The upcoming hotfix isn’t going to be a Big Deal(tm).

In fact, I’m going as far as to say this hotfix isn’t going to change anything. Assuming you’re a geared tank in a raid, that is. If you’re an undergeared tank struggling to keep aggro in heroics, or a DPS getting frustrated because you have to throttle back your damage to avoid pulling aggro (I think those people exist), you’ll find this a godsend.

No changes for geared tanks?

Exactly. If you have the same level of gear as your DPS, and you’ve been following your threat rotation/priorities properly, you didn’t have threat issues to begin with. You only needed to put out threat at the very beginning of a pull, and that particular problem could be sidestepped altogether by having your damage dealers wait, say, three seconds, or tell them to use Misdirection/Tricks of the Trade/Mirror Image + Invisibility and so on. Smart DPS would be happy to oblige. DPS Death Knights and Warriors might have occasionally crept up on you over a long fight due to their own lack of ways to manipulate threat beyond simply holding back and spending a few seconds auto-attacking, that was was more their problem than yours.

This isn’t making the game “easy mode”. Removing an issue you didn’t have will not devalue your accomplishments as a tank, and it’s not going to lower the amount of “skill” you’ll need to get through a particular piece of content. Tank single-target rotations are already fairly simple, executing them perfectly takes a backseat to situational awareness. If you delay moving out of fire or taunting the boss for an extra second because you’re trying to squeeze in that last Devastate or Lacerate, you’re doing it wrong. The challenge – and, in my mind, the beauty – of tanking is more about knowing the encounter and reacting to it. You don’t need “skill” to produce threat, but you do need it to survive a complex encounter.

Threat generation is more a function of gear level rather than skill. Once you have the gear level necessary to produce enough threat to keep DPS from pulling, any more gear you get will only make it so you can safely pay less and less attention to your threat rotation once you have secured aggro. Even if your threat stats don’t increase at all, Vengeance will go a long way towards keeping things glued to you.

But I gear for threat and it’s fun and useful!

While I can’t say anything about how fun it is to gear, gem or reforge for threat (I do it on the Druid because I lose almost no survivability in the process), there’s simply no reason to gear for threat if you’re at the right gear level and everybody in your party/raid group is doing things by the book. Once the pull is established and Vengeance starts to stack up, you can usually forget about your threat monitoring add-on of choice and turn your full attention to your “what is the boss going to do next?” add-on of choice.

Most tanks I see, including Bears, gear for survivability. When I see a threat piece mixed in, it’s usually because the sheer amount of Stamina made it worth it over their previous tanking piece, and the tanks I ask freely admit they’ll swap it off for survivability stats as soon as they have the chance.

The only tanks I have found so far who are actively going after threat stats are the ones who have to play with DPS who have considerably superior gear than themselves. Usually, those tanks are still slogging their way through heroic dungeons in search of gear drops and Justice/Valor points to buy what their luck in the Need roll couldn’t provide, or going on guild runs with the folks who are already in raids and doing 30k DPS when they pop their cooldowns (and no doubt laughing maniacally all the while). They usually have better geared healers who can soak up the slightly higher incoming tank damage without sweating too much about it, resulting in a very small actual difference between gearing for threat or survivability. Assuming you’re not simply being lazy and tanking in your DPS gear, that is. I’ve seen some people doing just that.

Those up-and-coming tanks who don’t yet have the gear to stand up to a Firelands-level DPS are the ones who will feel the change. And that’s good. If you’re just starting to tank heroics via the LFG, generating enough aggro will be more frustrating than challenging. Again, threat production is more a function of gear level rather than skill.

Tanks are busy!

What I found most interesting about Ghostcrawler’s post is that he talks about how encounter design has evolved up to this point. In the Good Ol’ Days of Patchwerk, many fights had tanks standing in one place through the five, ten or fifteen minutes of the fight, soaking in damage, being healed, using the occasional cooldown and running through their threat abilities to fill in the time between cooldowns. Nowadays, tanks (and everybody else, to be honest) have to pay attention to many more things. Reacting to encounter mechanics, positioning the boss, moving out of Ground-Based Death, taunting at specific points, and so on. Most adds tanks have to pick-up nowadays are either ignored by DPS or burned up very quickly before they kill someone. It usually means that if the tank managed to grab the mob’s attention, it’s going to stay on the tank until it’s dead or until it doesn’t matter anymore.

