priest Archives - Tales of the Aggronaut

Goodbye Cataclysm

January 14, 2014 by Belghast

Feeling Human

This morning is the first day in a long while that I have felt pretty decent. I went to bed around 9:30, but had to get right back up shortly after and deal with one of our ferrets. Our “old man” had made a horrendous mess of himself and as a result we decided there was more there than could be cleaned up with wet wipes. As a result we gave him an impromptu bath and then made sure to get some nutrients down him. We really need to talk to the vet about him, because at this point I am not really sure how good of quality of life he is really having. One of his two back legs just simply doesn’t work right most of the time. He will be just fine one moment, and then the next he will be tripping all over himself. Which is something we went through with his brother bandit when he got insulinoma… for which there really is no course of treatment in a ferret that old.

Even with the last minute excitement last night, I did still manage to make it to bed before 10 and slept through the entire night. I woke up a few minutes before the alarm was set to go off this morning, so I got a wee bit of a head start on the day. Right now I am feeling rather chipper, but I am sure that will be quelled as I actually get to work and see whatever stacked up yesterday while I was gone. I am looking forward to feeling human again, so here is hoping it lasts. Since I’ve gone over 48 hours without developing a fever, I am assuming that I am not contagious. My wife went to work yesterday and came home completely drained, so I am figuring that will also be the case for me. As a result I really don’t have much plans for doing anything when I get home but crashing.

Goodbye Cataclysm

I really did not do much of any consequence last night. It came time for our Monday night flex raid and I just was not capable of concentrating. Instead I continued to piddle around on Belglorian my Discipline Priest. I have decided that the thing I enjoy about Discipline is that they are kind of the “tanks” of cloth wearers. So long as I keep my shield up on myself, I can survive damned near anything and eventually win the fight…. albeit extremely slowly. The thing I did not realize however was just how much splash healing I was throwing around. One of the early Pandaria quests involves reviving a bunch of pilots that crashed landed in amongst a bunch of orcs. As I was working on killing the orcs I kept noticing that I was getting credit for reviving pilots.

I thought that maybe the quest was bugged and I was getting credit for another player reviving them in the vicinity. As I got closer to one and started nuking away with smite I noticed that I kept healing the NPCs. I am sure this will sound insane to most people but you have to understand… my priest was my free level 80 character I made when I accepted a scroll of resurrection. I am the future of our game… a high level player with no real clues about how the class works. Initially I had planned on leveling as shadow, but when a friend told me about the sheer survive of Discipline I made the switch without much effort put into researching the spec. It was one of those things that just worked, and the gameplay seemed extremely simple.

The problem with being handed all of these tools is I have no clue what half of them do, especially the passives. Sure I see pretty little icons proc at the top of my screen but I am far too busy killing things to actually hover over them and see what just happened. Now I had the common sense to at least research spell rotation and things like that before sitting down and building my hotbars, you can guarantee that not every instant 90 will do the same. Anyways enough of that old soap box, but I am the prime example of what happens when you hand someone a nearly fully leveled character.

Imperial Silk

I will admit that I had no real plans to ever level a priest, and since I got a free level 80… I decided to make it a priest since that was the least likely for me to ever level. One of the gaps that I decided to fill with this instant 80… was a Tailor. So for while some time I was a level 80 priest sitting in Stormwind with capped out tailoring, and no real way to make the ever so spiffy imperial silk. Sure I could have had someone summon me over to the Silken Fields, but that just seemed too cheesy even for me. As a result I decided to level the priest so I could legitimately start making bags for my army of alts. Funny thing is that somewhere along the way I actually started enjoying playing the class… even though I am probably playing it wrong. I like smiting things down while laughing off the damage I am taking with my shields.

