The Fight Basics

• 2 healers (or if you are a holy paladin with balls, go solo)
• 2 tanks
• enough dps to be “soakers”
• No prio for ranged or melee
• 2 people need to stay out for Hour of Twilight, so you must setup a rotation (you need 6 total including the tanks because after one is taken you get a debuff that locks you from the next 2)
• 2 people, in addition to a tank, need to hit their clicky ability for Fading Light
• In general, massive dps check, more healing needed
• The fight lasts to a 6 minute enrage, but you’ll really need to down him by 5:30 seconds. We cycled raid cd’s as of the 5 min mark
• Have your dps hit bloodlust at the pull, just AFTER your healers hit their clicky. they won’t get sated yay! Then you can use bloodlust again at 5 min into the fight just for the healers at the time THEY need it.
• On our kill, we had me (holy paladin) + a resto shaman. I took the red buff, he took green, then I took blue when it was safe to when it spawned. I think this healer combo is amazing. We also tried for several nights me and a holy priest, but didn’t get the kill.

How To Holy Paladin

Glyphs:

• First, take out that glyph of Light of Dawn for this you want to use LoD to hit as many as possible every time it’s at 3 stacks. You’ll be spamming Holy Radiance

Bacon:

• Bacon your tank, and focus heal your second tank (if needed). Otherwise you’ll be spamming HR on the tanks.

Cooldowns to use:

• Save your big cooldowns, Avenging Wrath, Guardian of Ancient Kings, Divine Favor, etc. for just after the second healer bloodlust mark at 5 min end. This means you can use them at the start, and they (not kings) will be up for the end.
• You won’t need Diving Plea at the end after you get the blue buff, so get a Volcanic Potion (I even pre-potted for our kill) and use it with your big cds at the end.

Aura Mastery and Aura

• Aura Mastery DOESN’T DO SHIT HERE.
• Divine Protection (glyphed) is quite nice (not on HoT)

Mana Regen Cooldowns

• Use your mana cooldowns, Divine Plea, pretty much any time before blue crystal spawns. You wont need much mana at that point so use it early.

Video Time!

Here’s our guild first (and horde side server first) video of this kill.  Note to self, don’t ever again in my entire life click DP when I have the blue buff – I have no idea what I was thinking – just freaking out I think at this point. It was our first pull of the night

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Happy healing out there healbots!

But let’s look back a bit. While we were busy wiping over and over on Zon’ozz heroic for the past 3 weeks, my main tank (and husband paladin) and raid leader sat out in order to take our Death Knight tank. Thank you again Blizzard for making this fight a hundred times harder with anything OTHER than a DK. This is when my stress escalated.

This left me, and only me as the raid leader.

Let me give you a little glimpse into our raid team and how we handle our raids. My husband and I are the raid leaders, he handles the progression leading, confirmations, group assembly, he has this way of knowing what decisions to make (and even switching people in and out) and keeping a very level head through wipes galore. He’s like, the PERFECT raid leader when it comes to the business side of it.  Under normal circumstances, I’m handing  the loot, dkp system, healing setup and strategies, cooldown rotations, uploading logs real-time and evaluating logs between pulls on my iPad, recording video, etc.

I’m irish by blood and boy can you tell. I can get really really angry, and impatient. This is where I make a terrible raid leader, but in combination with my sweetie – it’s a perfect combination. We’re side-by-side and I vent my frustrations to him, he comes up with perfectly awesome solutions and leads the team with them. I keep all of that discussion off of mumble.

Enter where the problem came – Zon’ozz heroic. Just me as mr. paladin tank was on standby 2 out of 3 of our raidnights per week. I could have cried, panic! Of course I wasn’t alone though. Thankfully I asked some teammates to lend a hand with leading, and they did each night. It helped, but I still felt immense strain and stress.

I spent hours  AFTER our wipefests to peruse the logs, did research, and posted information on strategy changes for the next night in our forums. That’s what I’m good at. But during the fights, I just don’t have a handle of everything going on except for the healing team.

