I was doing a bit of WoW Insider reading this morning while I ate breakfast and I happened to see this article about probable changes to Warlords of Draenor racial abilities. Mixed in with all the news about nerfs and buffs was a tidbit about what is happening for Night Elves racials:

Night elves see a bonus to Quickness that adds a 2% passive buff to movement speed and a completely new racial, Touch of Elune, which adds 1% haste at night and 1% crit during the day. Shadowmeld is unchanged.

I was trying to come up with something pithy about a buff that changes based on time of day and how that would be a pain to try to get haste breakpoints correct, but the first comment I read said it so very concisely:

I think raid leaders should be able to make whoever came up with Touch of Elune take a drink whenever someone asks them if they can move the raid forward or backward an hour to get the better buff. Let the true min/maxing begin!

Let me just take a moment and be thankful that I am part of the Horde, and all raids I lead are Horde raids.

Thoughts On Tanking and Role Models

 

For most of this expansion I've been tanking with a pally co-tank. It has been pretty nice. My pally co-tank is excellent and fun to tank beside. We've been tanking together long enough that we only need a minimum of vent communication to deal with most issues that arise.

However, the other night the pally was out and our dps warrior was convinced to strap on a sword and board. It was odd, but not in a bad way. It was odd because this warrior used to be the main tank of Darkfall back in Burning Crusade.  

When I first started tanking, there were several tanks that I really looked up to. I watched these tanks to try to learn how they were so awesome.  At that time in BC and early Wrath they were warriors and a few bears. At that time Ironspike was a big burly Tauren Warrior.  He's since changed race and gender (and character name) and is a little Blood Elf girl. It's odd that not only is Morn more burly, but since he does dps most of the time now Morn's tanking gear is better, too.  

It was odd and gratifying to be tanking next to Iron. I'd looked up to him a lot in BC and now I was tanking next to him.  It was really weird though, because we hadn't tanked together before.  We both knew the boss fights and did perfectly fine with the mechanics. However, the flow wasn't there. He is currently used to tanking with his monk, and we don't know each other's rhythm.  

Yes, there is a rhythm to tanking. Making sure your CDs are used at the right times for the boss abilities is basic. Rhythm is more about choosing when to use minor defensive abilities vs threat abilities. If you've not tanked with your co-tank before you don't know how much relative threat they put out. Or just when they will taunt, so you have to save an extra CD or threat ability in case they taunt early or late or in case they drop lots of threat at the start of the fight. It's nothing serious, but it is a learning curve.  

More recently our warlock's pally has been filling in for our missing OT. It's interesting to tank with a different pally. It's also fun to watch someone relearn the fights with a different class and spec. I was amused when he did Norushen for the first time on normal; he had an unpleasant surprise with how much stronger normal Norushen purity test realm is than flex. Fortunately I had a battle rez ready for just that situation. 

I've also been tanking next to Hellbovine, and have been having fun with that too. Warrior charge is so annoyingly OP for getting initial aggro on trash packs. It's sometimes hard to not feel useless when he has all the Vengeance. Still it's a lot of fun to tank with him, though.

Once Upon a Time: Mornara

 

Follow on to Shadow's Edge
 

~~~***~~~

The sun was just peeking above the horizon as Mornara made her way to the Trade District of Dalaran. Most of the streets were still in shadow, but various merchants were opening their doors or pulling back shutters.  She got a dark look from someone sweeping off his doorstep, but other than that most people are still too sleepy to pay much attention to her.  

"You stumble about in darkness. There is no light here. No mercy! Icecrown has claimed the souls of better heroes that you."

Mornara trips over the edge of a cobblestone that was hidden by a building's shadow.  She almost falls, but manages to catch herself on a nearby wall.

Mornara pivots so her back is pressed against the cool stone wall. She isn't sure where the voice in her head came from, which worries her. Oh, she knows whose voice it is. The Lich King has a very memorable voice. She just doesn't know why it was in her head right then. 

It wouldn't have been a surprise if she were still in Icecrown Citadel. She would actually expect it there. Ever since the forging of Shadow's Edge she's been hearing his whispers while in the citadel. And if she were still asleep it could quite easily be a nightmare. But hearing voices while you're awake? That's either crazy or about to get enslaved by the Lich King.

Again. 

After a while her breathing levels out and she continues on to the Jewelry shop. They always have extra work, even for Death Knights. Mornara picks up a work order for the day. Some of the parts she needs are not in stock so she heads out of Dalaran to get them. At Krasus' Landing Mornara mounts her drake. The drake surges in to the air with several strong wing beats and Mornara directs him towards the mountains to the north. 

One of the components she needs is a Vrykul Amulet.  However the Vrykul aren't exactly friendly with either the Horde or the Alliance, so their amulets aren't easy to come by.  The closest place to find Vrykul will be in Ymrheim, where the strongest of the Lich King's Vrykul warriors train and live. 
 

~*~

 
Mornara uses the ever present snow to wipe the blood off of Shadow's Edge and then slings the axe onto her back.  Weapon properly cared for, she pulls on one of the runes to heal herself slightly.  Only then does she inspect the bodies in front of her.  The third one has an amulet, which she roughly pulls off his neck and stuffs into her pack.  She still checks the fourth corpse, and grabs several silver from the caster's pockets. 
 

"Never have I had cause to regret sparing your life, mortal. Always, you continue to amuse me."

For a moment the face of the last Vrykul she had killed shimmers. It solidifies as a familiar troll shape. Mornara gasps and starts to reach for her axe. Before she finishes the motion the Vrykul's face is back to it's original shape. Mornara watches the Vrykul corpse closely for another minute.

She shakes her head and then lets out an ear-splitting whistle. Her drake dives down through the clouds and then backwings to a gentle landing. Gentle for a drake, but the breeze blows flurries of snow in her face and tosses her pigtails around. Mornara shields her eyes and then mounts up to head back to Dalaran. 
 

