Nope, nope, nope! (Weapon woes, pt. 1)

This tip popped up for me yesterday, in the twenty minutes I actually spent logged in.  My job has me on mandatory OT now, which makes alting at all pretty hard.

I was going to talk about my paladin or my mage last week, but that flew out the window.  There was Timear's weekly quest to do the world quests, so most of my meager game time last week was spent grinding out the same world quests I've already done a few times.

So...trying to level alts is probably a terrible idea this early in the expansion.

Then again, I love to entertain terrible ideas.

So...

I have two mages.  One night elf, one blood elf.  On my night elf, I already got the frost and fire weapons.  (Felo'melorn and Ebonchill, for those who don't play a mage but love lore and want to know.)  Those were somewhat easy, with a little bit of a challenge factor, for someone who didn't bother gearing up and isn't used to playing a mage.

And then there's the arcane weapon.

Oh God.

The arcane weapon.

I'm going after that on my blood elf mage right now.  I died until my gear went a little broken around the edges.  Went outside the scenario to repair, optimistic because I thought I almost had it...but the whole thing reset.

Oh hell no!

So, I'm in the middle of that quest.

Screw it!  I'm doing the death knight weapons next.  And my night elf can never go arcane, ever, as far as I'm concerned.

Any mages out there want to tell me how it's done?  I already got the idea that I want to stay as far away from the guy as possible, but other than that I'm at a loss.  My blood elf got leveled in a hurry from the Legion invasion events, so I don't have any buffs of any sort.  No food, no flasks, no potions.  Should I stock up?  Any spells really help?

Anyone else have any weapons they've gone after that just made them nope the hell out?  Or has it all been smooth sailing for you so far?

Shaman-ing for the win!

So, the other day I had this conversation.

me: Okay, DH is all leveled up.  What next?

guildie: Shavvy.

me: Yes?

guildie:  No!  Shavvy!  Shavra!  Level your shaman next!

me:  OH!  Duh...

It should have been a no-brainer.  In my guild I'm still called Shavra after my first main ever.

However, it isn't always so cut and dry.  There have been a few expansions where I just can't get into the shaman play style, no matter what spec we're talking about.  I learned to play a shaman in BC, and the class was a whole different animal back then.

Resto in BC: Earth shield on the tank.  Little heal, little heal, little heal, OHSHITINSTANTBIGHEAL, little heal, little heal, done.

Elemental in BC: Lightning bolt x 5000, flame shock on cool down.  Forget you have earth shock unless you're watching Omen like a hawk.  Chain lightning if there was more than one thing and you trusted your tank until you ran out of mana.  Get yelled at for putting down a mana totem.

All shamans in BC: Listen to everyone tell you which totems to throw down, be told you're a scrub no matter which ones you plant because someone didn't get the buff that would help them the most.  Watch your totem timers like a hawk.

I didn't touch enhancement in BC, but I gather it was auto attack a lot, cast a couple of things, watch your totem timers, and pray to the windfury RNG gods.  Oh, and interrupt shit, which is why I avoided that spec.  It sounded like too much responsibility to me.

Holy crap, Legion is different!  It happened gradually, sure, but where'd my totems go?  What do all these extra buttons do?  If I were a time traveler and went from BC to today I'd be so lost.  Thrilled, but lost.

I gave up playing elemental and resto in Wrath, because in Hyjal I saw Thrall call forth his ghost wolves, and when I heard I would be able to do that to it was my greatest goal in the game.  (Temporarily, of course.  Seeing Arthas for myself eclipsed it pretty fast, since I was devouring lore at the time.)

All that is to say, Legion hit me in the shaman feels pretty hard and super fast.  Shavra is up to level 104 currently, and I'm awed by the state of the lore as well as how playable the class is.  I have totem laments, since I was proud of how often people complemented me on my totem-slinging skills.  However, the class is more streamlined now.  I don't feel paralyzed by too many choices that ultimately finish in a wash on the DPS meters.  I'm not juggling six or more timers all the time.  I'm just playing.

