Whimsical.nu

Raiding as frost in WotLK 3.3.3

So a while ago I’ve gone and respecced Eilonwyn’s secondary, never-used spec to a frost PvE raiding spec. I’ve always been arcane since level 78, when I changed specs from a frost leveling spec to an arcane end-game raiding spec in order to learn the arcane mechanics before I hit the big 8-0 and started dungeons (when Naxxramas was the highest raiding content available). I love the arcane mechanics even before everyone started going arcane because omg buff!, and I daresay I will continue to raid as arcane even if Fire pushes ahead. (They’re currently neck and neck now, with Fire ahead in heroic best-in-slot equipment.)

Sadly, frost has never seen this sort of attention. I know frost is really good for PvP, which is the reason behind why Blizzard can’t really buff frost too much because it would be too overpowered then. However, I do miss my Water Elemental, who I’ve been with for a good many weeks while I died and ran and rode my way to end-game. And frost PvE has been buffed recently, with a permanent Water Elemental and Deep Freeze damage on bosses (those permanently immune to stuns). So I decided I’d give it a whirl for fun purposes.

So I took the cookie-cutter frost PvE build and tested it out on a boss training dummy. Since stat weights are similar for frost as with arcane, I didn’t change anything; I’d forgotten about arcane having 6% hit and frost having only 3%. Meter sample incoming:

Meter 1 - Missing 3% hit

Missing 3% hit: 5254.7 dps over 1,006,856 damage

Not too shabby. Note that I am basically missing 3% hit as well as slows on the target dummy (to proc Torment the Weak); the actual DPS value of TTW is anywhere below 12%, since I have my mirror images with their frostbolt and the occasional Brain Freeze-d frostfire bolt occasionally slowing the dummy.

Next, I went and queued up with a tank friend for a random dungeon to try out my frost spec on a boss. We got Culling of Stratholme, but sadly I wasn’t able to get a screenshot of my meters then. Meathook meters were 5,152 dps over 237,440 damage. (I went arcane for the rest of the dungeon, to get the fights over with, and because I felt I needed to redeem myself, lol.)

During the dungeon run however, I kept pulling from Vhinz, which I felt was completely crazy given that, um, I was doing less damage as frost. The culprit? Only 10% threat reduction (although the Water Elemental accounts for some of the damage, hence less 10% threat as well?), and no threat reduction for fire talents (i.e. frostfire bolt). Pretty significant coming from an arcane mainspec, with its 40% threat reduction. (Thanks to the people over at Elitist Jerks’ Frost PvE thread.)

After all of this, I realized I was under hit. -_- So I just went and tried myself again, against a training dummy. Much better numbers, my tests kept running at around the following meter:

Frost PvE: Hit capped meters

Hit capped: 5550.7 dps over 1,204,615 damage

Not too bad, although to give it a little perspective, as arcane I was anywhere between 6500-6900 dps in the same fight duration (3 minutes) and identical buffs. Applying Torment the Weak modifier at only 9% (to account for mirror images and frostfire bolt slows — obviously a number just pulled from the air though), dps rises to 6050.3, while arcane would likely be around 7200 up. But it wasn’t very dismal; as frost I can still go into 25-man Vault of Archavon and not shame myself silly. Raid buffed I would likely reach above 6200.

I don’t think I’ll ever see me in raid with a frost spec, however; especially seeing as how I’ve gotten a fair amount of ribbing from the guild that it’s escalated into something being very annoying. Additionally, as one of the usual hard-hitters in the guild, it’s unlikely the guild will be able to afford 15% lesser dps; it makes me a little envious of some raiders whose guilds allow them that flexibility, though I believe these are usually either theorycrafters or those not too serious with progression raiding. Neither of which I am, or my guild is.

But, as my guild master said: “At least it’s not like the 2,000 dps like I thought it would be.”

