I just decided to create a Twitter account. As I play, I’m just going to post smartassy comments and wry observations as they pop into my head.
I had to choose “wowBaluki” instead of just “Baluki” because that name is already taken. Maybe I’ll be able to obtain it eventually, but it’s not that important.
You can either continue visiting this blog to see my Twitter comments, or follow me there on Twitter itself. Or, you can follow me on Facebook, because all my comments are going there too.
Yup, I’m back. Again. Reactivated my account a few days ago to do the Elemental Invasion stuff, and now the whole world has changed in many interesting ways.
Orgrimmar looks spectacular, but it’s extremely disorienting. There’s so much new stuff in there, and everything old has changed dramatically. I knew the old city like the back of my hand, and this is like coming back to your home neighborhood after 20 years. I’m absorbing it, in bits and pieces, but it’s going to take time. I’m so glad they got rid of all the buildings that were half-embedded in the cliff faces, although there are still some left in The Drag (looks like they might be “rebuilding” those too eventually though). I guess I know who’s been buying all that Dark Iron I’ve been putting on the AH over the years: the Hellscream Development Corporation.
My old druid, Spamfire, is dead. He was only lvl. 21, a Tauren of exceptional bravery. He died in the attack on Camp Taurajo…more or less literally. I had no idea where I left him when I stopped playing him (a couple years ago) and it turns out I left him in the Inn in Taurajo. I logged in, and he got killed by those Alliance bastards squatting in the ruins. I was basically just there to cannibalize his gear anyway.
In reality, I deleted him to create a new troll druid, Yabengo, because troll druid animal forms are WAY better than any other race’s. Especially their flight form.
I don’t know if I’ll keep updating this blog. Probably, because I’m so vain. We’ll see. I’m sure I’ll be updating a lot once Cataclysm is released.
Vaneras just announced a huge list of changes being made to the shaman class on the official forums, and holy crap. There are a lot of really interesting and really cool changes and additions being made. As always, here is my analysis and commentary on the changes.
Primal Strike (available at level 3): Primal Strike is a new weapon-based attack that every shaman will learn very early in the game. Our goal with this ability is to make leveling as Enhancement rather than as Elemental more viable, since many key Enhancement talents become available at fairly high levels.
It’s the intention of Primal Strike to let shaman play as an Enhancement at low levels. Currently when leveling in this spec, you end up just using Lightning Bolt a lot so you feel like an Elemental shaman instead. At a higher level, Primal Strike gets replaced by Storm Strike. They share a cooldown so Enhancement just won’t ever use Primal Strike after that, in the same way that Prot warriors don’t use Sunder Armor once they have Devastate or Feral druids don’t use Claw once they get Mangle.
I hadn’t really noticed, but if you’re leveling as Enhancement, there’s not much for you to do besides shock and auto-attack until lvl 40, when you get Stormstrike. It would be nice to know what Primal Strike actually does (probably just a slightly different version of Stormstrike), but we’ll find out eventually.
Read More
This was fun. I got to die twice as quickly from being stomped by Thrym.
Anybody who’s ever been to the Forge of Souls has probably seen Bronjahm, the Godfather of Souls. And anybody with a brain in their head will probably be able to figure out that Bronjahm is really a tribute to James Brown, the Godfather of Soul.
But what’s really cool is just how much work Blizzard put into this boss character. In addition to looking like James Brown and making a lot of James Brown-style noises (“Wabadoooo”) look at his loot tables:
Then, of course, there’s the music that plays when you fight him. If you’re like me and have the music turned off, you probably missed this. Just type it into the game and listen.
/run PlaySoundFile(“sound\\music\\zonemusic\\icecrownraid\\ir_BronzeJam.mp3″)
I love Blizzard.
Ah, back in the saddle again. This type of post is why I enjoy blogging about WoW: it lets me speculate rampantly.
As many of you probably already know, in the next expansion, the existing races will have one or two new class options (except Draenei, who already have plenty). Many of the new options make sense from a lore perspective, but some of them are a little…odd. So I thought I’d try my hand at explaining some of the choices, to try to peer into the minds of Blizzard’s loremasters and try to understand why they are allowing these options now. Read More
Two days ago, I was at the meeting. Everyone was gathered in a circle in the center of the room. When it was my turn to speak, I proudly proclaimed, “My name is Baluki, and I’m a WoWaholic. (“Hi Baluki”) It has been 5 months since I last played.” Applause. But now it’s all undone. Yesterday, I reactivated my account.
