Hotbar Construction
Yesterday was at least in part a continuation of the previous day. When I got home we ate some dinner and I plopped down in my comfy chair and began continuing to sort through my gear, getting almost all of the way through my characters last night. Early in the evening Grace and I had talked about running some older content for transmoggy bits, so I had a clear target timeframe in mind. In the meantime I had to somehow make sense of my hotbars and decide what the hell I was going to play that evening. Since I really only care deeply about plate graphics usually I knew it was more than likely going to be Warrior, Deathknight or Paladin. As a result I devoted a bit of time to each of them, and tried to make something functional for the purpose of running content. Of the three the most immediately recognizable was the warrior with the only thing really dropping off of my hotbar being Heroic Strike. There were various other tweaks as well but nothing that I could not adjust to rapidly, and within a few minutes I felt like my old self again. The biggest hitch being the significant change to the thunderstrike sound and animation. It is those moments when I realize how much I ultimately play by sound, and use audio queues to know if an ability actually fired or not. The animation is also extremely different being more of an earthquake than a shock of lightning… which I can only assume is part of their “aligning of class fantasies” business. More than likely we lost our lightning because they decided that only Shaman can have lightning effects or something along those lines.
The paladin was also a similar easy adjustment period, and I fell into that routine rather easy. I also love the fact that Paladins now have a movement speed buff similar to that of the Crusader in Diablo 3 which I have played the last few seasons. I may or may not have spent a good deal of time charging around my garrison. The big challenge however was that of the Deathknight, and I still have not quite figured out how I am supposed to be playing it. Compared to the other two tanks it just feels like a wet paper bag when it comes to survival. I straight up got wrecked by the dungeon tank dummy in the garrison and had similar problems in Legion beta. So far I have been able to breeze through the artifact weapon class every single time… but with the Deathknight. While doing that quest I wound up dying roughly five or six times before I was finally able to limp through it. The whole reason why I always gravitated towards the Deathknight was their ability to solo and their ability to quest rapidly. I am not discounting the fact that I probably am missing some key element that makes the class manageable, but whatever is wrong… it is a little maddening. I was truly hoping this would be the expansion where I could feel comfortable returning to being blood again. As it stands… for tanking main I am pretty much staying Warrior because it feels comfortable and like I have the ability to actually take some damage, and at the same time still have a lot of movement in the form of the new combo intercept/charge and heroic leap.
Collecting Appearances
I thought I would include this gem of an image as a clear understanding of why we need a good cosmetic system in this game. As I sifted through my various alts I encountered a whole bunch of reasons, but this one from Earthen Ring takes the cake. As far as the actual collection of appearances we ended up running a few panda raids… or at least tried to because one of the bosses on Heart of Fear kept resetting, and neither of us seemed to have Throne of Thunder unlocked. We did however successfully get through Mogu’shan Vaults and then finished off the night with a quick run through Black Temple where we honestly got more awesome greens than purples. I was making an attempt at getting the second warglaive for my warrior. Earlier in the evening I ran my warrior through MC at least up until the binding dropping mobs… only to get the same binding I had already to drop. I had a similar lack of luck in Black Temple, but there were a handful of plate appearance pieces that I had apparently never picked up along the way. Grace made out like a bandit in Pandaria, but seemed to get minimal drops once we finished the night up in the BC era content.
Right now my biggest frustration is with the whole collection of appearances being locked to armor type. As a result anything that was leather or mail pretty much went to waste, well other than selling it for gold. This is a similar problem to the one I have with the cata era cloth drop rate changes. There are certain characters I play just to have a complete stable of classes, and then there are other characters that I actually enjoy farming content on. My tailor is a Shadow/Disc Priest and that is the character I will probably never actually farm older content on because I don’t get along very well with finger wigglers. Similarly I gravitate towards plate wearers for the characters I actually repeatedly run content on, and it would be amazing if I could just pick up those items and commit them to my appearance library rather than being grumpy as I watch cool stuff going to waste. I can totally see making appearance follow class lines in parties to keep people from rolling on everything. However when you are out soloing it would be amazing if you actually got to collect those appearances. However the end result is likely going to be that I find a farmer of every armor class and wind up running a lot more old world content. Maybe that was their intention all along? Force you to dust off those alts and actually play them?
Low Sodium
This is one of those patches that I have seen a lot more salt over than previous ones. I am not sure if the World of Warcraft community is just more dramatic than it used to be, or if the changes really are that frustrating. I mean on some level I get it, because I quite literally had to rethink the way I play every character I have tried so far. All of the rules of how classes interacted changed, and for the players that tried to do a lot of things for utility purposes… I fear their gameplay is forever going to be changed. For me… I have a full stable of alts and if for some reason I don’t like the way one feels this time I can shift focus to another one and be equally happy. However for the player that spent over a decade playing this one class a certain way… the changes could be traumatic. I fully support complaining about World of Warcraft, because god knows I have done plenty of it over the years. I fully support the notion of feeling like your voice needs to be heard. However after doing both of those… you are ultimately left with a decision point of either adjusting to the changes or quitting the game and trying one of dozens of other good MMORPGs. Change has right or wrong been a constant in World of Warcraft, and if you are not willing to reinvent yourself every few years than chances are you are going to wind up bitter and frustrated.
This moment happened for me during Cataclysm, and several times since I have decided that I am simply no longer having fun with the game. Each time it happens I have tried to be more chill about it, to the point where when I quit these days it is not a huge ordeal. So if you are finding yourself having one of these moments over the Legion changes, take a bit of advice from someone who has been there so many times. Firstly it is completely okay to quit the game. The game will still be there, and you can absolutely return at a later date if you rethink your decision. I quit “permanently” at the beginning Cataclysm, around the end of Cataclysm, the beginning of Pandaria, the middle of Pandaria, the end of Pandaria, the beginning of Warlords, and then I’ve been more or quite often less active for the last six months. There are other amazing games you could be playing and would likely have a much better time doing so, at least until the present bitterness fades. If you need some suggestions hit me up sometime and I can probably rattle you off a dozen based on your previous Warcraft preferences. Essentially what I am saying is as someone who has been there… doing that is so much better than flailing impotently in the hopes that someone will notice your pain and rollback all of the offending changes. Sometimes it is better to walk away and return later… rather than napalming the community.