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On the new LFG and Icecrown Citadel raid

I’m possibly one of a minority of players who has finished the new World of Warcraft raid but hasn’t stepped foot inside any of the new 5-man dungeons. /facepalm As my guild raids on Wednesday and maintenance is usually done Tuesday night, the only time I’d have to do non-progression stuff is right after maintenance (Wednesday dawn) onwards, up to before scheduled runs. Looks like I really can’t be arsed to wake up at 5am after maintenance even when a new patch is out. ;)

(All my recent posts are WoW-related -_- I do have other things ongoing but none I can talk about yet!)

On the new Looking For Group mechanism

But before the scheduled progression run I did get to try out the new LFG and random dungeon option (not gonna pass up my emblem of frost, y0). After the raid, I also went a second time. Both times were… quite different. It feels like I went the full pickup group experience spectrum, actually; which is to be expected, I suppose.

For the first group, we got Nexus and it was quite a fast run; one pull after another, finished flawlessly plus some chatting about the new LFG. It was a nice, friendly bunch of people, with some jokes and laughter all in. If I could add them to friends list, I would have. (Much love to the new disenchant option. I’ve grown to hate doing it, it’s such a chore to look through rolls manually and whatnot.)

For the second group, it couldn’t be any more different; once I got zoned into Drak’Tharon Keep, the tank already had aggroed the first few trash mobs. And he kept going through the whole hallway. Straight to business, eh? By the time the last trash pack in that hallway was down, I was almost out of mana, and wasn’t able to pick up any of the loot from the earlier mobs. Without waiting for the healer or myself to regen, he pulled two of the abominations and goodness knows what else in the room before Trollgore. No communication whatsoever, mind. Naturally, we wiped. On DTK trash.

We went in again, got Trollgore down. Pulled all the spiders. Started Novos right when running in (no regen), didn’t finish off adds coming down. No regen, went directly to the room with the bats. Straight on to the dinosaurs and riders. (Still no talking at this point.) Once we got to Dred, tank said, don’t heal, I’m pulling all. He went directly to the end of Dred’s area, and didn’t come back. We wiped. He asked why he didn’t get any heals, and the healer said LOS (line of sight [issues]). Why where you LOS? he asked.

Healer quit.

I don’t blame the healer in the least, man. Tank has the gall to say, why did he quit? What the hell. The kitty with us commented that he shouldn’t have pulled all; I asked, are we in a hurry? Kitty said no, tank remained silent. Seriously, if you’re going for a quick run, make sure the rest of the party is in the same boat as you. It’s not like old LFG where you can whisper prospective party members and say “fast run only” or whatever. You should have woken up and smelled the coffee when we wiped on trash mobs, slow down a bit, y0.

We did finally get to have a healer stay for a half-finished dungeon, and finished the rest of the dungeon without much more fanfare (and no more stupid too-fast chain pulling). And I’m ashamed to say that the tank apparently is a Filipino player (based on his name anyway). I was going to get chatty and say I was too, but given that kind of player? Hell no.

I forgot to put that tank on my ignore list. I’ll have to check out how later.

On the new Icecrown Citadel raid

We went for 10-man last night, we had three groups running concurrently. I finished the whole raid, but on different toons. :D For the first group we ran into a problem when our warlock disconnected on the gunship battle and didn’t come back online, and we couldn’t get a replacement; after a couple more tries 9-manning it, another guildie needed to go, so we called it and continuing later tonight.

After going back to Dalaran, my guild master (who was raid leading the second group) asked if my priest was 80, etc. So I came in a subbed on the gunship battle as well. We got both the gunship and Deathbringer Saurfang down! So essentially I did get to complete the whole raid within a night, just on different toons. Heheh.

The fights were prety interesting; I should think gear is important but they felt more like mechanic-driven fights than anything else. There are plenty more qualified sites that talk about strategy, so I’ll just add a couple of my own notes on the fights:

Lord Marrowgar

Interesting movement fight, can be rather challenging to find a place to run to when he whirlwinds and there’s cold fire all around. A target Bone Spike macro should come in handy here for casters–I couldn’t tab to it half the time and had difficulties clicking on it to target and dps down.

