Tuesday 15 October 2013

Pictures At Eleven


It was a long time coming but I have finally levelled all my characters on my main Realm. My warlock has languished at the rear for such a long time that I didn't know if I would ever finish the job.

Oddly enough I am enjoying playing a Warlock and the revamp as turned Locks into Dps monsters, I know they have had their moments when billions of dots and Seeds of Corruption were the order of the day, but I always preferred Mage to Warlock , or Hunter to Warlock when Voidwalkers were a pale imitation of a Hunter's pet.

Having played everything except a Priest I can now rank the classes as I have seen them this expansion:

1st Class - BM Hunter, Frost Mage, Elemental Shaman
2nd Class - Blood Death Knight, Windwalker Monk, Destruction Warlock
3rd Class - Arms Warrior, Retribution Paladin, Combat Rogue, Balance Druid

I have done very little re-speccing so if Feral Druid kicks ass, I am really pleased, but Balance as been rather lacklustre in my opinion. Levelling 10 different classes it is difficult enough getting to grips with 10 specs without doubling that with dual specs. I have only dabbled with one healing class this expansion and that is Restoration Shaman which I am very comfortable with.

The Timeless Isle will allow a certain amount of dual speccing, and healing for Druid, Paladin and Monk are on the cards in the near future. The Rogue and the Warrior are likely to be boxed away and handed over to the Lorewalkers until the next expansion.

Having now completed my biggest goal, I am left with a large hole to fill. A potential list of objectives includes:

  1. Maximum level for all primary and secondary skills (looking at you fishing)
  2. Obtain an average iLevel of 500 on all characters
  3. Defeat Garrosh in LFR or Flex on as many characters as possible. (that depends on my personal skills)
Ok so it's not a very big list, but it should keep me busy for a few more weeks yet. I am starting to get a little bored with the logon to all my crafters to learn new recipes and produce a new crafting material. I like the items that are made for the leg slot, but at one item per month per profession, it is remarkably slow going especially as it requires logging onto each of the characters every day. It is Blizzards version of water torture, and eventually we are all going to crack.

I have noticed this week that the Celestials are planning a vacation to Hawaii, and it is not like anyone will miss them. I have seen only Celestial killing all week. The other world bosses have all had a much longer lifespan than these four. Just over a month since patch 5.4 and the majority of people have got what they wanted from the Timeless Isle and moved on to something else like Flex or LFR. When the Timeless Isle was launched I wrote an initial impression, and back then I predicted:

"I am not sure whether this zone will have the legs to last for any considerable time and I expect it to be almost deserted in about 6 weeks, but for now, I am happy to collect my daily candy."

I am pleased to have the foresight to predict the lifespan of content, but if I can get it so right, why did Blizzard not see this coming. Is this the natural lifespan of new content? If Blizzard are spending 3-6 months to design content then you would hope it would have a longer shelf life. If this is the case then would it make more sense for Blizzard to create more but smaller patches.

Patch 5.4 could have been split into Timeless Isle - 6-8 weeks, Siege of Orgimmar 3 months. Burnout comes from either doing the same thing over and over again for a prolonged period or gorging on too much content at the same time. Small bite sized chucks fed frequently will keep Pavlov's dogs coming back for more. Nobody wants to be left to defeat Garrosh for the next 9 months, until the next expansion.

2 comments:

  1. That's ... kind of crazy. Your class/spec combos are exactly how my toons leveled in Cat (and almost entirely how they sit today, although I have a disc/shadow priest as well). My only changes today are that my warrior is temporarily running Fury (picked up better 1H weapons so it was by necessity... plus, that epic BloodThirst self-heal!) and I finally gave up on Balance and went Resto (and questing/soloing as resto? Thrilling!).

    I'd also swap some classes around in terms of my impressions of them and my preference for who gets to run LFR in the unlikely event that I'm in the mood for it:

    1) Mage, Shammy, Monk, DK, Hunter, Priest (disc)
    2) Warlock, Pally (post-5.4)
    3) Warrior, Rogue, Druid

    For some reason, the 5.4 change to Inquisition has made Ret a lot more enjoyable for me... I don't really know why, it's mostly just a quality of life thing, but now I find it a lot more enjoyable to play on a casual basis.

    BTW - Atonement priesting is killer these days, both for end-game content (possibly minus cutting edge raiding but possibly even for that) and for questing. Not sure if you have a lowbie priest (L38+ for Atonement) or have some sort of deep-seated anti-priest bias but if you have any in the mix, you should give it a try, plenty of time to level before the next expansion still and it could give you a new favourite healer so you can keep your monk and pally in their current specs and put your druid in the same box as your warrior and rogue, where it belongs.

    Max fishing on all toons?! You're nuts but more power to you, crazy person. Stick to pools and skill doesn't matter. :)

    I've always had a routine for the daily crafting requirements for professions, that hasn't gotten any worse with the recipe learning process... I actually like this process a lot better, although I wouldn't mind a cheaper way to speed up the actual crafting. Maybe an accelerated spammable version that uses 5x the mats of the normal daily one vs a very expensive raid mat? That would have the side effect of raising the price of the base mats, making farming more lucrative for those who rely on that for their income.

    Your server may be dead on the Island but my main (and relatively slow) server still has a few Celestial kills every night (even had an Ordos kill last night, which shocked me more than a bit). I'm expecting about 8 weeks of "life" on my main server which is probably a good point for it, that's about how long content should last, I think. You don't want people to feel obligated to keep going out there for 6 months, better to make it a more legitimately optional thing at some point. I suspect most servers still have some activity out there. I just wish the rep grind was a bit more ... democratic. Join a rep group or, literally, die.

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    1. My Druid is set for some Tree Healing (Hugging) so he gets a little longer before I put him in the box.

      Fishing is nuts, but I have been meaning to complete it on all characters for so long now. My biggest issue is with my Panda who is only just onto BC fish. I could really use a few "Nat's Fishing Journal"

      The same thing happened with the Barrens as well as the Timeless Isle. They get plundered and then people move. The only way to extend the lifetime of these places is to phase the zones like they did with the Isle of Thunder.

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