The Torment of Halfhill Village!

If I was a witty writer I'd make a song about this wonderful little city. It would be grand and catchy. But I'm not so I won't.

(source)

We has Shatt, a mecca of wonder with refugee's and research facilities. It was multi- leveled and seemed so amazing at when you 1st got there. It seemed busy and friendly  It housed everything you needed aside from auction houses. You could fall to your death in a second if you clicked the wrong mount or happened to be on the toon that was on the non Scryers rep. Located so amazingly it never felt like a chore to get to and was the height of the game for me.

Then came Dalaran. The create it created was huge but getting there was pretty cool. When Wrath hit, it was a mystery to me on how I'd get there then...how do you get out. I jumped out of the sewers the 1st time and bubbled. As I landed I got tore apart by some wolfs that were close. That was fun times.

When Cataclysm released I thought, hey Blizz made a huge mistake by sticking us all in the home cities. We sat around for hours in Org or SW and read trade, did our few dailies and leveled alts. Something felt off about having no hub city.

About a month into MoP I"ve found myself never logging out at the newest and shiniest of the grand cities Blizz has put in game. While it is kinda cool, you can't ride around and well, just about everything is spread out in nooks and crannies. Its not even where I log off now.

So where do log out you ask? In a tiny lil village full of wonderful dragon and magical seeds. You can phase out in the blink of an eye and buy all the good you need to power level cooking in about 20 seconds and 60g or so (really I'm guessing at the price, I think it might have been more like 200g but whatever) and if you head up just a tad you can find an inn on stilts (the Lazy Turnip) with the coolest music in game (my opinion).


Every day I log on and do some farming. Oh, no not that kind of farming. I am not looking to make some armor or extra gold. I'm actually growing crops where my main, Chasey always seems to have to beat the hell out of some critter that messes with my plants. Once you get high enough level with the Tillers you no longer have to use their rusty ole can or hand pump sprayer, but you still have to deal with them stupid ass vermin that pop up. Yes, folks, I log on to a video game and farm! Why, cuz someone thought it would cool to take us out of the major cities and put us in the thimble of a village where every nit wit on the server ride their WAY to big mount and stand on the vendor or quest giver.

Growing 1.6 Spirit of Harmony a day is O.P. if you ask me. I farmed mobs, and did dalies for about 3 days to get my first 3 to do the JC research.

Really I don't mind the farming in game. It is kind of cool to grow what mats or food you need. The only real issue I have is Halfhill is so small its hard to get to what you need. The dailies out of that area are pretty fun and fast. Seems that all that work you put into cooking some panda wants to steal your newly cooked food for reputation. I do wonder why pre 90's don't get rep from the Tillers while planting.

Its really hard to talk to people in game with mounts sitting on top of the quest givers.
It never seems to amaze me that Blizz never pre-thinks these things thru. If you are on at a busy time on a busy server it could take 5 minutes to get the person you need to talk to. Doing the Golden Lotus dailies is pain stacking at times.

The other biggest pain in the butt right now is logging on to farm rep. Yes, I"ve heard that rep farming was done. But if you don't you won't get the rep you need to get patterns and well epics. The money is great. Logging on to do a job is NOT!

I wonder how the quaint people of this tiny village think of the growth potential of all the new guests?

My Impressions of the Mist!

Finally a 90!

Oh my what a grind. I've played this game since 2007 and I've seen some grinds to level and get rep. I don't think any of the past stuff I've done in game come close to how LONG the grind was from 88-90. It honestly felt that was seven levels worth of work. Even the quest rewards, XP and gold was amazing. It felt like the my XP bar never moved. Mostly I had rested XP too. I just can't image going to another toon now and starting that grid.

So what do I think of MoP. The scenery is beautiful. They really did a nice job on the art work. Not really liking the mobs but the buildings and landscape are really put together well. I haven't got all the instances done but what I have seen they did nice work on that too. I can't wait to see the rest.