That’s a lie, of course. My name isn’t really Baluki, and I don’t think I was ever addicted to WoW. I can quit any time I want to, dammit! I stopped playing because I was bored with doing dailies and because I didn’t have time to do dungeons anymore. Read More
If you haven’t been paying attention to the patch notes for the PTR, you may not know that there’s a lot of goodness coming for us shamans. It’s nice to see Blizzard treating us so nice after years of mediocrity; the last patch had a huge amount of improvements for us, especially for the Elemental tree (yaaay!) and this patch will be giving us extra love, and generally nerfing our enemies. I can’t see anything wrong with that, but that’s over 4 years of playing a shaman speaking.
So. Here we go. Read More
My sole purpose in posting today is to brag.
I got my Kalu’ak reputation up to Exalted today, and finally got the most awesome fishing pole in the game, the Mastercraft Kalu’ak Fishing Pole. Sure, there’s one pole that’ll give you a higher Fishing bonus, but it doesn’t look nearly as cool (nor is it as easy to get). While I was there, I also picked up the baby penguin pet, and a new mace.
But all of that isn’t nearly as cool as what else I got today: a Green Proto-Drake mount. You get it from the Mysterious Egg sold by the Oracles at Revered. The egg takes a week to hatch, and WoWhead says it only has a 4% chance of dropping this mount. I got it on my first try. And man, it looks REALLY cool! The texture is beautiful, and the animation is amazing. It may be the best-looking mount in the game, with the X-51 Nether-Rocket X-TREME (which I would kill for) being the one possible exception.
Just gotta get me a Traveler’s Tundra Mammoth and a Mechano-Hog and I officially win WoW.
Sorry I haven’t been posting much lately. I’ve been playing WLK constantly since it came out, and it’s been a friggin’ blast. I just hit 77 about 5 minutes ago.
Before the news, I’ve just gotta say…you might’ve read a few Blue Posts on the forums that claimed that elemental shaman DPS wasn’t poor before lvl. 75 (when you get Lava Burst). That’s definitely not true. Pre-Lava Burst, I was firing off several Lightning Bolts, a couple Chain Lightnings, a Thunderstorm when available, and a Fire Nova Totem or two just to kill a single creature. After I got Lava Burst, I’m down to 2 or 3 LBs, a Flame Shock, and a Lava Burst. Holy crap, Lava Burst hits hard. It’s certainly possible to level 70-74 even with poor DPS, but I’m doing much better now that I have Lava. Mmmm.
Anyway, on to the news: WE’RE GETTING BUFFED!
UPDATE (12/15/08): WE’RE GETTING BUFFED EVEN MORE!
I respecced. To Enhancement.
I know, I’ve made my reputation on being the foremost expert on the Elemental tree in the game (HA HA HA), but I felt the need to try something different.
And it is pretty fun, even though I run out of mana every 3 kills. And I have rather sad gear. And I’m using two daggers. And I have no Strength. And I’m still using Elemental glyphs. And the way I’m specced will probably cause a lot of experienced Enhancement players to cringe.
The good news is that I’m doing pretty well with it. I kill stuff quickly, and the downtime isn’t too bad.
Spirit Wolves are fun, although I wish they also restored mana when you use them. In fact, they’re so fun that I wish they were a baseline ability for the entire shaman class. Read More
I, like everyone else who bought WLK, recently made a Death Knight (named Pareidolius, from the word “pareidolia”). And I, like everyone else, was dismayed to find that trade skills start at ZERO. So now, I’ve gotta run all across old-world Azeroth picking low-level flowers so I can make low-level crap that I’ll vendor (fortunately, low-level Glyphs are desirable for everyone, so it’s not a complete waste) so I can pick higher-level flowers so I can make higher-level crap…well, you know how it goes.
