My Feral Troll Druid has reached level 20, and that’s cause for celebration!

Namely, I get to ride a lizard now instead of dashing about as a kitty.

Here are a few of the Troll Druid specific impressions I have from leveling to twenty.

The Troll starting area is really on rails, mon. Neat, love the layout, and even on patch night it flowed well, only two choke points (top of hill waiting for one NPC to kill, and off on an island waiting for some animal to spawn for me to lasso and ride). Very smooth moving through that zone, and I enjoyed the story a lot. Only downside was, it felt desperately short compared to some other starting zones, like the Human one or the Blood Elves. But maybe I’m just remembering them wrong.

The addition of flight points scattered, well, everywhere feels like cheating. More than any other change in World of Warcraft, the concatenation of flight points is the one thing that brings the grumpy old school Bear out in me. “In MY day, we had to RUN from the troll village to Orgrimmar and back! Uphill! Through the snow! BOTH WAYS! You young whipper snappers with your flight points every fifteen feet don’t know how easy you’ve got it!”

It’s very nice, it’s just jarring. Sure, Elwynn Forest slapped me in the face with its flight point out at the logging camp, but somehow putting a flight point at the troll starter village felt more distinctive. And yet, the second we dinged twenty out there in Northern Barrens, did you hear us complain that we could now FLY directly to get our riding training and buy a raptor mount? No, you did not. You heard only a massive sigh of relief that we didn’t have to run it.

Having to play as a caster until level 8 before getting kittyform, after playing so many alts in the days since patch 4.0.1 revamped classes, hurts EVEN WORSE. I don’t want to be a caster. I want to be a kitty or a bear. All I’ve got are caster tools in my toolbox until getting kitty form, so instead of feeling like a Feral Druid in training, I feel JUST like I used to with a new Druid… playing a character through a story where I’m only playing as a fill in, not as my real character. Eight levels that don’t really count as Druid time.

Intellectually, I grasp the concept that understanding and utilizing my casting abilities is very important in having a balanced appreciation for my Druid’s capabilities. I’m supposed to be a hybrid, flexible, shifting force of nature to be reckoned with, able to weave Roots and Insect Swarms and Moonfire dots and Thorn self-casts (grrr) into kitty Rakes and Mangle bleed debuffs and bear Bashes and Growls and damage sponging greatness.

Doesn’t mean I can’t wish I had kitty form at level one, though, does it? I wanna claw face naow!

Moving on, once you get kitty form, AND ding level 11, you’ve got your Feral Tree open to select, PLUS two talent points.

I’ve found that placing two points by level 11 into Feral Swiftness is kind of OP. I get 30% increased travel speed at level 11. That’s…. well, that’s a lot. You don’t get Dash until level 26, but a 30% speed buff all by itself is pretty sweet. Shaman get their Ghost Wolf not long after, so we’re not alone in our speediness, but wow that feels nice to blast across the dusty road.

On the subject of Cat Form.

Keeva wrote a beautifully detailed and artistically styled guide on how to pick your Troll Druid’s form colors based on hair color. It’s indispensible for getting just the flavor of gummybear that you desire.

My favorite ‘flavor’ style in Cat Form is how the color of your mane is shared in the tufts of fur along your legs, starting on the bottom of the pads on your paws and running up the backs of your legs. My coloring is bright orange mane hair with a light green body fur, and so I see a strong contrast, what with the red hair running up the backs of the green kitty legs. That sounds so wrong to say.

Here’s why that has really grown on me.

Each Druid, to me, looks different in style when in forms and that style really matches my impression of the race itself.

With the two we’ve long been used to, Tauren and Night Elf, the Tauren forms have felt strong and massive, beefy if you will, while the Night Elves have felt smooth and precise. Tauren are Feral Sledgehammers battering their opponents to death while the Night Elves are slim Rapiers piercing just that perfectly positioned point above the aorta.

The Troll Druid, with these crazy tufts of vibrant fur sticking out here and there, and those manes and the tusks, have in my opinion a wild, chaotic and in-your-face brashness to them.

To continue with the weapon analogy, the Troll Druid feels akin to having a roll of  quarters in your fist and a steel cap on your knee, then swarming over your opponent, smashing them surprisingly hard in the face, crushing in their nuts while they’re dazed, and leaving them battered and bleeding on the ground, confused over what just happened there. Maybe a little Mike Tyson styled gnawing on the ear tossed in for good measure.

