Confessions of an anxious parent.

I have four children — all daughters. Jessika was my first and, admittedly, my favorite. She has always been a quiet and modest tomboy, but she is prone to great fits of rage when her friends, for whom she has great compassion, are in danger. For a long time I thought that one child would be enough, but eventually Aksana was born. She is very different from Jessika. She is cold and intellectual, with a dark and sometimes risqué sense of humor. She has always had a taste for power. At first I was worried that her motivations were purely selfish, but I learned that this was the only way that Aksana knew how to help her friends. Muriel spent much of her childhood and adolescence focused on her studies at seminary but was always acutely aware of the pains our enemies inflicted upon her two older sisters. She wanted to help them. She knew that there were ways that she could fight back like her sister Aksana. Classes in the dark arts existed at her seminary, although they were rarely discussed and were not listed in the official course catalogs, but she decided that perhaps her greatest gift was one of healing. Makawee was a bit of a surprise — a “caboose baby” I suppose. She has characteristics of all three of her older sisters. Like Jessika she has a great respect for arms and armor. And like Muriel she has a gift for healing. However I think that she will follow in Aksana’s footsteps.

Jessika, Aksana, and Muriel are all now settled in Outland. They are finished with their training and are fairly self sufficient financially. This has given me more time to spend with Makawee. But I have become concerned about the family’s impending move to Northrend. All four girls will need my help so that they may continue their training, and I am sure there will be significant financial needs as well. I love them all, but I will have to make some difficult choices. I think quite naturally that Jessika, the eldest, will be my priority, but it will be difficult to neglect the others and to decide how to divide what little extra time I will have among them.

Another Intervene macro.

Here’s a little macro I came up with yesterday and tested in Karazhan. I’m not the first to suggest this but I haven’t seen it discussed much.

/cast Taunt
/cast [help] Intervene; [target=targettarget, help] Intervene

Essentially this macro will Taunt or Intervene depending on the range of the target (assuming you have sufficient rage and your cooldowns are up). If the target is within 5 yards it will be taunted, and if the target is between 8 and 25 yards away, it will be intervened. Furthermore after doing an Intervene you can hit the macro again to Taunt. What I like about this macro is that it puts together a couple of abilities that are similar in purpose so that I can economize a bit on keybindings and keyboard space. I find that I am more likely to use an ability effectively if it is easier to reach. I’ve always had Taunt bound the one of my best keys (tilde), and now I have Intervene in an easy to reach place. Of course I realize that I could also use keybindings for multiple abilities by using macros with modifiers, but for myself I’ve found that I am not very good about hitting modifiers quickly in the heat of battle.

Keep in mind that there are some limitations of this macro. You need to still be careful about the range. You may really want to Taunt a target but if it is in the Intervene range you may find yourself moved to a spot less convenient from where you started. And given the ranges of Taunt and Intervene there is a 3 yard dead zone (5 to 8 yards) where you can’t do either.

Incidentally, didn’t they fix Intervene so that it would automatically select target of target so that the extra conditions in the standard intervene macro are unnecessary? That is, doesn’t

/cast Intervene

now work the same as

/cast [help] Intervene; [target=targettarget, help] Intervene?

I thought this was changed in a patch but I haven’t had a chance to test it.

It’s progression mon.

Last night we made our second assault on Zul’Aman. Actually given our gear we probably should have returned to Zul’Aman much earlier. We’d gone once before several weeks ago and made it less than gracefully to the first boss (trouble with the last pull) and made two attempts on Nalorakk before calling it a night. Last night we one-shotted Nalorakk and downed Akil’zon after three attempts. We started clearing the trash to Jan’alai but folks were getting tired. I hadn’t even noticed that my sword was nearly broke. Have you ever tried to hold aggro with a fist and shield? The drops were shoulders for our hunter Niobar and a chest piece for our healadin Ashratum.

After Karazhan Zul’Aman seems very relaxed and quick — good casual raidng.

Too much information!

Is anybody else overwhelmed with the amount of information now coming out regarding The Wrath of the Lich King? I can’t help but wonder about my toons and how they might change with the expansion. I don’t see many changes for my holy priest or my elemental shaman. I will be interested to see if frost will be a viable spec for raiding or if I will want to switch to fire or arcane. But the changes in the mechanics of tanking in general and in the talents and abilities of (protection) warriors are quite considerable. It would seem that tanks are getting perhaps the largest overhaul of all the classes/roles. I wonder what they are going to do to balance the three existing tank classes after the removal of crushing blows from the game.

Jessika’s WoW-free vacation.

Part of the reason for the gap in posts lately is that I was away from WoW for a whole week! I did a bit of vacationing in Oregon. Of course even though I couldn’t play WoW, my mind was still there. Here are a few screen shots.

The Oregon Dunes are reminiscent of Tanaris.

I got a good picture of a Sand Gnome.

I also visited Crater Lake. They say it was caused by a volcano, but personally I think this is what is left after our fire mage Veloreynn nuked a boss or something.

Near Bend I also found what looked like the remnants of Veloreynn’s work. Smokey the Bear would like to have a talk with you Vel.

New trash tanking philosophy.

Karazhan isn’t up to code.

I hope we are not the only raid that has more deaths due to falls than trash in the library section of Karazhan.

