Wrath Classic Phase One Raids Part 3: Something Something Something Black Dragonflight

Monday night my raid team ventured forth to do battle with Malygos (again) and then to the only raid instance I'd yet to see in Phase One of Wrath Classic, The Obsidian Sanctum.

Once again, I hunted around for a quest --any quest-- that pointed people in the direction of the seedy underbelly of Wyrmrest Temple, but I rolled a "1" on my Intelligence check. 

"Is the redone Onyxia [raid] out yet?" I asked in voice.

"No, it still says L60 if you go visit her," our Warlock replied. "I think the redone Ony dropped around the time of Trials of the Crusader."

"Then I'm trying to figure out why we're here. I couldn't decide if Blizz decided to redo Ony after it created Obsidian Sanctum, or before. It feels like this raid [Obsidian Sanctum] came first, then Onyxia's revamp, but unlike Ony there's absolutely no reason for us to know this raid exists in game."

"Oh, this definitely came first," the Raid Leader replied.

"Yeah, but unlike Eye of Eternity and Malygos, there's no quests at all for the reason why we're here. At least the Nexus War had a big long thingie for it."

"Thingie?"

"Whatever it is. Brain fried from the time change."

But that's the point, really: there is no reason why we're at The Obsidian Sanctum. If it weren't for Blizz saying "Hey, this is a new raid," you'd have no reason other than pure curiosity as to whether there's something underneath Wyrmrest Temple. 

***

Blizz has mentioned in the past that they're already looking, storywise, a couple of expacs ahead. I've always thought that was something they did later in WoW's lifetime, but I suspect it was happening even back in the "ancient days of WoW", pre-Cataclysm. 

After all, the evidence is right in front of you when you walk into The Obsidian Sanctum: Three Twilight Drakes.

Years before we got to know them well in Cataclysm, there they were beneath Wyrmrest Temple. No explanation, no nothing. Just... there. Arrogant as hell, even as drakes they feel superior to Sartharion, and their presence there make the raid totally chaotic.

So I'll give kudos to Blizz thinking ahead, but without any in-game reason why the raid is there, it's just, well... disjointed.

***

Oh, the fight itself?

Uh... I died. A lot.

I'd never been in the raid before, so of course they wanted to try killing Sartharion with two drakes up.

I very quickly became acquainted with what "two drakes up" meant: you can kill Sartharion with anywhere from zero to all three drakes alive when you first attack Sartharion, but the more drakes you leave alive before you start the fight the better the loot that will drop.

And the more chaotic the fight gets, too. 

The basics of the fight are simple: kill Sartharion. However, Sarth summons fire elementals to pester you and whelps to hound you. Oh, and there's this thing called a Lava Wave (or something to that effect) where walls of lava come rushing at you like you were out surfing in Hawaii, with a gap that you can stand in if you're fast enough.

I was frequently not fast enough. 

Oh, it's not that I couldn't see the gap, or that I dropped casting (I did), it's that I often chose a gap too far away from me to try to make. And with my Blink ability frequently on cooldown because I constantly had to move to avoid mobs/AOE/whatever, I had to hoof it a lot.

That's a type of mistake that I'll fix the longer I'm exposed to this fight. 

Yeah, starting out on the second highest difficulty setting for 10 person Obsidian Sanctum wasn't the best introduction to the fight. The Raid Leaders finally decided to dial it back a bit and take down Satharion with only one drake alive before the boss fight began, which made things much easier to process for me. Whereas before I saw only chaos, I was able to understand the mechanics of the fight better because I wasn't constantly running for my life. 

As is what I've discovered in the Phase One raids, I do better when I can stand and cast. Fire Mages' abilities don't lend themselves well to fights where you have to be on the move: our instant casts are pretty piss poor, damage wise, and even if a Fire Mage was standing, my damage output is definitely inferior to an Arcane Mage.* However, I can do better --and have more of an impact-- with AOE damage for all of the adds that spawn. Get them down, and the fight is much easier. 

