Battle for Azeroth: first alpha impressions

I'm not sure how I got invited to the F&F alpha for Battle for Azeroth, but I'm going to try to be useful and not just run around mining.  This post will probably be super spoilery if you don't want to know anything about quests and whatnot, it's just going to be a running commentary as I run around Zanchul.

So, Marksman hunter, yes.  Of course.

Tranq shot is back!  I'm super excited about that for no real reason aside from Molten Core nostalgia.

Lone Wolf is currently nowhere to be found - and honestly, I like it better like this.  I miss raiding with a pet, and if this sticks, I'll be happy.  With the whole raid buff return, I'm really not surprised if it does stick - you'd have to put the raid buffs back into the Lone Wolf thing somehow, or have Marksman not bring the raid buffs the other two specs do, and that seems like a bad idea (in terms of the likely social pressures it would bring to play a different spec, not mechanically).

And one of the default starter pets for the alpha is that fire turtle that was such a pain to tame in Cataclysm.

Zul shows up early!  Looks like he's going to be a whole quest chain focus kind of thing.

There are orc peons all over, which just feels super Warcrafty.

Just realized that Quick Shot has replaced Arcane Shot, doing functionally the same thing but as physical.

Brutosaurs!  I squealed and made my husband come look.

There's a handy test feedback mini window with both bug and confusion reporting, and feedback at the bottom of all the quests, which makes it easy for someone like me who isn't entirely sure how to be helpful for an alpha/beta.

So far I've gotten stuck in a wall once.

OMG tauren kites.

So Steady Shot is back, while moving, and OMG that druid NPC just turned into a triceratops.

Anyway, so far it looks like the only thing I can't do while moving is Aimed Shot.  There's Rapid Fire now, baseline, which looks like a single-target barrage.  All in all if this incarnation of Marksman makes it to live, I'm going to enjoy it.  (I mean, I've been playing Marksman since 2005 and just kind of rolling with the changes, but I was going to be really sad if I couldn't do solo stuff with my pet - that was probably the biggest potential change I didn't like.)  Aimed Shot has two charges - I'm not sure why, other than from making it too spammable with high haste, maybe?

Ooo, picking a loa.  This looks kind of like picking which building to build on the Broken Shore - each one gives a mobility bonus of some sort out in the Zandalar zones.

I kind of like this more centered main bars thing (default UI) even though it's going to take me a little while to get used to a new mouse position.

"Zandalar forever!"  Yeah, we know who's been watching which movie.

Ooo, trolls from other troll empires.

Anyway, that concludes day one of poking around in Zandalar... now I have to do actual weekend stuff, like laundry.

Sidewinders/7.1.5

I've been poking around in my guild's raid logs since the patch, partly because I'm so glad to be rid of Sidewinders, and partly because being rid of Sidewinders didn't make me worse.

Pre-7.1.5:  ilvl 870, average DPS for boss fights in heroic Emerald Nightmare: 209,635.1 (log)
Post-7.1.5:  ilvl 876, average DPS for boss fights in heroic Emerald Nightmare: 240,105.2 (log)

My ilvl has only gone up a little, but that's about the same kind of boost in raw numbers that I saw from initially switching to Sidewinders a few weeks into normal Emerald Nightmare.  I didn't like doing it; I like the on-demand instant shot that Arcane Shot has become, and other than kind of switching Marked Shot for Serpent Sting, it's the same three shots that were the core of my Molten Core rotation.

I realize a lot of hunters are disappointed in Marksman (and Beast Mastery) right now, but playing at the level I am (where that 308k on Nythendra is kind of a personal non-trash best), I'm really happy with my numbers.  I'm also really happy to have some traps back.

After this long, I had gotten used to the Sidewinders/Marked Shot AOE, but by the time we got to Dragons trash I was pushing out relatively decent numbers again.

Overall, across our raid group, the patch was good.  We steamrolled through H-Emerald Nightmare, beating our record times for both Cenarius and Xavius, andwent for a couple easy kills in normal Trial of Valor, but no one wanted to go through then minutes of Helya after all that.  Sunday we're going to look at heroic Trial of Valor and see what it looks like now.

Still want some kind of really AOE (either damage or heals) for my discipline priest, but that doesn't seem likely at this point.

The Return of Hunter's Mark

So I've been using a shot macro since like, Karazhan or Wrath sometime, when I realized I was not effectively using Steady Shot in my rotation.  The macro has changed a bit over the years, as shots available changed, haste plateaus affected it, and so forth.

So, Steady Shot is gone for me.  I don't really miss it - I like having Arcane Shot back, on demand, free and on the move.  I do miss the Aimed Shot mobility, but that's just a matter of retraining myself to stand still for it.  I've got Aimed Shot, Arcane Shot, Multi-Shot, and Marked Shot for core shots now, with Bursting Shot as an interesting kind of combination of Barrage and the old Scatter Shot.  I went with Murder of Crows for my regular set up, which I've been occasionally regretting when I go to farm old raids and forget that I can't just change it on the fly when I remember, after I'm there, that I kind of want it for that.  I love the crows, though, and it feels safer in raids and dungeons since my mastery increases my range now and I don't have as good a feel for how far back is safe to Barrage yet.

I went with Patient Sniper originally for its synergy with Sidewinders, realized that Sidewinders didn't feel safe enough for group use with the whole range issue (like Barrage), and switched it to Trick Shot.  Originally I had been using Steady Focus, but I felt like I was drowning in Focus with it, so I moved that over to Careful Aim.  Depending on how haste, gear changes, and such affect it while leveling, I may switch it back.