There’s a good argument to be made here: if tanks didn’t have to worry about threat beyond making sure they have aggro, they could focus on everything else going on around them. Of course, not all encounters are challenging or engaging for tanks. They need a little more to keep them interested. Nowadays, it’s generating threat. According to Ghostcrawler, the developers intend to make it actively boosting survivability. Gearing for survivability has no impact on how you actually play once the blows start landing. Timing long cooldowns is an useful skill, but not used often enough to replace a threat rotation.

More control over incoming damage (it’s a good thing!)

Once you reach X amount of Stamina, Y amount of Avoidance and Z amount of Mastery as a tank, you can be expected to take damage at a predictable pace, with survivability cooldowns (and the occasional non-passive debuff like Demoralizing Shout/Roar) reducing that amount temporarily. If I understand the latest Dev Watercooler post correctly (and I may well be wrong), Blizzard intends on getting rid of “threat rotations” and implementing “survivability rotations”. Instead of using your abilities to deal damage and thus keep aggro, they want to redesign it so you are using your abilities to deal damage but, more importantly, reduce incoming damage in some way.

That concept entices me. Instead of judging how good a tank is by how much threat he can produce, we’ll be able to measure how good they are by how much damage they can reduce. A mediocre tank may take upwards of 20% (number pulled out of thin air) more damage than a skilled tank. The possibilities are fascinating, and I cannot wait to see whether the devs can actually pull it off.

It would be a truly massive paradigm shift if they implement it properly. This hotfix is not “dumbing the game down” by any stretch of the imagination, this is just the first step towards allowing tanks to be more skilled and reaping concrete benefits from it in a world where we live and die by healer mana.

Personally, I cannot wait.

It got me thinking. Eventually, I reached the conclusion that there are four things that really helped Bears become a good deal more flexible in terms of gearing. And then I realized something even more important.

1- Stamina has become standardized.

We don’t need to go out of our way to get extra stamina (beyond tanking trinkets and the like). The health difference between two tanks of different classes but similar gear levels isn’t nearly as jarring as it was in Wrath. In fact, even the difference between a tank and a DPS isn’t that big, compared to some tanks rocking twice as much health as your average Mage. I’ve done a bit of napkin math regarding my Druid’s (admittedly sub-par) gear and by not gemming for Stamina I’d be losing around 7k health, but gaining a lot more in terms of threat and mitigation.

2- Damage intake and mitigation has become more consistent across tanks.

Yes, DKs are still known for taking more damage than everybody else, but they still don’t need much more healing than the other tanks. Paladins can reach their Mastery cap and take much less damage, but Blizzard has stated they don’t want that to happen. And even with those possible exceptions, damage is coming in a lot more smoothly. It ties in with my first point: without a need to absorb many huge hits in quick sequence for a prolonged amount of time (as many WotLK fights required), Stamina is devalued and average damage intake becomes more important.

3- Threat matters.

Even with Vengeance stacking to possibly ridiculous levels, threat is still an issue in quite a few situations. Tank-swapping is one of those, as the new tank will most likely be fresh out of Vengeance and DPS will be wailing on the target at full speed. So tanks have to occasionally gear for a little more threat instead of going balls-out stamina/avoidance, otherwise they start losing on DPS uptime due to people having to use their threat wipes, throttling down damage or simply tanking the floor after generating more threat than the tank.

4- Encounter design.

This is the most important part. Instead of huge, repeated unavoidable hits all the time, most encounters are designed around average unavoidable damage with occasional spikes to test healers, and lots of avoidable sources of heavy damage to test the other players. Most times, you only die because you or someone else didn’t react to something in time, as opposed to being killed between two casts.

The Stonecore as a whole is a great example of this. Every boss there has a mechanic that is completely avoidable but that will damn near kill you if you don’t take care. Corborus has Thrashing Charge and Crystal Barrage. All of Slabhide’s abilities are avoidable by DPS and only Sand Blast isn’t avoidable by the tank. Ozruk has Ground Slam, Paralyze and Shatter, all needing to be dealt with otherwise you’re very likely to end up dead. High Priestess Azil is all about positioning (both players and the NPCs) and interrupting stuff.

Reacting to the world around you

After a certain (fairly low) Stamina, Mitigation and Avoidance threshold, your tank’s gear or class matters a lot less than your ability to react to the encounter. I personally love that. It makes content inaccessible to people without the necessary skills without a need for a “gear check” fight like Patchwerk. Gear is still important to allow you to survive certain encounters, be it by allowing you to do more DPS, healing or absorb more damage/generate more threat, depending on your role. Every level of content has a different gear threshold, but most encounters are focused on situational awareness and knowing what to do (move somewhere else, use cooldowns, etc…) instead of raw numbers. So, as long as you have the minimum gear for it, as long as you’re on your game you should still be able to complete it just fine.

