An Experimentalist's Survival Guide

Back in prehistory when I attended university, I got my Bachelor's Degree in Physics. While most of the undergraduate curriculum was already defined for a Physics major, there were just enough electives that you could pursue a few classes that you were really interested in. Based on what you liked --and whether you kind of liked working in a lab or not-- an undergrad was lumped into two classifications: theorists and experimentalists. The experimentalists performed laboratory experiments, while the theorists stretched the Mathematics behind Physics as far as it could go. 

I was definitely in with the experimentalists, as I enjoyed --and still enjoy-- puttering around and testing hypotheses. My deck project highlighted that I'm decent enough with my hands and working through issues on the fly that if I hadn't burned out on Physics* I would probably be slaving away in a basement lab** somewhere. 

During my time at UD, I learned how to think critically and how to attack a problem. Sure, it's nice to have resources, but back then Internet access was pretty minimal so if you didn't have all of the resources right in front of you, well... You had to puzzle a lot of it out on your own.***

You can see where this is going, can't you?

Sorry, no cheat sheets allowed for the exam.
Yes, this is Wowhead, as of 12/3/2024.

Yes, between my training, my inherited stubborn streak, and my revulsion at the widespread acceptance at turning a game into a mathematical exercise****, I try to figure things out myself. 

There are exceptions to the rule, obviously, such as when I joined Valhalla's raid team in 2020, but I want to learn to play a game by actually playing the game and learning the rules provided (either in-game or in a rules manual). People who love to say that Wowhead or Icy Veins is the manual for playing are missing the point: just because a game company farmed out some of this stuff to a third party provider doesn't mean that you shouldn't be able to figure it out yourself. 

And with the new Classic Fresh release, I have been taking my time to do just that.

***

Of the nine original Classic classes, I've played five of them: Mage, Paladin, Rogue, Shaman, and Warlock. Three of them, Paladin, Shaman, and Warlock, I've never played in Vanilla Classic past L20, but I am familiar enough with how they play in later expansions that I have a (somewhat) basic understanding of them.*****

Others, such as the Warrior, not so much.

Better get used to visiting dwarves, I suppose.

I thought I knew how a Warrior played until I actually started playing one. Then I quickly discovered just how much that basic attack meant to a Warrior: it builds up rage, which the Warrior can then spend for a variety of different abilities.

It's been a while since I played a class that behaved that way, so once I got used to the concept I began to work on how to play it efficiently. Build up rage, throw on a DoT, then build up rage for other buffs/attacks.

It was at that point that I discovered the next issue with playing a Warrior in Vanilla Classic: timing your attacks. 

I began bitching about the weirdness surrounding Heroic Strike when I went to use that attack. There were times when it would attack very quickly, and others where I sat waiting for a few seconds for the attack to land. 

"What the hell is going on?" I muttered more than once, mindful that my wife was sleeping upstairs. I checked my connection, but my latency held steady and internet speed was still good. I did a quick search as to whether the Classic Fresh servers were buggy, but no dice there for my specific problem.#

I just learned to live with it until about L8 when I finally realized what was going on: it had everything to do with timing. If you time your attack right then there's no delay at all. 

So THAT's why swing timer addons are so popular.

I then proceeded to get flashbacks from my time as an Enhancement Shaman and shuddered. I wasn't going to go down that route if I could help it, so I decided that if I was going to be serious about leveling as many alts as I am, I was going to have to just develop the necessary feel in-game to play a Warrior right. That also meant I wasn't going to take that alt into any instances, because when you see a Warrior in Vanilla Classic, you immediately think "Oh, there's a Tank."

And I ain't tanking. Too much stress involved; that's one job where you absolutely need confidence to do it right, and I don't have the confidence. There's also that trust you have to have in other people to keep you alive (and not pull threat), and let's just say I've got issues there too.##

***

Warriors aside, the basics of attacks and whatnot are pretty self-explanatory. What I've been surprised the most about, however, are the class-related quests and stories. 

I didn't know this NPC existed.

While the class stories don't come even close to the level of detail found in SWTOR --still the gold standard for class stories in MMOs, IMHO-- they are unique enough that I really enjoy their presence.

