I was having a discussion with a mate who plays WoW the other day about changes we would like to see in the game. I had a nice list going, so I thought I should post the ideas here and see what people think. Some of these have made the rounds before and some are new, to me at least.
New Druid Forms
Since I have a druid main, my first wish is some change to the druid forms. I have been the same ugly cat since I hit level 20, and the dire bear form is getting pretty old at this point too. I would love new elite textures and models for our forms, especially if there were several new ones to choose from. Additional models and textures only available to feral druids for cat and bear would be icing on the cake. I would love for all of these forms to have unique quest lines, but that might be asking too much since we already have a 70 class quest line for epic flying form. A different approach would be craftable, or vendor available, cosmetic armor for use on our current forms.
Gear Colors
I have always wanted some sort of color changing options for gear, be it dye or multiple selectable looks for a specific armor piece. I am tired of looking like a rainbow and getting an awesome piece of gear that makes it worse isn’t a huge let down. I have looked at other MMORPGs and been jealous of their gear dying options. The solution EQ2 has implemented, with a paper doll for looks and a separate one for stats, seems like a good middle option. I believe that Blizzard prefers to maintain control over the colors so that each item is easily recognizable compared to similar textured and modeled items, and so they can maintain the artistic look of the game. Making people with the best gear visually recognizable makes it more of an achievement to have that gear. There have been arguments that for pvp you need to be able to recognize gear to react correctly to different situations. I think none of these arguments really stand up. The models for the epic gear should be unique and then the colors don’t matter as much. The colors available can be limited to disallow too much artistic license, although, they already have pink shirts and tabards available now, so what more harm could be done?
Languages
The first time I realized that my Night Elf hunter could speak in Darnassian I was very excited. I thought, as you would, that eventually through a quest or a trainer I could learn other languages and possibly learn to speak to the other faction. I was sad to learn that this was not possible, and over my time in WoW this has always been something I hoped would be patched in. I think this is an opportunity for a new profession or secondary profession. The languages could require long quest lines, and would allow you to trade with any race whose language you know. I think this offers a lot of potential benefits and fun that are missing from the game.
Cross Faction Interaction
With the increase in cooperation between the Horde and the Alliance in the Burning Crusade, it is time for cross faction interaction and grouping. The language changes I suggested above could be the beginning of this integration. Eventually allowing cross faction access to cities and auction house, and linking all auctions. This would allow servers with low populations, or imbalanced Alliance to Horde ratios, to have better access to buy and sell. The integration should also allow cross faction instance groups. This would assist all levels in finding groups easier, and allow for more diversity in grouping. This would be a huge change, and would require a lot of work to sort out, but I think it would be worth it for playability reasons. There are lore repercussions and pvp issues, but I think it could be done. With the advent of Horde vs. Horde arena matches the pvp based arguments are void. World pvp is dead anyway, and if you really wanted to you could integrate the battleground teams also, with a little lore tweaking. This request has nothing to do with my two alliance 60 characters rotting away unplayed on the same server as my horde mains and guild, nothing at all, I swear.
I have some other requests as well, cross server instances, new low level zones, new classes, and new races, but I am out of time to write today. I may post about them another time. What do you think of the ones I have detailed or mentioned? Should Blizzard look to implement them? If not, why not?
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
BRK Linkage
I am nearly done for my post for the day, but as I was browsing my daily blog readings which are in a feed on the bottom right of this site, I saw that BRK linked to me in a list of new blogs on his site. I just wanted to pass a big thanks to BRK for the linkage. His blog is one of my favorite WoW blogs to read, so the notice was the highlight of my day. Welcome to all of you who are visiting from his site, please make yourselves at home and leave a comment or two.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Hybrid value: 3 roles, one class
My first commenter and good rogue mate, Lale, brought up a good question in the comments yesterday, which I think I will address.
“I would like to make a quick point up for debate = hybrids are good at many, masters of none. I have seen times where a druid tank has been a far better option than a warrior. Has the shift in the game changed? Can hybrids now be masters of particular roles? I smell a new post today...”
