Guest Post: Priests in the Arena

Happy Turkey Week!  Jov and Seri are traveling, spending time with friends and family, and preparing for a serious case of food coma.  Special thanks for the guest posts for taking wow posting off our plates, and leaving us with more room for sides…

I thought I would write a guest post for Snarkcraft (one of my favorite priest blogs!) about a topic not often covered:  Arena PVP.  I’ll start with some basic arena strategies.  I am assuming you’re just starting out, and that you’ll be a Priest, specced Discipline.  Holy really isn’t arena viable at the moment.

General Arena Helpful Tips

1. Don’t Die
2. Don’t Let your Partners Die
3. Blow Defensive Cooldowns when the other Team blows Offensive Cooldowns
4. Blow Defensive Cooldowns Earlier Rather than Later
5. CC and DPS when the target is low
6. Drink – a lot!
7. Pick up a PVP trinket – don’t leave home without it.

How to gear

As a priest, you wear cloth and lots of it.  You’ll want to wear as much resilience as you can get your hand on.  Once you start feeling comfortable (for me this happens only once I’m in the 1000+ range), start stacking stamina and spellpower.  Get the spirit set, although you can double dip the shadow set, getting the 50 resilience bonus from both sets, but you’ll notice the lower regen.  You will be able to go offensive much better though, so it could depend on your playstyle.  Get at least 4% hit so your fears connect a reasonable amount of the time.  Yes, it’s that important.  Pick up the +hit offset pieces for cloak, ring, and neck slots, and you should do fine.

Glyphs – Pick up Pain Suppression and Inner Fire, especially while still gearing up.  Glyph of Penance is 100% necessary 100% of the time.

How to survive

You have no real escapes, especially against warriors/undeads.  Priests in PVP essentially tank in cloth.  I know it sounds crazy, but it’s crazy fun when you can pull it off!  Anyway, keep moving, cast PW:shield->Penance->Prayer of Mending->Renew->stop and flash as necessary.  Remember to dispel any dots or snares that you can – especially against DKs (Chains of Ice and Diseases) and mages’ frost novas.  You’d be surprised how much dispelling what amounts to these classes’ damage buffs reduces the amount of damage they can dish out.

Line of Sight (LOS) – Line of Sight is your friend in Arenas.  Anyone who says otherwise, or says that LOS is cheesey, plays too many battlegrounds on their hunters.   Good LOS play can significantly reduce the damage you take and the scariness of enemy target switches. You’ll notice some teams will try to lure you into their LOS.  Shield/Penance your DPS when you can, but be aware the other guys have some dirty tricks up their sleeve…

Fearing Defensively – Save your Psychic Scream for when you need to get a cast off, or you see an opportunity to gain distance or get out of LOS.  If you are in an emergency situation, however, blow it.  There’s nothing more embarrassing than dying while your cooldowns are still up.

How to heal

Penance and PW: Shield, Prayer of Mending – these are your most powerful heals in arena.  In my experience, greater heal comes close to the output of penance, but penance has the benefit of going off immediately, and going through line of sight.  Use PW:shield first, especially since it gives you a haste buff.

Flash heal – Flash heal is what you do when Penance, PW:Shield, are on cooldown.  Get a latency mod, like quartz for your castbar and spam that button!

Other odd heals you wouldn’t think to use – Greater heal, Divine Hymn, Binding Heal, and Prayer of Healing are heals you probably won’t use very often, mostly because they’re best when you aren’t being focused, which happens approximately 0% of the time.  However, if you can get them off, especially if someone has let their mortal strike debuff fall off for a second, you can really turn the tables.  I’ve seen 3v3 matches where I was super behind, and I popped Divine Hymn and Inner Focus and topped off my team.  And they say Priests have no reset buttons. 

Mortal Strike – Mortal Strike is your enemy #1.  Know what the debuff looks like, know how long the cooldown is, know how to get as many heals off as possible when the debuff is *not* up.  Hunters, Warriors, and Rogues can all apply versions of the 50% version.  Mages and Shadowpriests (do they really exist?) provide a 20% version.  Oh, and if someone has the debuff and needs a heal, heal them.  You just got outplayed, but you have a better chance of winning if your teammate is alive.

How to pressure

Dispel – Dispels at the right time can be sooo clutch.  Paladins and Priests should be dispel spammed if they are your DPS target.  Also, dispel any CC as often as possible.  Some classes have dispel protection – for instance, if you dispel unstable affliction from Haunt warlocks, you’ll get silenced, which is BAD…

Mana Burn – You’ll find that the one thing in your bag of tricks that will force a healer to go defensive is Mana Burn.  As a healer, learn this sound.  It will strike *sheer terror* into your heart… It’s fun to hold people on the other side of pillars with this.  Say your DPS is focusing the other team’s DPS.  Use Mana Burn to force the healer to LOS their DPS, then keep using it to hold them there.  They’ll only be able to get off instant casts, which means they’ll be way behind.  Just make sure you remember to heal your DPS in time…. Cast Shield, Psychic scream, and Power infusion, then spam Mana Burn at the other healer for fun and profit.