Since I can't just easily switch between two Marksman specs (I was dual-MM again for the last while of Warlords) to go back and forth between having Lone Wolf or not for various fights in raids, I'm not sure I'm going to use it much.  I've got Binding Shot slotted, but I might switch over to Camouflage for general use.  I miss Freezing Trap, but Binding Shot doesn't really replace it.

So what does all this mean for the macro?  Short answer: the macro is dead.  I could throw something together, maybe - Aimed, Arcane, Marked, Aimed has a decent chance of regularly applying and exploiting Marked Shot and Vulnerability based on how the proc rate for Hunter's Mark seems to work out right now.  It wouldn't be sure-fire, though, and it would get hung up on Marked Shot any time Hunter's Mark failed to proc.  I'd have to do a similar one for Multi-Shot, as well, for AOE situations.

So what am I doing instead?  Marked Shot already lights up when it's usable, and Multi and Arcane light up when Hunter's Mark application is ready to go.  This means I need to remind myself to use Crows, Trueshot, and Aimed Shot besides when Lock and Load procs.  Crows and Trueshot are easy Weak Auras, and I set one up for Vulnerability to light up Aimed Shot when my target is vulnerable.  Button glow works fairly well as a cue for me.  (Anything audio or flashing is bad for my sensory input issues.)  So this is what I'm looking at now:

I switched from Binding Shot to Camouflage by the time I got to taking this screennshot.

However, this isn't ideal for someone who uses the mouse for the bulk of their abilities - it means I'm watching the action bar a lot more.  I can't play with straight keybinds for abilities on the left hand in a raid/dungeon situation for more than about an hour without aggravating the joints in my hand (probably arthritis), so mouse is preferred for something I play a lot.  (Sadly this is why I don't tank more - I do play that with left-hand keybinds.)  For my priest, since she's usually focused on health bars anyway, it just means clustering everything in one area of the screen.  I've done a decent amount of raid tactical calls as a hunter, though, from add calls to doing things like the conveyor belts in Siege of Orgrimmar.  Hopefully I can adjust to the point I don't have to watch the bars too much.

All that said, I'm enjoying the playstyle of apply Hunter's Mark, apply Vulnerable, nuke with Aimed Shot (currently from 46 yards out). And I helped my mom tame an explosive sheep last weekend, even though I had to swap to Survival to do it because of the Freezing Trap changes.  I'll live without the macro.

Now I just have to figure out how to track Atonement in larger raids, and I'm good to go...

Transmog Weapons

So as I'm logging around my level 100 toons today, when I got to my shaman, I suddenly realized I didn't know if she was going to have a spec that she could transmog into Gorehowl with the artifact weapons.  I don't play enhancement, and I remembered that elemental is getting a fist weapon (cool enough), but... Gorehowl?

Not all of my toons have weapon transmogs that I care about; my mage, for example, has the basic Draenor staff because all the staffs I like to go with her transmog are bound to other characters, and at this point I'm not buying duplicates when the looks are going to get shared so soon.

Some of them, though, I'm probably going to have to change.

Hunter (main), marksman
Currently:  Golden Bow of Quel'Thalas
Changing?:  Nope, hunters have been able to transmog between ranged weapon looks for a while, and Marksman is getting the bow artifact, anyway.  The Windrunners are cool, and all, but I'm a Tauren.  My alt hunters by and large don't really have a preferred mog weapon, although my original Night Elf is tranmogged into the Gorewood Bow (Blightcaller raids, heh) right now; most of them may use the artifact looks.

Warrior, protection/sometimes fury
Currently: Blazing Rapier/Drillborer Disk
Changing?: This pair was picked to go with her current transmog, so it really depends what pops up in the plate transmog, as well as my one-hand/shield options.  I did pick up the sweet shield Naana has paired with Quel'Delar, so I may look at the blue/steel/yellow/gold options.  That said, the base artifact look for prot doesn't jump out and grab me for the kind of transmogs I like for my warrior, so I probably won't be using that unless digging into the plate backlog turns up something I like with it.

Priest, discipline
Currently: Communal Staff
Changing?:  Probably not, at least not for the initial discipline staff's look.  I love the bits of disc priest artifact story I've heard, so I'm really looking forward to seeing how the quest story plays out, but my priest's current overall transmog is the one I'm most fond of, and I'm not likely to break it up for a while (unless I find shoulders I like better; the ones I have currently are because they're the best color match I had available; I'm not sold on the fiddly bits sticking out of them).

Warlock, destruction
Currently: Soul Harvester
Changing?: Eh... the destro staff looks cool, but... Soul Harvester.  That said, I do have a lot of neat purple-colored cloth if I haven't vendored too much of it, so I'll probably see what it looks like on the goblin once before deciding for sure.  Thematically, the Scepter of Sargaras isn't really a step down.  If I don't like the way any of the purple looks, I'll stick with my tier 1/Soul Harvester setup.

Shaman, elemental/restoration
Currently: Gorehowl
Changing?: Unfortunately it looks like I'm switching off of Gorehowl once I get an artifact for the shaman; I'm looking at either a mace and shield or fist and shield.  I have been accumulating something of a shield collection, so I'll see what options I've got to go with her current mog (which, at this point, is something of an iconic shaman look to me).  I'm leaning towards elemental at the moment, but if resto solos okay, I tend to play my healing capable toons as healers (excluding the paladin).

Paladin, protection
Currently: Knight's War Hammer & Emerald Shield
Changing?:  Like my other plate wearers, whether she keeps her setup depends what turns up in the plate transmog.  I love emerald plate on my paladin, and the prot paladin artifact's basic look is more blue/silver than green/gold.  If something turns up in the plate transmog I like as well, I might try it out.  The Knight's War Hammer and Emerald Shield work with this set so well, especially using the Ripped Sandstorm Cloak heirloom with it.

