Priest, Mage, and Shaman Level 90

So I have been making really good progress since my return.  I hit 90 on 3 of my toons this week.  It was mostly questing except for my priest who spent most of her time healing dungeons.  It amazed me how tough the regular mode was compared to how the heroics are right now.  I guess starting at the end of expansion I should have expected most of the WoW population to have over geared the content by now.

I had 3 World of Warcraft accounts when I took my break, but for some reason one of the accounts only has a starter account now.  My guild bank was also empty.  Its sad because I know my account was hacked and when I emailed Blizzard they said the characters were under someone else's account and they can't talk to me about it because its not my name on the account. Pretty sure whoever hacked my account merged my WoW with their account.  I remember when you could just call and explain what happened and now it seems like no matter what I write they just don't understand. Needless to say I've become quite frustrated with the whole experience.  Luckily I only had a level 70 rogue and a 63 Paladin on the account.  I did lose about a 100k in gold and a lot of items, but I'm not going kill myself over it.

Plan on seeing some changes around the site as I work on a new template and make this blog a little more professional looking. Thanks for stopping by!

Back for Cataclysm!

Like many people I took a well needed break in between expansions to clear my head and catch up on real life.  I bought Cataclysm the day after it came out and finally logged into the game on Monday.  To say a lot has changed would be a big understatement.  I love the changes that I've come across so far!!!

I love Questing! 
I have always hated questing.  It always felt like work and when they put in random dungeons I just ran instances to level up my low level alts.  That has since changed.  Everything seems streamlined now.  I run an instance and the quests pop up to let me accept it when I hit certain areas in the dungeon.  No more searching all over the place to find them.

The quest hubs seem to have just the right amount of quests and when you finish one in a string of quests you can automatically go onto the next one without going all the way back to the quest giver.  This saves a ton of time going back and forth constantly.  Even though it seems every cloth reward piece has spirit on it I still think they did a good job of giving us a good selection of choices.  I even got a companion pet from a quest without searching all over the place.  I chose the Blue Mini Jouster!

I love Flying
One of the main reasons I did not complete a lot of the achievements in the old lands was because I couldn't fly!  I hated traveling via horseback from place to place.  Being a mage I had it easier then most classes, but come on I shouldn't have to suffer to get the achievements I was most interested in!  I even hated the fact that I would port into a town and have to ride to get to the bank or auction house.  How very nice it is we get to fly in towns now!

I love the Talent Tree
Gone are the days of not being able to choose the fun talents.  The fact we had to basically choose certain talents to be competitive just wasn't cool.  Now I can choose improved blink and not get picked on by my fellow guildies.  How cool is it that we get Time Warp too!!!  Basically a Bloodlust/Heroism clone! 

I love the Instances
Running dungeons and raids has always been my favorite part of WoW so it wasn't hard for me to love it.  I have only run Blackrock Caverns so far, but 6 bosses, some cool mechanics and some good loot.  How could it go wrong?!

I'm only level 82, have only quested in Mount Hyjal, ran one instance twice, and haven't tried the new PvP battles yet, but so far this is shaping up as the best expansion yet by Blizzard.  My love for the game has been reborn all over again!

3v3 Arena 1515!!

Last night our 3v3 team got together and played 33 matches.  We started at 1406 and ended up at a 1515 rating which is awesome.  Our matchmaking value continues to rise and is now well into the 1600's.  We started to get into our groove towards the end of the night, but it was approaching midnight and some of us had to work early today.

My team consists of a Discipline Priest - Healaryduff, Boomkin - Kona, and an Arcane Mage - Monelle so were not the average team.  I like our synergy though with our excellent burst damage, CC abilities, and awesome healing.  We usually are able to get the first target down quickly, but when we don't it's a very tough road from that point on. 

We seem to be having some problems with double healer teams which have been consisting of a Discipline Priest, a Holy Pally, and an Arms Warrior.  We tried a few different things last night and it seemed the best option was to cyclone the Priest, Fear/Silence the Pally, and burn the Warrior down as fast as possible.  Surprisingly it did work a few times last night which is great because I have a feeling we are going be facing more double healers teams the farther up the ladder we go.

We had a few matches last night that were within a split second of us losing and then all of a sudden our burst took one of them down, our healer kept us alive, and we were able to pull out the win.  I think the hardest part for us is that we aren't exactly pros in arena so a lot of our matches are trial and error when deciding on the kill target.  Sometimes we make the wrong choice and when we aren't able to burst down that first target it becomes a very tough fight for our combination.

I can't wait to get the Three's Company: 1550 Achievement which will only be my third arena achievement.  The only two I have now are the Mercilessly Dedicated and World Wide Winner achievements so I'm excited to add another one!  I'll also get Vengefully Dedicated with 35 more wins! 

Presence of Mind Trick

I feel I'm quite experienced with my mage being that I am very rarely beaten on DPS even in high end raiding guilds. I thought I knew every trick there was to consistently achieve great results. I joined a new raiding guild just recently with only 1 full-time raiding mage that I've met so far. Pauliewalnut gave me a little tip the other day and yes its not game breaking, but it works well for raiding and PvP to squeak out that little bit more. If you cast Presence of Mind (which makes your next cast an instant spell) and then click off the buff before the pull then you will start with the extra 30% critical chance buff from Arcane Potency without wasting POM. It’s a great tip and I find it very useful in Arena matches.

Introduction

Hello Everyone!
My name is Nick, an avid WoW player - this is my blog dedicated to Monelle, my Gnome Mage.  She is a hardcore raider, arena combatant, and Achievement chaser.  She is currently 9/12 Heroic Modes in ICC 25, 11/12 HM ICC 10 so she has good experience raiding the hard modes. She even rides around on her Bloodbathed Frostbrood Vanquisher!  She is starting to get really into Arena.  Our 3v3 team just recently hit 1400 rating and will soon be working towards theThree's Company: 1550 - Achievement at 1550.

I hope to have you following us around in our adventures.  Thank you for visiting!

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