She Rolls Horde

Alright, doing fluff posts is breaking my heart a little, because I have this growing list of topics I want to talk about, but I’ve either got to break them down into multiple, smaller posts or find some serious time to sit down and write things out. Unfortunately (kind of), my life offline has just developed a new activity for me to pour my time into.

I auditioned for a play on Saturday. I’ve never acted before… At the arts high school I went to, I majored in creative writing, and since then I’ve dabbled in other areas of art, but I never imagined I’d get involved in acting. But the university news update mentioned these upcoming auditions for The Vagina Monologues, and I couldn’t resist. I’ve never seen/read/heard it before, not entirely, but I know it by name, theme, criticism and controversy, and when I saw that auditions were coming up, I thought, “How awesome would that be, to be able to say ‘I acted in The Vagina Monologues?’” So I auditioned. I found out yesterday I made it, and tonight I go for a read-through and the cast assignments.

The performance is March 29. Rehearsals aren’t all too often, but it does mean I’ll be shorter still on time. So you can expect fluff posts here and there for a little bit. I will try to sit down soon and break down the actual posts into more manageable pieces so I can get back to blogging about the important stuff (and playing WoW, period) as soon as possible. In the meantime… hey, did yall hear that in patch 2.4, Improved Mend Pet’s chance to remove a Curse/Disease/Magic/Poision effect will go up from 15/50% to 50/100%?

Well, I put some serious time into questing this weekend, and for one shining moment I saw 750 gold, at which point my best friend Saint signed on and bought his Green Windrider. Needless to say, I am back down to 250. I keep telling myself I will save up, hardcore, for my epic… but Saint comes first. He’s a Priest, my best friend and the totally platonic love of my life. What am I supposed to say to that? “No, I’m not going to help you; go get your own gold!” Of course not.

Alas, I’ll save up that 5000g sooner or later. I even have a vague plan worked out to do it. I really need to be better about diligently doing the dailies. Vaten, my other best friend (also, boyfriend and pet Warlock), and I did the starter quests for Ogri’la yesterday, which opened up a few dailies. If I can do those and the daily BG, that’s a little chunk of gold every day. I need to power level skinning so I can use that while I’m farming Apexis Shards. It wouldn’t hurt to circle a couple zones for mining nodes, either, and farm up some ore. If I do that, work on some primals here and there, farm some netherweave… Surely, one day, I’ll see that 5000 mark.

How did you fund your epic? Or how are you planning to?

Okay, if this isn’t the most appropriate topic to blog about this week… Trackhoof posed a particularly relevant question over on BA: How do you balance your WoW life and your offline life? It’s a tricky question, one I’ve struggled with since I started playing a year ago. Honestly, I haven’t found an answer yet.

In an ideal world, I could get involved in a raiding guild, raid once a week and stay on top of a job, an academic career, my family and a social life. Unfortunately… we all know that’s not the case.

For example, this week has been extraordinarily busy. Classes and the holiday have me away from my computer more than usual, so I haven’t been able to blog (or play) as planned.

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m 20 years old. I’m a full-time university student, and I’m due to graduate next May. In the near future, I’m looking at taking the GRE and applying to graduate schools and internships. I also work part-time as a secretary for a church and play bass guitar with the band at said church. Even outside of my basic obligations, I try to spend some time with my family, and I spend a couple nights a week with my best friend and my boyfriend.

At this point, I consider my offline life more important than my life in Azeroth. I play WoW for fun. It’s entertainment; it’s a way of escaping real life for a short time. Although I’d love to get involved in a real raiding guild, I have to put my offline obligations first.

Maybe when I get to graduate school or when I get a standard, scheduled job, I’ll be able to arrange things so that I can devote a regular block of time to the game, but, at least for now, I can’t afford to balance my life offline and my life online. As much as I’d rather be playing WoW sometimes, my offline life has to take precedence. So. I’ll see you in Azeroth… when I have time to play.