I made a point in the post to focus on classes, not talent specializations. This was because including talent trees into the discussion muddies the waters a bit more. With in hybrid classes the talent trees allow you to either focus on one role, or spread talent points around and gain a hybrid setup. The confusing part is that even in a so called pure class, like a priest, talent specialization allows players to play different roles or a hybrid mix.
That said, I think I can still answer to your question. When a hybrid class focuses on any specific role, they can be as effective as the focused pure class at that role, while bringing additional abilities outside that role. They may not have all the exact same abilities as the pure class, but the skills they do have should allow equal capability to fill the role. Before TBC talent trees, gear and the new 70 skills, the hybrid classes actually only had one role they could effectively spec into, healing. This has been resolved and now druids can be great healers, tanks, and melee or spell damage dealers. Paladins can be healers, tanks, and melee damage dealer.
If a hybrid class puts his talents in multiple trees then he becomes the jack of all trades player that you are talking about. In that case he is less effective at all roles then a focused primary or hybrid class, but can more effectively switch roles on the fly. This is the same as a pure class, like a priest, who can specialize into healing or damage dealing, or a mix of the two. I think that the hybrid classed have better synergy in the design of our talent trees post-TBC, which allows us to use a hybrid talent build more effectively then say a hybrid specialized warrior or priest. Druids, for instance, have a feral talent that translates strength into +heal, and restoration talents lower in the tree that effect rage generation and damage in feral forms.
With the number of talent points players now have at 70 they will generally specialize into one role mainly and then still have enough points to get a hybrid level specialization in another role. For instance my paladin is currently 41 points into holy, and 20 points into protection. This allows him more survivability then a full holy build, which is very helpful in pvp and surviving bad pulls in pve. He could also tank instances effectively, if he had the proper gear.
This brings up one final issue that all classes face, especially hybrid classes, the issue of gearing. If a class plays one role all the time, like most pure classes, then they only need one set of gear. They may want other bits for different uses like pvp, or resistance gear, but your gear is mainly one set. Hybrid classes, on the other hand, will need a fully different set for each role they want to play. If they attempt to use a hybrid set of gear, with a mix of stats for different roles, then they will be less effective at each of those roles then the pure class, even if they are fully specialized into that role at the time. It is the same as if a warrior attempted to use his tanking gear with an arms build to deal damage in an instance, it would not be nearly as effective as if he switched to gear with the proper stats for arms. A hybrid specialized player, hybrid or pure class, will be able to use role specific gear to buff his abilities in a certain role, or use a hybrid gear setup to improve his abilities across all roles by a smaller amount.
The biggest hassle of playing a hybrid class is getting the proper gear to effectively play the roles that people expect of you. On my druid, I have 4 sets of gear in Item Rack, I have a healing set, a bear set, a cat set, and a hybrid set. That is a lot of gear to carry around and more importantly to collect, even if there is some overlap. It makes it hard to have a good level of gear for all the roles you play in a group. I would always recommend gearing up for your main role first and then working through the other gear sets. In my guild I am known for snatching up anything that would add to my gear sets, be it caster, melee, or tank gear. They may complain at the time that they missed out on a shard, but when the gear is needed to save their bacon I have it available.
So in review, you have 4 requirements to play a hybrid class as a master of a particular role. First, pick the correct class that will allow you to play the role you want. Second, pick the proper talent specialization for the role. Third, gather the proper gear to play the role. Fourth, you must have imagination to use the class to its fullest potential. You do all that, and you can beat out pure classes in an otherwise equal situation. Remember you have skills they can never match, so make sure you take advantage of them when the situation allows. Don’t just stay in cat form dealing damage if the healer is out of mana, and the mage is getting hammered on. Switch to caster form, throw the healer an innervate, switch to bear form, and taunt the mob off the mage. You do that, and they will take you over that uber geared, damage meter whoring rogue every time!
“I would like to make a quick point up for debate = hybrids are good at many, masters of none. I have seen times where a druid tank has been a far better option than a warrior. Has the shift in the game changed? Can hybrids now be masters of particular roles? I smell a new post today...”
I made a point in the post to focus on classes, not talent specializations. This was because including talent trees into the discussion muddies the waters a bit more. With in hybrid classes the talent trees allow you to either focus on one role, or spread talent points around and gain a hybrid setup. The confusing part is that even in a so called pure class, like a priest, talent specialization allows players to play different roles or a hybrid mix.