***

Like the Onyxia fight back in Vanilla/Vanilla Classic, The Obsidian Sanctum is organized chaos. It is also the most difficult fight in the Phase One raids for 10 people. Yet despite that, it is the one raid that has the largest disconnect from the entire expansion. Kind of like how Blizz shoehorned in a Troll Raid (Zul'Aman) into a Burning Crusade expansion that had nothing to do with Trolls at all.

*More on that for another post.

Meme Monday: Time Changing Memes

Here in the US we set our clocks back one hour this past weekend.

Again.

The older I get, the more annoyed I am at having to do this on an annual basis. My body complains more and more every year about this, and the discernable benefits --to the outdoors industry anyway-- don't help my own personal health much.

Trying to explain to my oldest's
guinea pigs that there's a time change
simply doesn't work. I tried.
From imgflip.

I've got coffee going, and if it
weren't for me likely getting scalded,
I'd be doing this. From Houston Chronicle.

Then again, this was my body on
Saturday night.
From imgflip.

Of course, this is me for
the next week. But I've got
enough friends to remind me when
it's raid time. From imgflip.

Wrath Classic Phase One Raids Part 2: How to Make Something Less than Epic

As I alluded to in my previous post, we cleared Wrath Naxxramas over the course of two nights, with plenty of time to handle Vault of Archavon and the Eye of Eternity. While we didn’t get to Obsidian Sanctum this first week of my raiding participation, the raid team did clear it the week before. That means there’ll be a third post on Phase One Wrath raiding when I visit Obsidian Sanctum, so you have been warned.

After dealing with the Uncanny Valley Effect in Wrath Naxx, the two other raids were completely new to me. I mean, I knew of them back in the day, but as I wasn’t a raider back then I never actually saw them. During Mists I considered trying to go in and solo the Malygos fight, but I was vaguely aware that there were drakes involved, and if I were required to use a drake’s abilities for a decent portion of the fight then it would be impossible to solo. But Vault of Archavon? I really don’t know why I didn’t care about soloing that raid, but it just wasn’t something I was interested in seeing.*

After we turned Kel’Thuzad into a puddle of goo at the end of Wrath Naxxramas, we ported out to Dalaran and flew over to Wintergrasp. 

“Everybody should have the flight point,” someone in the raid said. 

“I don’t,” the raid lead said.

“Nor I,” I added. Given that the only way to get to Wintergrasp is via flying, my purchase of Cold Weather Flying the day before meant I didn’t have that flight point. I wasn’t planning on short circuiting the storyline and grabbing all of the flight points available just because riding wasn’t as fast as flying.**

I tried flying over to Wintergrasp –and yes, I got turned around on my navigation and initially went the wrong way-- but because I was also one of the few people without an epic flying mount the rest of the raid made it ahead of us and summoned us over.

“Don’t ask me to navigate,” I grumbled to myself, dismayed at how low my map reading skills had fallen from the days of being the family’s navigator when we went on vacation.*** “Maybe I should reread that book on orienteering that I bought back in high school.”

We went inside and I followed the crowd to the raid entrance. I’d never been inside the building before, so I was surprised to see another location where you could queue for battlegrounds. As if there weren’t enough of them already.

***

People call Vault of Archavon VoA for short, which gave me flashbacks to my shortwave radio days as VoA is also short for Voice of America, the long running international broadcast of the US Government, in much the same way as the BBC World Service or Radio Nederland or Radio Moscow were for their own countries.

Or it reminded me of a few songs from the 1980s…****

Holy crap is this music video so campy!
And I thought "I Can't Drive 55" was bad...

It wouldn't be an Asia album without

the Roger Dean cover art.

As for the raid itself, there’s not a lot of ‘there’ there.

I knew absolutely nothing about the boss fight, but neither did I die nor did I feel like I was in any sort of danger of dying. It was pretty much a typical spank and tank fight, with an AOE effect that you could move out of, and that was that.

The gear dropped was, well, PvP epic gear. No big deal, but hey, better than I was wearing at the time. I won the pants, so that was worth the fight, I suppose.

Then it was off to Coldarra and the fight I really wanted to see.

***

Malygos the Spellweaver, despite the very poorly written reasons as to why he began the Nexus War in the first place, was the collision course we’d been on from practically the moment we arrived in Northrend. 

