Yay Advancement

I Just finished a Gruuls Lair PUG in which we wiped the floor with him, i came out of it with a new belt off the High King and my T4 Leg piece off gruul.
now i'm in full epic gear, i should try my hand at SSC and TK at some point, albeit that the're both nerfed.

when doing gruul i was realy confused at what i was doing, because it was my first time in a 25 man raid i dident know exactly what was going on all i did was read the kill order and fight.
I'm sure that if i had been in a guild i could have had the fight explianed better, i ended up DPSing Krosh followed by kingler (he was the only one alive when we finished), when that was done the High King fell like a sack of bricks.
embarassingly i died very quickly into the gruul fight i think i might have just been unlucky though, i got thrown across the room and died to a shatter that was happening where i landed.
all in all it was a good day, i rolled like a monster though both rolls i made where mid-90 numbers.

Cloth Trinity

Well i've had a fun day today, i got a surprise boost through SM:GY and Lib from a 64 shammy and i managed to run RFK making a good amount of exp and items (i have the Illousionary Rod already ^^) and finally hit level 30 yay mount.

During the RFK run i was using quite a bit of AoEas the tank was a paladin and we always ended up pulling 2 groups at once (the drood was trying to do the tuber quest and accidently pulled 8 mobs!), whenever these big group pulls happend the tank was usualy at risk of dying because of the number of mobs hitting her of course as i was doing some insane amount of AoE i usualy ended up pulling a small group of mobs of her.
Whenever i ended up pulling aggro i found it quite easy to stall the mobs until either the tank regained aggro or the shammy killed them, whenever i was in trouble i would frost nova the mobs and blink away (Glyph of Blinking was so useful here) and if nova was on cooldown cone of cold seemed to work well too.
The highlight of the run was when the tank died while AoEing a large group of bats, luckily this was near a small cliff so i hit them with cone of cold blinked away and waited at the top of the cliff for them, when they got there i jumped down and healed myself with lifeblood (the healer was healing me too at this point) by the time the bats got to the bottom of the cliff i could blink again so i used frost nova and blinked away.
I ended up repeating this until all 5 of them where dead, this was a lot of fun and i was rather impressed that i'm starting to figure mage stratagy out better.

My mage Nanoha is what i hope will be my second charecter to 80 and will be the third cloth charecter that i've gotten to a decent level (Koushirou and Haneko being the others), i intend to be an arcane type mage as it goes with the charecter i'm trying to become and as i honestly prefer it over an elemental tree (probably because it's like mindflay).
I've taken Herbalism and Inscription as professions mainly because they were both new to me and ended up making a killing in the AH (300 G from selling glyphs at my level range), i'm still building up my list of minor glyphs as i havent got the ones i realy want yet (glyph of slow fall, glyph of levitation and glyph of polymorph: polar bear are the ones i want the most)

All in all a very fun day has been had, i'm aiming to be 40 by the time wrath comes out but we'll see how it goes.

Random Spontanious Disconection

Patch day today was crazy, my server dident come online until much later then other servers and i kept getting constantly disconnected every 30 mins or so.
my mage nanoha started inscription and is just above journeyman level, luckily for me i was quick on the ball and had my glyphs in the AH before everyone else.
This has left my mage with a nice tidy profit from the day as my money has tripled at least, this will die down pretty quickly though as it becomes more mainplace.

Other then that my UI has been totally destroyed with this patch and i'll have to start hunting 3.0.2 compatible addons in order to get a better feel for my display, i managed to get my main into a kara run which can be described as nothing less then a complete and total joke.
Every class has been buffed to some extent as well as raids being nurfed but that still dosent prepare you for how fast kara is to run now.

Attumen was downed in under a minite, moroes in under a minite,maiden in under a minite, opera (oz) was just over a minite, curator was downed in around about a minite dispite being ninja pulled before the hallway was cleared (he never even got to his first evocation), illhoof downed in under a minite (no chains), aran was downed in under minute, nightbane took around 2 minutes, netherspite was down in under a minute too (i was in the blue beam :D) and prince was downed in just 0ver a minute - average boss kill time 60 seconds, god knows what a T6 geared raid could do.