That said, I think I can still answer to your question. When a hybrid class focuses on any specific role, they can be as effective as the focused pure class at that role, while bringing additional abilities outside that role. They may not have all the exact same abilities as the pure class, but the skills they do have should allow equal capability to fill the role. Before TBC talent trees, gear and the new 70 skills, the hybrid classes actually only had one role they could effectively spec into, healing. This has been resolved and now druids can be great healers, tanks, and melee or spell damage dealers. Paladins can be healers, tanks, and melee damage dealer.
If a hybrid class puts his talents in multiple trees then he becomes the jack of all trades player that you are talking about. In that case he is less effective at all roles then a focused primary or hybrid class, but can more effectively switch roles on the fly. This is the same as a pure class, like a priest, who can specialize into healing or damage dealing, or a mix of the two. I think that the hybrid classed have better synergy in the design of our talent trees post-TBC, which allows us to use a hybrid talent build more effectively then say a hybrid specialized warrior or priest. Druids, for instance, have a feral talent that translates strength into +heal, and restoration talents lower in the tree that effect rage generation and damage in feral forms.
With the number of talent points players now have at 70 they will generally specialize into one role mainly and then still have enough points to get a hybrid level specialization in another role. For instance my paladin is currently 41 points into holy, and 20 points into protection. This allows him more survivability then a full holy build, which is very helpful in pvp and surviving bad pulls in pve. He could also tank instances effectively, if he had the proper gear.
This brings up one final issue that all classes face, especially hybrid classes, the issue of gearing. If a class plays one role all the time, like most pure classes, then they only need one set of gear. They may want other bits for different uses like pvp, or resistance gear, but your gear is mainly one set. Hybrid classes, on the other hand, will need a fully different set for each role they want to play. If they attempt to use a hybrid set of gear, with a mix of stats for different roles, then they will be less effective at each of those roles then the pure class, even if they are fully specialized into that role at the time. It is the same as if a warrior attempted to use his tanking gear with an arms build to deal damage in an instance, it would not be nearly as effective as if he switched to gear with the proper stats for arms. A hybrid specialized player, hybrid or pure class, will be able to use role specific gear to buff his abilities in a certain role, or use a hybrid gear setup to improve his abilities across all roles by a smaller amount.
The biggest hassle of playing a hybrid class is getting the proper gear to effectively play the roles that people expect of you. On my druid, I have 4 sets of gear in Item Rack, I have a healing set, a bear set, a cat set, and a hybrid set. That is a lot of gear to carry around and more importantly to collect, even if there is some overlap. It makes it hard to have a good level of gear for all the roles you play in a group. I would always recommend gearing up for your main role first and then working through the other gear sets. In my guild I am known for snatching up anything that would add to my gear sets, be it caster, melee, or tank gear. They may complain at the time that they missed out on a shard, but when the gear is needed to save their bacon I have it available.
So in review, you have 4 requirements to play a hybrid class as a master of a particular role. First, pick the correct class that will allow you to play the role you want. Second, pick the proper talent specialization for the role. Third, gather the proper gear to play the role. Fourth, you must have imagination to use the class to its fullest potential. You do all that, and you can beat out pure classes in an otherwise equal situation. Remember you have skills they can never match, so make sure you take advantage of them when the situation allows. Don’t just stay in cat form dealing damage if the healer is out of mana, and the mage is getting hammered on. Switch to caster form, throw the healer an innervate, switch to bear form, and taunt the mob off the mage. You do that, and they will take you over that uber geared, damage meter whoring rogue every time!
Monday, October 29, 2007
Hybrid love, pure imagination
I love playing hybrid classes, but before going on about why, I suppose I should explain what I mean by hybrid. The dictionary defines a hybrid as something of mixed origin or composition. We are talking composition in this case, so what elements are we mixing in our composition, or class? The roles a class can fill in an instance would is its defining elements. There are 3 main roles, tanking, damage dealing, and healing. Crowd control, buffing and de-buffing tend to fall into one of the main roles already listed, and can be thought of as sub-roles. So we have the elements, or roles, that get combined to create our composition, or class. By the definition, we would assume that we need two or more of these roles to create a hybrid class.