Now on the difficulty level from what I've seen - The 5 mans are a joke. I'm in starter gear and the things I've seen and done are laughable. Cata set the bar much higher on entry level difficulty. Gear isn't horrible, the quest rewards seem to be pretty nice. Not the greens but anything blue and higher. At this point, by the time people hit epic level of gearing, we will be doing 5 mans as fast as we did towards the end of Wrath. It will be a pull fest. In fact there is ZERO fear by the dps on ninja pulling.

I'll say this, I do not run a damage meter as a tank or ever for that matter. Due to this I've almost figured out I have and internal clock that tells me how the DPS is going. I've been linked a few times and I fear tank damage output is TOO low at this moment.

Up until level 87 I quested as prot as I have done for 87 levels. Chasey was leveled as prot from level 1. At 88 it felt like I was back at level 32, I could honestly go to the rest room and come back with half a mobs health left to finish. Pulling 5 mobs as I have in the past really lead to trying to keep alive more than anything else. The mob really started to hit hard. As I got to 89 to 90 I had to actually quest as Ret. This saddened me but it made killing go just a tad quicker. Level 90 mobs had roughly 400K health. So I guess you could say the quest mobs are highly tuned and the 5 mans are well....easy sauce.

I do understand that there is a new feature to the game in called challenge mode but I don't know if running 5 mans (normal, heroic and challenge) mode add variety. It seems like there is just EXTRA lockouts. I dunno, I haven't done them yet, so my judgement is with out knowledge.

On being Prot!

I like tanking so far. Threat is a no brainier picking up mobs after a bone head ninja pulls while the healer has zero man isn't tough. It feels like we are missing another attack or a bit of a lull in the rotation. I love holy prism, my 7th tier talent. Not huge damage but enough and the heal is pretty nice, when running with DK's who think there is zero reason to move out of the goop, fire or black shadow stuff on the floor, it gives the healer a second to realize he is dealing with a retard...lol

Brewmaster!

So when I hit 89 I decided to do the brewmaster boss. Coren has SO many HP's and abilities that I never knew he did. My 1st time I did it, the healer was 90 and a rogue was 90, the others were 89 and we got it done. It went smoothly and fast. Not DPS fast but kind of like any other time you ran Coren just to get the dodge trinket.

My next time I wasn't so lucky. I had a druid healer who forgot he was a healer and went kitty and a Ret pally. ( I don't know if anyone has noticed, Ret pally's are pretty squishy) I died almost instantly, well as soon as Ardent Defender went off. He battle rezed me. I got all the mobs set up and I proceeded to get kegged 4 times straight. (Yes DPS was that slow that I was able to get kegged 4 times). All of a sudden after the wipe, the talk of how bad the tank is because he can't keep aggro starts between the Druid and Ret. I wasn't aware that while stunned for 2 minutes of a 4 minute fight where I can do nothing but wander about until the debuff wears off mean I'm a bad TANK. But oh well it happens. The group fell apart, I requeued and low and behold the Druid and Ret were there again.I know I'm out of practice tanking but really, if no one picks up Ursula when she pop's out and the DPS is too slow to kill the boss, that fight sucks. The Druid starts to berate me and leaves after dropping this dandy little line. I'm not healing that suck ass tank ever again. My pride was hurt.

Next group full of 89's downs boss no issue at all.

The stam trinket is NOT dropping, so I que'd one more time. This time we had a few 90s and a Druid healer from my realm. We wipe! We rez, run back in and pull again. We wipe again. I get a whisper saying I don't know how to tank so please don't ever do it again. He then drops group. 10 seconds later we get another healer, I pull and WHAMO, down goes Coren and my trinket drops.  I know I shouldn't have, I just couldn't resist but I sent him a tell telling him for some reason, a different healer was the key to downing the boss.

To be fair to all involved I did announce to the group, if Ursula isn't OT or kited I will get kegged (stunned) and we will not get the boss down. The hunter tanked Ursula with her pet and it went fast.

