Patch 3.1 PTR Notes

Moving one step closer, the PTR notes are up for 3.1

This is the patch that will bring us dual specs and make me a very happy Resto Shaman, with an Elemental leaning. Most of my gear should translate pretty well between both specs and I have been consulting lootrank.com to put together a shopping list of DPS-centric gear as I go along.

It looks like the cost for getting your dual spec will be 1,000G, which is about what I had figured. Not a trivial amount, but most 80s won't have a problem handing it over to gain a second spec. I'm wondering if we might be able to add slots later, like we do with our bank? I would envision that cost going up incrementally to obtain each additional slot.

Matthew Rossi at wowinsider.com wrote a great article on the propsed changes, which you can find here.

It looks like Shamans are getting some love, no major nerfs to the way I play. I am not a huge raider, so the Bloodlust change (5 min CD, 10 min Debuff) is not critical to me. Usually we only use it at the final few percentage of the boss fights to speed it up a bit. That may change and will affect hardcore raiders and 25 man progression guilds a lot more that it does for me.

All in all, I like what I am seeing for this patch so far.

My thoughts on recent raiding

A post I made to my guild website:

So...yeah...

After reflecting on the runs we had over the past week, I have come to the conclusion that we probably need to do some more work in heroics to farm gear and badges for gear.

If you would like to PUG the raids, you have my support. But, I'm not sure that we are totally ready to be raiding as a guild quite yet. A couple of weeks of heroics should make a HUGE difference for all of us.

Recruiting is also something that will need to be focused on and I have made a macro that I will be using when I'm around the major cities. I will post it if you want to see it and use it as a template. We have 8 solid players, and 3 or 4 that are possibles based on their schedules, so we really only need to recruit a few more. Another healer, or a respec from the guild, and DPS with CC are our main needs at this point.

What do you think?

I got positive feedback on this post and we have tried a few more heroics. I am always struggling with where a casual guild stops and a progression guild starts. And where do I wanna be, anyway? With a small guild am I being unrealistic with my expectations?

I really like the crew I am playing with and I want everyone to be happy with the content we are doing, and still maintain the balance we have had. I guess it comes down to the fact that I like the people better than the content.

I love my guildies

Our regular OT and I decided to run some Heroic Violet Hold to break up our boredom....bad idea. We got one of those PUGs. You know the one, where the guy barely breaking 1K DPS is harassing the tank and healer and telling us we aren't doing the instance right. He went so far to say that I should go back and do it on regular to learn the fights.

Now, I'm not "pro" or "elite" of any of that, but I am a solid healer. I don't like being called out like that by a Unholy DK only doing 1100DPS. I know he should be doing better, our DKs pump out high mid 2000s regularly.

That wasn't the point of the post, really. The point is this - I love running with my guild, there is no venom or belittling each other. I don't understand why people do it, but I'm glad my crew doesn't.

So for those Limited Warranty guys who might read this - Thank you for being so professional and awesome.

Over the fence we went

We made it over the fence!

Only 9 showed up for the Naxx run, but that is a significant portion of our small guild. Almost everyone was on time-ish, repaired, ready to go.

There was some confusion on where to start, so we tried the first spider boss - I forget the name. We took 3 shots at him with the 9 we had, only Mishandala and me healing. We only got him to around 50% and decided to move into the plague quarter.

Noth the Plaguebringer went down easily for us and Kariki and Mishandala were able to grab some nice upgrades. The night ended shortly after that, as 2 of our team had to study for midterms - eduation comes first.

Overall I was pleased with our performance and we downed a boss. I know some of you laugh and say Naxx is EZMode, but we are pretty casual and didn't raid a lot in BC either. I am proud of the crew that went and we will be downing more bosses in the near future.

Here goes nothing...

I have scheduled a guild run of Naxxramas for tonight. A lot of people have been asking about doing it and I am throwing my hat over the fence*.

I sent an invite using the in-game calendar, and the guild website, to all the level 80s in the guild. I'm hoping that everyone can show up, ready to go and we can get some raiding going. I will be very disappointed if it does not happen. I really think we have a great group of players and we can be successful - if everyone is dedicated. That might be where there is an issue.

Getting this organized has not gone as smoothly as I would like. I have gotten very few responses on raid night and time preferences. We are set for tanks and healers, but the DPS is where we are lacking. I hate to resort to PUGging it, but we may have to.

I have so many thought swirling in my head right now, and some of them will make it to this blog later tonight. Stay tuned.

* "Throwing my hat over the fence" - based on a story I heard once, don't remember where. A guy was trying to decide whether to climb over the fence (for some reason or another) and was having a hard time deciding what to do. So, on impulse he tossed his hat over the fence. Now he is left with two choices - go get it or forget about the hat. It's an expression of forcing yourself into a decision.

I'm an Elder

Another of the "holiday" achievements has been accomplished successfully. This one wasn't terribly hard, but it was time consuming to track down all 75 of the elders. I like the "Elder" title, I think it fits my character pretty well and I will probably be wearing it most of the time.

It was pretty easy to get into the Alliance cities to visit the elders and I only died on the way out of Stormwind when I accidentally ran into the auction house. So it goes.

The dungeons were easy enough and it allowed us to get some additional heroic runs in, to get some extra rep.

Next up is the "Love is in the Air" event, looks like there might be a few tricky steps in there and a lot more PvP to get the next title.

We can be heroes

So, Limited Warranty has begun doing our heroic runs recently and so far have plowed through Nexus, Utgarde Keep and Culling of Stratholme, and have made it part way through Violet Hold.

Things I learned:

• The resto build I am using is much better for healing heroics but not as good for the questing and dailies, still manageable, it just takes longer.
• UK and Nexus are actually not too bad on heroic, we went through both with very few wipes. We adapted to the fights very quickly and got some loot upgrades.
• The Violet Hold VoidWalker boss SUCKS! We were not able to get past him and gave up. We need to research that one a bit more. We did down the boss with the spheres successfully.
• Meathook kinda sucks, he is by far the hardest boss we fought in Culling of Stratholme. His Constricting Chains attack always seemed to hit me, the healer, and kill me first. We finally got a good strategy on him after multiple wipes and I think we should be okay next time we try it.
• Prince Arthas in Culling of Stratholme would be booted from any PuG I was running. He doesn't follow kill orders, runs ahead of the party, aggros damn near everything, and is a whiny little bitch when he pulls the whole room and goes down. Seriously though, his AI kinda torgues me and those gauntlet pulls can get dicey when he aggroes the group past the one you are working on.
• Last, but certainly not least - I love my guild and the people in it. We work pretty good together and, even in frustration, work to get a solution and get our strategy worked out. Great job guys!