Honeymoon? Oy, shouldn't I at least get some time to think?!

I was browsing through the blogs that I follow, and Larissa wrote a post about how she felt that the blogging community is experiencing a wave of people burning down the Cataclysm expansion. I read the entire article, and I think I caught it right after posting since there were no comments yet.

I did start writing a comment and then realized it had become so long that it would fit better in a post of my own. So here goes.

My thoughts on Cata so far.

I have levelled a nightelf mage to 62. So yes, I have gone through the new levelling process, of course not entirely since there are several zones that I didn't do, but I think it gave a good idea about the current style.

I thought it was a lot of fun, the flow felt nice, but it was definitely a solo experience. No groups needed, no dungeons needed. And even if you do dungeons...well who needs a tank. Or a healer for that matter, just blast your way through them, or at least most of them.

I have levelled two characters to 85, and am working on my hunter who has just dinged 83. On my main, priest, I did all the 80-85 quests that I could find even.

Again, a lot of fun, great story lines, but very much a solo experience. Some quests do eventually lead to dungeons, but there is no absolute need to do them and you can level easily without them. I did not at all get the boardwalk feeling as much as some have described, I mainly enjoyed how I was actually fully pulled into the story for a change.

My negative is that I would indeed like to see some group quests, and would actually love the difficulty tuned up a tiny bit for some special quests. Mind you, in general I thought it felt well tuned.

On my main I have run every Cata dungeon on heroic mode, and have probably run all of them at least five times. I like them. I keep wishing for scaling difficulty, because my gear is already making them much easier. B

My negative here is that I absolutely hated having to spend 2-3 hours in a dungeon. No, I don't spend that time there anymore now, but it's quite taxing to do so, and I did not experience that as a lot of fun especially.

And oh...I am still affraid of pugs, but if you go in a guild group things are a lot of fun.

We have also started raiding again. We have killed 4 bosses and I am LOVING it! I do find the healing quite frustrating at times, but once I got my head around the whole thing of the healer not being the saviour anymore, but just doing their job, it did get better.

The one thing I feel I cannot really comment on is PVP. I tried a BG once to see if I could learn more about healing, and discovered that it simply sucks as a healer since you get chopped down faster than you can get a heal off almost >_<

The changes to my class? I still hate mana management. I wish they would come up with a way to make healing more challenging without mana management. I just really don't like that I either have to chose not to heal, or well...I cannot heal at all. Which is still what I think that mana management basically comes down to.

I am very much looking forward to trying out Disc once the next patch goes live, and seeing if my favourite spec is a valid raiding spec again, since currently holy just crushes disc in raids. And while I have come to like my circle of shiny healing numbers, I still muscle memory towards my penance button.

Overall? I think that the raiding is brilliant, but solo content is lacking sorely at 85. My priest has nothing left to do but dailies (I hate dailies) and the daily obligatory random heroic for valor points. Sure, I can go fishing for guild achievement or farming herbs for raid flasks. Not really too exciting.

So...I level alts. I do hope that more will come soon though, since I am on my third alt and lets face it...80 to 85 just doesn't take that long!

Must frustrating thing in the game at the moment: Archaeology having upgrades pre-raid. Should never have been put in like this, I see various guildies digging themselves to boredom and annoyance for hours on end because there are no other ways to get upgrades for them except for raiding.

Most amusing thing in the game right now: The economy. I have been seeing glyphs go from 100G one day to 10S the next. Tradeskill gear goes for gigantic amounts, and I am just in awe how much gold there is amongst players. What does worry me a little is that gold sellers have become increasingly active since stuff is hard to get, so they probably get more business again. (more gold sellers = more hackers = more disappointed people)

End verdict? So far I still like Wrath better than I do Cata, but my 10man did really, really well in that expansion..so maybe I'm a bit biased ;)

Quick Guide to Halfus Wyrmbreaker

We've been raiding a few weeks again already, and I have to say. It's not going too bad! My 10man has so far killed Halfus, Valiona and Theralion, Magmaw, and Omnotron....and we have made a couple of decent attempts at Ascendant Council; which I am confident we will kill upcoming weekend.

So I figured that I would share some tactics.

However, since there is quite some guides out there already I figured I would take a different approach. This will be more of a reminder guide, and a quick overview. Not so much a full-blown step by step fight guide.

Halfus Wyrmbreaker 10man

Composition: 2 tanks, 3 healers, 5 dps (yes, I know some say it can be done with 2 healers, but you shouldn't need 6 dps so why risk it?)

Halfus has 5 dragon type pets, and the proto behemoth. He will chose 3 each week to assist him, and the behemoth is always active.

Drakes in order of importance to free and kill:

Storm Rider – Shadownova on Halfus. Releasing the Storm Rider reduces the cast time of Shadow Nova and makes it possible to interrupt it.

Whelps – Killing the whelps significantly reduces Halfus’ damage and increases his damage taken.

Nether Scion – Halfus gains 100% attack speed when this drake is active. Releasing the Nether Scion will reduce Halfus’ attack speed, hit chance, and damage by 25%.

Time Warden – When released it roots player periodically, including the fireballs from Halfus’ protodrake. Causes fireballs to move much more slowly.

Slate Dragon – When Slate is active Halfus will put a mortal strike debuff on your tank reducing healing taken by 5% each time he hits a target. This ability stacks. When Slate is released it stuns Halfus periodically for 12 seconds.

Unless you have the top 3 to deal with you can free the most important two from this list and then ignore the third while you kill Halfus. If you do have Storm Rider, Whelps and Nether you will have to free all three.

At 30% he will start doing a pulse that will stun the entire raid. Each pullse will come ticks of 3. Make sure to interrupt shadownova still if Storm Rider was one of your dragons.