One down, one to go

Blizzard has decided NOT to reset honor upon release of the expansion. While this was obviously not my chief problem with the PVP changes, it was something that would have royally pissed me off had they not announced that arena points would be required for all honor rewards.

As far as I know, however, they will still be forcing arenas for blue main set PVP gear. So I'm not as pleased about this as I could be, but it's better than nothing. I can at least grab, like, bracers or whatever to supplement what I can get from that PVE thing.

Herbstravaganza

I have decided that, rather than pick up alchemy on Ahami, I will take inscription. This is partly because inscription looks pretty neat and fun, and partly because my guild has a ton of alchemists — while I'm sure some of the others will pick up inscription also, it'll still be more helpful to the guild, I think, if I picked that up and leveled it first.

Besides, if I do alchemy on my death knight, then I can use that as a bank toon and potion/transmutation factory if I end up hating death knights. I plan to hit at least 60 before I make a final decision, which should put me high enough to max out alchemy.

Anyway, Anna of Too Many Annas made a quick and handy list of needed herbs for leveling inscription, and I've taken a nice break from leveling/Hellfire Peninsula (still hate it, though I have not yet been smacked by the Fel Reaver this time around) to gather what I need.

I'm currently cruising between Desolace and Dustwallow Marsh to gather the third step's herbs; I already have all of the lower level herbs I need, and quite a few extra for alchemy/donating to the guild bank/profit. Considering how the prices have risen on VeCo just since the first time I went through these places, I highly recommend all herbalists gather and hoard herbs until the expansion is released, then sell them for mad moneys if you're not picking up inscription.

These choices are, of course, subject to change.

KITTY!

Updated taming plan for Wrath of the Lich King: Ideale will get two more stable slots. One will have a tanking pet, probably a rhino, or whatever else is good for that PVE thing (yes, I will call it that forever). I already have Gutripper, so when Blizz stops sucking and I can switch back to PVP, I will still have a pet with awesome PVP abilities. Which leaves me open to fill that third slot with ... a kitty, of course. Duh.

I've had an idea of which kitty I wanted for quite some time now, but I wasn't positive until I saw this.

ZOMG KITTY!!!

(Yes, I'm completely aware that three kitties on one hunter is stupid. Which is why I am happy to point out that Loque’nahak* is a spirit beast. And apparently spirit beasts have something called spirit strike, although I am not sure. Either way, not technically, really a cat, but still a kitty. Also, I don't care, because I loves the kittehs.)

* Laque'nahak being the tamable, presumably much smaller version of the awesome looking Har'koa in BRK's screenshot, by the way. I know Har'koa's not tamable. Alas.

The zhevra has landed

Had to download Firefox to do it (seriously, Blizzard, please make your site work in Safari), and it took some synchronizing with the roommate (which actually took some effort, since as how our schedules are literally exactly opposite) but Ahami finally got her zhevra mount. And then she had to run all the way to Sen'jin Village to train her riding skill 'cause I had never done it and the poopface in Orgrimmar was, like, too good to talk to her or something. Poopface.

But a zhevra! And it's fast! And it came with two spare hooves (could have used those back at level 11, Mr. Nesingwary, but thanks for the kindness). I swear.

Pics of the zhevra and the hilarious letter that came with it eventually. Also finally took pics of the talbuk. Those will come eventually, too.

This PVE thing

So I decided that, since I plan to focus on this PVE thing in the expansion until Blizz removes its collective head from its collective ass, I ought to start doing instances so that I could get in the experience. I tried on Ideale a few times yesterday and got nothing (thanks, huntards), so I decided to try on Ahami — people are always harassing me to heal. Got into three groups, one with alts from a top guild and me, and ran Ramps twice and Blood Furnace once.

Holy moly, healing five-man instances is SO EASY. Compared to PVP, it was actually boring. The boss fights were fun and challenging, but the rest? Blah.

I did lose the ele shaman twice in the Blood Furnace run, but considering that I got feared and I was a little low for it (dinged 61 in the instance), I think I did okay. Tank hit half health once.

Seriously, though, if you've never healed an instance before, go heal Arathi Basin or something a few times and it'll be cake.

I hope raid healing is more exciting. :-/

Last post on arenas

I think the worst part about this is the developers KNOW that people will simply AFK for arena points. They don't care, because this falsely boosts arena participation, and many of the arena players don't care because it will boost their ratings (although the serious arena players probably don't want to face dancing AFKers any more than the serious battleground players do).

Well, screw that. I love World of Warcraft and I love my characters and the time I put into them, and I love my friends and my guild and how awesome they are. I'm not going to let this ruin things for me yet.

And I'm sure as hell not going to participate, either. I'm not going to be forced into propping up some 12-year-old's ego. I will NOT be stepping foot into the arenas.

I'm going to be finding a new niche in the expansion. I will level Ideale up to 80 and see what it's like. Maybe I'll try some PVE — the few times I've done instances with guildies, it has actually been fun, I guess, and with so many 10-man raids in the expansion, maybe I'll have fun with that. I'll give it a shot. Or maybe I'll spend my time gathering and crafting. I really enjoy that aspect of the game.

I will leave Ahami at 70 at first — and if 80 sucks, I can still play the battlegrounds without getting one-shotted over and over. And I can level my other toons to 60 and 70 and stop them there, too. If 80 is okay, I can drag Ahami up to heal. Will I ever have more than two 80s? Probably not, if they don't fix the PVP — I simply refuse to do arenas, and since I can play the battlegrounds at 60 and 70 without them, my toons will stop there.

And if, after a few months of that, I get bored? If world PVP absolutely SUCKS with level 80 quest greens? If I get sick of being constantly ganked? I am on a PVP server, and since this is where my friends are, I'm not going to pay to transfer to PVE and I'm certainly not going to bother rerolling. I'll just cancel, if that happens, and give Warhammer a whirl. I hear they have real PVP over there, and I can still have kitties. Even if there's no Mac version by then, there'll be some sort of hack that'll let me play on a decent OS, I'm sure.

Sidenote: Grats, Blizzard, on making me actually consider this — I had absolutely no intention or interest in trying Warhammer until now. Not like losing one of 8 million subscribers actually matters, though. /bitter

And I'm done. No more on the topic. Back to the usual pointless rambling about cats virtual and real, and wishing I was still excited over the expansion like I was a week ago.

Okay, seriously, no more bitter.

More on the arena requirement

I wrote an e-mail to the Blizzard support staff and copied it to the General Discussion forum. Unfortunately, I have not received a response to either; as I can only read the beta forums and not participate on them, I was unable to put this somewhere that a blue might actually read it — the threads about this on other forums have been ignored, probably because GMs outside of the beta forums have no power to comment on game changes in future releases.

Here's what I wrote:

So battleground players are going to be forced to do arena in order to purchase the basic, blue PVP gear? Okay. But to make it fair, raiders should be forced to do arena for their off-set pieces, and there should be awesome arena epics available only with badges earned from raiding. I could go for that — spread the misery around!

