Healing not just for girls anymore

Why every monk wants to spec mistweaver

I´ve always been a healer. Maybe it is because I am female – as male players always like to point out – or because I want to make up for not finishing medical school. I just like the role and nothing is more satisfying to me than getting a group safely through a hard encounter. I tried tanking but it is just not my thing. I feel like a kindergarten teacher trying to get a group of toddlers to safely cross a highway, while there´s always one going astray or pulling stuff he shouldn´t and expecting me to fix it. Healing is nice and simple. You stand back, you don´t bother with the boss, you just throw your heals at the tank, shield the mage, learn not to panic if the warlock´s health drops drastically (seriously, they should warn newbie healers about that).

Healing is hip

So yes, I am a healer in heart and soul and I knew from the moment the monk class was announced that I would spec as Mistweaver. Before I knew how cool monk healing looked. I feel the need to point this out, because on the beta servers healer is suddenly the hip thing to be. If somebody asks in chat how to respec (not possible yet), rest assured that he has just seen a mistweaver at work and has realized life is not worth living if he can´t become one too.

As a result, for the first time in history waiting times for healers are longer than those for dps in the random dungeon finder. At least at pre-85 level. Your typical group consists of a reluctant tank, a very content healer and three unhappy dps who were stupid enough to queue as both healer and dps and feel they can´t really fulfill their destiny being forced to doing damage. As the healer your every move will be watched closely, and the moment you let the tanks health drop below 80% the dps happily chirp “I can heal!” and steal your heals from you.

Let me point out to all those people that healing is NOT just about looks. It takes dedication and determination and skill to choose out of your wide range of spells while painstakingly maintaining your mana pool because you have to make life-and-death decisions in a split second…. Ok … who am I kidding? My healing panda has at level 35 exactly two healing spells, that both need such a ridiculously low amount of mana that I have yet to get lower than 60%, even if I let the whole group´s hp drop to 20% just for the fun of it.

Soothing Mists

Let´s take a closer look at those two very powerfull spells. At level 10 you are rewarded for you wise choice with the spell Soothing Mists, a channeled spell that heals your target each tick. It costs a certain amount of mana each tick - scaling up with your level - but at the moment such a low amount that you could keep this spell channeled for a whole instance without ever going OOM. You don´t have to, however, because in three ticks you will have your tank up from 10% to 100%, leaving you plenty of time to hand out some kicks to the mobs. A nice detail of soothing mists is that you get rewarded for not overhealing. If your tick completely heals your target, you have a 1 in 4 chance to regain a chi point, needed for some other abilities.

Chi Wave

The second spell, that comes at level 18 iirc, is Chi Wave, much like Prayer of Mending. It jumps five times and does either healing or damage, depending on whether the target is friendly or hostile. This makes it also extremely useful while soloing, because it can ping-pong back and forth between you and the mob you are killing. It has a 6 second cooldown, and requires 2 chi (out of a maximum of 4).

The servers are down right now for maintenance and if mistweaver healing hasn´t been nerfed down after they come up again, it will happen in the very near future. And that´s for the best. Not only because otherwise all the priests, paladins, druids and shamans will have to go cry in a corner, but also because – believe it or not – overpowered healing is kind of boring. Sure, it gives you plenty of time to admire your Serpent Stance and find the best angle for a screenshot, but in the end even healers like a challenge and some excitement.  Let´s see how long the rush on healing lasts when it requires you to think again…

Pandaren mount speculation

Will female pandaren have a male pandaren as mount?

Since a hint in October from the developers of the new World of Warcraft expansion that they leaned towards a turtle mount for the Pandaren, Blizzard has been suspiciously quiet about the subject. But that has never hindered the fanbase to speculate wildly about the way of transport we may expect for the sturdy new race.

