Tag: WoW

I like having goals in games that I play, whether they’re goals I create myself, or goals the game creates for me. One of the goals I had for myself in WoW was to reach ilevel 700 on my main (who at this time I consider my priest) before Legion released. I consider myself to be a pretty casual player, I don’t group up very often but I spend a fair amount of time in LFR or searching through custom groups for something that catches my fancy. I’ve never done a mythic dungeon (let alone a raid) and while I did do a lot of PVP at the beginning of Warlords, I’ve since stopped. This meant that reaching that magical number was a goal that I wasn’t sure I could accomplish.

Except today I managed to do just that. It probably would have been sooner had I bothered trying to get groups for Kazz but I didn’t even know about that raid (blush) until a month or so ago.

My gear is of course a hodgepodge of stuff. A few set pieces (Felfume) some Kazz loot (trinkets, neck, cloak), and some empowered baleful from Taanan Jungle. While I’m out and about on my own my priest is usually spec’d as shadow – but when it comes to grouping or raids, I’m currently in disc. I’ve been playing a priest main for years now, and I’m excited to see the holy changes that are coming in Legion, it’s been a while since I’ve tinkered with that specific spec.

In the meantime as we wait for Legion I’m doing the typical “prepare for Legion” things. Milking my garrison while I can, collecting appearance gear in my bank / bags for when transmog changes go live, doing world events for tabards, and playing the alts here and there. I’ve also been working on my pet collection, I’m up to 551 now, but I want more to be level 25, and at least rare quality. Alts come in handy for this, I can earn enough tokens in a day to turn a few rare and to also level up a few levels just by doing the garrison pet daily. I know I could grind out the levels on the pets that I want at 25, but I have a feeling I would get bored of that pretty easily. At least this way I keep myself interested.

That’s one of the hardest parts about waiting for an expansion – keeping interested and busy. Since I’m such a casual player to begin with, it hasn’t been that hard this time around, but I AM very eager for Legion to release.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Last week I finally got into the Legion beta, after trying to get in since I heard about it. I eagerly downloaded the beta server and then was promptly unable to play because of some technical difficulties with a patch they had just rolled out. Such is my luck. Eventually later on in the day I was able to log in without facing a multitude of disconnects and lag, and what grabbed me right off the bat was not any of the proposed changes coming in Legion, but the changes coming before Legion hits. The ones that are now on the PTR for testing (with no live date in sight, but with Legion only months away, it’s only a matter of time).

Of these changes my absolute favourite is the changes to the transmog system. Instead of carting around appearance gear or storing it forever in void storage (which has a hefty fee if you ever want to remove the item from void storage) there’s a slick new interface that’s account wide. I absolutely LOVE this change, and I think it will really make a difference in how often I get to change my characters appearance from their typical gear. Not only does it take armour into consideration but things like tabards and shirts will also be account wide. The changes to this single feature (so far) outweigh everything else I’ve seen. In true blizzard fashion they’ve taken a system that’s already around in other games (Diablo3, GW2) and added their own design features and perfected it for World of Warcraft.

One of the changes that leaves me with a less than happy taste in my mouth is the changes (and removal) of glyphs. A few are still around, but characters no longer have a glyph panel and instead these are built into your spells. The problem I have is that it doesn’t seem that Blizzard has thought it through as far as the inscription craft class goes which of course I just swapped my 2nd main character to. Instead of making glyphs, inscription will make a consumable item that’s used by players once a week to help do more DPS to a specific boss.

Eh?

Of course I’ll reserve my overall judgement for when it all goes live (nothing is set in stone) but it leaves me with a sour taste in my mouth. I guess there was some heavy debate over scribes making too much money with their glyphs and this is some sort of retribution and balance to that. Perfectly understandable but I’m still kicking myself for having just picked up the profession. On the other hand, I have enough alts that I have pretty much one of everything, so it’s not a huge deal.

I’m very excited to experience the rest of the changes, I think it’s going to be a great time for gaming in World of Warcraft.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

I don’t enjoy confrontation, and I’ve never been a huge fan of PVP though I do partake (it’s probably because I’m constantly doubting my skills or lack there of). Where that doesn’t seem to matter at all because of the method in which battles have been implemented in is in World of Warcraft’s pet battles.

At the start I was pretty intimidated. My first attempt at doing pet battles (in a pvp sense) was during pet week when there’s a bonus to the experience earned. You get a token that instantly boosts a pet of your choosing to 25, and that’s a pretty awesome thing to have. I figured how bad can it be to win 5 matches.

The very first thing I realized is that there’s a lot LESS pressure than I thought because the whole thing is anonymous. You have no idea who the player is that you’re up against. There’s no names, there’s no chatting. It’s just like you’re fighting NPC except they’ve got a different way of doing things.

I started learning a lot about my pet set ups and thinking outside of the box as to what team would be best suited for random battles where I had no idea what I would be up against. The team switches from week to week, but for now I’ve settled on the unborn Val’kyr, anubisath idol, and soul of the forge.

I open with curse of doom, and follow up with haunt. This kills the val’kyr but only temporarily until haunt triggers 4 turns later. This gives my opponents a false sense of security, they think “hey, one pet already down!” – then I sandstorm. I try to time my deflection when their biggest moves are up, and crush in between. I swap pets and repeat the process when the unborn val’kyr is back in play, and spam flamethrower, and deep burn on the soul of forge while keeping extra plating up where possible.

Do I win every fight? No, of course not. But I win enough to earn a few achievements and to earn the quested token that lets me boost another pet to 25. It’s fun, stress free, and if you’ve been avoiding it because you’re not sure how the pvp aspect of it would be I highly suggest diving right in.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!