Main Management

Many of us consider our “main” character to be the first character they started and nurtured to max level (whatever it may have been at the time).  Some people may only have one character at max level, and some folk just pick one and stick with it. 

I also know their main has changed for many people, too.  Myself being one of them.

I started this game with a few failures but eventually took off with my mage.  He was the only character I had at max level throughout Vanilla and BC.  Sure, I had some alts, but they clearly took the back burner.  Now, being part of a small guild, we were only running 5-mans, if anything.  But eventually we rounded up enough folks to venture into Karazhan.  This also happened to coinicide with me finally getting a second toon, my druid, up to max level.  And because of the other main characters other people had, it basically worked out that my druid needed to be a tank.  It worked out for the guild rather nicely, really.  These characters and dynamics would also make up our 10-man raiding in Wrath.

So, that left me with two “mains”.  My druid, to raid with the guild, and my mage, who was my “baby”.  Both of which I fret over, although sometimes one more than the other.  Right now, I’m pretty happy with my bear tank – he’s geared enough to progress with the rest of the guild.  But I’m not quite satisfied with my mage.  I fret over him and his gear a bit more (which has been made evident by a few of my posts).  It’s all a bit silly, considering he does well enough when he needs to and it’s not like I’m trying to do Hardmode whatever.

Now with having a third toon higher in the leveling process, I’m kind of excited about trying him out in some of this endgame content; although I’m not really sure I’ll have the time or focus without completely neglecting the other toons.

So I’m wondering:  If you have more than one “main”, how do you manage them?  Do you have any difficulty finding a balance between them?  Have you abandoned one out of necessity?  If you do have balance, how do you do it?

Judge not…

…lest ye be judged yourself.  (Or something to that effect.)

I don’t know about you, but I know I usually check out some other people’s gear when I’m in a raid/pug/whatever.  Especially so when it’s someone of the same class.  And one of the things I notice and critcize most is the Meta gem.  It’s usually pretty evident which Meta gem is best for which class.  Such as my mage; it’s the Chaotic Skyflare Diamond.  My druid uses the Austere Earthsiege Diamond, as I’m sure most tanks do.  Now, I don’t go out of my way to specifically look at what Meta they might be using, but under a certain circumstances it becomes more noticable. 

When is it most noticable? 

When the Meta requirements aren’t met and the benefits are grayed out. 

It’s my understanding that the benefits from a proper Meta gem are absolutely worth getting, even if you need to do a bit of crafty socketing via dual coloured gems (ie: purple, green, or orange).  You may not get the full +Stam or +Spellpower or whatever, but you at least get that Meta doing its dirty work.  So, when I see someone not exploiting the benefits of their Meta gem, I judge them a little.  I don’t outright dismiss them, but it’s more of a “jeez, lrn2gem” or “pay attention” negative judgement.  Then today I was taking a look at a WoW gear evaluation websites (Be Imba! , in particular), and I noticed something horrible:

I am not getting the benefits of my Meta gem on my mage.  I need to have another blue gem.

Damnit – pay attention, Reeg.  /facepalm

Healing over time

I recently levelled my paladin to 80 and decided it was a good time to take up Chawa and Regis’s call for guest posts from the guild.

While I levelled to Northrend in protection spec I had gotten interested in paladin healing and ended up doing most of my levelling from 70-80 by healing in instances and in battlegrounds. During the process I started to think a bit more about what I like doing in WoW.

I’ve decided that while I like levelling and questing on DPS toons I’m kind of indifferent to playing them in instances once they have hit 80.

I also really like tanking but I find I need breaks from it.

But I’m pretty much happy to heal all the time.

Until the guild started doing Kara and I needed to heal it my druid was definitely an alt. If we had the healing covered I would have brought my hunter instead. However, I found healing the fights really interesting.

Part of it was that the other healer was my partner’s resto shaman. The guild didn’t use vent but we effectively had a healer channel since we were in the same room. Each fight was a problem to solve — there was a certain amount of damage going around and we had to work out how to heal it.

As we levelled through Northrend and worked through the new five-person instances I liked learning the fight mechanics and determining how to deal with the resulting damage.