The biggest mistake Blizzard made in this expansion (besides allowing gnomes to be DKs) was setting tradeskills at base level for new Death Knights. They’re basically saying “here, go waste your time on something we could’ve easily fixed”. How? Easy. Since Death Knights enter the “real world” at lvl. 58 (and immediately head to Outland), they should automatically start their new trade skills with 290 skill points. They should walk through the Dark Portal, get to a profession trainer, have Master-level crafting available to them to train, and be given 290 points right then and there. Read More
Glyphs, which are created by characters who have the new Inscription profession (if you didn’t already know), add a pretty interesting new element to the game. They’re basically alternative talents that, in many cases, do interesting or unusual things to your spells, and they can actually change the way you play, unlike most of the benefits you receive from the other professions. Here’s a list of the new Shaman Glyphs, and whether or not they’re worth getting.
Glyph of Chain Heal (Req. lvl. 40) – Your Chain Heal heals 1 additional target.
I like the idea of our Chain spells hitting additional targets, but this glyph may be a bit too weak, at least compared to other glyphs. This seems to increase your total healing done by CH by about 7%, which isn’t terrible, but it all depends on your style, and how often you use CH. It’d be nice if this glyph also reduced the per-jump power decrease by 5% or something. Read More
I just wanted to write up an update on the state of the shaman class in the WOTLK beta right now. First, I’ve gotta say that I’m NOT in the beta. Don’t want to be. So keep that in mind. Also keep in mind that because this is a beta, things are going to change.
There have been a lot of very interesting changes in the Enhancement tree that make it very appealing to an Elemental shaman, to the point that we probably don’t need to go into Resto anymore.
Ancestral Knowledge is finally useful, since it’ll increase our Intellect by 10%, instead of our mana by 5%. The old AK sucked a whole lot, and this change helps us not only with mana, but with spell crit too. And, of course, that extra Int is going to make Unrelenting Storm more powerful. Read More
I just wanted to point out that this past month I hit 70 on both my Mage and my Hunter. I rule.
I’ve also been working on my Rogue quite a bit. I’ve gotten him from 35 to 45 in about 2 weeks.
I’ve also been playing my Priest, but that’s a huge pain in the ass. I don’t know how other people do it. I’ve got her up to 32, and it’s taking forever. I originally had her specced Shadow, but I actually have her specced for Holy DPS now, shockingly enough. Shadow just didn’t seem to gel for me. The Holy DPS spec I have right now is fairly effective, but the mana efficiency is atrocious.
I’m still working on my Paladin too, who’s at 64 right now. She’ll probably be the next to 70. I had respecced back to Prot for its AOE abilities, but I was having much more fun with Ret, so I switched back.
My Warlock has been sitting in Shattrath at 51 for months now, disenchanting and making potions. I’ll probably pick her up again once I get my Pally to 70, and the first thing I’ll do is respec back to Affliction. I wanted to try the Felguard, and I don’t really care for it. Which is weird, because my Hunter is a BM.
My Warrior and my Druid are still sitting at 18 and 20. I have no interest in playing either. I don’t like the Warrior class in general (at least not at 18) and I already have a rogue, warrior, mage, and priest, so I don’t feel any desire to play my druid over the others.
I’m really looking forward to adding a Death Knight to my repertoire.
I just wanted to mention that I’ve got a new blog that I’ve been working on for about a month now. It’s quite a departure for me, because it actually covers some serious topics, like politics, science, religion, and so on. I must warn you though: you probably won’t approve of some of the topics I cover. But go ahead and check it out if you’re curious; you’ll survive. If nothing else, you’ll get to see what I look like in real life. And I’d love to get some feedback.
In case anyone is wondering, I still intend to keep writing THIS blog. There just isn’t a whole lot for me to talk about right now. I’ve been working on a feature post that I’m tentatively calling “WoW’s biggest mistakes”, which I hope will turn out pretty good.
I just wanted to show off this animation test I did for one of my Multimedia courses. I took the Baluki illustration I did a few months ago and created a walking loop in After Effects, then tossed down a bunch of trees and bushes and rendered it all out.
I don’t know what I’m going to do with this though. I’ve thought about doing a series of animated clips, or perhaps a webcomic. But I don’t know yet. In all likelihood, nothing will come of it. But I think it looks pretty cool.
