On Monday morning I got a nice surprise. My AMD brand video card got an installation upgrade, a rather significant one, that I am hopeful will take care of the screen locking problem. Time will tell, but the update has already improved refresh speed and a few other bothersome things. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Fist is level 80 now, and feels she needs a plan to tackle the last ten levels. She will most likely spend more time in Sholazar Basin as there are a lot of quests that should go fairly fast. Fist hopes she can get to level 82 before leaving Wrath for Cata level zones, but if not she will likely jump to Cata anyway, as she's pretty ho hum about the other Wrath zones.
There are five Cata zones and five levels to achieve (81-85). Mount Hyjal is the obvious choice, as it's the starter zone for level 80s (I don't count Vashj'ir, as Wild never liked it much). The question is whether Fist can continue to pound out a couple of levels per zone, or if the new five level expansions (versus Burning Crusade and Wrath being ten levels) will force Fist to go zone to zone for each new level. Deepholm and Uldum are both fun to do, but I doubt I'll be able to skip the last/highest zone, Twilight Highlands, which has some good quests, but is not a favorite.
The jump from Wrath to Cata gear-wise is also a concern. At level 81 Fist will lose a lot of the heirloom experience boost, dropping from a 35% buff to just 15% (level 1-85 heirloom gear is only available on head and back). That 1-80 heirloom gear will no longer improve with level, either, so Fist will have to find gear to replace her shoulders, chest, trinkets, and weapon. That means major changes in how Fist collects her gear, which up to now has been updated almost entirely from quest rewards. The rest of her gear will also need a complete overhaul, since the gear stats of Cata level gear is much more powerful than Wrath level gear. Wild entered Cata with raid-level gear which helped him get through the early going. Fist is entering with quest level gear and that will be painful.
How painful? Consider her mistweaver healing staff: no +int, but a nice (I thought) 250 spell power. The AH has a level 77 mace that has +65int ... and 871 spell power. Gulp. Even her "best available" questing agi gear doesn't come close to measuring up: Her heirloom +68agi staff is laughingly bad against an AH level 80 one-hand axe with +233agi on it!
More pain from the AH is that pricing for Cata level gear is stupidly high. Fist has a green light to buy whatever she wants off the AH, but how much should be spent on gear that will too soon be replaced? How much gold is Happy willing to throw at Fist?
Fist could get royally murdered out there in Cata land.
Monday Night - Naithipe heard about Fist's mutterings and swung by to see how Fist was doing. Naithipe's advice (demand, more like) was that she stop wringing her hands and start practicing her healing if that's what silly girls do at level 80 these days. Naithipe, of course, would rather be cutting opponents down than healing, but if that's what Fist is interested in, she'd better work at being good at it.
Fist doesn't want or get much advice from her mother, but she took the blunt advice seriously. She got her healing spells in some semblance of order and put herself in the queue for a random battleground. She got Alterac Valley. AV is a large group BG and was ideal for Fist to blend in and see what she could do.
It turned out better than she expected. She barely knew her spells, and having to track two different kinds of heals (those that use mana and those that use chi) had Fist pulling her hair. She learned a bit at a time, but mostly just pounded keys hoping some actual healing was getting out there. There were many small group battles that Fist helped with, and her confidence grew.
Fist died only four times, which is fewer than usual for a Wild family pvper. It was just coincidence, though, that she didn't draw focus fire much, because she was certainly squishy and easy to kill, with her modest health and absolutely no pvp resilience to provide protection. She did DPS a little, too, but mostly she healed.
The horde team also won the fight! At least until the next BG, Fist can brag she's never lost a BG match.
Considering how randomly Fist was dropping spells, it's a wonder her numbers were as good as they were. Here is the BG Summary from the fight:
Not bad, if Fist does say so herself. She was third in horde healing, and fourth overall. Her DPS didn't amount to much, but at least she got some numbers on the board.
After the battle Wild helped Fist get macros set up (like his) so that next time she can mouseover heal instead of click targeting. Fist had a lot of fun.
No comments:
Post a Comment