New character Screens

So to start off the beta I decided to start where almost every new player does, the character creation screen.

With Mists of Pandaria the character creation screen will be revamped. Now the first thing you will see is the screen to choose your gender, race, and class. The preveiw will show that class in some of the higher tier armor. I chose to show the female versions, mainly because I like them more. On a slower news day I will post up images of the males, maybe. (Or if it is requested)

Warrior preveiw

Paladin preview

Hunter preveiw

Rogue preview

Priest Preview

Shaman preview

Mage preveiw

Warlock preveiw

Monk preveiw (This one does not yet have them shown in a higher armor tier)

Druid preview

DK preview (Should be the same as before, or is not complete yet)

So don't be fooled by these previews, your character will revert back to their former lameness once you hit the next button. The other changes are seen here as well, now instead of hitting the arrows to check out different options, you will have thumbnail images to the right that rotate as you rotate they character. 

Warrior

Paladin

Hunter

Rogue

Priest

Shaman

Mage

Warlock

Druid

The monk looks the same as above.

Another nifty feature being added is on the race/class screen. It is the "More Info" button.

When pressed the more info button will give the run-down of the race and class specialties, just like it used to have on the right of the screen.

The character creation screens are still under construction and may change well before the game hits the retail shelves.

I think that's enough picture overload for today, but I will be posting the Pandaren character creation screen in my next post.

Thanks for looking! ~Bevy

Warrior Tank Leveling

I've started to enjoy tanking more than ever since playing on my druid and warrior. I've been tanking heroics for a while now on my druid, and I liked it so much, I decided to level another tank. Since I found warrior to be the most similar tank to the druid (rage and charge), I have been leveling a gnome warrior tank. Aside from having to jump in order to smack my targets with me shield, tanking on my warrior has been one of my favorite ways to level.

Using the Dungeon Finder
Since I am a tank, queue times for finding dungeon groups couldn't be shorter. Combine that with a trusty healer at my side (Aerti on her priest), and we have near instant wait

Why It's So Fun
One major fun factor that comes with tanking the warrior is Charge. Being able to Charge so early (Level 20) thanks to Warbringer is a great addition to my tanks mobility. Starting a fight with Charge is a great way to generate Rage, and when loose mobs are across the room, using Charge allows me to keep the from causing a bigger raucous.

Another fun factor that I've found as I've leveled is the amount of abilities that I have at my disposal. I'm currently level 51, and my spell selection is already extremely diverse. I already have many of my core tanking abilities, and that has allowed me to not only deal a lot of damage (always fun) and become more familiar with my threat rotation.

What I look Forward To
As I'm closing in on level 60, I really look forward to the dungeons available in Outland. I enjoyed the content from The Burning Crusade expansions, so doing those dungeons again will be very fun for me. I am also looking forward to getting Shockwave. While Blood and Thunder greatly improves the Warrior's ability to keep threat on multiple targets, Shockwave is an added ability that will help me control mobs even more.

I really look forward to the 70-80 level range, and getting to level 85 is sure to be enjoyable. The look and feel that I get from playing the warrior, The armor and the shields cement the warrior in my top five for sure. But what do you think? What do you like about playing a warrior, and tanking for that manner?

Healing Sunday, When Things Go Well

Whenever I'm learning new fights and with a group of people I've found that I often run out of mana shortly before everyone dies. Running out of mana tends to be a big indicator for me that the fight is not going well. This often occurs because learning new fights means that people are taking damage from boss abilities that they should avoid. Having to heal through that additional damage means that I'm healing more than I should, and as a result my mana bar dwindles in the process.

This reminds me of my groups first attempts on the Lich King. I would constantly run out of mana before the first transition phase, and it was evident why when we wiped shortly thereafter. It took a lot of attempts before I became comfortable enough with my healing and the fight mechanics to slow things down and realize that I don't need to go all out. Slowing the pace of the fight down in my head means that I'm using my less expensive heals more often, and I'm not worrying as much when people are taking a lot of damage because I know that I have other healers to help me keep up.

Slowing the fight down makes me more efficient, and as the group gets better at dealing with boss abilities I can afford to be more efficient because they aren't taking as much damage. The two go hand in hand. With practice and becoming familiar with a fight the group takes less damage and the healing strain isn't as intense. This became more evident to me when my group recently downed the Ascendant Council from Bastion of Twilight. We would consistently die in the third phase, and when we did my mana was consistently running low. When we killed the boss, however, everything just seemed to click. My mana was around 30% when the boss died, and the group executed the fight better than any of our other attempts. These two outcomes did not happen by coincidence.

