Dungeon Delving 403.
When I was 7, one of my homework assignments was to draw what I wanted to be when I grew up. I drew an indiscriminate black person-shaped blob proselytizing in front of a massive blob of more people-shaped blobs. If I saw this picture today, I’d say it was a cult leader. Close enough- it was my dad.
My parents are both Presbyterian Pastors, a profession I can honestly say I’ve had no intention of entering since I was 7 and my mom was pinning homework assignments I drew of my dad on the refrigerator. This philosophy on career choices bled into World of Warcraft, where until last week my highest level priest was 17. I’m not sure what it is that turned me off the class. Freud would have his theories, but I think it has something more to do with the fact that I hate Paladins. And, after leveling one of those to 80 (how I found the resolve, I do not know), I vowed to never again pick a class whose main descriptive word is “goldenrod.” I also despise Blood Elves with a passion, and my opinion on trolls is “cool, but not for me.” Undead? They’re just ugly. (If they ever let us skin our undead to be another race that looks undead, though, I’m totally there.)
However, patch 4.0.3. changed all of that. After literally a year of anticipation, the Shattering has come and Deathwing has unleashed herds of Tauren Priest unto this world, in all their Divine Bovine(y) goodness. Following my tradition of only caring for characters if they’re of the so-rare-it’s-still-living-steak variety, I launched straight into leveling my first real priest. Five minutes ago, Clergelam hit forty. And, so far, I love it.
Leveling received a huge buff in 4.0.1, when talent trees allow us to get signature talents at incredibly low level. When Deathwing broke the world (and the servers), leveling saw it’s second huge buff- a retooling of the old world. Quests now breadcrumb into other quests, they require significantly less movement, and they’re written as to be engaging. However, I have little experience past Mulgore and the first half of Northern Barrens when it comes to questing. My focus has primarily been on dungeons.
Dungeons are incredible now. Blizzard has done an excellent job of going back to all of their old content and retuning it to be appropriately difficult for the level you are. No more of these silly “immolate-conflag-soulburn-soulfire-dead” bosses of a week ago. Bosses today, from Ragefire Chasm to Scarlet Monastery: Cathedral, take a beating. Moreover, they can dish out the hurt. Some have even taken it upon themselves to teach new players a vital life lesson for all of World of Warcraft: Don’t Stand in The Bad.
Shadowfang Keep. Level 20ish. Lots of Bad.
Some dungeons have been retooled entirely- Shadowfang Keep and Deadmines being the most significant examples of this, though Stormwind Stockades as well. They feature new bosses, and unlike most low level bosses these ones come with actual weird mechanics. They hurt like heck (the first boss of SFK is going to be a pug killer, doubtlessly), and they don’t go down easy. For those dungeons who didn’t get a total redesign, some changes were made. Razorfen Kraul is now a 30-35 instance, while it’s counterpart Razorfen Downs is even higher. Maraudon was dropped into the 30s, and Scholomance was moved to 40.This made for some slight annoyance in the late 20s, where the hell-hole of Gnomeragan and Scarlet Monastery: Graveyard provided my only dungeon choices for 3-4 levels, but once past that hurdle I’ve had a cornucopia of dungeons to feast on.
My level 40 Dungeon List.
But wait, there’s more! An entire new quest system has been put in place for the newly remade instances. Most instance-related quests have received a makeover, and are now given by questgivers inside the instance proper. This means that when you do a random instance for the first time, you’re not only getting the instance experience and the random experience, but you’re also rocking thousands of experience in quest rewards. While straight up quest leveling might be the fastest way to level now, this gives questing a run for it’s money. There’s also more to instance questing than just having quest givers at the entrance, too. For quests that are part of a chain, they will give you the option to “complete” the quest and give you a new objective for your next quest, saving you a run back to the beginning of the instance. For those not part of a chain, you have the handy “teleport out of dungeon” and “teleport to dungeon” buttons to allow you to skip the run and focus on the quest rewards.
Look at those shiny Uldaman quests.
