Sparking a Change or Two

General, Rahel, Teca

It’s been a couple of days since I last posted and quite a few things have attributed to that. I’ve been working on a project for a friend, trying to work with two friends to do another project that may be related to this site, have been attempting to gird myself for NaNoWriMo with a close friend breathing heavily down on me so that I’ll mindlessly pursue my goal and he can read the results, and working on a variety of alts. For one, Rahel Isera’duna — my cantankerous priestess and former Discipline doll — has fully embraced the dark side of the priestly trees and emerged as a Shadow priestess.

The decision was the only viable one left to me, since I’d forsaken Holy for Discipline with the perky priestess and couldn’t condone having a Holy priest again since the class didn’t appeal to my playstyle.  Having two Discipline priests seemed sillier than my earlier decision to have not one but two healing priests, even though their specs and intended functions originally set them apart.  This was a big step for me, since I hadn’t played a Shadow-specced priest beyond thirty since those naive pre-The Burning Crusade days.  It’s surprisingly been a lot more fun that I recall and the new changes that have occurred since¹ make the return to Shadow much more intriguing.

Like many people, I finally settled on a 5/0/56 raiding build that seems to be very popular at the moment.  It’s worked very well for me thus far, though I am trying to decide on how much benefit there is to be gained from Improved Shadowform.  In a way, it seems more like an improved version of Fade rather than an actual viable talent to acquire, and those remaining two points might be better spent on talents like Improved Power Word: Fortitude or picking up two points in Improved Inner Fire for when Rahel reaches 71 and the spell increases Spell Power in addition to Armor.  I go back and forth on the issue, since I don’t know if I could train myself to use Fade enough to make the talent worthwhile, but can see the benefit of it in raid scenarios where splash damage tends to run rampant.

I’ve been letting the matter mull in my head while I work on yet another alt, my draenei warrior and former Vindicator Teca e’Veritas.  She had managed to reach the vaulted status of 50 prior to Patch 3.0.2, though I had managed to work up the gumption to play her a handful of times in recent months.  However, the changes that made soloing as a Protection warrior more viable intrigued me and I took the opportunity to gleefully return to the Protection tree from my prior Fury build.  She’s currently 0/0/43 and I’m floored by how much fun I’ve been having playing a Protection warrior.  When I had first begin leveling Teca, I had attempted to do so using some horrible Fury-Protection hybrid that I’m almost ashamed to admit that I test, but as fun as it was to gather up a bunch of enemies, I found it frustrating to spend a singnificant amount of time trying to wear them down.  Post-Echoes of Doom, however, it’s been beyond enjoyable to multi-tank targets for quests; I gleefully round up a group and tear into the with surprising ease.

I think that I’ll enjoy leveling my warrior prior to the expansion.

Regarding Politics

Today we held our elections within the United States, including the presidential elections.  The results are out and there’s a lot to be said regarding the changes, but I’ll borrow a bit from the “Autobiography of Mark Twain” in saying:

In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.

That said, I’m certain that for many of you your servers’ global channels were full of posts regarding today’s elections — just as they were on the Feathermoon US roleplaying server today and in previous weeks.  While some of the discussion was actually quite interesting and engaging, most of it was just mindless babble from unwashed masses that really served little purpose other than incite others.²  I, for one, am glad that the elections are over because it might mean that Trade and General can return to some semblence of normalcy.

There were, however a number of noteworthy quotes that I managed to capture this evening just before the results were announced!

Related Posts

1. Embracin de Shadow
2. Spirit on Arena Gear — Absurd!
3. Arena Shape-Up — Redux!