Or, alternatively, Blizzard could implement a system that actually addresses battleground AFK problems instead of simply spreading them to the arenas.

1. Bring back the pre-BC battleground ranking system. Have a set of gear earned purely through this. Then players will not be able to AFK their way to epics in the battlegrounds. Make the gear rewards from this require battleground participation only.

2. Remove honor point requirements from arena gear. Then players will not HAVE to AFK in Alterac Valley just to get their off-set arena pieces.

The way the beta gear system is looking right now, a lot of us battleground-only PVPers will just be AFK dancing our way to PVP blues by losing 10 arena games a week, and there will still be hardcore arena addicts AFKing in AV for the honor they need to buy their pieces. This doesn't actually solve the AFK problem, it just ensures that it becomes a problem for arena as well as the battlegrounds.

I've heard a lot of people say that the pre-BC rank system was really hard. Well, bring it on. I don't mind hard. I do mind being forced to duel in a box just to get the most basic gear I need (blue gear, no less, not even epics!) just so that I can survive for more than two seconds in the battlegrounds. As it stands right now, I am debating just not buying the expansion and staying permanently in the 70 bracket; achievements and new zones would be fun, but all there would be for me to do at level 80 would be to level another toon or dance around in a pretty dress in arenas until I get my blue set. Not interested, honestly.

Forcing battleground PVPers to duel is not going to solve the problems with the battlegrounds, nor is forcing arena players to earn honor for their off-set pieces. All it does is encourage AFK, because who is going to do more than the bare minimum if they are forced to do something they don't like in the first place, just to be able to play the part of the game they do like?

Unfortunately, from Kalgan's responses to complaints in the beta forums, it appears that the developers do not see the problem. They see PVP as PVP, whether it takes place in the battlegrounds or the arenas.

The problem that most of us battleground junkies are having (and I will point out here that there are people who love both battlegrounds and arenas) is that battleground PVP is very different than arenas. They have different feels — objective-based, epic battles versus no-holds-barred death matches — and attract different kinds of people. Some enjoy being part of a large team working toward a goal; others want to test their abilities versus a similar team, figure out the weaknesses of a comp and how to exploit them, or figure out their own weaknesses and how to neutralize them. Some like both.

I, personally, prefer battlegrounds. I play support classes (hunter and shaman) and I'm fine with that. I will never be the hero of a battle. I also like the strategy involved in a well-played battleground; I like how the same thing doesn't work every time; I like the ingenuity required to succeed against a team that outgears and outmans you. I'm not in the least bit interested in small-scale death matches; there's a reason Alterac Valley, Arathi Basin and world PVP are my preferred forms of entertainment.

I know that there are players who live and breathe the arenas, and who are entirely uninterested in the battlegrounds. They want to test their skills, reflexes and ideas in small-scale matches. They have no interest in the battlegrounds — flag capping and tower protecting holds no appeal to them. And I think it is equally unfair to require honor points and battleground marks for these players to get their off-set pieces, just as I think it's unfair to require battleground players to do arena for their sets.

I wish that the developers understood this. Requiring arena for battleground gear is not going to make people try harder for it. It's just going to encourage AFKs in the arenas, making arena ratings and epics meaningless — no matter how hard you work for your arena gear, people will never believe that you didn't just luck out and face AFK teams each week, just as those who work hard for their battleground gear now are written off as AFKers with welfare epics. Instead of fixing battlegrounds, it will ruin arena.

The best way to fix the battlegrounds is to FIX THE BATTLEGROUNDS. Whether this means revamping honor entirely, instituting bans for AFKs, or removing the honor system altogether and reinstating the old battleground ranking system or creating an entirely new system based on HKs, flag/tower caps, and other battleground objectives, FIX THE BATTLEGROUNDS.

Don't alienate a huge portion of the PVP player base just to shut up a few elitists who feel that battleground gear somehow devalues what they raided or arenaed for. Because that's exactly what this move is doing. I know plenty of people who didn't give Warhammer a ghost of a thought until this was announced — and many of them have now canceled their WoW accounts and pre-orders and switched (or so they say).

We're not even asking for epic gear. All we want is basic gear with enough stamina and resilience for us to survive in the battlegrounds and world PVP long enough to be of value.

But unfortunately, the GMs and developers are ignoring all of the threads about this topic in the general and suggestion forums, and those of us who chose not to request a beta invite cannot post to the beta forums where they are paying attention. Well, hopefully by the time I reach 80 the backlash will have reversed this. If not, I'm not sure what I will be doing after I hit the level cap. Or if I'll even be moving past 70 at all.

And with this, I lose all interest in the expansion

MMO Champion has a post detailing the Wrath of the Lich King PVP gear for level 80.

Here is the cost for the basic blue Savage Gladiator gear:

Chest - 0 AR - 6000 HP and 350 AP
Hands - 0 AR - 3600 HP and 200 AP
Head - 0 AR - 6000 HP and 350 AP
Legs - 0 AR - 6000 HP and 350 AP
Shoulder - 0 AR - 4800 and 275 AP
MH Weapons - 0 AR - 8400 HP and 475 AP
OH Weapons & Items - 0 AR - 3600 HP and 200 AP
Shields - 0 AR - 6000 HP and 350 AP
2H Weapons - 0 AR - 12000 HP and 700 AP
Caster 1H Weapons - 0 AR - 10000 HP and 575 AP
Ranged Weapon - 0 AR - 12000 HP and 700 AP
Throwing Weapon - 0 AR - 3200 HP and 175 AP
Wands & Relics - - 0 AR - 3200 HP and 175 AP

See the AP cost? That's arena points.

To get the basic blue PVP set — the equivalent of the blue set that was purchasable for PVE rep in the Burning Crusade — players will have to actually PVP and earn honor. This is fantastic. Players will also have to do arena.

That freaking sucks.

Basically, in order to be BARELY competitive in the battlegrounds — the only part of WoW that I like other than rep grinding — I have to do arenas, something that I am not even remotely interested in doing. And considering the gap between the Savage Gladiator gear and the Deadly Gladiator gear, I will still get roflstomped.

Um, if I wanted to duel, I'd go hang out outside of Orgrimmar. Or buy "Tekken." That way I can trash-talk my roommate (and vice versa) while we play and I don't have to spend $15 a month on it.

You know what? I have said since the first day I entered a battleground to whiners saying, "Just lose so I can get my marks" that if you don't want to do battlegrounds, don't do them. No one's making you. If you're not going to PVP, why bother getting PVP gear?

Well, as far as I am concerned, Blizzard is requiring me to arena in order to do the one part of the game I like. And you know what? I'm not going to shuffle for the man like a good little casual player just so the arena elitists can strut around in their epics. I fully plan to find a partner each week and dance my way to a loss in 10 games as fast as possible. Naked. And if the arena players who whined about how battleground PVPers getting access to outdated arena gear was devaluing their accomplishments don't like it, tough. They're the ones who caused this epic bullshit in the first place, and if that means that they get their fun taken away? Well, they took away mine, so they can suck it.