Kinda all over the place nutso berserker-ish. Oh, hey, what’s that Troll racial ability called again? Huh. Go figure.

On the down side, while you’re a crazy kitty chainsaw as you quest, the bear side is lacking a situation to feel needed. Sure, if you get in big trouble you can go Bear, but… I never saw anything even remotely like a difficult situation while questing, and have yet to feel like I need bear form in any way, not even for ‘named mob’ battles.

Since I did not run any instances as tank before 20, and I didn’t do any PvP, I can’t speak to how effective the Bear tools are in those areas, but for questing, the form itself is definitely superfluous.

We’ll see how it goes. I intend to spend much more time getting into instances between 20 and 30 as the tank. And I do NOT want to wait until Swipe or some other AoE threat crutch is available. We’re supposed to be able to do this without AoE just like in the old days, and I want to see it happen.

Self-casting Thorns right before the run in is probably going to be a big initial threat grabbing move, but right now I’m just incredibly sad that I have no Feral Faerie Fire for ranged pulls or threat grabbing, and no Feral Charge. Without those, I’m left with Growl to try and get the mobs as tank before any ranged fires into the crowd I’m running towards, and that’s in my past experience a prescription for disaster.

All in all, though, I’m really enjoying my Troll Druid.

I have one quibble, non-Druid related, and it’s a big one.

They added XP gain from Herbing and Mining. That’s nice. I didn’t ask for it, but you gave it to me, so thank you.

When it was first released, everyone in your party shared that XP gain from an Herb or Ore node. That was nice too, and made a to of sense, since I was leveling a Mage with my wife the Bear Tank. Sharing the XP from gathering while we quested kept us together as we intended.

With the new patch, that vanished. ONLY the person doing the actual Herbing, at least, gets the XP.

I cannot express adequately how incredibly frustrating that is when your entire goal is to level with someone else hand in hand.

I quickly went almost a level past my wife before we hit 12 just by running across the occasional Herb, because she isn’t gathering, she went with Tailoring/Enchanting.

I do not need a 10% plus enhanced XP gain over my wife when we’re leveling together, okay?

It either needs to be changed back to be shared across the party, or give us a tool to shut it the heck off. We’re now having to either NOT Herb, which kinda makes it hard for me to be able to level Inscription at all, OR plan for when she’s going to have to go off for a while grinding solo so she can catch up, which is just soooo exciting and fun filled.

All in all, the experience has been very fun, and I never thought I’d say that about questing in any part of Barrens.

I hope that your own experiences in the new zones and with the new class combinations has been equally rewarding!

This post is just a little bit of musing about then and now.

Tuesday will see the dawn of a new era in WoW.

Or will it?

The Cataclysm will come to the world of Azeroth, surprising our characters, but not us.

That’s not what I’ve been thinking of.

Maybe it’s Tesh’s fault, but I do spend quite some time trying to analyze the intentions of the Blizzard developers NOT from anything they say, but rather from what they actually DO.

You’re not what you say you are, no matter how loudly you proclaim it. You are what you do.

Tomorrow, for the first time since the release of the Burning Crusade expansion, the portal hubs will go dark.

For the very first time since the end of the Vanilla WoW era, there will not be a single place you can set your Hearth that gives you ready access to… anywhere you want to go.

There is much in the patch and the expansion that will move the game forward.

Is the removal of the portal hubs a move forward… or a move back?

In my opinion, trying to get into the heads of the developers to figure out how they hope this will work out, it’s an interesting move.

People bitch about ‘slippery slopes’ a lot, but one thing is usually true; once you’ve removed an action that used to cause long periods of  grinding, grunt work or downtime, if you put it back in, people resent it. 

One of the things that was true in Vanilla WoW was that moving from place to place took a lot of time. Time waiting for boats, time waiting for zeppelins, time on flights across the continents, time running across deadly zones to get flight points hoping you wouldn’t get eaten, but having to do it because there WERE no boat or zeppelin routes that would give you a convenient short cut around them.

‘Fed Ex’ style quests took no skill at playing your character to complete… but they compensated for that by taking up a lot of time in transit.

There was good cause for rejoicing when Burning Crusade brought us Shattrath; a city with Innkeepers to set your Hearth, and filled with magical portals that could transport you in the blink of an eye to any of the major cities on another world.

Suddenly, just by finding a friendly Mage or Warlock of the right level to help you get there, maybe a 10 gold tip, your character could easily pop in and out wherever they might need to go.

