Blizzcon Thoughts

I don't do crowds, so the virtual ticket is pretty much the best option for Blizzcon for me.  Some of the main themes of the next expansion - Kul Tiras, Zandalar, Queen Azshara - were all things I was expecting to see.  Which is weird - I never guess right about what's coming next.

I wasn't really expecting the sub-race options, but I pretty much know what alts I'll roll to probably leave unleveled for all the new ones:

• Zandalari druid (replacing an existing level 8 troll druid)
• Lightforged priest (to take the place of the level 1 draenei priest)
• Dark Iron warrior (if it's an option)
• Nightborne mage (or race change the night elf I've been debating making Horde)
• Highmountain hunter (or race change my existing tauren druid or blood elf monk)
• Void elf rogue (because I only have one rogue out of 30+ alts of various levels)

I'm curious how many other sub-races/allied races we'll acquire in the long run.  There are some obvious possibilities already:

• Mag'har or Draenor orcs
• Taunka
• High Elves
• Forest trolls
• Wildhammer dwarves
• Broken draenei
• Ogres or half-ogres
• Those adorable fox people in the new zones
• Hozen
• Jinyu
• Yaungol
• Leper gnomes

There are also less likely possibilities:

• Naga
• Mantid
• Withered elves
• Harpies
• Mogu
• Centaurs
• Tuskarr
• Tol'vir
• Arakkoa (either model)
• Those stone dwarf dudes
• Mechagnomes

I don't know just how much work it takes to convert an NPC race to a PC one - I'd imagine there are emotes and animations to design and map, adjustments to make for armor, and in some cases updates graphically to bring the models up to current game standards.  You may have noticed with some polymorphs and costumes that some models lack things like swimming animations.  They do at least have existing territories and lore.  Hopefully these first six go well and they can expand on it going forward.

So far as the increased focus on the faction divide... eh.  I'd like to play more with my mom, but she plays a lot of humans.  I play a lot of tauren and forsaken.  I'm hoping the changes in PVP/PVE server stuff means that eventually you'll be able to communicate and group with people of the other faction outside the faction capitals if you're not flagged for PVP, but that's not this expansion.  Years ago I had a literal dream about being in a cross server queue for running a dungeon, basically standing around in a room with various other characters waiting for them to call five of us to go in next.  Maybe next time?

About the only interest I have in Classic servers is to go see Auberdine again.  I... can't really quest in Darkshore anymore, which seems kind of silly, but I spent so much time there.  It took me something like 28 days /played to level my first night elf.  I hearthed to Auberdine for probably 8 months.  It also took me till level 48 to get my first mount, so other than Auberdine tourism, they don't hold a lot of appeal for me.

I'm looking forward to the zone scaling, though - I've stranded more than a few toons at the Outland/Northrend boundary, maybe because Outland is more removed in memory.  At this point I wouldn't mind mostly skipping Cataclysm for Pandaria, as well.  I haven't enjoyed zone quest set-ups where you basically have to unlock the zone to wander around and find quests.  Let me wander in and do random crap, especially on alts.  I do pretty much everything on my main, but after that I just kind of want to get the toon through to get to leveling up trade skills.

Artifact Transmogs

So now that I've started getting artifacts on my alts, pretty much the first thing they all do upon getting out of the artifact scenario is get out the transmog yak.  (That thing is worth its weight in gold.  Also I want to see some kind of series now involving the adventures of Cousin Slowhands, Mystic Birdhat, and the yak.)

Anyway, here's where things stand so far.  I still need to get artifacts on the demon hunter, second priest, second mage, and hunters three-five.  My rogue's got her artifacts (subtlety), but I haven't found a transmog I like for her yet.

Disc priest

 

Prot warrior

Windwalker monk

Prot paladin

Resto druid

Blood death knight

Destro warlock

 

Fire mage

Resto shaman

Marksman hunter #2

Alting in 7.0

So I've been running all my alts through the Broken Shore scenario since I got the troll hunter to 100 (that's five now).  Doing this is letting me get their bars set up, figure out a bit how they work, and all that.  It's also let me see how I like where the specs I usually play are at now.

