From Zero to Hero

Not really hero but zero to normal capability doesn’t sound as good. A couple of weeks ago I nearly gave up being a paladin. I’d tanked a couple of dungeons, and probed the Mogu’Shan Vaults trash, and I was in trouble. I couldn’t hold threat, my dps was in single digits and my survivability was poor. I started to wonder whether protection paladins had been killed, whether they were no longer viable. It didn’t help that two of the best prot pally’s that I know swapped to death knight and brewmaster. I love my paladin but I love being useful more, I seriously considered swapping classes myself.

However, before I took such a step I took to the theorycrafting world. I combed Theck’s posts and read Elitist Jerks till I thought my eyes would bleed from all the numbers. I talked with the paladin turned brewmaster, who despite class swapping had some useful tips. I discovered something quite monumental.

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Raid Lockouts

This seems to be a never-ending argument and it’s something I’ve touched upon before. Every few months the debate is kickstarted by something, in this case by lockouts being separated on Korean realms, and 25 man getting better loot than 10 man. People are wondering whether this is a trial run before it’s brought back to NA/EU servers. After all that was the system in place in Wrath of the Lich King.

What people forget is that their opinion is biased, and I’m no exception to that. Even people who’ve raided both formats equally will like one or the other better, and that will bias their opinion. It’s a complex subject because due to personal experience everyone is convinced that they are right. The problem with that is that everyone’s personal experience is different.

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National Novel Writing Month

This is a Warcraft blog. I’ve tried to blog a few times over the years but never had any success at sticking to it until now. That being said I do on occasion blog about other stuff, and this is one of those occasions. A little short post to explain what that new widget on the sidebar is.

You see while I might not have had much success at regular blog posting, I’ve always liked to write. I started off, as many do I think these days, writing fanfiction. Truly, dreadful fanfiction but the more you write, the more you learn about writing. You start seeing the plot holes, you start learning about pacing and conflict, you learn to show rather than tell. Every story you write you learn a little more about crafting stories and fanfiction, for all it’s bad press, does give you a vehicle to practice story crafting. Eventually though the ideas can’t be constrained by someone else’s universe and you have to make your own.

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Enraged: A tale of too much rage

My warrior was the first alt I rolled, it quickly got shelved in favour of the paladin alt I rolled soon after. It made it to around level 30 before Cataclysm hit. I liked the melee nature of it, but I didn’t like how it played. I’d specced prot as I thought that my warrior would be my tank alt. It was so unbelievably boring, I spent every fight just hitting Devastate, I didn’t have enough rage to do anything else. I’d made it my gatherer so I had to level it, I did it mostly through gathering so I wound up with lots of herbs at least. Once about level 74 I tried Arms as it was taking so long to kill everything. My survivability promptly disappeared and after a dozen corpse runs, over the same pack of mobs, I went back to Protection.

I’ve mentioned a few times that I liked the warrior changes on beta. With the announcement of no flying, I had to try my warrior out, to see if it would be viable for gathering. I copied it over, Outland gear and all, and checked it out. It was more than viable, I didn’t break a sweat as Protection even with packs of 6 mobs at a time. Plus it was more than just hitting Devastate, there were more buttons, I actually had rage. However, killing things in a tank spec is so slow so I decided to see if I could live as Arms. I made Arms my levelling spec and began the trek to 90.

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The ever present storage problem

In real life I live in a very small house, so I’m very familiar with having trouble finding space for all my stuff. In game it was never an issue until last expansion when transmogrification was announced. Void storage might have come along with it but it was nowhere near enough. For the whole of 4.3 I ran around with about 20 free bag spaces, my bank was completely full so I had to carry a lot around with me.

Through vendoring off spec gear and being ruthless I made more space to start in Mists. However, it’s only been two weeks and I’m back to 20 free slots again. With all the new vanity items, plus the changes to cooking, space is at a premium. That’s why I believe that Warcraft is overdue an overhaul of the inventory system. Here’s what I’d like to see them do with it.

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Reputation Dailies: Good or Bad?

I have never seen as much QQ probably because I avoid the forums, as I can’t stand the QQ. People are saying the game is doomed, that subs will half, that they’ll quit, all because reputation is got by dailies now and not in dungeons. Is this a good or bad change? Well that rather depends on your point of view.

I have a certain opinion on this obviously and so it’s hard not to be biased towards my opinion. So this is going to be a bit of an exercise in creative thinking for me. Can I see it from the other perspective? Well I’m going to try.

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Why Matt Rossi is my hero today

I was going to entitle this post something boring like “My journey to level 90” but then I read today’s title for The Queue. All I ever hear and read is The Burning Crusade was the best, and Ulduar was epic, with everything ever since being derided as substandard to the awesomeness of the past. Everyone is different of course. I was talking with my old old guildmates yesterday and they said that they were very meh about the whole thing, that they were hoping once they got into raids they’d like it more.

Well I love Mists and Matt Rossi is my hero today for saying the same. I’m sure he’ll get flack for it. There is literally nothing I dislike about the expansion. There’s one or two slightly irritating parts, but that’s more because of my laziness, than because they are bad things. Like it would be more helpful if my gatherer had flying and levelling does take a while to get to 90. If I could buy the ability to fly account wide, once I’d done it once on the ground that would be nice, but I fully understand why they don’t want that. Questing is very different when you can fly, it’s more like checking items off a to do list rather than an adventure.

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