Guesses range from floating clouds to the panda just rolling himself up in a ball. This last option seems less feasible, ever since the debacle with the Worgen way of fast transport by running on all fours. While this was completely acceptable lore wise (worgen are wolfs after all), a lot of players thought it looked ridiculous and Blizzard got a lot of grief from the Alliance side, that felt left out of some extra mounts while their Goblin counterparts had cool trikes to show off with. The hastily recycled horses that were thrown in to answer the complaints didn´t make anybody really happy. One could argue that since the Pandaren are a both-faction race there would be fewer complaints, but Blizzard is known for listening to their players and I don´t think they want to burn their fingers again.

It needs to be said though, that whichever mount eventually gets chosen, there will be complaints from some people. Already hardcore fishers feel cheated by the idea of a turtle mount accessible to anybody, while they had to spend long and lonely hours fishing for theirs. And yes, they have a point. In the lull of time before Cataclysm hit the stores, I went through the mind-numbingly boring grind for the Winterspring Frostsaber and used it as my standard mount afterwards, proudly showing I have no life at all. Now that the grind has become much shorter and more entertaining, the sabers are not a rare sight anymore and I put mine back in the stable. Likewise, I have always regretted that the Horde counterpart – the Ravasaur – doesn´t have a more distinct look from the normal troll mounts to reward for the amount of time put in obtaining it.

Having said that, turtles do fit the atmosphere and the lore of Pandaria, the starting world being a giant turtle swimming through space and all (not to be confused with Discworld´s A´Tuin, the big turtle swimming through space carrying four elephant on her back who in their turn carry the discworld). And it might help that I never fished up the turtle mount on any of my toons, not for lack of trying.

However, lately the rumors about the mount being a yak are getting more persisting, for instance through mmo-champion, where they have discovered the yak-model is already available in five different colors. On the starting world, transport to and fro different quest hubs is offered in the form of a little carts, towed by…. indeed yaks.  Keeping in line with the character of the race and the emphasis Blizzard has put on their love for good food and drink, wouldn´t it be a nice touch if the yak offered milk and cheese to its owner?

All speculations aside, we will only be sure the moment the developers decide in all their wisdom to end the suffering of the suspense and reveal what they have come up with. And then brace themselves for the storm of critics and complaints. I hereby promise I will be happy with whatever choice they make, be it a spinning fishbowl or a beer keg on wheels as long as it doesn´t make a horribly intrusive noise. So there. You may keep me to that.

Best weapon name ever

Think they might keep the name like that if we send in a petition?

Touch of Death: too good to be true?

Monk abilities in Warcraft

Beta testers still disagree weather the one-shotting monk ability Touch of Death is really as overpowered as it sounds. It is on a cooldown after all, can´t be used against mobs with more health than you have and takes the maximum of 4 chi (a system much like combo points or holy power). 

I personally think that only being able to one-shot a mob every 1.5 minutes instead of all the time, still makes it on the overpowered side, to put it mildly. I would be very surprised if it made the final version is this form. But while it lasts, it is extremely satisfying, especially when used in combination with Jinyu Cider (restores all you chi) and Fortifying Brew (increases health by 100%). 

Kind of reminds me of the starting days of Death Knights, just after Wrath of the Lich King went live. When you took on a group of elites 3 levels higher than yourself, died and filed a bugreport because the "immune to death" ability didn´t work. Ah.... those days....

Getting Pandafobia?

How to get the best out of the warcraft-beta

The next wave of 250.000 invites for the Mists of Pandaria beta have been send out yesterday evening, leading to the Pandaren starting zone being overcrowded with fresh panda monks. The majority of players will drop out after a few days to return to the live servers, but if you don´t have the patience to wait for that, there are some ways to explore around while avoiding being trampled by a stampede of panda´s.

 

Steer clear of the Wandering Isle

Because everybody wants to see the new Panda starting zone, the smart choice is to make a level 1 char from any other race. Granted, you don´t get to see the Wandering Isle just yet, but most of the races allow the monk class which is completely new, and you have the zone more or less to yourself. Added to that, you will have access to a racial mount at level 20, as of yet not available for panda´s.