Marksman:  I think I wrote about this at length in the post-macro... post, but I'm liking the Hunter's Mark/Marked Shot interplay.  I'm using Patient Sniper but not Sidewinders.  I'm also mostly using Murder of Crows because it's harder to switch back and forth between that and Barrage on the fly.  I'm having a bit of trouble judging "safe" distances for Barrage with the mastery range increase - which I like, but I'm just not used to it yet.  I miss a nice reliable crowd control like Freezing Trap that doesn't necessarily put you in combat, and I miss Spirit Bond for its survivability and less downtime while soloing.  I'm thrilled to still have my pet, and I've been doing invasions with Puppy (KitTabik), Cuddles, PangurBan, Jack, and Kitty.  Oh, and Inle, because I wandered out of the Kharanos Inn on my level 3 gnome hunter... who's now level 11.

Discipline:  Disc wasn't bad for invasions, but I'm finding group healing without the cooldown you get from the artifact to be... missing something.  It's going to have to be reworked after Legion to account for this, which seems like an oversight to me.  There's no good sustainable area healing or damage.  I'm using Halo for both right now, since you either have to spread out some Atonement and then do damage or put up Purge the Wicked and then have the target live long enough for you to be able to Penance it - and if Penance is on cooldown you have to wait to start AOE damage.  Applying Atonement is awkward with the area-based Power Word: Radiance, and too expensive to just blanket with Plea after six applications.  There's also no good way to heal up that one person who died during combat that you've resurrected and want to get back up quickly - I used to spam some Flash Heals on them, but I've got nothing without a cooldown strong enough to really do that now.  Easiest fixes?  Give us back Mind Sear, and make Power Word: Radiance target like Prayer of Healing did and adjust the mana/cast time/healing done for five targets to let us apply Atonement in a more predictable way than just where someone is standing.  It would make LFR less infuriating to try to heal.  Doesn't fix the out of combat healing, but there's food for that.

Restoration (Shaman):  Haha, I have no idea what I'm doing on my shaman.  This isn't entirely true, but I'm not even sure why I have her spec'd Resto because I didn't like healing on her that much before.  She seems to have a decent toolkit for both AOE and single target heals, a couple of good big-heal cooldowns, and that added totem-based battle rez.  I need to switch her back to Elemental, though, because I want to play her as a lightning-zappy shaman rather than as Resto.

Destruction:  I was a little worried when I was setting up my warlock's bars until I realized I'd talented Incinerate to hit everything.  Destruction seems fine from a casual point of view, and hella fun.  Keep Immolate up to generate some shards, hit Conflagrate when you can, Incinerate all the things, and Chaos Bolt for mana regen.  Life Tap and Drain Life's return was very welcome, and my infernal has a name now and I  apparently talented to keep him this is amazing.  Super pleased with my little burny goblin.

Subtlety:  I feel like I'm not completely incompetent on my rogue again.  I can just Backstab now and don't have to rely on Hemorrhage for soloing since they changed the positioning stuff on Backstab.  I also discovered that I have crap for leather transmog.

Protection (Warrior):  Invasions probably weren't the best place to judge my tanks, since the healing is so sporadic.  I miss Charge, but other than that and not always being sure how to get rid of all the excess rage, it's seemed okay.  She's got some new melee animations, which seem neat.

Protection (Paladin):  I actually felt more survivable on my pally, but that might be because I was doing the invasion a week later and there may have been healing going on.  I actually feel like I have buttons to push on her now, which is a change; with the removal of holy power (just for prot? I don't know), I did have to move buttons around so I wouldn't hit things that I need to save the cooldown for rather than just smashing them because they were available.  I'll still run through the holy spec artifact quest at some point because I really want to see it, but I think she's going to stick with prot as her main spec.

Restoration (Druid):  The druid has always been my second favorite to heal on, and for the most part she feels like she still has a complete healing toolkit.  HoTs, AOE, single target, some defensive cooldowns, and Tranquility still seems pretty great.  I really hope Disc feels okay with the artifact or I may have to switch over for dungeon healing this expansion.