From the “Why doesn’t anybody believe me?” initial quest (on both factions), through your first “don’t piss me off or I’ll eat you” interactions with the Red Flight, the Keristrasza tragedy, and becoming the messenger of the Kirin Tor to the Dragon Queen, everything led to this.

I made the entire Nexus War personal for Cardwyn with that short fictional piece, but it also underscores the genocidal nature of Malygos’ “solution” to the problem of overuse of Arcane magic. When you decide to control the overuse of magic by “limiting the supply of Arcane users” one way or another, you’re essentially authorizing the slaughter of children with a talent for the Arcane. And entire families who may have one Mage in the tree, because talent is inherited. (My interpretation.) 

Despite every valid reason to limit the overuse of the Arcane, Malygos’ solution is far worse. And Blizz’ crappy reasoning for creating the conflict in the first place aside, for a being supposedly as wise as a Dragon Aspect, it feels incredibly small minded to have settled on “Kill them all” as the solution. 

The Lich King couldn’t have cooked up a better conflict if he’d have tried.

When we arrived at Coldarra, I was nervous, having only briefly skimmed the fight, but ready to go.

Except for me almost entering The Oculus’ instance by mistake.*****

Yeah yeah yeah, the old
"I'm invincible!" speech. 

We wiped about 3 times on Malygos before we got all of the mechanics down, but this fight definitely does not play to my strengths. The first phase does, but the second phase has those adds all over the place and my tendency to strike the one closest to me ends up poorly, with me as a dead Mage lying around. Once I resisted the temptation to simply wail away at random adds, I was able to survive that phase and enter into the "Drake Phase", where the ground crumbles beneath you and you're rescued by Red Dragonflight drakes, who then turn and fight Malygos (with you riding them, naturally). 

It was an interesting fight, but not that memorable. What really made it less than epic was the voice acting itself. I described listening to Malygos in raid as being voiced by an Accountant lecturing on tax law; maybe it wasn't quite that bad, but the voice actor was absolutely not what I expected the Spellweaver to sound like. Maybe some reverb or other vocal manipulation would make Malygos sound a bit better, but for a gigantic Dragon Aspect the voice simply didn't fill the space like the Spellweaver himself did. Compared to Nefarian's and Vaelastrasz's voices, Malygos' voice is very uninspiring, which by extension makes the raid encounter weaker for it.

It's not just a problem with the Spellweaver. Alexstrasza and Keristrasza both sound "less than" as well;  although to be fair I thought the acting of Keristrasza in The Nexus good enough, but it just doesn't sound "dragonlike". If this were Keristrasza fighting us in her polymorphed human form that's one thing, but she's fighting us as a dragon. Maybe Blizz is having difficulty making the vocals sound like they're coming from something as gigantic and epic as a dragon in their true form, but my belief is that the difficulty lies in adjusting a woman's voice to make her sound like a woman and yet inhabit the full throated cavernous power of a dragon in their natural form.

Now that I think about it, this is not a problem confined to the dragonflights, but those who are simply gigantic compared to us. The Keepers' and Watchers' vocals in The Storm Peaks are pretty hit or miss, although to be fair they tend to be closer to the mark than a lot of the dragons in their true forms sound. But when you hear the petty shrillness of the Hyldnir's vocals, which are pretty much the opposite of what you'd expect of those who remained loyal to Thorim all these years, it is nothing but grating to the ears. 

***

It's a shame that the Eye of Eternity was so underwhelming to me, because I'd hoped for an epic battle to close out that chapter in Wrath Classic. Much like how I found Wrath Naxxramas to be "close but not quite" like the real thing, the Eye of Eternity could have been great but just was... pretty good.

*It probably had something to do with that there was no real backstory behind that raid. From my perspective, it was the “PvP raid”.

**Yes, I’m one of those people who would have used the “pity mount” in Storm Peaks rather than purchase Cold Weather Flying. I remember being able to navigate a lot of The Storm Peaks –the Norse Mythos inspired Thorim questline notwithstanding—via a riding mount back in the day, and I realize now that a lot of that is due to what faction I played. More on that in an upcoming post.