Mass Dispel – Mass Dispel has two uses in Arena.  One is when there’s a zergfest and everyone’s in range – you’ll dispel debuffs and buffs at the same time!  This is win. The other use is to dispel Iceblock and Divine Shield.  Especially against Paladins, it’s important to pre-load this so that you can get their bubble off and get the kill before their heal goes off.  Plan ahead!

Fearing Offensively – Psychic Scream is a powerful CC because it hits all targets within range.  Use that to your advantage, and try to catch the target and at least one other player.  Also, against healers, fear them when the target is around 30% health – they may think they are keeping up, and then BAM! They’re CC’d!  At the very least, you forced the trinket or blew their timing/global cooldown.  This is all huge, just from a 30 second cooldown!

How to DPS

If you are in a place where you need to out-and-out DPS to help force a kill or apply more pressure, you need to consider what situation you’re in.  IF the target is very low on health, cast Penance or Holy Fire->SW:Death.  This “Backloads” the damage from SW:Death (the damage will all come in nearly the same global cooldown, because the GCD from Penance is already done).  If you need to pressure, use your holy DPS spells.  These spells (Holy Fire and Smite) are at what amounts to 100% spell penetration because Holy has no resist stat.  Don’t forget your DOTs and Mind Blast, they do a surprising amount of damage!

Smite Spec – if you want to go really offensive, pick up the smite glyph and the low end holy smite talents – Holy spec, Divine Fury, and Searing Light.  Congratulations!  You are now a Mage with healing spells!

How to CC

Refer to Psychic Scream offensively, above.  One little thing to note here, do not ignore shackle undead!  Make a macro to target Ebon Gargoyle, and shackle DK ghouls whenever you can.  Also, DK’s who pop Lichborne are legal targets for Shackle as long as the buff is up…

When to trinket –
#1 – when your team needs a heal.  You just got outplayed, again.  Prepare to eat blind or sheep.
#2 – Against CC, try to sit it out if you can, and save the trinket for emergencies.  However, be aware that some comps can easily drop your DPS inside even really short CCs.  Refer to #1 and trinket.  Otherwise, refer to the LOS section.

How to Drink

Drinking is how to pressure, defensively, as a Priest and as a healer in general.  Most of the time, especially against Paladin and Druid healers, Priests just can’t keep up in the mana department.  It’s the drawback we get for being able to go offensive with Mana Burn.  If you can, have your DPS go defensive and get drinks off, early.  The longer you can postpone your shadowfiend, the more pressure you can put on the other healer in a mana war.  A few ticks of drinking can change the game!  Learn to notice when the other team is leaving you alone.  These are the best times to sneak off behind the nearest pillar and get a drink.  Do it at every opportunity! Remember, you need to buy special Arena Water for Arenas.

On a side note, make sure to dispel innervate and divine plea whenever you can.

Enjoy!
~Felade

Guest Post: Priests in Battlegrounds

Happy Turkey Week!  Jov and Seri are traveling, spending time with friends and family, and preparing for a serious case of food coma.  Special thanks for the guest posts for taking wow posting off our plates, and leaving us with more room for sides…

So you want to run some battlegrounds as a . . . *gasp* PRIEST?  What are you nuts?  Seriously, people can have this reaction.  Our class doesn’t have a great reputation for survivability and that deters many of us from running battleground or ever trying them for that matter.  Fear not!  I am here to guide you through these death mazes and give you some tools to bring the pain to your foes.

The first thing you should expect in Battlegrounds is to die . . . a lot.  How much is a lot?  Picture the Horde and Alliance lined up in the field of strife in Alterac Valley and the enemy all pressed tab at the same time, they would all target you.  Yes it CAN be that bad but it rarely IS that bad.  Battlegrounds (BGs) are not raids or heroics or arenas or even quests.  They are their own unique slice of WoW and it involves dying. A lot. Everyone dies at least once in a BG, release, let go of it, and move on to the next victim.

You got Talent

Many people talk about pvp talent builds but be warned not all of these will benefit you in a BG, most of them are designed for arenas.  You have a great deal more flexibility in your spec for BGs but a dedicated BG spec will make your life a lot easier.  As Priests we have a lot of options for good pvp talents but we will stick mainly with one tree and this decision will rest mostly on your play style.

I WANT TO SURVIVE!: DISC
I WANT TO KILL’EM ALL!: SHADOW
I’M A LUNATIC!: HOLY

All types of priest are viable in a BG and have talents that designed for pvp activity.  You can make your own choices and don’t have to stick with what you raid in.  I am a Holy priest but I run BGs as shadow exclusively because I spend enough stressful time healing dungeons and pvp is a way to blow off steam and melt some Alli faces.  I will not go into great detail about every useful talent for each built but I will point out a few crucial ones.

