Monday 20 September 2010

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

I enjoy playing World of Warcraft. I used to play it VERY often, and I'm talking hours and hours and hours. Nowadays, I've found a bit of balance and don't play as much as I once did. I used to be in a solid 25 man raiding guild, but that doesn't interest me anymore, so I was really glad to hear that Blizzard is making 10 man raiding equal in difficulty (and loot) with 25 man raiding.

So apparently the expansion is out at the start of November, and I'm still not settled on what I'm going to play yet. I'm mostly playing my Shaman at the moment, and will probably continue playing that. Healing can be pretty boring if you've got nothing to heal, you are mostly just stood there waiting to click grid like a frantic game of whack-a-mole, but healing is getting better in Cataclysm. When I'm not healing, I will throw a few Lightning Bolts and keep Flame Shock up, and this is exactly how healing will be like in the expansion.

It looks like Priests and Shamans will be expected to Smite and Lightning Bolt when not healing, I don't really care much about Priests, but the talents that Shamans get are pretty hot. Throwing Lightning Bolts will restore mana by 40% of the damage done, and casting a Shock spell will increase the healing power and decrease the mana cost of your next healing spell. Pretty cool right? So it seems like Resto Shamans are going to be offensive healers, sign me up! Elemental is getting a nice reboot also. Elemental has always been a boring facerolling spec, but a couple of spells are adding some much needed complexity to the spell casting priority. Rolling Thunder is a talent that gives you 30% chance to return some mana back every time you do damage with Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning, but it also generates an extra charge on your Lightning Shield up to 9 stacks. Fulmination is the next talent that works hand in hand with Rolling Thunder. Fulmination allows your Earth Shock to burn any extra (past 3) stacks of Lightning Shield you've generated. So you wait until you've got 9 stacks of Lightning Shield, and then you Earth Shock to do Earth Shock + 6 stacks of Lightning Shield damage, pretty awesome. Another cool talent that adds a bit of unpredictability to the rotation is Lava Surge, this talent gives your Flame Shock ticks a chance to reset the cooldown of Lava Burst.

So that's what I like about Shaman, but I've always been a Protection Warrior, and I'm not really impressed with the gimmicky talents in Protection, it looks more like a DPS tree than a tanking tree. The talents look fun for tanking heroics and such, but there aren't many talents in there that improve your survivability. Oh well.

So when the expansion comes it looks like I know what I'm doing for the next few months, hah! I just have to discipline myself to keep up with my good eating habits and exercise. I'd hate to turn back into a fat, lazy slob.

I saw a cool quest preview from Cataclysm today, it's a Plants VS Zombies clone called Peacebloom VS Ghouls, heh. Credit goes to TotalBiscuit of http://www.cynicalbrit.com/ for this:

36 comments:

  1. I came across this today too. Looks awesome, actually. I think they said that there's repeatable or dailyquests available once you beat it. Should be a fun little timekiller within a timekiller.

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  2. Whoa, game looks totally awesome

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  3. I quit during WotLK, but may come back for Cata... looks interesting!

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  4. I might also come back for cata, my account is still running... and i'm still paying for it :/

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  5. Looks awesome. I'm gonna check it out.

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  6. I'd like to check it out but I never managed to level to 80 before quitting. Enjoy the info though, WTB F2P option for WoW PST!

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  7. does anyone know the title of the song in the beginning?

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  8. The plants VS zombie style mini game looks incredibly fun! look forward to playing it my self

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  9. Does somebody know the name of the song in the beginning?

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  10. I've never played that game, but looks awesome, I'll buy it, good article! I like your blog.

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  11. Plants vs zombies was fun so this should be too.

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  12. sweet, shame i dont play wow though :(

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  13. If the addon cames out, I will play it again

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  14. well, i think I´ll also play Restoshaman and Rogue when Cata comes, maybe gonna reroll shaman although I have already one at 80, but I really want test leveling now that they changed so much.

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  15. While I no longer play wow. I spent many years as an avid PvPer and occasionally raided. My favorite class, by far, was a disc priest.

    Amazing heals with crazy offensive power to boot.

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  16. might get into wow now. nice review.

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  17. Looks pretty awesome. Can't wait...

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  18. WoW has sucked way too much of my life away from me. I'll never play it or any of it's expansion packs again. Good luck to you with that man.

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  19. Cata looks awesome. I can't wait to come back to WoW after over a year.

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  20. Blizzard seems to have put a lot of effort into this expansion, even though I'm just a casual wow-player, I'm looking forward to it :)

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  21. nice post man. I am personally not a fan of WoW but you made it interesting!

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  22. Man, I've lost count of how many times I've quit WoW. Yet I keep coming back even tho it will never be as good as during vanilla. Tho I don't think I'll start playing again, but that's what I said last time too.

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  23. Kewl post bro
    Check out my new posts at CrazyStupidShit

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  24. New joy wait on you! Here our play has ending. Following!

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  25. Nothing but curious pleasures, as from thence Following!

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  26. See where she comes, apparelld like the spring. Following!

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