Blood:  This is the only spec I've really played on a death knight in... a very long time.  It's changed a bit, but I still muddle around in it okay.  I think I spent more time making a new mog for her than actually doing the scenario and invasion.  I didn't feel as comfortable as on my warrior or like I had as much wiggle room for muddling around as I did on my paladin, but I didn't feel so lost that I won't play her in this spec (like my shaman).

Fire:  I switched off of frost for two reasons:  I had always preferred playing fire but kept dying while leveling, and I made an awesome fire mog for my mage.  Other than being frustrated by Flamestrike's super slow non-Hot Streak cast and wondering if I should talent differently so I feel like I have useful AOE, the crit-crit-Pyroblast rhythm of fire is fun.  I don't play the mage enough to know if I'm doing badly at it.

Mistweaver:  I've been lost on my monk since 6.0 when I boosted her to 90; that hasn't really changed, but I've somehow managed to complete the healing proving grounds on her, so I guess it's not a lost cause.  After running the Broken Shore scenario, I went through and renamed all her healing macros - her spells are now hot, +hot, chan[nel], 3heal, and bubbl.  I've played my other healers long enough to mostly know what their spells do by name, but I don't know my monk well enough to keep them straight.  I think she's got a decent healing toolkit if I ever play her enough to get used to it.


So overall - there are some specs I feel kind of lost but not helpless on.  Since discipline is one of the ones I play the most, I have some frustrations with it, but I think I'll get by.  Marksmanship has lost a few things I miss (Freezing Trap, Spirit Bond), but overall it feels okay.  My warlock may move up in the alt leveling rotation because destruction feels so fun.  Most of my toons are 660+ post-invasions, and my primary toon in each role (Duskhawk, priest, and warrior) are all 690+.  So I feel pretty set for Tuesday when my collector's edition box shows up.

Current Transmogs

I've got fourteen toons at level 100 now, and most of them have set transmogs at this point.  I've discovered that the races that it doesn't matter if you can see the bottom of their feet, their names don't obscure them, whereas ones that can wear whole boots get the name/enter world button overlaid on them.  The goblin is the most boggling in this regard.

Anyway...

Duskhawk is in mostly Axeclaw, with the Golden Bow of Quel'Thalas, the requisite straw hat, and the awesome, awesome belt with 3D pouches (Girdle of the Legion General).  I'm going to be mogging this bow forever.

Throop's got a much more eclectic mix; she's a prot warrior for the most part.  The chest and pants are from the goblin quests in Spires of Arak; the boots are from Wrath blacksmithing; the shoulders (which move) were out of a missions chest.  The shield is the Drillborer Disk from Molten Core, and the sword is an artifact of her Swordsmithing days, the Blazing Rapier.  (Throop also makes appearances in Enchanted Thorium, since she can make it.)

 Noski is in mostly Season 2 and Season 3 PVP gear, which tells you how long it's been since I did arenas regularly.  The shoulders used to become transparent, taking your shoulders with them, when you'd stealth.  (They've fixed that.)

Elsabeth's transmog is one of my favorites; the Mistscape Robe was a random drop while leveling an alt, and it just went so well with the Rime-Rift Shoulders and Derevka's Gleaming Girdle.  The Communal Staff was in my bank for months before I finally got something to drop that I could mog it to; I had a 1-hand and offhand forever.  Apparently the only 1-hand I have banked on her to use for transmog is the Mallet of Zul'Farrak.

Duskmoon is the other hunter with a transmog; my Nelf only has vanilla PVP gear banked for cohesive sets, and my third Horde hunter doesn't have anything cohesive complete (though I want the set from the Cataclysm endgame dungeons for her; she's got that bow).  Anyway, Duskmoon's mostly in Wrathfin armor, with some random kind of matching shoulders (Calcified Web Spaulders) and Boots of Savagery.  Normally I give her a crossbow, but she's got the Farstrider's Longbow at the moment.