The Mandatory Disc talents are important here but there are some key differences.  You will want to pick up Unbreakable Will if you find yourself getting snared or stunned a lot.  Imp Inner Fire and Imp PW:F are VERY helpful. Meditation and Inner Focus are less mandatory. The reason being that BGs require a lot of chain casting (healing or killing or both) and I find mana regen impacts my performance since I am usually dead before I run out and I rarely find Inner focus to be worth the point except specific BG scenarios.  Better spent points are Imp PW:S and Soul Warding to enhance protection.  Further in DISC are some pvp essentials like Reflective Shield, Power Infusion, Rapture, Aspiration, Pain Suppression, and all the way to Penance the all purpose heal/nuke.

Shadow has a lot of great pvp talents too.  Mandatory ones for pvp are Imp SW:P, Imp Mind Blast, Mind Flay, Imp Psychic Scream and down to Silence, Shadow Reach, Focused Mind,  and pick up every talent in the Vampiric/Shadow form segments. Take up the all important Imp Devouring Plague(DP) not only because it is increased damage but also it gives DP instant damage which our class lacks a lot of in pvp.  Optionally you can pick up Psychic Horror and I would grab it because there is a use for it and I will tell you shortly. Take Dispersion even if someone tells you it suck, it does but its all we got *sigh*. Its main use is mana regen and a very last ditch escape mechanism. (PRO TIP:You can Disperse even while mounted!)

Holy . . . well it kinda sucks.  You CAN heal a LOT of people VERY effectively in BGs with this spec, but you can’t heal yourself very well with it.  Survivability is key to pvp, the longer you live the less the enemy does.  However, we do get some nice spells here.  Healing Focus (stops pushback), Divine Fury (extra holy damage/healing), Desperate Prayer (instant full health heal or near it), and Body and Soul (an escape mechanism combined with shielding). You could argue there are more important talents in holy but for pvp these are the must haves.

The Tools of DESTRUCTION (mwahahahahaaa . . . ha)

You got the talents and the spells now what do you do when you want to kill someone. Typically you mostly spam SW:P and DP.  I know it’s really sad and you are probably saying “Wow Nic you make BGs sound sooooo exciting!” Firstly, hey shut up!  Sarcasm will not help you kill faster. Secondly, there are two reasons why you will spam your DoTs.  1) Almost no healer will ever remove your DoTs in the BG and 2) They are exceptionally potent and quick cast DoTs.  Seriously, nothing will make you happier to watch a Rogue get DoT’ed up and run around as they desperately try to escape their ever shrinking health bar until they die.  In fact I have yet to meet the rogue that can survive the SW:P and DP combo, even if no one else is attacking them (Sorry Seri). The key to topping the damage charts is getting in damage as quickly as possible before the target dies from other combatants and unfortunately our class dps is more of a steam roller. Takes forever to get moving but can crush anything, assuming it doesn’t quickly step to the side XD. Speaking of DoTs, Vampiric touch is very good too, except the slightly long cast.  If you can get it up do it, but don’t start with it and don’t follow up with MB, its just not worth it (time wise or mana wise).

Our other useful spells are our trusty nuke, Mind Blast. IF you get the chance cast it. Another staple is SW: DEATH!  I know it seems risky as you can actually kill yourself with this spell and probably will several times till you get the hang of it. However, it does crazy instant damage, crits very high, and glyphs can reduce the damage you take.  Mind Flay is great in that it does a decent stream of damage AND cripples your opponent’s movement to a crawl.  It’s bad in that it is basically a giant glowing sign pointing out to your enemy who is killing them slowly and can probably die easily. It’s good to use when others are around to finish off someone. Fear, Horrify, and Silence are all amazingly effective interrupters of casters and can help put distance between you and a charging horde of enemies. It also can be effective in chain silencing/interrupting Warlocks who are the current pvp champs and particularly difficult for priests. Horrify is particularly useful against the dreaded hunter.  While two seconds of doing nothing doesn’t seem like a lot the key is the 10 sec of dropping your main hand and ranged weapon. You can essentially turn a hunter into a gimpy one-handed sucky rogue and own them. (See?  I told you there was a reason for Horrify!)

If you go disc the power of bubbling and Penance cannot be overstated.  Have you ever tried to kill a disc priest? They are, in my opinion, among the hardest to kill in a BG right after Trees and Pallies.  If you are good no single player will be able to kill you, sometimes not even two or three. If you are disc the world of spells is open to you, if you are shadow you will neglect any holy spell as the cost to drop shadow form will be too costly to mana and inevitably health.

