ding x2!

FINALLY! My mage hit 80 yesterday!


Amazingly I had enough gold just from questing, so I sprang for a dual spec: 0/51/20 fire for PvE (with Frostfire Bolt as my main nuke) and the cookie-cutter 20/0/51 frost for PvP. At the moment my gear is pretty craptacular (lol quest greens), so it's off to grind heroics for me. Once my gear is better, I may even try out arcane. That talent tree has always fascinated me.

Also, Mirror Image might be the strangest spell ever. Not saying it's not cool, it's just really...weird...seeing copies of me running around. And whenever they die I jump a little, just because the female undead death rattle is very jarring, and hearing it times three...well, maybe I just need to turn the volume down a little.


ALSO! Midsummer Fire Festival! It took a couple of days of running around with my boyfriend's warlock, but we both got the Flame Keeper achievement. Easy, and no dependence on random drops or having to log in every hour. Nice!


Then I went on a title grabbing spree.


Working on "of Undercity" next.


Took me freaking long enough!

Next: Arena! Specifically, 2v2s! Specifically, 2v2s with a rogue! Hint: It's pretty fun. ♥ Penance.

on mage leveling

Before I get to the topic at hand, allow me to squee just a little bit - a couple of weeks ago, I took my priest to Naxx10 again (run by my friends) and, well, let's just say I got geared up the heezy:

• [Agonal Sash]
• [Heroes' Leggings of Faith]
• And finally, the item I had been drooling over for a while: [Heroes' Shoulderpads of Faith]

Oh man, gentle reader (yes, the one of you that is out there!) you have no idea how long I have wanted my glowy angel wings. And now I have them! (Although I did not realize that the particle effect would look kind of funny from behind, but oh well.)

/end squee

And now: after months of procrastinating (actually, I prefer to think of it as a "vacation" of sorts), I have finally decided to level my first character, Adenine. But not as frost.

...Wait, what?

YES, that's right, she is fire now. She has never been a fire mage. I knew nothing about fire mages. Turns out, it's not as scary as I anticipated.

But before I could set foot in Northrend, I had to do something of the utmost importance:


New haircut FTW! Now moving on...

I read Ekye's mage guide on the Ensidia website (link is over there to the right somewhere). Excellent guide. I decided to go with his 0/51/20 build, for the fact that I will eventually be wanting to use the ever-so-sexy [Frostfire Bolt] as my main nuke (also includes the glyphs he recommended for MAXIMUM DEEPS).

Now, a few observations: one, I forgot how much effin fun it was nuking the shit out of things. (I guess leveling as a holy priest does that to you.)

Two: FIRE - HOLY CRAP WHY DID I NEVER TRY THIS BEFORE?! Seriously. Wow. I love frost, always have, always will...but damn have I been missing out.

Three: I did not anticipate how squishy I would be. Or how quickly I would run out of mana. Hurm. Must remember to investigate further.

Four: Jame's Horde Leveling Guide - okay, not really an observation, but I'm pretty sure that if I tried to level without it I would take much too long (most of the time spent leveling Illythia went something like: *runs around for twenty minutes* "Hurrrrr where's the next quest hub guise?"). As of tonight, Adenine is 72 (I started leveling her about two days ago). My goal right now is to get to 80 as quickly as possible, and this efficient little guide is working quite well for that.

Next post: Old school raiding, and Children's Week!

speccing shadow, or how i tried to learn face-melting

For a couple of months, I specced shadow on my priest. Now, the last time I was shadow was back in Burning Crusade-era, around level 61. I played around with holy and discipline specs since then, but I never put anything into shadow, nor did I even think about it ("Me, spec shadow? That's crazy talk!") That is, until my boyfriend hit 80 on his druid, Grimcow, and wanted to give resto a try.

He is lucky he is cute.

First, I went with a 14/0/57 build. Since I hadn't been shadow for, oh, about 19 levels (I'm not even going to try and convert that into real-world time), I suppose you could say I was pretty rusty at it. And by "pretty rusty" I mean I "completely forgot how to play shadow". This was reflected in my DPS. which was, in a word, embarrassing...

But after doing "extensive research" (read: perusing Elitist Jerks forums while at work) I was able to find out how to improve my shoddy DPS: keep your debuffs up, use spells once their cooldown is up. Simple enough, right? Well, let's just say I still need to work on it.

This was the rotation that I tried to follow:

• Opening: Vampiric Touch --> Devouring Plague --> Mind Blast --> Shadow Word: Death --> Shadow Word: Pain --> Vampiric Embrace --> Mind Flay.
• From here, refresh your debuffs in this order:

1. Vampiric Touch
2. Devouring Plague
3. Mind Blast
4. Vampiric Embrace
5. Mind Flay

• And cast Shadow Word: Death ONLY when you have to move or when you're waiting for Mind Blast to come off its cooldown and still don't need to refresh debuffs.

LET ME TELL YOU, INTERNETS, juggling DOTs is harder than staring at health bars for an hour straight. And although I haven't yet fully grasped the intricacies of melting faces, I can at least say I had fun and I would try shadow out again. It's definitely something I'd like to get better at, at least.

Before Illythia went back to the priest trainer to spec discipline, she and Grimcow decided to pay a visit to an old friend...Onyxia.

I finally got to see what it was like tanking a big angry dragon.

And twenty minutes later, we kicked her to the curb and made off with some Tier 2 helms. But why doesn't the priest stuff ever drop?

When she was done sulking, Illythia picked up Onyxia's ginormous head, somehow stuffed it into her backpack (don't ask her how), and returned to Orgrimmar.

And then, for the first time ever on any of my characters:

Rallying Cry of the Dragonslayer, baby!


Next post: PVP DISCIPLINE. HELL. YES.

...or i'm psychic?

The Blizzard gods have answered my prayers!

In yesterday's post, I off-handedly mentioned how I would love to have my very own pack mule to carry around my bank items. Well...according to a recent mmo-champion post, this is actually something that will be implemented in an upcoming patch:

Pack Mule ?

• Pack Mule -- Summons a pack mule, giving you access to any bank items for 3 min. The mule may only be summoned once.
• Summon Faithful Mule -- Summons your faithful pack mule, giving you access to any bank items for 3 min.

This is awesome news! I wonder how people will be able to acquire these, though. Rep rewards? Or something really uber-expensive? There isn't anything much else in that post to explain it, so I guess we'll just have to find out.

There was something else in the upcoming patch notes that caught my eye, though. First, the good:

Priest

• Levitate can now be cast on other players. [Same with Slow Fall!]
  

Yay, minor woot? Sadly, the Blizzard gods are as fickle as they are generous. They will just as soon smite you as shower you with blessings, I soon found out:

• Glyph of Dispel Magic -- Your Dispel Magic spell also heals your target for 3% of maximum health. (Down from 6%)

Oh, LAME. Well, I guess that's not so bad.

• Circle of Healing now has a 6 second cooldown.

...Wait, what?

6 second cooldown

6 second cooldown?!

Major freaking QQ!

So I guess Blizz doesn't want us to rely too much on this spell. I won't know for sure how much of an impact this'll make until I hit 80 and start venturing into Naxxramas. However, it may not seem like a long time, but when everyone in your group is taking big hits six seconds can seem like an eternity.

I can't say I don't appreciate a challenge, but still: damn you, Blizz, for making me work harder! (I kid! But only a little, because I'm still QQ-ing.)

More on the recently released patch notes later.