Death Knight, blood
Currently:  Darkened Broadsword
Changing?:  As much as I love this sword (I shamelessly rolled need on it while leveling her through Outland since my troll's was bound to her (Titan Grip!)), it depends what pops up in red/silver plate transmog options.  Being a green cow, I'm not sure the red/silver will look great on her.  Some of the salvage yard swords for death knights were pretty cool, too, so I may go with the black/blue transmog options, again, depending what pops up in my plate options on Tuesday.

Monk, mistweaver
Currently: Aspirant's Staff of Harmony
Changing?: Not immediately - I don't dislike the Mistweaver staff, but it doesn't look like it goes as well as I'd like with the Wolf Rider's getup I've got my monk in.  If there's a leather set that turns up in my mog interface that I like with the artifact staff, I might use it instead.  This staff was picked more because it worked the best with Wolf Rider's of my available options.  Wolf Rider's was picked partly so I had a toon that didn't clash with the Ruby Panther.

Don't care/waiting to see what pops up in the new transmog interface:  rogue (subtlety), hunters 2-4 (all marksman), mage (frost), druid (primarily restoration but sometimes balance), priest 2 (discipline).  I mean, I've got the Christmas Tree daggers for my rogue, but I'm not particularly tied to them.  If I can ever transmog the Dark Herring, though, that's hands-down what my rogue is going to be using.  And the Scythe of Elune!  I may have to play balance more on my druid, because I love the Scythe of Elune.  I was terribly frustrated in Vanilla when I found both halves of that story line in quest chains (first in Duskwood, then in Ashenvale), and they never linked up until Cataclysm and the Gilneans came in as a faction.

All in all, I think the Golden Bow of Quel'Thalas, and the Communal Staff are the two weapons I'll be keeping for sure; a lot of the others are dependent on keeping the transmog they're currently part of.  I'd keep Gorehowl if I could (partly because I find the idea of healing while wielding it amusing), but alas, there are no two-handed shaman artifacts.

Bonus Transmog Discussion: Axeclaw Mail

I'm using the Axeclaw set (the Tanaan token drops) on my main for the bulk of her set right now basically because the gloves sold me on the set.  I love the green/white contrast and the rivets up the inside; I this may be the only armor set where the gloves were the piece that jumped out and grabbed me enough to make me want to use it.  I had been using the set belt in the transmog, until I got the Girdle of the Legion General and I suddenly had 3D pouches on my belt.  I'll probably mog out of this once I find a set in Legion that I like, but pouches on my belt.  I'm probably keeping the belt if they don't have any as neat in Legion.

Legion sounds awesome!

Okay, for once I got to watch BlizzCon streams at home in real time!  All in all, I'm excited about a lot of the stuff they talked about.  I'm not super-stoked about playing Marksman without a pet, but it's for sentimental reasons, not mechanical ones, so I figure I'll just swap over to Beast Mastery when I want to visit my pets.

But what I am looking forward to...  (If you don't have livestream access, try Blizzard Watch for info and lots of pictures!)

• The new Hearthstone adventure:  Okay, it's not a WoW thing, but I literally yelled, "Oh, my God," at the screen when they showed the Golden Monkey card, so... yeah, I'm kinda stoked.  I don't play enough Hearthstone to get past rank 15ish, but I play enough to get to 17 most seasons.  So slightly more than casual play, but not a lot.
• The whole artifact customization system:  It kind of reminds me of FFX-2's dress sphere system, lol.  But I loved FFX-2 (it's the only one I've actually finished), so that's really a plus for me.
• EAGLES
• The transmog system.  I was commenting in guild chat as I was watching it, and everyone seemed excited.  I've done a lot of quests on Duskhawk, and I've got a pretty awesome shield collection... on a level 47 alt on another sever from my warrior and paladin that will actually be relevant.  Only having to get something to drop once to use it in transmog for all the toons that could equip it will be really helpful for shared armor types for the classes I mostly heal on.
• Atonement focused Disc!  I've been playing Discipline (or a Discipline-heavy hybrid spec) since Vanilla, and I loved when they added Atonement.  It feels weaker this expansion than in previous ones, but I'm looking forward to the soloing survivability returning again.
• Okay, so when they started talking about the Subtlety rogue as ninja thing - yes, yes, that is why I made my rogue in Vanilla.  I spent most of that panel just kind of happily gibbering.
• Improved UI!  Every quality-of-life improvement they make just makes me that much happier.
• Meaningful profession content!  There are days all I want to do is spend three hours going in circles mindlessly mining - and now we won't even have to compete for nodes!
• The changes to the mob-tapping system also make me happy; I was doing Throne of Kil'jaeden dailies Saturday morning on my Disc priest, which is a, well, slow process.  And the event to spawn the Succubus boss popped up.  So I go up and start slowly working on the elite mobs there.  I can kill them, it just takes a while.  And a hunter comes up and starts killing them, and I was glad even though I wasn't getting objective completion just because it went so much faster, but in the Legion system, I would have been getting completion credit, and loot, and that would have been nice!  People might actually help you kill stuff in passing more often because it benefits them!
• The seeming mashup of daily/weekly quests and bonus objectives - show up in a zone at max level and there will be some content there to do!  No need to hit up a hub, just go to the map area and do it!
• I want to be excited about what they're doing with dungeons - I like the concept - the folks I mostly ran dungeons with up through, like, Wrath stopped playing for the most part around Cataclysm.  Maybe if I find some new folks to run with regularly.
• The frickin' Scythe of Elune.  Okay, I did like, all the quests in Vanilla.  All of them, as in, when they first put in gold at max level for quest rewards when you couldn't get the quest XP, I went and did every quest I could find.  And so I did both the Alliance and Horde branches of the Scythe of Elune stuff, and they dropped it, and then in Cataclysm in the Worgen stuff they finally wrapped that up, but I'm so excited by the presence of the Scythe of Elune that I'm debating making my druid primarily Balance instead of Resto to start out with that.  SCYTHE OF ELUNE.  
• I like the idea of my hunter getting a Windrunner-legacy bow, but I've been transmogging into the Golden Bow of Quel'Thalas, and that's aesthetically hard to beat. (It's bigger than my Tauren.)  But I really do like the idea, and it sounds like the progression process for the artifacts will have lots of story meat.  And story meat is the best meat...
• NONI GREW UP and he has bacon for us!
• Baby mooses!