Finally, if all of those endorsements weren’t enough to get you salivating for dungeon leveling, here’s the kicker: You can represent your faction of choice while running instances, allowing you to garner reputation without having to quest or donate stacks of cloth. If you’re a Tauren who wants a Raptor mount, a Troll who wants a turbo-trike, or an Undead who wants a kodo, you just need to buy the tabard at your local city quartermaster (conveniently located next to the city flight masters). On another positive note, these tabards actually look cool, making you want to wear them.
As a final note- the changes to low level questing/instancing have made a lot of people play lowbie alts. DPS queues are around 5 minutes for me, and healing queues are almost always instant. There’s really no harm in trying the refurbished zones out. (Unless you wipe, which is a distinct possibility.)
If I Stopped Playing a Shaman, I would Play:
When I first started playing World of Warcraft, leveling from 1-70 took me months. Eight or nine, to be exact. I fell in love with twinking Elam in practically every bracket, which meant that at level 19 I was backpedaling on a shitty laptop with 8 fps against rogues with mains to buy them crusader enchants. Looking back, I have no idea why this seemed fun to me, but it did…and I did this for a solid 2-3 weeks at every bracket from 19-59. Upon hitting level 60, I realized that I knew absolutely nothing about how to actually play this wonderful game I’d blown off half my college coursework for and I went to the forums to brush up. When I got there, I was greeted by a thousand Enhancement shaman…and their tears blocked out the sun. I got so scared for level 70 experiences that I had never experienced that I ditched Enhancement and leveled resto. For 10 levels. In Outland. With no nerfed experience or heirloom gear. When I finally hit the level cap, I vowed I would never put myself through that agony of leveling again.
Nearly three years later, everything has changed. Buffs to leveling, nerfs to experience needed, ridiculous buffs to damage output at lower levels (yes, that’s 47 Killing Blows), have made leveling a breeze, not to mention enjoyable. I consider this to be an excellent change, as I don’t believe that any one should play, write, or talk about balance issues in the World of Warcraft without having walked in the galoshes of every other class. Playing one single class allows us to kid ourselves into pretending that we’re the only class that “has it bad,” we’re the only class that has exploitable weaknesses. We pretend that the other nine classes are played by hooking up an “Easy” button from Staples as our mouse and mashing our head against it. This is a lie for every class except low level rogues. (Bind Easy to ambush, profit.)
I’m an altoholic. I have 6 80s, two characters leveling through Northrend, one in late-Outland, and one in early Stranglethorn Vale. I have no actual desire to change mains (partly because if I do switch mains I imagine the collective shaman community will flay me a live. Ditch them once: For shame. Ditch them twice: Murder.) However, as I have experience playing something like 28 of the 30 specs in the World of Warcraft arsenal, I figured I’d take the time to express my views on what the best five specs going into Cataclysm are.
Note: All of this is subjective. I’m also not making any claims based on numbers or viability of said spec, I’m making claims based on ingenuity of idea and overall playstyle. This isn’t “I’d play this spec to top meters in Cataclysm.” This is “I’d play this spec to have fun in Cataclysm.”
Number 5. Blood Death Knight.
The Blood Death Knight barely scraped onto my list today, getting in on the merits of “I @#$%ing hate Paladin, Warriors are boring, and I need a plate spec so an entire community doesn’t feel ostracized.” I almost skipped over Blood entirely because my hatred for Death Knight dps specs blinded me from the virtues of their one tank spec, but once I remembered Blood’s existence it was like a match made in Acherus. Blood Death Knights had a massive transformation in October, where they went from ARP stacking Meat Cleavers to blood-sucking Meat Shields. Death Strike in itself is a cool concept, it’s a drain-life esque ability on a massive scale, while Bloodworms add a bit of gore and some more fancy healing on top. Throw in some rune tap to convert one blood/death rune to 15% of your health every minute and you might as well start queuing with four dps…. though maybe one of them should be a hybrid, just in case. (This is a gross exaggeration of how much they actually heal for, but the idea on it’s own is cool!) My one real problem with Blood Death Knights is that Dancing Rune Weapon seems out of place in the Cullen-family inspired tree. Maybe make the 31 pointer a passive that makes your skin glitter in the sunlight?
