Addicted to Heals

There are really only two:

1. I hold it upside down far too often. And that’s more an error with me.

2. I cannot beat that damn frostwyrm when logging in anymore. I hate that thing. So much.

I just got my first (and hopefully only) WoW authenticator. Here’s hoping I don’t lose it.

The timing is ironic, because I booted up my computer and hit message boards this morning to find that a Grunts officer was hacked and basically wiped out the guild bank. This officer was extremely careful with her computer and account information, and is not computer stupid at all, so I have no doubt in my mind that she did absolutely nothing “risky” that led to her being hacked. And I’ve heard of several similar cases lately. Taking the standard precautions is not enough anymore, and it’s not just gold buyers getting hit.

While several tickets have been opened and I have a folder full of screenshots that makes getting our stuff back pretty likely, it’ll probably take several weeks, because the Blizzard staff is currently overworked. Why? Because so many people have been hacked recently.

If you live in the U.S., authenticators are about $7, and that pays mostly for shipping. You can buy one at the Blizzard store. If you have an iPhone, you can head right onto iTunes, go to the App Store, and download the Battle.net Mobile Authenticator for free, and you can get it free for other cell phones on their mobile site.

Really, if you have any kind of access to your guild bank at all, it’s a really good idea to get an authenticator.

Okay, before I explain why, let me note that I KNOW that I need to weed through my blogroll and remove all the inactive blogs. And I might even do it, someday.

But for now, it’s kind of a mess over there, which is why I am pointing out a new link over here: World of Wallpapers, a.k.a. the cause of my jealousy. I can’t even make a banner for this blog I don’t despise before finishing it, and Branwyn is making some of the most gorgeous WoW wallpapers I’ve ever seen. I’m currently rocking “Sky at Night” at work, and fully intend to drop the Orgrimmar entrance one on the laptop once I get home and the cats get bored.

There are only a handful of wallpapers up now, but it seems like there’s a new one every week, so go check her out and stuff. Because I want her to be successful so she’ll make more wallpapers.

The Armory has been updated. It now includes additional information about recent achievements, upgrades, raid activity, and more, as well as a pretty fun little model viewer.

Some people are worried about e-stalkers. Well … I think I am in the second category (e-stalkers who don’t care about people knowing my latest gear upgrades). Why?

While many of the PVPers I know (except druids) hide their helms and cloaks to avoid giving away extra info, quite a few of the people I know on VeCo don’t. And many of them are Alliance, so I only see them when on the field of battle … meaning I don’t see them at all, because things are going crazy and I’m three-quarters focused on health bars.

I finally know what people’s characters look like! It’s exciting!

… No, really. These are the kinds of things I get excited about in this game. Sad, right?

The Cataclysm Friends and Family Alpha will allegedly be going out on Tuesday. The analysis going on in various parts of the WoW community seem to agree that this means the expansion will probably be out in July or August.

So I am taking this time to create a to-do list, much as I did back in Burning Crusade:

AHAMI
1. Complete Loremaster of Kalimdor, Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms, and Classic Dungeonmaster. Yeah, I know, I don’t PVE, but I can solo the classic dungeons pretty easy, and I got most of them back before T. the DK Who Was My Pocket Tank quit, so I don’t have far to go. And I have about 210 quests in Old Azeroth to do for both the classic Loremaster achievements, so that’s no problem.

2. Conqueror. This isn’t going to get done before Cataclysm hits, but I’d like to make more progress. I’m currently Friendly (!) with the Warsong Outriders, and I’d like to be at least Honored by Cataclysm. And maybe Revered with the Defilers; I’m Friendly with them right now, but that’s because I’m saving my favorite of the three old school battlegrounds for last.

3. RP clothes. I want the D1 shaman set. So far, I have the boots. I don’t need all of it, but the chest, skirt, helm and gloves would be good. I can get the shoulders via heirloom gear.

… Yeah, that’s it for Ahami. I am happy with where she is right now.