The consequence of this convenience was that one of the most powerful benefits of being a Mage or Warlock, or having one for a friend, was marginalized.

Even the Shaman’s ability to reduce the cooldown of the Hearth was slightly reduced in equivalent power.

The LFD tool brought even more convenience to the party, didn’t it? Instant ports, and all that sort of thing.

No question that having portal hubs saves a lot of time… time that once was spent traveling from place to place could now be spent getting it stuck into the fight faster.

The developers chose to include those portal hub cities. First with one in the heart of Outlands… then again in the heart of Northrend.

The developers have chosen to remove all of those portal hubs.

What can we glean from this decision?

I think, despite some of the conspiracy theories I’ve seen in Trade chat the last few weeks, that this is not an attempt to make us waste more time so the content lasts longer before we get bored.

I’ve seen some comments that it is being done, in part, to cut down the ‘Laglaran’ effect of having 80% of a server’s population in the same zone or city. That sounds like a very plausible reason.

I know that it’s been said by developers that a key point is to force players to be out and about running around the world, so it seems populated and full of life.

Well, if I wanted to be a picturesque local to add color for the enjoyment of the new tourists, I’d prefer to be issued a grass-roofed hut, banana leaves and a spear to shake. And a table to sell my hand crafted goods at ridiculous prices. And a bottle of rum. And some bacon.

I’m not here for the tourists. Screw the tourists! I’m here for my own paid playtime. This particular argument you make for why I should now have to spend tons of my own personal time traveling around not having fun when I used to be able to ‘blip’ effortlessly about is not compelling. Stop making it.

It costs a set amount of money to play per month. Time = money. Your change is costing me playtime I used to spend having fun, and that means you’re costing me money.

Or, as Henry Rollins once put it, you’re killing me… you’re stealing my life. Just a teeny, tiny bit at a time.

So, no, that rationale doesn’t quite float my boat, honey.

But there is another good reason they could be trying it. I say trying, because they can always change their mind back later. It’s not like they’re bulldozing, and can’t afford the zoning permits to rebuild.

By reverting us once again to the days of Vanilla WoW… we are returning to a time when having a Mage, a Warlock, or a friend who is a Mage or a Warlock was a damn good thing.

The abilities those classes learn, and  especially those Portal spells the Mages work so hard to acquire over the levels, suddenly go from being  handy once in a while to being freaking awesome.

Which is how they were before the Burning Crusade.

We’ll still have LFD. We’ll still have the new, vastly improved summoning stones as well. Well, maybe. We will even have new perks from Guild Leveling letting us summon guildies directly to the raid (unless they changed that when I wsn’t looking). And of course, the boats and zeppelins.

We’re not turning back the clock all the way back to Vanilla.

But we won’t have Dalaran or Shattrath to set our hearth to be able to pop wherever we want.

I find thinking of it as a planned change to bring Mages and Warlocks more love for their class skills far more satisfying than thinking of it as a way for Blizzard to feel that they’re running a populated world.

Unless we ever see player or guild housing, set up in seperate communities where we have a reason for hanging out there, housing that other people can peer into to see us hanging out but they can’t enter because they don’t have the friend or guild key… any attempt to make us populate world areas is purely superficial.

Oh, and Blizzard… I know you don’t read my blog, it’s cool, I’m an idiot. But seriously, from me to you. I love you, and what you do is awesome, but could you please consider player or guild housing? Think about it. If you seriously set aside areas where a guild could buy, say, a small townhouse with outdoor area in a city park, and only guild members were allowed in the area… but people could walk by and see what was going on in the outside area of the ‘lawn’?

You would likely have a real, living breathing community on your hands in that neighborhood. Instead of doing laps while chatting, people would lounge on an easy chair in the sun catching a few rays, or stand around the BBQ drinking beer while they chatted.

Oh yes we would.

Back to the point, in my opinion changes attempted to bring a classes’ unique abilities back into prominance is a good thing. Unless the class ability was poorly thought out in the first place or no longer fits the intent, and needs a revamp.

It will be interesting to see how people adjust to the changes. Will there be tons of QQ? Will people be so thrilled by all the rest of the changes they don’t even notice?

Will the number of Mages and Warlocks rolled suddenly increase?

I can’t wait to find out.

I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time on my Orc Fury Warrior lately.

