Ring Enchants for Enchanters Only

Attention min-maxers!

In BC, you could level up your enchanting, enchant your rings, and then drop enchanting for some other profession (such as leatherworking for the drums, or jewelcrafting for the BoP gems).

Crazy, right?

Well no more!

You’ll only have the enchant active if you currently have enchanting skill above 350.

As it should be, in my opinion.

Communication Part 1: What I Want from Blizzard

There’s been a lot of talk about communication lately here in the blogosphere. Specifically, how do we want it?

Where is this coming from?

I started thinking about this a few weeks ago when I saw something on the shadowpriest.com forums. With constant revisions of talents and nerf bats coming seemingly out of nowhere, the snippets we’ve gotten from the blues have been, at times, very confusing. Someone called Koraa out, claiming incompetence, and pointed out various “oops, I meant…” statements scattered across several class forums.

Nijessi of Burning Legion responded in the thread:

Fact is if blizzard DOESNT have the man power to communicate effectively and accurately than all they are doing by attempting to communicate is creating turmoil. I would rather effective communication above all else – but if it’s not available then I would say make it a walled garden.

A couple weeks later, 2nd Nin from Life of a Nin wrote a piece about in-game design. While the piece focused on tanks, there’s some really insightful nuggets that apply to everyone. She notes that:

… none of the beta testers have seen a vision statement for each class or talent tree and instead we get limited snippits from dev from time to time. By hiding (or rather not revealing) the overall plan Blizzard minimises the chance that we can give useful and productive feedback to them.

Though this is focused on our ability to give feedback, it points out something very important – we don’t know where Blizzard is going with any of this. Wrath is like a completely new game and we don’t know what Blizzard is trying to accomplish with each class and/or spec.

Merlot from Misery posted a great view of how the response from shadow priests to Blizzard is really a study in trust. She, too, points out:

[there is a] lack of transparency with the development process. We have no clear iteration of Blizzard’s vision for shadow priests, so we have no context in which to view certain decisions.

The rest of the article is fantastic, and gives a great perspective on the shadow priest-blue dynamic.

So what do I want?

I don’t expect full transparency into the developer thought process. Blizzard is a business – it will make whatever decisions it feels is right for their game. But among those millions of players, there’s a strong group of people who will theorycraft, simulate, and make alternative suggestions.

It’s just really hard to do when we don’t know where you’re trying to take us.

I don’t want a “walled garden,” but I would LOVE a little something more cohesive than what we’ve seen so far.

So here’s my wish: Give us a road map, a vision statement, or any number of other business clichés. For ALL classes and specs. What are you trying to do with each class? Where do you want them to be at level 80, at the top of the raiding/pvp/soloing game?

Blizzard, you’ve created a wonderful, insanely addicting game, and have facilitated the creation of a massive community. I wouldn’t still be playing if I didn’t like what you’ve created – so I have to trust that you have the best interests of the game at heart. But since you want feedback, please let us know where you’re trying to take us, so the suggestions that are crafted with so much love for our respective classes can match up with what you want us to be.

I don’t need all the nitty gritty details of each decision – just an idea of what it was based on.

To come:

Communication Part 2: What I Want from My Leadership
Communication Part 3: What Others can Expect from Me

Image credit: Pontuse

Naxx 25 gear – I Want it Nao!

I was poking around mmo-champion and saw this:

Gosh, that’s pretty. Even the name gives me chills!

Tarnished Goods

Know Your Lore is one of my favorite columns on WoW Insider.

Recently, they did a piece on Stalvan Mistmantle. You remember him, right Alliance folks? Crazy guy in Duskwood, fell in love with a girl he tutored, ended up murdering her entire family? Seriously psycho.

This is the part that struck me:

He attacks you, you kill him, and bring his ring to Madame Eva. Then you get your choice of two rewards: One is an axe that he probably used to murder the Flintridge family, the other his ring.

I carried around the axe that psychotic used to massacre an entire family?

