Just to fill y'all in on a bit of background, Temitope - the eponymous deathtard and my only 80 - is actually my sixth or seventh alt (after an undead Warlock, a Troll priest, a belfadin, an Orc shaman, a belvish bank-alt, and a Drenai warrior (my only other Alliance character). I rolled Temi specifically to see how the other half lives, and like a vast number of other losers, I managed to get her to 80 faster and more efficiently than any other character (plate + self heals - mana = win).
I hooked up with a nice but new guild, and soon found that of our level 80 characters fully three quarters were Death Knights. This has made it impossible for the guild to break into raiding (we have exactly one healer) so I decided to roll a druid specifically to help my guild out with their healer/ranged dps/anybody who isn't a freaking DK shortage.
First thoughts: holy crap, low level WoW is *hard*.
Even in heirloom shoulders, there are quests in Darkshore that are *kicking my arse*. Cliffspring falls contains a cave full of Nagas which routinely tore me into tiny bite-sized druid bits, while I tried in vain to fill a little glass bottle with spring water.
The problem was exacerbated by the fact that I had virtually no tools at my disposal. I've got wrath, moonfire, some heals and a bit of bearform, and that's it. I finally managed to get the damned water when I got Swipe, which allowed me to deal with two things hitting me at once.
What this is all building up to is an observation about the levelling game, which is that not all classes level equally. More specifically, there are a lot of classes in the game whose core mechanics show up comparatively late.
Tricky as the first few levels of my drood have been, once I hit 20 I'll get kittyform, at which point I should be prowling and shredding my way to glory in short order. On the flip side, I've just started working on a Blood Elf shadowpriest and at level 22 I'm actually better off using Holy spells half the time (particularly because there's so much Shadow resist in the game).
Then there's my shaman.
My Orc Shaman is currently level 35. She's leveling Enhancement, but I'm one of those weird people who doesn't really distinguish between leveling specs and endgame specs. She's an Enhancement shaman, she likes to hit things with axes. She won't stop just because she hits 80, that would make her sad. Thing is, the whole basis of Enhancement Shaman gameplay is dual-wields and Stormstrike. Dual wielding isn't available until level *forty*.
I know leveling is easy, but it's the principle of the thing. The whole reason I specced Enhancement was because I like the idea of dual-wielding. I think it's my inner LARPer. It's really weird to basically not be allowed to play the spec you've picked until you're literally halfway through the game.
I had a similar problem with my Paladin. It's better now we've got the taunt and can use Exorcism on regular mobs, but for a good long while I was a tank who couldn't pull, which made the whole business of running instances rather complicated (party rogue sneaks forwards, throws a dagger, mobs come running and I hope to hell that Righteous Defence doesn't miss).
I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, I just think it's an interesting observation.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled weblog.
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I also choose my spec ahead of time and level accordingly. (Though I am endlessly tickled by the foolish folks who name themselves after a spec, and end up someday as a fire mage named Frostbite or a tree named Feralicious.) This has lead to leveling mage as arcane, druid as resto/balance, and warrior as prot, as well as the more traditional shadow priest and combat rogue. It lets you learn your spells as you acquire them and form an actual rotation, rather than blindly applying the raiding spec at 80 and muddling through it all then. Experienced players have the resources and quest knowledge to level quickly regardless of an "inferior" spec, so there's no reason to be deterred from the one you want!
ReplyDeleteThough I picked up my baby pally this week (to get her to 20 for her charger mount in 3.2), and it is such a joke. I auto attack and hit the "judge" button every 10 seconds?? By that point, rogues are using opening moves from stealth, hunters are learning to maintain pet aggro, warriors are learning rage mechanics, a warlock is staring down her third minion...and the paladin is using one attack every 10 seconds. /eyeroll. At least mine's got engineering, so I can pretend to use explosives for pulling!
Yeah, low-level pallying was a bit dull. I tanked my way through most dungeons up to Mara using a grand total of two buttons (Judge, consecrate .... Judge, consecrate)
ReplyDeleteThen again, I've just hit 75 so now I'm going from "Judge every 10 seconds" to 6/9/6/9/6/9 which isn't exactly stimulating either.