Friday, July 25, 2008

Looking Back - Looking Forward

Waaaaay back in Januari I made a little post deliberating how my characters were getting along. Where they were in their WoW carreers and I thought it would be interesting to take another look now that we're 6 months further down the line (can you believe how fast time goes?).

This post might not be interesting for anyone who hasn't been following noobding for a while so to the occasional reader, go read my previous post instead (I fixed all the strange formatting bugs and it's actually readable now :P).

Looking back at how it was 6 months ago my team looked something like this:

Capsize - lvl 65 undead warlock
Capstone - lvl 32 blood elf paladin
Capricious - lvl 24 troll hunter
Capibara - lvl 20 tauren druid
Capone - lvl 10 Orc rogue
Capeesh - lvl 12 Orc warrior
Capacitate - lvl 20 undead priest
Capitulate - lvl 23 Blood elf mage
Capow - lvl 10 Tauren shaman

I was heavily invested in my warlock at the time and quietly hopeful that my paladin would grow up to be a well liked tank. Plans for the other characters were sketchy at best but the thought was I would work towards the holy trinity (1 tank, 1 DPS, 1 healer) and see what to do from there.
The rest of my characters were underappreciated at best but every now and then got the benefit of getting their rested xp burned off and their talents distributed in pretty random places.

Looking at the team now (and I quote this from the top of my head since I don't have WoW access here):

Capsize - lvl 70 undead warlock
Capstone - lvl 70 blood elf paladin
Capricious - lvl 41 troll hunter
Capibara - lvl 54 tauren druid
Capone - lvl 30 Orc rogue
Capeesh - lvl 17 Orc warrior
Capacitate - lvl 21 undead priest
Capitulate - lvl 26 Blood elf mage
Capow - lvl 20 Tauren shaman

Which is about 130 levels in total further than I was 6 months ago. Considering I play a few hours a day most of which I spend standing around and chatting anyway I am quite pleased with this number.

The Paladin has temporary left the path of tanking and is picking up some healing / spell damage gear to do some holy shocking mostly due to the fact that tanking gear is somewhat hard to come by if you don't instance enough. The warlock is for the most part completely unchanged but has significantly better gear happily sitting at +1k spell damage.

The druid will be the final piece for the holy trinity. Currently running as a moonkin with a lot of points now going into restoration to get nature's swiftness. Granted that will make him somewhat of a moonkin healer hybrid but at least he'll still be viable for soloing.

The mage is currently still my least liked character which is strange because I usually have a soft-spot for ranged DPS. I simply can't settle into the rythm needed to play a mage well meaning I'll be forced to crawl him to 40 after which probably some of the more interesting talents will kick in and the power curve will pick up a bit. This is a similar problem I had with my warlock but is more obvious now because the content the mage is going through is no longer new.

The rest of the field is coming along nicely except for my warrior and priest whom I look forward to playing but simply didn't get around to doing so.


Looking forward the question whether or not we should plan for wrath is probably strong in everybody's mind. Assuming however that wrath will hit the shelves around christmas there's plenty of time to decide whether or not there is something worth preparing for.

For the moment my primary concern is with the changes that came with 2.4.3 or rather the ability to mount your character up at level 30. Travel speed is everything WoW and whilst not an immediate concern for my shaman thanks to ghostwolf there's almost nothing more disheartening to me than to switch from my paladin with an epic mount + crusader aura to a character that is forced to walk all over the place.

With the ability to supply all my alts with 16 slot bags, buy up all the bank slots and fill them full of 16 slot bags as well (yay for tailoring) there's really no reason why I shouldn't invest a little in the lower end of my team.

So within the next few months I am hoping to level the field a bit and get all my characters mounted.

For the sake of argument lets say I manage to scrape together another 130 levels by the time wrath hits. Ideally I would strive for my characters all being mounted and at least some parts of the lower field hovering around lvl 55. That way I can easily put a death knight into my rested xp rotation and funnel relevant equipment between my characters. The trick however would be to stay far enough away from 55 (either higher or lower) to prevent from having to share quest mobs with hundreds and hundreds of (probably pink haired gnome) death knights starting out their carreer.

Capsize - lvl 70 undead warlock
Capstone - lvl 70 blood elf paladin
Capricious - lvl 64 troll hunter +23
Capibara - lvl 70 tauren druid +16
Capone - lvl 50 Orc rogue +20
Capeesh - lvl 35 Orc warrior +18
Capacitate - lvl 35 undead priest +14
Capitulate - lvl 35 Blood elf mage +9
Capow - lvl 50 Tauren shaman +30
Cap???? - lvl 55 ???? Death Knight +0

As you can see the shaman is receiving a tremendous boost during this period. Primarily due to my current unfolding interest in a elemental / restoration hybrid and the high level of utility a shaman brings. The other noteworthy improvement is the hunter which is mostly related to the fact that I am having such an incredibly easy time levelling my hunter. As a result he will probably come up a little more often when it comes to burning off rested xp.
This will settle the field nicely around lvl 35 with an additional 2 level 50's to keep my shiny new death knight company.
The mage as anticipated will receive the least amount of love until someone manages to inspire me to play my mage (that's right... that was a challenge).

1 comment:

LarĂ­sa said...

Hm... it's strange this reluctancy you feel towards playing your poor little mage. Could it be that it's a blood elf and not a gnome... :)

Actually I must say that I enjoy endgame with my mage so much more than the levelling. It was hard to level, though I'm not sure if it was because I was so new to the game and didn't have a clue or if it was because mages are pretty fragile, die a lot and spend crazy amounts of time drinking and eating (though my discovery of first aid made life at least a little bit easier).

Why don't you give it a try? I challange you! Join the mage blogging community for a while! Let us follow the adventures of The Reluctant Mage through your blog! We'll give you whatever you need of moral support or even advice, if you want any...

Common!