***And yes, growing up in the 70s and 80s meant we drove everywhere for vacation. In a station wagon. No, not one with the “gun turrets” in the back, but a mid-sized 1980 Chevrolet Malibu.

This is very similar to the one we had.
The paint is the same, the interior as
well. Only difference is this had the V6
engine, while ours was a 267cc V8.
From smclassiccars.com

That wagon became my second car when the old 1976 Plymouth Volare finally kicked the bucket.

****Before you ask, yes, I have both albums from back in the day. Sammy Hagar’s VoA I have on cassette (!), and Asia’s Astra on CD. The latter was one of the first CDs I’d ever bought, and I bought it from a secondhand record store near UD called Second Time Around. 

*****No, I hadn’t been to The Oculus at the time of that raid. It appears to not be everybody’s favorite instance, and I tend to go with the flow in that regard.

Wrath Classic Phase One Raids Part 1: Welcome to the Uncanny Valley

The past two nights of raiding were, well, weird.

As in 'fever dream' kind of weird.

Have you ever had a dream where you were performing some action, and everything felt 'off' to you, as if you were talking to someone in the dream and had a sudden Uncanny Valley effect? Or that you were performing an action in a dream which is impossible in real life --such as flapping your arms and flying around-- but everybody in said dream just assumed it was a normal thing?

Yeah, that's what raiding in Wrath's version of Naxxramas felt like to me.

The original Vanilla WoW version of Naxxramas, intended for 40 people, had both that epic feel to it and a lethality that was legendary. Very few raid teams back in Vanilla ever finished Naxxramas*, which likely contributed to Blizzard reusing Naxx as one of the intro raids for Wrath of the Lich King.

But with that recycling of existing content came, well, compromises.

Blizzard had already committed to 25 person raiding in Burning Crusade as the "main" raid**, and they doubled down on it by deciding to create separate 10 and 25 person raids for each raid instance in Wrath. I presume the idea was to allow more people to see the raid content as it was "easier" to get 10 people together than 25 (or 40), but scaling down 25 person content to accommodate a raid 40% of the original size was going to be a challenge.

In the case of Naxxramas, there were already challenges lowering the scope of the raid from 40 down to 25 people, much less a raid with only 1/4 of the original raid size. 

I knew all this in the back of my head, and I'd quickly reviewed some of the fights beforehand, but I really didn't internalize just how much had to be lopped off in Naxxramas until I zoned in.

Or attempted to zone in.

***

Okay, I should back up a minute.

I spent some of the last hour before Sunday's raid trying to make sure I had all that I needed. You know, things like flasks, mana and health potions, stuff like that.

Or enchants to the gear I had.

Deuce, just like OG Cardwyn, had taken Tailoring and Enchanting as professions, and I'd diligently been raising the skill level up to at least reasonable proportions. When I say "reasonable", I don't mean "I went broke in game buying mats in the Auction House so I could level up my skills," but something I could achieve that would get me some enchants I could actually use. 

So, out of a Wrath Classic maximum of 450, I hit 430 on both Enchanting and Tailoring. I had access to the Enchants I needed***, and I spent those last minutes making sure that was done. So I hopped on a Flightpoint over to Wintergarde Keep, where Naxxramas was hovering nearby, and when I arrived I began riding around, looking for the portal spot on the ground just like Classic Naxx had. 

The only thing was that I couldn't find it.

"It's gotta be around here somewhere," I muttered, dodging Scourge in the killing fields underneath Naxx. In Classic, it was a one way trip. You got in, and if you didn't have a Mage, the only way out was to Hearth. There was no exit, which is one of the famous things about Naxx.

And, unlike just about any other raid instance, there wasn't a "Here it is!" identifying stone right outside the entrance to Vanilla/Classic Naxx either.****

I finally broke down and hopped on Google and queried where the entrance to Naxxramas in Wrath Classic was.

Oh.

To quote Gruber when he accidentally pulled two trash packs at once in Classic Naxx: "Oh...... shit."

You see, I still hadn't picked up Cold Weather Flying, which is required for flying of any sort in Northrend. 