These were NPCs that I either didn't know existed --like the Bear Spirit (above) for the Druid class quest-- or I never paid attention to them. Yes, yes, I know the cardinal rule of NPCs in a video game is that if they have a name then they likely have a quest or something associated with them, but just what was associated with them was an unknown until I began playing more classes.

The class quests in WoW Classic range from the snarky...

To the earnest...

To the annoyingly mysterious...

While a lot of class quests are 'go there to see person X' and said person gives you a new ability, others actually want you to perform a task before they grant you the ability, such as the Human Warlock having to go 'rescue' a book coveted by your Class Trainer that the Defias had stolen.

All in all, these class quests aren't a lot of effort (so far), but they do provide flavor to Classic WoW that Retail WoW has lost.

***

Just about all of the alts I've created that I intend to level at this time are at L10 (with a straggler or two a couple of levels short), and most of those toons don't even have their major class abilities yet. What does happen at L10 is that the talent trees unlock, and I've found myself swamped by an unexpected desire to get it 'right'. You know, pick the 'right' talents to play the class 'properly'. Or select the right 'pet' for my Hunter.### 

I have resisted that siren song so far, but my desire to explore and experiment on my own wars with my desire to research a thing to death. And being a 'solved game', WoW has tons of that out there floating around that I am deliberately refusing to use this time around. (See Figure 1.)

This won't bring back 2004, but it will allow me to internalize my learnings better than following a guide or reading the contents of a Discord channel. And the one thing it will absolutely do is slow down my leveling process. I realize it's about to slow down the next five levels, and once I hit L20 the brakes will come on even harder, but exploring and learning will allow me to fight FOMO that much better.

I think I found my Holiday shirt.
From Amazon UK.

*And had the confidence to believe in myself. There, I said it. I've been carrying those doubts around since my first semester at UD, because I learned very quickly that unless I got my ass in gear I was going to wash out. "You know nothing, Jon Snow," could have been my mantra if A Song of Ice and Fire were around back then.

**Yes, the Physics Professors' labs were always in the basement of Sherman Hall. It might have been due to the weight of the equipment, but given that the Engineering building had labs all throughout the place, I think it was just because the building was designed primarily for teaching students rather than professors' research.

***Or wait for a week or two for the referenced article to arrive via interlibrary loan. If you thought Fed Ex is expensive now, back then it was so cost prohibitive you could just about forget about using it if you were a student.

****I remember people joking in boardgame circles back in the 90s and 00s that Mathematicians would play Reiner Knizia's boardgames for fun when they came home from work. Reiner was (in)famous for creating a boardgame with a mathematical premise and a theme that was pasted on to a greater or lesser degree. Nowadays, it wouldn't shock me if they played WoW instead.

*****That's all relative: the Paladin got a makeover in TBC, the three versions of the Shaman play radically different from each other, and I cut my teeth on a Warlock strictly through PvP in Catalcysm, which is very different than its Vanilla incarnation.

#There are issues with Friends lists not updating, but I don't know whether it's WoW itself or some interference with the addons I have. Just a note that the only "social" addon I do have installed is Total RP3, which doesn't really interact with Friends lists.

##It's several stories from my youth, and nobody wants to hear them now, except maybe a therapist.

###Somebody asked in Teldrassil's Gen Chat "Which Hunter's Pet is the best?", to which people said "Go to Petopia". Forget opinions, go to The Source and follow that.

Hope Comes in Many Forms

(This is a rare occasion, where I inserted a jump break to keep this post from overwhelming the main page of the blog. Just wanted to warn you ahead of time.)

 

One of the things on my bucket list for WoW Classic was to experience the class quests as they were originally intended: to provide a unique flavor to each class. I realized that some classes had it better than others, such as the Priest and Hunter class quests being superior to the Rogue class quests*, but I was fine with that. I just wanted to see how things were before Cataclysm destroyed all of the unique little quirks that made the Old World so good.

I realize that the Mage quests don't have the same level of interest of some of these other class quests, but the biggest challenge is trying to do them at level on an underpowered Mage for the zone you're in, heading into the swamps beyond Theramore and Brackenwall Village searching for Tabetha's Hut**. That challenge makes the exploration portion of the game shine, but as in just about every other aspect of pre-Cataclysm WoW addons take out all of the guesswork and fun in a search in the unknown. If you do it as Blizz intended, a lot of these quests are more challenging than they seem in a meta created and addon filled (aka Questie) environment.***

"...says the person who DIDN'T get
struck by lightning..."

