Initial Reactions to 4.1

2-second Arcane Blasts? Woooohoooo! I feel like I owe some developer at Blizzard a plate of cookies or something. It's like I found an amazingly awesome Christmas present that got stuck behind the couch. Mmmmmm-mmmmmm-goood!

Panther Cub? D'awwwww! All the poor lil' guy had to gnaw on was some... erm. Well, dead dwarf. Well, really, dead-ish dwarf. As in "not dead yet" dwarf. Ah, well. Circle of life, and all that. We'll make an exception for this little guy because someone heaped cute on him and topped it off with more cute.

Bwemba's quest chain? Cool. Though I could have done without her spirit maneuvering in front of me... every... time... I went to click on something else.

The new panes for titles and the equipment manager in the character screen? Also nice. Being able to see more than a handful of titles at once is great, and the gear management interface seems to be a bit slicker.

New achievements? Check! 2500 Daily Quests, Justly Rewarded, Cataclysmically Delicious, Drown Your Sorrows, plus the new troll dungeon quests.

All in all... thumbs up!

Ding!

Started off yesterday evening doing some TB dailies on Aetherna, then switched over to Aretae. When last we left him, he was at level 35, having done a mere handful of introductory quests in the Western Plaguelands.

By the end of the evening?

Level 40. Professional expert. Dual talent specialization. Journeyman riding. A bag full of herbs, pigments and inks all lined up to crank out glyphs, scrolls and other inscription goodies.

All in the space of about 3 hours.

Yowza. He's going to be farming Heavy Junkboxes and cranking out Darkmoon Faire cards for Aeth before you know it. They grow up so fast!

Seriously - the XP bonus from guild perks and heirloom items has combined to make Aretae a leveling monster. Another couple of nights, and he'll be ready to start his farming operations in earnest.

Moving to WPL was a definite win, both in terms of experience, and in terms of challenge. I'm starting to get more familiar with his abilities, and my button-mashing has gotten slightly more sophisticated. I've remembered that I have Evasion, for example, and I'm - slowly - learning the art of stun-locking a target. Now that I've dual-spec'd into subtlety, I'm looking forward to playing with his new set of abilities.

All in all, I'm having fun on my murderous, backstabbing wolf-man. Even just getting from place to place with Running Wild is entertaining. Once he's done with his farming and crafting duties, we'll see if that novelty lasts through Outland and Northrend and into the Cataclysm content.

Bourée

Lots of achievements this weekend, thanks to guild runs of Tempest Keep and 10-man Ulduar. I'm impressed with Ulduar - there's a couple of boss encounters that are trivial in Cataclysm raiding gear, sure. There are others (Freya, for example) that are still more "coordination checks" than "gear checks". No matter how hard you hit, if you don't know the fight and work together, you're not going to succeed.

Dinked around on Aretae for a bit, getting him to level 35... at which point I moved him to the Western Plaguelands. I'm looking forward to doing the EPL quest chains again, this time with a level-appropriate (albeit overpowered-in-enchanted BoA items) character.

Playing a rogue is a different experience. I definitely enjoy the solo play style - sneaking, sneaking, sneaking is fun. I'm thinking about respecing from Combat into Subtlety just because I like the sneaky, more meditative aspect of the class so much. I just can't see how that contributes to team play, though. So I somehow doubt I'll ever take him into a dungeon.

As combat, my twitch reflexes just aren't there, and playing a combat rogue seems to be all twitch reflexes. Maybe I'll have an "ah-ha!" moment and The Ideal Priority Rotation will crystallize in my mind, but for now, I still feel like I'm mashing buttons and watching things die. I'm actually hoping playing in a more level-appropriate area will force me to think a bit more about what I'm doing instead of depending on his BoA Items of L33tne55 to carry me through fights.

Music monday... Ian Anderson, master of the flute, playing a duet with mission commander Cady Coleman. In spaaaaaaace!

I love living in the future.

And Now For Something Completely Different

RPG inspired perfume oil blends from Black Phoenix Alchemy.

Me? Dwarf.

Rogue.

Lawful.

Yeah, I know. It's me, though.

Ulduar!

Got pulled into an Ulduar guild run on Saturday evening... yeah, so I'm a bit behind the power curve. Picked up plenty of achievements, including Crazy Cat Lady, which I am sure will amuse my wife to no end. We downed Freya, then my network connection decided to go south for the evening, probably because it got fed up with the near-constant high winds we'd been experiencing all day.

Other than that, it was a pretty quiet weekend. Finished up the questing achievements in the Eastern Kingdoms, which was fun. The storyline in Booty Bay was interesting, and there were some amusing moments in there. With those out of the way, Aeth journeyed to Darkshore, set her hearthstone there, and started plowing through the Kalimdor zones. As I'm almost done with doing Tol Barad dailies, I expect that the various zone quest achievements will get knocked off a bit more quickly now.

Thinking about PvP

Probably because of my humiliating pwnage by a miserable rogue last night, I've been thinking a bit about working on filling out my starting PvP set for Aeth, and possibly putting one together for Laen.

My goal here isn't to be an arena PvP monster. I just want to get myself to the point where I've got a decent PvP set for Tol Barad and other battlegrounds.

I'll have a more detailed discussion at a later date. For now, some notes...

A list of craftable cloth armor with resilience, but no spirit (ugh!) for Aeth. Looks like what I'll want is a mix of Emberfire and Fireweave items, trying to prioritize haste > crit > mastery.

Looks like there's no craftable weapons for PvP, though there is a craftable off-hand in the form of inscription's Battle Tome. More research needed here, obviously there's got to be something Aeth can use that won't require Arena play. Myabe?

There's a variety of trinkets purchasable with honor. Same for neck items, cloaks and rings as well. Yay! It looks like there's really only one or two items in each category that fit for a spellcaster, though, so this is less of a decision than what armor set to sport.

Gems are easy to come by, but probably won't factor into her initial set, except for a belt buckle and possible PvE gear gemmed for PvP use, if I have trouble filling a particular slot.

There's a variety of consumables (arcanums, inscriptions, enchantments) that are geared towards PvP. As with trinkets and the like, though, there's really only one obvious choice for a spellcaster in each category.

Or, I guess, I could just Ask Mr. Robot.

For now, I think I'll do my own research and thinking on the subject, and then see what Mr. Robot has to say on the matter.

Ah, PvP

Cape of Stranglethorn, Gurubashi Arena.

Once again, I am reminded of how much - as a mage - I absolutely, positively loathe and despise rogues.