Irregardless of my stress, the guild had to go on. We continued our slow progression. I guest appeared on the Blessing of Frost podcast, slowed down my blog postings. Recruitment for one of our member teams had to start up. It all became way too much for me.  Lately, I have had the burning feeling that I need to find some more zen in my life again. Yes, zen. It seems that running a (now) top raid guild on the server, with three ten-man raid teams with only 3 officers. The fact that my only other raid leader is my husband. What if we go on vacation? We needed some backup.

Enter Today – Putting on the Brakes

We have a phenomenal group of people in our heroic raid team – and damn it if we didn’t get our heroic zon’ozz kill last week. In the blink of an eye, we went from wiping halfway through, to wiping at 3% over and over. At some point, it just clicked (as it usually does in progression). And we got the kill at the last pull of the night on reset day (typical). But it was an eye opener for me with the stress – much of it I probably brought on myself.

Here’s our first kill video for Zon’ozz hc, a guide will be up soon!

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This weekend, we made some changes in the guild. We’ve added 3 new officers (co-gm’s)  to the leadership team to help out with the load  and guild morale.  I’m really pleased with this solution, it is a huge help and relieves some of the pressure I have been feeling. This will be a big help in sharing the responsibilities around.

We also opened up a spot for a full-time raid leader on the heroic raid team. This person would be a full-time raid leader, pretty much taking my spot in what I suck at. I’ll then focus on being the healing lead, logs, and dkp – the things that I don’t suck at

This also means… *drumroll*… at some point me and my tank can take a holiday! We don’t have one planned, but we should take a trip home to the US within the next few months.  

I feel better already! Now, if we get this Ultraxion hc kill tonight, I’ll be a ton better!

Transmog?! OMG TRANSMOG!

I’ve been pretty meh when it came to the transmog feature, I mean it’s cool and all, but never something I wanted to try to spend any time on. I didn’t care much either way. Until today. I made this, and my girl is the hottest thing in town now

Before I go, here’s a touch of  the typical musings in guild chat… see why I love these guys?

Happy healing out there healbots!

This guide will focus on what you need to know to down Morchok heroic on 10 man.

The Fight Basics

• 2 or 4 healers (depends on your dps, it’s easy with 4 so we go with that)
• 2 tanks
• 2 “soakers” are needed (best soakers are plate wearers, or a rogue)
• Prio ranged dps
• At 90% hp, Morchok instantly duplicates and becomes 2 zomg bosses (second boss is Morchok spelled backward, Kohcrom)
• split your raid into 2 mini raids to tackle each boss individually on each side of the main path
• If you are not the soaker, you are on crystal duty, make sure everyone is healed up for the damage – priests, Binding Heal is your friend here and your soaker will love to be bubbled for stomp.
• …thats about it, mechanics on each boss are the same as normal

How to: Holy Paladin Soaker

Holy paladins actually make great soakers, so I always do this for my group. Here’s what I do.

Glyphs:

• First, take out that glyph of Divine Protection for this you want to use Divine Protection for the damage mitigation (not magic) on every other stomp.  Without it will hit for more than 100k.

Bacon:

• Bacon your tank, and focus heal yourself with HS > DL after each stomp and use WoG + DL on your tank if needed. It helps that he’s bacon‘d though since half of what you heal of yourself will transfer to him.

Cooldowns to use:

• If you know you are not going to be full HP to take a stomp, don’t hesitate to use Bubble. Also, Hand of Protection works on yourself as well (stomp is physical damage). So that’s 2 cooldowns at your disposal to negate 2 stomps. If you have a paladin tank with you, also ask him to save HoP for when you need it.

Aura Mastery and Aura

• For a third cooldown, use Aura Mastery with Devotion Aura (actually keep this up, there’s nothing to resist anyway) when it’s up – on a stomp.

Mana Regen Cooldowns

• Use your mana cooldowns, Divine Plea and Potion of Concentration, when running out of the black goo. Plenty of time for regen then.

Video Time!

Here’s a recent video of our guild doing this kill a few weeks ago, with me soaking! Too funny that our tank pulled morchok nearly to the next zone AND we pull an add group at the end lol.

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 Happy healing out there healbots!

