P is for Priest…

…Penance, Power Word: Shield, PvP, and Pwnage.

So I’ve done two things in the past month that I thought I’d never do. I stopped drinking coffee (at least regularly…but black tea ftw), and I have a dedicated PvP toon.

Muriel was my holy priest that was my main alt back in TBC. I used her to heal in Karazhan and Zul’Aman when we were short heals. She also did many heroic runs. I enjoyed her thorougly and after I leveled Jess to 80 and had some extra time I brought Muriel to Northrend. But somewhere around level 73 she stalled out. I leveled holy for a level or two, and then shadow, but could never quite get into it. I still can’t get into shadow. Maybe it’s because I don’t like the new “silly string” version of the mindflay animation. I missed Muriel and envied other priests, but had no desire to level another healer as I am quite content playing a resto shaman as my healer alt right now. However I did find myself fascinated with the new discipline tree. I wanted very much to try it, but I didn’t want to get tied down healing PUGs, and again I had no desire for another 80 healer. The solution? Alterac Valley. There I could heal to my heart’s content but with more flexibility since I could enter or exit a BG whenever I wanted.

So I specced her disc and leveled from 74 to 80 largely from experienced gained in AV. While waiting in the queue I would quest in my smite spec. Like a few other odd priests out there, I have a strange fascination with smite. Healing in a BG is great fun. Before I was never much into PvP. I did some BG with Jess during TBC to get some shoulders, and a decent staff for my frost mage, but that was it. More recently I’ve taken Jess into BGs off and on and I enjoy doing PvP as an arms warrior, and Keredria even talked me into doing arena for the first time the other night (5v5…don’t ask). But lately I’ve been enjoying pissing off Hordies with my little clothy. A disc priest has quick heals, single target and AoE dispels, an AoE fear, and of course bubbles bubbles bubbles. I might even dare to say that I might have gotten a little good at PvP.  And it’s interesting to have an alt that is entirely dedicated to PvP. The nice thing about doing non-arena PvP is that I don’t feel that I need to invest quite as much in this toon. Of course I am spending her honor as it accumulates and I have two pieces of the satin Deadly set, but I’m not buying her epic gems, uber enchants, or purples. I haven’t even purchased cold weather flying for her. I only splurged for the dual spec so that she’d have something to do while waiting for another BG.

Oh and I did switch her off-spec back to shadow, just to give it a fair chance should she get a chance to do abysmal DPS in a 5-man guild run sometime. But it’ll just make me sad. WTB glyph so that mindflay looks cool again.

 

Real people.

Keredria’s recent post about Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov’s WoW addiction hobby reminded me of a couple of recent posts by Ta-Nehesi Coates, contributing editor of The Atlantic about things to do while you are gaming, or why he can’t bring himself to brag about not owning a television:

“…one reason I’m unlikely to lead a brigade against television is because some of my happiest hours are spent prancing around as  a red-headed elf. When you’re a WoW-geek, it becomes difficult to argue for stigmatization…”

I remember when I was sitting in a coffee shop near a university and overheard bits of a conversation from a couple of very “normal” looking 20-something college students, a man and a woman, who talked casually about classes, apartments, life, and raiding. I remember how this startled me and then being startled at the fact that it startled me. Why should I react that way when I play WoW? I mean, I actually think I am fairly “normal” myself.

Your first shock with your first MMO is that the characters you meet in the game are played by real people. Your next shock is when you learn the people you meet in real life play the game.

But I’m still sick!

Here’s what Keredria sent me last night.

Sigh. Ok well I have several posts that I’ve been wanting to do, but I’ve been busy in real life and I am still getting over the plague flu. But here’s an update at least.

Progression. We’ve done all of Ulduar except Yogg-Saron and of course Algalon. I’d say we’ve got it on farm even though we don’t actively farm it much now. The Keepers can still make things exciting sometimes, and we’ve done Mimiron and General Vezax only a couple of times, but it’s clear that now it isn’t a matter of if we down a boss, but just if it will take one or a few attempts. We would still like to go back and do some of the hard modes, but we’ve not yet found time to work that in to our raiding schedule. I really enjoyed our progression in Ulduar. We hadn’t farmed Naxxramas all that much before we started working on Ulduar, and we wiped many times, especially on The Keepers, but it was hard honest work and it felt good that we were able to master the encounters up through General Vezax before the welfare epics became available in Patch 3.2. Also Ulduar is just a wonderful raid instance and well worth seeing through anyway. I’ve been meaning to write a retrospective of Ulduar but I’ve just not gotten around to it.

We’ve cleared Trial of the Crusader on normal mode each week for the past four weeks so it’s on farm. Soon I think we’ll try the heroic mode. It feels a bit meh after Ulduar, but I’m sure the heroic mode will be a significant challenge.

Onyxia and Koralon are pure fun. I like that we can do these little mini raids when we have an extra hour or so.

Jess has done pretty well in terms of gear. I have enough Emblems of Triumph to buy at least a couple pieces of Tier 9, but I’m still running around with my Tier 8 since I have four pieces of it. I guess some might argue that the 4-piece Tier 8 bonus isn’t all that great, and I’ll probably try mixing in some of the Tier 9 for hard mode ToC. Anub’arak was kind enough to cough up a nice sword and board for me.

Also GuildOx ranks us as #3 on Drenden for strict 10-man progression, although I’ll admit that part of the reason for that is because some other 10-man raiding guilds disqualified themselves by doing some 25-man PUGs.

Alts. I’ve had a chance to heal most of Ulduar and ToC with my resto shaman, Makawee. She’s got a good set of Tier 8 and 8.5 and some other good drops. I do like raid healing with the resto shaman, and of course everyone appreciates totems and Heroism. I’ve also leveled a kitty druid to 80. She is purely for fun. I’ll try to write a post about her soon. I’ve messed around a little with my 74 priest and my 70 mage but haven’t really gotten back into them.

PvP. Yes, Jess is doing some battlegrounds PvP. The last time I did any serious PvP was back in TBC days when I needed tanking shoulders for Jess and a staff for my mage. I’m still not as into it as many others in the guild, but I enjoy a bit of PvP from time to time, and I do like playing an arms warrior although it’s embarrassing that my kitty druid can do more DPS with welfare epics from Trial of the Champions.

Ok. Moar posts soon. I promise.