Throwing Baby Bears Out Of Trees

The title refers to what might be the best quest in game that I’ve encountered so far. It’s in Hyjal. You throw baby bears out of trees. To save them. Or the quests where you’ve got a small turtle following you – and fighting for you! It was so cute.  We’re level 82 and probably 95% through with Hyjal and I must say Blizzard has shown once again why the only ones who can kill WoW will be them, and they haven’t screwed up yet. I love the mix of standard “Kill 10 Cultists” and “Collect 4 Livers” quests with the interesting ones using vehicle mechanics to do something cool, like give  a speech or save baby bears. And the jousting quest in Hyjal? Tons of fun, IMO, though I can see other people disagreeing.

So we’ve spent two evenings in Cataclysm so far, gotten our mains to 82 as I said already and dabbled a bit in other things (I did a little archeology, super fun, must do more). We ran Blackrock Caverns and Throne of Tides Tuesday night with guildies – Repgrind on her mage, my brother Logarithm on his warrior, and then first Sharelore and then Multipurpose from guild as a boomkin and shaman, respectively. That was fantastic. We went in blind and figured things out as we went. We wiped on the forge boss in BC, twice, figuring out his gimmick but man did we have a sense of accomplishment when we did. It took us the first wipe to figure out about the transporter, heh! We ran all the way back on foot.

BC was cool but Throne was cooler. The enviroment was awesome, the bosses felt really unique. So nice after Northrend to get those vibrant colors. We very nearly wiped on the last boss, because it went into the final phase and we couldn’t figure out what we were supposed to do and the damage was stacking. Fortunately, just as we lost all three dps, my brother announced “I have something targeted but I can’t see it”, and Reversion was able to use assist to figure out there was a giant squid outside the room shooting at us! That was cool. I brezzed Rep’s mage and managed to keep us alive for long enough to kill it, although if Reversion hadn’t thrown all this cooldowns it would have been a wipe. I died at the end but Reversion rezzed us. So much fun.

So far I’m finding healing to be even more spiky than Wrath healing. Yeah, the constant AOE damage is lower but the hits are huge. I assume we need more gear because ow, Reversion got one shot on trash at least once but then we were able to kill the pack while he was running back (and this was  a group where CC was not an option; what the heck are Faceless Ones anyway? They don’t seem to say). But it’s fun. I know that if things are too hard Blizz will tweak ’em, they’re pretty good about being balanced.

Anyway, so far, total thumbs up on this expansion. We’ve got a three day weekend and hope to have a pair of level 85 druids at the end of it. We’ll see!