I’ve been gearing up my Bear with what’s essentially DPS gear with tanking trinkets. I’m not reforging into Dodge and I’m not gemming into Stamina. Instead, I’m reforging Haste into Mastery/Crit/Expertise and gemming for Agility/Mastery. I’m losing out on 2% dodge, tops, but threat has been very solid (assuming DPS are attacking what I tell them to, of course) and no healers have ever complained about me being hard to heal. I step out of ground-based hazards, interrupt stuff, debuff mobs, pop my cooldowns when I know heavy damage is coming in, and so on. I’m always doing the best to actively avoid damage, which devalues having a massive health pool.

Would this gear set-up work in a raid? I don’t know, I haven’t tried it yet. I think it would. Would it work in a bleeding edge Paragon-style raid group? I don’t know. And personally, I don’t care: I’m not in one of those raid groups, and I’ll most likely never be. For a normal raid run, assuming both the healers and I have the right level gear? I’d love to try it and I’m confident we’d do fine.

Gear should be secondary to a player’s skill, knowledge and situational awareness. It should compliment it and enhance its results, not be the only thing tanks care about.

… no, it’s not Michael Jackson releasing a new album from beyond the grave and re-releasing Thriller in a worldwide tour. Try again!

… no, it’s not Osama Bin Laden after his body was rescued from the depths of the north Arabian Sea and turned into TerrorTron 3000 either! Come on, try again!

… no, it’s not (as interesting as it would be) Marie Antoinette releasing a new book of memoirs about her scandalous extra-marital affair with Winston Churchill during World War II!

Know what? Guessing games suck! It’s the Dwarven Pinball here, in his new identity as Holtzmann! Why? Because I wanted to put all my online identities together. So if you see a Holtzmann out there in the internets, there’d be a fair chance it’d be me! Or maybe a German philologist. Or a pioneering female lawyer from New York. Or a German Protestant theologian. Either way, I’m the only one of those who’s still alive!

So, what happened to you, Pinball– err, Holtz?

So glad you asked that question, my internal monologue! Things have been pretty hectic since Cataclysm was released, which made me go from casual player to making Elitist Jerks break out in hives. I’ve still been playing quite a bit, but mostly worked on alts. It’s more relaxing and can be done in short bursts, as opposed to raiding and grinding heroics for gear.

Ever since last year I…

… got my Paladin to 85, started tanking on her, then used my off-spec to try healing, then tried PvP (mostly as a healer). Healing is fun once you get mouseover macros for frikkin’ everything, and it’s a lot more relaxing than tanking.

… Leveled a dwarf frost Mage from 1 to 85, maxing out all the secondary professions as I went along. This baby is currently replacing my Hunter. I dabbled in Fire and Arcane, but Frost is just more proc-happy and fun for me.

… Leveled my Warlock, my Warrior, my Hunter and my Druid to 85.

… Leveled a gnome Priest to level 48, and she’s the cutest thing ever!

After all that alting, I heard the Call of the Tank once more. It sounded a lot like a raging scream, yelling at stupid DPS to stop pulling stuff and attacking the Skull. I simply couldn’t resist it. My Death Knight is still at level 76, so I had three options:

1. the Paladin, who has lots of cool tricks but a somewhat wooden threat rotation and a DPS spec I just can’t play. Capping Mastery, which seems to be what everybody tells Paladins to do, is boring.

2. the Warrior, the original Dwarven Pinball, who has crazy survivability while grinding mobs due to Victory Rush and is actually quite fun to play once more. It was all a matter of organizing the buttons on my action bars and work out a couple macros and I was back in business! Trying to DPS as a Warrior, however, was a pain.

3. the Druid, who is now much more engaging to tank with (it’s not just Swipe Spam anymore!) and has a DPS spec that I love to play and that also shares most its gear with the Tank spec.

At first I decided to go with the Warrior and started gearing her up. Then I realized I wasn’t going to have the time or the inclination to grind out two sets of gear and trying to re-learn Fury or Arms DPS. My Guild has a lot of people with tanking characters, and I still want to be part on their runs. So, it was time to Druid it up instead!

So, what does it mean to the Pinball?

I suppose picking the Druid to be my main for the time being does result in an Artifact Title (don’t click that link if you value your productivity). But hey, “Fuzzy Scratchy/Mauly Pinball” wouldn’t really work, now would it?

