So, tomorrow it will be patch day, and loads of new stuff will be available, among it all a new profession, Inscriptions, and the rest of the professions have been polished up with new fun and/or cool features and recipes.
I know for sure I will get this new profession on one of my girls, but which one? Being the levelling freak that I am, all of my girl are capped in their primary professions, so it is not just a question of ditching any old profession and start levelling the new one.
Tessye, my first, my precious, has been a skinner and leatherworker since day one. Those trainers were the first ones I encountered in Goldshire so I picked that up, not knowing that there was anything else, and it’s been a good choice for a rogue so far and it seems to be a good choice in WotLK too.
Since skinners see a lot of dead animals without their clothes on they can become Masters of Anatomy, by which they will know that exact spot where to out the dagger to wreak maximum havoc on a poor mob of any kind. Good knowledge for a rogue :-)
There will alse be nice gear available to leatherworkers and some bracers and leg patches that are LW only, like different Fur Linings and leg armors.
Joaquime, my druid, is an herbalist and alchemist, transmute master. The herbalists get some extra love with the Lifeblood HoT. Not that she really needs another HoT, being a druid, BUT this one is useable while shapeshifted! This will be very handy when soloing in cat form or tanking in bear. Also, I really don’t want to lose herbalism on her, since picking flowers in epic flight form must be the fastest, simplest way ever of farming herbs.
Alchemists get some sweet loving too. They can already make and use Mad Alchemist’s Potion, which is a really cheap alternative to Super Mana/Healing Potions, and now they will also be able to learn Mixology. Increased effect and twice the duration of every flask and elixir, yes thank you!
Paynne, my little warlock, is a tailor and a miner. Being a clothie, her tailoring will provide her with something new to wear every now and then, which is important for the fashionable warlock. For some reason, tailors will also be able to get more cloth drops than non-tailors.
She already has a cool epic flyer but will probably make herself a flying carpet as well,
Mining is actually a nice boost to a warlock with the Toughness spell, and she is capped and has an epic flyer, which makes farming ores rather fast and not much of a hassle. Daissy, her fellow gnome warrior, is a miner too but she still has a slow-ass copter and mining with that takes forever! (Yeye, I will get her an epic flyer too, but I am not that rich yet!)
I don’t want to drop Daissy’s mining since as a warrior she also benefits from Toughness. She is also an engineer, which needs lots and lots of ores and bars to make her cool fun trinkets and weapons. Now engineers will get a whole lotta new fun recipes, like new goggles, a portable mailbox and the very handy Army Knife. They will also learn how to make a chopper, but like Paynne she already has a cool mount, her pretty pink tiger.
Jools, my priest, is a jewelcrafter and an enchanter and there is no way in hell I’ll drop any of those painfully levelled professions.
The enchanters will get some new enchanter-only ring enchants and also be able to create some soulbound wands with spellpower, crit and some stats on them. The JC's will be able to make some BoP trinkets like the Sapphire Owl and cut some nice BoP gems, so all in all I am happy with keeping those professions for Jools.
Larue, my shaman, is like Joaq an herbalist and alchemist, potion master. The potion mastery is very handy and often procs a few extra free pots. This mastery may be slightly less useful now since the use of pots will probably diminish since the Potion Sickness means you can only use one potion per fight – no more selling a stack of Super Mana Potions for 30 gold, but it's still nice to get some free pots so I don't want to drop her Alchemy.
Again like Joaq, Larue does not really need the herbalism HoT since she can heal herself, and this is one profession that won’t hurt very much to drop on Larue since she’ll get her Alchemy needs satisfied by Joaq’s herbing anyways.
So, one possible free spot out of all 12 professions in total on my six lvl 70 girls...
There is another choice though, my lowbie hunter Cuddling is currently skinning and herbing her way through the 30's and I could drop the skinning for inscriptions. There are a few quests associated with Inscriptions and I might as well get some lvling xp out of them a well.
Ah well, I'll see what happens tomorrow :-)
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Professions, professions, professions...
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Holy Schmoly - pure damage
News Flash: Jools is insanely happy! After having killed about 200 ogre geomancers and about three times that amount of skirmishers in Blade's Edge over a period of two months or so, it finally dropped! The recipe for [Enchant Bracer: Spellpower]!
Only thing not so fun was the mats required for the enchant...6 large prismatic shards, 6 primal fires and 6 primal waters...with those mats you would have expected the enchant to give 150 spellpower instead of 15...ah well, I got the recipe and gotta start looking for somethinhg else to farm for when I have a moment to spare :-)
Back to the usual stuff:
As you probably know already, I respecced Jools to holy recently and immediately ran into trouble gear-wise. What is she supposed to wear? How can she improve her healing bonus to the max?
Every holy priest dress list mentions the Primal Moonclothe set as the absolutely best for a holy priest. Well, I am not gonna drop my 375 enchanting or my 375 jewelcrafting to pick up tailoring, so what else is there?