This definition is close, and excludes classes like rogues and mages, which are clearly not hybrid. On the other hand, if you spend too long thinking about it you could claim that most classes in WoW are hybrid. All classes are a mix of damage dealing and some other role. A warrior can be damage dealer and a tank. A priest can be a damage dealer and a healer. This isn’t what I mean by a hybrid class, so how do I define it clearer so it excludes these classes? Well, I think we can safely assume that every class in wow has some flavor of damage dealing available to it through talent trees. So if we exclude this as one of the roles that can be combined to create a hybrid class, we can assume that any class without the ability to heal and tank is not a hybrid class.
This definition limits us to the druid and paladin classes, excluding even shamans which are traditionally thought of as hybrid. People think of shamans as hybrid because they heal and deal damage, but that is no different that a priest, which is most definitely not a hybrid class. I guess you could also argue that a shaman is a hybrid of melee and spell damage, but again, it doesn’t hold water, as a mage does different types of damage, but is clearly a pure class. So, paladin and druid classes are hybrids and I love playing them.
Now, I think an example is the best way to show you why I love playing hybrids. I was playing my fully feral speced druid tank in Botanica on the weekend. The party was a hunter, a druid healer, druid tank, rogue and a warlock. I generally just tanked and held all the mobs on me, while my trusty damage team took out the baddies, and the healer kept us all alive. This is all well and good, but a pure class warrior would have handled this equally well, though with a lot less style then me of course. Where the hybrid really shines is when the shit (yes, we are a pg13 blog and can say shit. No, the FCC can’t charge us a fine.) hits the fan. During our otherwise perfect run, there was one messy pull. You know the one with 5 mobs that polymorph people, spawn additional mobs, and cast that horrible killer AoE on the ground? Yeah, that one. I pulled them to me, and the kill team took out the little beast mobs, but while they were doing that the polymorph mob poly’d the healer, and the killer AoE was thrown. The party’s health was dropping quick and the healer was out of action. I moved my remaining mob back out of the AoE, and stunned him. I popped out of bear form, cast barkskin, popped a fel blossom, and cast tranquility, healing the whole group to full. The mobs were rather pissed about the healing and stayed on me. I popped back to bear as soon as the cast was over, taking very few hits between the fel bubble and barkskin. The healer’s polymorph broke, and he went back to healing and the kill team finished off the polymorpher and then the AoE caster. Now, some of us might have survived, but without that quick hybrid action several players would have gone down.
That is why I love hybrids, we contribute most when it counts. Now I could go on and on, and likely will in other posts, but that really covers the basics for me. Now a poorly skilled or narrow focused player would not be a good hybrid, they lack the imagination and reaction speed to successfully get their hybrid on. That’s right folks! Those who play pure classes have no imagination!
This definition is close, and excludes classes like rogues and mages, which are clearly not hybrid. On the other hand, if you spend too long thinking about it you could claim that most classes in WoW are hybrid. All classes are a mix of damage dealing and some other role. A warrior can be damage dealer and a tank. A priest can be a damage dealer and a healer. This isn’t what I mean by a hybrid class, so how do I define it clearer so it excludes these classes? Well, I think we can safely assume that every class in wow has some flavor of damage dealing available to it through talent trees. So if we exclude this as one of the roles that can be combined to create a hybrid class, we can assume that any class without the ability to heal and tank is not a hybrid class.
This definition limits us to the druid and paladin classes, excluding even shamans which are traditionally thought of as hybrid. People think of shamans as hybrid because they heal and deal damage, but that is no different that a priest, which is most definitely not a hybrid class. I guess you could also argue that a shaman is a hybrid of melee and spell damage, but again, it doesn’t hold water, as a mage does different types of damage, but is clearly a pure class. So, paladin and druid classes are hybrids and I love playing them.
