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.

Just cuz you can, doesn't mean you HAVE TO.

This might seem obvious to some (maybe most) people, but I figured I would put this little information out there anyway.

I'm a paladin. I can wear plate. However, that doesn't mean I HAVE TO wear plate!

Currently, I am wearing 2 pieces of mail gear (because every boss we kill in Naxx flat out refuses to drop plate healing gear). The boots and legs are great for healers, whether they normally wear mail or not. My group having no shamans in it, I immediately snatched these up.

This can be true for hunters too. While Blizzard has done much better at putting intellect on the mail hunter/shaman gear, sometimes a piece of leather is much better than the piece of mail that you are wearing. This may not be true in the end game, but especially while leveling it can be.

Now, Paladins are capable to wearing leather and cloth too, but I personally don't like to. With the spellpower changes, a piece of cloth is going to be worthwhile for any caster, and I'll leave those to my mages or priests who need upgrades first.

Bottom line: wear the gear that makes you a better player and upgrades your gear. Don't get hung up on the "plate, leather, mail, cloth" classification (to an extent) and focus on the stats you need.

Lunar Festival

Well, it's been a busy first weekend back here at school. I had some friends come visit, so my play time was way down. Nothing today, so I'll hop back into Azeroth and maybe try to get some of the Elder achievements done. After I really got into the Hallows End achievements (and got the "the Hallowed" title), I really haven't been able to push myself into the others. Winter's Veil required some Ogri'la stuff, which I wasn't going to go back and start since I hadn't done it at 70 at all. The Lunar Festival seems fairly easy as far as achievements go, and I love getting 83 alliance rep every time I find one, so I may push for finding all 75 of them. Could be close enough to get me a tiger mount from Darnassus. Who knows.

I finished off the Argent Champion title late Thursday night, after Naxx. I did get the Chivalric Chestguard, which I am probably actually going to wear instead of my T7 piece! Its disappointing that they failed completely to put spell crit on the holy paladin T7, but I'd rather that than Mp5 any day, and will probably gem up the non set piece and wear it instead. The only thing that may keep me from switching is the 10% crit chance to Holy Shock from the set bonus. More Holy Shock crits means more instant Flashes and more 1 second Holy lights, which is never a bad thing. I'll be testing both out in some heroics today and tomorrow and see what the differences are and if one really is better than the other.

Happy Elder hunting to you all!

I have no idea what to call this post. Oh well.

A real life friend of mine who was in our guild (and topping our DPS meters in our 10 mans) has left our guild and joined one of the top 3 raiding guilds on my server (which isn't much on the Underbog, but they are certainly ahead of my guild in numbers and progression). He wants to see more 25 man content and plays regularly with people from the guild anyway. It's his decision, and if that is what he wants then he should do it. I wish him luck. It's not like we wont group up or do fun stuff together.

I have been thinking of switching guilds, much like him, but have come to the conclusion that it won't make my play time any more enjoyable. My guild is progressing through Naxx 10. It's not top end raiding in the slightest, but we are doing it together and everyone is downing bosses for the first time in our raids. The guild my friend is joining has been there and done that. I would rather be with a group of friends and progress as a guild and be an integral part of the progression than join a top end guild and tag along with people that have done it all before. That's just me.

I also started a small guild on my server, as I have started a new mage alt. After making her and questing the starting zone, I realized how many brand new players there were around. I decided I would start up a guild to help these people out and get them some friends/connections on the server. I am going to level the mage ( probably slowly), and help the guildies out, setting up "run nights" where I'll hop on my paladin and run some people through instances. I'm trying to provide a place for newbies to be able to ask questions, maybe get some help, and level together. I hope it works out.