Bored now.

I don't mean to channel Vamp Willow, or Dark Willow, but... bored now with resto shamaning. The thirties sucked. The forties are crawling by in a succession of bad Dire Maul runs.

Leveling in WoW isn't hard. Having fun while leveling is hard. Staying engaged is hard. Not getting bored out of your fucking skull is hard.

Enhancement heirlooms, a complete set, are over on a different server. I don't really want to bring them back over for $25 just because I'm bored with a spec on a level 42 toon. I can reroll over on that server if I really need to go Enh.

I just haven't had fun on this toon in a while. I put in the time, Earth Shield/Healing Surge everything, collect a level or two for my effort, and then move on.

Probably need a change of venue with her - after a break. 

Sorry, Shaman players. I think I'm just doing it wrong.

This is Cynix's face after she'd just been kicked from a Dire Maul run that started out bad, turned worse, and ended with a mob of angry warped trees chasing after her.

Really. Really? Really. Okay then.

I saw the loading screen and was surprised, honestly surprised.I'd let the tank die at the start because he pulled before I was ready, and my attention was split between him and the hunter. Admittedly not a great start on my part. He lit into me in /p, and I went right back at him in response. It was a great way to start off a run. My /bg instincts perhaps do not serve me well in LFD.

After about 10 minutes of killing things in silence, the tank jumped down off the ledge into the gardens below - I have no idea why, I think it used to be glitched? - and I followed. "Huh, that doesn't work anymore?" he said, and I kept my mouth shut and got to work healing everyone from the fall damage. He then pulled most of the quarter, said "whoops too big of a pull," I spammed heals but couldn't keep him up.

Then I was kicked.

The tank died once because I wasn't paying attention to him. The second death was the tank's fault, but the healer took the blame. This is an old LFD story.

Not worth dwelling on, but interesting when it happens to you. 

Next.

I finished out the 30s with an interesting SM run. Pally tank, lots of accents in her name, but solid and dependable in a way the warrior tank from DM was not. Damage was slow and easy to mitigate, pulls were sensible, and the DPS didn't do stupid things. 

Looks like I have two things to come up with now: how to use Chain Heal, and figuring out a mail outfit to level in. Might need to take a break from LFD and quest a bit.

I'm clinging to the advice of my Shaman friends here tonight, to be honest. The last few dungeon runs have been pretty boring. I can see this now as my leveling alt, one I pick up and run a time or two and then put down again, but I know I'm missing a lot of the joy of Shamaning doing it this way. I decided to keep my mail heirlooms where they are, on my Horde server, so perhaps rolling an Enh shaman over there would be a logical step for a future alt.

But for now, Cynix will keep on trucking. Looks like we've got DM and ZF coming up next, as well as more Mauradon runs.

Last night was a good night in LFD, with RFK and Mauradon (Purple) runs. I can't really keep the Mauradon colors/maps straight - I know pretty much where to go, but can never remember which is which. I should go look at Maps for Tanks and get it straightened out, otherwise the next few entries of this blog are going to be me rambling about Mauradon in PvP terms or maybe football or let me just read up on it so I can keep Crystal Waters straight from Foulspore Caverns.

Wait, it's not called Crystal Waters anymore? Damnit.

Anyhow, had my first Bear tank last night. Throughly competent, called me by name when waiting for my mana to recharge, set a good strong pace. Good bare.

Second set of runs was crazy.

Pally tank with Mage from same guild formed the core of the group, with me, a rogue, and a warrior. She pulled fast - really fast - but I kept up and it wasn't really any problem. Things were going well until the Warrior needed on the healing shield that drops in Mauradon, and when the tank called him on it (I didn't even see it until I scrolled back), he went mute and started pulling everything in sight.

"Let him die," the tank asked. And while I wasn't overly inclined to heal him, the warrior healed himself up with Victory Rush and was slowly clearing the instance. Someone finally kicked him and we got started again.

We picked up a crazy dwarven Enhancement Shaman. The pally would tank one set of mobs, he would tank another. I don't even think tanking is the right word here - he obliterated them. 

So we proceeded to run maybe 3 or 4 dungeons in a row, steamrolling everything in our path with two very good tanks, 2 dps, and me going mana mana mana oh never mind.

This Enhancement Shaman was awesome, and when I asked him about it he shrugged. "I hit things and it heals me," he said, and all I could say was, "I think I picked the wrong spec to level with."

And I think I might have. Wow, that looks like fun. 

