Mists of Pandaria – Pet Battle!

As well as adding the Pandaran race, a new continent, the new Monk class, and an overhaul of the Talent Calculator, the Mists of Pandaria expansion also brings with it a pet battling system.

There’s a review of the system on MMO Champion.. collection, levelling and training of pets, battling and stats, which sound a little like Pokemon and Geomon, two ‘pet’ collecting and battling games I’ve been playing a bit of recently.

Pets will now be tradeable, even once trained.  Some pets will only be out in the wild during certain seasons or weather conditions, so trading will be a nice option for those pets you can’t find yourself.  This reminds me rather a lot of Geomon, where I’m a little frustrated by the idea I can’t collect all the Espers myself.. and I like to aim for a full collection once I start!

I particularly like the idea that pets will become account wide.. I have a great collection on my main character, Kirria, including many which were gifts from friends, and I wouldn’t fancy my chances at collecting them all again.  I look forward to trying the system out for myself when I eventually get enough spare time to make it worthwhile re-subscribing to WoW.. but I’m not sure about naming all the pets I’ve collected!

Trying out Holy

I’ve been trying out a Holy spec in the last few weeks, partly due to being pestered to try it, and partly due to the lack of AOE healing as Disc.. if I’m ever to get into the Rise of the Zandalari dungeons then I’ll need to be able to do it..

I’m having mixed results though.

At first I found it fun to be trying something new, and when dungeons run smoothly I like that I’m able to handle it without my usual spells.. but at other times I’m running out of mana so much faster than I should be, or being faced with wipes which may or may not be my fault.  Today’s long wipe-fest dungeon made me want to give it up again as I kept thinking if I’d been Disc I’d have been hitting the right spells and maybe pulled it back when things went wrong..

Apparently, as Holy, I should have better mana regen than I do as Disc.. yet I’m finding that I run out of mana towards the end of most fights.  Possible solutions include giving DPS less proper heals, only Renew.. but then if something else hits them and they die, I’ll be in the firing line for not healing them enough.  Otherwise, it’s a long, boring read through the forums to see whether I’m using the right (read: most efficient) spells.. but with all the maths which I don’t fully understand, that feels more like work than gaming.

Maybe this is why more people play DPS.. get that wrong and nothing much happens..

Attempts on Occu’thar’s Life

With the release of the Firelands patch, a new boss, Occu’thar, was added to Baradin Hold.

Occu’thar is a demon dog, who basically ate all the others in his prison, and is now too fat to get out.  Priceless 🙂

We’ve set out to kill him a few times, but so far haven’t been able to.. in the groups we’ve been in so far, we’ve all taken a lot of damage from the horrible Eyes of Occu’thar, which is then quickly followed by fire which again.. people don’t always get out of.

However, we did meet a few nice people on one of the attempts.. so it’s not all bad 🙂

Vortex Pinnacle – Heroic

Some time ago, I had a horrible experience in Vortex Pinnacle which made me reconsider playing at all, if it meant ending up with random idiots who would sooner kick you than speak to you.

Tonight we went back for our second attempt at the dungeon on Heroic.. and we killed Ertan again, despite the extra mechanics brought in.  This meant I actually enjoyed the rest of the run, despite a few slip-ups here and there..

The wipe also allowed me to take a look around while riding the Slipstream.. it is a pretty nice looking place when you get to look 😉

I think I now have three more Heroic dungeons to get through for the set.. not including the Rise of the Zandalari dungeons, Zul’Gurub and Zul’Aman, which are also on my hit list!

I am a little concerned about what I’ve heard about Disc Priests struggling here though, relating to the lack of ability for group healing.. I might therefore be forced to try Holy, which annoys me as I’d rather try it for myself, out of interest, than because of imbalanced numbers somewhere.

Free to Play Games on Steam

Steam announced some free to play games this week: RPG / MMOs; Champions Online, Global Agenda: Free Agent, Spiral Knights and Forsaken World, and an action game, Alliance of Valiant Arms.  Free-to-play games usually include some sort of paid features.. extra skins, more equipment, or faster levelling.. or serve up adverts or limit the places you can go in the game while free.. so this announcement got my attention..

Champions Online requires payment to play past level 40, which at least allows a good trial of the game, in which you play a hero going up against Dr. Destroyer and his minions.. the game also apparently allows you to customise your own character, but more interestingly, your own customised enemy to harass you throughout your superhero career.  This sounds rather interesting, though.. another game with a big open world?  I need more free time 😉

Global Agenda: Free Agent‘s free version allows all the game’s content to be played, but you can pay to speed up levelling and purchase better gear more quickly.  I actually bought Global Agenda back in March, just prior to it going free, but having the option of adding it to Steam is a nice one.  This might also help me keep it updated, though I’ve not actually played the game recently..

Spiral Knights, is also fully free to play, but as a co-op game, this will require friends to play with..