The group's performance has the biggest influence on your healing decisions, and those decisions impact your mana efficiency. If you ever find that you're running out of mana and just can't keep up with the healing don't be too harsh on yourself. Sure your gear, spec, and enchants are important, but if you're group is taking unnecessary damage it doesn't always matter how much mana regen or spell power you have. There are times when you can't keep people alive. But, if you're making sound healing decisions and your group is working well, then everything is going to be okay.

Dig Dug

Archaeology. The newest secondary profession added to the game with Cataclysm. This profession gives players the opportunity to dig up artifacts from the games oldest races, and put those artifacts together to recreate items from those races past. Through exploring the world (of warcraft) and persevering in the production of rare artifacts, players have the opportunity to gain powerful rewards for their efforts.

I like archaeology, and it is definitely my favorite secondary profession. I have been able to make a few epic items to help my characters, as well as gain some pretty neat vanity items that either transform me into a big Naga, or allow me to shine a green spotlight into the sky. I look forward to getting the Professor title (only two rare items away), and while making cool items is a grind, I have enjoyed putting together little pieces of Azeroth's history.

I haven't ventured into Outland or Northrend just yet, but the convenience of flying over Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms has been enough to outweigh the possibility for additional items. What do you think of Archaeology? Are you enjoying the grind for discovery, or is working for epic items too much of a pain in the butt?

What's Annoying me Wednesday

This week, I'm particularly annoyed by helpless players. Those people who never seem to know anything, ever. They haven't read the quests, they don't read the patch notes, and they don't want to look up information anywhere else.

Blizzard has made tons of guides to tell you what stats are the best for you, what your class should be doing play-style wise, and even made leveling just plain easier. Yet there are still those who constantly ask dumb questions. (Yes, dumb questions exist.)

On top of the resources blizzard has made, there are many many fan-sites with, in my opinion, have even better information. mmo-champion, wowhead, and wowpedia are some of the best that I have found, but there are many, many more. But when you tell someone to look there, they get pissed and say it's not real help.

I hate this type of mentality. WoW is just a game, but don't ask questions so that someone else has to find the answer for you. If you have a question, be independent enough to find an answer for yourself if someone else does not know the answer.

Do you hate answering those questions? Do you read the patch notes, or expect others to tell you what's going on?

Old world Loremaster

What now feels like forever ago, I did loremaster. It was incredibly hard to do. There was no way of knowing what quests you had finished, what zones you had more quests in, and no flying mount on which you could ride over quest hubs to look for them.

I felt really great when I completed all those quests and I had worked very hard for the achievement. Now that they have changed it, they do not even require you to finish every quest in each zone, there are many many quests you can skip in order to be a loremaster? That just does not seem as epic to me. 

I am working on Loremaster v2.0 now, and have found it to be much easier. Are achievements meant to be easy? Should blizzard be making purely vanity objects come easily to players, or make them hard and real accomplishments?

Healing Sunday, Learning to Heal as a Discipline Priest

Recently I have started trying to heal as Discipline on my priest. For a long time I would exclusively heal as Holy, but since I haven't been doing so hot with Shadow as my off spec, I decided to give Discipline a shot. I've always been intrigued by Discipline and how the spec utilizes absorption heals more than any other healer. The idea of using a bubble to heal by preventing damage is an interesting one.

So I tried it out. I changed my spec. I picked up Evangelism, Archangel, and Atonement, and into my first heroic I went. One thing that stayed the same as Holy is using Prayer of Mending on cooldown. This spell is a great go to, especially with the glyph for it. Another similarity that I noticed is the pace of healing is about the same. I didn't feel as though I was using more or fewer spells to keep up, and overall the effectiveness for both is about the same.

One big difference between the two is the ability to heal with Smite and Holy Fire. I think that the synergy between Evangelism, Archangel, and Atonement is very cohesive, and, while Chakra has improved greatly over the course of this expansion, I wish that Holy had something as fluid.

The absorption from Power Word: Shield and Divine Aegis is another big difference between the two specs. If someone is on the verge of death and I'm unable to cast a heal in time, I can use PW:S to save them. It essentially gives them an additional 30,000 health. Divine Aegis felt very similar to Holy's mastery heal, Echo of Light. If I heal and generate the heal over time from Echo of Light, then I can wait until the HoT has ticked before I heal again. Similarly, when the shield procs from one of my critical heals, I can wait until it is absorbed before I heal again. In both cases I can let the spells do the healing for me.

All in all, I'm happy with my decision to try Discipline healing, and finding that I enjoy it as much as I do gives another reason to love my priest even more. So what do you think? Have you tried out a spec that you ended up loving?