Another metagame issue that impacts whether people do the class quests is "Are the class quest rewards any good?"

Yes, even I use seventyupgrades.com (and its predecessor, sixtyupgrades.com) to determine if my rewards are decent or not for the quest I finished. But the difference in my usage versus others' is that I don't plan my questing based on upgrades; I just quest, and if it works out that I can get an upgrade, great. If not, I'm not gonna bitch that I should have done some other quest that yielded a better item.

The class quests I just do, because they're class quests. They represent a big part of why I play WoW Classic and not Retail: I want the flavor of Azeroth without it being beaten into me by a system designed to get me to Endgame as quickly as possible. The class quests are --by their nature-- unique and not a part of a zone story or anything of that sort. I choose to do these quests for the same reasons why I play the way I play, even though it costs me time to do so****, because I'm not doing any Endgame more complex than Kara right now. And probably won't for the conceivable future unless a friend's Saturday Night SSC runs start up.*****

***

Okay, with that as the prologue, you probably know where this is going.

 

Clothes Make the Mage

One thing about class quests in WoW Classic is that each class has a different focus. For Warlocks, it's all about the demons and the power they bring. For Rogues, it's about how to use your abilities to not get killed in the field. And for Mages, it's about acquiring the trappings of power: your gear.

That's not to say that Mages are stuck using gear they're given in these class quests, but they represent the maturation process of the Mage. As you grow in level --and stature-- the class quests become the equivalent of exams.

For example, your first class quest is the equivalent of getting your entrance papers in order: you show up with the letter, and you're in.

Then there's the basic "gofer" test to prove you can follow directions and not ask too many questions*, which gives you your first "real" staff.

The next quest (~L15) is the "go investigate" quest, showing you have basic mastery of your abilities, and you are rewarded with a "real" Mage robe. Right about here, this quest presents you with an item that easily identifies you to all around that you're a Mage; so you've "joined the club" and are no loner a Mage-in-training. It doesn't carry any real weight to others who are Mages, but to the general populace it provides an "ooooo" moment. Such as when you finally graduate from basic training in the military and you get your first dress uniform.

After that, you don't get any new class quests until about 10 levels or so later, which is when you're sent on another fetch and carry quest, but this time it's considerably more dangerous. You could potentially solo it, but this is more of a "social" test for the Mage: you have to put a group together to go achieve the fetch and carry, and since a Mage has high social standing, you have to demonstrate that you can navigate the complex social life in Azeroth.** Your reward for this is a better set of robes, but you have to assist in getting them tailored. You've moved up the food chain to no longer being a 1st or 2nd Year Mage, but rather a 3rd Year Mage.

At least she's no longer a Freshman.

And now Cardwyn has just reached the next round of respectability, as she just received the Class Quest for a wand.

Of course, that quest means that she has to travel to Dustwallow Marsh and hunt for a Human Witch out in the swamp.

At L30.

There's a reason why this quest shows up as beet red in the quest log, because you'd have to have a full group to run through Dustwallow Marsh at L30, and even then you're all likely to wipe once you go south past the fork in the road that heads to the Barrens.

It's not that a Mage hasn't stumbled across a wand or three out in the wild, but this is a Class wand, which may not be the most powerful wand available to you, but is another social cue to others in the profession.

***

You know, it's kind of strange to approach the class quests like this, because until I started writing about Cardwyn's journey, I never really noticed these details. I certainly remember Quintalan's two biggest class quests, which involved him learning how to Rez people (~L20) and obtain his Blood Knight Tabard (~L60). The quests involving the Blood Knight Tabard left a bitter taste in my mouth, as so much of that questline was driven by revenge against the Alliance for abandoning Quel'Thalas in the Third War.

That being said, I don't recall much of Neve's leveling process --and corresponding class quests-- because she was still at a fairly low level when Cataclysm dropped and removed all of the class quests. (The same with Tomakan, my Draenei Paladin.)

