I Play on Rotaion

Now that i've got a few 80s it's becoming a habbit to play them all in a rotation so that I can gear them all up equaly.
This is causeing me a bit of annoyance as without focusing on one charecter I'm not getting a good enouth level of gear to enter places like ICC.
Of course the biggest issue here is mostly the elitist attitude on my server which makes it impossible to get into a PuG unless you've got the kingslayer title, I wish I was joking about that too but I'm realy not.
I'm even haveing problems getting into places like TotC-10 without haveing a Gearscore of 5.4k, It seems I may have to just transfer to a server with more mature players as it's rediculous trying to get into a PuG on my server.

My Mage is the best geared of my charecters at 5.2k but she can't run any PuGs because nobody needs mages for places like VoA and as i said before guilds / PuGs have higher standards on my server.

My Rogue is at 5k with the only heroic upgrade being from HoR (Yeah i'm not getting that sword), which again is too low for any PuGs and the guild i managed to get her in seems to have fallen though.

My Priest on the other hand is at 4.9k and is off the main server as she's running with Gevlons Undergeared Project but is probably my best bet to do any raiding whatsoever but even then I don't have the achievements to get into groups with her.

Well sorry for making a post about me complianing but it's getting realy frustrating not being able to do anything, maybe I'll have better luck when i gear my Priest up a bit more.

Conservative Healing

In an atempt to ease the transition into what i believe cataclysm healing will be like i decided to make another Priest alt so that i can practise precise healing in lowbie dungeons.
Trying to estimate how much a heal hits for and only casting it when it won't overheal is difficult as my main heal spell hits like a truck.

Currently i wait for a tank to fall under half health before casting as it would overheal otherwise, this creates a type of healing that seems to stress any tanks that don't trust me.
One of the paladins that i was healing with my efficent (albiet seat of your pants) style of healing kept starting a holy light cast around half a second before my heal hit.
It works better for druids and warriors as they tend to focus on their job and put blind faith into the healer of the group.

I'd encourage any healer to roll an alt of the same healing toon they currently play just to practise the difficult art of not overhealing as it's likely to be the differance between a good and great healer in cata.
It also helps with your mana pool a lot, in some cases i've managed to run an instance without my mana taking even a slight dip, where as in others i've had to cahin drink to get it done.

of course the worst thing for a healer in a low level dungeon is a warlock with a penchant for casting rain of fire and then life tapping his mana back, if i ever get into a dungeon where all 3 DPS are warlocks i think i'd probably break down and cry.

I've been haveing some thoughts to trying it in heroics at 80 but i don't think many tanks would appreciate it as most of them are annoyed at a healer who can't keep them at 100% health all the time, to paraphase ghost crawler "A healers job is to make sure everyones health dosent hit 0% not to keep everyone at 100%".

It's nice to play around with Ideas of a Greater Heal orientated Holy build, i might try it out for fun anyways ^^

First Blood

An interesting thing happend to me yesturday while i was unlocking the Ebon Blade quatermaster on my new 80 Rogue Vivio.
I'd just finished a few heroics and thought it would be a good idea to unlock the Ebon Blades Arcanum of Torment for when i get a head piece worthy to put it on.

While there i came across a Human Paladin (level 77) and decided to play it safe and fly to a good altitude as i was at 1/3 of my health bar, as is usual with most paladins this guy was an asshole and imediantly says what i assume was an insult to my rogue and then divine storms her while jumping off his mount.

I survive and he almost dies from the fall, i decide to fly off in a differant direction out of his range but still able to target him to stop off and eat, when at full health and fly back and stealth where he can't see me.

At this point i assume that he was taking down the oculus eye at the top of the black watch as his health is going down and he's still on his mount, so i wait in an alcove next to the quest giver and lie in wait.

It wasent long before he lands at half health next to the quest giver at starts chargeing up a Holy Light on himself, I quickly move in behind him and cheap shot, mutilate and he drops dead just before I kidney shot him.

Considering that the asshole was prohibiting me questing i found my vengence perticularly sweet, but as an added insult to this idiot I got the ahievement for my first honor kill right in front of him, to add salt to the wound I /hugged him and got the Make love not Warcraft achievement and because I was in the mind set of evil I tea-bagged his corpse several times before he released.

of course while thats all fine and good the paladin had higher health then me and i'm not good enouth with my rogue in PvP to get a win agianst him in fair combat, i grab a few scourge essences for my quest then restealth for what I expected to be a second round that I would lose.