Moral of that story is, don't underestimate any fight, even if you have done it hundreds of times because you never know the group you are going to be with. Oh and good DPS is really nice to have.

TL;DR-
MoP is grindy and takes long to level. They did a nice job with the art work. Killing stuff in Prot is a burdensome process, 5 mans are easy, quest mobs are high in health and Coren Direbrew is not easy when people can't just faceroll the boss.

Still Crazy!

My current MoP experience-

Just a quick not to say I'm still around. Why? I love the game, its a good time sink and I missed my toons. Sounds crazy right? it kinda is but oh well that's who I am.

I'm enjoying the scenery or MoP. Blizz really did a nice job with the graphics, landscapes and mobs. I wasn't sure how seeing an all China theme would go but hand it to them, they pulled it off. Some places are beautiful and other dismal. All in all it works.

So where am I at? I am not raiding at all this tier or maybe not doing progression in any way but will enjoy an LFR or two. I chose the path to make some gold prior to leveling. I made about 12k gold in about 3 hours of farming with my hunger prior to touching Chasey. I was able to make my hunters prof's and go to level 87 with out hardly doing a quest. Farming turned out to be OK but they are soooo abundant it is a market killer.

I have all professions covered aside from inscription and engineering. I'm amazed that some are so easy to level and others are requiring you to be a level to make it to a vendor to by additional patterns. Not liking the JC discoveries at all. In my 4 days of looking for rare gems, I've gotten 1 pattern. Sadness...

I'm going to plan on getting in to the 'lay persons' guide to MoP pally tanking.

See everyone around soon and thanks for sticking around, if you have!

Paladin Changes 5.0

As long as you don't live under a rock, I'm sure you heard that 5.0 will be going live to serves the week of 8-28-12. Here is the changes you will need to know for the Paladin class. You can also look at my post for the talent calculator and Theck at Sacred Duty did a great tutorial on how to work the new talents (here) and lets not forget Rhidach giving us the full run down (here). Thanks to both of the, you guys are the best.

As for me, I'm not in game ATM but I think by next week I might re-up my sub to see how the new things are going.

I hope everyone enjoys MoP!

Below is the new abilities animated!


All the Paladin ability's can be found (here) click on picture to enlarge -

Paladin Talent Calculator 5.0

It can be found here .
If you look up toward the top right it will give you a link so you can save it and share it too.

Below is a hot link to all the paladin changes:
Paladin:
SKILLS
Talent Calculator
Holy Changes
Ret Changes
Prot Changes

Thanks (here)

And Azshira has made a BRILLIANT post about all the changes for paladins over at MMO-Champion.

Below is WOW's stat changes that you will need to know: (source) and (source)

Almost that time...

I hate to say it, it has been a solid friend to me, a great stress relief and I've met some amazing people. But sadly I must say this out loud...I'm probably finished with WOW.

Why? Well a few things come to mind.

I am so bored leveling low toons. My druid is fun or, um, sort of. My rogue is cool but it is a single mob killing machine. I like to pull lots.

There is no one to talk too! My guild is barren (see what I did there) it has 185 members and 3 people have logged on this week. Most of my realID friends are playing D3 and I'm not raiding.

I have about as much intrerest in buying and playing MoP as I do of hitting myself in the toe with a hammer.

Time will tell, I'm super busy with summer here so I'm in no hurry but the economical and smart thing to do would be to cancel my account.

Whatever the case, I will miss my blogging pals I've made.

MoP map and paladin changes.

Finally, the MoP MAP is in!

Every day new info comes in about MoP out of the Beta people. I haven't seen anything really worth mentioning. What makes me the authority? Well I'm not in Beta so I'm not to concerned about a quest not working right now or what the abilities of every class in game since so much is going to change before the game goes live. I'm trying to hit on the important stuff, so if there is something you would like to see more of, please let me know.

The MoP MAP -

(source)

A few minor updates to the Paladin class have been changed too:
Paladin (Forums)

• Blessing of Kings had a tooltip error corrected: Places a Blessing on the friendly target, increasing Strength, Agility, and Intellect by 5%.
• Blessing of Might had a tooltip error corrected: Places a Blessing on the friendly target, increasing mastery by 3,500.