I had a blast last night recording episode 48 of Blessing of Frost. Through thick and thin, power outtages, and EST / CET time differences, we persevered! There were no hickups I swear *whistles*

It was 10pm and I was camped out in my bedroom. Specificially so I could hide from my parrots and dog’s annoyances. I had 2 laptops, 1 iPad, and 1 iPhone in front of me, siked to guest appear on the Blessing of Frost podcast to talk about the Dragon Soul nerfs!

I kind of sort of messed up my time difference, so was an hour early. You’d think I ‘d remember it’s 6 hours and not 5, right? Since I am originally from that time zone? Urgh! Well through this and Majik’s power outage - including a  change to Skype – we finished off the evening of recording. And now….

It’s live!

The episode just went LIVE at http://www.blessingoffrost.com/episode-48-nerfs-and-power-outages and don’t forget you can subscribe via iTunes also!

Huge thanks to my 2 fabulous hosts, plugs below:

Kurn

Kurn on her site http://kurn.apotheosis-now.com or follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/#!/kurnmogh

She’s a badass holy paladin blogger and fellow healbotess, if you don’t already follow her blog, uhmm what rock are you living under? Go check  it out and support her!

Majik

Majik on his site http://www.majiksmissives.com or follow him on Twitter https://twitter.com/#!/Majjity Now comes free with extra power outages :) and if you are REALLY lucky, maybe a decurse!

Thank you both for the great fun last night!

During the scheduled server maintenance on the week of January 31, the Dragon Soul raid will become enveloped by the “Power of the Aspects” spell, reducing the health and damage dealt of all enemies in the raid by 5%. This spell will grow progressively stronger over time to reduce the difficulty and make the encounters more accessible. The spell will affect both normal and Heroic difficulties, but it will not affect the Looking for Raid difficulty. The spell can also be disabled by talking to Lord Afrasastrasz at the beginning of Dragon Soul, if a raid wishes to attempt the encounters without the aid of the Dragon Aspects.

So, the nerfs are already starting a mere 2 months since the raid landed – and this makes me a very sad panda

Here’s why.

Let me tell you how hard recruitment was in December. It was PAINFUL. We were just a few short on our 10 man (woman) HC team to have a large enough roster to build the optimal groups for specific encounters. It was a nightmare of spamming all recruitment and marketing and it drained me and took a lot of the fun out of raid/guild leading for me.

I’ve seen a few months now of  our server’s number dwindling down. I’ve even seen a few of my server friends move to the highest pop server in our battlegroup.  Actually seen a lot of people just leaving lately. I have heard from others that our server isn’t the only one.

Is wow dying?

Is wow dying?

Enter today. Our team is full, with a 14 person roster of high quality raiders that are all integrated into our tight knit guild family. Since the first of the year, we’ve also been progressing really well in Dragon Soul! We’re working on our third hc boss this week – and this news of the tiered nerfs incoming really has me overwhelmed with an intial feeling of failure and sadness for the game.

I don’t want it to get easier.

I feel a sense of disapointment and I’m sorry for my raid team. Sorry I didn’t push us harder, faster, and get us more HC kills.

I don’t want it to get easier yet. 

So, as a raid team we have to look at our options.

Option A)

Turn off the buff. Fall behind on progression because everyone and their mother is using the buff. Fall behind on server leaderboard. Now 5% nerf isn’t exacty making the bosses faceroll but still.  But after a bit, it will be 10%. Then 15%. Then 20%. So we continiously would fall behind. Does it matter that we clear it without the nerf? Not so much, leaderboards don’t show the difference unless you look at clear dates.

We saw this all before in ICC. Did anyone turn off the buff? No. So this isn’t REALLY an option.

It’s like.. if you beat a 10 year old at boxing, that doesn’t make you Mike Tyson

Option B)

Succumb to the buff, get totally demotivated (/sigh), and let it hang over your head that you cleared from 3+ on HC after the nerf and had to do it with the buff or fall farther behind.

So, in the end I’m not really liking these options.  Yes, tell me that I’m bitching and whining because I am – but these are my facts These sort of things have slowly been taking the fun out of the game for a lot of people I know. It’s like the LFR debacle, it was launched too early in my view.

