Beta: More on the grind.

Ok, so the last post was me hastily jotting down thoughts whilst finishing my coffee and heading out the door to work.

Last night, Ulu ran around the Howling Fyjord for a while, doing some of the early quests there. It's a pretty huge zone, but the infrastructure between quest hubs feels a little awkward right now. There's a plane you can take from the docks/first quest hub to a second hub, but there's no way for you to return to the first hub easily from there. Thank Blizz for Divine Shield-assisted base-jumping is all I can say!

This morning Ulu left the Howling Fyjord to go back and finish the last few quests in the Borean Tundra, and more specifically, the Coldarra subzone. As I mentioned in passing in the last post, there appears to be an annoying bug present that stops people regenerating mana and health normally. I'm not sure where it comes from because it certainly wasn't present last night.

The new Blessing of Sanctuary and Judgement of Wisdom definately make life easier for soloing, but it all depends on the number of mobs you're fighting. Against one solo mob, it's decidedly inefficent, since you don't dodge, block or parry enough to get a decent mana income relative to your costs. That said, at three or more mobs, I find myself switching to Judgement of Light since I'm getting more than enough mana back.

Casters are still annoying however, but I'm willing to accept that as our Achilles Heel.

There also seems to be new quest rewards added in. Whilst questing in Coldarra, I picked up two quests for The Nexus that included blue-quality tanking options. They don't appear to be on Wowhead, so I'll take screenshots tonight.

It's nice to be level 72, but looking at the new powers available (a new rank of Divine Wrath and Redemption) I won't be making a beeline for the Paladin trainer tonight.