Random Thoughts, and The New Arcane Shatter

So, it was a busy weekend. My wife was throwing a birthday party for her niece, and we had family in town as early as Thursday night. I had Friday off, as a result of holiday work schedules, and was expecting to get bogged down entertaining, but bless my wife’s heart, she arranged it so I had most of Friday to myself.

So, been fighting off the last dregs of a cold, and ended up waking at about 6:30 Friday morning, and after getting a pot of coffee going, jumped on WoW, and resumed my grind to finish off Hyjal, and then was off to Deepholm, where I eventually found myself in the good graces of the mother of the hottest babe ever to hit Wow. I think it says a lot for my determination, charm, suaveness, and the lack of sweating petty details by the WoW design team, that Therazane conveniently ignored the fact that Layjos has killed her lovely daughter at least twice. Oh, wait, that was when he was Lajos. Of course! It was the name change! Doh!!!

On a serious note, I repeat again, Blizzard does it right! I’ve taken a break from leveling alts now that Layjos is on the scene, but what I’ve seen of the revamping of the Old World quests has been very pleasing. The quest-lines make sense, they move along, with very few of the “kill endlessly until you get X number of items” type of quests. Even those tend to be fairly quick. The copious side quests don’t detract from the momentum of the main questline, and some of the questlines are downright entertaining. The John J. Keeshan lines in Redridge and Burning Steppes inspired me to grab First Blood for my son Nick to see, and he has declared it his current favorite movie.

When I finally decided to scratch the mage itch, and move Lajos/Layjos, I breezed through Hyjal, and Deepholm, with no real feeling of “grind”. About the only time I did a conscious “grind” was when I saw my experience bar close to the next level. I always make it a habit, if possible, to grind out those last few points on mobs, so the quest turn-ins launch me well into the next level. So, having gotten the Coming Down the Mountain and Deep into Deepholm achievements, I returned to Vash’jir to pick up there. Unfortunately, I’m not getting the big quest experience points, since I’m a bit above level, but the quests are still entertaining. Yesterday, after family left, I jumped back on, and decided to see how I fared in the battlegrounds.

Oh, incidentally, I gave Fire a try during all that. Not bad. The ability to cast Scorch while moving is interesting. Unfortunately, leveling the way I am, I haven’t been able to muster enough crit rating to really make it effective. I’ve been gradually replacing my Wrath epics, but even with abilities, I wasn’t finding Hot Streak proccing enough for my comfort in PvP, so I decided to return to Arcane.

Overall, battlegrounds went well. I killed more than I died, and even with very little resilience on my gear, didn’t find myself getting killed to fast when I got focused. I identified a few areas I need to macro, and shift my keybinds, but all in all, it went quite well. I didn’t dominate, but I didn’t suck, either. When I had a group that worked as a team, things went well. When I had a group that thought Eye of The Storm is all about capturing the flag, things didn’t go well.  One Warsong went really well, with me leading in HKs, and in the top four in killing blows. We had a good team, and I spent my time picking engaged targets, and hitting them with Arcane Blast, and destroying their health bar, while staying out of close up mismatches. Looking back at it today, that was probably my best battleground, and it highlights what I need to do – get myself in a good position, avoid short range mass crowds of melee, and focus on staying alive. In later battlegrounds, I forgot those principles, and while I didn’t do terribly, I was letting myself get focused, and not escaping effectively enough. It’s something I noted before. I tend to go for the goals, and dive into things, counting on my teammates to be there to back me. When they are, I rock. When they aren’t, I die. It all goes by fast, but I can clearly remember several fights yesterday where I had a healer backing me, or a couple melee-types keeping me from getting smothered. I felt comfortable, in control, and Horde were dying. I can also remember several times that I rushed in too fast, and then, when I went to escape, was still trying to do damage, instead of getting away, and I invariably died.

Arcane has some great control and escape features. Insta-Invis, PoM + Polymorph, and a 3 second speed burst after blinking. I used all of them Sunday, but not as effectively as I should have. Using PoM effectively is going to be a key skill in this spec. The two biggest uses are going to be Insta-Sheep, and Insta-Nuke. In the past, playing the old Arcane Shatter spec, I used Frostfire Bolt as my Insta-Nuke, since it was buffed by the Frost tree, and had the benefit of slowing the target down. Now, with Nether Vortex, Arcane Blast slows the target, and applies the buff, so it’s going to become my nuke of choice, with Presence of Mind making it instant when I need it. More on that later.