See? Bigger than my Tauren & 100% awesome.

So that scene at the end of the movie trailer, where he jumps off the balcony onto his griffon to fly into combat? THAT. THAT IS WHY I LOVE FLIGHT ON MY DRUID.

I'm kind of stoked. >.>

Warlords of Draenor Shot Rotation

Okay, we're a bit into Warlords now, and I haven't been entirely satisfied with the numbers my rotation was putting out.  Since I absolutely love the concept of Exotic Munitions (specifically, of fire arrows, which I've wanted since Vanilla), and I'm frequently the raid's battle rez with my crane, I'd been using this cast sequence still:

/castsequence Chimaera Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Aimed Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Aimed Shot

But I've been drowning in focus.  Just drowning in it.  So I put together this cast sequence to work with:

/castsequence Chimaera Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Aimed Shot

The difference on the target dummies, using Murder of Crows, Glaive Toss, and Poisoned Ammo, was a bump from ~15k to ~16k.  Moving in a positive direction!

But then I decided to try Focusing Shot, since I was frequently getting Glaive Toss or Crows in between my Steady Shots when I wasn't paying attention.  The first attempt went badly - I just shoved Chimaera, Focusing, and Aimed into a cast sequence, and I was again drowning in focus and clipping cooldowns.  Based on those observations, I put together this:

/castsequence Aimed Shot, Aimed Shot, Focusing Shot, Chimaera Shot

The results were markedly better than either of the Exotic Munitions tests: around 18.5k.  That's an improvement of about 3k on my average dps right now; with raid buffs that will likely be even better.

What I'm not sure about is movement:  Focusing requires not moving, and there are some fights where movement is important.  I won't get to test this in our raids again until Thursday due to work, but I might hit up LFR before then to see how it shakes out.

Either way, with or without Focusing Shot, this is the first major revision to the cast sequence in what, four years?

Times change!

6.0 - Initial Thoughts

Patch day has come and gone, and besides Battleground queues being temporarily broken...

I need a 'mog worthy of her now.

First and foremost, my warrior looks amazing. When I first saw her updated model in the beta, I nearly cried. Troll hair has been notoriously... sad, and she just looks awesome now.

My wolf dances again. I started burning party grenades after watching my tauren’s facial expressions while dancing, and I had puppy out from a foray into the new UBRS, and... I may have kind of shouted in excitement to my husband.

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

I only changed 7 of about 40 faces: three unfortunate human eyebrows; two unexpectedly scowling gnomes; one overly perky night elf; and one troll that has so many awesome options now that I liked better. The rest I’ve been happy enough with, although I might go change some hairstyles now that they’re less blocky.

My rogue won the most-filled-crafting-tab. She’s the one that’s kept one stack of every type of herb.

Yes, that's Blood of Heroes.

I shoved so much stuff into void storage on my main hunter... and then went and did the same on my warlock, because wow, she had a lot of banked gear.

My shaman won the most-gold-from-currency-conversion: ~1400g.

I snagged the Bottomless Bag pattern for <100g. Thanks, combined Auction House!

And soloing... Just, wow. Last time I hopped into Dragon Soul 10N (about 3 weeks ago?) Morchok killed me since my pet wouldn’t tank him. I killed him in 9 seconds last night. Everything up to Spine was a cakewalk; Spine does some weird rolling stuff that’s going to take some work to get down smoothly.

I haven't tried out healing on my priest yet - I have heard mixed reviews.  I'll see how it goes later this week.

On classes

Why do I like the classes I play?  Why don't I like the ones I'm not?  A few bullet points:

Classes I'm playing:

Hunter

• Independence: I'm a solo player by nature, and being able to do so when I want to is great.  Hunters are great for soloing.
• Ranged: I have a ranged mentality; I like being far enough away to have a chance to run away if things go pear-shaped.
• Manageable rotation: Okay, so marksman doesn't really have that reputation, but for me, it works.  I can macro the core of it (Chimera/Steady/Arcane) and work in all the specials (Stampede, Crows, Rapid Shot, etc.) as they're available.  I can't make that work on every class.

Priest

• Multiple healing styles: A priest can go Disc or Holy, and within each, switch it up even more - single target, AOE, direct heals, indirect heals.  I love options.
• Reasonable healer soloing: I can quest as a disc priest and just not die.  Is this what it feels like to be a pally?  I'm not sure.

Rogue

• Stealth: I discovered the thrill of just walking by stuff to pick flowers way back in Azshara at level 50, and it's just wonderful.  I don't have to fight stuff unless I want to.  It's like flying before there was flying.
• Survivability: Evasion tanking the 2nd boss in the Black Morass for the last ~20% was a rush, and not doable on every class.