You want to whine about welfare epics? See who really has the welfare epics when you earn your 2200 rating versus 2 good teams and 8 teams of naked dancers every week — because if the forums are any indication, there is a huge chunk of PVPers who don't want to arena and will probably lose their way to blues rather than participate.

And if it sucks too bad? Well, I'll cancel my WoW account. Because this is actually game-breaking for me. I just wish I'd known this was coming before I bothered investing time and $15 a month on my toons, dragged my real life friends over, and made friends in game. I'd have saved myself a lot of frustration.

Why I WANT AV twinks

My battlegroup has AV issues. Big ones. When I was running Ide through the 51-60 bracket, I was like, "I don't get why everyone complains about Alterac Valley. I don't see any problems!" And then I hit the 61-70 bracket and was like, "Oh."

Running Ahami through AV while waiting for her mount to come in has netted the same reaction. The 51-60 bracket of AV is just so. Much. Better. for Horde on Nightfall.

1. People defend. Every single battle I've been in, at least 5-10 people head for Tower Point and Drek to meet the Alliance who slip through the cracks.

2. Our offense shuts down their offense. None of this ride-right-by bullshit. No, someone tries that crap with us, and they're dead before they can dismount.

3. Towers that are lost are quickly recapped. I swear to God, I do not understand how people forget this between 60 and 61, but they do. (Although, considering I've seen the same people in AV the week and a half I've been chilling there with Ahami, maybe they're the only ones who know how and everyone else moves on.)

4. People actually want to be there. At 70, AV becomes an honor/mark grind, apparently. People don't care about winning or losing as long as the can get in and out as fast as possible. The few times I've had fun in the 70 AV was when both sides were dominated by VeCo PVP guilds and it ends up being a brawl instead of a race. At the 51-60 bracket, with its incredibly long queue times, people actually WANT to be there. We talk strategy, we encourage each other, and so on.

At 70, AV is a chore, and I can't imagine that changing at 80. But at 60, AV is unbelievably fun, even when we lose bad, and I want to have a couple of my favorite classes available for when I just can't take the craptacularness of 70 battlegrounds anymore.

Twink-o-rama

I've been doing a bit of poking around on making an AV twink. There's not a lot out there as, unsurprisingly, most twinks stay in the 19 or 29 brackets. Personally, I don't think that sounds like fun — what's the point of having so much health that there's absolutely no risk of failure on your part? What's the point of being able to one-shot other players? No fun, I tell you. At least at level 60, the gap is closer. (Plus I HATE going up against twinks on my non-twink toons in the lowbie brackets. It takes all the fun out of the battlegrounds. Why would I do that to other people?)

Besides, with my desire to get the Conqueror title for Ideale, at least, and probably Ahami as well, I don't want to be wasting too much time running Warsong Gulch or Arathi Basin on anyone else or running AV past exalted on the two of them — I'll just be running the bgs for marks on my other characters, anyway. A 60 twink rather than a 59 makes more sense, especially since it opens up a whole new level of gear options.

So I will be making two level 60 twinks, one hunter and one shaman (which fills five of my VeCo slots with hunters and shamans...). I haven't done much work on them and probably won't until after I get Ide and Ahami to 80, but I wanted to at least do some research, and figured I'd share what I found.

Gear: The best gear outside the PVP stuff is, of course, from Hellfire Ramparts, and there are several drops for both hunters and shamans because Outland loves us. I made myself a wishlist. I plan to bribe my friends or perhaps total strangers into running me through Ramparts as soon as I can enter, which is I believe at level 55. There is also some excellent gear for other classes — if you, too, want to make an AV twink, check out the WoWWiki loot table. I looked at some of the drops from the older instances, but it seems like at this level, Ramps, crafting and PVP would supply better gear than anything that drops in old Azeroth.

There are some quest rewards from Outland that I want, but I have not done enough research there yet. I do intend to pick up Bladefist's Breadth for Kresha and Vengeance of the Illidari for Mayari. I want to avoid the quests as much as possible, though, to avoid leveling more than intended.

More important to me is the PVP-Epic gear, because that will be providing the bulk of my main gear, and filling in any holes left by unacquired loot and crafted gear. Some of the faction-based PVP rewards look like nice additions — I'm going to want to do AB and WSG on the way so I have the marks I need for that.

And of course, a twink has no need of gathering professions (though I have and will keep double-gathering on both until the 50s because hey, money and crafting mats).

Engineering seems like a must for Kresha for the bullets alone — Fel Iron Shells only require level 57, meaning that if I can get Kresha a decent gun, I can supply much better ammo than I could possibly buy (or use) at 60. And the High Warlord's Street Sweeper looks like a really good candidate. The available crafted goggles aren't quite as good as the Epic PVP helm, but the Gnomish Battle Goggles are taught by a trainer (i.e., cheap and easy to get the know-how) and would be a pretty decent substitute while filling out the rest of the PVP set.

Engineering is an option for Mayari as well, but I'm not sure. And I'm not sure about the second profession for either — leatherworking crafted items seem fairly unimpressive at first glance and with Onashne already training (and powerleveling) leatherworking, it's not like I need the kits or anything. Jewelcrafting offers some handy BOP trinkets, but the PVP trinket will fill one slot for each and Bladefist's Breadth and Vengeance of the Illidari seem like better options for the second slot. I really don't want to pay to level enchanting again, honestly. Inscription might be an option — in fact, just the ability to supply Daj with scrolls for enchantments would make it worth it — it would be a heck of a money maker.

I guess with professions, I just need to do more research.

Things to work on in PVP

One thing that is pretty important to me is improving my performance in the battlegrounds. While I know that many PVE'rs hit the bgs just to get "welfare epics" (why they just don't do badge runs and get THOSE welfare epics, I dunno) and thus don't care about winning, losing, or contributing to the team, I do. And if you're not constantly working on ways to better your skills, then you're just deadweight.

With that in mind, I've been PVPing the past few days with an eye on areas where I need work.

I've been practicing kiting on Ideale a lot, because last time I did this, that was the thing I most needed to work on. While I still need the practice, my kiting has improved to the point where I can continue to improve simply by doing it, and no longer need to focus on it. I've also improved in protecting our healer, which has netted me much healing in return. <3 healers.

Where I most need work now is: 1. Using my spec tools. I tend to forget about intimidation when I'm in PVP, but it still has a stun effect, so I should be using it every time the CD is up. I also need to rethink how I use Bestial Wrath/The Beast Within — I use it when unneeded a good 25 percent of the time, and probably don't use it when I should. 2. Prioritizing targets. I tend to simply shoot at whoever is in front of me, when I should be focusing on taking out healers. I need to start keeping an eye on enemy healers and taking care of them.

On Ahami, I've been pretty pleased with my PVP performance. I think I've mentioned before that I do better as a healer than a hunter (ironic, I think, because I still prefer huntering). I've topped the healing charts in a good percentage of the bgs, and come within the top five in almost all of the rest — even when I've come into a used bg. However, I tend to die a lot when I'm not in 1v1 or enormous groups.