To be perfectly honest, there shouldn’t be a whole lot of change. Most of what I wrote was about tanking or general gameplay. I’ve been running a gear set with DPS stats instead of reforging stuff down to dodge (except for trinkets and other tank-specific items), which should be an interesting little experiment. I figure the threat and Savage Defense potential (from both Mastery and Crit) would make up for the 2% Dodge I miss out on reforging and gemming for Dodge. I know I’m going to get yelled at for it, but hey! It happens! I plan to report on the results of this experiment. So far, the healers have been liking me.

Anyway, let’s get on with it! The Dwarven Pinball is back! Huzzah!

PS: here’s an idea for Blizzard! Dwarf Druids, make it happen! Wolverine Form and Bobcat Form! Maybe even Lazerquail Form! Make it happen!

So I finally found out the obvious, I’m nowhere as consistent with my writing to keep up with a blog by myself. At least not for the time being. With that in mind, I still want to write. So I had a word with my guild, got myself some top-notch writing buddies and we started a whole new blog!

The Bloomin’ Paper! Go there for your fix of in-character World of Warcraft shenanigans in a newspaper gimmick!

Because at least one DPS always ends up dead before the boss goes down.

I always warn people I’m not an ICC-geared tank when I join LFG (still gearin’ up the ol’ Pally, trying not to use my Justice Points), and I always ask them to give me a couple seconds to establish aggro and get, say, both Judgment and a Crusader Strike in after pulling with Exorcism+Avenger’s Shield. That usually gives me enough of a lead that a combination of Vengeance stacking up and using all my abilities properly lets me ride the razor’s edge and still retain threat.

Of course, some people ignore that request. I taunt the boss off them once to give them time to use their threat wipes or ease up on the damage so I can pull ahead again. More often than not, however, they simply keep on pressing their magical Kill-Stuff-Dead buttons. Once my taunt wears off, the boss looks at them funny, they turn into some sort of class-flavored goo on the floor, and the boss goes back to me. After that it’s usually smooth sailing.

I also love it when Kai’ju Gahz’rilla (great reference there) tosses me up and wipes threat. People simply keep on going, get splattered, and then the big lizard diligently turns back to give me its frozen love and attention. Flamelash is also a good one: I tell people to get out of the fire, the healer tells them to get out of the fire, yet they stand on the fire and get cooked.

I’m starting to enjoy 4-manning stuff.

That meant getting to the level cap (from level 78), bringing both her Mining and Blacksmithing from around 150 to 450, and then playing her enough to learn the class and getting enough gear to feel somewhat decent in heroics. Starting with a mishmash of leveling greens and blues and ending in mostly ilvl 200 Purples and Blues (and one trinket I couldn’t get rid of yet), the past week has been exceptionally eventful. Between grinding my face to the bone on the random dungeons, I also spent a hilariously large amount of gold leveling my Blacksmithing to 450.

But while doing that, I was still raiding on my Hunter. And with the random dungeons still fresh in my mind, I realized that there is a huge discrepancy between a raiding environment and a dungeon environment.

Why is that?

Why is that DPS readily collaborate with the tank when raiding, but then revert into hypercompetitive, Recount-obsessed, trigger-happy threatmonsters in a dungeon?

Why is that healers are perfectly fine with healing tanks through bosses laying down jillions of points of damage, but unceremoniously drop group when they come across a tank with only slightly less health than their own ilvl 277 pocket tank?

Why is that tanks who are perfectly nice people in a raid suddenly start charging into packs of mobs and dropping group once even the smallest thing goes wrong in a random dungeon?

If I knew the answer to those questions, I wouldn’t be writing a blog, I’d be out getting my psychology major. All I can do is wonder how to fix this issue.

Obviously, the playerbase needs to be educated. And I’m not just talking about the poor lolcasuals who keep “ruining the game”. This sort of behavior seems to happen more often to people who take the game too seriously, whether they play it often or not. As a result, they often make the game feel like a chore to other players. And really… no one plays a game that’s not fun.

This is part of the reason tanks and healers are always in short supply on the LFG. It’s bad enough that tanking and healing require different skills than what you usually exercise while leveling and that you have more responsibility on your shoulders. Having to put up with people who have no clue of what teamwork might very well be what drives potentially great tanks and healers away.