Shaman

• Chain Lightning:  I love elemental, and spamming chain lightning is a bit disturbingly satisfying, especially when it procs and you get double chains.
• Ghost Wolf: Happy puppy dances!

Warrior

• Shield Slam!  Shield slam is so fun it warrants an exclamation point rather than a colon.
• Charge:  I leveled in Battle Stance way too long just to keep using charge.
• Victory Rush:  Because hitting things makes you feel better!

Warlock

• FIRE.  Uh, yeah, that's most of it.  BURN ALL THE THINGS goes a surprisingly long way with me.  And I love my little goblin destro lock.

Druid

• Flight Form:  I'll admit it, I made the druid initially for faster herbing.  And then I discovered just how amazing flight form is: hop out of water, keybind, A BIRD!  As I said earlier today, such freedom.
• Healing:  My second favorite healing playstyle; variety of buttons, instant heals, some AOE "oh crap" options.
• Downside: I like the Balance playstyle, but moonkin form just does not do it for me.  If I could glyph to play Balance and still look like a Tauren, I would.   (Am I the only Resto druid not glyphed to look like a tree?)

Classes I'm not (really) playing:

Mage

• Main server is full.  That's pretty much my main reason my mage got stranded at 40.  I was enjoying fire, then moved her to move some heirlooms when server transfers were cheap.  Then I rolled my druid on my main server...

Death Knight

• Confusing rotations:  I don't know which buttons I'm supposed to push when.  I'm not sure which abilities really go with which spec.
• Starting zone:  I've played through the DK starting zone... five times now?  It's like the Worgen, Goblin, and Pandaren zones - once was enough.  Having the option would be nice, but having the option to skip it would also be nice.

Paladin

• Confusing rotations:  Same problem as the DK, really - I was okay until Mists, and then enough changed fundamentally that I don't know what I'm doing again.  There's even only one DPS spec and I'm not sure what buttons to push for AOE vs. single-target.
• Healing not compelling:  I tried healing briefly, but stopped because I couldn't figure out how to not run out of mana.  That was really unfamiliar.
• Upside: Since the paladin is my last character under 87 on my main server, I'm probably going to try her again when I finish my druid.  Maybe *gasp* tanking.

Monk

• Late to the game:  The monk suffers from being a new class when I'm full on my main server.
• Melee animations:  The monk animations override a lot of the best melee animations - undead female special melee attack, the flippy one.  I just... wasn't as interested when I saw that.

Raiding!

We've been hacking away at the Stone Guard for a while, killing them the first time two lockouts ago, and again last night (this time with chains up!).  Feng will fall soon - probably this week or next.

I've been raiding as Beast Mastery since 5.0 went in, but with 5.1's last minute buff to Aspect of the Hawk and the change to allow Steady and Cobra Shots to be cast on the run, I went back to Marksman last night.  The change is good!  I'm posting decent numbers (for me) and finally not feeling like a deadweight.

I'm switching back and forth between Spirit Bond and Iron Hawk for soloing/raiding, as well as between Barrage and Glaive Toss.  I shouldn't love Barrage as much as I do, given how much it tries to get me killed, but let's face it:  40 yard range, hits everything in front of me?  It just makes some of the dailies go so much faster.  On the other hand, I don't dare bring it into an instance, because I don't know what it's going to pull.  (Also, randomly accidentally killing critters that may or may not be capturable battle pets... ;_;)

I'm not sure if I'm going to push to finish reputations first, to hit 150 mounts, or if I'm going to hit up the old raids for the battle pets contained therein, but so far 5.1 has been good for me.

PS: cloth heirloom panda is creepy:

Those eyes!

Offspec

I'm a marksman hunter, yeah?  I have been for what, 7.5 years now?

And since the 5.0 patch, I've been doing raids and dungeons as beast mastery.  *shudder*

The results were pretty marked: an 8-10k increase in DPS on Zon'ozz probably says a lot at just how bad I am at marksman sometimes, especially when I'm macroless as BM and have been running with a cast sequence macro on MM.

It also suggests that maybe it's time for me to try running without the macro as MM and see how that goes, as well.  I really like Aimed Shot and Chimera Shot, and I miss them - especially Chimera Shot - in the BM spec.  I could get a self-heal through talents, but it's not the same - it's really just one more thing to cram onto my bars somewhere.  Sure, there's a trap pull-out now, but that's not particularly handy for keybinds.

On the BM front, I've picked up one of the gorgeous green cranes (Lucius) and a black goat (Aurelius - there is a pun there, but it's not really explainable outside my marriage).  They're not exotic pets, but they're pets.  I have four exotics at the moment - Skoll, a devilsaur, a worm (named Larry, because he just seemed like a Larry), and the cat from Hyjal that I'm probably going to dump because I really don't care about it and it's taking up space.  I kinda just tamed it because it was there while I was getting tokens to try for a scorchling.  The devilsaur is pretty, but he may get axed, as well.

In other news:  I spent the first... day and a half? of Mists doing pet battles to get to 250 pets.  Then I finally went off to leveling.  I'm up to 88, and I've discovered that Stampede will just make extra copies of pets if your 5 active slots aren't full.  (Good to know if you want to keep an empty slot to tame something pretty.)

