A first look on heroic performance

Its been quite a few days since I posted as I was up to my neck with work and my spare time went in game.
Lance is now lvl 80, Holy spec-ed and I am starting to adjust to the new talents, rotations and the new game play.

I have not visited any normal instances yet as Holy but I did visit Culling and Dark'Tharon in heroic modes. My observations are...

Healing is much more interactive now. The cost of spells is bigger, you can not rely on passive mana management and you need to keep an eye on your bar and cool downs. Divine plea is a massive addition if used timely, often and whenever possible. It will extent uptime, it will compensate for emergencies and it will keep you going longer. The numbers are not of my concern for the time being as I have not gotten the feel of it in many instances.

Holy shock is marvellous filler for emergencies and once we get the hand of it we will couple it with fast follow-up heals with Infusion. Tricky but quite doable and as far as I see it fun.

Holy Light is now quite different as down-ranking is a no-no. So its a pure nuke heal. Crit, Mana per 5 and heal need to be adjusted for longevity and net effect. How this will develop... its quite early for me to say.

Sacred Shield has a nice graphic but I have not yet fully appreciated its use.

Longevity in my current tier6 gear is a question though. I see my mana bar dropping sometimes a bit more than I am used to. But hey, its a start.

Overall, healing with the Paladin seems fun to me. If only our solo dps was a tad more exciting, I would be pleased

Northrend...

Its been a few days since I posted, simply because I have dived in to the quest pool and looking around in awe. Blizzard has done a very good job on the environments, most of the quests and the story is more involving than ever. I am halfway to 76, trying to keep a balance with speed and enjoyment of the quests. Leveling as retribution is solid, almost no uptime and I also did UK, NxS and AN with guildies. Completed the quests on Howling, Dragonblight, went straing for the Argent Crusade tabard (did a few quests there for the rep), then went to start normal questing in Grizzly. The latter is by far the most immersive area I have seen in wow. Probably the trees, the colours, the shadows the...ah crap, bears!!!

No upgrades yet though apart from some trinkets, a ring and gems! Oh the gems are nifty. As far as professions are concerned I am not doing anything in particular than mining everything I encounter and then try to level engineering in steps. I was also fortunate enough to get the Heavy Frostwave book (or whatever its called) quite soon in Zul'Drak and do the odd cooking here and there. Fishing...well, I am stuck at 320 so I'll leave that for when my GF goes to outlands.

Overall, the game looks and feels a million time better than previous instalments. Lots of things to do, lots of scenery and lots of lore. Meeting up with the likes of Krasus, Rhonin (I am a wow book fan :p), Alexstrasza, Arthas and ofc Tirion in his pala armour truly gets you into the conflict.

My only concern is the slightly more demanding minimum requirements that may affect my GFs laptop and seem to have caused some issues on my rig. Do not be afraid to tweak the settings and do not assume that going all maxed out in the graphics tab yields the best performance. You need to look what wokrs and what not for your setup, going lower or disabling something may look better actualy.

Good luck, may the Light guilde your path and see you in Icecrown...

The script evolves...

As I said a few days ago Blizzard ought to bring the story to a point that there would be leverage for the Alliance and the Horde to attack Northrend (which up to a few days seemed not to be the plan).

Now undead forces attack the two iconic cities of Stormwind and Ogrimmar. I personaly expect Sindragosa to come on top of the current attacks. The spring is loaded and about to throw us to the noerthern continent. Arthas taunts us and we will take up on the chalenge...

A few hours left till the Wotlk launch, a few more hours till the servers get hammered from old, current and returning players. A few hours before Lance grabs his two-hander after quite some time and venture to the icy continent...

Meet you all there...

The Final Countdown

The clock is ticking... The final countdown has started...

This is the last weekend before the release of the Wrath of the Lich King and I expect some events to trigger. From a `screenplay' point of view the alliance and the horde currently have no incentive to attack the Lich King, apart from the old crimes. Which more or less - and bearing in mind that nobody does anything about them - seem `ignored'. I feel that in order to justify the attack in Northrend something big needs to happen.

Ofc that would mean that the time point of entry to the new continent will have to be placed a few months from now to justify the new structures and the Alliance and Horde expeditions establishment/preparations.

If nothing happens then the script will seem a bit flaky to me. If the entry point in Northrend is the next day form the end of tBC then there will be missing references on what takes place currently in Northrend (it would have to be now, in order for us to go and find everything set up the next day).

So, in other words I expect (and hope) that Hell breaks loose this week.

Still, the amount of information we received the past months makes me eager to see the new content, do some fine -lore related - quests and drool over some fine new items.

I just feel that wrapping everything with a good script will set up the ground perfectly for the new expansion which Blizz claims to be much more lore related and involving for all of us.

I left my paladin in the Stormwind Harbour looking towards the Horizon. He expects the Lich King's taunt, in the form of a dragon...