With the benefit of hindsight, however, these Mage class quests --while optional-- provide flavor that was lost when WoW streamlined leveling/questing with Cataclysm and subsequent expacs. I've a similar experience now that I've been playing in a D&D 1e campaign the past year or two***. While newer versions of D&D have a better grasp of various actions, there's something about the quirkiness surrounding 1e that was lost in 3e and 4e, which helps to explain the popularity of the "return to basics" that D&D 5e espouses.**** When everything becomes a mechanic, you tend to look at actions in strictly a "gaming the system" fashion. But D&D 1e, like WoW Classic, there are quests and options and other things that aren't there strictly to propel the plot forward, but reflect your toon's interaction and status within Azeroth itself.

I guess an argument could be made that Classic was far more open world than subsequent iterations of WoW, and as the mini-Reds would put it, "You're not wrong".

Now if you're excuse me, I'm going to let Cardwyn contemplate her place in the universe while I go work on some fishing and crafting with Az. I've finally decided that she does need a mount sooner rather than later.





*For Alliance toons in Stormwind, it's the "get the vial filled" quest.

**Okay, it's not that hard to get a group together for the quest --at least in the Redridge Mountains version-- but you still have to be social enough to pull the group together. The more I play Classic, the more I realize that because I post in LookingForGroup and Trade Chat, I'm the one who frequently gets the job of putting a group together. There are a lot of people out there who simply passively watch and not get actively involved in the social aspect of putting a group together.

***We just finished the Slave Lords modules (A1-A4), and are starting in on the Against the Giants modules (G1-G3).

****That's not the only reason, by far, but it is one that has captured the interest in long time players such as myself.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love those OP Classes

You don't know how much you'll miss something until it's gone.

Yes, it's cliche --and also the subject of an 80's power ballad by Cinderella-- but it's also quite true.

In this case, the something I missed was internet access.  On this past Saturday, we lost our internet connection, which didn't get restored until a few hours ago.  No, this wasn't due to any natural disaster, but to MAC address problems between our DSL modem and our ISP.

Not counting the occasional vacation, that was probably the longest time I've been without internet access in about 20 years.*

In the Internet era, we've become used to permanent online access, and we reduce ourselves to complaining about First World problems when we don't have it.  But really, is it all that bad?

No, not at all.**

This kind of dovetails right into a favorite complaint of MMO players, right after "I'm bored!" and "[Pick a faction] sucks!":  "[Pick a class] is over/underpowered!"

You can't enter into a battleground or read Gen Chat without someone making an observation that "Monks are SOOOO OP right now" or "Damn, Warriors are BEASTS!"***  I've been as guilty as the rest, since I saw how Locks got revamped compared to their Cataclysm incarnation, but I don't spend my BG time complaining about which class is the "favored class" right now.  Others, however, live for that sort of thing.

There's an entire cottage industry built around maximizing classes and specs for raiding and PvP, so it's not surprising that people complain when they feel that a spec has gotten some unfair love or hate from the Devs.  But really, is it that big of a deal?  Unless your toon is being picked on by the OP ones, is this really that much of a problem that it requires a Dev to get out the nerfbat?  Is absolute class equality the goal?

While a nice idea, I don't think class equality should be an overarching design goal.  You can lose sight of the overall game while trying to make everything equal for everybody.  I realize that a basic tenet of Blizzard's raid design philosophy is "bring the player, not the class", but the reality is that people will bring a specific class for a specific raid boss mechanic.  That can't be avoided.  Likewise, a BG/arena team will look for specific specs/classes, because they bring the best chance at survival.  Tweaking things to promote class balance is tricky, and doesn't necessarily work to encourage more classes to take over specific roles.

I'm reminded of pencil-and-paper RPGs, with the common complaint in D&D 3.x (and it's successor Pathfinder) is that the spell casters are overpowered in high level campaigns.  Well, Wizards of the Coast decided to "fix" that in D&D 4e, to the point of having constant tweaks to different classes via the D&D Insider subscriptions.  I was unaware as to just how much tweaking Wizards had done until I signed up for DDI.  Much to my surprise, Wizards had tweaked classes to the point where they'd even gone and changed the names of some of the basic classes just to make them sound more in tune with newer class names.  Gone was the Cleric, in its place was the Templar.  That, to me, seems to be taking things a wee bit too far.

While MMOs haven't gone down that route just yet, it seems that temptation is there.  After all, look at the wholesale changes to talents that each new WoW expac brings to the table.  To say that the Mists version of WoW's toons bears only superficial resemblance to the Vanilla WoW version is probably an understatement.  The classes act in a similar manner, but almost everything under the hood is different.