For other bloggers’ opinions on the matter:

• Trackhoof (Survivalist Hunters’ Anonymous)
• Pike (Aspect of the Hare)
• Alda (Life Is a Balancing Act — moving soon.)
• Claz (Rage Against the Lich King)
• Tenryuu (Sin’dorei Lineage)
• Annalira (Keine Ordnung)
• Bansidhe (Musings from an Angry Bansidhe)
• Hyouzan (Hyou2)
• Yashima (Yashima Plays)
• Softthistle (Softthistle’s Spot)
• Tepisor (I Tank Stuff: The Life of a Protection Paladin)
• Auryann (Lifebloom and You)
• Euripedes (Critical QQ)
• Lifebloomer (Lifebloomer)

Okay, I’ve been a Bad Blogger. I planned to blog every day, Monday through Thursday. Then today came along, and… work was busy, so I couldn’t get something up then. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem; I could come home, write something up and post it. Thing is… Saturday, I went and bought myself something special. Two somethings, actually…

…eheh. Let me just say it is ridiculously addicting, and I have hardly touched WoW since I brought my new toys home. I almost feel bad about it. Almost. I’ll be sure to get a post up tomorrow, though; don’t you worry.

This week on Blog Azeroth, bloggers have been asking, “Does WoW need another party role?” I’ve put a lot of thought into classes I’d love to see in Azeroth, but party roles are a more difficult subject to contemplate. Presently, WoW has four basic party roles: tank, healer, damage dealers and crowd control. Even beyond those, parties may have off-tanks or secondary healers.

Often, party members fill more hybridized roles. Hunters and Mages are used on a regular basis as equal Damage Dealers and Crowd Control. Druids can tank and do serious damage. Paladins can, conceivably, tank and heal. (I’ve seen it done: one Paladin playing both Main Tank and Main Healer. That man is disgusting. He deserves fresh, home-made cookies.) Some classes, like Warriors or Rogues, may fill one role more than any of the others throughout a fight.

I’m really not sure WoW needs another role. I’m certainly no authority on game or party dynamics, but, based on my experience, I can’t think of any roles a party might need outside of the existing ones. As long as friends are staying alive and enemies are going down, I’d say the current system is working.

For other bloggers’ opinions on the matter, check out these links:

• Fumbleknock
• Perpetuus Mos
  
• Rakel
• Euripedes
• Llanion
• Thuenderman
  

First off, let me just say thank you to Mirshalak for the shout-out. That was a pleasant surprise to find when I pulled up Google Reader last night!

Now I feel I should explain my Hunter, because if you look at my blog and then look at Hemera in the Armory, you might be a little confused. I am, at heart, a Survival girl. I love the Survival talent tree. I really do. That said… currently, Hemera’s spec is 43/15/3 in favor of Beast Mastery. I feel like I’m lying to myself, sporting such a talent build, but I know it’s for my own good.

See, I’m one of those crazies who believes that you can’t say you like one thing best until you’ve tried the alternatives. I leveled Survival, and, when I hit 70, I came to the conclusion that I should probably give Marksmanship and Beast Mastery a try, too. Partly, it was because I had been reading BigRedKitty’s blog since about level 62 or so, and I wanted to see for myself what made BM so fantastic. Partly, I just wanted to learn my class. Each spec highlights different aspects of the Hunter class, and I think you need to be familiar with all of those aspects in order to become a good Hunter. So. At least for the moment, Hemera is a BM Hunter.

My little foray into Beast Mastery has thus far been entertaining, at least. I’ll be honest; I get a little (okay, a lot) excited when I see Pixel go all Red Hulk on things’ faces. Still, I really miss my super effective traps, Expose Weakness, seeing those crit numbers… I promise I’ll go into just why Survival is so fantastic soon. There’s a lot to be said for it.

Alright, for the sake of timeliness, let’s talk about this upcoming patch. It’s looking good, folks; I’m kind of excited. It’s a pretty sizable patch, so let’s look at some of these changes.