Now, I think an example is the best way to show you why I love playing hybrids. I was playing my fully feral speced druid tank in Botanica on the weekend. The party was a hunter, a druid healer, druid tank, rogue and a warlock. I generally just tanked and held all the mobs on me, while my trusty damage team took out the baddies, and the healer kept us all alive. This is all well and good, but a pure class warrior would have handled this equally well, though with a lot less style then me of course. Where the hybrid really shines is when the shit (yes, we are a pg13 blog and can say shit. No, the FCC can’t charge us a fine.) hits the fan. During our otherwise perfect run, there was one messy pull. You know the one with 5 mobs that polymorph people, spawn additional mobs, and cast that horrible killer AoE on the ground? Yeah, that one. I pulled them to me, and the kill team took out the little beast mobs, but while they were doing that the polymorph mob poly’d the healer, and the killer AoE was thrown. The party’s health was dropping quick and the healer was out of action. I moved my remaining mob back out of the AoE, and stunned him. I popped out of bear form, cast barkskin, popped a fel blossom, and cast tranquility, healing the whole group to full. The mobs were rather pissed about the healing and stayed on me. I popped back to bear as soon as the cast was over, taking very few hits between the fel bubble and barkskin. The healer’s polymorph broke, and he went back to healing and the kill team finished off the polymorpher and then the AoE caster. Now, some of us might have survived, but without that quick hybrid action several players would have gone down.
That is why I love hybrids, we contribute most when it counts. Now I could go on and on, and likely will in other posts, but that really covers the basics for me. Now a poorly skilled or narrow focused player would not be a good hybrid, they lack the imagination and reaction speed to successfully get their hybrid on. That’s right folks! Those who play pure classes have no imagination!
Introduction
Welcome to my new blog. This will be the home for my reflections, rants, and research about World of Warcraft. I expect the topics to cover everything related to the game, but will follow whatever interest I have at the time I sit down to write. I hope to update this site at least a couple of times a week, but we will see.
To begin I think I should introduce myself, while retaining my aura if internet anonymity of course. Let’s see if I can be properly vague so people can’t figure out who I am. I have been playing WoW since December 2004. I first played a night elf hunter, on an RP server. While I didn’t RP much the server was great and that hunter was my first 60, and the hunter class is still one of my favorite.
After my first few experiences of bad tanks and horribly lead instances I rolled a human protection warrior, which allowed me to lead instances and ensure they went off smoother. I leveled both the hunter and warrior to 60, and played the hunter through the beginning of MC, before realizing that the raiding world wasn’t for me. The farm to fun ratio was much too high, and the amount of time spent standing around in a 4 hour raid was also not to my liking. I also felt like the individual contribution to a 40 man raid was much less then that to a 5 man instance, and I prefer to actually make a difference when I play. Granted a few people in the raid, like the RL, MT and MH, make a huge difference, but as hunter0301 in a 40 man raid there isn’t much contribution.
After quitting my raiding guild I proceeding to form my first guild, and gather a few friends to my banner. We instanced a lot and I decided that 5 mans and pvp was the endgame for me. I worked my hunter up to Knight Lieutenant before realizing that instant queues and more team oriented people existed among the Horde.
I tossed in the alliance towel and re-rolled horde on a new server that had just opened up in my region. Since I was planning to pvp heavily I picked a new class that I felt had a lot of potential in PvP, and could contribute to 5 man runs. Yes, I rolled a troll mage. I had a blast playing the mage, but I tended to play with others who were not always available, so I decided to start another character to play when they weren’t around. I was looking for something to solo with, that had potential for instancing and pvp. So I rolled a druid, thinking that I could heal, something I had never done heavily.
Around this time I fled my random guild, after a GM lead raid on STV with level 15 characters was so horribly organized. Me and another member of the old guild formed our own guild, to level up and instance together. We both brought other friends/family and we had a nice small friendly guild.
Now, druids were a complete unknown to me and I quickly realized I liked the feral forms more then casting and healing. This, and the need for a tank for the new guild, led to me specing into feral combat and eventually tanking the majority of the guild runs as we leveled to 60. So the druid became my main, and I fell in love with the hybrid power to save runs, and myself, from almost certain horrible death. (My love of hybrids will be a theme for this blog, and my next post will likely explain my thoughts on this topic.)