I really hope that we aren’t sitting in Dragon Soul for the next 6 months farming it with it getting easier and easier, just waiting on Pandaland to launch. It makes me wonder where WoW will be in 1 year.

What do you think?  Will you be embracing the nerfs? Turning off the buff? Taking a break?

This is the next in my short rundown (and videos) of our boss kills in Dragon Soul. As of now, we’ve been knee-deep in progression and gone 2/8 heroic modes. In this quick and dirty guide, I’ll be focusing on the new airship battle, called Warmaster Blackhorn  If you are looking for other bosses, check here. 

Warmaster Blackhorn Basics

This encounter was one of the first fights we found in DS that was actually a tad bit harder. Here’s the quick and dirty guide:

First, let’s start off with what we NORMALLY always tell you. This.

What we always say.....

BUT on this boss, you NEED TO STAND IN THE POO…

This time, get in the BIG poo

This time, get in the SMALL poo too

Phase 1

• You’re on an air ship! If it dies, you die too (this is important to know)
• 2 tanks + 2-3 healers
• 2 big adds – each tank will pick up one
• purple drakes that ranged dps will kill
• 1 top prio add called a Twilight Sapper (sneaky little rogue dude) that drops down on the boat. Imperative that he dies before reaching the end of his walking path! He can be stunned and deathgripped to buy you more time. This is prio #1 if he’s up because if he hits, he’ll do 20% damage to the ship.
• 1 big huge drake that only throws big purple swirly things on the ship.
• STAND IN BIG PURPLE THINGS – technically called Twilight Onslaught . Yes, EVERYONE has to stack in that swirly to share the damage so it doesn’t hit the ship. See picture above!
• Setup a raid cooldown rotation for each big swirly. We typically use Aura Mastery on first, Divine Guardian on second, Hymn on third, Bubble on fourth, etc.
• Also stand in the small purple swirly things – technically called Twilight Barrage. In addition to the big swirly that the big drake throws on the ship, the smaller drakes will also pelt the ship. 1-2 people should stand in these to take the damage also – but don’t jump in there if you are at 50% hp or you’ll kill yourself!
• Big adds will mark the ground for Blade Rush . It’s indication that he’ll charge that target in like 5 seconds and two things have to happen now. 1: you must move out of his charge  and 2: everyone should get the fuck out of his charge path
• Rinse
• Repeat

Phase 2

Holy Paladin / Healing Tips

• You don’t have to move straight away after the big swirly aoe hit, you can stay long enough after to fire off a HS > HR > LoD then move to help heal up the group
• Bacon one tank, heal the other
• Glyph Divine Protection and be sure you use it on every single swirly.
• You can also use DP to take a small swirly solo
• You can also help out your dpsers but doing the first stun with HoJ on the little Sapper when he lands.
• in Phase 2 there will be tank swaps, so be sure you know who’s tanking when
• Don’t hesitate to bubble if you are going to get stuck in a shockwave
• in phase 1 it’s safe to use Divine Plea in between the big swirlies
• in phase 2 don’t use Divine Plea during a shockwave
• Use Aura Mastery in the cooldown rotation for big swirlies

Once you get down the fight in terms of eliminating damage to the ship, handling sapper quickly, and getting into P2 its an easy kill after.

Kill Video

Just a quickie update on me, the guild, and things in general. 

First, an update on me.

Wow has real life and hardcore raiding really kicked me in the ass. Not only has my free time suffered, but also this blog and my swtor blog. I haven’t been updating as much as I used to and I’m sorry to everyone for that.

But have no fear, I’m still here! Feeling a bit overloaded and stressed, but here nonetheless.

At this point, most of my free time is spent cooking (I started a cooking blog!), researching heroic encounters for our progression (fuck you Zon’ozz and your enrage timer SHIFT!!ONE), dealing with the normal guild daily drama (not really drama hehe we have sweet peeps in our guild family), and if I can ever get to it, playing my Sith Sorcerer in SWToR!