I need to work on moving away from AOE and self-healing when needed — I get so focused on healing everyone else that I forget myself. I also need to work on doing damage when needed — if we have three healers and one DPS at the mine, I should be DPSing. Last, I really need to work on dropping totems in battle. I'm getting good at remembering to drop them at the start, but I should be refreshing them throughout — and dropping Stoneclaw when rogues go on totem sprees, because I saw another shaman do this last night in EOTS (on Ide) and the rogue stunned himself and we killed him before he shook it off.

I need 20k honor and 37 EOTS marks* for Ide's bow. I think I can have it by the end of the month. Ahami needs to fly to Org for her trinket, then I get to focus on hording marks for gear with her. I know that S2 will be useless once Wrath hits in six weeks, but I'd still like to collect the full set for Ide and the weapon and two pieces for Ahami, just to have done it.

*Apparently this needs AV marks, which I have plenty of. Which means I can trade in my EOTS marks for honor. Which means less than 13K honor to go.

YARRR

Ideale be a pirate queen!

(No, really. I sent the screenshot to my work e-mail to fix up tomorrow, but if you talk to the goblin commoners, you can dress up as a pirate.)

EDIT: As promised!

Wrath rush?

I've been trying to avoid most of the information floating around about the upcoming expansion (aside from pet-related stuff and a few talent tree items I couldn't resist). I did not apply for a beta invite, and if someone offered me one, I wouldn't take it (like that'd ever happen, but still).

The way I see it, I've been playing the game for less than a year. There's still so much I've never seen in Azeroth; I first stepped into Shadowmoon Valley last week (that's right, aside from getting Ide her flying mount, I had never been there — I was slowly working my way through Netherstorm and hanging out in Azeroth, leveling trade skills and exploring).

With so much still to do and see, I'm in no rush to see the expansion.

And I think that will continue even after it's released. Oh, sure, I have it on order and will be doing the install pretty immediately when I get it. But I won't hop that boat to Northrend immediately (or whatever the Horde equivalent is, as I've managed to remain tainted only by Alliance news of WotLK), and I won't immediately roll a death knight (okay, I will, but I'm not going to play her right away).

What I plan to do instead is hit the Isle with Ahami each day — she won't have been 70 long enough to be exalted with the SSO, and I will wager that it will be virtually empty. I'll probably keep doing Skyguard quests with Ideale (or perhaps Netherwing, though I'd have to group for the intro quests, ew). And I'll complete the quests I have not yet done in Outland — I haven't done a single quest in Terokkar Forest yet in addition to SMV. And with the extra pet slots I will buy with the money from those quests, I will go tame myself a couple of somethings with Ideale (probably a firefly and who knows what else ... I want another cat, honestly, but that's kind of silly). I'll probably do some instances if my guild goes in, but I'm not really planning that much.

And if that gets boring, I will play Daj and Onashne with my best buds in the world, or power-level their professions, or work on my two twinks — I need to research which professions they will eventually take, decide which levels I want to take them to, plot out gear, etc. Since research is my favorite part of the game (honest, I'm that much of a geek), this would fill the hours nicely.

And I always have Alliance toons to fall back on — poor Tshaya hasn't been played since about June, and the others have waited longer.

Or I could roll a few new classes on another server and play around — I don't think I'll ever like another class the way I do hunters or shamans (honestly, if I wasn't playing as part of a team, I'd have quit my druid by now — the class is very boring to solo for me, to the extent that when I've gone off on my own to do the druid quests, I've been like, "Meh," although when I eventually go balance I think it'll be more fun), but it might be fun to mess around a bit.

And then, after a few weeks, when the starting zones are mostly clear, I will venture forth into Northrend and avoid much of the lag, resource and mob competition, and ganking that is sure to immediately follow the release. I figure that by then, most people will be in the mid-to-high 70s range or be working on tradeskills and gear at 80, but not yet be ready to drag another toon through, and I will be unbothered in the early zones. And the hardcore players will have their second toon already past the start zones, too.

That's the plan, anyway. Whether it actually happens or not, I don't know.

Holidays in Azeroth

While Daj was cruising around Orgrimmar with her 'locky friend on Monday night, we ran across a handful of workers. She asked them what was going on, and found that they are setting up for Brewfest.

I'm very excited for this holiday, and have been since it was announced that kodo mounts would be one of the prizes. Why? Well, Daj needs a kodo, mostly because I despise raptor mounts for screechy-noises-that-annoy-me reasons, but also because it's more appropriate to her history. So when I rerolled Daj as a hunter, I ran her little level one self all the way to Mulgore and quickly got her to honored with Thunder Bluff.

Only now that I am leveling her with my best friend's warlock, I don't think I am going to make it to exalted — especially since the original plan was to have her there by 40, not 30, and since we chose to forego the Stonetalon Mountains. Brewfest is the perfect chance to get her a kodo with a minimum of trouble.

I have to say, though, so far no holiday has come close to my first holiday in Azeroth. I rolled my first character mere hours before the Lunar Festival started back in February. I love Lunar New Year anyway, and to waltz into Stormwind (I had yet to find Thunder Bluff on my Hordies at that point) for the first time and find people celebrating it was pretty awesome. Getting that invite to Moonglade and popping in to see revelers dancing in the moonlight was also cool. All four of my "main" characters on Whisperwind had the festival clothes, and I delayed deleting them (even after rerolling!) for months because I didn't want to give them up.

I have been itching for February to return so that I can repeat the fun on all of my peeps. I think the only other holiday that has come close for me is Children's Week — there's something incredibly fun about running those little rugrats around all over the place, and getting cute little pets is always a blast.

What I'd like to see are holidays that are a little more immersive, I guess. With the Lunar Festival, you went and spoke to the elders, got red envelopes in your inbox (and might I add that I LOVE getting mail from NPCs? Dorky but true), and went to party in Moonglade. During Children's Week, you run the kids around and show them a good time, like a Big Brother/Big Sister thing. During the Midsummer Fire Festival (which I also liked), there were the really cool quests to spy on the Twilight's Hammer, plus dancing around the maypole and stealing flames. That stuff is FUN.

Meanwhile, the Harvest Fest? Noblegarden? That Valentine's one? Kind of blah. "Oh, hey, look, an egg. Why does this matter?" No cool prizes (at least do a mini-pet or some clothes!), no cool storylines, no sense of accomplishment at the end.

I'd love to see Blizz flesh out those two holidays, at least. Adding more would be cool, too! Like, how fun would it be to have a flower festival? Or something based on Mardi Gras? (Although that would have to be moved to avoid conflict with the Lunar Festival.) I know every day can't be a holiday, but maybe one every month would be fun.

Hey, Alliance

To be fair, the list is skewed. High Overlord Saurfang is the most dangerous creature in Azeroth. He's short on kills because few are brave or stupid enough to piss him off.

(I swear I will have something constructive to say sometime soon, honest.)

