A Noob’s Journal
So, while recovering from the massive bruises to my ego (Warrior tanking feels painful in the threat department), I’ve found a little journal I started writing the moment I finished downloading the trial client.
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.
Dr. StrangeLight
(Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Class)
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.
DoTs vs DoTs
Short and Sweet: I have both a Shadow Priest and an Affliction Warlock.
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?!
Volley gone, good riddance!
And so Ghostcrawler has confirmed it: Volley is currently out of Cataclysm.
Suddenly, I feel my current cold is a blessing in disguise. For it allows me to do this:
/phlegm
/spitoncorpse
Thank you very much, Blizzard. Volley has never fit the Hunter class in terms of theme or gameplay. A non-magical class (Arcane Shot notwithstanding) shooting a gun towards the enemy and having arrows dropping from the sky over a wide area? Makes less sense than Multi-Shot giving you three shots per trigger or string pull. And as for gameplay, it forced Hunters to stand still and not do anything besides spam it for 90% of the dungeon, plus it had that extremely annoying targeting bug that canceled Volley randomly while still spending the Mana for it!
With Volley now out of the way, Multi-Shot will have a use once more. Maybe Explosive Trap will finally do damage. With some luck we’ll get a Multi-Shot more in line with Swipe and Fan of Knives: a single attack that hits all enemies in an area. Call it splinter-shot or something. Since we’re ranged, I don’t mind needing a target for that (so all enemies around our target take damage), or having a short cast time comparable to Steady Shot. Barring that, I’d still be happy to be using an actual shot instead of a channeled, buggy spell with an incongruous visual effect, even if my AoE damage is lower. Call it a quality of life and consistency change.
Now excuse me a second while I dance some more on Volley’s grave, then go get an expectorant.
/dance
Player Characters
Story time, everybody!
Imagine this situation: reasonably powerful player characters are handed an Indestructible Mystical Gem. This gem seems completely innocuous, but eventually they learn that in two days it will spread a plague upon the land that will generally just inconvenience everybody a lot. It won’t kill anybody, it will just make life pretty uncomfortable to anyone who catches any other disease. All in all, annoying but not exactly life-changing to anyone.
The PCs find a way to go to the Outlands, have a chat with a Naaru, and discover that the Indestructible Mystical Gem is in fact a Burning Legion artifact and the only way of it is to:
- Find a way to go to a Burning Legion world.
- Capture a Dreadlord alive.
- Bring the Dreadlord back to the Outlands in the presence of the Naaru.
- Make the Dreadlord eat the Indestructible Mystical Gem while the priests and the Naaru perform the appropriate ritual.
- Once the ritual is complete, they must then dispatch the Dreadlord with extreme prejudice so it goes back to the Legion world the PCs snatched it from and destroys the Indestructible Mystical Gem.
- Once the Indestructible Mystical Gem is destroyed, anyone affected by its disease is automatically healed.
It is obviously a very difficult task for your average group. The Naaru also (foolishly) reveals that this disease does not spread through walls: it can be contained until they’re ready to destroy it. So, what will the player characters do?
Note to Whoever Programmed the WoW Installer!
I think we can afford to download a couple extra megabytes just so we can listen to something other than the same short loop repeated over and over and over. Give us more songs to listen to! You have a whole soundtrack to work with, come on!
Either that or give us a mute button or volume control. It’s annoying to have it suddenly jolt through your speakers every time you want to check your progress.