Lady Deathwhisper

Add fight, basically. It looks like getting most DPS on the adds and getting them down quickly and then switching to the boss’ mana shield is the way to go. It was a little messy and crazy, and should probably bear with some reading up on the fight to smooth out the fight next time. Good thing 10-man didn’t have the crowd controlling part–really need to work that in somehow (buff and debuff notifications are a little off when using Pitbull for raid frames and nothing else).

And, elevator! Do you get squished if you stand underneath?

Gunship Battle

Absolutely fun fight! You equip a rocket pack on your shirt slot and using the rocket pack allows you to target somewhere and, well, fly to that area. Some fall damage is imminent if you fly too high/far. What I did was, I bound it to my fourth mouse button for easy usage/targeting. Win!

Very simple fight over all, just rinse and repeat (and don’t 9-man while doing progression).

Deathbringer Saurfang

After wiping a couple times, what we ended up doing was running with two heals for higher DPS. The damage is manageable (considering that we had a geared resto shammy and my, er, not-so-geared disc priest) as long as you know who to focus on and keep alive (tanks, and whoever has the Mark of the Fallen Champion). I’ll be trying this as DPS later tonight, so should be an interesting fight as DPS as well.

The take so far

All in all, rather pleased with the patch so far, if a bit pressed for time–too many errands and things I need to do as Christmas vacation is looming closer and closer. Looking forward to finish off the available raid wing tonight, and actually get to see the 5-man dungeons. XD

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WoW UI Screenshot

I’ve been meaning to do a post on my World of Warcraft UI for a while now, mostly because I love tweaking my UI and seeing other people’s game UI as well. Unfortunately it’s always been delayed because I keep discovering addons, better ways of using addons, and not being satisfied with screenshots I take.

So I’ve decided I’ll just post two screenshots — one which is fairly recent but in solo dummy combat, and another slightly dated screenshot in a ten-man raid. Both shots are of my mage UI, although my priest UI is very similar (only a couple settings like aura changes are different).

WoW UI screenshot in solo mode
WOW UI Screenshot (click to enlarge)

WOW UI Screenshot (click to enlarge)

The addon differences are minimal; the only change visible is the switch from using FuBar to LibDataBroker/DockingStation (as well as general cleanup of some actions on the action bar). I’ll list all the endgame addons I use later, but wanted to point out a few notable addons, most of them visible in the screenshot:

Pitbull 4
Used to customize unit frames (target, raid, etc). On a 25-man raid, there are 5 columns down the lower portion, extending to the left of the currently-shown raid members.
Satrina Buff Frames
A really great buff organizer, I use this to show only buffs in the top right corner, my debuffs below my unit frame, target buffs and debuffs I care about below the target frame, debuffs I need to track/refresh on my target (not shown in screenshot), and short-term buffs I get (upper left of my toon).
Power Auras Classic
Power Auras combat procs on mage

I use it for immediate, visual representations of stuff I need to react to. Now it’s just mostly buffs, procs and cooldown availabilities, but earlier I’ve also used POWA to show important debuffs like a Grobbulus injection and Thaddius charges. The screenshot shows my combat auras when I’m at, er, full power: Missing Barrage, Arcane Blast stacked to 4, Arcane Power, Icy Veins, a shield is on me and Incanter’s Absorption has procced, plus another random spellpower proc (like Lightweave for example).

Deadly Boss Mods
The must-have of raiding. I also use it for timers like when I can click my pew pew button again, when I can use the last ticks of Icy Veins to Evocate if I needed to, or when to pop Invisibility when my Mirror Images are about to expire.
Bartender
I like having buttons in easy reach, and rearranging them around my screen.
LunarSphere
WoW LunarSphere addon extendedA relatively unknown addon, but really fabulous. It’s also an action bar replacement addon but I like using it and bartender together especially for my mage. It’s collapsed in my screenshots as I’m in combat (you can choose not to collapse them automatically, naturally) but in the smaller screenshot on the right you can see that buttons around the sphere can be expanded into submenus. I use it to house my portals, professions, food, buffs, and whatnot. There are a LOT more utility features in the addon, as well.
Sunn Viewport Art
I like the cinematic feel of the viewport set up the way it is. It also shows me a lot more than how it is normally.