A sudden sinking feeling

You know how the taurens at Freewind Post sell cheese?

WHERE DOES THAT CHEESE COME FROM!?

Must ... not ... level

I do not get my zhevra until the 26th. It is the 16th. Ahami is level 59.

So my options?

1. PVP! I've parked her in Thunder Bluff. My goal? 100 marks each from the three battlegrounds I can currently get into. Why? Well, I need a few AB and AV marks for the gear I want at 70, and I figure I can turn the rest in for honor once I can get into Eye of the Storm.

2. Play on Ideale more. (This is my favorite option — I have been neglecting her a bit while I level Ahami and play on Daj and Onashne, and I miss her.) I am working on the S2 crossbow for her, so I can do a bit of that. I also have four more points to go in jewelcrafting and just need to farm adamantite to get them, and I would like to max out my SSO rep and start working on either Sha'tari Skyguard or Netherwing. Plus, money from dailies is sorely needed after my irresponsible spending spree.

3. Get Kresha to 29 and start PVPing in anticipation of twinkage. (This will probably end up being put on hold until after the expansion.) After a lot of consideration, I decided to switch Kresha and Daj in my future plans. I just like trolls better and I prefer Daj's personality. (Sorry, orcs!) So the new goal is Daj to end-game (which will probably be 80 by the time we get there, but whatever) and Kresha to either 59 or 60 to be a high-level twink. I also want to do this with an elemental shaman.

... Basically, I get to PVP a lot for now. Then level Ahami, then PVP a lot more until Nov. 13. And then level to 80 and PVP forever until the next expansion. Yay!

Resto shaman = win

Ahami was level 58, with one (1!) piece of gear from Outland (the only quest I've completed with an actual, usable reward vs. cash or crap I can't use). And she was running from Falcon Watch to get that missive out of her bag and into Cenarion Expedition hands, when a level 63 draenei warrior passes her on the road ... and a few seconds later, intercepts.

She dropped a Searing Totem and an Earthbind Totem, and basically kited him around while doing nothing but healing herself and hitting a Flame Shock or Earth Shield every time they wore off ... and she won.

Did he make mistakes? Well, yeah. He didn't bother with my totems — had he been taking them out, I probably could not have kited him effectively, nor would there have been a constant of damage, and he did not use his PVP trinket to get out of it, either (I checked the armory, and he does have it equipped). Plus I would have had to blow mana to drop more, or to use Frost Shock. And he couldn't have known that my main is a hunter or that I've actually been practicing kiting (gasp!) lately.

But he was still five levels higher and in quest greens and instance blues/crafted items from Outland, whereas I am still sporting Gahz'rilla Scale Armor (but nothing under level 45! I'm improving!) and quite a bit of leather druid gear. So please forgive the bragging, but I am pretty damn proud of myself for this (and, because pride goeth before a fall, will probably get ganked times a bajillion for the next week).

On an unrelated side note, I had 300 skinning when I hit Outland, and trained it immediately. Since then, I have skinned 26 level 58-60 boars, all "orange" to my skinning skill (I still have all the leather in my bags, so I counted). My skinning is now 304. That can't be right, can it? It seems to me that my skinning should be at around 320-325 by now, but maybe they slowed down skinning leveling in Outland because it goes so quickly otherwise? In comparison, I've harvested five Felweed plants and my herbalism is at 305. I just don't know if this is worth opening a ticket over.

There is something wrong with me

I feel like I have been posting a lot more about shamaning than huntering lately. This is partly because I've been like "OMG NEW STUFF!" every two levels on Ahami, and mostly because there are just so many awesome hunter blogs out there that I don't feel like I have much to offer on that front. Not that I have much to offer on the shaman front, either, but still.

So, to get back to my roots, this is why I called the blog "The Kitty Collector" in the first place:

Regularly-played characters
Ideale: Cinnamon, elder springpaw lynx; Saffron, ridge stalker
Ahami: Fog, white kitten (mini-pet); Siamese banked for the expansion release (I don't have room for a ton of pets yet)
Kresha: Tack, a Durotar tiger
Onashne: not-yet-named silver tabby, and she will be able to BE A KITTY in two levels

This is in addition to the planned kitty acquisitions, which include the black tabby (been farming it but no luck yet), Kresha's shadowmaw panther (six levels to go!) and two yet-to-be-decided hunter-kitties when Wrath comes out.

Rarely-played Alts
Daj: Serai, a snow leopard
Tshaya: Onryo, a ghost saber
Dihas: Shadow, cornish rex (mini-pet)
Dayea: Apple, a springpaw lynx; Rain, a nightsaber stalker

And of course, Sparrow and Klio in real life right now (but not the 87 other cats I might have if my roommate and mother did not block my cat-gathering attempts on a weekly basis), with very fond memories and many photos of Ditto and Taffy, my first "babies." My dream is to someday earn enough money that I can buy a 5-acre plot somewhere and fill it with cats and horses (my other obsession — I have pictures of my bedroom from the fourth grade, and it looks like Horsetopia — were there such a magical place, that's what it would be named, I swear — exploded onto my walls).

... I need help.

Three PVP tricks, resto shaman style

One of my favorite things to do in PVP is to trick the other side into underestimating us. (This is, honestly, why I am so stoked for camoflage — with that, a stealthy pet, and Aspect of the Beast, a hunter-druid-rogue defense would be awesome in Arathi Basin or Warsong Gulch. "Haha, those losers left their flag unguarded. I'll just grab this OHHOLYGODWTF" *dead*)

Anyway, the nice thing about leveling a resto shaman is that apparently no one does it, so no one expects you to be healing. It's pretty obvious Ahami's not an enhancement shaman, since she doesn't dual-wield, which means that (I assume, anyway) the Alliance team generally assumes she is elemental, and reacts accordingly, taking out the "real threats" first. My goal in battlegrounds has been to encourage this thought.

Please keep in mind that I am, as in practically everything WoW-related, a total noob when it comes to this, so my way may not be the Right Way — though it works for me, so far. These tips are for 60 and lower, by the way.

1. In small battlegrounds, such as Warsong Gulch or Arathi Basin, I pick a stealther (rogue, usually), and this person is the recipient of my first Earth Shield. Why? Well, when they stealth, poof, no Earth Shield in sight. I use Lightning Shield on myself — no major tipoff that there's a resto shaman about. Once they figure it out, of course, it goes on whoever is taking the most damage, but I've been through entire WSG matches where no attention is paid to me at all while the other healers spend the whole match at the graveyard. This doesn't matter so much in Alterac Valley, where you are likely in a large force with several shamans and they probably won't figure it out 'til they catch you chain healing instead of shooting out lightning or wading into melee.

