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Realm First! Level 90 Derevka on his race to the level cap
WoW Insider previously featured Derevka's tips on how he was preparing for his Realm First! Level 90 race, with gaming endurance tips, and having got that coveted achievement, he's returned to answer a few questions about how he did it. Why did you want to get Realm First Level 90? Why? Mainly because I had never done it before and lots of people in my guild were getting really excited about Mists and all the hype... It was hard not to get all wrapped up in the excitement! Besides, it was something I had always wanted to do and just wanted to see if I could do it. And I'll show a little bit of hubris here: its always nice to see your name go across the screen in realm spam. What did you do to prepare in advance? Well, I had leveled to 90 on the beta. That said, I did that leveling very early on in beta so I knew there was going to be a number of changes (as well as bug fixes) that i didn't experience. I was familiar with all my class changes, so I knew I was going to be comfortable with both healing and DPSing in Shadowform. Perhaps the two best things we did to prepare was to formulate a strict strategy with our 5 man team and to plan our dungeon time. Our 5 man leveling team had a rogue, Torima, who had quested a lot on beta and has a phenomenal memory so he somewhat became our de facto guide through the maps and quest chains -- he actually remembered some quests that were dead ends or particularly painful in getting RNG quest drops: if the quest was skippable, and ate up too much time we didn't do it -- such as the Yak quest out in Dread Wastes.
Maximising your gaming endurance for that precious realm first
Derevka, of Tales of a Priest fame, is looking to add a string to his bow by joining the race for Realm First level 90. He's already one of the top Discipline priests out there, and will be engaging in the leveling battle along with his guild, Something Wicked. Mists' launch is at 3.00am in Derevka's local time, and anyone who has tried to engage in a Realm First, or even World First race before will know full well that it's a long hard slog. This time around is no different, with a massive 97.5 million XP to get through from 85 to 90. We will be speaking to Derevka after his race attempt to get the low-down on all his innovative tactics and tips, so be sure to check back for that. But today's post concerns you, the player. Staying up for as long as it takes to get from 85 to 90 is not something anyone does every week, and it can be a real endurance test for body and mind. As gamers ourselves, who understand what it's like, we would never tell you not to do it, so we're going to talk instead about ways you can do it better. How can you increase your endurance and mental acuity for the race to 90?
Spiritual Guidance: Shadowfiends retire, more priest talent news from Mists beta
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. Do you want to know the greatest and most amazing new thing priests are getting in Mists of Pandaria? It's a squid. Well, it could be an octopus, but I think it's a squid. It's called a Mindbender, and it's our new level 45 talent. The Mindbender is a flying, shadowy squid that serves as an improved version of (read: replacement for) our old pal, Shadowfiend. Our new squid friend does double the damage of Shadowfiend and thus returns twice as much mana. I can only assume the reason he can do this is because he latches onto the heads of our enemies and sucks out their brains, sort of like a Mind Flayer, the squid-faced monsters from Dungeons and Dragons with telekinetic powers. Mindbender, Mind Flayer ... That's right, Blizzard, I'm on to you. Anyway, I imagine Squiddy will become the prime choice for healing priests in MoP because 1.) mana is mana, and 2.) the other level 45 talents are a bit lackluster. That will unfortunately mean leaving Shadowfiend at home, which is awfully sad, but I've painted up a scenario in my head where Shadowfiend tells me, "Look, Dawn, we've been raiding together for a few years now, and it's about time that I caught up on all the prime time television I've missed. There's Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and I've still only seen one episode of Game of Thrones. I need a break." "OK, Shadowfiend," I say to it, "you can stay home this expansion." "Thanks, dollface," it responds with Don Draper-esque charm and winks an eye at me I never knew it had.
Spiritual Guidance: Further changes on Patch 4.2 PTR to consider
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for discipline and holy priests, while her archenemy Fox Van Allen tries to go back to the future -- or the past, or something. Dawn also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast. It's been another exciting week for healing priests who have their sight focused on patch 4.2 and the next raiding tier. First, Blizzard announced that it was going to go ahead with its plan to change how critical heals worked. Previously, Ghostcrawler (lead systems designer) explained that the developers were looking to increase the value of crit for healers, since most classes were ignoring it in favor of other stats. Now that they've gone ahead with their plans, we'll need to examine the impact this will have on discipline and holy priests. But before we do that, we have to look at the most exciting news for priests this past week: Our set bonuses got changed! If you missed it, last Thursday Zarhym hopped on the forums and announced that the developers had made some changes to the set bonuses of several classes. Priests were, of course, on that list.
Spiritual Guidance: BlizzCon players tell about their first priests
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers healing for disc and holy priests. This week, Dawn and her shadow priest rival, Fox Van Allen, faced off at the WoW Insider reader meetup in a battle of quips, and it would seem that Dawn came away victorious. Originally this weekend, I had planned on writing a direct address to Blizzard concerning holy priest healing and mana in beta raids. The topic has been a large area of concern for priests on the forums lately, and I thought I should give the discussion a little boost by addressing it in my column. However, I am currently at BlizzCon 2010, and I happened to get the opportunity to talk to Ghostcrawler (lead systems design) in person for a few minutes. During that time, I relayed the general message of our problem (HPS is jank, mana needs work) and figured I'd give the Blizzard developers a week to attend to it before assailing them with complaints. Until then, I ask that my fellow priests not panic for a little while longer. In the words of Toby, who is pictured above, "Keep the faith!" By the way, I'm starting a donation fund for BlizzCon 2011 to buy Ghostcrawler a fedora. Ghostcrawler would look awesome in a fedora. Anyway, to tide you guys over until then, I figured this week I would attempt to entertain you all. At first, I thought I might try to be humorous, and then I remembered I'm not funny. (A priest walks into a bar and ... yeah, I got nothing.) So instead, I've decided to go with priest story time. Hit the jump to see what I mean.
The Daily Quest: Dave Arneson rolls a 20
D&D co-creator Dave Arneson passed away earlier this week. While you might not have played D&D, know that he and the late Gary Gygax were the pioneers of this genre of games. I would not be surprised to hear from Blizzard on this in the upcoming days. On a personal note, I ran into him around the age of 10 while in a St. Paul, Minnesota comic book store (Schinders, for those of you wondering). I was looking at Magic cards mainly, but he was browsing around and came over and talked with me when he saw I had turned my attention to one of the D&D 2e books. The clerk later told me as I was checking out who he was. Mystic Chicanery gives a good step-by-step guide on how to make voice overs for WoW movies. Teeth And Claws has a nice discussion looking at a feral raiding spec for patch 3.1. Derevka of Tales of a Priest has a very good rundown of the Acutioneer add-on. We've covered it a few times as well. Our own Matticus has thoughts... about Val'Anyr and "stuff." Click here to submit a link to TDQ