Their state of mind is important, though. I think we would have shorter LFG queues if we fostered a more relaxed attitude. You know, less ragequits after a single stupid wipe and more “That’s okay, we all learn”. However, we all know that’s not happening anytime soon. We need to support fledgling players. Show them the ropes. And even more importantly, we need to tell new tanks and healers players in general five very important things:

• Keep going, because yeah, it’s gonna be tough early on.
  
• Do your best, because that will make everybody’s life easier.
  
• Have fun, because that’s the entire point of the game.
  
• Respect everybody, because everybody likes being respected.
  
• Ignore the idiots, because you’re gonna find those eventually.
  

The sooner we can get everybody into that mystical zen-like state of…

• “DPS pulled aggro. That’s okay, they can deal with it for a few seconds, I don’t need to stress about it“, or
• “Someone is standing on fire, but he can move. I’m not going to let the tank die to help him“, or
• “Recount is nice, but the size of my reproductive organ does not depend on it“

… the better. That way we’ll be able to make this stupid behavior gap between raiding and dungeoneering shrink a bit, and everybody will have a better time for it. There will always be idiots out there, but hey… a dwarf can dream.

But it just didn’t feel right. There was something off. It didn’t click anymore.
At first I kept wondering if it was just because of the new Ability Queue messing up my life. Warriors Tanks are still mostly GCD capped, so missing a quick Sword and Board proc due to both lag and lag compensation gunking up my rotation hurt a lot with most of my attacks hitting for a lot less. Vengeance also took a long time to stack up, making over-eager DPS even more of an issue than necessary, and not getting the initial attention from the mobs in a Bloodrage-less environment leaves me feeling pretty lonely.

For example: the Shadowmourne-wielding DK (I swear I’m not picking on DKs, it’s just that I see that way too often) slaps down Death and Decay even before the mobs spawn or before I’m even finished charging. I do my best to keep the mobs on me, but they only decide to look at me and give me sweet, sweet Rage after Mr. Bubblyfloor bites the dust. While I don’t usually mind stupid DPS eating a couple repair bills (especially now they pay as much as I do for it), it’s still frustrating to feel like you’ve lost control of the pull.

Actually, the new Rage-generating Shouts work pretty well, but the extra 10 rage trickling in from the old Bloodrage did make a difference. Either way, I was still bouncing around, tab-targeting like crazy, watching out for procs, and now stacking Thunderclaps for bigger Shockwaves. I knew I was doing everything right, and the pulls were still mostly going the way I wanted, and yet something still didn’t feel right. Even on single target, things felt off.

Then it hit me like a brick to the head: I wasn’t having fun anymore.

And it’s not QQ. I don’t blame Blizzard for “ruining my class!!1!1″ and making “4.0.1 worst patch EVAR!”. The patch is great (love the Hunter changes as well), I still love the Warrior concept. But I was already feeling pretty burnt-out on the Warrior Trademarked Mash-All-The-Buttons-Let-The-Gods-Sort-Em-Out playstyle. 4.0.1, while bringing some really cool things to the Warrior table, was the last little push I needed to go into the full burn-out zone. So I decided to put my Warrior aside for a while.

Considering the amount of work I put on that character (she’s both my reputation mule and my achievement dump), I was pretty sad to reach that sort of conclusion. But hey, at least now I can now see how the other tanking classes work out.

So yeah… Farewell For Now, Old Friend Warrior! I’ll see you again soon!

* * * * *

As a last note: I have totally not picked up my Paladin and played the heck out of her lately just to satisfy my Shield fetish.

(Nope, I’m totally not on the tanking rebound.)

The following are my unadulterated notes from a couple years ago, about a week or so after Wrath of the Lich King launched. I thought it would be an entertaining read.

* * * * *
DAY ONE
* * * * *

WoW Journal, Entry 1:
Trial going well so far. Had a couple problems involving my connection deciding to become unstable and not accept the program’s requests. Created a Human Paladin in one of the recommended US servers (I know I’m not from there, but who cares about lag, anyway? =P). Can’t remember which one right now. Anyway, the game is downloading the resources.

WoW Journal, Entry 2:
Jokes about World of Waitcraft are beginning to form.

WoW Journal, Entry 3:
Well, at least the Blood Elf chick on the loading screen looks hot. I think I know who drew her.

WoW Journal, Entry 4:
Watching Colbert Report clips in the Comedy Central website. Playing this on the Mac rocks, since I can keep the game in windowed mode and just shift desktops to check how it’s going. Yes, I know… it takes some of the bandwidth to watch the videos, but hey… it’s not like I have anything to do in a Saturday night… =P

WoW Journal, Entry 5:
Yay! After fifteen minutes, we’re halfway through!