2. In WSG, go ghost wolf, run up the side (to avoid the honor farmers in the middle), and communicate with your offense to figure out where they're coming out with the flag. Meet the flag carrier and run alongside, popping out of ghost wolf to heal/renew Earth Shield when needed. (This works best if you take the points in enh for instant ghost wolf — I've been having issues since I hit 41 points and respecced for Earth Shield, but should be fine in a few more levels again.) Of course, if your offense meets a decent defense, run in a few seconds after them (when the enemy should be engaged) and start popping heals. You likely won't be noticed right away. This should keep you from being noticed and neutralized until absolutely necessary.

3. Chain heal like it's going out of style, especially in Alterac Valley. Unlike in 5-man PVE, everyone will be taking damage in PVP, not just the tanks — chain healing can take care of three people at a time, which means that they can continue fighting and hopefully keep the enemy from getting to you. It's more mana efficient anyway — and since combat in PVP can last a long time, you want to be as mana efficient as possible. Let the other healers worry about single-target healing — you've got a multi-person heal and you might as well use it.

Other things to remember: You have totems. Drop them, even if you don't think your group is nearby. If someone in your group is, they benefit, and if not, at least it has the potential to occupy the other side's melee classes for a while. There's always one asshole who's more worried about taking out totems than taking out the other team. (And you took the talent to minimize their mana cost, right?) Also, Earth Shock is kind of awesome if you catch an enemy healer mid-cast, if you have the time, attention and mana to spare. Purge kicks some ass, too.

Naming characters

I know that some people don't spend a ton of time naming their characters — as evidenced by players with names such as "Ihealukill" and "Orczpwn" in the battlegrounds — but for me, the name is intrinsic to the character. Maybe it's my stifled, repressed role-player coming out (poor thing), but I spend more time laboring over the right name for my characters than I do choosing the right appearance (and I spend far too much time on that).

I don't really have a set way of naming my characters.

Ideale's name was from my list of "I want to try this class/starting zone, so let me make a throwaway character" names, mostly pulled from mythology. I am glad I picked that one, though, as it fits her quite well — it's very blood elfy — and it's really a gorgeous name. Although, honestly, I probably ought to have taken herbalism for her instead of mining; Ideale is the goddess of the harvest. (Four of my defunct Alliance characters got their names the same way. One of the names, Mayari, I'd love to reuse, but it seems a very night elfy name to me.)

Ahami was one of my characters from Materia Magica. It's a name that, as far as I know, I made up, though I probably heard it somewhere. I don't know why I picked it for my troll shaman, other than that it sounded like it could be a troll's name and I missed it. It fits her better than it ever did my MM character, though. (Tshaya, my draenei hunter, was also named for an old role-playing character.)

Daj and Kresha were also made up, mostly just playing with sounds. Daj was a variant of a character I made up for a series of short stories I wrote in high school, named Daija — she was the incarnate of fire. Since Daj was originally a shaman, it seemed appropriate. Now she's a hunter, of course, and again, the name doesn't quite fit. Daija didn't sound trollish enough to me, so I ditched some letters. Kresha just sounded nice and seemed fitting for an orc.

Onashne — I have to admit, I was playing with the name generator on the character creation screen and liked it so much I had to make a character with the name.

Gabi, the little shadow priest who will probably be reborn as a death knight in the expansion, was named because "gabi" means "evening" — I knew she was going shadow from the beginning. Too bad I hate playing a priest.

I mostly wrote this because I'm constantly curious as to how others name their characters, and assume everyone else is, too. *whistles innocently*

Why I'm not trying WAR

Everyone seems to be talking about it lately: Dropping their WoW account and switching to Warhammer Online. I don't know if this is prevalent everywhere, but on my realm's official forums, quite a few folks, including at least one major guild, are planning a mass transfer.

I love the sense of community on my server and will be really sad to see people go, but I do not intend to follow (and not just because I have to start paying grad school loans this month and am going to be too short on cash to justify two for-pay games).

One of the things that drew me into World of Warcraft so effectively (and into various MUDs and RPGs before WoW) was that in-game morality is not black and white. Oh, sure, the PVP is what keeps me here, but even though I very rarely actively RP with people in game, I do sort of RP with myself. All of my characters have backstories and current stories, and I like that I can play Horde or Alliance and have characters who are good, evil, or in between on either side.

I love that I can have a blood elf (arguably the most "evil" race in WoW alongside the Forsaken) who is snob but also a total pushover white hat and it's not out of character. I love that I can have a troll healer who respects life but totally doesn't get the ban on cannibalism because it's such a waste of good meat. I love that I can have morally ambiguous characters on both sides, who do questionable-to-evilish things that make sense to them (night elf rogue and undead shadow priest = love — I may dislike the playstyle, but they're still among my favorite characters).

So when people started talking about how awesome the PVP in WAR was going to be and how you could level through PVP (OMG COOL), I immediately headed to the website to check it out, and found that you could be ... order or destruction. Neither of those sounded fun, really, but more importantly to me, it seemed like one side was being cast as good (why people associate order with good, I will never know — balance would be more appropriate) and one as evil. And from the reading I did on both the website and various forum topics, it does not sound like that initial impression was totally wrong. I'm not seeing a lot of nuance there.

I don't care how awesome the PVP is, I don't want to be locked into creating one-dimensional characters. It takes the RPG out of MMORPG. I want nuance, dammit, and I will stick with WoW until I can find something that is both better at game mechanics and better at providing those shades of grey.

EDIT: It's just as well I had not planned to try this game, as it seems to be a PC-only release and I roll on a Mac with no intention of switching any time in the near future.

Harvest Festival blues

I should preface this entry by mentioning that I grew up in the country. And by that I mean that our nearest neighbors were half a mile down the road (which was paved for our section, but dirt past the corner). I went to a K-8 school with 120 students. I grew up surrounded by cows (literally, our little tiny ranch was right between two huge cattle ranches). I was treasurer of our 4-H club for three years. When I got to go to high school in the nearest town (which didn't have a single stoplight until I was in high school), I rode the bus for over an hour each way because we lived over 15 miles outside of that town, and when it rained the bus couldn't get through and we got to skip school. It was awesome.

Anyway, my point is, when you grow up in a place like that, you get to know what a harvest festival is like. Hell, half our fun comes from harvest-related activities (in this county alone we have the county fair, an asparagus festival, a grape festival, a strawberry festival, several farmers markets, various 4-H activities, local Native American harvest celebrations, school celebrations — even at Halloween we're still celebrating the corn harvest that allows local farmers to set up nifty mazes).

So, Blizzard? Your Harvest Festival sucks. Where is the music and dancing? Where is the pie eating contest? The biggest pumpkin competition? The livestock? The beer garden? Horseshoe games? I know that this is just the holiday that falls between the Midsummer Festival and Brewfest, but seriously, when you've been working your ass off all summer to keep your crops alive and thriving, you PARTY HARD when it's finally time to harvest them all and then relax until planting (well, aside from the canning and pickling and drying and cooking).

Plus, food is kind of a major part of this time of year, what with everything being fresh and new-picked. Food and food-related activities should be the central part of any harvest celebration. WHERE IS THE FOOD?

Seriously, Blizz, find a rural town somewhere in America — anywhere — and go to their harvest fair, and then rework this holiday, because it's really, really lame.

