Media Consumption Hiatus
I always wondered which of my features I would break down and not do first. I have a pretty bad habit of launching a series but only quitting doing it… a month or so later. I like the concept of a day like Media Consumption… but the truth is there are some weeks I don’t really consume much media. This week for example I consumed a lot of Fallout 4 related stuff… because that is pretty much all I have been playing. The problem is… any videos I watched on how to get the most out of electricity or general base building theory… aren’t really all that interesting to talk about. Nor do I feel really compelled to talk about iZombie that we finally caught up with… or last weeks Walking Dead. Literally two episodes of iZombie and a single episode of Walking Dead is pretty much all of the television I consumed this week. So for this week I am cancelling this column, with the option to revive it as soon as I have movies, television or other media worth talking about.
Farwell to Gladiator
This week the previews for the class changes in Legion came out… and for the most part there are two classes that I was really interested in… the Warrior and the Death Knight. Two big things changed in Warlords that caused me to switch priorities a bit… firstly they made Death Knights feel like shit by making pestilence be part of the ability rotation… giving them a caster feel. Secondly they gave me Gladiator stance… which pretty much was the thing I always wanted to do as a warrior… be able to DPS with a sword and shield. As a result I took Belghast my protection warrior off mothballs… and has quite a bit of fun raiding as Gladiator dps for at least part of the expansion. Warlords however just didn’t have enough oomph to keep me going… even though I was playing the best possible player fantasy for me. I guess part of me knew that it simply could not last past this expansion. I watched as Blizzard developers struggled to figure out how to itemize tanking gear… but not making it insanely overpowering for Gladiators. Part of this came from the fact that armor was simply a better dps itemization stat than strength. I gained 1.5 attack power for each point of armor… whereas I gained 1 from strength. So that mean’t for dpsing… I stacked Armor potions rather than Strength potions and did other fiddly things… like looking for +armor gear with crit on it.
It seems as thought my fears have come true and as they talked about the Warrior class changes I saw zero mention of Gladiator spec. Even though I knew deep down in my heart that this was coming… it still feels a bit like a sucker punch to the gut. I liked being able to play Belghast again and enjoy doing so… the problem being… that I still didn’t really feel like DPS. My heart has never been in the DPS rotation… and as a player when it comes to DPS… I don’t want to be last place on the meters, but I have zero burning desire to be first place either. I feel like I am lacking the competitive nature needed to really excel at damage dealing. Tanking however… my deep protective streak over my friends always kicks in and I fight my ass off to hold aggro, or stay alive during this attack or that. Basically tanking feeds off of my instincts in a way that damage dealing never has. So while I hate the thought of not being able to deal silly amounts of damage as gladiator… and have relatively high survival… I am totally see why they are getting rid of it for exactly that reason. Regardless of the fight, I was almost always the last one standing because I had cool-downs a plenty to keep me alive during big problems. There were numerous times where I could temporarily tank while we resurrected a tank, which tells me… Gladiator was just too strong.
Welcome Back Blood
During the Crusaders Coliseum patch cycle in Wrath of the Lich King… I ended up switching mains from the Warrior to the Death Knight in theory… to give up tanking and do damage instead. This didn’t actually work like I planned, and instead of DPSing I quickly found myself pressed into the role of Blood tanking. This was fine by me because from the start of playing a Death Knight I had always been drawn to the high survival nature of blood. As that turned into the official “tanking” stance I adapted quickly and came to love the class and the spec. Through Cataclysm and Pandaria I was all about the Death Knight and it was always the first character I would level. In fact until Pandaria my Warrior sat at level 80… and relatively untouched since I crated him up towards the end of Wrath. When we were able to become Worgen, I race changed from human… and I felt like I was completely happy and set to be playing that class for the rest of my time in World of Warcraft.
Then Warlords came and made the class just “feel” wrong. I have talked about this before… but it is more important how something feels to me rather than how numerically it works out. Death Knights no longer “felt” tanky or even melee in general… but the constant pestilence and death coil usage made it “feel” like a caster… the absolute last thing I would want to play. With the class changes it at least seems like they understand this problem… and with it is a return to mostly melee abilities for at least the Blood Death Knight. So while I am losing Gladiator… it seems like I might be gaining back the Death Knight class as a whole? Admittedly a lot of what harmed my enjoyment of Warlords beta… was how bad the Death Knight felt to play. My hope is that at some point early in the beta cycle I can get my hands on some play time… and get clarification if this fixes the class. I am getting more interested in Legion as a whole… but this is going to be absolutely crucial to my enjoyment. I need my Death Knight back to have fun again.