WoW Journal, Entry 6:
Ah, Colbert! You comedy genius you!

WoW Journal, Entry 7:
I got disconnected!

WoW Journal, Entry 8:
Ah, cool. It saved the download progress. I’m finally in!
Nice intro, too.

WoW Journal, Entry 9:
First quest accepted. Off to kill Kobolds I go!

WoW Journal, Entry 10:
Woo, this starting area is a MESS! Too many people, not enough kobolds.

WoW Journal, Entry 11:
Huzzah! Ten kobold vermin slain! Let’s report back and get a few coppers for 15 minutes of my time. =P

WoW Journal, Entry 12:
You know, I really like this mechanic of having your health regenerate faster when you’re out of combat. Works very well to keep you from just having to sit down for two minutes between each combat (something I’ve done a LOT in Tales of Pirates).

WoW Journal, Entry 13:
Gotta find some Brother Sammuel in the Abbey. Can’t find the guy, though.

WoW Journal, Entry 14:
Found him. Got a couple new skills, and off to kill more kobolds I go.

WoW Journal, Entry 15:
I don’t really get how the skills work. Diablo II was a lot more forgiving in that aspect. Actually, I’m not even sure how weapon skills work either.

WoW Journal, Entry 16:
More Kobolds to kill! Yay. >.>
Meanwhile, I’ve got the WoWiki open on Firefox, let’s gather some information…

WoW Journal, Entry 17:
Got to Goldshire. What to do? Kill more kobolds! 8D

WoW Journal, Entry 18:
Okay, not sure what happened here. Game froze up for a long time, then just got back. Odd. Back to searching for Kobolds, I guess. Meanwhile, people are talking about supercars in the general chat. Alright…

WoW Journal, Entry 19:
FOUND THE MOVEMENT TOGGLE KEY! 8D
Traveling just got a lot easier.

WoW Journal, Entry 20:
I could really use more specific directions. Can’t find that Fargodeep Mine anywhere.

WoW Journal, Entry 21:
FOUND IT!
Time to go back to the kobold genocide.

WoW Journal, Entry 22:
Hunted loads of kobolds, died once, got back to the body, now I’m level 6 and starting to get interesting skills. Self-buffs are nice, and hopefully they’ll keep me from getting owned by every critter with a shiv skulking out there.

WoW Journal, Entry 23:
Jasperlode Mine: got attacked by three geomancers at once. Pwnt. >.>
Corpse-retrieval game, here I come!

WoW Journal, Entry 24:
And again! Luckily, it’s a short run.

WoW Journal, Entry 25:
Finally, got my body back and got out of there after killing a few wolves and two bears. As much as I’m against grinding, I think I’ll have to level up a couple times for this one…

WoW Journal, Entry 26:
Grind, grind, grind… at least I think I’m getting the hang on it. Level 6, and bashing level 8 bears with a lot more ease now.

WoW Journal, Entry 27:
Level 7. Casting Seal of Righteousness, then using Judgement of Light is a very nice way to pull monsters in while still dealing a little ranged damage. My first combo! 8D

WoW Journal, Entry 28:
Killed my first elite! A weird Gnoll whose name I can’t remember (ah, right, it was Hogger). Got some VERY nice trousers as reward, and finally managed to save up enough to get Sword training. Hello, Gladius!

WoW Journal, Entry 29:
You know, I’m happy I don’t have to do any more kobold killing until I decide to go back to that mine. And I don’t plan on doing that at least until I get rid of my old gear and get some new one.

WoW Journal, Entry 30:
Went to the Murloc village near the Stonecairn lake. Didn’t kill anything, but at least I got the items I needed to finish a quest that leads to 7 silver coins. =)

WoW Journal, Entry 31:
Ooooh, my first magic drop! Notched Shortsword of Power. That thing just doubled my DPS! 8D

WoW Journal, Entry 32:
Level 8. The guys at Blizzard sure know how to make you feel kickass. Just reached 650 armor, and while I’m pretty sure that’s a ridiculously low amount for any self-respecting character, I’m rather proud of it after buying almost a whole new set of armour. Next step, cloth items.

WoW Journal, Entry 33:
Whoops, got too cocky near the Geomancers again. Me no likey ranged attackers. >.>

WoW Journal, Entry 34:
Hunting gnolls for their painted armbands. Heh.

WoW Journal, Entry 35:
After some more grinding, Level 9. Got the best armor the Goldshire merchants had, got up to 750 armour. Almost got to Level 10, but I think it’s time to stop for today.