I ended up getting about a third of a level in the battlegrounds (gotta love that!) and made level 84 shortly after logging on this morning.  I’m going to finish up Vash’jir, then head out to Uldum. I’m guessing level 85 by no later than Wednesday.

And I’ll be respeccing this evening as well. I’ve already foregone Arcane Tactics, since I don’t plan to be doing much raiding early on. I’m going to drop Focus Magic, and putting that point in Shatter. My level 85 point will go in Shatter as well. “Lol-wut?!?” you say.

Arcane Tactics is a 3% damage buff on the raid. In a raid, over the course of a boss encounter, 3% is significant. In PvP, particularly when you’re not packing a buttload of spellpower, it’s not crucial. Likewise, with Focus Magic, a once-in-awhile 3% crit buff is significant, on a raid where you can make sure it stays on your partner. In PvP, it’s nice, but again, not particularly crucial.

However, being able to selectively apply a triple-damage crit in PvP is very significant, and very useful, especially when that allows you to tie it in with Arcane Potency and Arcane Power. PoM triggers the former, and Arcane Power just adds more goodness. If they’ve been pounding on my Mana Shield or Mage Ward, so much the better, as Incantor’s Absorption is  going to be buffing my damage. Get an interrupt on a caster? Woo-hoo, he’s silenced for 4 seconds, AND Invocation kicks in. Quick freeze, AP, POM, and nuke well.

Then of course, there’s Frost Ring, which has a significant range, which opens up all sorts of interesting possibilities, especially when you note that all the arcane tree goodies are worded “all damage”, “your damage”, “spell damage”, etc. Are Frostbolt and Frostfire Bolt going to hit as hard as Arcane Blast? Of course not. But  they’re not going to start the mana ramp-up either, and against a frozen target, Frostbolt is going to get a 20% buff in addition to all the other spell buffs Arcane gets, including the mastery buffs. Not to mention, it has a shorter cast time, and also very importantly, if I get interrupted, I’ve only got Frost spells locked out, and I have most of my main guns still available.

Is it gonna pwn like the old Arcane Shatter spec? Probably not, and I suspect it will play significantly different, but we shall see.

The Joys of Killing Paladins

So, we moved Nick’s DK over yesterday. By the time I got home from work, he’d already headed out to Hyjal, and was over it because of the constant ganking. So we tried the Vash’jir heroes call, which started okay, but then was cut short because the first quest refused to complete for Nick. (He found out this morning how to fix it, yay!). We went back out to Hyjal, started questing, and immediately, a level 85 Horde pally named Arvalon, or something like that, started displaying his douche-bag-ness. We’re in the middle of a bunch of mobs, and he jumps in. With a level difference of 5, Nick couldn’t even hit him, and frankly, Nick’s a PvE tank, not an arena player. I fared a bit better, and I can testify that Improved Blink is the shiznit in PvP, but I also haven’t mage PvPed in about 5 or 6 months. We hurt him, and finally got him to drop an AoE, and got some guards on him. We died about 5 times to his 1, but I still count it a minor victory. He camped the questgiver, and laughed at me. I laughed right back at him, and even gave him a mock-salute. I find it amusing that someone can misses the stupidity of making fun of someone they’ve killed who can’t really even hit them back, and let’s face it, that sort of person gets their nut on thinking they’ve pissed someone else off. No worries, it’s a big world, I can go elsewhere to level, and yeah, fucker, what goes around comes around, and the day will come when I’m what comes around.  My son hasn’t really had that sink in yet, I’m hoping he can be taught.

Caraway and I were talking at work, and he was marveling at the survivability of paladin’s in general, particularly prot. I was regaling him with tales of Hartbane‘s battle-healer spec in the good ol’ days, and as I told him, you don’t so much kill paladin’s so much as you dismantle them. Sort of like peeling an onion, and far more painful and full of tears. But hey, a Blood Elf pally died last night, so at least one new angel has a set of wings, and the day was a success.

My first experiments with Arcane PvP were interesting, though. I complete forgot to use things like Arcane Power (need to get that macro-ed in, dammit), but that really wasn’t a factor. As I said, Improved Blink rocks. I haven’t had time to evaluate the Glyph of Arcane Power (I’ve heard some discussion on how it’s supposed to work, but doesn’t). The biggest thing that jumped out at me was the lack of a really spam-able Arcane spell. Arcane Blast just isn’t suitable for quick use in combat. My initial cast with haste adjustmetns, is still like 1.9 seconds. In a battleground, with distractions, that’s probably doable, however, 1 on 1, or in Arena, that’s an eternity. Of course, there’s always Scorch or Ice Lance, but those really aren’t optimal for Arcane.  I sort of have visions of running along a freeway, throwing pebbles at trucks. Then again, Shatter is available on the first tier of Frost, for double/triple crit chance… and Arcane Blast has a 40 yard range, AND slows the target with Nether Vortex.