Oh yeah, I set my new years resolutions of:

1. new cooking blog with regular recipes posted weekly 
2. moar posts here and on torhealbot.com 
3. moar livestreaming hc raids
4. dedicate time to my photography (and the new tripod santa brought me that’s still in the box)
5. read moar (especially self development and management books)
6. amuse!!!!!!!!!!!!  I want to make tons and tons and tons of these. 

Updates with the Guild and Progression.

We’re now 2/8 heroic 10 man Dragon Soul. Our team is full! After all my bitching and crying and moaning about recruitment being an impossible feat now, we have an overly full team. Actually too full with melee. But we have a very good skilled group of peeps and we’re getting along really good and I am confident that our progression shows it.

Last week, we killed Yor’sahj on heroic for our first time. Wow, what a difference moving to 2 healing that fight made!

We’re working on Zon’ozz heroic now and hitting the enrage timer last night, so it seems we got the tactic down now need to find the pewpew. Maybe we should try 2 healing? Scary!

Cold Fusion is the second horde guild on the server, and we’re pushing for progression. Hoping for a new kill this next week and I’m considering extending to get it.

SWToR Whee!

I’ve been finding lots and lots of enjoyment in SWToR when I’m not raiding in WoW (and TorHealbot.com). I  love my Sith Sorcerer, she’s like a disc priest with a battle rez. I even have lifegrip /flex.

And looky what I got yesterday! Ding Ding Ding! Now, to find a raiding guild to try some of those badboys out

This week though, I promise I’ll get my backlog of Dragon Soul normal and hc boss guides out. For reals!

This is the next in my short rundown (and videos) of our boss kills in Dragon Soul. As of now, we’ve been knee-deep in progression and gone 2/8 heroic modes.   If you are looking for other bosses, check here. 

In this quick and dirty guide, I’ll be focusing on Ultraxion.

Ultraxion Basics

This encounter was not very complicated at all, it was all a very few important mechanics for healers and entire raid. Oh and dps.

• Familiarize yourself with this new button:
• 
• bring 3 healers of any flavor
• 2 tanks with 5 dps of any flavor
• 2 realms (normal and twilight when you use your heroic will button)
• everyone stacks on the tank, no one moves
• boss is a dragon (!!!) who also doesn’t move
• tanks job: taunt off of each other when tank gets Fading Light  debuff + click “super new purple button” technically known as Heroic Will on the screen to survive the expiring debuff
• everyone’s job: use their ‘super new purple button” technically known as Heroic Will when boss casts Hour of Twilight or you will d.i.e. instantly. If you are the lucky dps to get Fading Light with the tank, click your  ’super new purple button” technically known as Heroic Will before it expires.
• healer’s jobs: heal all the things like mad and identify which healer picks up which special healing crystal, and click your Heroic Will when boss casts Hour of Twilight
• healer buff crystals will spawn 3 times during the fight. First is Gift of Life Red (we give this to priests or tree if we had one), Second is Essence of Dreams Green (we give this to our shammy) and last is Source of Magic Blue which our holy paladin takes (me!)
• rinse and repeat every set of adds til boss is down
• 5 minutes into the fight, Nozdormu buffs the raid with Timeloop.
• Spam all the things and rotate healing cooldowns.
• Profit.

Holy Paladin / Healing Tips

• Don’t see your new special ability button?  Make this macro and bind it to a key /click ExtraActionButton1
• Take the third, Blue, crystal buff
• Prio haste trinket if you have one, I have zero mana issues on this fight
• Spam Holy Radiance some more
• That is all.
• ..sounds hard, eh? not so much
• oh here’s an actual tip: turn off recount/skada/floating combat text ==== this fight kills my fps because of ALL THE NUMBERSSSSSSS

All in all this wasn’t a hard fight. We one-shot it on our first raid night.

Kill Video

Take the Poll!

It’s been over a month now that this new feature has been live. It’s had a chance to sink in with the community. What YOU think of the raid finder addition now?  Please feel free to add your comments at the bottom, too!

Guild Quotes

I asked the same question on my guild forum, and received varied feedback. My general observation.

• Hardcore raiders either tolerate it (that’s what heroic is for) or hate it.
• Casual raiders enjoy it as an addition to their regular raiding.
• The same complaints exist though as the dungeon finder, douchebags are abundant.
• Super casual players (non-raiders) worship this new tool so they can get massively good gear and see the content.