Here’s an annotated screenshot of the raid screenshot above. I’ve since replaced FuBar as previously mentioned, as well as LiveStats with LDB plugins as well.

WOW UI Screenshot, annotated (click to enlarge)

WOW UI Screenshot, annotated (click to enlarge)

And my list of endgame addons (endgame addons mean stuff like QuestHelper, Auctioneer, etc aren’t included):

I’m always on the lookout for useful addons and ideas on UI improvement, so probably this time next month my UI will be slightly different again. XD Would love to hear about any addons others are using, so comment if you have a suggestion or question!

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Disc priest all grown up

Talá at 80

Talá at 80

I never got around to announcing it beforehand, but my priest dinged 80 around two or so weeks ago! /cheer

Hence I’ve been focusing on getting Talá geared over the last week. She can now heal Onyxia’s Lair (both 10- and 25-man versions) and Trial of the Crusader 10, possibly also the 25-man version (but have not tried yet). She’s discipline/shadow-specced at the moment. She’s a bit of a spoiled brat really, getting mats and stuff for crafted BOEs from her older sister Eilonwyn. :P

Healing is quite enjoyable, in a different way as opposed to being a damage dealer. I find that a lot of times, it hits extremes of pretty much any experience in a dungeon or raid; at easy heroics with a geared tank I get sleepy, but in raids where my gear is just right for it, it can be quite nerve-wracking. You also get to be really happy (“my heal target lived!”) or really sad (“omg I’m so sorry lag spike QQ”). I feel that DPS is a lot more linear in this regard; even if you’re overgeared for the dungeon, you’re still doing something pretty much all the time, as opposed to the healer throwing a bubble on everyone and then waiting.

I’m also finding that gearing up healing is slightly hit and miss. From the perspective of someone who’s been a damage dealer for the longest time, with tools like Rawr that tells you equipping this item or using the gem gives you +x amount of damage per second, it’s not as straightforward for healing.  There are stat weights, but even juggling between throughput and longevity depends on a lot of factors–factors which you’ll only really know through experience. For example, I thought my intellect was more than enough, until I ran dangerously OOM on Koralon.

Even healing styles are varied, and from the discussions I’ve seen there is no hands-down right way, unlike when you DPS it’s usually pretty linear when you have your rotations down pat. It’s possibly easier for other healing classes, like trees (uhm, bind everything to rejuv and roll face on keyboard) but I’m constantly feeling that I’m not using my priest abilities to its full potential. I don’t use a lot of them enough: binding heal and prayer of healing to name a few (but I love divine hymn; it’s like my lazy button).

Being disc, though, I’ve already come across people who complain about my performance on the “healing done” meters. I’m usually last; while gear probably plays a small part here, the biggest reason by far why disc priests would be lowest on the healing meters is that discipline’s strength is in damage mitigation, such as through Power Word: Shield and Renewed Hope. Sadly most people just love looking at nice big numbers. :( Yes, you’re a pally, you have heavy, huge-ass heals. I’m not, kthx.

Maybe once I’ve got disc down pat I’ll change over to disc/holy and see how raid healing goes. I like the focus-target style of disc, but can’t hurt to try other heal styles, too. Now, just need to find out how to change the clickbindings in Clique automatically based on what spec is active. Hmm. *goes to hunt*

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Baby disc heals

So a while back I’ve braved the horrors of LFG and pugged a couple of normal Utgarde Keep and Nexus runs for my then-early-70 draenei priest, Talá. My first ever try at healing in 70+ instances was UK at 69, which was somewhat traumatizing, even with a kind group (read: a group who didn’t kick me out for the number of times we wiped, or I died, or the shadow priest had to backup heals; the whole group actually either had healer mains or alts, lol).

