I am not sure I like the new looking for group system (lfg), mainly because it does not have raids, and there are a lot of people that hang out in it for the sole purpose of raiding. I was interested in seeing how raiding would work out if they allowed it. I am sure that there will be enough angry people asking for it that Blizzard will implement it. Perhaps now the real reason to the early December release of 3.3 is reviled as I know that I see a lot less raids going on due to holiday events. One of my regular groups has only 2 days scheduled. Perhaps there is not something I am seeing in the system as I have rather busy schedule and have not been able to see the full effect of the patch. However I have done enough random pugs a day to get the achievement, which was with 4 groups. 3 should have done the trick, but it appears that I did a few random pugs with various people more then once. 40 more and I get the title of Verdin the Patient, I imagine that 100 is the pug pet.

Usually when it comes to posts about pugs, I don’t generally have any thing good to say. Not to mention every one of these pugs was The Oculus, arguably the one instance that no one wants to pug regular or heroic. But with this patch it was supposed to have been nerfed. Not to mention everyone should be well geared with the introduction of Trial of the Champion. 3 of the 4 groups was a breeze making me think that perhaps its time to entertain the idea of completing the instance achievements for a new mount. I am after all 12 away from the 100 mark. 1 of the 4 groups was a bit annoying as 2 of 5 people did not know where to go, and for some reason thought they should lead. Even though I debated on leaving we still managed to finish it without a wipe. So at most the new system has only annoyed me a little, and I may yet see all my characters in tier 9 before the end of this expansion.

The new system eliminated one of the pains of pugs, which is for everyone to get to the instance.  Or waiting for 2 people to get to the meeting stone.  Which you can still do.  But you can click on the lfg macro on the map to transport to the instance.   At the same time you can transport back to where you were after the instance is done.  For example I was near the fp at the Tournament Grounds.  After finishing the random heroic it sent me back where I was. 

I suspect that there will be another patch in the next 2 weeks to make the lfg system cover raids so that everyone can get a chance to whack Arthas.

So its here the finale part of Wraith of the Lich King, when it first came out people contemplated that this was the end of WoW.  But as I stated in a earlier post there is still more lore to go.  Parts of what I had discussed in a earlier post will take part in next patch, one can only wonder if the Burning Legion is waiting for us in what may be the 4 the expansion.

So Verdin is decked out in tier 9, and most of my characters are sporting better gear in terms of where they were in the previous expansion.   I am a little surprised of the timing for this expansion, and now I ponder on if I should have finished leveling Bankous last month.   Now I wait for them to get done with their network maintenance.

Joy its patch time.  I can half hearty say that. Because while there are a ton of exciting  changes, it seems that people that are only around when there are changes are back.   I am still eager to see all the good stuff that has been released with this patch.  After Verdin is a crusder, and I had held off on working on Oracle rep because I did not want to have to regrind rep with Frenzy Heart.   More on that in my next two posts.  On top of that every thing is laggy as usual. Then you have the morons that think if you stand on top of the vendor you will get your stuff faster. I love the Taurens, but the hate starts to grow when your one the dumb asses standing on top of the merchants and trainers. Then there is the error messages I get bombarded with if I try to run my mods. At minimum I need bartender.

Lag was a bit over whelming and I over bought the Obsidian Hatchling 4 times.  Not a good mistake to make at 40 g a pop.  But a few friends got an extra one.   You can find him (and for some bizzare reason the only pet that can be found at the Magical Menangri at Daralan (58,40).    He is more of a grey raptor then a black.

But with that said, it looks like this weekend I work on leveling Vulpes. I was indeed able to buy the cold weather flying book and it appears you just need to be level 68 and have the first level of flight training. I can’t say I am disappointed that leveled my other alts before this. While this will defiantly increase my leveling speed, it was nice to have an equalizer in the beginning with those that did not have epic flight.

Strangely Meriones bear and cat form are purple, I was expecting a green color. My friend Tetrehana supposedly looks like a skunk, but she has blue hair. Bushidox has white hair and is a white bear. 

I have gotten back most of my pets and all my mounts. Blizzard has put me on hold with some higher level of tech support.

I have mixed feeling on what Blizzard did with priests. While I have never gone shadow, and I don’t have any desire to. I know there are a lot of angry shadow priests out there, as they got perhaps the worst nerfing out of any class / spec. But my three complaints so far:

1. Lower level heals cost more mana then the highest level spell, so no more scaling back on heals.

2. Spell power and healing are the same thing. This bothers me for few reasons. The biggest problem I have is pug looting, I now have to compete with mages, shadow priests, warlocks, moonkin, maybe even elemental shaman. Then there is the fact that the mats for healing enchants cost more then spell power. Why would I do healing when I could get spell power for far cheaper. This week I was in a kara group in which the healing wand (or used to be healing wand) drop off the oz event. It was a bit sad to see a mage roll against a priest for it.

3. I lost star shards, I like this spell with the last patch. It was no longer channeled and it was free. Sure it had a cool down of thirty seconds, but the key words are FREE DAMAGE OVER TIME. I don’t know of anyone that is complaining about this spell. Give dwarf priests back fear ward and give me back star shards.

I would like to play with the new spell that gives back mana to a party, but I have not had a luck at trying it because I either don’t need mana or the 8 second wait could result in the death of the tank. I think it should be an instant cast, not too mention more then 10% of mana back. Regardless I did not have too big a problem with mana, but I thought it was dumb I could only use one mana pot per fight. I am sure this is because of all the people complaining about the cost of pots. Never mind I have easily used 10 times the amount of pots for raiding, then I did pre bc. I think cool down on pots should have been dropped to 1 minute.