But why worry about it too much?  Is that particular Feral Druid that's dancing around you, firing off heals, the source of your annoyance?  Or is it the class?  Odds are good that we'll hear people say it's the class, when it really is the player.

So maybe it's time to be more specific, that it is a player you're complaining about, not the class.





*That includes several days without power due to Hurricane Ike back in 2008.

**I was perfectly fine, thank-you-very-much, but the lack of internet meant that we had to periodically go to a free WiFi location to check to make sure there weren't any school/work e-mails that required addressing.

***That warriors crack covers both WoW and TOR:  the WoW Warrior and the TOR Sith Warrior.

The Curse of Redbeard Strikes Again!

You'd think that I'd have learned by now.

I start a toon, and that toon's class and/or spec gets nerfed.

It happened with Ret (although it took Cata dropping for it to finally get there).  It happened with Frost (again, Cata's release was the kicker).  It happened with Locks, too.

And now it's happened with Rogues.

You don't notice that Rogues got nerfed a bit in Mists until you get higher up in level, around the 30s.  That's when a lot of other toons start to get new abilities.  Or their existing abilities take a big leap in utility.

Like, say, those damn Wild Imps.

Back in my day, when I leveled Adelwulf, we didn't have no stinking Wild Imps.  We Warlocks took our lumps from every other class, and we LIKED it!  And we walked to school barefoot, too!  Uphill!  Both ways!!

It's more than a bit disconcerting that in the L30s BGs you can suddenly find yourself fighting 4-5 on 1 due to those Wild Imps.  Couple that with some improved AI on the succubus and the Lock is no longer the butt end of the BG spectrum like it was in Cata.  In fact, if you put two Demonology Locks together and add one healer, you can pin an entire bunch of people down at the entrance in Arathi Basin.

A Rogue's ability is designed for maximum damage close in, sacrificing armor for speed.  If the Rogue fails to kill the enemy quickly, then they're a sitting duck.  In the L30s in Mists, what ends up happening is that those other classes take a big leap forward in survivability, whereas the Rogue's corresponding damage output levels off.  This results in the Rogue being unable to pick on even the stragglers in a BG if they're of comparable level to the Rogue.

And you can forget about a healer.  A Rogue simply doesn't have enough stuns to take out a healer of comparable level in the L30s.

***

From where I stand watching BGs in the mid-30s, the Feral Druid still rules the roost.  The Disco Priest has fallen back a bit, and has been replaced by the Mistweaver Monk and Demonology Warlock.  Warriors have gotten their mojo back a bit, and two warriors together can handle a group of 4-5 DPS.  What I've found surprising is that Frost Mages have made a comeback of sorts.  Back in Cata you had Fire and Arcane making inroads into BGs based upon their higher damage output, but it seems that in Mists that Frost has reasserted itself as the Mage PvP spec once more.  As a (retired) Frost Mage player, it's nice to see the spec doing well.  As a (current) Rogue player, however, they're harder to take down than before.

Paladins seem to have made a bit of a recovery from their easy pickings of the L20s, but they still trail Warriors in survivability.  Ret still has the aftereffect from Cata's overhaul; the lack of decent emergency healing seems to hamper Ret more than anything else.  Being a (retired) Ret player, I've noticed that the major Paladin failing in L30s Mists has nothing to do with the class, but with the player type.  Pallies are more prone to charging in alone than any other class, save perhaps the Warrior, but without the Warrior's survivability.  I call it the Sir Lancelot Syndrome*, which is an offshoot of how Pallies can simply plow through mobs in most other circumstances.  It feeds a belief in invincibility, and encourages the "Follow me!  Chaaaarge!" sort of behavior.

I was guilty of SLS as much as anyone else.  I'm sure the gleaming armor and "Servant of the Light" didn't help, but I knew that even the Holy Spec wasn't as squishy as most classes, so it only made sense to wade into the thick of the fight.  Additionally, in a game like AB where one player can gum up the works and divert 4-5 people away from trying to take another base, it's only natural that a class that can take a beating would be the one to storm the beachhead.  In my hubris, I also figured that if I led by example, others would follow.  Naturally, a few years of playing BGs has beaten that idea out of me, but I still backslide from time to time.