Tactics and Closing thoughts

Your job as a shadow priest in a BG changes depending on what you are running.  In IoC sometimes you are most effective running seaforium bombs to the keep walls, in AV you are useful in defending a tower, or sometimes it just comes down to bringing the pain.  In general we have some basic purposes depending on your end goal.  If you want honor run where the action is and cause as much damage as humanly possible from afar and heal/passively heal whenever you get a chance.  The more honorable kills you get and the more objectives you defend the better.  If you want to win BGs, cause as much chaos as you can by slowing down hippity hoppity rogues with mindflay, silencing mages/healers, or sacrificing yourself to plunge into a crowd of enemies and cast fear.  If your goal is to have fun I highly suggest you accomplish the first two goals with a friend or guildy in a party.  Communication is survival and a partner can drive you to the top of the honor chart, damage chart, and heal chart in any BG.  Finally, experience is the best advice I can give.   Learn the layout of each BG, see where the enemy on your Battlegroup likes to attack and counter it.  The goal is to have fun while dying, something you can’t accomplish in any raid or heroic. Happy hunting!

~Nicoran

Seri sez: Raid progression in 3.3 — The shot heard ’round the world.

Yesterday, Blizzard announced their plan for opening up Icecrown Citadel in 3.3. While I was reading it, I couldn’t help but think, “Wow, this is going to be extremely unpopular with the top raid guilds.” However, I have to admit… this wasn’t exactly out of the blue. Blizzard has been firing warning shots across the bows of said vessels for the last year, introducing a lot of changes that have been less than popular with the ’serious’ raiding population. Unfortunately, now it seems more like they’re shooting to kill.

Let me outline, in brief, The Plan™:

1. Icecrown Citadel (ICC) will not be fully open immediately at patch launch. Instead, its four sections (The Lower Spire, Plagueworks, Crimson Hall, and Frostwing Halls) will open independently with one or more weeks in between. Each section contains several boss encounters, plus trash.
2. Sections 2, 3 & 4 each contain a ‘final’ boss that must be killed in order to unlock the Lich King encounter for that raid instance.
3. Raid teams will have a limited number of cumulative attempts to defeat these bosses as well as the Lich King.
4. The number of attempts starts small (5) but increases to, eventually, 15 once all the content is released.
5. Heroic modes are toggled on/of on a per-boss basis, but are not available until after the Lich King has been defeated once on Normal mode.
6. At some point after ICC is fully unlocked, the number of attempts per week will gradually increase.
7. Also at some point after ICC is fully unlocked, an instance-wide buff that increases the raid team’s damage/healing/hit points will be introduced. This buff will also scale up over time, essentially ‘nerfing’ the instance to make it easier to defeat. This buff can be disabled.

So, basically, it’s Trial of the Crusader plus Algalon plus Sunwell with an added sprinkling of magic ‘make the casuals happy’ dust. Pardon me while I bash my head repeatedly against my desk.

Ok, moving on.

Blizzard seems to be attempting to put the brakes on raid progression in ICC, for reasons that I can only speculate upon. What cracks me up is this, which is a direct quote from their announcement:

“We believe a staggered release of the content will allow players to experience Icecrown Citadel at a sustainable, measured, and ultimately more enjoyable pace.”

Wow, really? Since when did it become Blizzard’s job to determine what sort of pace is most enjoyable for me? What’s next, timed raid instances? You have 2 hours to work on this raid instance today… really, it will be much more enjoyable for you that way. Call me paranoid, but the code already exists in the game to despawn bosses and teleport people out based on a timer. (VoA, anyone?)

On the whole, I really am discouraged by this announcement and concerned for the health of already-struggling raid guilds around the world. Long-time raiders seem to be becoming more and more disenchanted with raiding and the game in general, and while I’m not usually one to go all Chicken Little I would definitely say there has been something of a mass exodus going on. For the last year, Blizzard has made great strides toward bringing endgame content to the casual player. (Something that has not been terribly well-received by the raid guilds.) However, with ICC it seems like they’re shifting from bringing the casual players up to raid level to bringing the raid level down to them. The repercussions have yet to be felt, but I worry they will be significant.

More perspectives:

• How limited attempts risk to make raiding more dull. – The Pink Pigtail Inn
• Icecrown: The self-nerfing raid. – Welcome to Spinksville
• Disappointing news for raid progression in Icecrown. – StratFu

Seri sez: WTB Holy Paladin, Tree & DPS!

It’s been one of “those” weeks for me, so I didn’t have a post prepped for today. Instead of throwing something lackluster together, I’ve instead decided to use/abuse this space as a recruitment platform. Why? Because Wowlemmings.com is starting to invade my dreams…

What we’re looking for:

• 2x Holy Paladin
• 1x Resto Druid
• 2x DPS

We’d be particularly interested in an Elemental Shaman. Other than that, anything is fair game. (However, any Rogue/Warlock applications would have to be exceptional.)