It took a bit to figure out how I was going to spec, there were a lot of things in the holy tree I wanted, while at the same time there was the mana regen while casting that I wanted from the discipline tree. I am rather happy they replaced the wand spec with something useful, which is a 5 points for a 10% increase in heals and spell damage. Holy nova is now free to all, so no longer a talent point. Even though I specked out of it last time because that was what every mob that could mind control love too spam when they MC me. But holy nova made Dead Mine runs fun.

Even though they changed the stats of healing and spell power to the same thing I still need two sets. After all my healing gear has no hit or crit, and my dps gear has little spirit and low mana regen. I am glad my healing gear was not nerfed to one third the spell power, but half. The prior change was 1/3 spell power of your total healing. Though I think there will be a change on future gear and you will see spirit on gear that used to not have it. Mostly because of changes in warlocks. It use to be one of the first tier demonology talents had a + stamina with spirit reduction. Now its just a + stamina with no reductions on any stat. While in the affliction side you get a + intel / spirit aura from the fel hunter. Intel = spell crit, and spirit = mana regen, and if you have a priest that put enough points in to the discipline tree for improved spirit additional spell power. I doubt with this level of change that Blizzard will change back to the former way healing power worked because it will only cause a lot of confusion, especially when what might have been used for spell power gear would become healer gear.

There are a lot of nice changes in 3.0 so there is a lot to cover. I plan to write a different entry for each of my 7 classes as there are a lot of different exciting changes. Not to mention some things that were not so great.

First I would like to cover the new profession inscription. I knew there would be a lot of changes from beta. Its part of the reason I didn’t want to play beta, because what may have been in beta will probable not end up in the end result. Plus why put work in to changes I can not keep. I’m not going to write a list of what patterns you should use to level. For one I had to pay all my friends back for the herbs they donated so I was all over the place on what patterns I used. Also my herb list was off in leveling from 1 – 200. I could have used 25% – 50% more then I had originally listed. At the same time as I expected milling works exactly like prospecting. You need 5 of the same herb to mill.

Here is my new list of for power leveling Inscription,. Keep in mind you want keep these herbs in stacks of 5. 1 – 4 of a herb can not be milled.

Til yesterday I had not realized that this patch would release 2 new pets.   One of which is the sporebat which you can buy off the Sporeggar once you reach exalted.  Which lead to me getting on Auction House to buy any and all Hibiscus ( I just need 288).  But it seems everyone else knows about the tiny sporebat pet, or they are getting them for earth to water transmute (in my opinion the best transmute).  The other pet is blue dragon whelp which drops off the dragonkin in Azshara.  I will probable farm for this or buy it off some lucky soul in AH.  But I imagine the respawn rate and the farmers will make it something I would not want to be around to farm.

Though first thing I will do when I log on (After checking on auctions), is go and see the leather working trainer and the Honor Hold for the 20 and 24 slot quiver patterns.  Perhaps later I will work on farming the 24 slot leather worker bag.  The 24 slot Netherscale ammo pouch (Honor Hold / Thrallmar)  & Quiver of a Thousand Feathers (Lower City) require revered status and 350 leather working and a primal nether.  I am a little surprised that the quiver was not with Cenarion Expedition.  Not to mention you can make 20 slot quiver and ammo bag for a level 60.  But level 68 and fraction wise honored with the consortium and Kurwenai / Mag’Har for a 18 slot with the same speed increase.  Unfortunately I am atleast three runs away from making the good quiver, but I do have one nether.  I would have the 99 light feathers if I had not decided to auction them.  Which makes me think I should stop selling raw materials, or atleast keep 2 stacks of materials.  I am still regretting selling all my primal shadow prior to the last patch (2.2).

I don’t see anything in the notes about shadow bolt nerfing (which I hope not I like my critical hits).   I was told there would be a 2% decrease, I am hoping that’s not something did and did not cover in release notes.  Not a lot of notable changes for locks.   But there was alot of hunter love in this patch (especially for the marksman hunter).  Aimed and arcane shot were defiantly tweaked up.  I can defiantly see people bitching about that.  Arcane shot will debuff opponents, and aimed shot will reduce healing received.  Attack power increasing the effect of traps and stings only makes this patch sweeter for hunters.  It would be nice if attack power or intelligence would affect mend pet.  Not having duration on true shot aura is icing on the cake.

I like that I will now be able to decurse in moonkin form.  Not to mention 20 minute cool down as opposed to a 30 minute cool down.  This will give a bit more reason for people to bring balance druids.  I wonder if they did this because of the heroic quest chain.  One can only hope they extend the length of time on cyclone and decrease or remove the cool down on hurricane.

In my opinion priest changes are mixed blessing.  On the one hand it’s been some what of a relief that I will not have to be told that I should have rolled a dwarf.  But fear ward for all priests came with a nerf to where only one person could be buffed per priest.  Star shards is defiantly an improvement considering I never use it, a free spell makes me more inclined to use it.  As for Elunes grace, I am not sure what to think about that.  It really did not help much in the past against ranged attacks.  I am really happy about improved mana regen that will make my lasting power even greater.

But speaking of Rasbora, I am currently 3813 g away from getting him the epic flying mount Cenarion War Hippogryph.  Which require 300 riding, exalted status with Cenarion Expedition, and 1600 g (this is after the rep bonus).  But I figure I should have it before December. I think its a pretty awesome looking mount, not to mention the amount of gold would probable be a large deternet for alot of people to get one.

The Engineering mounts are interesting as well, and perhaps a reason not to drop this profession on Plec

I think that Tauren in Helicopters are rather hilarious looking.