As a healer, I have three buttons - 4 now since I can launch all my totems at once. I know that Resto is a viable healer (though I'm starting to have mana issues by DPSing all the time). But am I misisng out on something that is really a blast by leveling this spec?

(Also the tank noticed that my staff was a Frostscythe and thought it was the coolest thing ever. If I have to go get my Agility Mail heirlooms off of Drenden to play Enh, I may have more mogging to do.)

 

BFD. Gnomer. BFD. Gnomer. Hilariously bad Gnomer run. Scarlet Monastery. Gnomer. Scarlet Monastery. Scarlet Monastery. Razorfen Kraul.

The upper twenties and lower thiries are a blur of Gnomer and SM runs. Each dungeon gives about 75% of a level, sometimes more, sometimes less. This wasn't all tonight - I've been bad, I skipped a few nights here and there just because I literally couldn't find anything interesting to say. I ran LFD, it was businesslike with one notable exception, the levels roll away. I have 7 buttons, 3 of them are totems.

I'm not picky about needing on Intellect and Spirit gear, no matter if it's cloth or leather, since there just doesn't seem to be a lot of Healing leather in these dungeons. Cynix has done okay in replacing her hybrid hand me downs with decent blues. I've lost my leather caster chestpiece, so she's visually leveling in gear that she earns - which is actually how I like it. It's nice to see a character's appearance change over time.

One change I did make in my recent Transmogrification spree was to change her Grand Staff of Jordan into Ahune's Frostscythe - visually striking and badass when I run up to Frost Shock all the things.

I hit 50 quests completed at level 32, which shows how much questing I did. My Priest didn't complete 100 quests until she had been 70 for several months - these are LFD and PvP toons. I did more Horde quests on Cynderblock than I did on my putative Horde main, which perhaps explains a few things about my knowledge of Horde Flight paths.

I was really relieved to see RFK. It's not only a sign that the seemingly endless SM/Gnomer runs are coming to an end, but also because it has some gear - expecially quest gear - that really helps fill out those hard-to-get slots. 

In this case, after 33 levels of wearing a cloth robe, I finally got a healing chestpiece - in leather. 

Little things make me happy, what can I say?

/played: 21 hours, 15 minutes.

Psynister is leveling a Feral Druid, so he and I teamed up tonight to make quick work of runs through Wailing Caverns, Shadowfang Keep, and Blackfathom Deeps. Four levels in about an hour and 15 minutes. Finished off all the quests I'd screwed up the other night, which is nice - I hate leaving them undone. BFD has some great quest rewards Alliance-side, too.

It's funny how other players rub off on you. Psyn is an aggressive puller as a healer, something that normally you wouldn't do to a stranger, but a friend it's like, yeah, go grab those mobs over there for me, okay? Let's make these lowbie dungeons move a bit faster! So we both pull fast, pull a lot of mobs, and assume the other will bring loose mobs over. I was doing it tonight up to the point where we got a Hunter who was starting to pull for the tank, and I was like... okay, I'll be good and set a good example. 

Then I stealth-pulled mobs and brought them over to Psyn to maul with his big happy bear hugs.

It's a little interesting healing him with the Shaman. Earth Shield does a lot of the work, but if the pull is big enough then I need to be there and paying attention. Big Slow heals are all well and good, but I need to switch over to fast heals sometimes. We had one psuedo-wipe, where I lost Psyn in BFD as he was pulling big. He went down, the other druid in the party went bear, he went down, but I stayed up. I see now how Shamans can solo a lot of these dungeons at level. 

No real mana or healing problems to note, to be honest. I probably need to start making sure I have level-appropriate water. Water Shield is pretty helpful in that respect, though.

Also: Psynister likes to jump. A LOT. He is a hard bear to catch on camera.

I made a few changes to my macros, including adding in the Focus Macro Magic! Lizzia posted about today - I modified just my Earth Shield macro to include the mouseover focus, which eliminates the part where I manually used to set my focus with a more generic macro. Since Earth Shield can only be on one person at a time, it made sense to me to put it there. 

It worked well. I'll try it on my Lifebloom mouseover on Cynli next!

Total /played: 17 hours, 19 minutes, 26 seconds.

I'm starting to think this should become a photo blog. The levels start melting away if you're willing to hit the LFD button as a tank or a healer. 

Level 21 and 22 passed in Shadowfang Keep. I like SFK; it's well-designed so that you're having to really traverse many different environments, and each part of the keep feels different. (Contrast with the stairs of UK.) The quests can be problematic if you miss the one at the entrance, and sure enough I did just that. I also forgot to turn in the one I did complete.

Noob.

