Making Myself Useful

So....I've created a list of the blogs I've used when researching out the various classes, specs, skills, rotations, and other elements that help me (hopefully) not suck when playing any of the gazillion alts I have. I'd like to think that I'm a classic "jack of all classes, master of none" type - I doubt I will ever be the best Anything in WoW, but I'd like to think I become good enough at anything I play to at least not be a complete liability.

A few times in my WoW playing experience, I've had really good friends who were just - well, not very good at their class. (Ironically, they always seem to be warriors too - wonder why?) As their friend, and guildmate, I'd try to be available and help out when they needed. But it often wound up being a pretty painful experience...I know in the case of our real life friend, we tried giving suggestions, pointers, tips, and advice - all of which fell on utterly deaf and disinterested ears. So it became this awkward, difficult situation when any of these folks would look for groups - do you suck it up and go with the friend you want to support knowing it will take hours and hours and a ton of wipes and repair bills? Or do you suddenly have to log off and take the dog for a walk or run some errands you'd been putting off all evening?

If anyone ever figures out the best way to handle that situation, please let me know. I never have. But, what I did take away from it was that I never want to be that person, nor put my friends in that awkward and difficult role of thinking to themselves, "Well it's Nora, and I really like her, but man does she suck at tanking!" So - I guess that's my maxim for my Stable Full of Alts. I don't have to be the best, just.....I try really hard not to suck. :)

For me, the hardest part of going on groups like the above was always the lack of a learning curve. I'll be blunt - I'm pretty sure as of now, I suck pretty hard at warrior tanking. My sum total experience of it has been keeping adds off my husband's mage when we grouped together and leveled. Neither of us have done a lot of instancing at all, though at least as a ranged DPS, it's much easier for him to now get groups at 80. For my warrior though, I need practice because a lot of tanking (like many things in life) comes from practicing and practicing and practicing some more until you've really gotten your feet wet and seen what works - and doesn't - for your playstyle. In my case though, I'm always pushing myself to improve (through both practice and research) to the point where I'm at least a solid and reliable tank.

Since you can't always get four willing victims - I mean, friends - to go along on your "learning curve" instances, sometimes you have to find other means of working on your skills. And no, it's not always PuGging - I'm talking about research! The web can be a wonderful asset in coming up to speed on a new class or spec, and learning some basic skills and rotations. Now, with anything else on the interwebs, you can't take everything you read out there as truthful, good, quality information; some of it is incredibly solid, and some of it is utter garbage. You'll notice I have no warlock blogs I follow - mainly, because the "main" warlock site, The Warlock's Den, is (in my opinion) very spotty at best and full of questionable, if not outright bad, advice in many areas. I've run into a similar issue with elemental shaman blogs - there just don't seem to be many shaman blogs at all, and the one or two I've found are either woefully out of date or just really poor quality.

Please note, I'm generally only linking things that I play. My beloved uses Banana Shoulders when he's in the mood to look things up (though even moreso than I, he's 95% experiential in his learning and customization of how to be a holy paladin) - but I haven't linked it since I'm a pretty dreadful healer and don't see myself ever healing on a regular basis. (Yes, this is true across all classes - of them all, I probably fail least at shaman healing but I'm pretty terribad in all of them.)

I welcome additional links or blogs that I can post here! So if anyone has some other good blogs they follow about class mechanics, talent trees, rotations, theorycrafting, or anything else that helps break down the WoW class experience, please add in the comments or email me and I'll add it to the list.

Could it be, Patch 3.3?

Well, rumor has it (and by way of rumor, I mean WoW.com and my friend Elionene who will post updates in our guild forums) that patch 3.3 may hit next Tuesday.

I haven't figured out what that means for me and my playtime, per se. I know I'll definitely poke my head in - if it does hit on the 8th, that means I'll have almost three weeks of playtime before the account expires to check things and and get some heroics in. But it's tough to say - presumably if I do hop in, I'd be needing to do a fair bit of tanking (which I really do enjoy). Since my hubby's a healer, that keeps things easy on the healing front and it's always easy enough to pick up DPS - especially with the new dungeon grouping ability.