The shaman's in the heirloom parts of the Elements, with a bit of I think tier 1 filling in some of the gaps.  And then she's got Gorehowl, because I thought it was funny to do Elemental or Resto with Gorehowl and I can't mog her staff to Sulfuras.  The Elements is the iconic shaman set for me.

Katrine's in pretty much full Tier 1, Felheart, because it looks awesome on a goblin.  Yes, that scythe is Soul Harvester, and it killed my cropping options for the picture.

Dawning is in full Emerald Plate and I love her in it.  The Knight's War Hammer was apparently stashed in her bank years ago, and the shield is the Emerald Shield.  She totally looks like a tauren paladin working for the Cenarion Circle.

My death knight's in a similarly complete set - Warleader, with the Darkened Broadsword.  The green matched her a little better before the model revamp.

Zaala's set (she was named before I ran into Zaela, all right?) was a bit harder to come by - the robes were a random drop, but matched the mage trainers in Orgrimmar (this was before the Siege raid, ahem), but filling out the rest of the pieces has been a pain.  So with the Windchaser Robes I've got Mooncloth Shoulders, Icemist Bracelets, Regal Gloves, and the Lunar Belt.  This set was complicated partly because this shade of the robes doesn't have most of the matching pieces implemented for players; there's three same-model/differently-shaded versions of it with more pieces, but this was the one that matched the trainers.  I spent more than I should have on the belt. Ahem.

Evenmoon was made as a placeholder before my server got connected, to see what our soon-to-be neighbors' auction house was like.  Since I didn't have a monk, I kept her to level once she was in the guild... and then boosted her, which left me really lost for a while.  But I got a full set of Wolf Rider gear for her!  I don't have the shoulders I really want for this (Rageclaw Shoulder Pads) because they've been super expensive every time I've seen them, but the Emblazoned Shoulders substitute okay.  The staff is one of the low-level monk quest ones, since it matches well enough.

I still need transmog sets for my druid and two hunters, but I'm still drake farming, so that's been taking priority.

Things I didn't notice in Draenor until flying

This is going to be an image heavy post.

The spires of light in Talador:

Crowds (relatively) at pet battles:

This elevator is not the Aldor Rise:

It's not actually that far from Frostfire to Nagrand:

I didn't have my view distance set on Ultra.  The clarity:

Alliance towns:

Seriously, these zones seem to be set up to route you completely away from the other faction's towns.  I couldn't tell you where most of them are.

The extent of the ogres in Nagrand:

(I think I quested there and I didn't realize just how big it was.)

The volcanic? peak over Hallvalor:

Holy crap, why did you give us Warspear, Bladespire looks frickin' awesome:

Hot damn, this place feels underused now.  Sorry, Bladespire.

Seriously, Bladespire:

Drov the Ruiner.  Sorry, Drov:

Oh, my God, the Foundry:

This is what it felt like to fly into Storm Peaks the first time and see all that Titan architecture.  This place is amazing, and we've been stuck down there not able to see the forest for the trees.

Trees in a steam vent:

Gorgrond isn't that much less confusing from the air, but at least the plants aren't trying to kill you up here:

Huh, I apparently had the music off and oh my God I know that music but why is it in flutes and not brass??


Well, this looks particularly uninviting from the air:

Huh, there's mountains up there:

Oh, they fel-broke the roof?

Huh, symbols inside the portal:

Okay, enough sight-seeing; time to level the druid:

A Shot in the Arm

As I mentioned in the mount post, chasing mounts is a pretty big motivator for me in terms of content; heck, I did Long Strange Trip on three characters for faster flying prior to the achievement (and mounts) becoming account-wide.  So flying in Draenor?  Well, I just needed to finish three of the apexis areas for Securing Draenor for existing requirements.  But the carrot of flying is going to have me in Tanaan working on the new reputations, for sure.

So what am I looking forward to with flying?

