The grass is always greener……

So yesterday I have enlightened you all about my hard role in raids, spamming that big red fireball button. And in the process idealized the role of tanks and healers being a lot more complex. So browsing trough the comments of my last post (multiple comments, and no this wasn’t me posting on another name) Jehu commented that the role of pally’s (healing in general I guess) is playing a game of whack-a-mole on a bunch of moving green bars. Time for some nostalgia.

On a server far, far away a young warlock … aargh RP moment, what I meant to say was the following. Back in the days when Blackwing Lair and Zul’gurub weren’t even released I played a underpowered (can you imagine) warlock. Apart from casting shadow bolts and summoning an imp my role didn’t see that amazing either but hey it was new, it was molten core and little did I knew. Playing together with a priest buddy of mine we loathed the mana bar. Even with (non scaling) lifetap it felt like I was drinking all the time. When we decided to reroll it was a very easy choice, as long as it doesn’t have a friggin mana bar. So our Rogue/Warrior combo was pretty awesome because it ensured us a good tank in every pug run making leveling easier. The raiding game was looking back now pretty fun. Usually Fury dps-ing and sometimes helping a bit with tanking here and there. Being able to switch to 1h/shield and intercept mobs felt pretty good. Like I was doing more then just DPS-ing trying to top meters. Dying of cleave, aoestuns en a gazillion fears made me envious about locks/mages/hunters for standing at far range dpsing without a care in the world. PvP strangely enough was the same, with my at the time sick PvP gear (rank 13 gear with a severance) and a pocket pally it was devastating to mash trough the AV midfield. Of course most of the time when doing the pvp grind your playing solo which seems to be the other side of the coin. Every fight you play you end up half hp, retarded dots ticking and using bandages every 45 seconds. Damn how awesome would it be to make your own water/bread. Not to mention the counter class (frost) mages were of warriors made me envy of them even more. The reroll choice was obvious for a mage. And here I am, whining about the flaws of the claws.

Yup, the grass is always greener at the other class.

Playing with Fire

Being relatively new to the mage class in terms of playing I basically jumped the bandwagon of Fire. In 1 sentence this would be: Spec 10/48/3 and craft spellfire/spellstrike. Having finally completed this mindnumbling grind (thank god for questing money at 70) I’m filling up the final slots with some heroic upgrades or drops from kharazan and ofcourse, the insane season 2 dagger. Having saved up 3k points in season 1 I got it the second week increasing my spelldamage with 95 over the greatsword of horrid dreams. The final items I need are relatively small upgrades which leaves me with the current stats: 1038 fire damage, 31.52% crit, 10.05% hit. When raiding I usually switch a minor amount of crit for some +hit trying to get to the 16% threshold. Lest not forget that with these awesome stats my hp is only a shy 6393. This hasn’t proven to much of a problem yet with the exception of unlucky Gruul combo’s (shatter > cave-in ahoy). If our arena team gets any successful, getting some high stamina pieces to switch in on various encounters should solve that.

Anyway, having some experience now with the ‘spec of all specs’ it doesn’t feel as awesome in raiding as it does while grinding. Grinding or questing is absolutely brilliant, my fireballs are hitting for around 2100 which basically makes it possible to 2 shot any non elite mob in outland if you get 1 crit. If nothing crits finish up with a scorch and its down. Aoe-ing with a healer is better then frost AoE and solo I can get an easy 5/6 down as well with a basic nova > flamestrike > dragonsbreath > blastwave > Arcane explosion till dead. Because of the insane damage I really don’t find myself drinking that often if I just have a few seconds between the mobs and don’t try to AoE all the time. However, having been to Kharazan and Gruul’s lair numerous times now I definitely get a different feel to it. I can brake it down into 2 things.

1; It feels very much based on luck. I'm just standing away at 36y shooting fireballs and hoping to get a crit. Sometimes you get a streak, sometimes you don’t get some a few times. Even though I put up respectable DPS when not critting it just feels so out of my control to just wait for the crit. Popping combustion if an option but there is no way to force it.

2; It is soooooooo boring my god. There are exactly 2 buttons, and 2 bars I need to watch.

Bar 1: KTM; ensure I don’t get over the threat of the tank and use invisibility if needed.

Bar 2: Fire vulnerability; make sure you hit scorch once every 30 seconds

Button 1: Mana pot cooldown: Click the first one after you lost 2k mana, and then everytime again when the cooldown is up.

Button 2: Mana gem cooldown; Identical to mana pots.

So there it is, my limited role explained. A trained monkey could do it and probably do equal dps. Although in TBC there are quite a few mobility fights where I actually need to walk around a few times it’s a 2 button game for 4 hours in a row. It makes me wonder, apart from the social aspect ofcourse (good times on ventrilo). Is the raiding game any fun at all while not playing a healer or tank. A different spec (Arcane cycles looks promising) and time will tell. And if it gets boring? Theres always Arena.

First!!!!!!11one1!!!

Finally, I made first post on someone’s blog! And even better, I get to fill it with all the thoughts that pop into my head. Well, the non disgusting ones at least. So first time post, and first time blogger. A blog primarily about World of Warcraft, or WoW as we usually refer it to. As for wow news, thoughts, discussion or excessive whining I’m a big junkie. I daily read blogs like worldofming, shadowgaming, outofmana, oozo, radikal noise, worldofraids and other ones I can find. Next to that I’ll try to read up on Elitist jerks for a shot of theorycrafting, and if I’m feeling emo theres always the WoW officials forums. Nerf warlocks yeah! A combination of all the following can be expected right here with my own flavour added to the mix.

So about Nitri. A fresh good looking (read: exceptionally hot) Blood elf female mage on Talnivarr EU. Currently guilded in Sanity (pve guild) progressing in the end game content. Apart from the usual raiding, I’m trying to get a fair share of PvP done. Right now that means lets play 10 games for awesome epics but in a short while were setting up a serious 5vs5 team. Although I am a (lol) belf this game is far from new for me. Originated on Deathwing with an Undead warlock, and rerolling to alliance for a human warrior on Moonglade I’ve played this game for 2 years and seen most of the content.

So much for first post, next post will have actual content in it (promise!). As a final note, being a dutchy (/gasp tulips and pot smoking everyday) English is a native language to me. Don’t mock the grammatical errors to much, I’m trying to get as little as possible but some will slip trough.

First and only post that ever will be signed! So charish it. (Does anyone even read this blog??)

Nitri

Ps. Checkout my gear/spec etc all here: http://armory.wow-europe.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Talnivarr&n=Nitri