Holy crap. I guess I never really thought of the quest rewards in terms of the lore. That seriously creeps me out; bad mojo. What other potentially cursed items have I carried with me in my travels? Have I been wearing armor and jewelery and trinkets that “the bad guys” were wearing when they committed their evil deeds?

I think I need to go to the Cathedral and get some mental cleansing.

Image credits: levi_sz

Shiny Newness!

See that shiny new blog banner up there?  Hehe, my little Isis, she’s musing!

Compliments of thematrixhasme on the wow_ladies group on Livejournal.

She promised she’d let me know when she got her portfolio online, and I’d give her a little link love.

Until then – thanks!

Dear Diary: I’m Going Through Withdrawal

Hello, my name is Isis, and it’s been eight days since my last raid.

Hello Isis.

Eight days. *twitch*

Less than a week after our impromptu guild meeting about how we wanted to keep raiding until Lich King came out, people stopped showing up. Three raids in a row have been canceled due to lack of people. Now that there’s an actual date for the release, expansionitis has hit my guild hard.

Maybe I’ll take some of Dechion’s suggestions for dealing with expansionitis.

Guess I’ll go level one of my girls. My shammy and druid have been waiting for some level love.

Image Credits: Christina Snyder

To Priest or Not to Priest?

So, you’re thinking about rolling a priest.

Aendi over at Voodoo Ventures posed the Blog Azeroth topic of the week: Why did you choose your class, and what are the pros and cons?

Now, I’m a bit of an altoholic (don’t believe me? – meet the girls!). But, it seems that I’m a LOW LEVEL altoholic.

My main, my love, my only character over 60, is my priest. That being said, I had no idea what I was really getting into when I created Isis. I was going to duo my way up to 70 with my fiancé, and thought “huh, a healer would go well with a dps, I guess.” Little did I know that I’d be shadow for the rest of my career.

Larísa at The Pink Pigtail Inn did a great write up of the pros and cons of being a mage, and since she’s all sorts of awesome, I thought I’d emulate her for this post.

The Pros

Versatility
If you’re unsure what you want to do when you hit endgame, a priest may be for you. Spec holy to be an insanely wonderful healer in raids. Go shadow if you decide you want to pew pew and melt faces. Spec discipline if you want to annoy the crap out of people in pvp who can’t seem to kill you.

People want us around
Whether for awesome healing or to use us shadow types as a mana battery, raiders will want you in their raid!

Unique buff
No one else can raise health like we can with Power Word: Fortitude.

Shadowform
If you go shadow, no one will be able to see your clown gear when you first enter Outlands!

We can heal ourselves
This is a “well, duh?” for holy priests, but shadow priests – remember your heal buttons! This can speed up your leveling immensely because you’re not stopping every two mobs to eat. When you get Vampiric Touch and Vampiric Embrace, you’ll rarely need to stop to eat or drink.

Wipe recovery
With Resurrection, we can get things moving quickly if there’s a wipe. Very useful when raiding, or when leveling with friends.

The Cons

The Squishy Factor
Wearing only cloth armor, you’ll likely have low health and low armor – you’re squishy! If you get too many mobs on you, or a hard hitter, expect that you’ll have a problem. Low level priests are hard to solo, and many priests are left to rot before ever hitting level 20. You’re going to die, so get used to running for your corpse.

Mana Management
Stock up on water before you leave town to quest – you’ll need it, especially in early levels! While you can heal yourself up, you’ll be relying on spirit and water to keep your mana full.

You’ll be asked to heal
Over and over and over when leveling. Even if you’re shadow spec’d. The good thing is – you can! Even as shadow spec, you can heal regular instances well into your 60s.

You’ll be blamed
If you’re the healer, expect to be blamed for wipes that aren’t your fault. Especially in PuGs, blame for a wipe is usually placed squarely on either the tank or the healer.

So you still want to be a priest?

Good choice! Being a priest is extremely rewarding. People love having you around, and your versatility means you bring a lot of potential to the end game. In addition, priests are easy to play, but very difficult to master, so when you really nail something, it brings a great sense of accomplishment.

Now go roll your priest!