Speaking of army of alts… I have to say having one of every crafting profession comes in really damned handy. The moment I dinged 85… I went through a flurry of activity logging in and out various characters. When I finished I had a complete set of Pandaria level armor, a new staff, and a new cloak… and as soon as I get to 87 I will make a new trinket. I’ve decided to level up alchemy on this guy as well, so at some point I will feed him a bunch of herbs which should allow him to equip the alchemy trinket as well. Mostly I am doing this so that I can have an elixir master as well as my transmute master. I technically have a third alchemist, but I am not sure if it is worth having a potion master as well. The only thing I can see myself making a lot of that might be worth it is Luck Potions. Depending on how I feel tonight, I might farm up materials for a push through alchemy at all levels.

Faffing Overload

December 16, 2013 by Belghast

Holy Faffing

I had every intent Sunday to work on the various characters that I needed to run through LFR, however when other opportunities were presented I seized hold with both hands. A few members of the guild were running instances for transmog outfits, so I joined in the fun. The likelihood that I will play my little disc priest was just massively improved. Of all the priest sets, my favorite is absolution the Tier 6 outfit from Black Temple/Hyjal. Since I was the only cloth wearer along and the only other person on my class set did not need it… I managed to soak up an entire set of Absolution gear in the run. I also managed to get a pretty spiffy staff, that I remember all the priests desperately wanted back in the day.

I of course had to transmog to the gear immediately, even though I am only 80 and wearing a mishmash of quested greens. My hope is I can maintain the outfit as I level through all of the cataclysm content. I am sure there is a crafted set that will likely hold me much like the crafted gear has on my rogue. Belglorian my priest is also my tailor so hopefully he can take care of that as I level. I hope to get this character up to Pandaria level since I am stalled out 5 points away from maximum.

Twilight Faffing

While we were out and about our monk healer mentioned that he had a severe absence of flying mounts. Immediately we all thought about the three drakes achievement for Sartharion with its guaranteed mount drop. So very shortly we wandered our way over to Wyrmrest Temple in Dragonblight and formed up a quick group to do 10 man three drakes. It was insane just how fast we were able to kill it at level 90. It was pretty easy to do at 85, but Sarth just absolutely exploded with our current epic gear. We all passed on the mount drop, and let the healer pick it up unattested.

However since we all had an army of alts, we figured we would swap around a bit and go ahead and knock out the 25 man version as well. Several of us were missing that mount, so the monk healer said for us to roll on it as well. While not as much of a cakewalk as the first one, especially since we were all on alts… it was still rather easy. As you can tell by the image I am now the proud owner of a new twilight drake mount. For whatever reason I never managed to get this one in all the times we did three drakes after Icecrown raids during Wrath, so I was happy to knock out yet another mount.

Utgarde Faffing

We did a quick heroic Ruby Sanctum since one of the folks had a quest still active from the Wrath era, and with that most of us had hit our instance lock. I however still had one more to go before I hit it, so I logged back over to my Paladin who I had logged out at Wyrmrest. Since I was so close, I decided to fly over to Utgarde Pinnacle on a whim. I have run this place on heroic so many times chasing the mount, but each and every time I have walked away empty handed. Yesterday however, I was completely shocked to see a brand new Blue Protodrake mount in my loot window. I have always liked running the zone, and to some extent I am a bit sad I have no real reason to ever return.

While I cannot get the black or plagued protodrakes, this completes the set other than the Time-lost protodrake. I simply do not think I have the patience for that camp. Each time I am in Northrend I buzz through Storm Peaks just in case it is up, but so far all I have seen is the place holder and the time-lost corpse a few times. Similarly I make a trip to Deepholme every now and then and fly the circuit, but again I don’t really expect to ever find that stone drake up either. Both camps are extremely tedious things and I simply do not want the mount bad enough to go through it. I figure I will get my share of camping done when I start collecting spirit beasts on my hunter.