Unfortunately, my tanks are all a bit behind on the gearing curve. The worst of the bunch is my warrior, who I'd just gotten to 80 before I decided on a break. My druid isn't in terrible shape, but also certainly not fantastic shape - I'd been playing her primarily as balance, and only collecting the scraps of leather melee gear as I could when there weren't rogues or other people inclined to wear leather DPS gear. (Given the recent proliferation of DKs and fury warriors on our server, it was pretty rare for me to ever manage to get a piece of tanking leather since this overlaps with much of the DPS leather due to item standardization.) I could certainly dust off the paladin too I suppose - she's in the best shape of my tanks, but that also seems to be the class everyone else plays in our guild as a tank. Lack of diversity FTL!

For my own personal challenge sake, I'm leaning towards the druid or warrior. Druid since it's more likely I'd use her if I could go on a raid because it gives me a ranged DPS option. Warrior because really - that is the penultimate of tanking flexibility. But, druid tanking can be tricky, especially with my lack of hit and gear in my melee set, and my warrior is just miles below even the normal Icecrown 5 mans I bet. So we'll have to see.

Either way, my curiosity was definitely piqued when I heard about the patch coming out. I don't know that it's enough to draw me back in for the next six months, but I fully expect to log in some, check out the new instances and the new LFG interface, and maybe see if I can get my warrior in a bit more fighting shape for practice's sake.

(I suppose I should elaborate - since I'm not raiding right now, my purpose in playing toons is to delve into the mechanics and compare classes to each other in the hopes of settling on a class for Cataclysm. My desire to play my warrior and my druid is because I really haven't gotten to play or raid with either very extensively, whereas I got to do quite a bit with my paladin, mage, shaman, and warlock. Warrior in particular really has a lot of unique abilities within the protection spec that just require practice and time in the trenches to really master, and druid - while none of the specs themselves are particularly complicated, the fact that you have *four* specs - all of which are viable for playing - give that class its own level of complexity too. So that's what I'm hoping to explore this month.)

Catching My Breath for a Bit

I haven't been as good about posting updates lately. It's not that I've been too busy or distracted, it's more that I've had less and less to actually post *about* lately. You see, this blog is supposed to be, primarily, a place for me to chronicle my adventures in WoW and trying to find a place in this virtual world as a non-guild leader. I've written a lot about PuGs, working through some of my alts, and had a lot of fun as I've thought about things to write and chronicle.

It's just that lately, I haven't really been playing WoW. As in, at all. I think I haven't even logged in for a week - which is unusual for me. The truth is, I've actually canceled my account - I do have every intention of coming back of course, but it may not be until Cataclysm. I'd gotten to thinking about it when a couple guildmates were asking why I've stopped signing up for raids, and if I might start raiding again with 3.3. Initially I had planned to, though I wasn't sure as which toon....but the more and more I thought about it, I realized that the whole Arthas storyline just hasn't felt very compelling to me. Truth be told, I don't really even care about defeating him or seeing the new raid - I feel very "meh" about the whole thing. Not really sure why, but I do.

And when I realized that, well - it just seemed a little silly to keep paying for something I don't really care to do anymore, even if it is a relatively low cost thing. It's like paying to go see a movie and then deciding to go shopping instead. Why pay for something you don't intend to use?

I knew I did the right thing when, as soon as I hit the confirmation button on the Account Management screen, I just felt - light. It's hard to explain, really - but I felt this wonderful sense of something. Relief? Freedom? Excitement, even?



I need to start telling people, I suppose (those who haven't read here). In fact, I think a lot of people probably already have a hunch, given the fact I went from logging in daily to not logging in at all. And I do look forward to coming back someday - and hopefully I will have that same sense of excitement returning that I did hitting the cancel button. And thanks for Facebook and our internal guild forums, I'll be able to stay in touch with all of my fantastic guild friends too - and that will help, as well. I'd miss everyone otherwise!

But for me, it's time. Hopefully the time away will help me sort out some good toon ideas and concepts and mechanics, too!

Rhislayne, the Mercenary One

Since Rhislayne just dinged 80, I think it would be fitting to begin my character breakdown with a discussion of this toon. Of course, I'll have to add to it more as I begin tanking heroics and such with her. But for now, I'll fill in what I can about playing a warrior.