Not soo surprising, here’s some quotes:

I dont mind if everyone can see the content, thats what Herioc modes are for. + always nice to have easier methods than grinding on end for my alts to gear up. - jiera, our hc team kitty

The problem with LFR is that there are always some rather unpolite people in it. That takes the fun out of it for me. But still some great upgrades to get there (aswell as Tier setbonus) so feel forced to go. – Misparation, mage

Personally I love it! It means that I can jump in a raid with main or alts anytime of the day or week but mainly I like it and have been using it as a ‘training’ ground for tactics and seeing the fights prior to the ‘proper’ raids within the guild. – Spuddy

I really don’t like it at all, I did it a few times the first week and there is always drama, complaining, bitching, rushing which is basically the definition of Pugging and I’m not enjoying it at all. Even when we went with a big guild group and were basically one shotting everything there was still so much complaining and crying going on from the pugs that joined that I just decided to not do them anymore at all.

I understand the reason that Blizzard wants this raid content to be more open to everyone, but it has now reached the point where people are getting Deathwing kills and have absolutely no idea what’s going on. They just stand in bad shit in do their DPS/healing rotations and finish the content within a week. I can guarentee that most people on an LFR deathwing fight don’t even know what the colors/aspects do, they don’t care about the mechanics the only thing they care about is getting purples.

I believe raiding should only be accessible for people that are willing to spend the time and energy to learn the tactics and together with 9 (or 24) others work on getting a new boss kill that would actually feel like an accomplishment. To be honest the current “normal” modes are already way to easy compared to vanilla / TBC.

It is no surprise that the majority of the players are the casuals and that’s why Blizzard caters to that huge playerbase rather then provide good and solid content for end game.

- Xarlanther, my tank and <3

I would say run LFR with alts to fill in the gear holes you have and to see the encounters , but in no way expect that that LFR earned ilvl gives you the capabilities to do them on normal mode because then they are sadly mistake. -Coward

Pros:
Allows those without raid groups or a raiding guild to be abel to see content and get some nice gear.
We’re able to get a gist of the content before actually doing the higher level raid on it all
Nice to be able to nip into a raid whenever you feel like it for a possible upgrade that will help with the higher level raids

Cons:
Nothing with the actual LFR tool itself I dont think, just the whining. arrogant, idiot pugs we have to endure – that will always be there unfortunately and tbh isnt something that makes me want to spend the time on a daily basis looking for a group to raid with.
Maybe if there could be a 10-man version we might stand a chance of some lesser dickheads joining.

-Binky

My view is that there is not a real problem with the LFR itself, but with the community. There was a distinct change somewhere mid Wotlk that has worsened since then; the point where the “hurry gogogogo” generation began.  -resident Tree, Jauren

I think its great as means I can raid with my alts and gear them up while still raiding the harder versions on my main for slightly better gear. -Peterpedro

Personally I hate it. I hate it for a variety of reasons. I hate it that I did 50% more dps at Warmaster Blackhorn than the closest person. I hate it that NO-ONE got in the “Swirlies” and the ship got hit time and time again and yet we still survived. That to me was completely insane. To me thats laughing at all raiders, casual or non casual. Its kitting out those who blunty havent got a frigging clue as to what is going on and yet rewarding them. It’s taught them 2 things about the Dragon Soul raid: Fuck all.  -Etta, our HC team rogue… (amen etta!)

Oh and from a not-raiding point of view, welfare gear is fucking awesome! I’ve worked hard for my older expansion gear sets, so I really don’t mind that it for once come easy to me. Hell I actually enjoy being able to compete with the self-proclaimed ‘big guys’ on the healing meters, although I’ve not cleared a single 10 man dungeon in cataclysm. 

Making it easy for others doesn’t make the challenges you set for yourself any easier to accomplish. Even the best geared dps will still get killed on various 10 man hard modes, regardless of how awesome a healer team you have.

