Daily Thoughts: Arcane in the Membrane

Man, I’ve really been slacking on keeping up my Daily Thoughts here. Someone once commented that I should consider calling it “Weekly Thoughts” and that is seeming more accurate right now, but the name doesn’t sound quite right. Let’s continue!

Not too long ago, my mage reached level 85. I leveled using mostly a mix of frost and fire specs. 5 minutes after reaching max level, I was ready for heroics. Wait? Apparently it’s pretty nice reaching 85 with nearly max justice points and honor points through a long series of dungeons and battlegrounds. I picked up my vendor gear and had 331 item level, well clearing the 329 requirement to get into heroic dungeons. I got fired up, ready to go, and prepped for my unfortunately long 30 minute wait to get into a heroic dungeon…and found my DPS startlingly lacking. (more…)

Daily Thoughts: Ding! The Consequences of Leveling

Leveling is probably one of the most satisfying events while playing WoW. Not quite as satisfying as letting a jerk dps die when they pull a pack of trash without waiting for tank, but still pretty satisfying. Pretty much every new level there is a talent point or new spell enticing us to reach the next plateau.

My mage reached level 80 and started Cataclysm content just recently. Which, I must say is a nice change of pace from previous content. Wrath of the Lich King content was great when it was relevent. Now it seems slow and clunky like BC content once was – not just because I’ve done it so many times on other alts – but also because the questing system and layout for this expansion is that much better. Reaching 78 was actually the biggest jump in “power” for my mage though, because of the Cataclysm quality greens. My spell power doubled and stamina tripled going from 77-79 because of the massive item level difference. After that, the power growth jumped again upon receiving mastery at level 80. It took only slightly longer than an hour to reach 81 but here I noticed something. My DPS didn’t really go up. A couple of upgrades had only a tiny effect. Level 82 and a couple more upgrades and my DPS remained constant. How can I gain a few hundred spell power, more haste/mastery/crit rating and not gain DPS? (more…)

Daily Thoughts: Resto Druid PVP

In Wrath, Resto Druids were arguably the most over powered healing class in PVP. While that title is now often thrown at Resto Shamans or Holy Paladins, we former trees of HoT-ty goodness can still definitely hold our own. Aside from that, playing a resto druid in PVP is fun as all hell. There’s almost nothing like jumping into a large mass of players fighting, rolling HoTs on your team and turning the tide as, suddenly, the enemy can’t kill your teammates. Combine that with having a host of instant-cast spells and being able to break snares when changing form (something only resto druids can do now) and they can be really, really hard to bring down. (more…)

Daily Thoughts: An Interesting Patch Note for Warriors & PVP

I put up the original 4.1 patch note text HERE and you can find updated notes on blizzards blog http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/2356431. Although there are a handful of other changes from the original notes (shown in red on their blog) there’s one in particular that I think could potentially be a sign of things to come.

  • Colossus Smash now ignores 50% of a hostile player’s armor (PvP), but continues to ignore 100% of a non-player character’s armor (PvE).
  • (more…)