The fourth MMO, Forsaken World, has races and classes as I’m used to with WoW, but with dungeons where the difficulty scales with the players’ experience, and weapons and gear which evolves and changes.. another one worth a look.

The action game, Alliance of Valiant Arms, looks to be another squad-based shooter with teams of 4 or 5 players per mission.  Players rank up as they play; the highest ranked player becomes the Squad Commander, hopefully meaning good players can lead others, rather than a recipe for griefing.. another one I’ll have to rope the guys in for 😉

Sunwell Plateau

Late last night, I joined a group making a visit to Sunwell Plateau.. the hardest raid in the Burning Crusade expansion, containing the Sunwell.  We only ended up with six players including Vorlak and myself, as it seems there aren’t that many people wanting to go and chase down older content like us 🙂

I had the WoWWiki guide up on my second screen so I could at least glance over the tactics as we went through.. reading about things is not the same as experiencing them though, so I had to be on my toes to start with.  After the first few trash mobs, the other healer asked if I could heal the group by myself so he could DPS instead.. I was happy to try, though a little worried in case things went wrong and I took the blame.

The first boss, Kalecgos, proved a problem thanks to a tricky mechanic with two fights going in simultaneously, one in the regular world against the dragon himself, and the other in a shadowy world through a portal, where you must stop Sathrovarr the Corruptor from killing Kalec, the dragon’s half-elf form.

Those of us who had gone through the portal were unsuccessful in killing off Sathrovarr, meaning we were then unable to win the fight.  Fortunately we were able to solve this by leaving and re-entering the instance.  Our second attempt was much better, as all but the tank entered the spectral realm and killed Sathrovarr, then came back out to deal with Kalecgos.
So far so good though.. the group was nice enough and everyone else seemed to know what they were doing 🙂

The next bosses were found in The Dead Scar: a path made of blight leading through Quel’Thalas.. this is where the Undead attacked in the Warcraft III storyline 🙂

Brutallus, the pit-lord, kept applying his Burn ability to me, so I had to stay away from the other players to avoid passing it on to them, but fortunately it wasn’t doing a lot of damage.

Felmyst, the third boss, is resurrected from the corpse of blue dragon Madrigosa as it is tainted by the blood of Brutallus.. so she appeared as soon as we were finished with Brutallus.  This fight was a little more trouble as Felmyst’s abilities included various poisonous AOE effects.. gas, fumes, vapour..
I’d been given a heads-up to avoid these, but got caught out right at the end and was Mind-Controlled.. and the group had no choice but to attack me.  Fortunately the dragon was killed first 😉

After resurrecting our two dead players, we went back indoors, heading towards the Witch’s Sanctum and the Eredar Twins.

These two bosses work as a pair, with them both fighting in the first phase, and then after killing one Twin, the other continuing with some of the first Twin’s abilities.  Looking over the tactics, I was a little worried by Dark Touched as 20 stacks of this on a player means healing effects reduced by 100%.  I hoped this wouldn’t apply to Vorlak, as he was the tank.. but in the end it didn’t even register as a problem during the fight 🙂

M’uru was the next boss, a Naaru which I thought looked corrupted as the others I’ve seen were all bright and shining.. and didn’t want to kill us!

The group were going fairly quickly at this point and I didn’t get to check the tactics, but it just seemed to be a case of killing him quickly.. once M’uru is dead he transforms into Entropius, a void god, which again required burning down quickly.  No problem for this group!

Then there we were.. at the final boss, Kil’jaeden!

Kil’jaeden is being summoned through the Sunwell, where energy is being drained from the imprisoned Anveena.  Bit of lore here: Anveena looks like a human girl, but is actually the manifestation of the energy within the Sunwell; she sacrifices herself to weaken Kil’jaeden, which means the Sunwell’s destruction.

Tactics-wise.. the first part of the fight involves pulling the three Hands of the Deceiver away from the Sunwell.. thanks to us being overpowered and the group moving so very quickly, these were virtually dead before I’d got near the fight..

Part way through the fight, Vorlak used an orb at the side of the room to turn into a blue dragon!  This gave him some useful abilities including Breath: Revitalize, which gave me mana.. always useful.. and Shield of the Blue, providing a shield which reduces incoming damage by 95%..

As Anveena sacrifices herself, she applies a buff to Kil’jaeden meaning he takes increased Holy Damage.. yay for my use of Holy Fire letting me get extra damage in!  Once defeated he disappears back through the Sunwell..

There was more lore here too, with a conversation between Lady Liadrin and Prophet Valen about the victory, and how the heart of M’uru had been recovered, and is now a source of light energy in place of the Sunwell.   I really need to read the books so I have more of the story.. 🙂

Healing the group for this was much easier than I expected, and I was really glad I’d come along despite worrying about not knowing the tactics.  Vorlak and I both got the Sunwell Plateau achievement, and Vorlak also got Outland Raider.. I’m missing this one still!