Cassie and I had been playing our Druid and Mage combo a lot, and then I thought it might be fun to let the rested bar fill up a bit before we moved past Hellfire. We’re at level 64, and we’re going to leapfrog from Hellfire directly to Nagrand. Since we’re on Alliance side, we did the bare minimum three quests in Orebar Harbourage to get on speaking terms with the Kurenai, and then we sat down to chill.

Queue in our individual pursuits.

Cassie resumed her own Draenei Fury Warrior on another server, while I picked back up with my Orc.

My Orc is kinda my “finish all the little stuff I never did in Vanilla” guy.

At this point, I’m really happy with all the stuff I’ve done. My Druid did just about every quest there was Alliance side, and the only thing on that side I always intended to do someday that didn’t get done was getting a Wintersaber kitty to ride. Blizz assures us they’ll still be there, so maybe next year. :)

On Horde side, though, there are Venomhide Raptors in Un’goro Crater that you can raise from an egg over the course of twenty days.

My Orcs been doing that, I’m on day 14. I might just make it in time.

I love how, every five days the little guy grows a bit more. As a tiny little baby I thought he was just sooo cute, but on day 6, wow! Adorable! On day 11 he kinda grew up into a mini-raptor pet, so my baby is almost all grownded up. :(

At least this kid I’m gonna put to work once he’s past his teens!

Besides that, I’ve been fiendishly leveling to hit 69. At 69, I get to finally grab Titan’s Grip… and equip those TWO Bloodied Arcanite Axes that I’ve now got in my inventory. Thanks to the Argent Tournament, of course. :)

I don’t really care if I ever get beyond level 69. All I want is to be able to brandish those two massive axes, one in each hand, and roar in a fierce manner on the loading screen. That’s all. After that, as Mater might say, “Okay, I’m good.”

Hey, didja hear that they’re doing a second full release Cars movie? Sweet! I know, right?

So, Orc leveling.

I’m sad to say that I blew through Hellfire and Nagrand in two nights, plus some last minute Netherstorm questing, and my Orc is now level 68 in Borean Tundra.

I’m sad, because what’s the rush? But I really don’t care about those in-between levels! I’m on the hunt for twin two-handers, damnit! AXES! NOW!

In other news, I hadn’t realised they’d changed the Cold Weather Flight training soit wasn’t a Bind on Account book anymore. You can’t buy it for another character, it’s training like any other… but it’s purchasable at level 68 directly now, for 500 gold.

I’m kinda sad, I have more gold on Alliance side, I was hoping my Druid could buy the book and mail it to the Orc, saving me the hassle of Neutral AH gold swapping. Blech.

Now, you might think the title of the blog refers to the hunt for level 69. Nah, that was just synchronicity.

While my Orc was tooling around Netherstorm, flying over towards the undead city in the southeast corner, Cassie stopped me and said, “Hey! What’s that?!?” and pointed into the distance at this tiny flying purple blip.

I fly closer, and find that she’d spotted this beautiful rare purple chimaera named Nuramoc flying in the netherspace between islands.

Hmmm. I browse Mania’s website Petopia ALL THE TIME and I don’t recall seeing a purple chimaera before. Lemme check.

Why look, it’s the only purple one currently in the game! How neat.

Hmmm.

You know, I have this Hunter, and she likes shiny pretty pets… even ones with twin mouths full of razor sharp fangs.

Oh, why the heck not.

Off I went, logged out one character and back on my Hunter, and off I went to hunt for the elusive Nuramoc, who is listed as flying pretty damn fast.

I’ll cut this short by saying, yes, I did find and capture Nuramoc for my pet stable, but that sucker led me for one heck of a hunt. I knew he was potentially out there somewhere… and I covered most of the square footage of Netherstorm until I found him!

It’s amazing how, even after all this time, hunting for that super rare spawn can really quicken the blood, isn’t it?

With all the news Mania has been sharing lately about all the wonderful new pets available with a tameable Ghostcrawler being just the tip of the iceberg, Cataclysm is gonna be one wild ride for the pet-loving Hunter, isn’t it?

I can hardly wait!

I like that blog post title. Almost sounds like an old 70′s movie, right? Like Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. Or maybe a comic book… but not something from Marvel or DC, more like one of those flash in the pan Chaos! titles from the 90′s, the kind with gratuitous cheesecake on the cover, like Lady Death, something that sold for no other reason than a graphic cover with scantily clad goth chicks.

Of course, I just pulled it from Jules in Pulp Fiction, but we can pretend that I had some loftier source in mind, right?