Professions have been much less painful to skill up, other than the Spirit of Harmony requirements for damn near everything I actually want to make.  The engineering pet takes two - two - when you can make the inscription pets for some paper and ink.  I've gotten inscription, engineering, and alchemy maxed, and enchanting and blacksmithing are close.  Jewelcrafting is also close and is currently restricted mostly by my lack of blue gems to bump it up the rest of the way.  I'm not appreciating the inability to mine for gems without a rare-spawn pickaxe.  Cooking is maxed!  Well, the Way of the Oven is maxed.  Working on the others.  Overall, the guild just needs fishing and archaeology to get its heirloom pants.  I've been working some on fishing - it's at ~555 - but got distracted by clearing out the map in Krasarang.  I've caught one rare fish so far, but I'm still a Stranger to Nat Pagle. :(

Despite having played in beta, I'm still impressed by the size of the map and the sheer quantity of stuff to do crammed into it in Mists - the minigames add interesting layers, and the farm makes me want to get all my toons into Valley of the Four Winds.  I need either scallions or leeks for my next recipe. >.<

Deficiencies

As the title of this blog probably makes clear, I play Marksman hunters.  Four of them, three of which are 85, and the fourth is 82 and waiting for me to get around to doing Cataclysm zones yet again.  But as I have eight characters at 85 and a slew of lower level characters, it's probably also clear that I play other classes.

Like with hunters, my foray into other classes tends to be specialization specific: I play priests almost exclusively as discipline, for example.  I think my 85 priest has two 5-man runs as shadow... ever.  I've never specialized into Holy.  My warlock (who will likely get bumped up the alt chain due to the 'lock changes in Mists) is exclusively destruction.  My rogue was exclusively subtlety until dual-spec and the simplification of okay assassination damage rotations in Wrath made it possible for me to do more than solo or PVP on her.  My warrior was my most frequent foray into active dual-specializing; I leveled her as fury, but also kept up with her prot spec (which I love to pieces).  My shaman has an offspec (right now it's enhancement, though for a period in Burning Crusade it was resto), but she hasn't actually queued as anything but elemental in probably three years.

For the most part I do okay with these alts.  My priest has done 6/8 of Dragon Soul 10, somehow missing a random boss in each half, but having killed Deathwing.  I healed extensively with her at 70, gearing her out as well as Duskhawk through both Karazhan and whatever we were calling Justice/Valor points back then.  My warrior (whom y'all have seen in her shiny new transmogrification recently) can tank the new five-mans okay when I get up the nerve to queue into them, and my baby warrior is being leveled prot and doing random dungeons exclusively as a tank - I haven't even given her a DPS offspec.  (Prot AOE with Blood & Thunder, Cleave, and Victory Rush is a surprisingly satisfying way to level if you can find areas dense enough to pull enough mobs at the same time.)  I haven't done as much with my rogue recently, but I very much enjoyed 2v2 with my brother's rogue way back in the day, as well as Extreme Herb Farming (AKA getting exalted with Sporeggar via solo herbing trips in Underbog).  My warlock is... complicated as destro right now, but I think I'm getting a feel for it again.  She's got my transmutation alchemy, and I like her more as a goblin than when she was a blood elf.  My shaman I've taken through raid finder and gotten geared about equally to my priest - spammable chain lightning is awesome.

Those are the alts I'm at least marginally good at.  Combined with my hunters, that's six of ten classes.  The remainders (death knight, druid, mage, and paladin) I haven't gotten to level cap.  Even with all my baby alts, the ones I play the most are the priests (discipline, one of each faction, both in Northrend) and my warrior, who's in the upper 40s right now.  I like priest healing, and the queues for both the priests and the baby prot warrior are generally fast and painless.  That doesn't help with the "expand my horizons" kind of stuff I figured I would do prior to Mists, though.

Now, I've got one of each of the others.  I actually have a crapload of level 5ish mages, mostly gnomes, mostly with the same name.  I finally made myself get one further, so I have a draenei fire mage in the mid-20s.  She has portals!  And I know crap about fire.  My husband plays a mage at level cap, so I theoretically have someone around I could ask for help, except he plays the two other specs: arcane for PVE and frost for PVP.  Let's face it; I like to burn stuff.  This is why my warlock is destro.  I'm looking forward to Hot Streak, when I can cut out Arcane Missiles and spend more time with Pyroblast.  But really - I have no idea what I'm doing.  I push buttons, fire happens, and maybe I'm doing okay?  It's hard to gauge if I'm doing okay DPS at my level when I don't have heirlooms on the server she's on, and most of the other DPS I random into groups with do.  I'm having fun with her, which is the important part, but I don't want to be a burden on a group (or kicked) if I'm not pulling my weight and just don't realize it.

I tried playing a death knight back when they first came out, and it wasn't too bad; I just got bored with it. I made a new one a couple months ago to try to see if it's any better now in terms of "got bored with it" - and I'm not sure, because the specs and rotations don't really readily present themselves.  I have a bunch of buttons, and they do stuff, but I don't know which strikes to use in which spec.  She's unholy mostly because I find the ghoul names amusing.  She's also already acting as a bank, at 58.

I have a different but similar problem with my druid.  She's 15, currently feral, and which abilities she's supposed to use are obvious.  I just can't seem to get into playing her.  Maybe it's the zone - I started her as a worgen, so at this point she's been dumped into Darkshore, and really, after hearthing to Auberdine for the entirety of my Vanilla Alliance career, Darkshore is painful for me.  I spent a lot of time there, and the places and NPCs that I was familiar with are dead and destroyed.  Maybe if I take her over to Westfall the environment won't be so discouraging to getting to know her.

