Redwolf's Journal (continued)

I am weary. I have endured the alien world of Draenor, broken and not. I have walked the frozen land of Northrend to the peak of IceCrown Citadel itself. I have battled Deathwing, aspects of Old Ones, and even Sargeras himself. And it is now that I am tired. Sargeras' defeat and the shattering of the Legion was a great victory. I thought, perhaps, we could hang up our weapons for a time and relish an Azeroth free of imminent doom. Even with the damage done by his blade, the world could have, should have, been given a chance to rest. Instead, the wheel turns, the cycle continues, and the Horde lashes out. So, instead, I find myself taking up Oathseeker once more, even lacking the power it once had, and setting out to shield the Alliance.  This is not the first time, of course. When returning from the defeat of the Lich King, many territorial lines had shifted and Gilneas fell. With Garrosh's leadership, the Horde turned Theramore into a crater - much like the destructi...

So, the Warlords of Draenor alpha has begun. That still doesn't make me think it'll be released before October, and it still doesn't decide whether I'm going to take up regular play again. It also heralds the release of early patch 6.0 notes . There's a lot of info there, and it's early enough we can expect a lot of details to change. Shifting gears on professions leaves me with probably the biggest feeling of "Um... what?" I know all the details have to be worked out, and tweaks will be done, and all that, but it's one little thing that bugs me. Paladin Avenging Wrath is now only available to Retribution Paladins. The phrase that comes to mind is "clipped wings." I approve of simplifying the huge number of abilities in the game, but I don't want to lose such an iconic effect/ability just because I'm in Protection spec. *sniffle*

Warcraft related ponderings that may have limited appeal to an already limited reader base. ;) So, as I thought , patch 4.1 has largely been a bust for me. All reasons have previously been mentioned, though it boils down to a very small amount of content that appeals/applies to right where I'm sitting. My Cataclysm-born druid is level 30, I think? About that. Leveling with someone definitely slows the process down, as we only sync up for a couple hours a week - if that. 4.2 (recently estimated for a June 21nd release by non-official sources) promises to be a little different. The new quests in Hyjal should give me something to chew on for a while in order to unlock some items/recipes, even if it will probably get to feel grindy working on it with four characters. A new tier of equipment may give me enough incentive to get back into heroic dungeon runs a little more for the valor points, but I doubt I'll be reaching the point cap most weeks. The Firelands raid should giv...

Recent thoughts have made me wonder if I went the wrong way when dual-speccing Sashayla as Retribution. Ret is a DPS build, and reasonably fun to be - killing things so much faster than I'm used to as Protection - but DPS classes are (no offense guys) common. In the guild, we primarily want for healers. And I find that healing as Reya, while that was sort of the intent, is not as satisfying for me because anything gained from a particular run is not going to my main character. Also, we seem to forget that while dual-specs exist, and make it easy to swap, there's really little reason we can't use the older re-spec feature to open up more than two specs for a character. So it seems time to take a look at the paladins' healer build. In some ways, it's the complete opposite of what I'm used to. Build My "own" class, but a talent tree I'm almost totally unfamiliar with... Something along the lines of this . It's possible to favor Divinity...

I'm not going to delve into this fully at the moment, but I was asked to look into feral druid DPS rotations. This post seems to be fairly updated, and contains a priority list for the build that may work: http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=54761.0 So... Patch 3.2 for WoW is a big deal as far as equipment goes. Prior, my main was about as well-geared as I could expect until getting into 10-man raids. While the guild has been growing, it's not that size yet. Then the patch hit and suddenly there are upgrades available for almost every gear slot available via the new 5-main dungeon (mostly on heroic), Emblems of Conquest (now dropping from all heroic dungeons), and Emblems of Triumph (I won't see the drops anytime soon, but can earn 0 or 2 per day by doing the heroic dungeon daily quest). It's been one week now. My schedule has limited how much I've been able to do. I currently have 28 Emblems of Conquest, 6 Emblems of Triumph, and precisely zero tank ...