Luck

Get to Revered with the Oracles.

Buy mysterious Egg.

Open it 7 days later ---> Green Proto Drake.

First try.

Buy second mysterious Egg.

Open last night ---> Green Proto Drake.

Again.

So far, I'm 2 for 2 on proto drakes in my Oracle Eggs.

Sadly, I had to throw away the second one, as I can't sell it or use it.

The odds of this? I'm not sure they even exist.


In other notes, I did pug Naxx 10 last night, and had a chance to finally play around with the new Divine Plea. Surprisingly, I still used it quite a bit. You have to compensate for your 50% loss in healing by using some bigger heals, but in the end you still get quite a bit of mana back. I'm going to continue to use it in mana-intensive fights.

Drakes and Shields

I finally got Maexxna to drop her shield the other day. It's great, and is definitely an upgrade from the shield available from the emblem vendors.

And, lucky as I am, I got the Green Proto-Drake from my very first Oracle egg! I couldn't believe it...I was waiting all week for that thing to hatch, and when I opened it I near fell out of my chair when I saw the purple writing.

Sorry to those of you that have had trouble getting this from your eggs. I am truly lucky in regards to this, even though my loot rolls in Naxx are hardly ever luck-worthy.

Flying on this thing around Sholazar or Icecrown for ore while listening to the new Fray CD has become one of my favorite parts of the game lately. It's relaxing, profitable, and downright fun.

Bye Bye, Crazy Mana Regen

Well, the changes to mana regen across the board are all over the forums today, as well as all over the blogs. For the actual words from Bornakk, check the link to Banana Shoulders.

Divine Plea is getting nerfed. Instead of losing 20% of your healing while it is active, the number is being upped to 50%. The devs say they want it to be a decision for Holy Paladins, rather than a "use on every CD" ability. It was apparently originially intended for Protection/Retribution.

On Heigan the other night, we had 4 people left alive after the second "dance." Me healing, a Ret pally, a Prot pally, and our MT warrior. I was able to heal the rest of the fight (very little damage actually), and end at nearly full mana because of Divine Plea. The fight took 15 minutes, but we got it done, and I easily solo healed it with absolutely zero mana issues. Without Divine Plea, it probably would have still been possible, but certainly mana would have been a more pressing issue.

This change could be huge. In fights like Heigan, there is minimal damage being done, so Divine Plea can still play a roll, esepcially if you have others healers alive with you. In fights like Patchwerk, where you probably cannot stop healing for even a couple of seconds, mana becomes much more of an issue. Mana pots are down to 1 per fight, illumination only goes so far, and you may not have Innervate/Replenishment (although Innervate will be nerfed a bit too because of the changes to "spirit based" mana regen) in your 10 man group. Mana regen is getting tougher, but luckily paladins have been optimal in this area, so a nerf like this may just bring us back down to "good."

Blizzard also says that they design things around Replenishment, even in 10 man situations. My group that I run with honestly has no ret paladin, survival hunter, or shadow priests. If they are to design encounters around the assumption that Replenishment is in the raid somewhere, then I may be having more mana issues in future encounters. They have stated they are looking at adding Replenishment to more classes, which could help, but we'll just have to wait and see how this and other changes go down in the 3.1 patch.

(And, for the record, we Safety Danced our way to an easy Heigan kill this week, even with a new DK in the raid group)

I Want A Mammoth!

It's official.

I have decided to save my gold. 16000 gold to be exact.

I want a Traveler's Tundra Mammoth.

I already have epic flying. I have bought some epic gear from the AH. I have helped my brother gear up his warrior. I have nothing to spend my gold on. So I am saving.

My hunter is 73, and I plan to completely grind to 80 on him simply by killing/skinning beasts. That's it. Some quests, some instances, but mostly skinning, which is incredibly profitable.

I have been mining my ass off, farming eternals to smelt Titansteel bars.

As of right now, I am still about 10000 gold short, and it will take some time for me to save up for it. But it's just so cool, and I want one so badly, that I am willing to penny pinch and wait for it.

I can't wait.