* * * * *
DAY TWO
* * * * *

WoW Journal, Entry 36:
Day two begins. Back to the grind!

WoW Journal, Entry 37:
Time to expand beyond areas already explored. Let’s see if I can survive to the easy of Elwynn Forest, being only a 9th Level Paladin.

WoW Journal, Entry 38:
Exchanged buffs with a passing druid. Even though I’m playing mostly solo, I can see the advantages of pairing up with people right there besides my minimap.

WoW Journal, Entry 39:
Ah, cool. No more general channel spamming. It’s good to play in the morning.

WoW Journal, Entry 40:
Got someone following me. Apparently he’s too drunk to play properly and just wants to get the XP from discovering new locations. Alright, then.

WoW Journal, Entry 41:
Hunting murlocs!

WoW Journal, Entry 42:
It’s official: murlocs are annoying. Even more so since I’m still at least one level below them. =P

WoW Journal, Entry 43:
Level 10. Got one talent point to spend, and a few more murlocs to kill.

WoW Journal, Entry 44:
I think I’ve found a point in which WoW beats other competitors: no stat management, you don’t have to worry about getting your new stats every level. Also, weapon skills go up automatically, which is very nice for keeping characters reasonably low-maintenance.

WoW Journal, Entry 45:
I think bears are going extinct…

WoW Journal, Entry 46:
Two more quests finished. Time to get the rewards, go to town, learn more skills and stop for the moment.

WoW Journal, Entry 47:
Nevermind, found out I had another quest to finish. A bunch of bandits killed for their bandanas, and I’m back to town for good.

WoW Journal, Entry 48:
Six hours and a lunch later, back to the fray.

WoW Journal, Entry 49:
Got to Westfall, reached the Sentinel Hill, finally found a Gryphon Master. The flights might be long, but damn, it’s a pretty nice sight. =)

WoW Journal, Entry 50:
Fetch and deliver quest completed, gotta pause again. Only 30 minutes of work, but at least I got to level 11.

* * * * *
DAY THREE
* * * * *

WoW Journal, Entry 51:
Got a little bored of Cethran the Paladin, decided to jump over to the other side and see what’s in store for the Horde. A few clicks to find an Orcish female face that doesn’t give me nightmares, one wikipedia check for a name, and Alcyon the Warlock is ready to go.

WoW Journal, Entry 52:
Rectification: she will be as soon as the game finishes downloading the starting data. Same thing as before. But since this time I’m playing a different faction, let’s watch the Daily Show instead.

WoW Journal, Entry 53:
On second thought, let’s watch some local shows on Youtube. Should eat up less bandwidth.

WoW Journal, Entry 54:
Crap, I forgot WoW was at 0 volume! Now I can’t hear the introduction!

WoW Journal, Entry 55:
Right, game on. And orc in a red dress. Promising beginning. =P

WoW Journal, Entry 56:
First kill-stuff quest. 10 Boars, coming right up.

WoW Journal, Entry 57:
No, BAD! You’re a caster, act like one!

WoW Journal, Entry 58:
Yay, level 2! 8D
Also, quest completed.

WoW Journal, Entry 59:
Level 3, hunting familiars.

WoW Journal, Entry 60:
I now have an Imp! 8D Love them minions!
Let’s see if I have any more skills to train, then back to questing.

WoW Journal, Entry 61:
No new skills, but I got some new clothes for Alcyone. Now she finally looks properly slutty. =P

WoW Journal, Entry 62:
The game crashed. O.o

WoW Journal, Entry 63:
Just a fluke, apparently. Level 4!

WoW Journal, Entry 64:
Crashed again?!

WoW Journal, Entry 65:
It’s been crashing a lot… O.o

WoW Journal, Entry 66:
Ah, connection is failing. Figures. I think I’ll give it some time to stabilize.

* * * * *
DAY FOUR
* * * * *

WoW Journal, Entry 67:
Damn it, forgot to write the journal!
Long story short, I took up Tailoring, put all the linen cloth bits I had kicking around to good use, manufactured an almost obscene amount of linen shirts, sold them for good profit, then took up Skinning and made a huge mess right outside Orgrimmar. Got to Level 10 in the process.

WoW Journal, Entry 68:
After repeated deaths and a few crashes due to streaming failures, I finally got my hands on the item for the first Voidwalker quest! Killing the floaty beastie was easy enough with help of the Imp, so now I have my very own personal tank!