I'm very pleased with all my class changes and found dispersion surpriseingly more useful then i thought it would be (i used it while running between pulls to refill mana), devouring plague is a god send for priests in dangerous encouters it can keep you topped off nicely and in normal ones it allows you to use shadow word: death liberaly.
Vampiric touch should be treated as a DoT now and should be timed well to go with mind blast, the replenish machanic i easy to keep going and meshes well with all the new weapons we have now.
dispite massive boost to mindflay DPS i find myself not casting it as much mainly due to the other spells i have now, improved shadow forms anti-pushback mechanic works briliantly and now stops my casts being cut off completely when enemy AoEs going crazy.

Well long post is long, all in all i can't wait to see what unknown calamity awaits me further in to the pre-wrath patch these next few weeks should be quite fun :D.

PS: we actually failed chess the first time round because the person who took the king dident know what he was doing :p

Patch Day

yay patch day, theres ging to be a lot of changes coming when the servers finally come back up later.
of the things i need to do one of them is to test ot my new casting rotation on a silvermoon dummy and see how i do with the new stuff, if all goes well i'll try and have a go at running kara with my new shadow priest changes.

Other then that my plans invove changeing my addons (updating old ones ect) and reworking my macros and casting bar, most of my alts will be having small spec changes (for some reason i can't stand the frost mage tree, i guess i just like big hits).

My mage will be picking up Inscription and my alts and main should be able to pick up some low level Glyphs (of dubious use).
I'll try and get round to posting my mage plans at some point, not sure if people will be too botherd though.

PS. Out of all the glyphs avaliable which one do you want the most?

Backlists

I decided i'd do my regular download session today and foud a huge back log of stuff i need to download, i left it waytoo long during season changes and now it looks like i'll have to spend a day or 2 cathing up.

well i've been planing a music download session aswell as i want to update my libary (i've got a bigger hard drive now so i can have a lo more musicon it :p), it'll take awhile for me to find the time for this though i'll get round to it at some point.

Hopefully wesday will see the release of patch 3.0.2 on WoW, i'l finall be able to start my inscription leveling and i'll be changeing my mages spec from frost to arcane (with 5 points in fire for faster fireballs).
on my main i'll mostly be organising my stuff and teting out te new changes to my class, it should be a very fun week.

Lag and Goals

I've been hapily leveling my mage and to a lesser extent rogue though there 20's and keep haveing problems with my internet connection.
Every now and then my internet will decide to fuck itself and spend 2 minutes in a state of perpetual lag, upon the end of which i've been killed by whatever mob i was fighting or a respawn of a mob i already killed.

This is pissing me off quite a bit especialy since it seems to happen randomly, well enouth about my internets crashing.
i have a small list of things to accomplish before wotlk which is only a month away now:

Obtain an Epic Flying Mount for my main - This will be hard, i saved up 2000 gold so 3000 more to go.
Level Inscription on one of my alts - it will probably be my mage, i already have a bank full of herbs literally (see the image at the end)
Get my mage up to level 60 - this could be difficult but not impossible.

Hopefully if all goes well i should be able to manage this in the space of a month, oh and heres a pic of my alts bank:
:p

Utility Skills

As a hybrid class i'm taken to raids because of the utility i bring which can sometimes be seen as more important then the damage i deal, as a shadow priest i have quite a few spells that can easily be used to the advantage of the raid group.

In Wotlk we lose a bit of our overall utility in favour of more DPS but that still dosent make us a pure damage class as we can bring a lot of benefits to our group such as:

Shackle Undead - this spell can be considered extremely useful when wotlk hits as our biggest enemies in the expansion are the scrouge which is a faction lead by the lich king and is almost entirely made of Undead type monsters, this is a very reliable form of CC and will prove invaluble to the team during fights where control is needed.

Vampiric Embrace - this spell turns a percentage of the damage i deal into Health for my party although during Tbc i dident use this much due to aggro problems, in wotlk we have more threat mitagation and tanks have more threat generation so i should be useing this more often

Vampiric Touch - our biggest utility spell in Tbc although it has been toned down a bit it will still see a strong use in wotlk as a way of restoring mana to our raid group.

