The Tuesday morning maintenance is in progress - normal maintenance, meaning Patch 4.01 will not arrive for at least another week. It can't be too much longer, because over the weekend Blizzard made the official announcement that the Cataclysm expansion would be released on 7 Dec 2010, about eight weeks away. The timing was a bit odd, with the company's annual BLIZZCON event getting ready to start. You'd think they would want to make a big splash with an announcement there. Instead, we learned that we could have known the release date a lot sooner had we realized the little joke BLizz played on us. In the mountains of news covering every tiny detail that comes out about Cata, there was a post in AUGUST about Cata events. Here is the short notice:
High Tinker Mekkatorque has made an Azeroth Bulletin stating that Operation: Gnomeregan is imminent. He goes on to state in this announcement, "After all, Thermaplugg has eluded death for years to keep his reign over Gnomeregan; and with the fall of the Lich King, the last great threat to the citizens of Azeroth, the chance of any cataclysmic event taking place in the foreseeable future is less than 12.7%."
A "cataclysmic event?" ... "12.7%" ... 12/7, as in Dec 7th? Yep, Blizzard had let the goblins and worgen out of the bag months ago, and laughed behind our backs while we all conjectured. A writer at Wowinsider was the first to accurately speculate what it meant - just 5 days ago.
All that aside, life must go on with the Wild Family. With the patch getting near reality, Philly made the call that she would be unable to use her frost emblems before the patch and graciously elected to spend them on an heirloom bow that the family hunters could use. Mery, Chaitee, and Rakta were ecstatic by the news. Wait, we have three hunters? How did that happen? Mery, who already has a pretty beechin' gun, agreed to let Chaitee be the caretaker of the shared weapon. EZ, who is our only engineer, was able to make a +2 damage scope for the bow. Chaitee couldn't wait to try out her new toy when it arrived in the mail from Philly, and got a little red faced when she could not equip it. Chaitee uses a crosssbow, and had never taken the training to use a bow. So Chaitee had to travel to Darnassus via Auberdine and Tedrassil, where the Weapon Master for bows held court. She completed her training and then took some time in Auberdine to do some quests and test out the magnificent bow. Chaitee leveled from 14 to 16 and got her pet, Stretch, to level 15.
Chaitee shows off "her" bow
There was more Alliance cousin action Monday night. Java, Sin, and Esor were back at it after last week's run of random dungeons. UB was not able to make it. We were all a level or two higher now, and instead of being dropped into Maraudon every time, this week we found ourselves in Razorfen Kraul (RFK). Wild family members on the horde side know this place, as JB and Wild have hosted runs in RFK in the past for gear and experience. RFK is a long dungeon when it is fully cleared, with several bosses that drop some excellent gear for the level. Since we were all trying to level, full clears were the order of business.
The primary mobs in RFK are humanoid pigs. They even sound like pigs, squealing when poked and pounded on. Our group of three plus two strangers from the dungeon finder battled through the dungeon. Our druid healer was decent, although he complained a bit when Java rolled Need on a leather cloak. Paladins use mail/plate gear and druids use leather. However, the cloak was an upgrade even being leather. The druid won it anyway, and I explained that I didn't want it destroyed if he hadn't wanted it. I also told him I would pass him any leather gear he wanted if I won the roll for it.
The dungeon was just enough of a challenge that we had to pay attention, but our gear and level were good enough to make it fun and fast. In between last week's runs and this week's, Java had worked hard to build up his gear and make some improvements to his interface. In RFK Monday night, Java worked just as hard practicing his melee moves and spells, using Esor, who is also a paladin, as his model. One of the best things about running random dungeons with smart friends is that Java learned a lot, much of it simple stuff that other players just assume you know but never tell you about. Java is the first paladin that I've taken seriously, and I seriously didn't know the simple stuff, particularly when in a group and even more particularly when in a group with another paladin.