Faffing Overload

One of my really good friends Ashgar came back to the game this weekend, and similar to what I do he spent a lot of time running old raid content for fun. We had talked about going and doing Blackwing Lair earlier in the day, but it never really materialized until shortly after I had gotten the blue protodrake above. He was struggling to solo Razorgore, and I knew I very much could not do it on my paladin… but there were two items I really wanted desperately from there. The first is the Untamed Blade, that I am now modeling in the above screenshot. The second is a proper set of Judgment. While I love the blue/brown set from the opening of Northrend event, simply because it is super rare… I have always wanted a set of the red/gold judgment, that matches the untamed blade. To me that is the archetypal paladin look, and I will not be completely happy until I at least have that as an option.

Needless to say I managed to get the Untamed Blade, but over the course of the dungeon only a single piece of judgment gear dropped. We did however see every single pet, so at this point I am only missing Broodlord Lashlayer, as I managed to pick up mini Razorgore and mini Chromaggus. After we made quick work of Blackwing Lair we decided to wander over to AQ40, since thanks to Twin Emperors it is annoying to solo. There we did not have quite as much luck, but I did manage to pick up the mini Skeram pet, and Ashgar managed to get one of the other ones along the way. The highlight of the run for me however is that moments from joining up the Red Qiraji Resonating Crystal dropped.

The various colors of Resonating Crystals were a source of so much drama for our raid back in the day. We formed “teams” based on the color of mount we managed to get to drop. This was egged on by the fact that one of the raid leaders was strongly opposed to any color that was not “gold”, and as such tried to get as many people on his team as possible. My hunter was a member of this strike team… and we vehemently argued when someone called us “yellow”. The above screenshot was from the first time we saw a Red mount. Prior to that moment the mount war had reached a fever pitch, with various people not willing to accept the “wrong” color of mount. After a point the raid leader just started force-looting people various colors just so they would stop slowing down the raid.

However the moment we all saw the “red one” the mount war dissolved just as fast as it had begun. No one cared about the green, blue or “gold” teams… we were all somehow lacking because we were not riding around on a red mount. During our entire time raiding Ahn’qiraj I think we only actually saw two red mounts drop. The screenshot above was from the night we first saw it… we all lined up to pay homage to the new “red leader”. Lleandryn will always have the distinction of being the man who brought an end to the “mount wars”. I joke about it these days, but very seriously… the animosity over the color of mount we were using had really reached a point of ridiculousness. Lots of hurt feelings were happening over having the wrong color, so the fact that the Red mount “saved” us made looting one yesterday all the sweeter. Now if only blizzard would stop being a pain in the ass and let us ride them everywhere.

Hearthstone

October 18, 2013 by Belghast

Battle of Cards

I am getting around super late this morning to make a blog post. On a whim I decided to take Friday off, since for my wife it was her fall break. I figured the two of us could hang out around the house or do whatever. Then over night I noticed a rather frantic message from my boss. It seems like after 5 his boss had requested something by noon today… that would involve a lot of feedback and information from us worker bees. So as a result I got up around 8 am, got dressed, went out and grabbed breakfast and have been remote into work for the last hour working on the list of information. As a result… my normal early morning post is delayed.

Yesterday I was extremely pumped to get home, because over night I seemed to have received an email from Blizzard saying that my account had finally been flagged for the Hearthstone beta process. Since everyone and their brother is live streaming this on Twitch… I am assuming there is no actual NDA going on… or at least not one currently enforced. So as a result I snapped multiple pictures last night as I played and will be weaving them in here and there. I have to admit I went into this a bit skeptical… not really sure if I would like it or not. From the video I had seen, everything about the game feels rushed much like a LFG dungeon group. Even though you rarely think more than one round ahead… there is still a lot of strategy going on.

The Education

Day[9] has a really good series of videos walking through his first experience with the game, and I highly suggest you watch it if you are curious about how you get into the game. Basically Blizzard has done an amazing job of user education, in that to get started in the game you HAVE to play through a tutorial. Fortunately it does a really good job of slowly introducing you into the various mechanics, and as a result you can pick up the strategy of the game extremely quickly. You play through a series of NPC card fights…starting with Hogger and finishing with an Azerothian Super Villain that I won’t spoil for now.