Not much actually. Well, now I tell a lie again, there is pretty much, but not much that is achievable for me, casual player with too many girls to take care of (damned be that alt-itis of mine!). Drops from Kara, heroics, ZA, pvp vendors or BoE stuff from the Trade Channel or the AH is what I have to dress Jools in.
Btw, and this I didn't realise until recently, have you noticed how aptly named Jools is for a 375 JC? Hihi...
There is a chest that drops from Nalorakk in ZA, and there is a chest that drops from Julianne in Kara. Both are pretty nice and both are pretty hard to get.
There is the hallowed set ofc, which requires a lot of instance going and good luck in drops (= really not an option for me then, which all of you avid readers probably know by know....
...optional reading regarding my luck in drops:
The day I specced Jools holy I went for a Kara run. Huntsman, Moroes, Maiden, Opera, Curator, Chess and Aran went down that night. These bosses dropped in total
- 0 (zero) healing gear that Jools could wear.
- many (a lot!) of other stuff
(Well I am not complaining that bad, I got 4 new shinies that night for my spell damage gear, including the one and only Staff of Infinite Mysteries that Paynne have been longing for so long =( well it aint that bad for a priest either)
It seems that the times I roll goood rolls, like more than 80 or so, are the times when noone else is interested in rolling so I will get the bling-bling whatever I roll, and it feels Fate is just teasing me with this, cause next time when I roll against someone its that customary 10 or lower....oh cruel fate!
...optional reading off)
So I decided to do like everyone else these days, I will go get some honor and buy some sweet shiny epix for my priests healing gear - yeye I know I said I didn't want to do a lot of bg's but hey! A girl can change her mind can't she?
So I go AV for the honor (which goes fast and is fun) and I go AB for the marks (which is slow and pretty painful and have to be spread out through the day to avoid death by acute irritation at your fellow alliance (a guildie of mine called alliance in AB for headless chickens, and I see his point. Very clearly. Too clearly, in fact. Ah well, no pain, no gain...I try to look at it as en exercise in patience and keeping your calm no matter what the world throws at you...))
Anyways, as I went to Alterac Valley I noticed that there usually is enough healing going around on the boss fights, Galv and Drek, so I switched and started nuking instead. This made me curious - is it possible for a holy priest to actually put out some serious spell damage? I am not talking about topping the raid charts, but maybe just a chance to survive out there in the hostile world? And how is the survivability of the holy priest when she goes offensive?
Let's try to examine this a little.
Jools has about 860 + spell damage unbuffed and a crit chance of 15 % for her Holy spells and about 10 % crit chance for other spells.
How many offensive spells does a Holy NE priest have? Two Holy spells with a cast time, three shadow spells, one dot, one cast spell and one instacast, and one arcane dot.
I am not counting spells like Drain Mana or Holy Nova because they are very situational to use, and I don't think I have ever used Shadow Word: Death, not even back in the old shady days.
Smite
Now here is a spell with a cool name, smite, smite, smite...mmm just taste the name, not just any other everyday blast-things-away spell but very Old Testament-like, smelling strongly of the crusadery killing of unbelieving infidels, smite-the-mobs-with-the furious wrath-of my-pure-and righteous-faith-kinda spell.
Smite has a 2 sec cast time and does about 1300 Holy damage in her current gear. It crits for about 2000 but not as often as you'd wish (guess 15% is about right).
Holy Fire
Dunno what's so holy about this one but it looks cool, probably one of the coolest spell animations in the game, with that pillar of white fire blasting the target away...it has a 3 sec cast and hits for about 1100 and with another 450 damage over 10 sec. Isn't that the most pathetic dot-part ever?
Good thing though about the two holy spells is that they have no cd, so u can keep casting them on and on and on...
Mind Blast
As a Holy priest, MB has a 1,5 sec cast time, an 8 sec cd and does about 1100 Shadow damage.
Shadow Word: Pain
A staple for any priest, regardless of spec. Insta-cast, 2200 Shadow damage ticking over 18 seconds.
Starshards
A Night Elf racial priest skill, an arcane dot that with a 30 sec cd that costs no mana and ticks for abot 1650 over 15 seconds.
So off she went to Shadowmoon to finish those Scryer quests and get a little closer to the coveted shoulder enchant...
And to my surprise and delight it went real well! The mobs went down like snowmen in June and even the occasional add or two was really no problem to handle. Tried it on the warriors, shamans and elekk handlers of Baari and the slayers and chosen of the orc stronghold with the same result.
Usual spell rotation was Shield, Holy Fire, SW:Pain, Starshards and as the mob came running a Smite or two and then wand to death. Reapply Shield if needed.
Psychic Scream and Elune's Grace helped in the could-be tricky situations of additional mobs turning up, and she took a beating or two, but all in all she did real well and only died a couple of times (and one of those times was when she swam into a group of hordes while doing a quest).
It was a happy holy priest who almost reached revered with the Scryers that day :-)