These are core raid team spots! Our raid nights are: Wed/Thu/Mon 6-10pm CST (7-11pm EST).

Note: We are currently running from 6:30-10pm on a trial basis. This may become our schedule on a more permanent basis, but we won’t know until we get a better idea of how it works out.

<Axiom> has been raiding on Scarlet Crusade since 2007. Throughout that time we’ve been something of an enigma on our server… we’ve never participated in realm progression threads, just quietly rose through the ranks to compete with the top guilds on the server over time. We cleared all 25-man TBC content prior to WotLK and have cleared most of the 25-man WotLK content as well. We’re 13/14 Ulduar, have crafted Val’anyr, and have completed a couple of Ulduar Hard Modes. We clear Trial of the Crusader weekly, and have been making steady progress chipping away at Heroic Beasts when possible. (Unfortunately, we don’t always have 25 raiders available on raid nights… that’s why we’re recruiting!)

We’re a friendly, if rowdy, bunch. We cuss (a lot) and poke fun at each other constantly, but we’re pretty good at pulling focus when needed. We have raiders ranging in age from 17 to 40-something, with a quirky blend of students, slackers, professionals and homemakers. We also have a pretty high ratio of ladies to gents… a running joke on our server is, “Where are all the women? Oh right, they’re in Axiom!”

Axiom is a great place for someone that takes raiding seriously but doesn’t consider themselves a hardcore raider. (I’ve commented before to applicants and friends that we aren’t a hardcore guild, but we are a successful guild.) We do monthly reviews of all raiders and like for our raiders to be constantly looking for ways to improve. At the same time, we recognize that RL is important and encourage all of our raiders to lead healthy and fulfilling lives outside of the game.

What are we looking for? The ideal candidates will be right at our level of progression, available all three of our raid nights, skilled/experienced with their class/spec/role and geared in ToC/Ulduar 25-man gear with epic gems, best in slot enchants, a solid raid spec, good glyphs and a can-do attitude. We’ll consider exceptional applications from candidates that aren’t quite at our gear level… entry level Ulduar is about the minimum we’ll consider. Come to us with a positive attitude, enthusiasm for raiding, appreciation for off-color jokes and a snarky sense of humor and you should fit right in.

Self-centered narcissistic cockweasels need not apply.

Visit http://www.axiom-sc.com and apply today!

Seri sez: Exit, Stage Left! (No, not mine.)

Burnout. It happens to everyone. Sometimes it sneaks up on you and whacks you with a cartoon-sized mallet. More often, the slide from contentment to disinterest is rather gradual. There are ways to combat it: Scaling back your play time and/or guild/team responsibilities, gearing up and swapping to another character, taking a night (or a few nights) off… but what do you do when you realize that it’s time to call it quits? If your answer is ‘disappear without a word to anyone’ I have a few choice words for you.

I get burnout, I really do. I’m not immune to it myself, either, and I try to take nights off when I feel like I need them. When my raiders come to me and say ‘Seri.. I need a break’ my first words are usually ‘Ok, how long do you need?’ no matter how much it may hurt the raid team to be down a(nother) member for a couple of days/weeks. I like to think I’m a pretty reasonable person, and I like happy well-adjusted raiders. Unfortunately, sometimes people ask for a week off and simply don’t return… or, worse, just stop signing up for raids without a word to me (or anyone) about why. I’ve seen this behavior from extremely dependable/reliable raiders that I’ve known for ages, and I just don’t understand what is so difficult about contacting someone to tell them you’re not coming back.

I don’t know about your guild, but I think it’s fair to say that most guilds have some means of communicating outside the game. Whether that means forums, Twitter or a good old fashioned phone tree… unless you’re shipwrecked on a deserted island, in jail, or hospitalized, you should be able to get in touch with someone. Even if they’re not an officer, they can relay a message for you. Account expired and can’t/won’t renew? Leave a forum message, send an e-mail, tweet, or poke someone on the IM client of your choice. Computer dead? Use a friend’s. Have no friends? Call someone. Don’t have anyone’s phone number? Use an internet cafe. Broke? Find a local hotspot and start asking folks politely if you can borrow their laptop to send a quick message. (Offer to let them watch so they can see you’re not doing anything malicious.) Heck, these days most people are carrying around a cell phone that can connect to the internet. There are ways of getting a message through!

There are so many ways to get a message to your guild that there are really only two reasons I can think of for not doing it: Apathy and cowardice. If you are so apathetic about the game and your guild that you can log off and never look back without giving it a second thought… wow, you really do need to quit the game. If you’re afraid of telling your GM for some reason, take a few minutes to think about why. Are you worried they’ll be mad? That they’ll beg you to stay? Do you just feel so guilty for ‘abandoning’ the guild that you just can’t face it? Get over it. The world (of warcraft) won’t end because you are leaving. If your guild is strong, they’ll make it without you. If they’re not, well, then there are greater problems that you staying would probably not fix.