Holy-

• Holy Light now costs 14% of Base Mana, down from 16%.
• Holy Shock now costs 16% of Base Mana, down from 18%.

Protection - 

• Mastery: Divine Bulwark now increases the damage reduction of your Shield of the Righteous by 8% (was 10%), adds 8% (was 10%) to your Bastion of Glory, and increases your chance to block melee attacks by 8% (was 10%).
• Consecration damage reduced by 10%.
• Holy Wrath damage changed to (4,300.5 + 91% of SPH).

Major Glyphs -

• Glyph of Exorcism now requires you to deal damage with Exorcism to get the damage reduction buff.

There was also a video of Paladin abilities posted: (Source)

Not using your head, Head Enchants are Gone!

A Real Head Scratcher!

File this one in the unexpected and in the trash can too. I don't understand the reasoning behind this. In mid Wrath they made these enchants BoA so you only had to grind the rep for any of these ONE time. So once you got the rep on one toon, you could get that enchant for any toon.

In an effort to make the game less grindy, they did what any smart company would do, they not only didn't put a new head and shoulder enchant in game, they now make the old one non-functional. Why wouldn't they allow enchanters or leatherworkers do the head slot and have scribes do what they are still able to do and create the shoulder enchant? No answers on either of those but my guess is the company line will come out and they will say "thats really not in their plans" which translates to "WE DON'T HAVE TIME OR THE RESOURCES TO DO THAT".

I'd be interested in hearing others thoughts on this.

Source: (HERE) and (HERE)

Ghostcrawler

Head enchants are gone.

We decided that putting head enchants on the various faction vendors wasn't working well with our design intent for the factions. There is a lot of max-level quest content in MoP, much of it focused around the reputation with the new factions. I think it's really cool stuff -- worlds away from the old Argent Crusade scourge stone days. :)

In previous expansions, the head enchants on the faction vendors served to force players into that content. You couldn't even choose which reputation to pursue -- you had to pursue the one with your specific head enchant. Our design intent for MoP is to give players options in how to play, and the head enchant design wasn't compatible with that.

Once we decided to no longer offer new head enchants, we made the older ones non-functional or else players would feel like they had to go back to older content or be missing out on power. This way, helmets are just no longer enchantable and you'll have one less required step to get a piece of loot ready to wear.

Shoulder enchants can now be provided by scribes, so those still exist, but they are also not part of the faction reputation system.

More MoP beta changes.

Sorry this is so long overdue but good news is there is almost no real breaking news for paladins in MoP. I'll keep it brief and hit on only the important things.

Only real interesting thing here is the change to Shield of the Righteousness. The way it is reworked is: Now damages the target, increase block chance by 10% and the amount of block by 30% for 6 seconds. On top of that it allows WoG to stack 5 times and increases the amount you heal yourself by 10%.

Other Beta highlights - Pet battles have been described and added. I'm not a huge fan of this new feature but some seem to like it. Profession details are rolling in and the numbers are far from being SQUISHED. I'll try and post the next info as soon as it comes out.

Paladin (Forums) (source)
Baseline

• Hammer of Wrath now scales from 161% of Spell Power instead of 71.6% of Attack Power.

Talents

• Holy Prism now affects allies within 15 yards, up from 10 yards.
• Sacred Shield now increases critical chance of Flash of Light instead of Word of Glory.

Protection

• Sanctuary now decreases damage taken by 15%, up from 10%.
• Shield of the Righteous now reduces the physical damage you take by 30% instead of increasing your block chance.

Retribution

• Divine Storm now causes 60% weapon damage, up from 50%.

MajorGlyphs

• Glyph of Divine Storm now heals you for 6% of your maximum health, up from 1%.
• Glyph of Hammer of Wrath is now Glyph of Exorcism and now affects Exorcism.   