If you are prepared to face the crowds and insist on seeing the Wandering Isle RIGHT NOW, give up on questing. You have to go through the first 4 quests to get out of the starting zone (turn on “friendly NPC nameplates” in the interface menu, for easier clicking of the questgivers), but after that you can more or less run around freely on most parts of the island, take a look at the scenery and cuddle some angry rabbits. The questline of the starting area is completely linear and phased in some parts, but there is still enough to see and do to get a feel for the atmosphere.

Steer clear of level 85 quests

The level 85+ areas are less crowded, but quests have more bugs and waiting times of over an hour just to kill a certain mob are no exception. Satisfy yourself with just exploring, or level up first through older content and instances so you can skip ahead to a higher level zone. Blizzard promised to make the questing less linear in the high level areas, so in theory there should be quests available for you when you skipped the first bit, but I haven´t tried this myself yet so I´m not sure if this has been implemented yet.  

Be aware that premade characters are not available for the test realms at this moment. You can copy an existing “live” character to a beta server through your blizzard.net account page, but  especially on European realms this process can take up to three days.

Beta is not a demo

People expecting a full working glitch-free game will be deeply disappointed. The beta-test is not there for your amusement, it is exactly what de word implies: a *test* of a work in progress. So be prepared to encounter many bugs, half-finished area´s or story lines, missing objects, changes and lots and lots of rolling restarts. It is possible to get completely stuck and the only remedy is to start over again with a fresh toon. The good thing about that is the majority of the invitees will get fed up quite quickly and go back to the live servers. Usually only a small percentage will remain and dutifully report bugs and give feedback about all aspects of the game. There is no reward for that, no rare mount or extra privileges. On the contrary: you will eventually lose your characters, but you may revel in the awareness that you contribute a tiny little bit to a better game. 

"Pandaria Beta is not a joke" by Wowcrendor 

CareBears invading World of Warcraft

Mists of Pandaria: first impressions

I can discuss endlessly the finer details of MoP, the new talentsystem, the petbattles, the overhaul of Ragfire Chasm (and I will), but the big burning question on everybody’s lips is of course: are we looking at a future Azeroth in which we´ll  all run around like the Care Bears in Wonderland. The answer is a whole-hearted: yes! Surprisingly enough, that doesn´t matter. Even hardcore players –you know the type “in the old days everything was better, we had no mounts so we had to run everywhere, a single battle for Alterac Valley could take up to 3 days, blizz is killing the game making it too easy”- had to admit grumpily that after a few hours they were already hopelessly in love with their beta-panda.

This is not in the least because of the very well designed facial expressions and body movements. Even the biggest complainers have to cave in after seeing the /rude emote.  On the other hand, the pandaren design makes painfully clear how overdue upgrades for the other races are.

So let´s have it out for once and for all: Yes, the pandaren (pandari?) are cuddly and cute. But not annoying-cute like gnomes, or creepy-cute like goblins. Especially the male pandaren (pandaro?) really need to pay some attention to their BMI if they want to make it to level 90, but still manage to maintain a sense of dignity, helped by the wide choice of moustaches and beards. 

The females might be a bit too sweet (the dreamy  idle-motion got on my nerves in the beginning) but I appreciate the fact that the trend of super slim anorexic female chars has been broken with. In a time and age where even the top of the fashion industry becomes aware that it is not the best thing to portray a dangerously low bodyweight as the ideal for women, I applaud that we will have some more realistic female body shapes in WoW (and yes, I realize how weird that sounds when talking about panda bears). Granted, we already have dwarfs, but they are the least popular race among women because “if I want to look at a fat ass all day, I can use a mirror”, even not to mention the Tauren. Chubby though they might be, the female pandaren (pandara?) remain sassy and agile, totally capable of dishing out a high-kick on an orc´s chin. So you better think twice before mentioning cellulite.

To hammer the point really home, the pandaren´s racials are all but one related to their bourgeois lifestyle: Bouncy (falling damaged reduced by 50%), Epicurean (double well fed bonus), Gourmand (+15 cooking skill), Inner Peace (rested xp bonus lasts twice as long). Yes Blizzard, we get it. Fortunately the fifth racial -a 3 second stun- shows the tougher side of the pandaren (pandario?). Boy, those training punching bags never saw that one coming...