Since my druid became a large furry bullseye, my mage became my solo character. I had a blast learning to AoE grind. Killing 20 mobs at once with high risk is my favorite kind of fun. I had planned to level the mage as fire, but the survivability and mob control that frost provide mean that I have never speced out of deep frost since switching at level 20.
A month or so after these two horde characters hit 60, TBC came out, and the race to 70 was on. The guild actually selected to roll some blood elfs first, and give Hellfire a few days to cool off before we went after quests heavily. I rolled a rogue, as I have always wanted to try one, he is still sitting around level 27. We did go through the portal the first night and had a blast replacing all our fresh 60 gear with uber quest items. I very much enjoy the expansion and it has been a blast going through all new areas, low and high level. I reached 70 first on the druid, followed closely by the mage. The mage ended up getting a bit more play, since we found a nice protection tank as we leveled 60-70. But he has since moved on and my druid is definitely my current main.
As we hit 70 the guild wasn’t meeting my grouping needs, so, against all past experience, I joined a large raiding guild. This was ok for a short while, leading to more instance runs, and the large numbers meant more people to call on for 5 man quests. The leadership was lacking though, and the guild was headed for drama. I left that guild and once again formed my own, with my normal instance running group. We have been growing since with the goal to hit heroic 5 mans and arena heavily. We have a nice group of involved officers, and we have leveled up a crop of good players, mainly new to the game. We hit our first heroic a few weeks ago, and I love the challenge without all the farming that raids need.
As I hit 70 I also started hitting some BGs and Arena on my druid. I quickly found that healing was the most effective way to be successful, but that my feral spec and abilities didn’t lend themselves to healing pvp and arena. I would pop to caster form to heal and get absolutely mauled by other players. I took this to heart and decided that I wanted to heal and that a paladin was the way to go for pvp and they were strong healers for pve too, if the group needed that over my tank or dps mage.
So I rolled another new blood elf, and worked my way through the levels playing as protection spec, so I could AoE grind, and tank instances. The guild had a small group of new players at the lower levels, so we all leveled up together. When we found good players we invited them, and weeded out those who didn’t fit in or who acted entitled. We spent a long time teaching the new players to use marks and coordinate the runs well. As we have all hit 70 since and started hitting heroics and hard 70 instances all of this work has paid off, and we have had very few messy runs.
My pally is now 70, and has respecced Holy. He is rolling through the BGs and Arena now, healing his little blonde pony tail off. I am enjoying healing as much as I like tanking, and doing something completely different is a good thing from time to time.
So, that’s my WoW “career” all laid out. As you can see I have done most things in the game, except raiding, though I have stepped into different raid instances from time to time. I have maxed most professions and leveled fishing once. I have been a member, officer and currently GM. I have a 60 NE hunter, 60 human warrior, 70 troll mage, 70 tauren druid, 70 BE pally, and a smattering of 20 something alts. Even though I have done a lot, I know there is heaps I still don’t know about this game, and hope that when I share information here I can get some back from you. Please leave me a note, corrections welcome, feedback needed, and comments a must.
To begin I think I should introduce myself, while retaining my aura if internet anonymity of course. Let’s see if I can be properly vague so people can’t figure out who I am. I have been playing WoW since December 2004. I first played a night elf hunter, on an RP server. While I didn’t RP much the server was great and that hunter was my first 60, and the hunter class is still one of my favorite.
After my first few experiences of bad tanks and horribly lead instances I rolled a human protection warrior, which allowed me to lead instances and ensure they went off smoother. I leveled both the hunter and warrior to 60, and played the hunter through the beginning of MC, before realizing that the raiding world wasn’t for me. The farm to fun ratio was much too high, and the amount of time spent standing around in a 4 hour raid was also not to my liking. I also felt like the individual contribution to a 40 man raid was much less then that to a 5 man instance, and I prefer to actually make a difference when I play. Granted a few people in the raid, like the RL, MT and MH, make a huge difference, but as hunter0301 in a 40 man raid there isn’t much contribution.
After quitting my raiding guild I proceeding to form my first guild, and gather a few friends to my banner. We instanced a lot and I decided that 5 mans and pvp was the endgame for me. I worked my hunter up to Knight Lieutenant before realizing that instant queues and more team oriented people existed among the Horde.
