Hope

I queued for a random Heroic dungeon on Aeth last night, and got SFK - not my favorite dungeon, by far, though not the worst out there. Buff, pull, and... less than 30 minutes later, we were done.

No wipes.

One death due to distraction IRL.

Most of the blues ended up sharded.

As a whole, the group made use of what CC we had, popped cooldowns and trinkets at the right time, focused fire in the right ways, and generally just managed to do the right thing for the majority of the time in the dungeon.

All in all - a very nice run.

That's not an isolated incident, either. The LFD groups I've been in recently have generally been pretty good. There's still the occasional gem of a group, if by gem you mean "steaming pile of carp", but other than that, I've pretty much been denying Sturgeon his due.

What does this mean? Beats me. Maybe I'm just lucky, and my next half-dozen times in the queue will leave me pulling my hair out. Maybe all the brain-dead l33ter-than-thou players have gone off to farm Tol Barad or play Rift or something else, leaving behind only the rational, cooperative players. Who knows?

Whatever it is, I've been enjoying it lately, and I hope it continues. My random dungeon runs haven't been quiet, by any stretch of the imagination. I like that. The fact that most dungeons still require at least a modicum of communication helps remind you that your fellow players are, well, players. Even when they're not a friendly chatter-fest, there's at least the occasional lol or comment to keep the run from feeling dead.

I'm almost finished grinding out Gileas reputation for Aeth, though. I'll keep running dungeons with her after that to work on getting the next nice piece of valor gear... but I'm thinking that maybe it's time let Laenshield shake the dust off of his boots and give healing some regular dungeons a try...

Greetings and Felicitations

Just wanted to say "Welcome!" to all the folks visiting from WoW Insider, and give you a taste of what this blog is like.

You can start back at the beginning, where I introduce the original reason for the blog - to document leveling Aeven, the Dwarven Pally, in common gear only.

Eventually, Aeven hit level 80. Since then, the scope of the blog has expanded to encompass the various activities of my other characters as well.

Currently, one of the primary focuses of the blog has been on my main, the Human mage Aetherna, and her insatiable desire to complete the various achievements in the game... including gaining exalted reputation with every possible faction.

I try to post at least three times a week, though that can be spotty when work and family intervene. If there's anything in particular you'd like to ask about, or something you'd like to see me write about, or even if you just want to say hello - please feel free to leave a comment. Particularly if you happen to play on Kirin Tor, my home server. Y'all are good folks, y'are.

If you'd like to know more about me, well, there's a few tidbits here and there. I do try to keep my WoW blogging separate from the rest of my life, but bits and pieces leak through - hopefully not enough to dissuade you from enjoying the stories, rants, and other WoW-related posts.

Once again - welcome! I hope you enjoy your visit, and I hope to see you again as time goes by.

Not So Ascetic

Following my plan from yesterday, I stripped Aeth down to bare bones in order to see how close I could get to a character that might actually be challenged by Old World content. With no glyphs, no talents, no buffs, and no gear except a Simple Black Dress and Embroidered Boots...

... Aeth ended up just shy of 40k health and just over 20k mana.

The mana really isn't an issue; since spells cost a percentage of base mana now, the actual spell costs scale pretty well. In this configuration, she can manage a couple of Flamestrikes or just short of a dozen Fireballs before running OOM.

Damage seems to be... kind of OK. In a Redridge, she was still one-shotting most mobs with a single Ice Lance. Moving on to Searing Gorge, mobs were still taking 1-2 shots to down - not bad, but not quite the kind of fight I was looking for. If I could downrank spells, that would help, but unfortunately, downranking is a thing of the past. Oh well.

Health is the real issue. Aeth didn't even have 40k health, fully buffed, at the end of Wrath! So essentially, when doing Old World content, even stripped down, I'm still in god mode... incredibly hard to kill and doing a whole lot of damage, even without any buffs.

To make this work, I think I need the opposite of (the original) Martin Fury - I need a shirt made of nerf. I'm thinking of a BoA item that scales your health, mana, and stats by whatever percentage is needed to put you in the level mid-range for your current zone. Call it an "Ascetic's Hair Shirt", let me equip it to scale me to the right power level, and I'd be happy.