I hadn't needed it, because the zones I've been questing in have been accessible via riding, and I'd been summoned to the few 5-person instances that I couldn't get to via riding (Halls of Stone and Halls of Lightning). I could deal with just riding around, since I took forever to get a mount on my first toon in WoW Classic*****, and I was perfectly fine with riding in Outland. Or not having an epic (fast) mount out there, either. 

The cost in gold was also a deterrent, because while I originally thought it was going to cost 5000 gold for Cold Weather Flying --or that I had to get Epic Flying first-- neither were the case. Still, the cost was 1000 gold, and I wasn't going to rush to accumulate a lot of gold just to get Cold Weather Flying. Dailies were simply out of the question. I've been there, bought the t-shirt, and after doing dailies in Wrath and Cataclysm (and trying to do dailies in Mists), I simply burned out on it. 

There is no joy in Mudville

For Mighty Casey had struck out burned out on dailies

--Casey at the Bat - MMO Version

Besides, my life has enough work without me creating another part-time job for myself.

So... I hadn't gotten Cold Weather Flying, but I was gonna need it to get to Naxx. And suddenly my gold that I'd felt comfortable with while leveling my skills suddenly.... wasn't that comfortable.

Fun fact: you don't have to go to
Dalaran to pick up Cold Weather Flying.
This was obviously a post Naxx pic, if you
notice the gear Deuce has on, but this
screen cap was merely for demonstration.

I quickly pooled all my gold together and managed to purchase Cold Weather Flying.

Barely.

Just enough for repairs. I think.
And yes, I still have the Spectracles
from TBC Classic in my bags.
Don't judge me.

I flew back to Wintergarde Keep, got in the raid, and... I got summoned to Naxx.

/facepalm

***

Yes, you fly up into the underbelly of Naxxramas, which is where the Summoning Stone actually is. And from there you can walk right into the instance. 

Will wonders never cease?

The interior of Wrath's version of Naxxramas is as it was in Vanilla: green, slimy, glowing, and depressing. What it wasn't was what struck me: Naxx was devoid of tons of trash mobs. 

If there was one truism about Naxxramas, it's that the trash mobs would kill you if you weren't on your game. It typically took only two of the wrong sort of trash mobs to doom the raid, especially if you were just entering Naxx for the first few times and hadn't received any gear upgrades yet.#

But in the new 10 person Wrath Classic version of Naxxramas, the mobs are few and far between. "Paper thin" was how one commenter in Reddit described them, and he's not wrong. I remember dying to Scientist packs leading up to Patchwerk, wiping on Spider packs leading to Anub'Rekhan, and having my innards splattered all over the walls by the Cultist packs leading up to Faerlina, but now... Nothing. 

I almost felt sad about that. Almost.

The size of Wrath Naxx was the same, but with the reduced number of trash packs, it became almost cavernously empty. Some of the packs changed, such as replacing the mobs between Gluth and Thaddius with single oversized giants instead of a group of 4-5 "normal" sized Scourge, and far more mobs were skippable than ever. 

***

The first boss I encountered, Anub'Rekhan, highlighted the changes between Classic Naxx and Wrath Naxx. Original Naxx had that fight beginning with a boss and two adds, and the fight strategy was to kill the adds then have a pair of the raid --tank and a Mage (me, typically)-- babysit the adds as they will spawn scarabs from their dead bodies at some point. (Adds will periodically spawn during the fight, and they too have to be tanked and downed and babysat just like that initial bunch.) If anybody dies in the raid, they will also spawn scarabs too, so the point of the Mage is to freeze the scarabs in place before they escape and start munching on the raid, and then the tank will round them up so the raid can kill the scarabs.

Fast forward to Wrath Naxx, 10 style, and you begin the fight with just Anub'Rekhan. No adds in sight. A pair of adds spawn during the fight, and the off tank can grab those so that the raid can kill them --just like in the Original Naxx fight-- but no scarabs spawn off of them. The only time scarabs will spawn is off of the body of a dead raider, which makes the Anub'Rekhan very much a tank and spank style fight. 

Most of the other Naxxramas fights are like that: there's a shell of the original fight in place, but mechanics have been removed or reduced to accommodate the smaller raid size. Well, and also the expectation that you could potentially finish the entire 14 boss raid in one night.##

***

What do I think of Discount Naxx?