Now, I’m sure someone out there is going to say ‘What’s the big deal? It’s just a game… I don’t owe anyone an explanation.’ To that, I say: Good riddance, you self-centered narcissistic cockweasel. This sort of attitude is fine for a casual player… the sort of person that joins a guild for socialization, shared resources & occasional heroics. When it comes to raid guilds… you’re occupying a spot on the raid roster. There are people depending on your ass being in your chair on raid nights, and the time that your guild officers waste waiting & wondering if you’re coming back is time they could have spent recruiting for someone to fill your slot.

I know that there are occasions when it is just impossible to get a message out, but it seems in my experience that in most cases people could have easily gotten a message to the officers but they just—for whatever reason—didn’t. So, in closing, I’ll simply implore you all to not follow their example. If you decide to quit the game, tell someone. Don’t leave us twisting in the wind.

Related post: The Ethical /gquit

P.S. <Axiom> is recruiting DPS! Visit our recruitment page for more info and instructions for applying.

Guest Post: Gaming With Your S.O.

Howdy.

I was reading my excessive list of blogs I check daily at work and noticed they were looking for guest posters during the vaca. (I really do hate that word, but it’s so easy to use.) I thought I’d drop my hat into the ring as it were so here I am!

I guess I should introduce myself a bit prior to getting to the meat of what I’d like to discuss with you fine readers today. I’ve been playing WoW since the early days, November 26^th, 2004 is when I created my account and my very first character was a Night Elf Warrior. Rawr. I dabbled through vanilla, and managed to get myself to around level 43 and quit cold turkey for a good year. I would have had a nifty zergling or panda pet as well but I really despise a certain gaming establishment that sold my copy of the original CE I had paid for, but that’s a story for another time. No hard feelings. Really. No, really.

Anyway.

Way back when I started to play my significant other started to play with me. We both bought the game, made some Night Elves because they were cool looking and went on our way. She took a break about half a year before I did, and then I took my good long break.

We picked the game back up when BC was released and I created a hunter at that point. She a druid and we went along our ways and played through BC to Wrath. Long story slightly less long, today I am an official alt-a-holic. I have four 80’s and turned out to be a raid leader in the guild I’m currently in. She’s also amassed a number of 80’s under her belt and we both have a good selection of people to choose from to play.

That said, I read a lot of WoW related blogs as I stated above. Some of the ones I read often have posts about their spouse who plays with them and it got me wondering. Are she and I alone here, are we one of the only couples I’m aware of that when they play a game together, such as WoW, we don’t actually play together? We sit three feet apart from each other, and we talk and we even raid and instance on occasion.

But during the entire 1-80 process for our multiple characters we never actually grouped. Is that odd? Seems normal to us and fits us I guess since we do it without a problem but I always wonder, are we just the weird people, and every single other person out there does that?

I guess it’s enough that we raid and run heroics together. I mean, I see her a lot. We both work for the same company, more or less the same hours and same days off. She’s not remotely a bad player, not someone I wouldn’t want to bring on a raid. Are we doing something wrong here? Is it chaos? Cats and dogs sleeping together sort of chaos and end of the world…ness?

I personally feel it works out. We live together, spend a lot of time with each other and our friends but in game we get our “alone” time as it were. We get a nice little MMO-Break from each other. I think that’s a good thing in a way. We don’t really fight, or argue we still get our work done and our house clean and the dogs and cat fed. So it must be good, right?

What do all of you think?

Those of who play with your significant other. How do you do it, do you two constantly group/party up and does it work out? I wonder.

Guest Post: Wistful Thinking

Special thanks to our guildie Prathi, from over at Piercing Shots for this post.  This was written in the middle of his move when he was going through massive withdrawals.  Happily, he has since been able to reactivate his account, and is happily pewpew’ing for us again.

At the end of August I had to move.  I won’t go in to any great length about why I had to move, but one of the results was that I had to give up playing WoW until I’d settled some things.  Some things have now settled, so I renewed my sub last night.  I didn’t do a whole lot – I said hi to the guildies that were on and did a quick heroic ToC-5.  WoW looked a lot prettier than it used to, but I’m not sure if that’s innacurate memory or what.  It was mostly just nice to play a little again.

In a sad confirmation of stereotype, one of the things I’ve been missing has been upgrading my gear.  We all know and love that warm, internal glow from finally getting a shiny new purple.  It’s a little bit like the glow a chronic gambling addict gets from their infrequent payouts, I think.  Especially because the longer you go without it, the warmer it is when you finally get another taste.  And man if it hasn’t been a while since I had a taste, you know?  I’ve replaced two things since before the first time I killed Yogg-Saron in the middle of the Summer, both the rings, neither of which came from a 25-person raid.