General

• Characters will now retain talented spell ranks so when they retalent they do not have to relearn the spells from trainers.
• Spell Haste will reduce the global cool down on spells, down to a minimum of one second.
• Warlocks can now summon directly into instances as long as the player meets the instance requirements.
• Priests can now use Fear Ward while in Shadow Form.
• Enchanters will be able to split Void Crystals into two Large Prismatic Shards.
• New daily quests for fishing.
• No more diminishing returns. Honor will be received instantaneously (no more estimates) and will be spendable immediately.

That first bullet will be a much appreciated convenience. Players who respec often will love not having to pay for the ranks in those abilities they’ve already bought time and time again. The changes to the Ritual of Summoning will be great, too. No more running out or waiting for the summon-ee to run in… that will save some serious time.

Of all the changes, though, I am most excited about the removal of diminishing returns. Instant honor will be fantastic. I couldn’t count the times I’ve spent hours farming honor for a new piece of gear, only to wake up the next morning and find myself less than 100 Honor short because the estimate was so much higher than the earned amount. From now on, honor will be given and spendable immediately.

Alterac Valley

• Move the Horde’s starting tunnel back to a more equal distance from the first objectives, which will help evenly distance the starting points for each side across the terrain when the battle commences.
• The General and Warmasters for each faction will receive a stacking buff from each other that boosts their health and damage. The more of them that are still in the battleground, the more dangerous they will all be. This will put a greater focus on destroying (and defending!) the towers that remove the Warmasters as players work toward defeating the appropriate General and conquering the land.
• Balinda Stonehearth has been studying her spellbooks to become a more challenging opponent to the Horde and will do more damage with her spells. The additional health we recently added to Balinda and General Vanndar Stormpike will no longer be needed with these improvements and will be changed back to their previous amounts with the patch.

Poor Alterac Valley. Hopefully these changes will encourage more tower activity. AV used to be perfect for farming honor; you moved forward, you captured towers, you killed NPCs… Killing players hardly even mattered. The focus of the battleground was completely different. It was more involved than just… get to the end and kill the boss. Since patch 2.3, it seems like that’s all AV has become, and it’s tragic. It used to be so much fun. Hopefully, these changes will help bring some of that old AV play back.

Raiding

• All 25-player raid bosses will drop more gold and those who dropped set tokens will drop one additional token.
• The loot dropped by Doomlord Kazzak and Doomwalker has been changed to bind-on-equip. These two outdoor raid bosses will also drop much more gold than before as well.
• Scale of the Sands reputation will now be awarded in Hyjal at a much higher rate.

Okay, these don’t apply to me much yet, but I hope they will soon. I know these are welcome changes to more advanced raiders. I can only hope I get to that point soon. Simply dreaming of Hyjal just isn’t cutting it.

Sunwell Isle

• Sunwell Isle is a new zone featuring new daily quests.
• New 5-man instance, The Magister’s Terrace, with a Heroic option featuring Kael’thas as a boss. Heroic mode will drop epics on par with Karazhan loot. Kael’thas will drop items on par with those dropped by Prince Malchezaar.
• New 25-man raid, The Sunwell Plateau, tuned for Tier-6 geared players. Rumors abound of a shiny new legendary bow for Hunters here.

I am definitely looking forward to a new zone, especially a new Blood Elf-centric zone. The BE areas are so pretty; Silvermoon City is gorgeous. A new instance will be nice, for sure. I’m excited about the idea of a legendary bow, too, but I certainly don’t expect to see it in Hem’s little pixelated hands; I will be proud if I see Magtheridon before the expansion comes out.

So. Patch 2.4 is going to be exciting. Blizz hasn’t announced a release date yet, but they’re releasing information here and there, so it’s definitely on the way. If I hear any more morsels of info, I’ll be sure to write.

You’ve got to love that new blog smell, don’t you? It always seems so daunting, to me: the idea that I have a whole blog to myself. The possibilities are endless.

Upcoming Posts:

• Why Survival rocks my world.
• Patch 2.4 is coming!
• Learning to tank, one hit at a time.
• Shamans? Hrm.
• Things I’ve Learned (Usually the Hard Way) About How to Live With Other Classes.
• Prep Time! Batman understands its importance; so should you.

I’ll get to posting as soon as I feel like this blog is set up properly. Prep time ftw, after all.