Oh, and not that there is anything wrong with goth chicks. Nope. All in favor, myself. Anything that breaks people out of the normal everyday is all right in my book.

Mah point, I say mah point, son, is to talk about the furious angah part in that there title. Now pay attention, boy!

(Why oh why hasn’t anyone ever done a live action Foghorn Leghorn movie? That’s what I want to know. A live actor portraying a cartoon rooster portraying a live actor. Recursive loop is recursive. Win!)

I’ve been liking my Warrior quite a bit over the last few days. I shifted to dual wield swords Fury spec, and blew through the last 13 levels. I dinged 61 last night, and there’s gonna be no sleep ’til Brooklyn or Bust, baby.

I’ve been having so MUCH fun, in fact, that I looked ahead to see when I could finally get Titan’s Grip.

Level 69? You can’t get your max Talent Tree ability until 69 now? Gaaah!

So anyway… I’ve got one of the Bloodied Arcanite Reapers, those wonderful two-handed axes, enchanted with Crusader. Okay, to be honest, I’ve got one of every type of Heirloom currently in the game except for the ring, I’m always too busy with that real life thing to be in the Saturday fishing tournament. I’ve even got two of each Trinket, and the old Emblem daggers.

But here’s the thing. With the Titan’s Grip thingie, and the way Orcs get Expertise from axes, does it sound like a good idea to dual wield Heirloom Bloodied Arcanite Reapers?

It’s not that hard to get another one, because I’ve got a character maxed out with the Argent Tournament. Heirlooms for Justice Points is a sucker’s game, the markup is ridonkulous, but for Crusader’s Seals, it’s just right.

You see, a Bloodied Arcanite Reaper costs 95 Crusader’s Seals. That sounds like a lot, right? The thing is, since 4.0 went live, getting a Crusader Seal in your blue bag from some of the dailies is now guaranteed. Something like Threat From Above, which of course my Druid can still solo easily, is now worth 3 Seals all by itself. And when you unlock all of Argent Tournament, there are all those extra dailies that give Crusaders Seals.

Even without running ToC, I’m pulling in 12 Seals a day, easy. I could get more crammed into a day, but why bother? It’s not like I’d be 69 by Friday.

But should I? For those of you with Fury Warriors, does  it sound like something that would be worth doing, for the fun of it as well as the gobs and gobs of DPS? My Hit Rating obviously would be in the tank, so whaddaya think?

Oh, and for those folks that may be mourning their “self heal” Blood spec Death Knight, let me tell you, your Blood spec didn’t go away. It simply moved to Fury Warriors. Between Bloodthirst and Victory Rush, and with the Glyphs that extend Victory Rush’s duration and effectiveness and the Glyph to increase healing from Bloodthirst, I’m never below full unless I’ve got 4 or more mobs on me. I sneer at Elites with scorn. /scorn!

Frankly, what with the haste/attack speed procs, it really does feel quite a bit like an old Blood spec Death Knight while running with Unholy Presence for the haste buff. And that’s a GOOD thing!

So, two points to the post. One, what advice do my Fury Warrior peeps have out there for dual wielding Bloodied Arcanite Reapers specifically, and Titan’s Grip in general, and two, hey, if you’re wanting Heirloom items and are kicking yourself for not buying before Justice points went live, go hit the Argent Tournament up for some cheap Seals.

And no, I’ve not abandoned my Frost Mage. Level 63 and growing!

Have fun, ya’all!

A post about perspective.

Or, to quote one of my favorite movies, “Spaced Invaders”, “Maybe you’d better step back and look at the big picture here.”

I’ve been playing for a while, and I believe most of you have been also. “A while” is subjective, but I’m using the term to mean “You’ve played long enough to get comfortable with how the game works, how your characters(s) are controlled, and you’ve got at least one character to the end game and have been sitting at end game since before patch 4.0.1.”

That’s a whole lot of meaning to dump on one poor, innocent little word, isn’t it?

Patch 4.0.1 came along and shook a lot of things up, but it’s starting to settle down a bit. We’ve all had a chance to play what we consider our “mains”, get Glyphed and specced and regemmed and move our stats around a bit if we’re into that sort of stuff.

I’ve seen some comments out there since the Patch came out, and it seems that responses are a bit mixed. As one example, Dechion, a long time devotee of the Hunter class, is so unhappy with the overall changes that he just can’t bring himself to play his Hunters anymore. He’s moved on to other classes.