How to get involved in world PVP

Say you're on a server that offers a lot of world PVP (like mine, for example — VeCo is for FITE!). Even if there's a lot, sometimes it can be hard to get involved if you are new to the realm or have no 70s on the realm, work strange hours, or so on. But you want to fight! So how do you get involved?

1. Check out the guilds. Most realms with active world PVP scenes have at least two or three guilds for each faction (if not more) that are partially or totally devoted to world PVP. Go on the official forums, see if you can find some posts about PVP — or even ask on your own (on an alt if you're shy) about PVP guilds. The ones that are known for it will speak up.

Once you've done that, check their websites, check out WoWWiki (not all realms have updated pages, but many with active RP or world PVP scenes do), and see what the requirements are. Some of the guilds may have stringent requirements while others might be more casual. VeCo, for example, has several guilds active in world PVP from the totally casual to some with requirements ranging from level 58+ only to blood elves only to people who can participate in world PVP twice a week mandatory minimum only.

A lot of the ones with level requirements might have "alt guilds" or "feeder guilds" for lower-level members or full members' alts.

If you're already in a guild with no plans of leaving, you can still make a point to look for people in the big PVP guilds or their feeder guilds and befriend them so that you get a heads-up if anything big is going down (though some PVP events are between certain guilds only).

2. Check out the official realm forums. Most people hate the official forums, and as they are often a cess pit of trolls, gold sellers and sex legs, this is understandable. Nonetheless, your realm forum is still a valuable resource. Often, bored PVPers will take over an opposing faction town and, if the response is poor, post about it in the forums. "LOLOLOL WE JUST DESTOYRED TAUREN MILL" is one of the messages you might see. Check the time stamp. 10 minutes ago? They're likely still there picking off NPCs as they respawn, so get your ass there ASAP.

On realms with lots of world PVP, sometimes people will try to get together big campaigns or events planned via the realm forums (because what's the point of raiding Aerie Peak if no one shows up to defend?). Check for threads about that stuff, and if you can go, then go! The more people see you around, the more likely you are to hear about upcoming open events or get invited to spur-of-the-moment capital raids.

3. Why aren't you on the world defense channel? Every realm has an official world defense channel. If you want to be involved in world PVP, you really should join it (although if you're just on to do dailies or something, it can get really annoying). World Defense works just like Local Defense, only it dings every time any of your faction's NPCs gets attacked anywhere at all.

So head out there to check it out when "Freewind Post is under attack" pops up on your screen, and alert your guild, your friends' list, or people from known PVP guilds in capitals if it is a decent-sized raid.

4. Hang out in the known PVP spots. On VeCo, this is Hillsbrad. Many other realms see a lot of PVP in Stranglethorn Vale, Nagrand, Hellfire Peninsula, and so on. Working on a crafting profession or something? Grab your mats, head out to Tarren Mill or Southshore, and wait for Local Defense to ding (or a rogue or feral druid to sneak into town and try and gank you). Tada! World PVP.

5. Plan an event yourself. None of the above working? Head back to the realm forums, pick a time and a place and see if there's interest. Head to a major city and ask if anyone wants to set up a raid in trade. You might be surprised at the response you get, even on a PVE realm.

Those have all worked for me so far.

My first "real" purple

Look at what I found in Silithus today! Destiny — which is fortunately BOE, since none of my toons can actually use it (and Ahami, who got jumped by the Dust Stormer that dropped it, doesn't even have swords trained). Although I could get it disenchanted, I guess.

Still, my very first purple drop (as opposed to PVP and rep rewards) is kind of exciting. And Ahami dinged 55 just a few minutes later, meaning I have 15 levels to go and then I will have two 70s.

(Blizz really needs to work on the drop rates for some of these quests. I leveled Ide through almost all of 22 killing skull-less humans in Hillsbrad, and now I leveled Ahami, no joke, from less than halfway into 54 to two bars into 55 trying to get 8 scorpid stingers. WTF. Of course, I'm the dumbass who didn't just drop the quest ...)

While I'm actively leveling another hunter and a druid, I think I will be spending most of my playing time and effort in getting the Ide and Ahami semi-decently geared, upping their professions (and dropping skinning for alchemy on Ahami), and seeing how close I can get them to Conqueror in the next two months. Besides, both of the lowbies are still around 20, so I don't think I could get either of them to 70 before WotLK comes out anyway, unless I played one exclusively — and then I'd have three unprepared, poorly geared 70s rather than two decent ones. Boring.

Cats are not nerfed!

They're not they're not they're not!

I am keeping my cats and in fact am probably taming one more (might as well have the impossible-to-see-while-prowlin' ghost saber with a toon I actually play) when the beta hits (unless I really like the lightning bugs or they make elekks tamable). I don't care if they don't get a nifty new skill. You know why?

Because I am getting a nifty new skill which will make Arathi Basin WAY more fun with a cat than anything else.

Picture it: You're capping the mine. Stupid Horde, why would they leave the mine unguarded? Oh well, awesome for you, heh heh heh. Suddenly, there's snakes freaking everywhere, a cat clawing the crap out of you and you've got six arrows sticking out of your chest. WTF!? WHERE DID THE HUNTER COME FROM???

She was camouflaged in the bushes with her invisicat on guard, bitches.

And that's why I'm keeping my cats. (Not that giving them up was ever an option.)

EDIT: Of course, if you prefer PVE, I could see why you'd be stabling the kitty. Prowl kinda sucks for that.

EDIT II: Imagine the blacksmith guarded by TWO camo'd hunters with prowling kitties. Or even THREE. It would be AWESOME.

Weird conversations III

I swear, the conversations I have in game make me laugh.

Random person A: i hear you're the best hunter on the server
Me IRL: AHAHAHAHAHA!
Me in game: Someone lied to you. I'm not even close!
A: we really need another cc for heroic sethekk halls
Me: Sorry, I don't do instances and I'm neutral with Lower City. Good luck, though.
A: :(

Well, I guess ego stroking probably works on some people. But seriously, you're going to try and pull that "best [class] on the server" with someone in random crap and PVP epics? Who isn't even close to the rep needed for that instance? Really? If I was the best hunter on the server, wouldn't I be in gear from 25-man stuff or have a few pieces of S4, at the least? At least inspect someone before you go sucking up to them, come on.

This was especially funny as he whispered right after I got gang-murdered by, like, seven Dawnblade dudes because I broke my own trap. Twice. (I will blame the fact that I rearranged my action bar to making PVP kiting easier — moved everything useful to the left and now Serpent Sting is right where Distracting Shot used to be. It seems to have helped, too — I kited a paladin around for over four minutes yesterday, whereas my previous kiting attempts in PVP have lasted about a minute at most. He could have just sucked, though.)

I am bad at economics

I will not be getting an epic flyer before Wrath of the Lich King. Why? I want to get as many jewelcrafting recipes as possible. Even for jewels I will not personally use on my toons. And some of them cost thousands of gold.