For the time being, though, it looks like "Operation: Ascetic" is a failure. Curse you, my expanded health pool!

Continuing Resolution

I've been continuing to run through Old World zones with Aeth. Completed the quest chains in the Swamp of Sorrows, and started in on Redridge last night. Questing makes for a much nicer "waiting for the LFD queue to pop" activity than archaeology, fishing, or even mining.

Which makes me think.

Aeth is significantly overpowered for even level 60 quests in the old world, which means that I can blow through them rather quickly. While I don't particularly mind this, I find myself wondering if there's some way to make the quests a little bit more challenging, even for someone at level 85.

Here's some thoughts on making questing in the Old World a little more challenging (and, hopefully, more fun)...

Drop The Buffs. When I'm questing in the old world, there's no need to scarf down my daily doses of Pickled Guppy, or make sure that I've got Mage Armor and Arcane Brilliance up. If I pick up a buff from some other source, drop it if I can.

Drop The Gear. Without all her fancy gee-gaws, Aeth will have a whopping 207 intellect and 183 stamina. That should put her at about the same level as a geared-up level 50 mage or so. I'm thinking about picking up a Robe of Apprenticeship or maybe just even a Lovely Purple Dress to run around Azeroth in. Use the equipment manager to swap items in an out, and Aeth can both look stylish while running around the Old World killing murlocs, and be Cataclysm heroic-ready when the LFD pops!

Drop The Glyphs. This is a little more annoying than just not buffing, but by erasing my current set of glyphs, I can loose that little bit of an edge that they give. I've got a second spec (fire) that I only use occasionally on Aeth, so I can repurpose that spec to be my "questing, no glyphs" spec.

Drop The Talents. Along that line, if I'm going to have a "no glyphs" spec, I might as well reset my talent points and... not take any talents. No Netherwind Presence, no Torment the Weak, no Presence of Mind or Improved Arcane Missiles or Missile Barrage or... hmm. You know, maybe I'll take some talents. I'll start with nada, though, and see how tough things are then.

Drop the High-Level Spells. Stick to classic lower-level mage spells - nothing, say, past level 60 or so. Just move them off of my button bars and forget about them.

As I think about this, I'm intrigued. More on "Operation: Ascetic" as it progresses.

And for music monday, a bit of Jethro Tull...

Le Roi est mort!

Vive le Roi!

Well... Vive le meurtrier du roi, rather.

Aetherna is now The Kingslayer. All it took was a 3 1/2 hour guild run through ICC 10 heroic last night. For fun, for reputation, for achievements, for titles... for Lorderon.

Yes, we had about 3x the stats from gear that we would have had at the end of Wrath. And an extra five levels. And the new set of Cataclysm talents. And the 30% buff from Strength of Wrynn. And... well, I think we may have done the LK on regular, instead of on heroic.

Still. Ten achievements, ICC cleared, the Lich King down - it was fun.

What was strange to me, though, was the fact that we wipe several times in Sindragosa, trying to get that fight down. On the other hand, we managed the LK the first time, thanks to some really good directions before hand. The new raid markers helped immensely, as it made figuring out where to run to/from at various points much simpler.

All in all, a good night, and a fun night. Would it have been much tougher at the end of Wrath, without the ICC buffs? Most certainly. More rewarding, but more work, as well. Waiting a few months and spending an evening defeating the Lich King (instead of months of evenings) was definitely worth it for me.

The Lich King: AAAAA+++. Would kill again.

Really, Vanessa?

Continuing to run lower-level quests on Aeth last night, I found myself in Westfall. While I alrady knew the "big reveal" that Hope was really Vanessa VanCleef, I thought it was kind of interesting to see the story unfold. I mean, yeah, the opening quest line is pretty ridiculous, as has been pointed out elsewhere by folks much more talented than I. Still, there's some interesting bits in there.

I was enjoying it until I got the the point where Vanessa actually acknowledges my existence. As part of the scripted conversation, she tells you...

And you, Aetherna, I will spare your life. You have done much to help our cause, albeit unwittingly, but the next time we meet it will be as enemies.

Um.

Really? I mean, really?

Lady, I don't care who your daddy was.

In case you missed it, I'm a freakin' level 85 arcane mage.