-Kilyx

In short whether people get gear thru LFR; Normal or HC it doesn’t matter because at the end of the day normal raiding is always best as its about overcoming obstacles with a team and progressing, pushing the envelope for yourself and your team, and in the end what someone else does or how they get their gear has no impact on what I am personally doing in game.   -Mischevious

My Thoughts

Can you guess what my opinion is of the tool? I have a serious love/hate relationship with this thing. I love it on my alts, hell I’m running it nearly 5 full clears a week on my characters. I hate the gear that it drops (from a raider perspective). I hate what it “teaches” people.  I hate how many guild applications I get with people who think now they are ready for hardcore raiding with a 8/8 lfr clear (and not a single REAL raid boss downed). 

I don’t like that ANYONE and their mother can do sub-par dps/hps/etc and kill deathwing (that’s an END boss) and will get achievements before many real raiders who work very hard to do the same will. On my priest, I can Holy Fire and Smite Spam (and bubble tanks) my way to an entire faceroll time and STILL be #1 on healing in that thing. Fun? Not so much.

Hell I got my warlock in a 4 piece bonus set coming from mostly blues in 1 day.. it feels like cheating when my main in 391 hc firelands gear hadn’t yet had a single boss kill on normal at that point. Meh. Sure it’s nice for alts, but I don’t agree with the loot. Faceroll raid should get less “good” gear in my opinion and potentially not the exact same set bonuses that normal has.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion though, so, what do you think and why?

I started with Guild Wars, though switched to WoW when I bought a mac book pro.  Once I went WoW I never really went back.

Sure, I alpha and beta tested Warhammer but got bored soon as it came out to live. Then I toyed around with Rift, even bought the collectors edition. It was so non-impactful to me that I don’t even remember why I stopped playing only a few weeks from launch. That’s bad.

Enter today. I have been utterly hooked to ToR since I installed my pre-order last week. I know I know that this is a WoW blog and that’s why I am going to compare the two games.

Some Basic Facts

• I leveled a healer, Sith Sorcerer (she feels like a disc priest and paladin combined)
• She’s currently level 41
• Spec’d purely into corruption aka healing
• I’m leveling together with my tank

What Star Wars The Old Republic Does Well

AOE Looting – I loved this feature in Rift and it’s back again here. Love Love Love Love. Seems like such an easy no brainer feature that WoW  could use.. right?

Character Progression - This is sort of what I’d expect from a MMO and to me, Wow never actually delivered. In ToR, as I choose to go deeper into the dark side, my character’s physical look changes. She started as a blue eye, creamy skin, beauty. Now at level III dark, she’s looking more evil. Every level she’ll change more! This is so awesome.  And before you ask, yes you can turn this progression off in your settings but why would you?

Group Questing - So once I reached level 10, I could group with my tank (yay!) so we joined up on this space ship hub the Imperial Fleet, and set off to another planet together. Group questing in ToR is far superior to wow. Picture this, we’re grouped but at separate parts of the zone. One of us finds a new quest. The other is half way accross the city. You pick up the quest and I get a message to join the quest via Halocall. Yes. I get halogram’ed to the quest give where you are so we can take the quest together. I love it! Yes, you can still share quests but being able to halocall to the quest giver lets you take part in answering the quest questions with your group. Awesome! Shared objectives and drop items for quests drop for EVERYONE. You also get bonus xp for grouping together. It’s a win win if you do this anyway like we do.

Light Motherfucking Sabers  - really, need I say more about this one?

Spaceship - I GET MY OWN SPACE SHIP, SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Seethe – No more drinks or food to regen mana and health. Seethe (this is an Sith Sorcerer specific ability) makes chain pulling through instances a breeze. It has no cooldown and is reusable. So, basically as long as you are out of combat you can use this to regen. A few ticks and you’re ready to rock on!

Quest Line Choices Affect the Game - I am intriqued by this, the single-player-game aspect means that if you get a “good vs bad” choice in ToR it actually affects the follow up quests. You can even MURDER your quest giver and change your path. Very single-player-like but completely still a MMO, my partymate is right there in my phased quest zone with me AND he gets a bonus, too. Very cool!