Level 22 and 23 were Blackfathom Deep. It's hard to get a sense for how your class is really playing level-by-level when they're going by so quickly. It's a long march to 85, and I expect levels to start going quickly, but I'd argue that the speed with which characters need to level is actually yet another reason why we need the Big Squish. If you have a steep item level curve through leveling content, characters must acquire more gear, more often, to stay current with the challenge of their level. That means either 1) more gear has to drop or 2) characters have to level slower to acquire enough gear to meet their level's challenges. If the item level slope is shallow - squished - then gear decays more slowly, stays relevant longer - making leveling less gear intensive.

Consider two extreme cases - a steep slope of 10%/level and a shallow one of 1%/level.

The 10%/level slope means that each level, you need gear that's 10% better than the previous level's gear. So if you're level 23, and you got gear from level 22, it's 10% less effective than 23 gear. This is multiplicative, so 2 level differences becomes 21%, 3 is 33.1%, 4 is 46.4%. You'd either need to completely replace your gear every 2-3 levels, or risk falling so far behind that you're half as effective as you need to be to tackle that content. (Alternately, Blizzard could nerf the content so you could do it 4-5 levels back, but then encounters become trivial for people who are correctly geared.)

The 1% slope is still multiplicative, but the slope is an order of magnitude easier to deal with. 1%, 2.1%, 3.3%, 4.4%, etc. When your gear is 10 levels back you're what, 23% behind? That's probably noticable, but not crippling. If you get an upgrade every level, you're likely going to be just fine, trailing behind the maximum item level by a bit but not much.

I think the gear levels in Vanilla are actually < 1% - more like a linear 1:1 scaling through 60. That's not bad. It could be a little shallower, but - as anyone who has worn the same bracers from level 30 through 60 - having a few pieces lagging behind at that slope won't get you killed. 

It's interesting to think that the sheer number of levels characters need to get through is starting to cause itemization problems, not just the slope of the item level curve. While Blizzard could leave the XP required for each level the same, they haven't, and that's probably a good thing. If you want to get a toon to endgame (where much of their focus is,) it shouldn't be a six month project.

Even if it might take *me* six months to get there. :(

Bang. Wailing Caverns, redesigned so that even if your tank does something silly - like, say, not clearing the entire top ring first - it's really not a big deal.

Ninja mage in the group this time, got the ring I wanted. I hope he enjoys his leather shoulders and pants, too. At least I got the quest reward gloves to replace my agility hand-me-downs.

*sigh*

 

I logged in to Cynix on a whim tonight and got another 2 levels out of the deal. Level 19 passed in a blur - I didn't even realize I'd dinged 19 until I'd dinged 20 and gotten the achievement. :(

Earth Shield and DPS. Healing Wave every so often when things get hairy. Totems when I remember them, otherwise - DPS. This is kinda silly, to be honest.

Oh well. At least I can get an elekk now.

 

Man, Shaman PvP healing at 18 is boring. 2.2 second cast time on your heal? Ugh.

After a night of druid PvP, where everything is INSTANT and FAST and WONDERFUL it's a bit of a let down to come back and try to heal someone with ... a very slow heal.

Didn't even bother to use Wind Shear. SHINY NEW TOY LET ME SHOW YOU IT oh no, never mind, let me go carry the flag instead.

I carry the flags a lot on my healers. Perhaps it's better that way.

13-5 in WSG.

I'm starting to think I should ditch PvP for a bit and just heal instances up through the mid-20s, or even 29. I'm starting to sound like a broken record here.

Single run through Ragefire Chasm tonight with @ralod's rogue, Chojub. 

(Yeah. A gnome rogue named after Cynwise's imp. My guild is awesome.)

Started at level 16. Finished at 18. Had a bear tank for the first boss, then he had to go in the middle of a trash pull. I stayed back and let the DPS pull, but then realized I could get right up there and mix it up faster, so I started pulling. We got another bear tank, he lasted through Taragaman, then he bailed too.

So Chojub and Cynix tanked the rest of it. The other DPS eventually left, and we just cleared the place.

...

It was a bit more of a challenge with just 2 of us. Not a big challenge, but at least interesting. (Yes, there is a trend here.)

I mean, seriously; if I considered my job to just be limited to healing, I'd use two buttons at this level. Two. There's got to be more to it than that.

The biggest problem is that now I have a crapton of new abilities - mostly I'm gawking at Wind Shear, let's be honest - and it's time for a PvP pause. Time to hit the top of the bracket and see if I can get an AB game in before Cynix dings 20.

Related: Chojub has awesome gnome hair.