I go back to the alcove and watch as he respawns on top of the quest giver and consecrates / Divine storm the area before he flys off to fight a few scourge on an upper level, he comes back down drops another consecrate while i'm contemplating my next move when to my surprise he suddenly decides to bubble hearth.

I found this rediculously amusing he even goes at yelling the same insult he used to introduce himself to me earlier, I finsihed the quests there to unlock the quatermaster in complete safety and without worry.

I honestly never thought that ganking someone could so easily instill fear into them, as i said in fair combat the paladin can long outlast my offensive capabilities with his heals and Dps me down without too many problems, but with just one very humiliating gank i knocked all sense of safety out of him.

Either way this is the story of Vivios first blood, i'd like to see other bloggers rogue or otherwise to regail is in stories of their first world PvP kill or even their most interesting PvP kill as this memory will provide endless amusment to me.

Undergearing

I've recently been taking part in Gevlons Undergeared project by completeing raids in Blue gear, i've found that this is quite fun to pull off and i've been amused at how easy it's been going so far.
I've also been quite annoyed by the fact that most of the raids have been going smoother then when i was in guilds with a higher level of gear.

We have a solid group of skilled people filling the raid roles with me being the 3rd healer / off-DPS.
I'm feeling that my performance in these raids has varied a lot but find that i'm performing only average.

I'm never realy very confident in my skills and i think the constant switching of roles makes more of an impact on the meters, which probably creates an illusion that i'm doing worse then i am.

Hopefully doing these raids will help me fine tune my priest to be a multi-talented charecter with skills for both of my roles.

I'm currently re-itemising my gear for Disc spec as we have more raid healing between the resto druid and the shaman then is completely nessacery, me being holy on top of that is overkill.
This should allow me to spend more time on the tanks giving them better survival rates as well as some new raid buffs to help out with.

Of course the biggest plus for gevlon is that i'll no longer be saying "the tank just died" when i make a lucky save with Guardian Spirit (happens more often then i'm comfortable with), of course this time if i'm not on top of it the tank actually will die so we'll see how this goes.

5 Point Barrier

The next expansion for WoW, cataclysm is now in the part where it's far away but yet close enouth to be talked about.
The incoming changes slated by blizzerd seem to be a huge change to the gaming dynamic which should help curbe burst damage and dull healing enouth to make PvP interesting as well as making it easier to switch roles especialy with regards to tanking in PvE.

The main point of interest to me is the addition of 5 more talent points where our talent trees remain relatively unchanged.
I'm looking forward to seeing what these extra talent point actually bring to the table as far as specing goes.

However there is obviousley going to be some classes that benefit from five extra talent points a lot more then others, for example i can use the extra points to tag abilities i wouldent normaly have on my arcane spec mage such as Prismatic Cloak and Magic Resistence, which is good because i'd normally have to give up 6 yards of arcane reach and Incanters Absorbtion to tag these skills.

My frost spec on the other hand is relatively tight and in all honesty i don't think i'll get much benefit from the extra points, after putting the final point in Endless Winter i'd have nowhere else to put them (although i guess i'll tag Magic Resistence and Frost Warding).

Then there are specs where the 5 extra talent points open up a door you never even knew was there, from what i can tell the reason why Sword spec is good for rogues but not warriors is because they have 2 swords that hit faster then the arms warriors one sword thus procing more often.
Blizz tried to fix this by increasing the proc chance, now imagine warriors could dual wield big 2 handed Swords (Titans Grip), add in a talent that could increase swing speed to be closer to the rogues (Flurry) and suddenly warriors could see a sharp increase in sword spec procs.
The only thing stopping them from using this spec right now is that they can't take titans grip and a specialisation at the same time, even if you trim down the Fury tree points you'll still only get 20 points to spend in arms.
However as some may have notcied by now in cata they'll have 25 points spare, just enouth to tag a specialisation, i can imagine haste being a strong stat for a fury warrior useing swords as it would proc this a lot.

This is the one i've noticed though short skimming but i'm sure theres other specs where 5 more points allows them to tag stuff they wouldent normally have, or revolutionise a spec that wouldent even be good as it is now.
Of course there will always be specs like frost mages where the 5 extra points is going to be hard to find a strong use for.

So what will you do with your 5 extra points?.