I’m having this vision of stacking AB a couple times at long range, then jumping in with a Frost Nova, and cutting loose with a PoM + AB that crits for what Christian Belt describes as “ also doing damage to his posterity down through seven generations, causing his children’s children’s great-great-grandchildren to speak in hushed tones about the time many generations past when a mage blew up his forefather”. Granted, Layjos is only level 80, and doesn’t have that kind of spellpower yet, but the principle is there, and yeah, I find it exciting. More research required.

All that said, I’m going to experiment with Fire and Frost as well, I think.

 

 

Moving On

So, yeah, much as I hated bailing on Crits, I had too much time and effort invested in Lajos to let him sit, and the reality was, I’d never play him. So, last night, I popped on Winterhoof, sent the heirloom items from my other toons to Lajos, and a few other key items. The old guild bank had been ransacked by the last member of the old group, who had stayed with the guild. That surprised me, though on reflection, it shouldn’t have, since I haven’t really been on in about 3 months. It would have been nice to have my share of the titansteel we’d been pooling for choppers, but I’m not going to lose sleep over it. For all I know, Booters sent it to me, and it timed out and returned.

So, now I have to learn how to play a mage all over again. Whee, good times. Actually, I think it’s going to be pretty interesting, since there isn’t a whole lot out there for Arcane Mage PvP in Cataclysm. Yup, you read that right. Arcane.

Sure, I know, Frost is a no brainer for PvP. So, I’m guessing that there are going to be a LOT of Frost mages in the battlegrounds. Fire has been improved, and likewise, I expect to see a lot of Fire mages there as well. So, since I’m having to relearn anyway, I figured I’d stick with what’s realtively familiar. Everything I’m reading seems to indicate that Arcane rules when it comes to burst damage, and PvP is very much oriented around burst damage. We shall see. Should be exciting.

Oh, and incidentally, I had to rename him, so now he’s named Layjos. Meh.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ebb and Flo

So, yesterday, sitting at work, I was going through some old WoWInsider articles, and came across one from last June, an Art of Warcraft column talking about dealing with PUG battlegrounds. Most of it dealt with how to enjoy the experience, and not rage at it, and overall, was some really good advice. Most of it was redundant for me, things I’d sort of subconsciously realized and adapted to during the time where I was building my first PvP set, as it was the only way I could get any higher level gear, and that meant PUGS. It’s different in a battleground tho’, as there isn’t the rigid “this is how you handle this boss” attitude, and things are happening so fast, weaknesses of players (i.e., my own suck-age) are a lot less glaring, and so less likely to be commented on.

Looking back to then, I realized I’m in sort of the same situation. Back then, I was guild leader of a very small, tight guild, and raiding, even heroics, were beyond us. We were very PUG shy, when it came to instances, and my only real alternative was to do BGs, to get any sort of decent gear. Eventually, I ran into Repgrind, and found a high comfort level, and started getting into some higher level content. Eventually, my own guild fell apart, and I went to Crits, but left vs. right coast scheduling proved to make it extremely difficult to progress with them. Not long after, I decided to just take a break.

Now, I’m just a guild member, of a very casual guild, Moonlight Requiem, headed by one of the guys I work with. The guild is really just getting off the ground, but Caraway, the GM, is very good at getting people in. Most of the people I’ve met through the guild seem pretty cool, but I’m still finding myself soloing a lot. A big factor in that is the holidays. People have a lot of time off to play, and they’ve leveled at an insane rate. On the flipside, a lot of my play time has been sporadic, due to family aggro. It will be interesting to see now how it levels off, and what happens.

Doing a bit of introspection, I’m realizing that if I want company, I need to be more outgoing. LOL… not really my forte’, but hey, I’ll work on it. Looking at the big picture, Caraway has assembled what seem to be a really cool bunch of people, so in essence I have a “pre-screened” group.