For those of us who ran it in Classic, it feels like "almost" the real thing. I referenced the Uncanny Valley effect, where you get that uneasy feeling when you see a robot or video of someone very close to human, but not quite human###, and that is a pretty apt description. It's not the Naxx I knew; it's a reduced version of Naxx, and there's a shell there, but it's not the same thing.

I mentioned to a few people in raid at the end of Sunday that it felt that the original TBC Classic version of Karazhan was harder than the Wrath version of Naxxramas. "Oh yeah," one person replied. "Remember trying to clear that ballroom right before Moroes?"

"Or Nightbane?" Came another.

"Or Netherspite? Yeah, Wrath Naxx is much easier."

The Sunday portion of the raid concluded with us needing only Gluth, Thaddius, Sapphiron, and Kel'Thuzad to finish up. We'd wiped a few times, since we needed to work out the kinks with a raid composition that included two Mages (the previous week's raid not having any Mages), but in general it didn't feel like anything was out of our league.

But of course, Naxxramas isn't the only raid in Wrath Classic Phase One, and I'll continue these thoughts on those raids later.

*Of our WoW Classic raid team, only one person actually had completed Naxx back in the day. He was a member of the sixth raid team to finish Naxx, and his raid team pioneered the use of bringing world buffs to Naxx. On a PvP server, no less.

**With 10 person raids --Karazhan and Zul'Aman-- replacing the 20 person "catch up" raids in Vanilla. The hardcore early players of Vanilla will also point out that Blackrock Spire --Upper and Lower-- were designed as one whole instance but Upper Blackrock Spire being gated behind a door --you had to quest to get a key to unlock-- was originally a 20 person raid at launch. It was downscaled to a 10 person raid later in Vanilla, which was something I didn't know about. For all I knew, UBRS was a 10 person raid from the start, but that wasn't the case. 

***And Tailoring versions of the same, called Spellthread, for applying to Leg armor and Cloaks. As an Enchanter, I can even Enchant the rings I wear for a bit of an extra boost. The only people who can Enchant rings (or Tailors sewing Spellthread on their own cloaks) are the people who actually own the skill for their own rings; I can't sew Spellthread onto other people's cloaks, unfortunately.

****I know it was a 'feature' of Vanilla/Classic Naxx, but I suspect that it was an oversight due to the original design for Naxx calling for the entrance to be located inside the Stratholme dungeon itself. So, you'd have to run Stratholme --the side commonly known as the 'Undead Side'-- to get to the Naxxramas entrance. You can (or could) still see the entrance to Naxx, sitting unused, inside Stratholme in Classic WoW.

*****That was Azshandra, and I think it took her until L47 or L48 before she had enough gold to afford the Riding skill and the mount.

#Hence Gruber's "Oh...... shit...." moment, when as the raid puller he pulled a trash mob. Instead of coming right for us, one of the mob ran backwards in a small circle, aggroing a second mob nearby and they all rushed in. Gruber was famous for cursing up a blue streak all the time, so you knew things were bad when he very quietly said "Oh shit."

##This is very much a thing, as I've seen it numerous times already.

###Insert Mark Zuckerberg jokes here.

EtA: The comment about Gruber got chopped off. Fixed.

EtA: Fixed "flight" with "riding". Sheesh.

Meme Monday: Spooky Memes

Today is Halloween, and while I've not dressed up and gone trick-or-treating (for myself) in some decades, I appreciate the holiday for what it is: an excuse to dress up, scare people, and eat Scooby Snacks candy.

"Zoinks!! Run, Scoob!!" --Shaggy
From... Oh, come on. Haven't you 
SEEN my avatar? At least it's the original
"Scooby Doo, Where are you?" cartoons.
(From gfycat.com.)

So in honor of things that are spooky and make us scared, here's a few things that scare me in meme form...

If for you the Satanic Panic was
a non-event, then I salute you.
But for those of us in the Bible
Belt (or near enough), it still lurks...
(From DnD Memes on Twitter)

I can't flirt to save my life. If
I want to say something witty, it all
comes out "Hur dur yoo prettie!"
I'm still not sure how I ever ended up
dating, much less getting married.
(From Reddit.)