• Leveling my druid.  I love flying on my druid, and taking her to Spires of Arak, after all the druid flight quests in Outland?  That's going to be pretty cool.  Anzu used to be part of the quest to get epic flying on druids.
• Flying around in my Sky Golem.  Maybe I'll farm herbs on my death knight; maybe I'll just track down all the followers she missed while leveling.  I don't know, but I'm gonna enjoy flying around in my green goblin iron man suit doing it.
• Archaeology!  It's going to be so much less painful to farm for unfinished rare relics.
• Pet battle dailies!  There are a few pets I only have lower quality ones too.
• Maybe farming?  I used to swap over to farming ore, or fishing, when I had bad brain days and wanted something mindless today.  In Burning Crusade it was Nagrand; Sholazar in Northrend; Uldum or Deepholm in Cataclysm;  Vale of Eternal Blossoms in Pandaria.  I need a lot of lunkers for Nat Pagle still...

In the meantime?  I finished Grand Treasure Hunter back in November, but I'm going to try to get them all before the patch drops.

Post-Blackrock Foundry

Yeah, yeah, 6.2 hasn't dropped yet.  But Blackhand's dead, and my guild is taking an unofficial raiding break.

So what am I doing in WoW right now?

Leveling alts.  I had done my warrior and priest with the intention of having tank and heal alts available for fives, alt raids, LFR, etc., but realized that with treasure hunters I might be able to get the yak.  So my death knight got bumped up when it got slow, and my rogue is a fresh 100.  The weird thing is that I'm doing the melee first.  They aggravate the arthritis in my hand with their keybind-heavy set-ups, but the DK just kind of mowed through stuff, and my rogue, with stealth, can skip a lot of stuff (I've been doing this with her since Vanilla, really).  I really like Spires of Arak and have been basically heirloom and potioning my way to it and then more or less doing the quest achievement for the zone.  You get your salvage yards done like that.  I've hardly touched Nagrand other than on Duskhawk and some barn farming.

Missions.  I love the missions, although I kind of wish our mission table were in Warspear, so I spent more time around people I'm not in charge of.  I also wish Nazgrim were running it.  Siege of Orgrimmar left some holes in our NPC ranks. :(  But yeah, the  missions are edging me closer to a yak.

Crafting.  I realized I had over a thousand hexweave bolts; I upgraded my main's bags and kind of have some space again.  I feel bad when I load up my barn on my priest because I always feel kind of useless in a group farming wolves, but she's disc/holy.

Occasionally - apexis dailies when they align with the two reputations I still need to finish.  I'm nowhere near done with the Frostwolf and Laughing Skull reputations, so when those dailies come up, I buy the extra apexis dailies from my sergeant and hit them up with my bird-buddy Ishaal.

Even more occasionally - hitting up old dungeons or raids where I need mounts.  I still need the mount off Deathwing to finish out the drake achievement.

All in all I'm still playing, and enjoying, the game, but I'm not doing some of the things I did previously; I haven't farmed out the archaeology items yet, and I haven't been regularly hitting up the pet tamers.  Both of those feel too time consuming on ground mounts.  We'll see how Tanaan is for non-raid content once 6.2 drops.

Garrison Choices

Now that we're a couple weeks into the expansion, I've had time to unlock Level 2 garrisons on several alts, and Level 3 on my main.  After playing around with it thus far, I think I know which way I want to go with the rest of them, as well.

Some observations:

• Having an Enchanting Hut on anyone but an enchanter can be... frustrating.  Not everything disenchants via the cauldron.  Work orders are quite expensive when you're not able to disenchant everything.  All in all, if you have an enchanting toon already... Let's just say I replaced my blacksmith's.
•  The Storehouse is awesome!  I have Jeeves and the guild bank button on my main, but I am so not regretting bank and guild bank access (and eventually transmog), and I am liking the extra work order capacity for the potential days I won't be able to check on them.  This is, in fact, what I replaced my blacksmith's Enchanting Hut with.
• I haven't figured out which, if any, toon will get a Mage Tower (whatever the Horde name for that is).  War Mill, sure.  Stables, yes.  Barracks everyone starts with, and I like followers enough to keep it.  I think I'm giving my other engineer a Goblin Workshop to see what the inventions are.  But I don't know what I'd do with the Mage Tower, really.
• Leatherworkers are still getting kind of screwed compared to professions that use ore or herbs, given that the Barn requires tying up a medium plot.  That said, the Barn isn't actually that bad for a medium plot, especially on a toon that doesn't have a tank or healer queue (for the Inn quests) or one that doesn't collect a lot of other raw materials (to do work orders at the Trading Post).
• The Gladiator's Sanctum is... well, I don't PVP.  I kind of want to give it to a toon for account completionism, but I really don't know which one I'd even try it on.  The rogue, maybe?  One of the other hunters?  I don't know.