Anyway, to get back to where I was originally going, I was musing on how far I’ve come. I started, unintentionally, on a PvP server, and used to gnash my teeth at the ganking. I moved to a PvE server, and once there, grew to really like PvP. Now I’m back on a PvP server, and while I still despise the random griefing, it’s more of a roll my eyes thing now, rather than real rage. And, full-circle, I’m back to taking refuge in the battlegrounds, this time for leveling as well as gear.

Originally, I’d planned on leaving Lajos over on Winterhoof, in Crits, but I’m starting to rethink that. I’ve got a perfectly good level 80 mage, well geared, sitting, doing nothing, and realistically, I’m not going to be spending much time over there. If I do, it’s not like I’m going to be in a position to run content. Basically, I’m just “keeping a presence”, and I’m debating whether it’s worth it. If I do a character move, I can bring money, heirloom items, etc. over that will make life a lot more productive on my current server, including leveling our guild.

And of course, I’ve got a guild bank over on Winterhoof, full of stuff that would be really useful. My DK sits as guildmaster, and the stuff languishes in an upper tab. Those people who stuck with the guild after the melt-down have given up and bailed, and I can’t say as I blame them. I just really lost my enthusiasm for WoW after the events of last summer. Now that I’ve rediscovered some of that enthusiasm, it’d be nice to profit from some of my labor.

Off To Battle

So, when I started my discipline priest, I told myself I was going to be leveling a lot in battlegrounds. Then I totally got carried away in some of the new quest-lines, and looked up, and I was at twenty, then thirty, then forty. Each time, I’d resolve to knock out about seven levels, then hit the BGs. Each time, I’d look up, and go “damn, I’m at level twenty-nine… and on a quest”, etc.

And then I found out, belatedly, about the new five-level brackets. Oh, REALLY???

So, at like level fifty-one, I started queuing up. With visions of Fiaked dancing in my head, I chuckled gleefully, prepared to enter battlegrounds, and wreak havoc…

… and in my first Alterac Valley, promptly got my havoc wreaked. Well, damn.

See, I knew the theory that a battleground healer has to avoid getting focused, hang back, etc. Well, a couple battlegrounds beat that theory into me very, very well. I didn’t realize that my guild tabard had a big bullseye painted on it. However, it apparently does, as I became a very popular target.

Ok, so time to regroup, and adjust. I did. It went better (relatively), and once I started getting a quick finger on Shadow Word: Death, I even picked up a few killing blows.  Those first few BGs, were just plain rough though. I’m getting better at picking a teammate, and just tagging along with him. Let me also say that while I was already something in awe of Fiaked, now I’m at the point of stuttering, remembering a particular WSG fight where he and I stormed the Horde flag-room, and commenced a 2-on-5-ish kill fest, him healing my mage. It ain’t easy, folks. Nothing prepares you for those first few waves of incoming red nameplates, all gleefully heading for YOU, and enveloping you in a constant wave of stuns, interrupts, and what-have-you, while you’re desperately trying to get off a Flash Heal.

Honestly, after PvPing as a mage, I know that in time, I’ll get better. I also know that I was sadly light on stamina gear (which I’m remedying).  And I’m sitting here at work plotting tweaks to my add-ons to give me better info. I’ve made it through three levels almost purely on battlegrounds. After that, I picked up wife-aggro, and had to adjourn to get caught up on Dexter. However, I expect to get 55 early tonight, and then it’s off to a new bracket. Since I’m (mainly) healing, I can still work effectively at the bottom of a bracket, since hit percentage doesn’t come into play. Now it’s a matter of getting to that point where things seem to slow down, and I can pay attention to things like cooldowns, dispels, etc. Time to start tweaking Tell Me When.

Oh, and yeah, I’ve noticed that things were tweaked in general in 4.0.x, so priests are still being dialed in. Whatever.  It will get better, and I’m going to just look at is as exercising with ankle-weights, so to speak. When things do get dialed in, I’ll be that much better off.

Adventures in Healing

So, from midweek, on through the weekend, I was fighting off the latest crud going around. In my case, it manifested mostly with wracking cough that by Thursday had my diaphragm in perpetual cramp, but I got the stuffy head, etc. Luckily, this was a quiet weekend. I spent most of the weekend playing WoW, which was a nice change.