Paladins have a lot of buffs that can help a raid, but they have to be used correctly. First is the paladin Aura. Java can pick from three auras. Alone, Java uses his Retribution Aura the most, as it adds damage to Java's attacks. Being a melee damage dealer, Java figured he should continue to use "Ret" as his aura in groups. Not so, Java learned. In groups where the tank is not a paladin, the proper aura to use is the Devotion aura. That aura increases armor protection for the raid, and specifically helps the tank. So paladins are asked to give up a little DPS so that the tank will be better protected. When there is a paladin tank in a multi-paladin group, the paladins decide among themselves which auras each will use, in order to maximize the benefit to the raid. In the raid's on Monday night, both of us pallies were using the "Ret" aura, and we only sorted it out later that Esor preferred Java to use Devotion.
Another buff are Blessings. These are ten minute buffs of various types that the paladin casts on players in the group, including himself. A paladin can cast different buffs on different players, depending on what they need, but only one buff can be active at a time from each paladin. With two paladins, they have to coordinate which buffs will be applied by whom. While Esor and Java should have worked that out at the start, we did eventually settle on which buffs each of us would be responsible for. Java had to remember to make sure he cast his buff on Esor, too, so that we all had two Blessings each, one from each paladin. One of the more irritating challenges in a group for a paladin is re-casting Blessings every ten minutes.
Then there are Seals. A Seal is a thirty minute buff usable only by the paladin.
So, at the beginning of a run, and every ten minutes after that, Java is casting buffs on players and himself. It's a pain.
Melee combat with Java is a process of short frenzies and then poking bad guys with his weapon while waiting for his cooldowns to come up. Java's major damage spells have multi-second cooldowns, and there aren't enough of them to keep Java busy full time. Java bides his time by poking things with his weapon, helping the healer with a heal or two, taunting away monsters that are after someone besides the tank, etc, until he can do some real damage. Special procs on weapons can help add to the "white damage" (the base damage done by an un-enhanced weapon), and Java was trying out an enchant called Lifestealing, a rare recipe that Wild happened to have. After testing that enchant Monday night, Java had two words for Lifestealing, which is intended to do extra damage by stealing an opponent's health and giving it to Java. The two words - "It sucked!" The enchant added only 2% damage to Java's attacks, which is very poor. The Fiery Weapon enchant, which Wild can also make, does considerably more damage and is what Wild usually provides to his family members for melee weapon procs.
Java had a pretty good night in Razorfen Kraul. We pounded through the dungeon twice and Java picked up a very nice helm and a new weapon [Corpsemaker]. The 2-hand axe is one of the best weapons available at this level for a retribution paladin. And it has a cool name, too. Both are level 27 weapons, and Java was currently at level 26. He'll have to wait a level before he can use that gear.
After our RFK adventures and after Esor had to leave, Java and Sin hit the pvp battlegrounds. For Java, it was his first trip, which I didn't realize until Java started getting exploration achievements just for setting foot in a pvp battleground. We started in Arathi Basin. The view as we entered the field of battle was very weird since I am so used to seeing it from the Horde side. We got off to a good start but we weren't very organized. It became obvious halfway through that the horde team could take any base away from us they wanted to, while holding one or two bases to keep the ahead of us in resource gathering. We fought hard, but no one was surprised when the horde won. Sin was the top damage dealer by far and also led with 18 killing blows. Pretty impressive. Java came in 6th out of 12 in damage done, respectable enough.
We hit Warsong Gulch for our second BG, and unfortunately it went pretty much the same as AB. We lost. Sin again led in damage dealing in WSG and Java improved, at least relative to the AB match. Java came in 4th out of 10. Looking at the Battleground stats, it was obvious why we lost that battle. Of the ten pvpers on our side, four of them were hunters. One of the hunters finished 3rd in damage dealing, but the other three finished dead last, 8th thru 10th. Even the two dedicated healers in our group did more damage than those three hunters. Those three hunters failed even to heal their own pets! I guess what they say is true - hunters are considered an easy class to play, and a lot of very bad alliance players choose to be hunters.
Well, it's time to post this. At 11:50am on Tuesday morning the servers are still down. It's not the patch. It's just the usual delays.
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