Alt time?

Last Tuesday my resolve finally broke and I created a new alt, a rogue. After debating between a hunter or warlock as a solo artist, and a rogue or mage as classes I've not properly levelled before (paladins didn't merit consideration, sorry) I settled on the rogue as a chance to experience the proper stealth class. However thoughts of the long road ahead drained my interest and so he's now sat at the inn in Kharanos.

Instead some YouTube videos and a respec have renewed my enthusiasm for my druid. I hesitated for the longest time before committing the gold but with my fast mount so far off the more immediate gratification seemed the right course and so it has proved so far.

My 0/30/21 spec has far more utility in Warsong Gulch, thanks in no small part to Feral Charge and Nature's Swiftness, and I can either tank or heal in dungeons. My return to tanking was in the living side of Stratholme with a guild group (which was probably not a wise choice of dungeon), but a run through the undead side last night with another guild group was much smoother, marred only by poor handling of the guards just before Baron Rivendare.

I also managed to farm myself a pair of Atal'ai Spaulders of Defense. I'll probably go back for a set of the Monkey or Stamina at some point, but those are nice enough for now.

I'll respec back to moonkin for our raid on Thursday but I can see myself respeccing every couple of weeks. Being able to take advantage of a druid's versatility really does seem worth the gold.

How will we fare in Blackwing Lair?

I'm not sure how the world would categorise my guild - perhaps semi-casual? We raid one or two nights a week with a fairly stable core of raiders and a rotating cast of the rest - perhaps those who cannot or don't want to raid every week, experienced raiders on alts and relatively newer raiders. We're slowly improving our performance on a good base: for the last two weeks we've cleared Molten Core in under two hours and for the last three have killed Ragnaros before he submerged.

Last night there was discussion on Discord of how we'll do when Blackwing Lair is released. The tone was fairly confident, perhaps overly so.

I'm really looking forward to being in on some guild first kills, and happy to work through the wipes that will inevitably be part of some of them. It will interesting to see how things pan out - I hope that the "new" raid gives us a good level of challenge.

Moonkin problems

I'm struggling a bit with my moonkin spec at the moment. Outside of guild groups I'm sometimes not wanted as a damage dealer, and while I can heal I rarely want to offer myself as a healer since my spec's not really ideal for that.

Inevitably there are stronger and weaker classes for different roles, and I feel it's fair that druids and others should pay the "hybrid tax". It's hard to argue with the general theme of rankings such as those on Icy Veins - if you're looking for a damage dealer you'd really like a mage, if a healer a priest, if a tank then a warrior.

It's also frustrating. If I was wanting to play as a shaman tank (something I've done out of necessity in the past) then it would be fair enough for a lot of groups to not be interested - it's their time as well. But moonkins aren't such bad damage dealers that you'd avoid them, anymore than you'd avoid a shadow priest.

Contrarily, the struggle has motivated me to look harder at my gear and consumable options and see how I can maximise my damage. It seems that I'm valued in our raid. As much as the received wisdom seems to be that the moonkin buff isn't worthwhile and it's better to bring another, "proper", damage dealer, this doesn't seem right to me. For one thing it's not just any four mages that I'm buffing, it's the four best mages in the raid, so the buff is disproportionate, and for another while my damage is low there are fights where I'm competitive with the lower performing "proper" damage dealers.

For now I can live with the problems.

It isn't 2005 anymore

WoW Classic may be pretty much the same game that we were playing 15 years ago, but no one I've met seems to be playing it the same way. For one thing many blue items dropping in end-game dungeons are looked on with disdain - the class "tier 0" set items are a collectable curiosity, but with a few exceptions you wouldn't expect to see these actually in use. It used to be that if a warrior tank didn't use a shield at all times then they didn't know what they were doing, while now furyprot is a thing. And so on.

The things that seem to have changed are information and attitude. Websites like Elitist Jerks and now Icy Veins have made it commonplace to know what gear is best for your class and role, and players now seek this out. I imagine that the game's designers didn't really know what was a good and what was a great item, and I'm sure they expected players in Upper Blackrock Spire to think "oh, that's interesting, Jed Runewatcher is here" (or not know that was unusual), not to have members of a group reset the instance until they found one where he'd spawned.

Or maybe the old distinction between hardcore / raiders and casuals meant that this behaviour was there, but 15 years ago I was never aware of it.

Either way, much seems to have changed.