I work on the principle of total immersion, so I’ve pretty much ignored most of my other characters, and concentrated on my dwarf priest, Coosh. Just to recap, I got him to Kharanos, did a bit in Loch Modan, and then headed to Elwynn, more to see how the quests looked than anything else. From there, I went out to Westfall, and got thoroughly hooked on the questline, which ultimately sent me off to Redridge, where, among other things, I got to do the new Bravo Company questline, which is a tongue-in-cheek Rambo parody, and an absolute blast. Cataclysm continues the BC and Wrath pattern of achievements for completing a certain number of quests in an area. I got the one for Redridge, which then sent me along to Duskwood, where I knocked out the quests for the achievement, and then happily headed for the new Northern Strangelthorn area, where again, I got the achievement.

A quick word on the new quests: so far, an enthusiastic Two-Thumbs Up. Gone are the “slay things endlessly waiting for certain items to drop” quests. Most amusing, to me, was the fact that the one quest where I had a low drop rate on a needed item was killing Murlocks, which are supposed to be irritating, so I view that as game-flavor. Along the way were some downright engaging quests, some reworks of old classics, and some very creative new ones.

Spirestone is a PvP server, so ganking comes as no surprise.  I’ve been pretty fortunate so far, only one real ass-hat encountered. My first brush with “the enemy” was out in Redridge, where I’d gotten myself in over my head with a pack of gnolls. Suddenly, I see the pillar flash and crash sound of moonfire, and a gnoll evaporates. I was in “keep alive” mode at that point, and another moonfire came crashing down a cooldown later, and I turned to see a Tauren Druid tapping away at a mining node. I bowed, and saluted, and sent off a /thanks, and was on my way. Example 1: Classy Player, can obviously squish me like a bug, but helps out the lowbie. In my opinion, the way it should be.

Yesterday, however, I was in Northern Stranglethorn, and I saw a rogue vanish. “Here it comes” I thought, and prepared to take my medicine. Sure enough, one shotted. The rogue did an apology emote, so I figured he was gonna leave it at that. I ran back from the spirit healer, and resurrected. Bam, one shotted again.Rinse, lather, repeat, a couple times.

Here we have Example 2: The No-Class Cork-Soaker. I truly have problems understanding this mentality. Ok, so a level 80 squashes a level 30. That’s not something to feel proud of, it’s just a fact of game mechanics. Once is someone feeling bored. Not a problem. But to repeatedly grief someone… that screams to me of a truly pathetic personality. We all play the game for rewards, whether it be satisfaction, challenge, whatever. What kind of person is rewarded by making someone else miserable? Or in this case, thinking they were making me miserable? I pretty much just rolled my eyes, then after the fourth or fifth time, went and got more NyQuil, sampled some of the wife and daughter’s baked goods, then returned. By this time, he’d gotten bored and left. No doubt an e-peen that tiny can only take so much self-stroking before they have to go take a nap.

Later, my guild leader (and co-worker) Caraway invited me to heal his group in an already in-process Maraudon. I was still a bit low for the instance, but he was pretty comfortable tanking, so no problem. After all, how could I resist a trip to see the hottest babe in WoW, Princess Theradas? I’d just gotten a point into Atonement, so I was anxious to see how effective using Smite to heal actually was.

By itself, not terribly effective, especially with melee DPS in the party. All too often, I watched the healing go to the rogue, not the tank. For the most part, I felt I did okay. Could have used more mana, and since I hadn’t been planning on running an instance, I didn’t have much to drink with me, but all in all, it went well.

Nick, in his usual fashion, is dithering around with 3 or 4 characters, but he’s out of school, so he should be able to get his pally up to near my level, so we can start chain running instances. Either that, or I’ll have to ground him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

U Rack-a Disciprine!!!

Just a nod to some of Nick’s stand-up comedy. It seemed appropriate, since I’m doing a disc priest.

It’s new territory. Most of the current info on the net is applicable to level 80+, or it’s outdated. Soloing, I’ve pretty much done PW:S, hit my target with SW:P, Penance, then Smite until dead, or Penance was off cool-down. Once I got Evangilism, I swapped that around, using Smite to build stacks of Evangilism, then throwing in Penance. Occasionally, I’m seduced by the shorter cast time of Mind Blast, and when mana issues arise, I’m wanding, but so far, that’s about it. Oh, and I got level 20. Finally! Along the way, I won a duel against a same-level Frost Mage, and lost a duel to a warlock. The first one hardly scratched me, the second pwned me hard after I blew my Penance on a by-stander (all worgen look alike, what can I say?)

Since I’ve never healed before, I’m not quite ready to start using the LFD as a healer. This weekend, I’m going to attach myself to Nick’s baby paladin, and follow him around healing. I want to work on cleaning up my UI, and getting used to actually being a healer, not a self-healing DPS. Should be interesting.