I am scared of heights. I discovered this
little item when my wife and I walked
across the Roebling Suspension Bridge
one weekend. I got about halfway across
when I couldn't handle it any more and
shoved my behind up against the side of
the walkway that abutted the road.

Okay, that flying one is going to be fodder for another post, so you haven't seen the last of that particular meme.

I've caused my share of wipes, and I still
live in mortal terror of causing a bad pull.
I guess I learned "you pull it, you tank it"
far too well...

It's Been a While

I feel like I've been here before.

Tonight will be almost nine months to the day that I was last in a progression raid.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous about tonight's raid.

I just want to be good enough that I won't embarrass myself.

Scourge Was Not Our Greatest Enemy

Mages in Wrath Classic are in a curious place.

In a role reversal from the heady days of Vanilla Classic, I have frequently found myself getting whispers less for people wanting me to join a group and more for being an easy transportation device. 

Not that I mind much, because tips of around 5 gold per portal* do add up, but I do realize that life has changed for Mages from the Vanilla Classic days. My preferred spec, as a Frost Mage, is great for being out in the field and doing solo content, but they're now a far cry from the Molten Core and Blackwing Lair days of being the Mage spec to be.

Gee thanks, Wowhead. I guess I'm
the comic relief.

Given that I'd already committed to being a Fire Mage in the raid, and that everybody in the raid is fine with that, I wasn't too terribly concerned. I mean, here's the charts for the first week of DPS in Warcraft Logs:

Poor Linna; Ret Paladins are in a
world of hurt. But at least they're higher
than Frost Mages. And my preferred Rogue
Spec, Subtlety, is at the bottom too...

While Fire wasn't as high as Arcane, it was significantly higher than bottom feeding Frost. (Poor Warriors; I feel your pain.)

I think it prudent to mention that classes and specs that require a lot of proper timing, such as Enhancement Shamans, are very good in the hands of someone who is much better (and younger) in their reaction times. Otherwise, it's not quite so great. 

The raid team was fine with Card coming as a Fire Mage, so I wasn't overly concerned about being a middle-of-the-pack raider. After all, I was the 4th or 5th Mage out of 6 in DPS in our AQ40 and Vanilla Naxxramas raids, so I was used to being in the hazy 30% down from the top area. 

But having not had much Fire Mage experience in months, and with my impending first foray into Naxx myself a week away***, I decided Monday to use that dual spec capability in Wrath Classic and began practicing as a Fire Mage.

***

In short, it did not go well.

Ouch.

You'd think that I remembered that Fire does not have the damage mitigation and crowd control that Frost has, but no.... 

I spent a couple of hours trying to get the feel for the cadence, but after multiple deaths in a zone 5 levels below my own I just threw up my hands and set aside the game for a while. 

The rest of the evening was spent doing other things, outside of helping my questing buddy move some of the WoW Hallow's Eve candy to her toon before raid time.**** When raid time came, I had that urge to join in --and I was dejected that I couldn't-- but I was perversely grateful that I'd already marked myself absent. 

Why?

While I may do things my own way, I set high standards for myself, and my (lack of) progress getting back into a rotation for a Fire Mage was very disheartening. If you've ever come back to something you'd set aside for a long while, such as a musical instrument or sewing or programming, and you discover that you're having big trouble getting the basics down and you're wondering just what the fuck is going on, that was what it was like. There's that enduring moment of panic that you think you're never going to get your skills back, and that you start to believe all of those doubts you have hanging around in your head. 

I couldn't shake that funk all Monday night, and my inner critic doubled down on me when I woke up on Tuesday to find that the raid team had cleared all the bosses in Naxx, plus Vault of Archavon and The Obsidian Sanctum. It was like giving a double shot espresso to a hyperactive kid. 

By the time my wife and oldest had both split for work, I'd had enough of this death by a thousand cuts. 

"Shut up!" I bellowed to an empty house. "Stop driving me fucking crazy! I am NOT going to quit!! Stop with all the 'they don't need you' bullshit! If that were the case, they'd never have asked me in the first place! Now shut the fuck up and let me get back to work!"