Talá, the priest

Talá, the priest

Prior to Northrend, I’d been healing holy-specced with Healbot. As I did lowbie instances though, I realized that I was doing a lot of shielding; so it made sense to me to respec to discipline. I’d also felt that in addition to having too many raid frames (on Eilonwyn I was running with Pitbull and Decursive; on my priest I was running with Pitbull, Decursive and Healbot!), Healbot was sometimes being a bit too smart for me. It’s possible I just hadn’t configured it correctly, but knowing plenty healers went with Grid and Clique for healing, I decided I’d go with Pitbull and Clique (and get rid of Decursive).

So, a spec change and a UI change was probably not the best way to go about trying a “new” dungeon as heals. It put me off even playing with Talá for a while, as I wasn’t too keen on leveling her if I was just going to go DPS in endgame again.

After a while, I finally did join LFG, with a comment about being a newbie disc heals. Almost surprisingly, I did get people to invite me along (woo!) and was able to practice, and I seem to be doing relatively well as the parties I’ve been to have told me. The last one I’ve tried (after a long break of not playing her) was Old Kingdom; sadly we kept wiping :(

I can certainly use more practice, especially with the “rotation” (and my click-bindings!), but it’s not so bad. I basically keep shields up on the tank, drop a Prayer of Mending on a melee DPS everytime it’s up (ranged sometimes too), and shield people up if there’s raid damange going around. I can have a good bit of trouble with too much raid damage though, as I haven’t exactly found the best way to deal with it other than Circle of Healing which positively consumes mana like arcane mages (nom nom nom!).

The gameplay is certainly quite different from a DPS point of view, and something I feel keen enough to continue playing with. The pressure can be worse, and the rewards not-as-evident. With DPS there is a sense of satisfying finality when the boss dies; with Arcane there are even “exciting” phases when you pop all your cooldowns and burn mana for some extreme pew pew. With heals it’s either you failed to keep people alive, or you didn’t. It’s certainly a good thing to experience though; healing has opened my eyes to a couple things in fights I’ve done countless times as DPS, like how annoying it really is for the healer if the DPS is being stupid, or even small things like “oh, there is raid damage in this encounter?”

I haven’t really decided on getting parties and raids will be easier on a healer. I know there is a general shortage of healers/tanks sometimes but I’ve seen a lot of instances where you end up being on standby if you have a particular “role”, i.e., a tank or a healer; one raid can only bring so many tanks and healers into an encounter after all.

But, cheers for all end-game healers! This is one (squishy) DPS who certainly appreciates you. <3

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Arcane mage love

Mages’ arcane tree is fabulous with the last few changes done during patch 3.2.2 on World of Warcraft. /cheer

I’ve waited a while before posting my thoughts about the changes as I wanted to give them a couple of raids before making conclusions; during the first week, I was only able to raid Trial of the Crusader (both 10- and 25-man) with the guild, and pugged Onyxia; I saw a significant increase in damage done and DPS for all raids, but as PUGs are obviously wildcards, I didn’t want to take that into consideration.

Missile Barrage proc on Ulduar trash

Missile Barrage proc on Ulduar trash

The succeeding raids, however, saw the same general result: higher overall sustained DPS, and naturally arcane burst was still top-notch; fabulous enough to suddenly be called OP on the Lord Jaraxxus fight, apparently <_< I wish I had thought to take a screenshot of Recount data, though, for posterity’s sake; we didn’t have logging on that night. Heroism + Nether Power + cooldowns + procs = absolutely yummy! I’ve never been one to look at how much and how high I crit, but I had a 48k crit that night (care of my other guildies who actually looked into Recount, haha).

The way I see it, it’s a given that mana is less of a constraint for arcane with the changes done. With generally lower mana costs, and free Arcane Missiles on proc (seemingly only when Arcane Power is not in effect), mana is certainly less of an issue than previously. It’s not just the mana savings though; since the patch came out I’ve been spamming my Arcane Blast key a lot more as I felt it was “safer” to spam it. That probably counts for significant increases in damage done, too. So actual and psychological changes = win!

So what’s with the rotation?