Rhis's concept came to be the way most things came to be for me - I picked something based on game requirements, and adapted a story to explain them. In this case, I had two factors for going with a night elf as my warrior - one, I didn't really have any active night elves at the time, and two I really do like the night elf fighting animation. As a tank, they look pretty cool - dodging attacks, weaving in and out. So I decided to make her a night elf; I know a lot of people have asked if I will change her to a dwarf now that race changes are live, but I'm not sure I will for the above reasons. Also I have to say - shadow meld is handy if the party wipes, since I'm also an engineer and can attempt a resurrection if I pull it off. This has only come up once, but it was still a neat trick!

I'm pretty confident I can rule out warrior as a main class though. While I actually like warrior a lot, I'm not sure that I like raiding as a melee DPS. In particular, I can't really think of a good case to argue for why we'd ever want to bring a melee warrior DPS to a raid in place of something else. Yes, they have a buff, but it's not a particularly spectacular one - plus, it has a ridiculously short timer on it, which means you need to remember to refresh it every 2-5 minutes depending on how you glyph. That's a *lot* to be thinking about, and it also means you're burning a GCD on refreshing a buff instead of DPSing. I've never found a fury warrior that isn't a raging idiot, so I have less than no desire to play that spec. Arms is a lot more fun, similar to a ret paladin in some ways. There's no set "rotation" (which tends to be a selling point in my book, under the "Keeps Me from Getting Bored" clause) - it's a lot of cooldown juggling and waiting for procs. That said, Arms DPS isn't balanced quite as well as it could be and I think there are much better classes for melee DPS - rogues, DKs, and enhancement shaman are all vastly superior options to a warrior DPS. So - that's not a great option.

Tanking, well - I haven't gotten to tank a lot of heroics yet, and I've never tanked a raid as a warrior. I'd like to try it at some point, but it's definitely a lot more to think about. For me, when I'm tanking I'm the opposite of DPS; in DPS, I *want* a lot to think about and juggle in terms of spells and rotations. As a tank, I'm the opposite - I've already got enough to think about worrying about loose mobs, kiting, making sure I'm holding aggro but not passing the main tank, etc and so forth; the last thing I want to do is add more to think about, juggle, and factor in. Warrior tanks have a vastly superior tool kit to bear tanks and paladins, no doubt about it. They have spell reflection, a series of interrupts, spell penetration abilities - it's really impressive. If I was on better terms with our existing main tank, I'd definitely encourage him to explore warrior tanking for the Cataclysm expansion, as I think he'd really like having the full customization and the vast array of options that a warrior tank has at their disposal. But well...maybe someone else will relay said thoughts, as it's unlikely we'll be sitting down for cappuccino and theorycrafting about tanking any time soon. =/

I'm not expecting to be a raid tank though, now or even in Cataclysm. We've already got 3 truly dedicated tank toons and one mostly dedicated, not counting me - so there's not really a lot of room there. Granted, not all of those may be around for Cataclysm, but I'm sure at least half will. Plus, I'm hoping that we may have the beginnings of a family of our own in the intervening time period, and from what I understand having guaranteed raid night availability is in conflict with having a minion. I love raiding and all but yeah - minion wins, hands down. :) So even if I wanted to be the main tank (or main off tank), I think it's a more reasonable and better-for-the-group decision to be available as a heroics tank but not demand a raid tank role.

This rules a warrior out as my main, which I'm fine with.

The dilemma for me is finding a class that meets all of my and my husband's needs, and that's a trick. Not only do I love tanking very much, but it seems like nine times out of ten, that's what he and I need for grouping. I still have some pretty vivid memories of when WotLK first hit and the frustrations we had at pretty much never getting instance groups because we couldn't find a tank. My husband's a dedicated healer, so we know he'll fill that role if he can, and DPS if we need something else. At the time we were leveling, we were behind the first group that hit 80 in the first week; neither of us are the kinds of people who can really play more than 6 hours at a stretch, so it took us a couple weeks to hit instead of a couple days. We could reliably find our friend Xavron looking for groups, and our friend Giraud - both DPS, warlock and mage respectively. So that was four - three DPS, and a healer. But every time we'd have a group and try to get an instance run in, no tanks to be found. Invariably, the people we knew who ere tanks were either offline, or only wanting to run heroics by then and not interested in running level 73 instances. I remember how incredibly frustrated we got - Ehr logged off in a temper on quite a few occasions he was so angry about the situation. It took him months before he was able to actually see all of the instances, and in many cases his first view of them was in heroics (unlike me, he does not care to PuG).

