can't remember what the were.

I've also decided not to post NPC Spotlight on a weekly basis anymore. I'll post it when I come up with something I really want to show; when I haven't been out and about in the game, it's hard to think of who I want to spotlight. It was also feeling like a chore to write it for a specific day, and making my blog less fun for me.

Earth-shattering news, I know. Or perhaps even Azeroth-shattering. Cataclysmic. Ohho.

Take a deep breath, everything will be okay.

I love warriors. And tanking. I love warrior tanking!

I was having a hard time deciding what I wanted to play into Cataclysm initially. However, I've been having a blast playing my warriors... yep, all three of them!

I love the versatility and capability that protection warriors have, and the fast, heavy hits that fury warriors land. I've never gotten into arms spec, though.

I could never understand when I read that some people have multiples of the same class... but I've been playing across a few servers recently, and I've wanted to play a warrior on every one of them! So it doesn't seem so strange now.

I'm still considering my priest or druid as well. Recently though I've been feeling a lack of flavour in my priest. If Blizz can make them a little more interesting in the expansion, I may stick with Kloude.

I've been enjoying healing on my druid as an alternative, and from the class previews a couple weeks ago, looks like they'll be more fun than ever. (I for one am in favour of resto druids losing tree form as a constant spell.) And Ilmarion has got to be the most attractive night elf male on his server.

Oh gosh, I've hijacked my own post. Warriors! They're fun.

NPC Spotlight: Mr. Jones and me, tell each other fairytales...

After a tiresome but successful quest, you return to Dalaran and search for a place to rest. Deciding upon the Legerdemain, you pay for a room and slowly begin climbing the stairs. On your way up, you spot a small orange cat laying on a ledge, his bright green eyes half-closed as he drifts in and out of sleep. His collar is just peeking out from his thick mane of fur, and you make out the name Jones on the tag.

You pet Jones.
Jones purrs contentedly.

Thinking a little company might be nice, you shift into your cat form and curl up next to Jones, exhausted, falling fast asleep.

Two Awesome Things!

Yesterday, as most of you will know, Blizzard released a new in-game pet to their online store. Normally I'm not one to jump at buying their pets; however... I love XT-002! He's such a cool boss idea, and when my boyfriend mentioned they'd finally released it, it didn't take me long to get into the queue. :)

But that's only awesome-thing-1. No, awesome-thing-2 is not the new mount (though it is very pretty, I did not buy it).

It's my new tanking shield!
It doesn't look all that magnificent, but I've been running regular Halls of Reflection FOREVER to get the Splintered Door of the Citadel (replacing the Royal Crest of Lordaeron).

I've been in tons of groups where healers and dps left the group after the shield didn't drop, because that's all they were there for. It's all I was there for, but I never had the intention of leaving the whole group behind because the RNG wasn't going my way.

I even saw it drop once, but the dps warrior outrolled me for it because he "tanks for his guild". That was frustrating.

And today seemed like any other day. Another group with a potential shield-rolling participant. However, on the 6th pull, the death knight randomly drops out mid-fight, then the healer followed suit. I thought it strange since everything was going well. It lead to a wipe on the 7th, and after waiting in the replacement queue for a few minutes, the remaining dps left too.

But one of my friends had just joined the group to come heal, and then my boyfriend said he'd bring his super-dps pally. I thought, this is great! Lots of potential competition is being eliminated. We waited around for a bit, but the queue still wasn't bringing us any new party members.

So I thought, well... we could probably 3-man this. The guys were up for trying, and I was excited at the challenge. We got through pretty easily, and, you guessed it... my shield dropped! :D It was the best HoR ever.

Egg Rush!

Protip: For maximum Easter power, dual wield your Spring Flowers!

I completely forgot about doing the holiday achievement this week, so I raced the clock to get it done this evening on my hunter.

Note that dual wielding Spring Flowers does not actually give you any extra benefit, other than looking more splendid than only one bouquet.

Happy weekend everyone! :)

After a long wait...

The priest changes for Cataclysm have finally arrived! Here are some thoughts on the new info.

New spells:

Heal (available at level 16): I'd guessed a while ago that they'd be revamping priests' single target heals. With Lesser Heal and Heal both becoming useless (and slowly, Greater Heal went in the same direction), the spell book (and priest healing design) was just messy. Tying this in with all the changes to mana regen across the healing-board, I can see this helping with the competition priests were facing against other healers for direct, single-target spells (cough, Paladins). This is similar to what they're doing with shamans' new healing wave, announced earlier today.

Mind Spike (level 81): I was taken aback when I first read the description of how this spell is intended to be used. They want priests to repeatedly cast the same spell, forgoing their rotation? But understanding that it's for situational use, I can see how it helps. Shadow priests need to build up their damage, which means doing any decent damage on trash is a pain. So this will help boost shadow priests' overall dps. I like that they also tied in frost damage, so shadow priests now have something to cast when locked out of the shadow spell school. Two in one.