What rotation to use when you’re arcane specced can depend on your latency in-game, although not by much. Personally, I do:

ABSpam04MBAM

That’s spamming Arcane Blast up to four stacks, consuming the Missile Barrage proc with Arcane Missiles if you either have zero stacks or 4 stacks. That means fishing for a Missile Barrage proc by spamming Arcane Blast; once mana dips too low because of AB spammage, I do a no-proc Arcane Missiles to consume the Arcane Blast debuff and start all over again. I’d have to say that these occurrences aren’t that many, since the likelihood of getting Missile Barrage on Arcane Blast has been raised significantly.

The high DPS rotation is basically the same, except that the Missile Barrage proc can be consumed at any time. Admittedly, this is something I’m still getting used to, but owing to the very real danger of me running out of mana when I blow all my cooldowns, I should really get used to hitting Arcane Missiles on proc. It has to be noted though, that there have been a couple of posts pointing out that Missile Barrage when combined with Arcane Power is not free; but definitely almost-free. 20% of the original cost, from the looks of it.

Obviously, it doesn’t mean that there is no more danger of running out of mana. There is, especially when you burn your cooldowns and you get a 1-second Arcane Blast/MBAM. The spec is more forgiving, but it doesn’t mean you don’t need to deal with the consequences. I’m also seeing a lot more occurrences of getting aggro from the tanks; never really used to be a problem before, but now Invisibility is becoming one of my best friends.

Moar arcane plz kthx

There’s more arcane love incoming! From the WoW 3.3.0 patch notes on PTR:

Arcane Empowerment: This talent now also grants 1/2/3% increased damage done by the mage’s party or raid for 10 seconds after the mage gets a critical strike with Arcane Explosion, Arcane Missiles, Arcane Barrage, or Arcane Blast. This effect is exclusive with Ferocious Inspiration and Sanctified Retribution.

Woo! Arcane raid utility! Hot damn, I’m excited. Now I’m not just the raid vending machine/mini-fridge and Focus Magic giver, but I actually give all DPS a boost! I would say that +haste to the raid instead of +damage sounds like it would fit the spec more (as we eat haste! om nom nom!)–I’ve heard of a couple suggestions like adding an aura to Netherwind Presence which fits nicely with arcane flavor. But the +damage isn’t shabby at all, and makes sense in a “enemy becomes susceptible to more damage because of arcane damage from a mage” point of view.

We’ll see how this raid utility modification pans out. \o/

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Patch 3.2.2 on live servers this week!

Saw this today, and just can’t help but post quickly about it — World of Warcraft patch 3.2.2 will be on live servers this week. Sadly, I’ve not been able to actually try Onyxia before this patch is out, though I’ve been meaning to. Oh well! I’m quite excited about this patch, more because there are a number of arcane mage changes that are coming:

  • Arcane Blast: The buff from using this ability now stacks up to 4 times instead of 3, and each application increases mana cost by 175% instead of 200%. In addition, the duration of the buff has been reduced to 6 seconds.
  • Arcane Missiles: Casting this spell while both Missile Barrage and Clearcasting are active will cause only Missile Barrage to be consumed.
  • Missile Barrage: The effect from triggering this talent now removes the mana cost of Arcane Missiles. In addition, the chance for Arcane Blast to trigger this talent is now 8/16/24/32/40%. All other listed spells continue to have a 4/8/12/16/20% chance to trigger it. This talent no longer has a chance to be triggered when spells miss.

These are quite interesting changes, as they affect arcane mage playstyle–for better or worse, I’ve yet to decide. Basically, arcane playstyle has always been around mana management and finding the right moment to replenish mana as well as when to blow all your cooldowns. I find that I like this about arcane as it’s not as “reactive” as I find Fireball or Frostfire bolt specs to be (on initial tryouts of the specs). I know that the theorycrafting around arcane rotation is that you cast arcane barrage when you don’t have a missile barrage proc, but with my latency I cast arcane missiles at every 3-stack of arcane blast. Slightly lesser damage per second but higher damage per mana.