So that's one of my big priorities in terms of settling on a main for Cataclysm. I don't want to focus exclusively on raiding needs, but also what Ehr and I have as our regular, run-of-the-mill day-to-day needs too. And that has, at least for the last year or so now, typically been a tank.

If only there was some sort of hero warrior/archer class! Then I could tank when I wanted to tank (heroics for hubby and I or others in need), and ranged DPS in our raids. So far, there's only one class that can provide both ranged DPS and tanking, which is what I'm looking at for Cataclysm. But, I may be able to get some more opportunities to try the melee DPS front and see how that fares, too.

One other thing I've learned through playing this character that has nothing to do with the class: mining/engineering is, without question in my mind, the most useful profession combination for the long-term. It isn't a min/max combo to give the highest DPS possible in raids, but it's incredibly useful for farming ore and elemental goods! So whatever I decide on for a main, pretty sure I will make them a miner/engineer.

The Many Faces of Me

I have to confess, been a bit of a slacker in terms of updates lately. I haven't meant to be - just been enjoying a much needed breather from WoW for a bit. I think while I'm on break and waiting patch 3.3, I can update a bit about the various aspects and toons I play - and hopefully be able to make some informed decisions about which will become my main once Cataclysm hits.

Today I will add The List, and then from there can add a separate post for each.

The List of Alts (in order of creation, no less!)

* Shinorah, my original and very first toon. Human mage, languishing at 71. I haven't liked mage in a long time - the problem is, my playstyle just isn't compatible with the class. I'll start at ranged, but just stay there even when the monsters close. Apparently you're supposed to do things like - frost nova, blink, AoE. You know, avoid getting hit. Needless to say, I died leveling as a mage. A LOT. As in, 4 times per hour on average. It led to a lot of profanity and frustration on my part. The only reason I even leveled the toon to max level in BC is because she was my original and a guild leader, which meant she was recognizable and I kinda needed to have her around. Otherwise, she'd never have gotten past 43.

* Ixallare, my second toon - draenei elemental shaman, collecting dust at 80. This was my second toon ever, and honestly if it weren't for the fact I'd founded the guild as Shinorah, would probably have been my first 70. But I've always loved the playstyle (and survivability) of shaman far more than mage.

* Liadhan (nee Ellestriel) - 80 night elf druid. I love playing a druid at 80. I hate leveling a druid though! So this poor girl sat at 28 for about a year and a half before the free levels from Recruit-a-Friend allowed me to get her to 60. Then I just instanced my way as a healer through Outlands, and had my best friend's Death Knight drag me to quest with him through Northrend. She's probably my favorite character mechanics-wise right now, though I'm not a huge fan of night elf RP and lore. Changed her name when I used her briefly as a stealth character - I didn't like how puffy her lips looked on the toon when I started playing again, so I did a toon redesign and took the opportunity to pick a more unique name for her. (Our guild has an Allundriel, Ellyndrial, and Elenistyar - and trust me, Allundriel, Ellyndrial, and Ellestriel are impossible to tell apart in vent name-wise!)

* Angharrad, 80 dwarf protection paladin. She's been my main for at least half of WotLK, and I really miss her. I love RPing a dwarf, I like their walk best of all of the races in game, and it's really cool playing something so unusual. (You *never* see dwarven females in WoW.) I switched her main spec to retribution so I could get to raid with my hubby Ehrengar, and the toon hasn't been the same since. :( Sad but true, the girl's a tank at heart, and I haven't enjoyed her anywhere near as much since switching her to ret. I should do something about that...

* Shinnorah, the warlock version I rolled so that I could keep the character concept I love but not swear a blue streak every time I'd go out questing (which, in my case, means dying. A lot.) Amazing what a pet does for survivability! She's officially my current main, and it is fun RPing her. Unfortunately, warlock raiding is remarkably like mage in terms of rotation - it's very static, with little that changes between any given fight. I tend to like having to change what I do based on situation, which is why I love tanking I think.