The faction recipes are cheaper, thankfully, but I cannot convince myself that I do not need to spend 10g on a design for a BOP spell damage or healing gem. I will never make them, because Ide is neither a caster nor a healer, but I can make both Kailee's Rose and Don Julio's Heart. *headdesk*

And I will not be able to make up the difference selling them before Wrath, when they will all become obsolete.

(It's not too bad — I have set myself a minimum balance and I am not allowed to purchase anything that would cause me to drop below that balance, because I do want to have a cushion for the expansion. But that didn't stop me from shelling out 400g on the Delicate Living Ruby design this morning.)

About healing in the battlegrounds

More blog-browsing — seriously, not one, but two awesome blogs I've missed somehow in one night? My feed reader will be happy — led me to Out of Mana, and in this entry there was a great observation:

Prioritized targets: Anyone attacking one of my healers got first pri(of course this did wonders for my health, healers like being saved, who knew?!), then opposing healers, than opposing squishies, then finally anything else.

I am a Bad Prioritizer. Sometimes, on my hunter, I tend to go for rogues first, because I am still stuck back in the twink brackets mentally (I know!). Or sometimes things get too crazy and I can't process the information fast enough — I'm a decent multitasker on a large scale, but when I'm looking at my computer screen (I think I mentioned that it's tiny?) I tend to lose track of things sometimes. I do always try to protect the healer, though, and I am getting to be fairly decent at this.

Something to work on.

Anyway, from the healer perspective, I can definitely confirm that I, at least, give first priority for heals to whomever is protecting me. And once they figure out I'm healing them, they protect me pretty well. :-D Oh, sure, if their health bar is topped off and someone else is at 50%, I switch targets. I'm not a total asshole. But if the choice is between the rogue who's saved my ass three times (it's almost always a rogue or a warrior) or the mage who hasn't, I'm gonna save the rogue and not feel real bad when the mage eats it.

Although honestly, if I see a healer getting slammed and they still have mana, I will spam chain heal on them and hope it hits the DPS, because more healers = better chance of winning. I assume this is the correct line of action, since they do the same for me, with whatever sort of heal thing they have.

I honestly think I'm much better at PVP on Ahami, and though I have a blast with both, I think I enjoy healing a little more, too. I still prefer huntering in general — it's more fun for solo play, more fun for questing and dailies and on the odd occasion that I want to run an instance, it's more fun there, too (healing five-man instances is kind of dull — target the tank, maybe drop some totems, and then hit the same button for an hour, unless one of the DPS pulls aggro or you need to interrupt a caster — though I could see raid healing being pretty fun). But for PVP, there's nothing as fun as getting off a heal right when the other side thinks they took down your teammate, or as fun as slapping Earth Shield on someone and having them immediately stick by your side for the whole match because they know that you will save their ass if they cover yours.

It's like soloing as a hunter — when you're out fighting on Hellfire Peninsula or whatever, you pet keeps the mobs off of you and keeps you alive. In return, you keep them alive (by taking out the mob before they smash your pet, hitting Mend Pet when needed, bandaging them, and occasionally, when you've screwed up, stealing aggro and letting yourself get pounded for a minute while they get some health back). You're a team, and it's a great feeling. Neither of you would work as well without the other. As a healer, you don't get that outside of groups, but in groups, instead of a pet you get bodyguards. You keep them alive and they will keep you alive, and the whole team does better for it.

Recruit-A-Friend gearing

I was doing my usual link-jumping thing (SOP when the VeCo realm forums are slow and my work is done) and ended up at Outland Bound. Good blog. When I'm not feeling lazy, I'll add it to the blogroll.

Anyway, in the top entry Ess talks about running into a crappily-geared ret pally at Hellfire Peninsula.

Ideale was not well-geared when I got to Outland — I didn't know what quests to watch out for and ran very few instances. I, too, had horrible pants (level 36 chainmail bikini bottoms, oh how I hated you). I did quest and kill stuff in the levels before 58, so much of my gear was at least level-appropriate and had decent stats, aside from the pants, but I think a lot of peoples' first toons* probably have similar problems, especially if you're still learning the ins and outs of the WoW economy, and especially if you ignore advice and don't bother to take double-gathering or level your single gathering profession past 106 until you hit the 60s. But even though most people might have a few pieces of crap gear when they go through the Dark Portal, the Recruit-A-Friend program really does make it harder to keep up if you don't know what you're doing.

I recruited my roommate. I've been trying to get her to play with me since April, and I really wanted a zhevra mount, so I bullied her into it — she's enjoying it so far. But when we had hit level 8 without doing all of the level 1-5 quests in Mulgore, I knew we were going to have a problem. So at level 8, I walked her through summoning me to Silvermoon City (she plays a blood elf priest — she started with a Forsaken mage but said it was boring because everything died too fast), set her up as a tailor, set my druid up as a leatherworker, and off we went.

And when she logged off, I logged onto Ideale and Ahami, farmed enough linen, wool, and leather to power-level both of us to about 150, made rings and necklaces, purchased bags, and sent them along. I'm keeping an eye out for recipes, too, and showed her how to do the same, as well as how to auction drops, since she does not want me funding her anymore. If we keep this up, we should be able to keep ourselves decently geared via crafting even if we aren't getting all the best quest rewards (and to be honest, I have no idea which quests give decent feral druid or shadow priest gear, and researching would be pointless with the leveling speed).

And since we mostly play together, me tanking** and her DPSing/healing, or me rooting things and us both burning them down, she's getting the grouping thing down pretty well. She's getting the hang of Fade down, she's got Shadow Word: Pain and Smite down, she is a shaky but learning healer. I'll drag her into the battlegrounds at 29 — I have honestly found that the battlegrounds are FANTASTIC places to practice healing; the first instance I ever healed was SM: Cath (I think) and I did not have a single problem other than a crappy hunter running ahead and trying to tank — and maybe suck it up and drag us both through SFK or Wailing Caverns. And I've linked her to a few blogs, thottbot and WoWWiki, too.

So really, in cases like that where people are actually recruiting friends instead of creating second accounts, I blame the recruiter for n00b syndrome — that's fine when it's a case like my friends, who begged me to try it and then I went and sneak-joined on the opposing faction on a different realm six months later. How were they going to help me out then, huh? But when you're actively playing with a friend and dragging them around, at least bother to explain what to look for in gear, how basic abilities work, link them to resources, help them pay for training if they can't afford it, or something. Don't let your friends run around Outland in level 26 pants!

* Ide was not even close to my first toon, but she was the first past 32 and to 70.
** Despite my hatred of the rage bar, I'm actually enjoying this a lot. I think I will be speccing balance later — I love rooting stuff and killing it from afar (Edit: And it seems kind of silly to gear up two healers for PVP, but who knows, maybe I'll like resto druid, too) — but I wanted to try tanking for a little while and give my friend practice with healing and DPSing without pulling aggro, and it doesn't suck. I do need to remember that I am feral when crafting gear for myself, though.