With those changes, it looks like the rotation would be arcane blast to four stacks, and hit arcane missiles if missile barrage procced, but otherwise keep doing arcane blast until you get a missile barrage proc. It looks relatively static; a number seem to like the changes as it’s making arcane more competitive, but a number don’t as it looks like it’s dumbing down arcane too much. I’ll reserve judgment for later, when I actually get to play ;)

In other patch news–damn that Pandaren Monk is cute :D Want!

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Saving the world …of Warcraft

This category has gone entry-less for the longest time as I’ve had difficulty deciding on what to write for a first entry. I’ve never really blogged or talked about the computer games that I play; but I suppose you never really blog about playing Bookworm or Zuma, eh? Well, that’s changed a bit since I’ve been blogging (though I still play those), so I suppose the only way to start off this category is to talk about what I’ve been doing recently on the gaming subject: World of Warcraft.

I’ve always been very interested in RPGs, but also very wary of the way it just sucks me into the game. I don’t know how many hours I’ve spent on Diablo II, Neverwinter Nights, some Final Fantasy games, The Sims, etc etc when I was in college. That said, I’ve only started playing this game late last year, as I was avoiding it. Well, it came to my house (or I went to theirs?) now that I’m renting a place with a couple of friends; one of them plays WOW.

So now I’m hooked.

Eilonwyn the Explorer

Eilonwyn the Explorer

I have a raiding 80 human mage, Eilonwyn, who is my first toon. I raid as arcane with Mad Prophets, a casual raiding guild on the Dath’Remar Oceanic server. Yes, her name comes from Eilonwy in the Chronicles of Prydain story; I just added an “n”. (Also, I have a lowbie human paladin named Tarann, and another lowbie human warlock named Achrenn.) I also have a 70 draenei priest named Bituin, who I plan to go discipline heals during endgame. Heals is scary for me at the moment though, so she’s not seeing a lot of action at the moment.

I’m not entirely sure which player strata I fall under; I play regularly, dedicating time to join raids and making sure my character (or toon, in WOW lingo) has enough to get by and a little extra, but I’m also relatively casual in the sense that I don’t want to raid all the time, or do PvP/achievements/leveling all the time, either. Somewhere in the middle, admittedly slightly more on the hardcore side than the casual side.

I tend to sometimes be quite caught up in the odd things, like the time when I made up my mind to get the Explorer title; everyone seems to prefer getting Champion of the Frozen Wastes but meh, Explorer is so much cooler. (And yay for alliteration!) Or, spending a lot of my time grinding the Timbermaw faction (on my first toon, and not even maximum level yet). Or, fishing for Old Ironjaw and Old Crafty (sad note: I caught Old Crafty, but hit my cast button, and didn’t get to loot Old Crafty. I haven’t had any luck again so far).

I’m also a bit of a UI geek; I like customizing my UI and making it pretty–and functional, of course. The original UI is good, but more organized information where you need it is always good, from a raiding perspective. Plus there are those which is just plain fun. I’ll get a screenshot up sometime.

Naturally, a chunk of my playtime is spent on raiding and dungeons. I like shiny loot and achievements just like anyone else–in fact I enjoy fiddling with Rawr (though far from really good at it) to mix and match what equipment I have and which is the best to use. However, that doesn’t take away from the fact that a big factor with dungeons and raiding is the enjoyment of playing with friends. Having only one 80, it’s still nice to relax and do fun runs, even if I don’t need the loot. I don’t raid lead, but I enjoy organizing fun raids (as long as someone else is doing the directing part!).

If anything, the biggest reason why WoW has stuck with me is the social aspect of the game. It’s fun to play with friends, and meet new friends too; I’ve met a number of guildies from the two guilds I’m in, and know more people in-game who I enjoy running with a lot as well. Oh, there are the jerks and the know-it-alls, but it’s usually better to just ignore them. :D

I was actually surprised to find out that a couple of online friends play WoW as well, as I’d never known them to before. Which makes things all the more fun! So if you play WoW, and you’re ever an ally on Dath’Remar, let me know! :)

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