OTHER VECO CHARACTERS
1. Guardian of Cenarius for Onashne, and finish gearing her up. Maybe get RP clothes for her, too; the druid D1 set is also nice.

2. Max out Leatherworking on Onashne, and get a good bunch of the patterns.

3. Get Ideale exalted with the Argent Dawn. I’ll worry about Argent Crusade later, but she absolutely needs Argent Dawn rep.

4. Get as many heirlooms as possible for still-unnamed Future!Goblin. I currently have the PVP shoulders and mace, but I might actually suck it up and do a couple PUGs for badges so I can get other stuff.

DATH’REMAR CHARACTERS
I don’t really have any major goals for these characters, per se, but I’d like to make it through Thousand Needles one more time on my shaman over here, and get my priest to the Plaguelands, at least. I also fully intend to roll a troll druid over here when Cataclysm hits.

And last, but not least: BLOG MOAR. Seriously. I keep intending to blog here, but it seems like I never have time. But this is both a pre-Cataclysm resolution and a sort of New Year’s one. I will try to blog at least once a week.

I know, I know, late to the party. Anyway, there are some cool things to squee over in the patch notes.

Probably the biggest deal for those of us who don’t raid are the three new five-man instances — a nice change for people bored with the current ones — and some more superficial changes.

First, allow me to squee:

Orc and troll shamans now have their own unique totem art.

This makes me ridiculously happy. Don’t even ask, I don’t know, but it really, really does.

This, however, does not:

Will of the Forsaken now shares a 45-second cooldown with similar effects, including the Medallion of the Horde, Titan-Forged runes, Insignia of the Horde, etc.

Yes, I know, none of my regularly played characters are Forsaken. But, unless I missed something, there’s no similar restriction on Escape Artist or the human cowardice ability (Every Man for Himself? Right?), and thus I am offended on behalf of my faction.

And then there’s this:

All level 71-80 Battleground daily quests will now award 25 Arena Points in addition to their current rewards.

WHAT.

How did I miss this? It makes sense. In the future, they will be giving out Arena Points in rated battlegrounds, and you still need a personal rating to buy anything. But this gives me hope that, once rated battlegrounds are in play, people will be able to purchase weapons, and maybe totems/idols/relics/DK thingies. And I can start saving up now!

And of course there are the changes to questing (quest objectives tracked on the map, etc.) and the new cross-realm LFG. I don’t really know how I feel about either of these yet. On the one hand, easier leveling is nice, but on the other, I feel like a lot of new people are missing out on the game entirely. It seems like everything is focused on end game, and I know this will change with Cataclysm hits, but it’s still sad for new people now. Unless they’re going out for Loremaster or something, there will be whole zones they never see.

The cross-realm LFG will make it easier to see instances — because seriously, how many people can get together a group for Zul’Farrak or Razorfen Downs anymore? — but this will probably lead to the same problems as the cross-realm battlegrounds: An abundance of assholes. Ninjas, cussing, group kicks for no reason, etc. We’ll see, though; maybe people will be nicer?

Class changes: I am only going to comment on the three classes I have 80s of, because I really don’t know enough about the others to say anything.

Shamans:
- “Earth/Fire Elemental Totems: The cooldown for these totems has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.” Awesome, aside from the arena ban. But I don’t arena, and they may be banned already for all I know. Meanwhile, this means I can use two of these things every 10 minutes in battlegrounds or WG.

- “Fire Nova Totem: This totem has been replaced with a new spell, Fire Nova, which is available at the same ranks as the old Fire Nova Totem. Existing characters will automatically learn this new spell in place of the totem. With a Fire Totem active, shamans will be able to use Fire Nova (fire magic) to emit the same area-of-effect damage as the old Fire Nova Totem from the active Fire Totem, not consuming the totem in the process. Fire Nova will activate a 1.5-second global cooldown when used and has a 10-second spell cooldown. The caster must be within 30 yards of the totem to use this ability, but does not need to be within line of sight of the totem.” Veeeery interesting. It’ll be nice to have a traditional AOE that doesn’t rely on a totem to cast. Chain Lightning is nice and all, but it only hits three targets.

