Oldmanjack: Kiss my Axe

21 Vrykul archeology projects.  But I finally got it.   Given that it's been a while since Northrend was the cool place to be, let me tell you how cool it is to equip an ilvl 226 weapon at level 71.  ilvl 200 was entry level raid gear.  Level 80 raid gear.

I tell you man, it was tempting to search up a second.  But not tempting enough to actually spend that much more time searching through Vrykul towns.

Tabbykat: Playing as a Family

I am kind of sad that my teenage sons don't play WoW much anymore. I mean, they occasionally log on. They are kind of excited to play Mists and are logging on more as hype builds. Mostly, though, we no longer have the kind of "listen to the cool shiz I'm up to" dinner table discussions that used to drive my wife bonkers.

At our height, my 9 year old son was healing instance runs with his guildmates. And doing awesome. My 11 year old was assembling random groups in trade (back before LFG) and tanking runs. Tanking on his DK at least as well as I could back when I was DK & warrior tanking. We'd watch each other play and I'd give them advice:

"Your healing is going to pull aggro. If something runs at you, go stand on the tank."

"DKs are so lucky to have death grip. You never have to worry about casters pounding your healer."

I will agree that mostly they had great experiences with groups. Mostly. I still watched. There was that one time a group of asshats kicked my son from the group he had formed. That was tough to deal with. But it's true that kids don't mature in a bubble.

Man, this post on Big Bear Butt brings back the memories.

Now my four year old daughter is playing. Kind of. She uses it as an electronic doll. An electronic doll with a spear and the ability to pull lighting from the sky to kill spiders.  Plus she's learning to type & spell.  She's learned her way around a keyboard even with the letters worn totally off the w, s, a, d keys.

She loves the barber shop and has been able to get herself from the Night Elf starting zone to barber in Stormwind since before Cataclysm. She was so proud of herself for finding a clothing seller in Stormwind and buying a shirt she liked. For finding the toy vendor and buying some dolls.

She wanted a horse, so I got her Night Elf exalted with Stormwind. She wanted bird form, so I leveled her druid to get bird form. We bought the Celestial Steed because, well, what kind of Dad wouldn't buy his little girl a sparkly pony? And eventually . . . eventually . . . I will fish up a seahorse for her at darkmoon fair.

It is so awesome to have an activity to share with your kids that you all enjoy.

Yohannes: Welcome to Northrend

Dounonurnese: AQ20

Yohannes needed some disenchantables for whatever it is enchanters need for the final run to 300 skill. I looted through Upper and Lower Blackrock Spire, but just got him a lot of dust he says was one level shy of the kind he needed. So I figured I'd go check out what the trash in the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj dropped. Too much loot is blue & purple BoP. Good cash run for myself, but not so impressed with the number I could mail off to Yohannes. At least it was better than the Blackrock Spires, I guess.

Long as I was there, though, figured I'd whoop some ass.



Good times.

Coccinelle: Meet the New Healing

I've got to wonder how much of the "healing is hard" view comes from trying to heal the way we're told we're "supposed" to. While I had to make some adjustments post-Wrath, they weren't too drastic and I haven't found healing to be too difficult. I still love healing.

The biggest adjustment I made was that I now use Lifebloom, which I found mostly useless in Wrath. The HoT portion is nice, but primarily I keep it rolling on the tank for Replenishment (adds 50mp5 per 10K mana to everyone) and let it bloom if the tank needs a big heal, reapplying after the bloom before Replenishement drops off. The second big change was that I don't just spam Wild Growth and Rejuvenate. I mean, after Lifebloom, those are still my two most important heals (and Wild Growth is actually my biggest throughput), but I wait until at least 3 people need healing to cast Wild Growth and only cast Rejuvenate on someone taking constant damage . . . probably using Swiftmend/Effloresence as well. Finally, I pay attention to using cooldowns. Use Barkskin when taking damage. Use Innervate whenever it's off cooldown and mana is under 75%. When massive damage hits the whole group, use Tree Form. The healing buff is huge. In Tree, I'll cast Regrowth instead of Rejuvenate, keep Wild Growth up a couple times and everyone will be at full even while the damage is ongoing.

Healing like that, I don't ever cast Nourish. I only ever cast Healing Touch with my Nature's Swiftness macro. I rarely even use Regrowth out of Tree Form unless someone is taking lethal damage while all other HoTs are already applied and Swiftmend is on cooldown. I didn't even take Naturalist or Empowered Touch, putting those points into Balance instead.

Between Replenishment, Innervate and conservative healing, I never have mana problems. I mean, I have to drink between fights occassionally, and I don't share Innervates. Which is a huge change from Wrath. But I don't go oom during fights. I only even have one point in Malfurion's Gift (and only because I need the point to move up to Tree Form) and I'm only putting 2 points in Furor.

Int, spirit and even crit are all good stats, but I still say to stack as much haste as you can. Lower GCD, lower cast time on Regrowth and all your HoTs heal faster. Haste is so good that if I don't need to cast Regrowth, I'll Moonfire something occassionally to proc Nature's Grace.

All told, healing is more challenging than it was in Wrath because I now have to watch what I'm doing instead of just throwing around heals like candy. But what I actually do to heal hasn't changed all that much.

Tyrk: Happy Valentine's Day!

Seeing the Trees for the Forest

So, okay. The new tree form is ugly. But you know what? So was old tree form. At least now we look lush and vibrant instead of, like, barren old hags.