Paladin (Forums) (Source)
Baseline

• Hammer of Wrath No longer generates a charge of Holy Power.
• Seal of Truth now scales from 13.8% of Spell Power instead of 2.8% of Spell Power + 5.6% of Attack Power.
• Supplication now lasts 8 secs, down from 15 secs. Now causes your next Flash of Light to be a critical.

Talents

• Holy Avenger now lasts 15 secs, down from 20 secs.
• Selfless Healer now also reduces the mana cost of Flash of Light. Now reduces by 35%, down from 50%.

Retribution

• Emancipate now costs 15% of base mana, down from 25% of base mana.
• Exorcism now scales from 79.6% of Attack power, down from 99.5%. Base damage reduced by 20%.
• Guardian of Ancient Kings now has a 5 min cooldown, down from 3 min.
• Mastery: Hand of Light now also affects Hammer of Wrath.
• Sword of Light has an additional effect - Your spell power is now equal to 50% of your attack power, and you no longer benefit from other sources of spell power.

Protection

• Mastery: Divine Bulwark now scales from 120% of Spell Power, down from 225% of Spell Power. Now also increases the effectiveness of Bastion of Glory by an additional 120% of Spell Power.
• Guarded by the Light now also increases your block chance by 10%. Your spell power is now equal to 50% of your attack power, and you no longer benefit from other sources of spell power.
• Shield of the Righteous Reworked - Instantly slam the target with your shield, causing 5,364 Holy damage, increasing your block chance by 10%, and the amount you block by 30% for 6 sec, and causing Bastion of Glory. Bastion of Glory - Increases the strength of your next Word of Glory when used to heal yourself by 10%. Stacks up to 5 times.

Holy

• Beacon of Light now has a 3 sec cooldown, down from 10 sec.
• Denounce base damage has been increased by 100%. Now scales from 122% of Spell Power, up from 61%.
• Guardian of Ancient Kings now has a 5 min cooldown, down from 3 mins. Every time the Guardian heals, it increases your haste by 10%.
• Holy Shock now deals 17,216 base damage/healing, up from 2102 base damage and 6522 base healing. Now scales from 115.6% of Spell Power, up from 57.8%.

Major Glyphs

• Glyph of Denounce has been reworked - Your Holy Shocks have a 50% chance to reduce the cast time of your next Denounce by 1.0 sec.

Pre-MoP dulldrums!

Just like anything in life change is inevitable. Change is constant, yet sometimes it sneaks up on you and you weren't aware it happened. I think it happens more in this game than in real life or at least it happens much faster.

Something occurred to me today as I was leveling up my Druid, I no longer play this game as a social outlet.

There was a time when I logged in to see the people that were on, even on a non raid night. At that time in my life, those were my friends I wanted to see and hang out with. Kinda like going to a bar and hearing all your buds yell "NORM". Not my name but if you watched Cheers you know what I mean. The human interaction were the reason I played the game at one point.

Now when I log on it is sorta like a job. I get what I need to do done, then go do some more. It isn't to make my toon better to raid, or even make it better at 5 mans. It is a grind for achievements or a mount. Then there is always a gold grind. In short WoW is like a job now more than before.

I bring this up because I virtually have no one on my friends list who plays anymore. The few RealID people are either raiding or leveling up their low level toons on another realm and they have since passed my level. Its almost as if I'm not in the cool club anymore. I'm not a socially awkward person, although some might disagree...lol I just don't feel like reaching out to the people playing currently. It isn't against anyone personally, it just not where my persona is at.

The guild I'm in is like a ghost town too. I'm almost exalted there so I don't wan to leave just because people aren't logging on. It is after all a slow time now. I'm guessing after the next patch where the MoP event happens the guild and the game will be more lively.

Anyone else experiencing a similar thing going on? or are you in a different place?

In the next few days I'll be updating the Paladin MoP info I've been sitting on. I've been doing finals for the last week or so and I'm a bit behind.

Til then, have fun on the game however you can.