Edit: Added tags, including the most important one!

It’s A Lock

So, the Grumpy Mage has gotten really grumpy. Even more than usual. So RG messages me a week or so ago. It went something like this:

RG: hi!

me: Howdy

RG: I have a question for you

me: Okie. I probably have an answer.

RG: would you have any interest in the arena tourney?

me: I haven’t done much PvP in quite awhile, very little arena period. I’d get eaten alive in a tourney. lol

RG: we’re all going to get eaten alive. but you get a pet for playing 50 games … and we need a warlock

me: Hmmmm… but my lock is only level 48

RG: on the tourney realm, you get to create up to 3 toon, level 80 and with the best gear

me: ohhhhh

So, long story short, I’m now registered for the tourney. Liris, my now level-53 gnomie warlock is incarnated as a Lirith,  level 80 affliction warlock. Yes, the mage has turned to the Dark Side, reveling in the pain and misery of his – now her – enemies, cackling with glee as she sucks the life and very soul from them.

Er, well… sometimes. I’ve never played a level 80 lock before. Most of the time, I’m concentrating on keeping moving, and remembering all the things I’m supposed to be doing as a lock. So far, I’ve just been doing practice 2s, and even won a couple. The problem is, I have no way of knowing a) if I screwed up, b) how I screwed up, or c) what I should have done. I simply don’t have any background to use as a reference. I’ve just come to the conclusion that I’m just going to have to keep butting my head against it until I get better.

I’ve taken Liris into to the BGs, and done fairly well; I’ve usually wound up in the top two in killing blows. One thing I have determined I need to work on is situational awareness, and survivability, and hopefully, that will carry over to arena. Getting used to the higher level spells is a challenge, but it’s coming slowly.

I’d love to see a really good PvP guide for warlocks. I’m reading all over the internet, but too many times, the writer starts using PvP slang, and I haven’t a clue what they’re talking about. I’ve tried looking at videos, but typically, I have no idea what’s going on in the video beyond some guy jumping around the screen, and most videos aren’t really created for educating n00bs, they’re for showing off the player’s talent. Guys, it’s great that you’ve got a good soundtrack, but that doesn’t tell me what you did, or why you did it, or why I should do it. Most of the time, I can’t tell what spell your casting from looking at the screen, either because  it’s lo-res, or because it’s happening so fast.

Right now, I would pay money for a small series of well-done videos from a rated affliction warlock, with no music, but good commentary. (and I only specify rated because to give some insurance that the author would know what he was talking about).  Here’s an example of the kind of videos I would love: Paladin Tanking from WowWiki. The author did vids, then did a nice, clear commentary on what he was doing, how it works, why you do it, etc.

Game Balance Meets Six Sigma (If I Were Ghostcrawler For A Day)

Ok, so it would be more than a day. Likely, it would take at least a month to set things up properly, let alone do analysis, but work with me here.

Blizzard, like any designer of a multiplayer game that features a variety of factions/forces/classes/races, faces a huge task when it comes to game balance. They have to balance the player against the game, keeping the solo game challenging enough to keep interest, while keeping it accessible enough to not discourage interest.  The difficulty here increases exponentially with every different class added. The challenge increases when it comes to balancing the players against the players. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg; now someone like Ghostcrawler has to step out and face the public, and justify decisions, rationales, and explain to that player who is absolutely convinced he’s a great player that no, testing shows that the class is just fine. Personally, I think if there was ever a justification for a medical marijuana card,  it’s GC’s job. I think Blizzard ought to make it part of his benefits package. I really wonder if, when players go on the Blizz forums demanding by their right as a paying customer that they be given an answer, they realize just how fortunate they are that Ghostcrawler even acknowledges them. Not all gaming communities enjoy that sort of response.

Spec update…

So, logged on this evening, and immediately changed my spec to drop 2 points out of Improved Blizzard, and add them into Ice Shards. Currently level 37, and went out to play with the Crushridge Ogres up in the Alterac Mountains. I have to say, I’m pretty pleased. I seemed to be generating just as many frozen targets. What it’s done for my damage, I’m not certain.

My current problem is just what to use for a shatter combo. When I’m soloing, I go Fireball/Fireblast, but I find in a group, it takes way too long to get the Fireball off; usually, by the time I get it cast, someone has broken the freeze.  Scorch might be a better choice for the lead spell. I’ll have to play with things and see.