The post I’m writing now is inspired by two things; Dechion’s post and his reasons for not liking the changes to Hunters, and my own personal experiences since Patch 4.0.1 went live.

You see, contrary to Dechion, I’ve had nothing but positive experiences in actually playing since 4.0.1 went great gonzo on the servers.

I’m obviously not talking about bugs or crashes or instability or the world server crashing because OOB got the Kael’thas Realm First 25 man Heroic ICC Lich King kill last night (grats, guys!).

I’m talking about having fun playing a class.

There is a reason for that, and it has to do with my forward planning. When Blizzard announced the intent of their changes in Cataclysm, and the scope of what they were going to do in revamping Talent Trees and abilities, I stopped making new alts… of classes I do not already know.

It’s been hard. I get tired of end game, and love making new alts. I love the travel, the exploring, the following of new paths, the road not taken the last time, choice ‘C’ in the Make Your Own Adventure book story, the trying on new pets or new specs, doing stuff that’s unfamiliar.

But I did it. I put my Warrior on a shelf, I didn’t make another Warlock, I canceled other alts, and really the only altage I was doing was a Death Knight on another server, and that was mostly so I had a gold maker should Cassie and I start playing somewhere with more character slots… she’s plumb run out.

With 4.0.1, I’ve played my maxed characters a bit, Druid, Hunter, Shaman, Paladin and Rogue. Playing those characters gave me one perspective on the changes. Settling in, getting used to how they feel, trying to work out the changes and develop a new flow.

Then I respecced my leveling Mage, dusted off my 43 Warrior, I started playing my level 73 Shadow Priest again for the first time in, literally, over a year (haven’t played her since hitting 73 a month after Wrath was released, just made her my Jewelcrafter bot), And even made a Warlock for just 4 levels, to kinda feel the class out. I played my leveling Death Knight a teeny tiny bit, since I was loving Blood before and Blood for DPS feels dead as a doornail.

Playing the characters I’m more unfamiliar with gave me a much different perspective.

You see, the characters I was really familiar with obviously feel like strangers now. Enough of the core rules have changed, but enough of the intent has stayed the same, that it’s not just that there was change. It’s that some things look like how they used to, spell names and Talents, and it leads me to expect them to work a certain way from past experience, but things are changed enough that once I get into a flow using abilities can feel jarring, unnatural.

But the characters I don’t have any pre-conceptions about come off as feeling fresh, smooth, and extremely well-designed. It’s the well-designed and well thought out aspects that make me look more closely at the classes I know.

I respecced my Warrior as Fury for now, after playing the new changes as Prot for a bit, because I wanted to see if it was just me. Leveling as a Protection Warrior with the new changes felt like being an evil little killing machine… so how much more powerful could an actual DPS spec feel?

Well, pretty crazy, actually. The new Fury is just nutso. I had two Heirloom swords, so I went dual-spec Fury, and it’s just zero down time. Stuff dies so fast I wish there was a Glyph that refreshed the cooldown of Charge when you kill a mob that grants honor or XP, like Death Grip does. ‘Cause I’m ALWAYS waiting on the Charge cooldown.

What about the changes to Frost Mages?

Well, I never use the Water Elemental because I’ve got my own pet tank (sorry, Cassie), but I love that you DO get it as a base ability of the class/spec at level 10, and while I miss a lot of the focus of the original Frost Talent Tree in being able to concentrate on pinning down monsters and raining a Blizzard on their heads, the new method of play with Fingers of Frost and Brain Freeze, and the instant Ice Lance and all of our other goodies is just hilariously awesome. As my crit increases I feel like I’m riding a wave of juggling procs that’s actually fun to manage based on the situations. It’s never really about following a set chain of triggers, it’s about knowing what to use at the moment out of what you’ve got available. Decisions and judgment, gotta love ‘em.

The Death Knight I switched to Frost and had a lot of fun on for a couple nights, picking out one-handers and dual wielding and messing about before the lure of the Mage called to me.

The Priest… ah, the Priest. I tried, I really did. It was fun, and I did blow through another level, but here’s the funny thing; the playstyle of Shadow actually doesn’t feel like it’s changed much at all, and so I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as the others. The whole “Pop some DoTs and Mind Flay to slow” thing was still in effect. Oh sure, stuff died so damn fast that it felt like I was casting too many DoTs and I pared it down… but it still felt too automatic. Not enough room to mess about with other things. Probably just me, but the class certainly wasn’t lacking in any power, just variety. But back when I was originally Shadow in BC, I loved the playstyle… so again, it’s not that the class is lacking, it’s probably my own perception of what I like now compared to then, and Shadow is still very good… so good they didn’t have to change it that much.