***

Warsong Gulch is one of those BGs where your opinion of it is entirely shaped upon how well your side does in it.  You can top the meters day after day, but if your side doesn't win, you start to get bitter.**  I recognized that in myself in the most recent losing streak I've been in, as it was an echo of my time leveling Adelwulf.  There was this long period from L20 through L40 where my Lock could count on one paw the number of victories in WSG.  My Rogue found the BG much better --winning about half of the time will do that to a person-- but this current losing streak can wear on a psyche.

When you port in and you see half of the other side is a healer of some sort, you know you're in trouble.  The backbiting starts before even the first flag is captured, and the cries of "we ALWAYS suck!" fill the air.  Players drop like flies, and people who replace them look around, declare "What a fail group!" and drop themselves.

It's enough to make a body back up, go out into a zone, and work on a gathering skill for a while.

Or maybe visit the Darkmoon Faire.

But WSG is still lurking there, like Lucy and her football, hoping to get the Charlie Brown of BG players back in for another go.  "Surely it can't be that bad," you say to yourself.

"Yes it can," the pessimistic side of you retorts, "and don't call me Shirley."

"But maybe it's different this time."

"You said that the last time.  And the time before that.  And...."

"You know, when you talk to yourself, that's when you realize you're a bit off your rocker."

"So you're coming around to my way of thinking.  Good job!"

Maybe I ought to give WSG another try.  This streak has got to end sometime.  After all, even Manchester City won the Premier League last year.



*SLS makes a catchy acronym, you know.

**And your XP moves forward at a snail's pace.

Some Friday Humor

I'd always liked the Downfall parodies on YouTube, and was disappointed that they got yanked. Well, it seems that they're back, and better than ever. This particular one hits kind of close to home, since I play several Pallys as well as starting up a Warlock.  Be warned, there's some strong language, but nothing that you haven't heard in the heat of battle before.

Coming to Terms With My Outer Darkness

As has been well documented, I play several Paladins.  You know, the Goody Two Shoes of the WoW world.*  While the other ostensibly "good" class that draws power from Holy Light --the Priest-- has a Shadow Spec, the Paladin is free of any direct taint of Darkness.  They are the rigidly Lawful Good characters who embody what Roland, Saladin, and Perceval strove for.**  Not only pure of heart and mind, but able to kick some serious ass.

And they're also cloying.  The constant preaching of the Argent Crusade and from those who hang out in the Cathedral of Light can be grating on people.  Paladins have a reputation of being the sort of person that would stand side-by-side with you in a fight, but are too self-righteous to go hang with you at the World's End Tavern afterward.

So naturally it follows that I've started a Warlock toon.

If you thought that Paladins were on the uber-good end of the class listing, Warlocks have to be on the opposite end of the spectrum.  Whereas the Death Knight's intro story pretty much sets up their redemption at the Battle of Light's Hope Chapel, there isn't anything so warm and fuzzy about a class that revels in wielding "true power" and "secret knowledge".

The entire concept of the Warlock as a playable class kind of flies in the face of the current World of Warcraft setting.  With Guldan and the Shadow Council no longer in charge of the Horde, Warlocks would be persona-non-grata in official Horde circles.  Yes, there is still an undercurrent of approval and "those were the good old days" in the Horde, but all that time spent fighting against the Burning Legion in Outland would have driven that sentiment deeper underground.  The only official place --Cataclysm Era-- where the philosophy of "I don't care where it came from but I'm going to throw it all against you" would find a home is in Sylvanas' camp.

As for the Alliance, there's even less of a reason why a Warlock is a playable class.  The Alliance fought not only the Burning Legion but the old Horde, and if there's any class that the Alliance would despise more than the Warlock, I'm not sure what it would be.  Yes, I know that there are always people who are tempted by power, but when WoW tries to set your toon up as a hero, a Warlock is typically not what the general populace has in mind.

Considering all that, I felt distinctly uncomfortable when Genn Greymane and Co. would call my new toon an 'old friend' and a 'hero' during the Gilneas starting zone.  "Hello?  Can't you see the Imp following along behind me?  Doesn't that make you just a WEE bit uneasy, Your Majesty?"