* Rhislayne, recently dinged 80 night elf protection warrior. This is the only night elf I've ever actually enjoyed RPing - probably because I play her as someone who turned her back on what it means to be a night elf. She lives in Tanaris, drinking with goblins, carousing, and otherwise being a mercenary. I'm really looking forward to getting to try tanking some instances with her - I've done the tank thing extensively as a paladin, a bit as a druid, and I will say - warriors *definitely* have a very full toolbox in terms of tanking abilities. Now I just need to figure out what to do with them all!

* Lokhna, 60 orc beastmaster hunter. I'd originally rolled this up as a hunter version of Ix, but haven't played her since my RAF time ran out over a year ago. Last Monday, I transferred her over to Horde so I can try leveling and experiencing the Horde lore through Outlands and Northrend. So far, the Hellfire quests for Horde are remarkably similar to the Alliance ones. *yawn*

* Angharradh, 60 dwarven shadow priest (and current bank alt). Yeah I know - leave it to me to have a level 60 bank alt with maxxed out professions for her level. I might actually work on her a little bit once 3.3 hits, since they're adding a bunch of really nice buffs for shadow priests. Oddly enough, even in spite of the WoW quiz that tells me priest should be my favorite class, I've really never had a desire to play one. I only have this one at 60 because I rolled her as a healbot for my hunter and put her on auto-follow. Two 60s for the price and effort of one!

My Guilty PuG Pleasure

I have a combination of characters I play - the majority are in my guild, , but I have two others; one is a semi-stealth alt that's unguilded, and another is a deep stealth alt that I use for 25man raiding. Most of the time, I play my guilded toons - it's where my friends are, and I get awfully lonely playing the other two. But sometimes, either when I'm sick (like now), or just in the mood to be antisocial, I'll dust off one of my other two toons and get in on some PuG grouping action.

This is when the fun can occur!

You see, one of the fun side effects of random encounters in a PuG is, well....I confess, it's a bit of voyeurism. Sometimes you wind up in a group with folks where you know them, but because you're on a stealth toon, they don't know you.

I've had this come up twice over the last couple weeks - once being in a PuG of a guild we'd formerly worked closely with, and the second was being in a PuG with one of our own newer recruits. Both are interesting to observe from an "outsider's perspective".

As an officer, getting the opportunity to stealth-group with our members is something I always relished. You see - I knew, as guild leader, that folks are usually on their "best behavior" when I'm around, trying to make sure everything's A-ok for the boss lady. But well - what are folks like when you're not around, right? I think it's a testament to our recruiting that, for the most part, most of our members act the same way in PuGs as I've seen them behave in guild runs. They are, by and large, polite, respectful, listen to directions, and generally the kind of folks you'd invite back. Every once in a while I'll be a little embarrassed - typically when I see someone bearing our guild tag running around in circles and bouncing like a ten-year-old - but fortunately that's not the norm. Anyway this past week I was in a PuG with one of our newer members, so I got the opportunity to do a bit of stealth-scouting in action! Of course, given that *I* am not an officer anymore, I'm not sure how helpful my observations are...but at least I can still enjoy them.

The week prior, I was invited to DPS a semi-PuG 10m ToC run by a name I didn't recognize. I said sure, and in fact was a bit excited by the fact that the person asking appeared to be a roleplayer. Woot! Well, imagine my surprise when I accept the summons and find an entire raid full of people that err...ah....well, we didn't end on terribly good terms with. (I still don't entirely know why, but well - sometimes drama just isn't worth seeking out. Something about letting sleeping dogs lie and all.)

Well, since I'm on a toon I know then won't recognize, I decided to go along and see how it went. And well - I needed the emblems. >.> I'd figured it would be a fairly smooth run, as I remember the players being fairly skilled. Turns out it wasn't - I have no idea what was so off. The players seemed like they should have been geared enough, in Burning Crusade they were skilled enough....but wowza.

The other good thing about being on a non-guilded toon? If you decide you've had enough and bail on the PuG, it won't reflect badly on your guild. ;)

Run a PuG, Get a Pug!!

The details are still a bit vague, but as of Patch 3.3, you'll have a chance of getting this adorable little fellow by using Blizzard's new Random Dungeon Interfact. And really - if this isn't incentive to get you to try something new, exciting, and possibly hazardous to your health, well - what is?