I did make a Paladin alt just to see about the differenec when you hit 10 as Ret, and I’ve watched Cassie as her Druid changed and got Mangle as one of her given moves while leveling. Both clearly rock the casbah.

It really does seem to me that the class changes, all of the class changes from level 10 on, have been extremely successful. They were all well thought out, from a “starting fresh with a new perspective” point of view.

Every new class that I play, or every new spec of a class that I play feels tight, smooth, fun and exciting.

The only real dissapointments I have are when I play classes or specs that I already knew very, very well, right?

So, I gotta ask, is it the design on a few of them, or is it just me? Because it sure seems as though it’s probably just me.

If I’d never played a Feral Druid before, would I be rocking the changes better than ever? I’m still loving it now, I soloed an instance just the other night to manage multi-mob threat, and it was lots and lots of fun.

With the AoE cooldown timers, it’s the return of multi-mob threat distribution, but I preferred that style over Swipe spam by a light year anyway. Only reason I and so many others started spamming Swipe was because DPS stopped giving us a second to grab all the mobs. These days I follow the apparent intent of Blizzard; mark some targets, dish your threat, use Swipe to stay above Healer threat, and if a DPS grabs from me on an unmarked mob before the marked ones are all dead, let his dumb ass die as a learning experience.

Oh, and my Druid is back on the Alliance side. I’m a Night Elf again. It’s only temporary, though, until Worgen get opened up for race changes. Just an FYI. Now I have a max level tanking character on both factions, which was my original intent.

It’s just funny. I don’t dislike any of my max level characters, I actually LIKE my Hunter’s changes quite a bit, the trap launcher and multiple trap types up at once and expanded stables and new pets… much like Mania, I can see Hunters have a BLAST in Cataclysm. I dislike feeling like Arcane Shot spam for Beastmasters is a viable technique, but I’m sure that’ll get nerfed.

But while I don’t dislike my max level characters, the changes to the characters I’m unfamiliar with, now that I’ve learned those abilities and integrated them into a playstyle just as if they were brand new characters all feel fresh, vital, and above all exciting.

The whole thing REALLY makes me look forward to making a brand new Troll Feral Druid when the expansion comes. Leveling from level 1 as a tank from the very beginning seems incredibly exciting. Having that chance to flush all of my preconceived ideas and experiences, to start over with a clean slate and work out what to do and how to do it, wow. I’m excited.

Plus, I get to be a Gummibear. How cool is that? Yes, yes, I know, I’m in the minority on the colors, it’s okay. I’m freaking wierd, it’s understandable that I’m a rare bird when it comes to liking rainbow bears.

But that’s going to be the big challenge for me in Cataclysm. To look at the old and familiar with new eyes.

I fully intend to level as a Troll Bear Tank for Cassie. I intend to make a second Hunter and level as BM, collecting new and exciting pets along the way. I intend to finally make that Warlock that never was, as a new Goblin. And I’d like to try a new Tauren Paladin from the ground up.

Mostly classes that I’ve played before, classes that I KNEW very well indeed. I know it’s going to be a challenge. Can I really set aside the years of “this is how it works” and see the classes for the way they really are now, and LIKE them on their own terms?

I think so. I think I can do it now at max level, but how much easier will it be when the characters are new and the world is changed and alive?

How about you? How have your experiences been going in the new Patch? Have you experienced any of this kind of dichotomy between the new and the familiar? Are you looking forward to the new expansion like I seem to be?

Or have the changes to your familiar characters clicked with you even better than the old way did, and far fro feeling wierd, they now feel ‘just right’?

Oh, and as far as my Warrior goes… he’s a Blacksmith. I managed to achieve one of my goals, and maxed out Blacksmithing as high as i can get, and am running around wearing personally crafted ‘Imperial Plate Armor.” Is it just me, or wouldn’t it be cool if we could choose what color to make the accents of the armors and weapons we made? ot the bse steel greys or blacks, but the accent colors. I find it cool that my badass Orc is tooling around desecrating the Imperial Plate armor, but I sure wish I could have made the accents and helmet plume colors Horde Red instead of Alliance Blue.

Just saying!

Have a great weekend folks.