4. Elemental Shaman
The Elemental Shaman will be remembered as one of the real excellent examples of developers actually listening to player feedback. “Ele Shaman had a static and boring rotation in Wrath of the Lich King.” Let’s throw in some chaos with Lava Surge, Unleash Elements, and Fulmination to keep you on your toes. “Ele Shaman hate having to waste three talent points in Improved Shields to get Ancestral Swiftness. We don’t need more mp5.” Let’s give Ele shaman rolling thunder as a mana return talent and Fulmination so that Improved Shields=improved damage! “Ele Shaman have a severe case of turret syndrome.” Unleash Elements and Fulmination are both instant and castable on the move! Also, Spiritwalker’s Grace lets you cast while you pew pew. “We got everything but Searing Totem being 26 yards blows.” That’s annoying, we agree. Here, have a talent to fix it at 85.
I’m honestly not jealous of Ele, just impressed at how the developers addressed practically every gameplay problem they had in WoTLK. Bravo, Blizzard!
3. Affliction Warlock.
There’s something incredibly satisfying about seeing giant numbers pop-up on your screen. However, sometimes you’d rather kill the boss by infecting her/his body with a myriad of curses and magical ailments that corrupt and decay. For the evil witch doctor in all of us, the Affliction warlock is our go to caster dps. With handy new tools like Soul Swap (which allows you to move your dots off mob 1 and on to mob 2), half of the dots being refreshed by some other filler ability that’s already in the lock’s priority, and an Area of Effect Curse of Elements, the Warlock’s toolbox has been broadened. However, I have a few hopes for the spec I’d like to see before I consider leveling mine to 85- 1) I’d like to see Drain Life do more damage than Shadowbolt on a cast-by-cast basis, so it becomes the go-to filler ability. It’s just more fun and afflictiony. 2) A use for Soulburn for Affliction that doesn’t rely on aoe situations. Blizzard made the Soul Shard system significantly cooler this patch…but it’s still not quite awesome yet.
2. Beast Mastery Hunter
Rogues may have the Tricks of the Trade, but Beast Mastery Hunters have the tools. BM hunters have a pet for literally every situation, from providing your raid with 10% melee haste to Bloodlusting. Beast Mastery Hunters pet’s fill the missing gap in every raid’s lineup, and with 90% less damage from AoE they’re much sturdier than your standard mouthbreathing Enhancement Shaman in a void zone. I also just might happen to be the only person who has played a hunter main who LIKES the changes to focus. New resource system means learning and adapting new skills to play as well as diversifying classes, two aspects of WoW I very much enjoy. I also never thought hunters made much sense with mana as a system unless they’re all D&D Arcane Archers.
(Also, what other class in the game lets you have multiple types of Dinosaurs follow you around and smite your enemies? That’s right- none!)
1. Smite-Spec Disc Priest.
Part of me hates admitting my newfound love for Discipline Priests…mainly because they’re possibly one of the trendiest class/spec combinations to come out of Wrath of the Lich King. In Wrath of the Lich King, it seemed every priest was discipline. And if they weren’t discipline, it’s because 3.0.1 hit and Chakra was just released. 4.0.1. introduced a new style of Discipline healing- through talents, your Smites get beefed up after casting them. Talents also cause your smite to hit the person within 8 yards with the lowest health for the same amount of healing as the Smite did damage. Add that to Train of Thought, which lowers the CD on your penance every time you Smite, and you have the potential for some mediocre damage done and some mediocre healing done…at the same time! You can then convert your stacks of beefed up Smite Spammage to grow wings and heal 15% better for 15 seconds, allowing you to bump up your throughput in times of need. To me, this makes smite-specced disc priests a pretty excellent third healer for ten mans- for fights with healing downtime and late surges of healing needed (Saurfang and Professor Putricide come to mind), having a healer who can do enough damage that they’re above the tanks while being able to switch into throughput mode if shit hits the fan is the definition of a fun spec. It’s dynamic, it’s an entirely new concept for a game whose closest thing to a dps/healer hybrid was an Enhancement shaman dual wielding Earthliving Weapon, and it’s probably the second thing I’ll be leveling to 85.