Engine is BEAUTIFUL - games like this really show the age of Wow. I am running ToR on the same machine with everything maxed out, it’s likely the most beautiful game I’ve seen. I have no lag, I have a ton more in WoW (sure partially this is due to addons I am sure). My character’s clothing even looks beautiful, it shimmers. In WoW I only see polygons and boxxxxxxxy trees (got I hate that);-)

Familiarity with Differences - Rift felt like a skinned WoW for some reason and once it went live, I pretty much stopped playing. ToR feels like a familiar friend. Something vaguely familiar about most everything about it, but with different terminology and tweaks to make it feel like a different game all together. For the first time, I actually am enjoying it.

Professions aka Crew Skills - Since you get multiple companions (aka pets) in SWTOR, another super fun feature are your “crew professions”. This means you can send up to 3 of your bitches out to do your cafting or farming. AND they pull your mats from your cargo hold (aka bank) so you don’t have to carry your shit around with you. Awesome feature! Oh yeah, you get 3 professions too

Companions aka Pets but much MUCH cooler - At level 10, you get your first companion – very helpful for your class. For example, as a Sith Sorcerer I got a huge tank companion pictured here, Khem Val.

He made my entire life easier, he’s a tank, he wants to kill and eat people.. and I heart him. Everyone gets companions and as you level you add more companions to your arsenal. So far, I’ve also gotten:

This guy, Andronikos Revel, is a ranged dps companion.

But Ashara Zavros is my true favorite. She’s a Jedi Padawon that I converted to the dark side. She wields dual lightsabers and does melee dps. She’s so awesome!

While you can only use one at a time, the others can be out doing your laundry. No really, they can do crew missions and crafting (pro tip, they pull mats from your bank so you don’t have to carry all your crafting mats oh mah effin gee). Epic win.

Terminology SWToR vs. WoW

General Game Information

• Groups are 4 players (counting companions).
• Raid groups are 8 players (counting companions).
• Items: Cheap, Standard, Premium, Prototype, Custom, and Artifact.
• Loot Indicators (on dead mobs):Light Blue (Trash), Yellow (Quest item), Green, Blue, Purple (Loot)
• Stats:Strength (Warrior, Knight) Willpower (Consular, Inquisitor) Aim (Trooper, Bounty Hunter) Cunning (Agent, Smuggler)
• OMG MY UI IS BUGGED: Control + U two times is the same as reloadui

Things I despise in ToR!

Here comes the “omfg this sucks qq” about ToR But surprisingly, it’s a short list.

Walking Everywhere SUCKS - yes I know it’s like back in the day when we had to walk in WoW, but I still hate it.  On the flip side, unlike wow, my we get a “perma-sprint” like ability in ToR that allows us run 35% faster permenantly when out of combat. We get that at approximately level 14.  Then at 25, you can get a mount (riding).

Story and Cinematic Movies - I have a big love / hate relationship with the story in this game. On one side, I love the feeling… sometimes…  but most of the time I want to skip it and get on with playing/leveling. The fact that my story choices dictate my future questline, I do love!

Bugs Bugs and More Bugs - I’d be lying if I said I was surprised that there are bugs in the game, it’s just released! So while I despise this, I also expect it and don’t find it too annoying yet. Things I do find annoying: stuck in-combat bug, character stuck bug, and crashing game. Things I find funny: dead mobs standing up but dead Speaking of bugs.. yay bugs:

No Macros - I am so used to having macros that I find it absurd and clunky to now play a game that doesn’t have them. No macros for me means no mouseovers (omfg) for healing. Urgh. And not nearly enough customization of the raid frames for me to actually see debuffs I need to dispel.

PewPewPewPewPew - So while I love the lightsabers and sound of lightsabers, I HATE the sound of the blasters. PewPewPewPew rings in my head ALL the time. Can’t I change that to a puppy sound or something?

Conclusion

I’m not far enough along in this game yet, level 38 with cap of 50, to tell you about end-game and I’m just in a simple IRL friend guild with 5 members. But for now, I’m having more actual fun in this game than I’ve had in any game yet since early days of WoW. So, I’ll continue on my adventure with both games

But, I won’t bore you with SWToR talk all the time, so a new sister site has been born. 

Introducing, ToRHealbot.com Head over there if you want to read more!