Mind Control - this spell can be used as a way of CC humanoid type enemies although it can prove to be very unreliable at times, the biggest problem with this spell is that it breaks prematurely (quite often) and we can only do damage though the MC enemy (although this can sometimes be better then out overall damage such as MGT Heroic mobs)
This spell has a good use in PvP where you can throw someone off a cliff or into lava with it.

The Discipline Talent Spec has a few more utility skills including:

Power Infusion - increases casting speed and lowers spell mana cost, can be used 2 or 3 times in a fight and generally will be applied to a high damage dealer such as a Destro lock or a Mage when ever it seems apropiate.

Pain Suppression - this spell lowers the damage a person takes be a good percentage and can be used to counter incoming heavy hits or as a way to help someone who needs to buy some time before a heal is cast on them, probably best to use it on a tank before they get in trouble or as an O'SHI~ button.

A good priest needs to be able to use all his utility while still providing competative DPS (or healing in the Discipline spec case) in order to be able to fight effectively and help his raid group.

PS: i feel like my grammer is perticularly bad in this post although it is always going to be bad, i honestly don't think i word'd the opening paragraph well.

New Rotation Ideas

With the changes to priest racials and shadow tree talents i will have to take a good look at my current cast rotation and figure out how to improve my DPS.

Thanks to Pain and Suffering i no longer have to keep casting Shadow Word: Pain, which is a pain in the ass to refresh as it's very expensive this also allows us to keep misery up indefinately which gives us a good amount of damage as well as a spell hit bonus.

Vampiric touch needs to be up at all times so that replenishment can be used, mind blast should be used whenever the cooldown is over so that replenish can be refreshed regularly.

Devouring Plague is another DoT to our arsenal which i can use liberaly but should be careful with as even with the mana cost lowered it's still more expensive then SW:P, because DP heals you for the damage it does it has good synergy with Shadow Word: Death which should be used very cautiously as a badly timed SW:D can easily kill you (Prince's Feeble being the biggest case of bad timing for me) especial now that our crits do twice as much damage.

Vampiric Embrace should see more use now that we have more threat mitagation from shadow form, however this spell should be used cautiously as it can generate a lot of aggro very quickly and we don't have a real aggro drop.

And last but not least Mind Flay which is easily our most mana efficent spell and now that it can crit it's become considerably more dangerous i use this spell between Mind Blast cooldowns and should cast it at least once every 20 seconds or so in order to refresh SW:P (shouldent be a problem :p)

So my basic cast rotation should look like this:

VT > SW:P (once only) > MB > MF

With DP, SW:D and VE being weaved in as i see fit

Priest Racial Changes

WoW beta gives a lot of good chances to express opinions, whether they be choice discussions on how to play the new class designs or random QQ.
As most priests already know there are changes to the priests racials where as all race specific priests spells have been stripped down to the most useful ones and spread amoungest everyone.

All Priests can now use:

Devouring Plague - a DoT spell that heals us for a percentage of the damage done, Previously Undead Only

Hymn of Hope - a channeled spell that restores a percentage of mana to all party members - Previously called Symbol of Hope and was Draenai only

Desperate Prayer - an instant cast self heal, now a 11 point talent in the holy tree replaceing holy nova (now a base line skill) previously a Human and Dwarf skill

All other race spells have been dropped meaning my Blood Elf Priest loses:

Consume Magic - consumes a random priest buff and restores a small amount of mana, i never used this spell anyway the mana restored was too little to compensate for losing a good buff

Touch of Weakness - a Meager spell at best but i used this a lot as a little help against mobs, the biggest reason that i'll miss this spell is because it sometimes proc'd blackout which was hilarious when a rogue trys to gank me and gets stunned :p

Overall i think the trade off is well met and i will make far better use of the new spells then the old ones (except hymn of hope as it's a holy spell that dosent give as much mana as it's previous carnation).

New Header

Yay i finally got round to making a Header for my blog, the images where obtained through google, it's not bad for something thrown together in 30 mins especialy in microsoft paint :p.