I haven't grouped up with my shaman much yet.  No instances, no raids, just solo questing and conducting missions for my minions.  So, I don't know how it feels to be the shaman without being told, "Lay me down some of that sweet windfury love!"  It was a request I got even though I didn't have access to that totem until I switched specs in Wrath.  I've quested as both elemental and enhancement so far in Legion, though, and I just can't decide which I enjoy more.  They're both fun in their own ways.

Part of me wishes I still had my original Tauren shaman around so I could do a contrast/compare on the Horde/Alliance feel of just how epic it is to wield Doomhammer.  Going back to the Exodar on my Draenei and seeing the Legion trashing my home was a punch in the gut in ways it's hard to describe.  Either you're an oddball like me and sympathize with your characters, too, or you don't.  I like to go for immersion in the story to a point.  Not to the point of joining an RP server, just to the point of looking at events unfold and imagining  the "what if" of the moment.  I've done the event on four different characters now, and my shaman was the only one I got emotional about.  So, there's that.

I'm sure I'll get to the resto weapon quest one of these days.  I haven't even toyed with the idea of healing on my shaman since BC, even though that's where my roots are.  Perhaps that's why I haven't.  It's a feeling I'll never have back, a feeling I can never capture again.  Resto is my shaman's past, not her future.  I'm open to persuasion, however.  But if you try, make it good.

Next week I'll have a few things to say either about my paladin or my mage.  They've both been loads of fun in their own ways.  I've spent more time than I expected on gearing up my DH, though, so I might put those off if something amazing happens.

Happy leveling!

So I pick a new "main" each expansion...haha

I feel like the title of this post is a setup for a joke.  I don't have a punchline, sorry.  Or, perhaps I am the punchline.

The thing is, I didn't plan to race to 110 with my new Demon Hunter first.  I was going to go full circle back to my shaman, or perhaps finally tank with my paladin like I'd always wanted to do.  I'd had so many ideas of what I wanted to do.

I didn't want to fall in love with another hero class.  I'd done that once already, and fell out of love just as quickly.  I wanted to raid, and I thought the only way I'd get a guaranteed spot at the time was to be a healer.  So, in Wrath, I healed instead of playing the Death Knight I'd so loved.  It's probably a good thing.  I wasn't a very good DK.  There were just some tricks I never got the hang of, and I lost track of class changes fairly quickly with that one.  Once Arthas was dead my fascination simply waned.

So, I had a feeling that the DH would be more of the same.  I'd love the tragic darkness of the backstory, but I'd move on fairly fast.

The problem is, I love the mechanics of playing my DH.  Kalalin, pictured above, is a Vengeance DH, the tanking spec for anyone who hasn't kept up.  When I tried tanking on my DK in Wrath I did a poor job of it.  I didn't want to keep track of what abilities would do what to help, and when to use them best, and blah blah blah.  I was impatient.  I wanted to smash stuff and never die.

(Come to think of it, that's something I love about my DH.  Oh, and my Paladin that I leveled prot.  Oh, and my shaman that I leveled resto.  Um...)

The DH class is really rather intuitive for me, though.  Leaping into the fray and face smashing things gives me an unholy glee, to be sure, but the mechanics are smooth and actually kinda pretty to look at.  I don't have macros and keybinds set up yet, but if I tank more I'll be doing that.  I've never really been willing to do that for any other class, because I was always afraid it wouldn't be enough reward to justify the time investment, especially trying to learn a new thing and keep it straight in my mind.  I think this would be worth the time investment, though, even if all I'm doing is instances and not raids.

The story, of course, is captivating.  If you haven't tried a DH yet, I recommend at least getting through the starting zone once.  Delete after that if you must, but give it a try if you're even at least a little bit interested in WoW lore.  I have a Night Elf DH I went with Altruis on, and being the RP nut that I am (even though I'm not on an RP server), I have a budding backstory that explains why she chose him.  I have a Blood Elf Havoc DH, too, and I chose Kayn there so I can compare and contrast the experience.  I expect it to be an interesting diversion when I have time to get to my Belf.

Also, I leveled my first DH as Vengeance all the way to 110, only going into an instance once.  It was a lot less painful than I expected, especially after the experience of leveling a Prot Paladin through BC.  The leveling experience in this expansion has greatly improved over previous ones, for sure!