Should we talk about the weather?

Yet another 80’s music reference. Hmmm…are those women topless? I never noticed that before. (It’ll be fun to count the clicks on that link in my log.)

Anyway, after reading this article in WoW Insider I was reflecting on my feelings toward Outland — specifically the ambience. The surreal quality of Outland zones is fun, but there always seemed to be something missing that I could not quite put my finger on. But then this morning I was grinding through some Bloodsail Buccaneers on a beach in Stranglethorn Vale with my Draenei shaman when it started to rain. But it wasn’t just rain, it was a tropical rainstorm with horizontal gusts of wind and rain as well. It was fantastic! Then it occurred to me that that is what is missing in Outland — weather. Does the weather ever change in Outland? Also aside from Nagrand is there any noticable difference between day and night in Outland? I understand that someplace like Outland may not have normal weather patterns like in Azeroth, but at least Nagrand and Terokkar should have some rain, and maybe there could be electrical/mana/nether storms in some of the other zones. I’m imagine we’ll see some fun weather patterns in Northrend.

Ouch! Those are sharp!

So much for those celebratory group hugs after a boss kill. And what’s with the flame coming out the top!? I’m a little worried about my ears getting singed. If the shoulders drop off of Netherspite now I am going to shove them up his…well…somewhere where they’ll always be blocking the red beam.

WTB new dance.

I’m looking forward to the possibility of new dances. The Alizee thing for female Nelfs is getting a bit old. It’s a sexy dance we she does it, but the Nelf version is just slutty. We need something that is sexy and classy. May I suggest Flamenco?

OMG! Get out of the way! I have to PvP really badly!

So Keredria brought to my attention these shoulders after reading this post on BBB. They would be a considerable upgrade from my Shoulderguards of the Bold. Now I tried PvP a few times with Jess and really disliked it, but everything else I have is purple and I caught my guildies snickering about my shoulders a few times now, so I decided to bite the adamantium bullet and grind some honor.

The shoulders cost 20 Arathi Basin thingies, so I started there. Interesting, although not terribly productive given that the Alliance so rarely wins AB. I had to (re)learn how to fight in battle and berserker stance and use abilities that I rarely use while tanking like rend and hamstring. Of course I am a PvE-geared tank so I don’t die quickly, and although I don’t do much damage I can annoy people just by getting in their face. I like to go for casters since I can interrupt spells with both shield bash and concussion blow. I spent maybe 10 minutes just going back and forth with a holy paladin. After the fight was over (I died) she thanked me. Maybe she was being sarcastic but I like to think she had a good time. A few of my guildies came in with me and we all got on vent and had a fun time. Keredria said that she thinks of me as the bowling ball that they throw at the Horde pins. She wrote an amusing post about how we tried to save the corn.

I’m only a few short of the 20 AB thingies, so I’ve been doing Alterac Valley for honor since (a) we tend to win AV more than any other BG so more honor and (b) a tank can actually be useful there. I usually just try to make my way to Galv and/or Drek, although sometimes I have to play Bowling-for-Hordies if I get stuck at a choke point. Turtles suck although I just played an AV BG where a few of us were able to turn around a bad turtle by breaking through the horde position at IBGY. We took everything south of IBGY and took down Drek with a small but effective crew with me tanking. I still don’t know much about PvP and resilience and such, but tank and spank? That I can do.

So it’s been better than I anticipated, but once I have those shoulders Jess isn’t going back.

Miscellaneous news & observations.

• If you are like me and started playing WoW after TBC came out, head out to Eastern Plaguelands and check out Naxxramus floating above Plaguewood (NW part of Eastern Plaguelands). I never noticed it on my first two toons that I brought through there. I would suggest you do it soon because it’s going to be moved when WotLK comes out. It makes me regret that I missed some of the pre-TBC raid content, but then I’m not really hardcore enough to get to those late endgame instances.
• We did Zul’Aman for the first time last week. We didn’t have much luck but we did have fun. Ghostlands is so eerily beautiful and the ambient music is wonderful. I enjoyed leveling my now neglected Blood Elf warlock through there.
• My human priest Muriel hit 70 about a week ago, respecced holy, and finished her primal mooncloth set. I’ve healed a few normal 70ish instances, one heroic (Underbog), and filled-in as the second of two healers on our first attempt at Netherspite. That gave me nightmares. You are not prepared! Very true.
• The spell animation for Prayer of Mending looks utterly cool. They need to use this for some new offensive spell in the holy school.
• I’ve started playing again with my Draenei shaman, Makawee. Why a shaman? Simple. Throwing lightning is totally cool and I want to wear kilts. Also she looks great — greyish-white dreadlocks and dark skin. I should have named her Storm. Keredria’s shadow priest is about the same level so we’ve been doing a little questing together. I realize that the most efficient spec for leveling a shaman is enhancement, but I’m trying elemental.
• It’s ironic perhaps since my main is a protection warrior, but I prefer magic over melee for my alts. I’ve done mage, warlock, priest, and now shaman. If I were to start another toon I’d try balance druid — i.e., “crit chicken” — but to me the moonkin form looks so silly. Shouldn’t the animal form for a nuker be something more menacing? Maybe something like those lightning-casting serpents in Blade’s Edge Mountains?