I also added a Blog roll which i'll get round to expanding at some point, just goes to show how good boredom is as a motivator. ^^

I might be able to make it look quite nice one i get round to realy messing with the features.

My Band of Merry Alts

I have a tendancy to roll new alts whenever i'm bored and although a lot of them never make it past level 20 i enjoy most of the time i spend on them, it gives me a broader perspective when grouping with certain classes as i know there core gameplay mechanics and abilities.

I've played every class except druids (I truely hate them and wouldent hesitate to attacking any flagged NE drood i come across), I play almost completely on the horde side now although i originally started out on the alliance i switched because all my freinds played horde and i wanted to play with them.

My first charecter (or at least the oldest non-deleted charecter i still have) is a human paladin at level 32, she's called Koushirou and resides on the Eonar EU server.
This was back when i first started playing WoW so she brings back a lot of nostalgia, everything i learned about Grouping, WoW lingro and Stat placement i learned on this toon.
Armoury Link: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Eonar&n=Koushirou

From there i moved on to my second charecter and so far my only 70 who's a Blood Elf Priest also called Koushirou who's on Sunstrider EU, i refined my WoW knowledge on this charecter and learned a lot about Talent placement and Professions (i leveled as Disc spec until level 63 when i switched to shadow, don't ask me how i did it i honestly don't know).
This is on a PvP server so naturally i got my first taste of being ganked where i generaed enouth rage to put a warrior to shame. :p
She is currently my main and will probably be the first charecter i level to 80.
Armoury Link: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sunstrider&n=Koushirou

Other then that i have me small army of low level alts, who i like to mess around with which include:

Erio - my 26 Blood Elf Rogue (i rolled her with the intention of doing PvP and being a general asshole to alliance members :p, assumeing i get round to leveling her)
Armoury Link: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sunstrider&n=Erio

Procela - my 11 Tauren Shaman (rolled so i could go Wind Fury spec, probably has the lowest chance of ever reaching 70)
Armoury Link: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sunstrider&n=Procela

Teana - my 13 Blood Elf Hunter (rolled for the lulz probably will never make it past 20)
Armoury Link: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sunstrider&n=Teana

and finally Nanoha - my Blood Elf Mage (rolled with the name of an anime charecter i like and will be leveled as an arcane mage, has the highest chance of reaching 70 as i like the idea of emulating the charecter :D)
Armoury Link: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sunstrider&n=Nanoha

I also have a dropped charecter who i rolled in order to play with a freind but he has since moved servers shes called Haneko and ironically was not far off 70 as a level 64 undead warlock.
Armoury Link: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Eonar&n=Haneko

I'll probably make a lot more alts, i intend to make a Death Knight when the next expansion hits (big surprise :p) and also intend to level a warrior at some point.

Wotlk Thoughts

It's been a long time since my last post, i actually stopped blogging when one of my friends also stopped but now i'm bored so i'll try my hand at blogging again.

I've been following the Wotlk beta news for awhile now as i try and decide whether i should stick to playing my priest or else re-roll to a differant class, i started some new classes to mess around with which ironically are both classes i claimed to be unable to play well.

The priest seems to be doing OK with all the changes and messing around to the overall class structure, interestingly with the changes to spell power you can now gear a shadow priest as if it was a healer and get some nice results, which would turn out to be excellant news if they impliment the "Dual Talent Specs" that they are rumored to be working on.

The changes to shadow priest DPS makes it so we are a lot more powerful then before and should new be doing the competitive damage along with the rest of the hybrid classes, although i'm rather annoyed by the changes to Vampiric Touch.

I actually like the changes made with the replenishment buff as it releases the limiter placed on the shadow priest but i don't like how 2 other classes now have the ability to use the replenishment buff, i guess it's just me being angry at losing the niche catagory that i've always occupied.

Giving replenishment to survival hunters dosent bother me too much as you don't see too many survival specced hunters outside of battle grounds or arenas (not sure whether that will change in wotlk or not), but since ret paladins have been speculated to be slightly OP in the next patch then most people will probably take them along to raids and dungeons instead of shadow priests.

Overall though i'm quite please with all the buffs we've been getting and hope that by level 80 i can be doing DPS compareable to the rest of my raid group.