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.

freakin' FINALLY

Guess who's 80?

That's right! Why yes, I did respec shadow. More on that later.

Now I can sleep!

the calm before the storm breaks...

I'm long overdue for an update, but whatever. Here we go!

So, as we all know, Wrath of the Lich King hits tomorrow. What have I been doing up until now? Well, mostly school, but we try not to speak of those things here. I was fortunate enough to participate in the beta for the expansion. Unfortunately, due to that thing that we try not to speak of here, I was unable to do any instancing or leveling during my stint as a beta tester, and everyone already knows about all about the 51-point talents since patch 3.0, so basically I was a useless beta tester. /cry

Oh, but I had fun though! And I come bearing beautiful screenshots (thanks to the premade druid I copied over):





















So very excited.

In other, less exciting news, I went with a 14/47/0 spec for my priest. Desperate Prayer has saved my ass plenty of times, while Holy Nova, which I never bothered speccing into before, is loads of fun to spam (just like Arcane Explosion!).

Oh, and the spell I named this blog for? Nonexistent. So here is a short tribute: Touch of Weakness, you may have been pretty ineffective, but I always made sure to put you up whenever I could in hopes that Consume Magic (another well-missed spell) would eat you up as opposed to other, more useful buffs...I will miss you, old friend.

Next time: I'm updating from Northrend!

obligatory introductory post

Hello! So I guess I should tell you about myself or something. I started playing WoW in October 2005. My first character was an undead mage (Adenine, who is and always has been and always will be frost-specced). When Burning Crusade came out, I made a blood elf priest (Illythia) and left her alone for a time while I leveled Adenine to 70. Once that was accomplished, I turned back to my priest...then decided to switch mains. I've found I prefer healing to DPS (not sure why, but it might have something to do with the power that I wield over the lives of people in my group).

I started this blog to chart the progress of my priest as she slowly gears up and learns more about the world of healing. Here she is now, my 23/38/0 holy priest:


Her current gear isn't amazing, but I'm working on it. Yesterday, I went on a 5-man frenzy and acquired a number of new items - cloak, wand, trinket, boots - then had my smexy new belt crafted. Here's a list of her current gear:

• Head: [Junior Technician 3rd Grade Goggles]
  
• Necklace: [Natasha's Guardian Cord]
• Shoulders: [Hallowed Pauldrons]
• Cloak: [Cloak of Whispering Shells]
• Chest: [Hallowed Garments]
• Wrists: [Goldenvine Wraps] (with [Enchant Bracer - Superior Healing])
• Gloves: [Bloody Surgeon's Mitts] (with [Teardrop Blood Garnets] in both sockets)
• Belt: [Belt of the Long Road] (YES, my first epic on this character! I need to upgrade the gems, but for now they're socketed with a [Purified Shadow Pearl] and a [Luminous Noble Topaz])
• Pants: [Hallowed Trousers] (with [Silver Spellthread])
• Boots: [Light-Woven Slippers]
• Rings: [Celestial Jewel Ring] and [Keeper's Ring of Piety]
• Trinkets: [Oshu'gun Relic] and [Lower City Prayerbook]
• Main Hand: [Staff of Divine Infusion]
• Wand: [Soul-Wand of the Aldor]

For now, I'm focusing on stacking healing, but I really need to do something about my woefully low health - at 5511, I'm squishier than squishy.

That's all for now, I suppose! I hope I can get into some Karazhan runs soon, but what with an unmotivated guild, my lack of purples, and PUG runs that require +1600 healing, it's been decidedly difficult.

Next update: I'll introduce my very first character, Adenine. She needs love, seeing as how of late she's been demoted to primal farmbot for Illythia.