I really like followers and follower missions.  Once I have all 13 max level toons' garrisons open, I could easily just cycle through them doing their missions every hour or two and actually not mind.  They're going out fetching 630 ilvl gear for me right now!  (They had better be.  There's a 99% success chance for those boots with the group I sent out this afternoon.)

All in all, I think the way my toons' garrisons are going to shake out are:

• Small Plot 1:  Crafting profession building
• Small Plot 2:  Storehouse or crafting profession 2 building
• Small Plot 3:  Salvage Yard or Storehouse, based on Small Plot 2
• Medium Plot 1:  Inn or Trading Post (based on gathering profession and dungeon queue roles)
• Medium Plot 2:  Lumber Mill or Barn (based on whether they need leather)
• Large Plot 1:  Barracks
• Large Plot 2:  War Mill (raiders) or Stables (gatherers); Goblin Workshop on Engineer 2

Have I mentioned that I really like followers?

What I'm Riding

And by I, of course, I mean they, my 12 13 characters that are 90+.  I've got a lot of mounts, so I try not to use the same one on two different characters.  I'll do these in the order I opened their garrisons (or plan to).

Duskhawk: Swift Shorestrider - It was a birthday present, and I still love it.

Priest: I use different mounts for different specs on the priest.  For Disc, I'm using the Imperial Quilen.  For Shadow I'm using the Spectral Wind Rider - because it's practically invisible in shadow form, and I find that amusing.

There's a wind rider there, I promise.

Death Knight: My death knight was the first toon I started using the Sky Golem on, since I was leveling her with herbalism.  I didn't realize just how much I would love its flight animation, or how much I miss it.

Warrior:  I'm still using the Sapphire Panther on my warrior; when I first made all the gem cats, I was like, dammit, they're expensive, I'm using them.  She got the blue one.  (Also I was a huge Voltron fan when I was like, 8.)

Hunter 2:  Expensive cats?  This is the jewelcrafter, so she got the black one.

Shaman:  My shaman had the yellow cat for a long time, but I switched her back to a wolf for Warlords.  I tend to prefer unarmored mounts when I have the option, so I went with the Old Cliff Jumper model, the Dire Wolf.

Warlock:  My warlock is still using the yellow cat.  I might switch her up if I find something else I like her on, but the cat turns more golden when she's got full embers, so...

Hunter 3:  This is what happens when I can't decide what mount to use: a boring old Swift Green Wind Rider.

Rogue:  I've been using the Sandstone Drake on her, because 21 canopic jars, but I'm not sure I want to keep using big giant dragon on the ground. 

Druid:  This is where I sigh about flight form and stuff.  At least the updated Astral form makes the Forest Strider look even cooler.

Mage:  This is another character using a drake mount, this time the Azure Drake from Malygos; it seemed appropriate for a mage.  I may just go back to her Burgundy Wolf due to huge drakeness on the ground.  (It matches her hair.  Ahem.)

Paladin:  My pally used to be my bank toon, so I gave her Tyrael's Charger for running back and forth between the auction house and the mailbox.  It was paladin-y, and it wasn't a huge kodo that I couldn't find the mailbox under.  It's also one of the mounts that goes seamlessly between flight and no-flight, which is a plus as you level.

Mabs:  When I first made a character, part of the reason she ended up like she did was because her hair could be green.  So she's got the green cat (after years of default nightsaber that matched her Kitty).