I've got two paladins.  One is my original Vanilla paladin, still in her 40s, who was shuffled around servers when transfers were free from overcrowding.  The other is my relatively new Tauren paladin, who is about 72.  I've been playing them as retribution, because ret is relatively easy, the buttons you push are pretty straightforward, and stuff dies.  I've gotten to the point that I'm not sure I'm doing ret right in groups, though; I'm pretty sure I should be doing better DPS, but I'm not sure how.  So I got them both some intellect plate (a challenge in both level brackets, surprisingly - and intellect plate heirlooms, at least from Justice Points, seem to be... lacking) and gave them holy off-specs, and... Oh, my God, I have no idea what any of these buttons or procs in holy mean.  I heal on three priests, right?  I push buttons, heals and bubbles happen, and I'm pretty good at keeping my mana bar at least half full for most of a dungeon, unless the tank or DPS are crazy and pull all the things.  But on the paladin?  I haven't really figured out her mana management.  I looked at some forum posts, and it seems to be a matter of picking efficient spells, using spells I don't have yet at that level, and judging with Insight.  But just reading spell tooltips and talents, I'm really not sure.

So yeah, there's four classes that I haven't played much, and at this point I think I've figured out why:  they're not intuitive for me.  Whether this is a deficiency of me or of the class or spec in question, I'm not sure.  My guild's death knight contingent, which had been pretty strong in Wrath even after the novelty wore off, has been more or less decimated in Cataclysm.  We don't have any death knights raiding regularly with us, and the ones that sometimes do are alts.  If I'm going to play her at all, I think I'm going to have to look up what each spec uses just so I can figure out how to get started with her.  We still have some dedicated druids; I think in the case of druids, it's really just me.  For some reason they don't click.  Paladins the guild still has in spades, and I think in this case it's a learning curve thing.  I'm going to have to actually sit down and read something to do 5's as a holy paladin, which seems kind of weird after how intuitively I got into discipline healing.  I think for the mage it may just be I picked a bad leveling spec, at least for groups; I'm kind of a slow caster on her still, so stuff tends to die in heirloomed groups before I can get a fireball off on it.

The overall deficiency with these classes probably isn't the classes, really; the problem is that I tend to pick specs that I like conceptually.  I was into Robin Hood and William Tell when I was in... about 4th grade; accuracy and trick shot kind of stuff appealed to me; I went Marksman in Vanilla, and other than occasional stints to tame pretty things, I've never left it.  I like discipline priesting because I like indirect healing, and I like utility, which discipline used to have a bit more of way back when.  I love atonement healing, and it's made leveling as discipline, which I've always done with my priest, so overpowered.  I can handle stuff up to about six or seven levels higher (singly; I've done groups of about six mobs three and four levels higher (accidentally) without dying) before the hit rating glyph for Smite and Holy Fire becomes insufficient.  I rolled my first warrior with the intention of tanking - before I rolled my first Horde hunter, actually.  I didn't actually level her for another two or three years, but smacking stuff in the face with a shield is my favorite part of being a warrior.  I've always loved subtlety's survivability, and getting around without being noticed is my favorite part of being a rogue: cat burgling, in a way, even though it's just an herb or something.  My lock is a pyro (and my void walker always got me killed).  And, well, I mentioned my shaman and chain lightning.

I like the idea of a pyro mage.  I have a chimenea in the back yard, and I like to have fires.  I also picked up grilling recently, because, well, fire.  (First time lighting a charcoal grill: one match. /flex)  Arcane appeals to me for similar reasons that discipline originally did, but the novelty of setting the world on fire with my draenei probably has to wear off first.  Holy was my first spec as a paladin, and I went ret when I picked the class up again... five? years later for the expediency of leveling.  The last time I really played holy, consecration was a talent.  It's changed so drastically since then.  Death knights and druids, though?  I don't really conceptually favor any of their specs - this is probably part of my problem getting into them.

So for now the death knight and druid will probably stay on the bench; since I kind of get the mage, and at least sort of get ret paladins, even if I haven't figured out how to make holy work, I'll probably focus on those two of my un-level-capped classes.

Beta Mists, 6

Oh, look, a patch.  Download was surprisingly fast.

Hey, Hadrian is back to his normal size!  Unfortunately it doesn't look like this means the pet talents are in yet.

The slicky quest in the Jade Forest that wasn't letting me pick up the exploded slickies seems to work now.  There are spinning turtles here.

Whoops, phasing error.  Maybe I have to complete some more quests to make my turn-in person show up.  But now!  Going in search of pets!

Aw, you can't actually collect battle pets yet.  Sorry, Mr. Mouse!

So far, browsing through, a few pets have abilities in.  The Albino Snake, Jubling, Hawk Owl, Nuts, Armadillo Pup, Baby Blizzard Bear, Core Hound Pup, Crimson Whelpling, Mechanical Squirrel, Onyxian Whelpling, Peddlefeet, Strand Crawler, Tranquil Mechanical Yeti, Willy, Bananas, Gurky, Lil' K.T., Mini Tyrael, Pandaren Monk, Phoenix Hatchling, Spectral Tiger Cub, Stone Armadillo, and Zergling all have abilities, although some of them are obviously test abilities.

Jacob the Test Seagull, with his test abilities

Crimson Whelping - pet abilities

I don't know where Bubbles is acquired, but dude.  Also, the Dimetradon Hatchling appears to have some camera distance issues.  And, dude, the Fetish Shaman?  The otter pup is absolutely adorable.

Bubbles

Fetish shaman

Otter pup

Whoops, flew around, and Hadrian shrunk again.

Checked in at the mining trainer; I really hope Trillium's materials get nerfed down to one of each ore.