I've got three alts on deck to be my next 110.  I plan on talking about the leveling experience with each class as I go, so I suppose I'd better decide on one soon.

Nobody said having Altitis was easy...

A Damn Good Story.

None of these characters exist anymore.  They were all characters I didn't stick with, for one reason or another.  Mostly it was visual appeal, though sometimes it was just that I didn't know what I liked yet.  It wasn't until a couple weeks later, when BC had launched, that I found a character that resonated with me.  Shavra, a Draenei shaman with white pigtails and a cute face.  I'd made a Tauren shaman on Perenolde before that that was *almost* what I was looking for, but Shavra had that visual appeal and is still one of my favorite characters.

Why am I telling you this?

When I started playing (this screen shot was taken 1/15/07, when I first learned that I *could*), I didn't follow the story.  There were dragons, and naked gnome races, and I wanted to slay dragons and run across a continent woefully underleveled and undergeared through peril as part of a great group of people doing the same thing.  I eventually did those things, but along the way I started reading the quests, then the books, then the *BOOKS*, and finally I devoured every scrap of lore I could find.

My copy of the book in question

I started raiding like I'd wanted, walking into the gatehouse of Karazhan without knowing a thing about who Midivh was, or why he was cheating at chess, or what the hell had Aran's ghost so upset.  It wasn't even on farm anymore when I finally got curious about what my new guild mates were talking about and read "The Last Guardian".  It was part of this huge omnibus of stories, and I really liked them all despite what I thought I'd think.  And, tucked away in the back, was "Of Blood and Honor".

Paladins?  Ugh.  I hated paladins.  And what the hell?  It's written by some guy they named a reindeer after?  Who is this Chris Metzen person, and why did they let him write a story with these other authors I've actually heard of before?

But I read it.  And then I went back to Eastern Plaguelands on my alt so I could do Tirion Fordring's quests and know what I was doing and who I was helping, because I was so moved.  It wasn't the smoothest narrative in the book, but it was one of the better stories, I thought.  I wanted to know more, and I started loving these characters, the more I read.

The first time I saw a Blizzcon, I smiled to myself.  Ah, so this was that Chris Metzen person, the kidnapped reindeer, the puppetmaster behind Warcraft.  Hm.  I thought he was a little too California for my tastes, but other than that he seemed cool.  But, with each Blizzcon I streamed after, I gained a huge respect for him and his enthusiasm.  I became a huge fan of his stories.  I wanted to know more and more.  And I was nearly moved to tears by his "Geek is!" speech in 2010.  I'll NEVER forget it.  I felt like this was someone who understood me.  This was a member of my tribe.

I've been wanting to brush off this blog and start anew since I started playing the build up quests leading to Legion.  The problem has been that I've been too busy PLAYING in my spare time to sit down and write.  I've loved every minute of it.  Every damn moment.

But Varian's death, and Thrall...my old shaman, Shavra, taking up the Doomhammer sent a chill down my spine.  What the hell?  And my paladin, Jerasha, now has the Ashbringer, and while I was thrilled I was also concerned.

Metzen announcing his retirement a few days ago finally set the gears turning.  I had a dream that night that I won a chance to meet him and pick his brain for an hour, and say thanks for all the good stories.  Sure, this blog has just as much a chance of reaching him to express my thanks as that dream did, but I knew when I woke up that it was time to get my words of appreciation out there.

I'm shocked, but I'm not surprised.  He was already saying goodbye with the stories he was writing.  I mean...yeah, I want more.  This is a guy I'd love to have the chance to play D&D with or talk books with, or just hang out with for an hour.  But I already got that with all the video games he's been behind the stories for.  He doesn't need to hear my voice, because he's heard the voice of our tribe.  All of us.  And we're all thanking him for the stories he's given us.

It's going to be a very different world.  I'm looking at my virtual ticket for this year's Blizzcon with a bit of trepidation...what will Blizzcon be without Metzen?  It's going to be weird to find out.  But he's got a family to enjoy, and as a mom who stayed at home for ten years to be with my own kid, I get it.  I can't begrudge him this chance.  And Legion is a hell of a note to step down with.  Damn...