Once the loot was distributed, the others left and we wandered around a little.  I also tried out the dragon orb 🙂

An Addition to the Guild

A friend moved his Shaman over to our server tonight, to join our guild and play with us 🙂

To help him out a little, we went over to Zul’Drak with him, and through Gundrak a few times..
Not only did this give him lots of XP, it also gave me plenty of loot, which will go some way to making up for the thousands of gold I’ve spent on herbs for Inscription over the last week 😉

It was also rather good fun, and allowed me to take a proper look around the dungeon as we went, rather than having to speed through because randoms are impatient.

I also remembered that I was carrying a Blossoming Branch from the Noblegarden event..

I had kept hold of one of these so that I could surprise a friend at some point, and this just seemed like the perfect time 🙂

Bunnies can apparently still do Heroic Leap, which is quite funny to see.  They also fit in the side-car of the Mechano-Hog!

Tanking!

As Tim has only a little time left on his trial, I thought we should him to see a dungeon.  As we were using lower level charactershis also meant having a go at tanking for a group!

I’d not touched my druid in ages, and the talents had all been reset by this point.  I had actually planned to delete her and start again with the hopes of learning it properly, but I had some brief instruction from friends beforehand.

Our first dungeon was Blackfathom Deeps, and though I found the low ceilings a bit of a pain, the run started off ok 🙂

We were doing well enough until the summoning chamber, anyway, and after killing Twilight Lord Kelris, we lit the candles.. all of them.  This brought us a few too many mobs, and we died.. Blackfathom Durps, maybe? 😉

Last night we went for another dungeon and got Gnomeregan, which pleased one friend at least!

I found this dungeon a bit more tricky in terms of where to go, but the tanking itself started to feel a bit easier 🙂

One confusing thing though.. we found a box of parachutes early on in the dungeon, but there was nowhere we could use them.  When we came here a long time ago, I remember jumping down to the boss (and dying), and we thought the parachutes would be for this.. but there is now an invisible wall to prevent that.  So I now have a parachute.. 🙂

We also got Guild Achievements for completing these dungeons.. we’re getting a good stack of these lately!

Children’s Week

Children’s Week is another World Event, running during the first week of May.  I was told there were a few pets available during this event, so barely needed any encouragement to check it out.

My first child was the Orcish Orphan, picked up in Orgrimmar.

He had a couple of quests for me.. he wanted to go and ride the Rocketway in Azshara, go and meet Sylvanas in Undercity, and see the Fallen Chieftain, Cairne Bloodhoof, over at Red Rocks where there was a little ceremony led by Bairne.

After that there was icecream, kite flying, and toy swords bought for the other orphans..

I got a choice of pets and picked up Whiskers the Rat 🙂

Over in Shattrath, my adopted child was a Blood Elf Orphan, who also wanted to travel.. to Sporeggar in Zangarmarsh, to the Throne of Elements in Nagrand, where she got herself burned when she went too near to Incineratus, the Fury of Fire, and off to the impressive-looking Dark Portal in Hellfire Peninsula.

Her next quests had us travel to Silvermoon to see the Elite Tauren Cheiftain, which I had only seen in Blackrock Depths before, and over to the Caverns of Time, where I got her a Toy Dragon.  Nothing for the other orphans back in Shattrath this time, but a second pet for me.

I picked up Sleepy Willy, who is a non-combat pet like the rest, but he can also attack and kill critters..

He is fairly ugly though.. my “pity pet” as another friend dubbed him. 😉

The last Orphan was to be found over in Dalaran, and I picked Roo, the Oracle Orphan, rather than the Wolvar.. next time, puppy-man!

Sightseeing this time took in the Biggest Tree Ever, a massive tree housing furbolgs in Grizzly Hills, the Bronze Dragonshrine in Dragonblight, and off to Winterfin Retreat in the Borean Tundra, where I vaguely remember questing a long time back!  After those, it was over to the Shaper’s Terrace in Un’Goro Crater, where I ended up collecting Dinosaur Meat for my Venomhide Hatchling, before taking my Orphan to meet the massive Etymidian..

..and then on to meet Alexstrasza, and then back to Dalaran for more toy buying at the Wonderworks.

After taking Roo back to the orphanage, I got the Curious Oracle Hatchling in the mail 🙂

Two more pets came along this day: the De-Weaponized Mechanical Companion, from Vorlak..

..and the Panther Cub from the Zandalari missions around Stranglethorn Vale 🙂

Proto-Drake Whelp

My 80th pet was a good one, from a friend.. the Proto-Drake Whelp!

He has the same model as the Red Proto-Drake 🙂

This pet came from the Mysterious Egg, which can be bought from the Oracles in Sholazar Basin once you have Revered Reputation.
This egg drops other pets as well as a mount.. so I should get myself over there 😉