Anyways, Cataclysm is out, I’ve managed to get to level 85, and I’ve been able to run a few instances. Well, quite a few instances, actually. In fact, I’ve been trying to do as many instances as I could in order to gear up.

On sunday, the guild started raiding. We weren’t really supposed to raid for another few weeks, but so many people were already 85 and decently geared, and we decided to give it a shot. While I wasn’t actually in the raid group, the guild did kill Argaloth in Baradin Hold, as well as the first three bosses in Blackwing Descent. On tuesday, we went to take a look at the Bastion of Twilight, and nuked down Halfus Wyrmbraker and Valiona & Theralion.

Mana is fine

Just from stepping into heroics, mana was a little bit tight. But I saw this problem quickly evaporate with a bit of gear and speccing into some mana talents. As soon as my mana pool went up, so did the power of Dreamstate and Furor, and we gain a lot of mana from all the intellect we are picking up along the way.

A lot of people are complaining about their mana issues, and I really don’t think this is founded. I mean, you are supposed to struggle with mana, and you will have to use your innervate on yourself, but that is perfectly fine. I like the fact that innervate actually has a purpose in our lives, and getting back 50% mana every three minutes is very awesome. Long story short, the worries we had from the reports in beta are not a concern.

Damage is fine

I am hesitant to call this completely, because we are still quite early on in the expansion. Everybody has wonky gear, they are missing enchants, and we are trying to get used to all the new bosses. But all things taken into consideration, I really don’t think that our damage is much of a problem.

I remember the nay-sayers screaming that Blizzard did nothing for moonkins, that the new systems couldn’t possibly help us out, and that being a moonkin in Cataclysm was going to be terrible. And now I think back and snigger as they were clearly wrong.

Just from leveling to 85, my haste and crit finally dipped below 10% each. We are not going to reach any caps anytime soon. But thats fine, that will make gearing up a lot more fun, now that we don’t have to cry everytime we pick up an item with haste or crit on. And with reforging, I don’t even mind picking up items with mastery, because of its close proximity to crit, and the fact that I can reforge it into haste or spirit. Or even crit, I suppose. The hit cap itself is pretty easy to attain as well.

Our damage compared to others might look different as we all gear up, but this is to be expected. I really don’t think that we have anything to worry about for the time being. Well, except for the fact that I am considering taking Wild Mushroom of my action bars to make room for a non combat pet.

Instances are fine

Even going into a normal instance is a bit of a challenge, and the heroics can easely demolish any PUG out there. I did a PUG with a few people who were all from my server and not completely randomized, and we still struggled to clear the whole instance. And everytime I’ve done a heroic with my guild, we’ve had a few wipes on each boss, and generally had a real challenge with the place. That’s awesome.

Wrath heroics were, all in all, very easy. I dinged 80 back in the days, and immediately went into heroics – for I as a bear back then was instantly crit immune and could take a beating. Todays heroics are quite different, and require not only coordination, but also an innate ability to use your brain. I think we will be enjoying heroics for quite a long time.

Healing is.. OH MY GOD!

One thing I did notice is the apparant change of play for the healers. We are no longer seeing ourselves getting spammed up whenever we lose 1% health. Healers are much more conservative with their mana, and even then, they are struggling to keep everybody alive. We have to be much more dilligent about standing in healing puddles on the ground, using healthstones and, dare I say it, lightwells.

But I think this is great. We can no longer get by with standing in the void zone while we finish the cast, because even if it doesn’t kill you, you will be responsible for getting your health back up again. Sure, they might toss a heal on you, but if you are taking stupid damage, you better stand in the blue puddle, or face certain death.

I don’t know how the healers are enjoying themselves, but I can imagine its all a bit more fun than blanketing the raid with rejuv or spamming flash heal.

Videos

Even though I wasn’t in for the first kills in the Blackwing Descent and Baradin Hold, I thought it would be fun to resume my boss kill movies. So please enjoy the first two bosses of the Bastion of Twilight!

Halfus Wyrmbreaker

Valiona & Theralion

- QQ

For a first video I recorded a night in TOTC10. It’s just normal, and not overly exciting, but I had to get into using Sony Vegas Pro.

Next video was our Iron Council 25 hard mode. Our guild had been working quite hard on this one from the time I joined the guild. We used one tactic, then tried a second, and when we decided to go back to the first we took them down quite fast.

Then I recorded a Hodir hard mode kill. This was not our first Hodir, obviously, but I do enjoy the damage I manage to put out.

The next big hurdle was Mimiron hard mode. We worked quite hard on this, and it was a great pleasure to finally get him down. We did do Freya hard mode before Mimiron, but I didn’t record the kill. You can see videos from our Freya kill in Escapism’s media section.

Moving on, I thought it would be fun to record a General Vezax hard mode in high speed with a Benny Hill theme. All we do is stand in a puddle and run out, repeat, so I thought it fitting.

Moving on to something a bit more exciting, this is from our Yogg +1 kill. We didn’t work very long time on this – a few raid nights and it was in the bag. Yogg +1 really isn’t very hard when you can control your sanity and meet the damage criteria. This was also where I completed my heroic GOTUR.

Last but not least, just this friday, our TOTGC10 group decided to go and take a look at Algalon after we finished our Tribute to Insanity. We are still working on Algalon on 25 man, but it is not as big a focus as practicing Anub’Arak heroic. Never the less, on our third pull, Algalon decided that it would probably be a good idea to let us live.

Funny thing about this fight is that it shows absolutely horrible performence from me. My keyboard messed up in the beginning of the fight, and I wasn’t excactly swimming in eclipse procs. Ah well, I did my part at least.