I’m not sure exactly when I’m going to be able to return to raiding, but it’s going to taste pretty sweet when I do.  Especially since I’m sure the rest of the guild is swimming in 245 gear at this point.  Imagine the situation like this: it’s a kid’s birthday, and he’s in the back yard with all his friends.  There’s a pinata full of his favorite candy – maybe some kit-kats – and all of his friends are stuffed full of hotdogs, chips, cake, and soda.  They’re lying on the ground in a disordered, groaning semi-circle.  You hear the whoosh sound of him swinging the stick a few times, then a sharp crack followed by an avalanche of crinkling wrappers.  Giggling quietly, he scoops up the candy and runs upstairs to stash it in his room.

That’s going to be me in the Coliseum.

Distinctly second in the list of stuff I’ve been missing is the people.  Ha-ha!  Just kidding!  As an emotionally healthy human adult, of course I value interpersonal relationships far more than I value pixels named with purple text.

Hm.

Has anyone else ever heard a saying that goes something like “if you tell a lie to yourself enough times, you might begin to believe it”?

I’m not sure if that’s true.  But, moving on!

I really have missed my guildies, seriously.  Reading Snarkcraft has been the cause of some occasional wistfulness, because it reminds me that I haven’t been able to hang out with Seri and Jov, both of whom are pretty excellent ladies.  Axiom is just in general a really fun environment to raid with.  Making fun of the raid leader, making fun of Crutches (can I just say that the Hammer of Ancient Kings is apropos for him), misdirecting bombs onto the druid co-GM, pulling off the tank and wiping the raid in the first 5 seconds of an attempt (my specialty!), imagining the female Orc warrior Kerp speaking with the male Polack voice of her player, just on and on.  It has really been a drag missing out on all of that for a month.

On the other hand, there have been compensations.  This has been a really great way to get out of doing dailies and otherwise farming consumables.  Dragonfin Angelfish, for example, is pretty much never available for sale anywhere ever.  Saving myself the outrage over the prices for alchemy mats has also probably done wonders for my blood pressure.  And can I just say that I could happily live the tortured, immortal existence of an Anne Rice vampire just so long as I never, ever had to encounter the trade channel. Sadly, that boat has sailed, so no lace and black velvet for me.

For real though, everyone: none of it is funny any more.  None of it.  Any joke you were going to make in trade?  It isn’t funny.  Every time you say “anal”  and then link an ability or item, it actually creates a hole in the universe.  These holes – and there are, by now, trillions of them – vacuum up and destroy the elementary particle of human joy, known as the “fabulon”*.  Relentlessly and forever.  They don’t go away, people.  Now that we’ve made them, they’re going to be here until the heat-death of the Universe.  And while it’s true that kittens and puppies generate fabulons at a steady rate, we are rapidly approaching the point at which the holes will be depleting them faster than they can be replaced.  Please, think of the children.

*Entirely different from the god worshipped by the shadowy cult of Naga known only as “The Bravo Demographic”.

Guest Post: On Race Changes…

Greetings all! This is Derevka from Tales of a Priest. Yes I did close the doors at Tales, (mainly due to work being much more demanding of my time during the day, and our firewall at work now blocking blogger access) but I mentioned that I do miss blogging a bit, so Seri asked me to do a guest post here at Snarkcraft.

In the spirit of Snarkcraft, I really should try to make this post as snarky as possible. So I am going to discuss the in game feature that I am looking forward to the most. No, it is not killing Arthas and slapping that rather constipated expression right off his face… its Inter-Faction Race Changes.

This has been something I have been looking forward to for a long time. I know some people are rather upset by it because of the lore involved. How can you change your character’s RACE when you’ve been living and experiencing that race’s lore for 4+ years? To those I reply with, quite easily… you stare at the back of a female dwarf for 4 years and tell me that again. (I know I’ll be hated by the dorf lovers in this post… but I am shallow and like pretty things, so I’m looking forward to my visit to the plastic surgeon… a little snip here, a tuck there, an ‘augmentation’ over here…

I rolled a Female Dwarf Priest back in Vanilla for the sole reason of Fear Ward. The priest class back then, was the only class that had not only Racial Abilities but Race Based spells (Desperate Prayer, Fear Ward, Devouring Plague, LOLFeedback) Back in Vanilla you actually NEEDED Fear Ward on the Alliance side. You didn’t have Tremor Totems on Ally, and you needed fear protection for Ony, BWL, and MC.

Then enter Burning Crusade, and Space Goats were also given Fear Ward… but there weren’t many fights that had the opportunity to cast it. (Nightbane and Maulgar are the only 2 I can think of). Then Blizzard, in their infinite wisdom, decided to dole out Fear Ward to every priest. At that point, Vanilla WoW Dorf Priests looked around and /boggled.