Dominating members of the Burning Legion like a Warlock does is splitting hairs.  Really.  You can't look at the Warcraft universe and say "well, they may be demons, but they're on our side."  To paraphrase Azrael from the movie Dogma, "But they're f@$#-ing demons!"  Warlocks are playing with the worst kind of fire, WoW-verse speaking, and I am surprised that Blizz doesn't tweak things a bit so that they are more obviously shunned a bit more.***

In spite of all that, Warlocks are a bit refreshing.  Most people --virtual or real-- tend to hide their dark secrets.  Locks put their own Darkness right out on display.  Hell, they'd probably charge admission if they thought they could get away with it, in their own Ray Bradbury-esque dark circus.

So playing a Warlock --especially in an RP environment-- is all about power and domination.

***

Of course, that's not the reason why everybody plays a Lock.  Some of us are in it for the DoTs.

If you've ever been in a BG, you know what it's like to have someone out of melee range dump several DoTs on you, then sit back and laugh --or maybe cast a Fear-- while you bleed to death.  If you're lucky and you're playing a class that can dispel those DoTs, you'll end up wasting time dispelling them while there's a Warrior or Kitty Druid beating on you.  Having been on the receiving end of that tactic enough times, I finally decided that I'd had enough and I want some of that too.  After all, how hard could it be?

Um....

If you come from a melee or Hunter/Mage background, harder than you think.

The hardest thing I had to deal with during the Worgen intro zone was the waiting.  Your direct attacks aren't that powerful, so you have to wait for the accumulation of those DoTs to have the desired impact.  I suppose I could run around, kiting the enemy, but that could be disastrous if I ran in the wrong direction.  So there you are, clad in cloth armor, watching some enemy wail on you.  It's only when you finally get a Voidwalker minion that you have a viable mini-tank to take the pressure off.

But that leads into the second hardest thing as a Lock, and that's the accumulation of threat from all those DoTs.  Threat spikes have always been the bane of DPS, but you can mitigate some of the danger of threat spikes by slowing down your rotation.  With DoTs, however, you don't have any sort of control once you cast your spell; your only option is to determine whether or not to cast that DoT in the first place.  Finding a way to control threat in this back handed manner is probably where a lot of Locks fall down in instances.

So, what's up for the little furball of Evil now?

I'm going to keep him questing through Darkshore, and now that he's high enough level to queue for Ragefire Chasm, I'm going to find out how Warlock dynamics work in an instance setting.

Oh, and of course I'll queue up for Warsong Gulch.  I can't resist giving the old DoT/Fear trick a whirl!



*Blood Knights notwithstanding.  And Lady Liadrin, the Blood Knight Matriarch, has since corrected things during her audience with A'dal in Shattrath City.

**Yes, I know that Roland is the chief paladin of Charlemagne's court, that Perceval was a literary construct, and Saladin was more complex than his Medieval admirers believed.  Give a guy a break, will ya?

***Even though it's not in the WoW-verse, there ought to be a chance, however small, that the demon would break free from your control and turn on you.  I'd tweak it such that the likelihood of a demon breaking free from your control goes up when you get into a fight; after all, your toon is under increased pressure, so naturally something bound against its will would try to break free when you're distracted.


EtA:  Warlocks are a class, not race.   That'll teach me to not write and edit early in the morning.

Getting that Cataclysmic Itchy Feeling?

I spoke briefly with Souldat today while I was waiting in line to go smash Ahune*, and he mentioned that when Cataclysm is released he is definitely going with a Warrior tank.

While I didn't really have the time to follow up on that statement, I was curious about what people think about their class for Cataclysm.  A lot of Alpha stuff hit the WoW blogosphere like an overripe tomato, and there's plenty of goop all over the different classes.

The Ret Spec Paladin seems to have weathered the storm a little bit, with Crusader Strike becoming part of the starting rotation (Holy Shock too).  Although the loss of Purify will hurt a bit, I find I don't mind the Ret Pally's arsenal overall.

I'm not going to comment about the Holy Spec Pally, because I'm only recently returning to that spec, and Cat will drop long before Tomakan reaches 80.

That said, what do you think?  Did your class get nerfed?


*My son was asking who Ahune was, and I described him as the WoW version of Jack Frost who wanted to blanket the land in winter, and since this is the Summer festival we had to beat back Ahune to preserve Summer.  I didn't think my wife was paying attention until she started humming something.  "Why on earth am I humming The Christmas Song?" she asked out loud.