Once the guild had enough level 80 toons to start doing Naxx it was a similar thing. We had a discipline priest on the main tank and the two of us on everything else. Each fight we had to come up with a plan to keep every non-rogue alive.

However, while I like the planning aspect of healing it’s also lots of  fun when things don’t go according to plan.

The guild recently took down Koralon for the first time and had only a single tank from 20%-5% and a rogue tank for the last 5%. There was a lot of yelling going on in the “healer channel” during that last 20% but it was pretty satisfying when he went down.

To heal you need to think ahead but also be ready to abandon the plan and just know your abilities well enough to get through it.  This is my rough guess at why I like healing best, though maybe I just like playing whack-a-mole.

Incidentally, I still need work on the second part on my paladin.

I’d be interested to hear what some of my guildies who are better at DPS than me think about this.

Anyway, I think I’ll go respec my shadow priest.

- Brokentree / Maggotbrain / …

Brain Freeze!

A crazy and frightening thing is happening to me.

I am loving my death knight these days

Why is this crazy?

Well, it’s melee and so far, my attempts at the melee classes have barely made it past level 25.

Why is this frightening?

Well, this may sound strange but…. I don’t usually yell out my spells at the screen like “Strangulate” or “Oh! Mind Freeze!!” or “DIE DIE DIE!!!”  And when I became conscious of what I was saying, I broke down into a serious set of the giggles.

Beware the giggling death noob!

Mind Freeze is, by the way, my favourite DK spell.  Every time I imagine it I think of an ice cream brain freeze and laugh.

What’s also frightening is that I actually asked to join in a Ramparts run this weekend with strangers.  I took the honest approach:

In the end, turns out that person they got bailed and so I was brought in.

When we all got in the instance, the infamous question was then asked.  “So, who’s tanking”.

Um, what?

Party chat was silent for a good minute until the other death knight said “Guess it’s me”.

Hell ya it’s you!  See my screenshot!

****

Until this happened, I naively had absolutely no thoughts of ever tanking on my DK.  For the most part, I’m a solo player.  I really only run instances and raids with the guild or with friends.  Chances are, with the number of tanks we’ve got in the guild, I probably will never be asked to tank.  However, with the availability of dual specs, is it expected on a hybrid class to always dual spec in some manner?  Perhaps, it is.

 

The REAL LIFE Icecrown Raid!

The new LFG system hasn’t been implemented in WoW yet, and even if it were, I can assure you Chawa and I would not have been using it last night.  We had no wish to join, but we also had no choice to join, the real-life 350,000-man raid that Calgary experienced last night.  Ever since the Wrath release, Blizzard has enjoyed using vehicles in their instances.  This would have been another one; one that many of us already know as “The Traffic Raid”.

The most notable mechanic of this raid were the icy roads brought upon us from an afternoon snowfall.  The worst part wasn’t so much the ice, but that so many people were not prepared.  This was a level 80 raid and people were clearly under leveled, didn’t know the fights, and most definitely under geared.

And just like any raid, gear isn’t necessarily everything.  But I swear people had their cars equipped with grey item tires.  

Sure, there were some people with their blues and greens, which might have made things okay – but it really seemed like most of the vehicles out there had kept all their gear from their respective starter zones.

But not Chawa and I – we know the vile mistress that winter can be, so we made sure we went and got ourselves winter tires.

Not only that, when we picked our car, we made sure it had the best racial buff.  

We had next to no problems getting our way around.  Mind you, that didn’t mean we didn’t have to worry about the many fools on the road.  Sure we would cast the only spell we knew, but every time it seemed to get resisted.

That was likely due to our low hit rating; but considering the circumstances, a low hit rating is probably a good thing.

So, after extended amount of time facing the raid wide debuff that reduces spirit, we decided to stop and get a food buff and allow for some of the asshats out there to drop from the raid.  After some eats and a fine beverage, we continued our way home. 

 

Unfortunately, all that made us late for our in-game raid, but we’re just glad we made it home safe.

*Co-Written and Edited by Darth and Chawa