First new metal - Ghost Iron

Second new metal - Trillium

Hm, the specialization panes have had their information reduced to just the main spells.  I liked knowing what the specialization spells/abilities were and when you get them.  I also don't know what my mastery ability is - and I have no way of telling what the other specs mastery is without actually respec'ing.  (Feedback submitted on the forum, woo.)

The current incarnation of the specialization pane.

I seem to still have the Master Marksman ability (Steady Shots are still stacking it and proc'ing Fire!), but I can't find anything in my spellbook that tells me I have it.  Oh, wait, there is is!  So I'm still supposed to have it. :)

I went to check my priest's talents, and it's consistently giving me a fatal error.

Logged on the Tauren monk to check what the trainer was like, and, well:

I foresee a lot of new monks falling off the bridge.

Okay, so I went to look at the warlock again, and they've fixed destro's mana regen spell (Chaotic Energy, which is passive), and the new play style is hella fun.  Burning Embers can be used to empower a Soul Fire nuke or to heal - which is helpful, since carrying Burning Embers damages you.  So far I've gotten an 83k Soul Fire, and I don't even know how that compares to live.

Chaotic Energy - Destruction's mana regeneration

Also, there's Fire and Brimstone.  It uses a Burning Ember to splash around Immolate, Incinerate, Conflagrate, or a Curse - so if you're going to need to AOE, save up an Ember for Fire & Brimstone, and then pop your dot/debuff/nuke of choice on the group and then, if needed, you can follow up with Shadowfury or Rain of Fire.  So you could AOE up Curse of Elements or Immolate, both of which will buff your Rain of Fire, or Conflagrate if you just want to daze them, or Incinerate if that's all it will take to kill or mostly kill them.

Fire & Brimstone, sort of like Soulburn just for Destro

Huh, nice little warlock bug.  Shoot keeps trying to turn on, all by itself, even with no wand equipped.  And keeping me from casting Rain of Fire without manually canceling it.  (Added to the bug thread for it.)

Beta Mists, 2

I played a monk to level three before creating a beta guild for my guildies who are getting in.

Not being able to scroll out further than the default may cause me some issues; I need to play 'further back' to not get motion sick.

Ok, after some lag/crashing issues, I can finally teleport to panda land!

I, uh.  Pandaren are short.  I mean, sure, I'm a Tauren, but...  OH, that's a Pandaren kid.  The adults are shorter than I expected, but not *that* short.

Pandaran Male

Pandaran Female

Heading out of Dawn's Blossom to the Arboretum

Run around a bit, find some quests to kill wasps and pick up flowers.  Oh, right, my toolbars.  Some stuff is gone (Concussive Shot, Kill Command is out of my spec, etc.), and I haven't bothered to remake macros yet since I don't know what I'm going to need yet.  But I have A Murder of Crows, and it is awesome.


There are some pretty cranes in the Jade Forest, but I can't tame them.  This is just as well; the stable is a little buggy, and I don't want to mess with swapping pets around yet.  The pet talent pane is... gone?  I don't know, I just can't find it.  I'm guessing that's another work in progress.

Pretty green cranes!

The new glyphs are mostly fun!  I put in mostly soloing ones for now (Mending, Misdirect, and improved Mend Pet is now a glyph) since I figure that's what I'm going to be doing.  The Camouflage glyph right now gives you real stealth, which will be tempting later for dungeon soloing type stuff.

Marksmanship specialization

Talent pane

Talbuk models have returned!  Also not tameable.

Poor Hadrian has been shrunk, without even having the glyph in.

Taking lots of pretty pictures - War Serpents, the Temple of the Jade Serpent, the Dawn Bridge.

Approaching the Temple of the Jade Serpent

Guards in the Temple of the Jade Serpent - female Pandaran tails go under the cloak, no clipping

Stairs to the Temple (a little glitchy)

Temple of the Jade Serpent

The Dawn Bridge

There are a bunch of kites suspending lanterns along the bridge

War Serpents

Waterfall from the Dawn Bridge

Temple of the Jade Serpent, seen from the Dawn Bridge

Back in the Arboretum, looking towards the flight path

Serpent trainers

Serpent trainers

Aw, no fishes yet.

Oh, thank God, I found the camera distance slider.

OH MY GOD I KICK STUFF.  Okay, right, so I'm a Tauren hunter.  I have to destroy these statues.  To do so, I KICK THEM.  This is awesome.

Haha, first fatal error.

I keep trying to run out to range, but minimum range is gone. >.>

Lots of fill-up-a-bar quests in the Jade Forest so far.

Bell in Chun Tian Monastery

... High Elder Cloudfall randomly fell over and died.  Um.  It's apparently a known issue in the quest; I guess I'll go find other quests.

The bamboo forest

Hey, nearby available quests show up on my world map now?

Ok, the Jade Forest is kinda crowded, I'm going to go check out the Tauren monk I rolled yesterday.

Hm.  Jabbing stuff to death at level one and two feels slow.  I get roll at level two, and... ok, it doesn't roll yet on Tauren, more like the goblin's rocket jump effect.  But it's got a 0, 1, or 2 on it; I can use it twice and then it has to regen?  But the tooltip doesn't clarify.  Also my starting weapons think they're broken.  (They're not.)

Hm, leveling is just automatically teaching me stuff in the field, no running back to train.  Kinda nice.  Level three got me Tiger Palm (which uses some Chi) and Blackout Kick (which also uses Chi, usable at 35% like an execute).

Monk interface & a gazelle critter that I can't capture yet

Still, I feel kind of weak compared to the other low level toons I've made.  I'm dying a lot more than I usually do, to mobs just a level higher than me.

Hee, another bug that's already been reported.  Tauren monks don't speak Taurahe.

Moon over Mulgore