August 26, 2010

70 and Beyond

I did it. I have my second level 70+ character in game after uh, well less then a week. Of course it was also a week of me using a recruit-a-friend account up to level 60, but I’m happy to be here none the less. I jumped into a few Wrath dungeons right away and immediately fell in love with deadly boss mod all over again. It was nice to know exactly what was going on in the encounters where as before I could only generalize.

I also decided to move my shaman over to the new server. I’ve always hated having characters spread out, and this time was no exception. The shaman is level 65 which was required in order for me to get my crafting to 450. She’s my jeweler / inscription worker, and it’s nice to be able to make my own glyphs as well as my own gems for sockets. Plus the shaman is just plain fun.

The leveling slows down now and comes mostly from questing rather then dungeon grinding. Not a big deal, I’ve barely touched quests since I created the character. As a change of pace I also decided I wanted to learn how to tank – so I created a paladin. I contemplated a DK but it seems like everyone and their dog has one (although the same could be said for the paladin as well). Whether I will be any good at it I’m not sure, but it was worth a shot I figured. Then I will understand the game from all three perspectives, healer, dps, and tank. Is this important? Not really, but it’s sort of fun.

When I hit 70 my little warlock got a spell called Seed of Destruction which is now my new best friend. I decided to purchase dual spec, and I have one for AoE damage (which is handy in instances, although my single target dps is quite shoddy) and then I have one for questing, which is focused on single target damage. My parse jumped from roughly 800 to 4000 in groups of three or more and I couldn’t be happier. Of course that also comes from me being level 70 now and the mobs being slightly easier to hit.

I’m already starting to save up my tokens for gear. I make sure at these lower levels when the instances are easier that I’m doing my random for the day. It helps that I have an 80 warrior who can queue up with me and thus make tanking a LOT easier (and safer) for me to dps to my little hearts content.

While I don’t personally feel that WoW is as complicated as some other games out there, I also don’t feel that it’s exactly easy-mode either. You still have to pay attention, and you still have to learn tactics for encounters. I think perhaps the ‘cartoony’ (as I have heard others call it) graphics of the game mislead others into thinking that it’s simpler then the games they’re already playing. Aspects of it are certainly easier (like crafting, for one) but dps is dps. It’s spamming the same buttons over and over to maximize your damage, and doing whatever is required per encounter. That doesn’t really change too much no matter what you’re playing.

Happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!