I tossed in the alliance towel and re-rolled horde on a new server that had just opened up in my region. Since I was planning to pvp heavily I picked a new class that I felt had a lot of potential in PvP, and could contribute to 5 man runs. Yes, I rolled a troll mage. I had a blast playing the mage, but I tended to play with others who were not always available, so I decided to start another character to play when they weren’t around. I was looking for something to solo with, that had potential for instancing and pvp. So I rolled a druid, thinking that I could heal, something I had never done heavily.
Around this time I fled my random guild, after a GM lead raid on STV with level 15 characters was so horribly organized. Me and another member of the old guild formed our own guild, to level up and instance together. We both brought other friends/family and we had a nice small friendly guild.
Now, druids were a complete unknown to me and I quickly realized I liked the feral forms more then casting and healing. This, and the need for a tank for the new guild, led to me specing into feral combat and eventually tanking the majority of the guild runs as we leveled to 60. So the druid became my main, and I fell in love with the hybrid power to save runs, and myself, from almost certain horrible death. (My love of hybrids will be a theme for this blog, and my next post will likely explain my thoughts on this topic.)
Since my druid became a large furry bullseye, my mage became my solo character. I had a blast learning to AoE grind. Killing 20 mobs at once with high risk is my favorite kind of fun. I had planned to level the mage as fire, but the survivability and mob control that frost provide mean that I have never speced out of deep frost since switching at level 20.
A month or so after these two horde characters hit 60, TBC came out, and the race to 70 was on. The guild actually selected to roll some blood elfs first, and give Hellfire a few days to cool off before we went after quests heavily. I rolled a rogue, as I have always wanted to try one, he is still sitting around level 27. We did go through the portal the first night and had a blast replacing all our fresh 60 gear with uber quest items. I very much enjoy the expansion and it has been a blast going through all new areas, low and high level. I reached 70 first on the druid, followed closely by the mage. The mage ended up getting a bit more play, since we found a nice protection tank as we leveled 60-70. But he has since moved on and my druid is definitely my current main.
As we hit 70 the guild wasn’t meeting my grouping needs, so, against all past experience, I joined a large raiding guild. This was ok for a short while, leading to more instance runs, and the large numbers meant more people to call on for 5 man quests. The leadership was lacking though, and the guild was headed for drama. I left that guild and once again formed my own, with my normal instance running group. We have been growing since with the goal to hit heroic 5 mans and arena heavily. We have a nice group of involved officers, and we have leveled up a crop of good players, mainly new to the game. We hit our first heroic a few weeks ago, and I love the challenge without all the farming that raids need.
As I hit 70 I also started hitting some BGs and Arena on my druid. I quickly found that healing was the most effective way to be successful, but that my feral spec and abilities didn’t lend themselves to healing pvp and arena. I would pop to caster form to heal and get absolutely mauled by other players. I took this to heart and decided that I wanted to heal and that a paladin was the way to go for pvp and they were strong healers for pve too, if the group needed that over my tank or dps mage.
So I rolled another new blood elf, and worked my way through the levels playing as protection spec, so I could AoE grind, and tank instances. The guild had a small group of new players at the lower levels, so we all leveled up together. When we found good players we invited them, and weeded out those who didn’t fit in or who acted entitled. We spent a long time teaching the new players to use marks and coordinate the runs well. As we have all hit 70 since and started hitting heroics and hard 70 instances all of this work has paid off, and we have had very few messy runs.
My pally is now 70, and has respecced Holy. He is rolling through the BGs and Arena now, healing his little blonde pony tail off. I am enjoying healing as much as I like tanking, and doing something completely different is a good thing from time to time.
So, that’s my WoW “career” all laid out. As you can see I have done most things in the game, except raiding, though I have stepped into different raid instances from time to time. I have maxed most professions and leveled fishing once. I have been a member, officer and currently GM. I have a 60 NE hunter, 60 human warrior, 70 troll mage, 70 tauren druid, 70 BE pally, and a smattering of 20 something alts. Even though I have done a lot, I know there is heaps I still don’t know about this game, and hope that when I share information here I can get some back from you. Please leave me a note, corrections welcome, feedback needed, and comments a must.
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