You didn't even bother to stun me, you ignorant little witch.

I just finished going through Westfall like a hot knife through butter.

In fact, the only reason there's anyone of your thugs left standing at all is because killing them was just too plain tedious.

When I'm done here, I'm going to use the power of my mind to rip a hole in the space-time continuum. Then I'm going to travel to another world, find the biggest, nastiest, most twisted member of the Burning Legion still mobile, and turn him/her/it into a puddle of ectoplasmic goo... just for fun.

You're what? Sixteen?

Seriously, Vanessa. Is that your age, your level, or your I.Q.?

All three, apparently.

It's also the number of milliseconds you'd manage to survive if the developers hadn't revealed you as part of what's essentially a non-interactive cutscene.

I'm going to go run the Deadmines at least once just to kick your scrawny, whiny, self-centered butt and give you the beating you so richly deserve.

"I will spare your life." Pfft. It is on, girl. And you're going down.

In Which I Agree With A Big Bear Butt

Yeah, you know which big bear butt I'm talking about. Apparently, John's found him some good times, and has concluded that, in fact, "WoW is just so damn awesome!" He's switched his point of view, gone on to a new server, new challenges, and has apparently found his happy place.

Just, you know, playing the game. Who'da thunk it?

I had a similar experience over the last couple of nights. Two, actually.

The first was Monday night, when I logged in to run dailies and wound up in a guild run doing OS for the mount. One thing led to another, and by the end of the evening, I had managed to pick up a bunch of achievements on Aeth. We killed Malygos, which got me The Spellweaver's Downfall, which got me Champion of the Frozen Wastes and A Poke In The Eye as well.

Yep - I had raided on Aeth a bit in Wrath, but I never did Malygos. Going back at level 85 with a handful of Cata epics made it an easier fight, but it was fun to see it. It made me start thinking about whether or not I might be able to manage to finish off the few achievements I need for Glory of the Hero solo...

Then, last night, I logged in to do dailies, and maybe a bit of mining. I didn't want to actually do anything significant, since it was an interrupt-driven sort of evening. I wanted to be able to put the laptop down without worrying that I was abandoning someone in the middle of something.

Mined for a bit, which was... eh. Mining is my "killing time waiting for LFD to pop" activity. Doing it to kill time? Fine. Doing it just to do it? Nah, I don't think so.

So, after a circuit of Uldum, I was thinking about maybe doing some archaeology. That works fine when I've got something else to do as well, particualrly reading and catching up on news online - I can read an article, switch to WoW to survey an area a couple of times, head for the next dig site and switch back to reading. It can make for a pleasant enough evening.

Still, it's not the most entertaining of activities. So when I opened up my map to look at the current dig sites, my eyes wandered over to the Eastern Plaguelands, and I thought, "Oh, yeah - I started doing some quests there. Forget archaeology, I'll just go finish those off and get the quest achievement for the zone."

Two hours and 60+ quests later, like John, I had found my happy place.

Seriously - if you haven't done so, hit EPL and do the quests there. Not because they provide epic lewt, or because the quests are so freaking awesome they'll make your head explode... they're really just the kind of quests that you'd find anywhere else, really. Nicely polished, maybe arranged a little bit better and not quite as railroad-ey as some of the newer cataclysm zones. Pretty average, as a matter of fact.

Except...

The have Fiona.

And Gidwin Goldbraids.

And Tarenar Sunstrike.

The bickering, the conversations, and the character developed around these three NPCs over the course of a couple of hours in EPL is incredible. A Blood Elf and a Dwarf? Fellow paladins? Friends since childhood? Fiona's obvious affection for the two of them, and her concern for others she meets along the way?

Awesome.

Thrall? Jaina? Varian? Pfft.

Pikers.

At the end of Cataclysm, when I'm doing whatever it is I need to do along the quest lines that lead up to assaulting Deathwing... I want Fiona, Gidwin and Tarenar there with me.

All of which, at then end of the evening, reminded me that there's something like another two dozen revamped zones in Cataclysm that I haven't quested through yet. There's undead to lay to rest, murlocs to kill, kids to rescue and heroes to meet.

If any of them are even as remotely engaging and interesting as Fiona and her crew, it's going to be a fun, fun time.