Once you have finished with the tutorial it has taught you basically everything there is to know about the Mage deck. Essentially the decks are all themed after one of the World of Warcraft classes. I notice that Deathknight is conspicuously absent… so they must be intending to add that in as an expansion opportunity. For those who are familiar with the Duel of the Planeswalkers series of MTG games for consoles and steam… you will be used to the way you progress from here. Now you can take your mage deck and challenge the other classes, by defeating them you unlock the ability to play as that class.

The Sticky-ness

The biggest surprise for me is just how sticky this game was. I got home around 5 pm and started playing around 5:30. I ended up playing this game without pause until around 9:30.. and only then because some guild members needed me to tank a FFXIV dungeon run. I have to say that is fairly unheard of for me, when it comes to card games. I have copies of all of the Duel of the Planeswalker games that have been released, but have maybe logged 50 hours total among ALL of them. There was just something about the physical card game experience that never quite translated to the online version.

Last night over the course of the evening, I managed to unlock all of the different class decks. At various points through the evening I was rewarded with either gold or actual packs of cards. The game uses a quest like system to give you little goals to work towards. If you look above you can see that in the screenshot I have 2 of the 3 wins needed to earn 10 gold. There was another quest I had to level one of the classes to 10, and in doing so I unlocked a pack of cards. Essentially it seems like there are two kinds of cards you can get… Basic cards that are unlocked through completing quests and scenarios and leveling… and Expert cards that are unlocked through either purchasing or winning packs of cards.

The Money

Since this game is free to play, you have to be asking yourself… where do they make money. Well like always with any card game it is in the packs. I took a screenshot of the current store interface. You will notice that the packs that be bought with either in game gold currency that you earn by completing achievements or be purchased with real world currency. You can purchase a single pack with 100 gold, 2 packs for $2.99 ($1.49 each), 7 packs for $9.99 ($1.42 each), 15 packs for $19.99 ($1.32 each) or 40 packs for $49.99 ($1.24 each). So as you can see in buying in bulk like you would expect you keep getting more and more of a discount on the per pack price.

Through the course of play last night I earned 5 packs of cards either through a combination of gold or actually winning the packs outright. I have to say the sound design and animation are amazing… and really capture the same excitement of opening a real pack of cards. You can double click the pack to open it… or for a more tactile experience drag it open. Similarly all five cards in a pack come flying out onto the screen… but do so face down. This allows you to flip them over one by one similar to sifting through a physical pack of cards. They know their audience well and have put in a number of tactile hooks to increase the sense of suspense to see if you have something good or not.

Versus Players

Currently you have the option of playing progressively harder NPC decks, or setting out and playing some physical players. Quite honestly I have found playing players a bit easier than playing the expert decks. There are two PVP modes of play… the first of which is simply building a custom deck and then taking it on the road to fight against other players. The second of which is the Arena, which serves as this games “draft” mode, giving both a more random experience but also potentially a more balanced one.

I am not sure if this regenerates but you get at least one free Arena token, after that it appears to either cost 150 in game gold or $1.99 to unlock additional tokens. In the Arena you choose a class and then are presented with a series of three cards. The card you keep goes into your arena deck, and the other two are discarded. This continues on until you have chosen 30 cards for your deck. An Arena deck lasts until you have lost three times. At the end of the match you are rewarded based on how well you did. For me I got 2 sacks of gold 2 packs of cards and a rare paladin card for playing. I won three times and lost three times.

The interesting thing about the Arena is the fact that you don’t have to play it all in one sitting. So long as you have not lost your three matches you can continue playing arena. There is some bar of gems that fills up each time you win, but I am not 100% certain how that works. You might get punted out of the Arena if you win too often as well. Last night I played through a single arena match and then was off playing custom games with players. My little hunter deck seems to be doing pretty well, so I will likely return to doing some of that today. I have to say I am very pleasantly surprised in just how good of a game Hearthstone is.