Fast Forward to today, I’ve changed Gender to Male Dwarf because I simply couldn’t stand staring at “my humps my humps my humps….” anymore. I’ve been checking my Blue Tracker and even logging into the Account Management screen daily hoping to see the “Paid Race Change” to lose that taunting “Coming Soon” tag that is branded next to it. Hell, I’ve even clicked it a few times hoping it would somehow let me go through.

Some people view this as just another way for Blizzard to make money off of the player base. Just keep milking that dying cash cow. While I do tend to agree with them, I will happily spend that money in a heartbeat. It’ll be a change of pace… visually making the game look newer. No more having to rush to the front of a Guild Screenshot so I’m not completely blotted out by a Night Elf. No more twirling braids, or big bushy beards. No more oven mitt sized gloves. No more blow up doll facial expression when doing an Omni Cast. (look at a Female Dwarf spamming Inner Fire, and you’ll see it)  Soon I will have a Female Draenei ’stretching magic’ casting animation… and not to mention a rather hoofed-yet-sexy physique to go along with it.

Why Draenei? Why not Human? Yes, for PVE Healing, Human is generally the Alliance best bet for Every Man For Himself, Faction Bonuses, and Human Spirit 3% spirit bonus. Mine is purely aesthetic, and the fact that my toon’s name is Derevka. (Which is a spin on the villainess family from the TV Series ALIAS – so having the Eastern European accent on my toon only seems fitting.) Now, if only the /dance animation was to “Single Ladies”…

Seri sez: Cross-realm random LFG… wave of the future or business as usual?

One of the changes announced at BlizzCon 2009 was the introduction of cross-realm instances. Yesterday, World of Raids posted a preview of the new LFG tool coming in patch 3.3. I logged into the PTR to check it out, but it had apparently been disabled so I wasn’t able to experience it for myself. However, I’m very intrigued by the prospect of being able to queue for a random instance and be partnered with players not only from my server but other servers in my battlegroup.

There are certainly times when I am up for something but have no real opinion what… throwing myself in the queue for something sure sounds better than sitting around twiddling my thumbs. But, then again, I am apparently one of the few people in the world that doesn’t hate Oculus with a burning passion.

I can’t help but wonder if the interface will allow you to queue for raids as well… the current one does, doesn’t it? I’m too lazy to look, and pretty sure no one really uses it to look for raid groups anyway. Heck, in my experience very few people actually use the LFG tool anymore… which is a whole other rant for another time. (Really, it’s an awesome freaking tool… why do people insist on using Trade chat to look for groups?)

There is a part of me that cringes at the thought of joining a PUG raid this way, that doesn’t want to believe that non-heroic raid content has been dumbed down so much that you could actually get tossed into a group with X number of random strangers and actually be successful even in a 10-man. But I have to admit.. I think that day is coming no matter how much I might want to cling to the good ol’ days when those who could raided and those who couldn’t didn’t. (Call me elitist, but… the current evolution of endgame just isn’t satisfying to me. Also a whole other rant.)

What do you think about random instances & cross-realm instancing? 5-man or otherwise.

Seri sez: I am Henri(etta) the tank, I am.

This week, I embark on a grand adventure. I’ve faction transferred my old warrior and, in the immortal words of Malcolm Reynolds, “I aim to misbehave.” Why should you care? Well, there are insights to be learned about tanks that can only be learned by walking a mile in their steel-toed boots. Or hooves, depending.

Anyhow, it’s been a really long time since I played this character. She’s 70, but it’s been eons since I touched her. (A year, if not more.) When I logged her in, she had no spec and I wasn’t reasonably certain I remembered what even a quarter of her buttons did. Needless to say, I have my work cut out for me. But, with some help from Tarsus and the Panzercow, I have a nice fresh spec and am reasonably certain I will know which buttons to push when I venture out of Warsong Hold. Eventually.

What? Don’t look at me like that… there’s a lot to do when you pick up an old character! So, maybe I’ve spent about 90% of my time on her shuffling her between the bank, the mailbox and her trainer. It’s been productive! She has heirloom shoulders, breastplate and trinket. She has a spec, her bank is… partly sorted… and I actually gained a point of Blacksmithing from mats I had in my alt bank. Also, Cold Weather Flying! See? Productive.

Don’t judge me.

What may make this exercise all the more entertaining is that I’ve decided to level as Protection. I’ve heard Northrend is a lot of fun for Prot Warriors, so I’m going to give it a whirl even though some might think me crazy. The way I figure… I haven’t tanked anything for so long that the more practice I can get between instance runs the less likely I am to make an ass of myself (or more of one than usual) while grouping. I wouldn’t bet on it but… that’s the theory.

I’ll check in periodically to share my insights with you. In the meantime, do you have any anecdotes to share about standing in the front instead of the back? I’d love to hear them.