Cardwyn: "I would like a word with you
about this 'comic' and the 'imaginary' part..."
By Grant Snider at
incidentalcomics.com

A bit later, during a multi-hour seminar at work, I logged in again and began going through the Fire Mage's capabilities. I moved a thing or two around on my bar --such as swapping out Scorch for Pyroblast*****-- and I recognized that I needed to focus on a few spells a little differently than in Vanilla Classic, so began grinding mobs. Casting went better, I moved a bit smoother, and while I took more damage from enemies than if I were a Frost Mage, I was able to handle those same mobs I died to the night before. 

Then I got into some instances that night, and all that progress fell apart.

"The rotation feels janky," I said in Discord during a run of Culling of Stratholme.

"Are you missing something, like on your bar?" a friend asked.

"I already moved some things around," I replied, "such as taking off Scorch and replacing it with Pyroblast so that when Pyroblast procs it's an instant cast, but Scorch isn't used as part of the rotation anymore. The days of using Scorch to get five stacks of Improved Scorch are past."

After the runs were over, I went back to questing solo and the rotation felt fine, so it had to be something about the rotation for groups that was off. 

From quickmeme.com.

I then discovered I was doing things in reverse.

For a Frost Mage, I use the term "Lock 'em and rock 'em" to describe dealing with a mob. You freeze them in place using Frost Nova, then you can cast Cone of Cold then Blizzard to down the mob. Fire Mages in Vanilla Classic didn't really have anything to lock people in place, so you just waited for the tank to grab aggro then cast Blizzard. 

Well, in Wrath Classic there's one thing that didn't exist in Vanilla Classic: Dragon's Breath. It's a Cone of Cold for Fire Mages, so I figured that I should use it after an initial cast of Flamestrike. However, after conducting some research (see meme above) I discovered that instead of Flamestrike then Dragon's Breath, it should be Dragon's Breath then Flamestrike because of the tendency to get an instant cast of Flamestrike out of it.

Oh.

There's also a tweak to Blast Wave, which is a Fire talent tree only spell. The Vanilla Classic version of Blast Wave dazed enemies for a few seconds, but in Wrath Classic it knocks them back, moving the "dazed" effect to Dragon's Breath. I thought that knockback was a Talent Tree effect, but no.... It's something that can be eliminated via a Glyph.

::grumbles something vaguely incoherent about juggling too many systems::

"Stop your laughing! I'm serious!"
Blizz did the original graphic,
I did the rest.

So tonight, I'm going to find out how these changes work in group content. It'll feel weird, but at least I no longer feel like I've totally lost my edge.

***

I'm a work in progress.

I realize that it's a daily thing, beating back the doubts, but being able to control what small things I can ought to help a lot. Falling back on my training, conducting research when I fail so I can learn how to fix things, will help too.

I just have to be willing to use them and not be so damned stubborn about it.

*The other day I received a tip of 30 gold for a portal to Dalaran. I wasn't going to turn it down --I may never insist on fees but will gladly accept any tips offered-- but given that they volunteered that amount a month after Wrath Classic dropped I was a bit surprised.

**The point was so that the Warlock in question understood that Warlocks were doing just fine; it was a pick-me-up sort of response meant to make the Warlock feel better. 

***Since we visited my son over the past weekend, I took one of the two initial bench slots for our team of 12 raiders. I could theoretically have made the raid on Sunday night if there were other call offs, but I talked with one of the two raid leads and he insisted that I just chill out and not worry about it.

****In WoW, that candy provides some buffs for players, so it's kind of a thing. But since it's a limited duration item --only around for the Hallow's Eve in-game holiday-- you can't mail the items at all. So, I became the mule for my questing buddy, trading the candy to her.

*****Scorch is better in a Battleground when you have to have a fast casting spell while you're on the move. Pyroblast, when Hot Streak pops, becomes an instant cast and then it becomes useful in a fight. But otherwise... I know some people who lead with Pyroblast, but when you've got a ton of people in a zone and you need to stake your claim on a mob fast, go with a faster cast to start with. Or just stick with Fireball.