Inner Will (level 83): Yum, more utility! And this spell is pretty unique. It's another self-buff, like Inner Fire -- you must choose between them now. However, Inner Will seems much more situational than Inner Fire is. Having higher spell power for all spells trumps run speed and lower-cost instant spells when you don't need to move. But for when you do need to heal on the move*, this will be a great addition, not to mention awesome for PvP, if that's how you roll.

Leap of Faith (level 85): This is amazing. Oh my gosh. This idea was being discussed in the priest forums just earlier tonight in a "if you could have any ability..." thread. (Leaked info? Who knows.) Being able to save a friendly player from damage, and preventing from having to heal them? Such a cool idea. Sorry, all I can do is marvel at the moment, it's just so brilliant. There have been so many times where I've wished I could move a player from something dangerous, knowing they were in a bad spot, and having to resort to healing them through their ignorance. Though this rewards players for being lazy... at least it will interrupt their casting to teach them a lesson (thanks for pointing this out, Lym of Bronzebeard!). If they don't want to lose out on their DPS... they'll learn not to stand in the fire. One can hope.

Changes to abilities and mechanics:

• HoTs and DoTs benefiting from crit and haste (but not shortening the duration, just increasing ticks) will be a great addition.
• "We want to bring back Shadow Word: Death as an "execute" -- something you do when the target is at 25% health." Great! Now our resident shadow priest will have less opportunity to nearly kill himself from SW: Death crits! :) (at least back in BC days)
• "While we want to keep the priest's role as a well-rounded healer"... lulz. Anyone else feel like this may be utterly lost? At least they're trying to find ways to make priests well-rounded again, focusing first on letting us tank heal again, with possibilities such as larger shields for Discipline, and fixing Greater Heal.
• "We are, however, getting rid of the five-second rule, because we don't want to encourage standing around doing nothing." This is interesting. With the assumption that they're fixing mana regen (and having too much) across the board, I'm guessing we miss this.

New talents and talent changes:

• "We want to improve Discipline's single-target healing capacity. One key is to make sure shielding isn't always a more attractive option than healing." An interesting gesture. I'd like to see how they balance this.
• "We want to improve Holy for PvP healing. One way to do this is to make sure that Heal's throughput is similar between both specs." I would love to PvP with a holy spec, as much as I love discipline too. I think there's real potential for holy PvP, the tree would just need a little more PvP love.
• "We want to improve Shadow for short fights and reduce its susceptibility to school lockouts." Sounds like they have more than just Mind Spike spiking their minds.** But this spell is already a good start.
• "Discipline will finally be getting Power Word: Barrier as a talented ability. Think of it like a group Power Word: Shield." Been a long time coming.
• "We want to make Holy a little bit more interesting to play. One new talent will push the Holy priest into an improved healing state when he or she casts Prayer of Healing, Heal, or Renew three times in a row. The empowered state varies depending on the heals cast." I'm wary about this one.... I'm all for making Holy more interesting to play. However, this feels like a recycled Serendipity. Don't get me wrong, Serendipity is cool. I like having a faster Prayer of Healing. But right now, it's a bit of a joke; basically it's okay to overheal with a few unneeded flash heals to get the increased speed effect for Prayer of Healing. To me, this shows that the problem is too much mana and not enough speed. Promoting overhealing shouldn't be okay. All that said, this situation will probably be very different once all of the mana regen changes are implemented (as in, not having the mana to waste). And who knows, since each 3-cast spell will have its own unique buff, it may not turn into the same situation. I can just see that this "new Serendipity" could be abused in the same way as the current one.
• Shadow Orbs mechanic: Destroying the orbs would increase your shadow damage with certain spells. Apparently this idea is similar to the old Troll priest racial ability from way back when, or at least the animation of it... I'm not quite sure what the racial was.
• "Misery will no longer affect spell Hit chance. We want players to be able to gear themselves around a Hit cap that isn't variable depending on group composition." Good. Because this reminds me of when people rely on having a Draenei in their group for raids. I hate that. Suck it up and gem/enchant your hit!***

Hope you guys enjoyed the read and all the juicy new priest info! Comment with your thoughts. :)

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*I was itching for a run speed increase on my priest, which is why I got the rocket boot enchant. I love it. Useful in so many ICC situations (Putricide's slimes, anyone? Need to run to one of Valithria's dream portals?).
**Sorry, I love terrible puns.
*** Another pet peeve surfacing. Am I unreasonable on this point? How does everyone else feel about relying on Heroic Presence?

New Cataclysm Class Info

Excited to see the priest changes tomorrow! :)

NPC Spotlight: :(

Today's spotlight will be late canceled, because AMAGAWD SCHOOLWORK.