Class Change and New Stuff in 2.4

It's been awhile, so time to write in the ole WoW Blog again. Lack of posts has nothing, of course, to do with lack of play time on my part. In the past couple of months there's been some big changes in the game for me. Most importantly I decided to change my main character. Rather than make a 'current' alt my main, I created an entirely new toon.

I already had a 70 tauren shaman, who I enjoyed greatly, but found little opportunity for anything other than solo play with. (As far as I am concerned, the horde population on Silver Hand is practically dead outside of a bunch of super casual players and like 1 or 2 hardcore raiding guilds.) I finally decided "oh the hell with it" one day and rolled a draenei shaman on alliance, who I vigorously leveled to 70 in something like 9 days and 4 hours of played time, over something like 2 and a half weeks. I now have an itch that my tauren shaman's destiny is to become a bank alt. It's really too bad because I love horde and I love tauren, but there is just not enough life on my server's horde side. But yes, my main is now my draenei shaman.

As far as the main changing decision goes, I still love my druid. I just can't enjoy 25 man raids as one anymore. There's no room for my play style. It's the way Blizzard has designed BC raiding and classes. 40 mans kinda gave more room for group customization, but they are now a thing of the past.

Now, to talk about something slightly more interesting, I'm really rearing up for patch 2.4. These days, since the majority of my guildmates are pimped out in T5/T6/etc+ gear, it's sort of hard to convince anyone to take my nooby shammy into a normal 5 man. Heck, people don't even want to do a heroic 5 man because it's so easy to get a bunch of badges from Kara or ZA, and it will be even easier when they drop from 25 man bosses in the new patch. One thing I can look forward to, however, is the fact that EVERYONE is going to head to magister's terrace 5 man when it comes out. Magister's has some amazingly great gear on both regular and heroic modes, including some of the best new trinkets in game. And we all know about how much people salivate over trinkets. Ra-kaww! Trinkets! Power in trinkets! Yes, I admit I have a weakness for trinkets, too. It is probably because epic instance drop trinkets are so damn hard to get. In fact, if I could have any item in the entire game on my druid, it'd be Tsunami Talisman, which I know I will never ever get because dps trinkets hate my guild so much that we are usually lucky to get each one to drop maybe 2 times ever. They might as well be legendaries!

New dailies, and a new limit of 25 dailies per day. Crazy! I just hope they're fun. I have to admit I enjoy bombing run dailies, but a lot of others I don't like. Monstrous Kaliri is probably the most annoying mob in the entire game. They are unnecessarily obnoxious by design. Why, Blizzard, why? I think most of the Ogri'la dailies are annoying and lacking in the fun department. Of course, my idea of a good quest is "go pick up 10 glowing fungus" and "kill 5 regular bird and 5 dire bird". Sure they are simple, but they're not -annoying-. They don't have some mechanic to them that makes me hate them after doing them 5 days in a row on a daily basis. Daily quests are done frequently so they shouldn't be painful. That being said, I really hope the Isle of Quel'Danas does not have the blood elf equivalent of Monstrous Kaliri. You know a good daily quest? Booterang. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's the best daily quest ever. Oh and the cooking quest to pick Mana Berries.

There's lots of new badge loot. Some of it is to fill in itemization gaps, and some isn't. The most exciting for me, of course, are the new fist weapons. Honestly, I hate fist weapons, but these are so good for enhancement shamans, and so easy to acquire, that I am willing to set aside my hatred of them for now. In the meantime, I will probably be working to farm myself 2 very sexy Poor Man's Netherbanes (i.e. - Breeching Comet) from heroic sickly-Kael'thas in Magister's Terrace. And did I mention I like trinkets? Shard of Contempt is nothing short of amazing. I think I was supposed to be talking about badge loot. Oh well. Here are Vanir's Left Fist of Brutality and Vanir's Right Fist of Brutality.

I've just stooped to gushing over new loots now. It's extra exciting when you're gearing up a fresh character, though. :)

It's always stoked when a new content patch is about to come out. I am not, however, looking forward to updating my addons. That's a whole other beast to tame. The point is, stuff like the introduction of the new island and instances are like miniature expansion packs. This time, they're not just adding an instance a small fragment of the player base will see (Black Temple), but a new regular 5 man, new heroic 5 man, new dailies, new 25 man and more. That's not even counting some major class changes. I think 2.4 will be a much busier patch day than the last few. It's kind of like when they added AQ and all the Cenarion Circle stuff into Silithus. It basically was there to tide us over until the Burning Crusade, and it worked like a charm. Everyone was in Silithus all the time for months. I just hope the servers can handle it!