WoW Journal, Entry 69:
Was running around, grinding my way to Level 11 and searching for Linen Cloth on harpies near Orgrimmar, when something funny happened. A Lvl 9 Undead Priest showed up and asked if I wanted to party up since he thought we were doing the same quest. I wasn’t doing any quests, but decided to help him out anyway. He’s pulling them with a ranged spell, I’m stacking 300hp worth of DoT on top of them, and my VW is tanking for us both.

WoW Journal, Entry 70:
Didn’t get much XP out of the whole enterprise, since his quest was to KILL the Harpies and we couldn’t party up due to be using Trial Accounts, but I’ll tell you this: it was the most fun I’ve had so far. Playing with someone with good grammar and common sense is priceless. Added the guy to my Friends list. Hopefully we’ll play again later.

* * * * *
DAY FIVE
* * * * *

WoW Journal, Entry 71:
I log back in and the harpy place is already being farmed by a bunch of hunters.

WoW Journal, Entry 72:
Went back to the city. Found this Ragefire Chasm place, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do here.

WoW Journal, Entry 73:
Okay, bored. Time to create a third character! 8D

WoW Journal, Entry 74:
Night Elf Rogue. More downloading screens. Fun, fun.

WoW Journal, Entry 75:
Level 4, on the way to 5 already. Using Energy instead of Mana is lots of fun!

WoW Journal, Entry 76:
Level 5. Lots of quests in the starting area. Plus it’s more or less enclosed, so it’s hard to get lost. The spider cave was also surprisingly easy to go through.

WoW Journal, Entry 77:
Okay, enough of Melee. Back to ranged characters, which is where I belong! 8D

WoW Journal, Entry 78:
Female Dwarven Hunter. Loading screens ahoy!

* * * * *

The rest, as they say, is history.

Both my Warrior and my Hunter are already fully decked-out with the top gear I could get outside of Raids (except for that damn Splintered Door of the Citadel… and the Orca-Hunter’s Harpoon), so I decided to feed my altoholism a little. I got my Rogue past level 40, leveled up my DK some more (until the rigidness of the Rune System turned me away again), then, as I looked at my character list, I realized I would have to face the Light again now Cataclysm is drawing closer.

The Paladin class is sort of a guilty pleasure of mine. I bash it, I poke fun at it, I scream it’s overpowered, but deep down I like it. As much as I enjoy the bouncing around and hearing delightful crunch of some undead minion getting its head caved in by my Shield, or as much as I like watching five shots in a row turn out to be crits and then hitting Feign Death to escape the mob’s wrath, I like what the Paladin class brings.

I like being able to heal myself, I like being durable, I like buffing people and rezzing them, and I like occasionally equipping a nice big two-hander and going to town on a field full of mobs. And dear Lord, I love Crusader Aura. Still, ever since Wrath of the Lich King arrived, there’s always been something in the corner of my head, annoying me constantly whenever I try to get my Pally leveled up. I guess it was probably the Great Retribution Boom of 2009, when everybody, their dogs and their mothers got themselves a Paladin. It felt like the class had somehow lost its luster.

Anyway! The Protection Warrior “rotation” is spastic and intense. Sometimes a little too much: there are points where you’re gasping for Global Cooldowns, and having to keep Heroic Strike or Cleave permanently queued doesn’t help, and I’m glad that last little bit is going away in Cataclysm. On the other hand, the Protection Paladin rotation is much more timed and deliberate, much like the Death Knight Rotation, except that my offensive abilities and defensive cooldowns don’t interfere with each other (and that’s a huge difference). It’s laid-back and slightly repetitive, but it does allow me to flex my fingers every now and then to stop my arm muscles from turning into a bundle of leathery cords.

So… I decided to ignore this nagging voice in the back of my head and keep leveling the Paladin and try to gear her up. Who knows, maybe it’ll click into place. I don’t mind changing mains.

Besides, Paladins are looking very nice in the Beta, after all! I like the new Holy Power dynamic.

Upon closer inspection, both classes are very similar in terms of rotational abilities:

• One main Nuke (Mind Flay/Shadow Bolt)
• One cooldown-based Nuke that you’ll want to keep on cooldown (Mind Blast/Haunt)
• One DoT with a cast time (Vampiric Touch/Unstable Affliction)
• One instant cast DoT that is refreshed by your main nuke (Shadow Word:Pain/Corruption)
• One instant cast DoT without interaction with other spells (Devouring Plague/Curse of Agony)

My question is… if the two are so similar why is playing the Shadow Priest so much more fun than the Affliction Warlock?!