~~~***~~~

At the head of the group Mornara hacked and slashed. Shadow's edge cut a swathe through abominations, geists, and plague doctors. Behind and beside her the rest of the group fought with their own weapons and spells. 

Poison gas and toxic slime had been defeated.  The horrific giant abominations Rotface and Festergut lay dead in their respective chambers. The Professor was still to be fought, and who knew what foul concoctions he had brewed in his laboratory.

The group gathered and then charged up the ramp to the lab.  As the last tauren thundered into the hallway the doors behind them snapped shut.  Mornara and the other tank, another orc, rammed into the doors ahead of them. However, those doors stayed firmly shut. 

"You can't come in here all dirty like that! You need that nasty flesh scrubbed off first!"  The voice came from above and ahead of them, from in the laboratory.

The hallway started to fill with giant beetles. 

 

~*~

The bloated and plague-ridden body of Professor Putricide lay dead in front of the group. 

Underneath the gore and slime that coated Shadow's Edge Mornara could feel a change in the axe she held.  It pulsed with an feel similar to the unholy runes already etched on it. As Mornara watched, the unholy plague slime that coated it was pulled into the blade and only the gore was left on the blade.

~*~

Darion Mograine had inspected the axe after it was infused with the unholy slime of Putricide's death.  He told her that the axe would next need to be fed on blood.  His glowing blue eyes met and held Mornara's own as he informed her that it would require her own blood and her companions' blood.

The way to correctly feed the blade involved being bitten by Blood Queen Lanathel, and then biting the rest of the group. Mornara wasn't too keen on this idea. Lanathel's bites tended to turn you into a ravening vampire.

~*~

The final infusion required for the axe was frost.  Even better than the Lich King was the frost wyrm Sindragosa.  Her frozen breath on the axe and then her death would infuse the final magic into the blade. 

~*~

The axe was infused with unholy, blood, and frost.  The runes etched upon it glowed with the magics contained within.  They pulsed and flared at random. The axe was strong, but needed a way to store the power that the infusions had created.  Thus Darion Mograine sent Mornara back into Ice Crown Citadel to gather crystals from the various leaders that Arthas had favored. 

Love is in the Air

Love is in the air and I want to barf. I have said it before, but I really hate the Fistful of Love achieve and this WoW Holiday in general.

I logged in this evening and before the world had fully rendered around Mornara she had rose petals falling on her. It wasn't even five seconds before Morn was coated in rose petals. Rose petals! Argh!

What if I don't want to avoid cities for the next two weeks? And even if I try to avoid cities I can't avoid my raid; members of whom were already snickering at me for being covered in pink petals...

That Sinking Feeling

 

When I picked up the quest from Wrathion to bring him the Thunder King's heart I had a bit of a bad feeling about it.  That feeling did not decrease in the slightest when he ate the heart and then had some sort of vision. 

Best case with that vision is that he is seeing a Titan influenced danger directed at Azeroth.

Far more likely in my opinion is that the players have once again unleashed Bad Shit (tm) upon the world. 

Remember back in Vanilla, there was that nice troll at the harbor in Tanaris?  We helped him, and he gave us loot and then Hakkar was alive again. So sorry, Troll Priests in Zul'Gurub, you got corrupted by Hakkar and then got executed.

Oh oh, and remember that nice human at Light's Hope Chapel? He promised to get rid of that pesky phylactery from Naxx. Yeah, Father Inigo Montoy, who helped Kel'thuzad come back to life, and then eventually ended up turning into a lich himself.

And don't forget that time that we helped that crazy gnome Millhouse Manastorm get out of prison and then he helped the Twilight's Hammer destroy stuff in Deepholm.

My favorite of course is when players helped Drakuru kill all the trolls in Drak'theron Keep so that he could become a Death Knight.  He then repaid the players by trying to coerce us into slavery for the Lich King (again for Morn) as well as slaughtering a large portion of the Drakkari Trolls, and leading to them killing off their own Loas. Oops.

But the thing that really tickles my memory is when we helped Loken trap Thorim. It was good that we got Thorim back on friendly terms with the Sons of Hodir. But all our actions doing that that just resulted in Thorim getting tentacle raped by Yogg-Saron. We ended up having to fight both Thorim and Loken. Thorim at least we could beat back into his right state of mind. Sadly we killed Loken which brought Algalon to Azeroth and almost led to the destruction of the entire planet. 

Loken/Thunder King is the parallel I'm really seeing here.  We killed someone and brought his body part back to prove death for a quest giver. But that someone, while now bad, wasn't necessarily bad to start with. Both Loken and the Mogu were servants of the Titans. They both seemed to get corrupted, but that point I suspect will be lost upon the Titans who will descend upon Azeroth with re-origination in their overly orderly hearts...

Darkmoon Eye!

This past week the Darkmoon Faire was in town. Well, their portal was in town. The island I assume doesn't actually move, but is closed to the public for 3/4 of the time. Anyway, I parked my little monk, Sucan, at the faire for the week and faithfully logged him in to battle Jeremy Feasel every day.

I had almost given up for another month yesterday, but the fight is a tidy chunk of XP for Sucan so I logged him in to send the pets forth to battle Saturday morning. The last day of the faire, and I get the eye in the Darkmoon Pet Supplies. I am not embarrassed to admit that I did a small dance when I saw the eye in the bag.

Why, yes, I did name my Darkmoon Eye Sauron. Really, what else could I have possibly named it?

DraNgNon saw and heard my Dance of Joy, and remembered to log in her own parked Faire alt. Thranba, the little troll hunter soundly trounced Mr Jeremy Feasel, so much so that he gave out a second Eye.