- I can reincarnate every 7 minutes now. (Unless I specced out of that last time. But still.)

Druids:
- They have changed how Eclipse procs for Balance druids; it used to be if solar eclipse procced, you had a chance to proc lunar within 15 seconds and vice versa, but they now have a 30-second cooldown for all Eclipse procs. Meh. Understandable, I guess, but meh.

The rest of the druid stuff didn’t really interest me much. There was a change to Gift of the Earthmother from a GCD reduction for HoTs to “This talent now increases spell haste by 2/4/6/8/10% and reduces the base global cooldown of Lifebloom by 2/4/6/8/10% instead of its previous effects.” But this is a worthwhile change, considering the changes to how haste works with HoTs/DoTs, and I never used the old one anyway. I think.

Hunters:
- Pets getting 100 percent of the character’s resilience? a.) NICE; and b.) About time!

- “Pet Leveling: Hunter pets now need only 5% of the experience a player needs to level, down from 10%.” Also about time. While I realize we have much more flexibility in our pets than warlocks and death knights, it’s still a pain in the butt to be the only class that has to level our pets individually. This will make it a little easier, at least (and on top of the change in 3.0 where they popped up to five levels below you, this will be positively cake compared to TBC).

- The Misdirection change is AWESOME. Now that I’ve gone marksmanship, I have found AOE farming of meat is a little more tedious, because I have to bandage between pulls — my pets can’t hold aggro as well. The new Misdirection should fix that right up.

I really don’t play my hunter enough or follow news enough to comment on the rest, and considering the number of excellent hunter bloggers out there, someone probably already has, and better than I could, anyway.

Around level 55, I dual-specced my druid, Onashne, as resto/balance. While resto was my “main spec,” I was mainly just using it in battlegrounds, and I did my questing as boomkin.

This meant that, until the low-70s and battleground leveling, I was dinging each level in my balance spec, and training, then switching to resto and training, then going back to questing.

Well, today I learned that there is a slight glitch to leveling with a dual spec: Your action bars are only updated in the spec you train in. So if, for example, you are training in balance, then your balance spec action bars are updated to reflect new spell ranks, but your resto bars are not.

So I’ve been using Rank 8 of Regrowth and Rejuvination, Rank 3 of Tranquility, Rank 1 of Lifebloom, etc. since about the mid-50s.

Which makes me even more proud of this, from the Alterac Valley where I dinged 80 last week:

That paladin at No. 8 on healing was a monster, though; I may have topped heals but he was our MVP.

Anyway, the lesson is: Check your spell ranks in your action bar if you dual spec. Because you could be even MORE AWESOME if you’re using your max-rank spells.

No, I didn’t finish NaNoWriMo — and with just under 20,000 words to go, I am not going to. Between some guild stuff that needs to be taken care of, the Pilgrim’s Bounty holiday and Onashne hitting 80 (as well as mostly-awesome real life stuff, like a brand new cousin), I got sidetracked and NaNo was what suffered, since I was stuck at a plot hole anyway.

I probably could catch up, if I wanted to spend the next three days holed up and writing, but I don’t really want to write 6,600 words a day, so I’m bowing out.

Which means that I will be back over here shortly (celebrating my sister’s birthday tomorrow).

In the meantime, I finally made a WoW.com profile, but I can’t figure out how to add people. Or even find people. I think you’re all rogues IRL. My user name over there is Ahami. Anyone want to be my WoW.com e-friend?

And question #2: If you do not host your WoW screenshots on WordPress, what do you use? I was thinking about starting a Flickr account just for WoW (one for my screenshots, and then one for the guild), but … it’s Flickr, guys. Are there alternatives that aren’t Photobucket? Or all full of whitespace that looks like the 1990s?

I might just start a photo blog for the guild on WordPress, but it’d be nice if people could add their own stuff so I don’t have to.