I'm bailing on my server.

I don't like not having progression. However I'm not going to transfer with money or anything. I just up and started a Hunter on a different realm. Right now it's pretty fun like it always is. Hunters have been a class that appealed to me without me being able to get into them. I like the customization of having select pets, and man I can't wait to join a 25 or 10 man group that I can weigh my pet benefits for the good of the group. Wolf? fuck no, I'm bringing a wasp!... or a worm...

Also does it seem weird to anyone that worms are exotic? Really? worms? is seeing a creature burrow from the soil that strange to these guys?

Anyways I'm starting survival, although I don't know if I'm going to stay that way. Mostly I'm doing it cause I'm a leatherworker, and I'm the guy that whenever they see passive effects all I see is "delicious talent points, use them here". So improved tracking was nice for me.

Blizzard seems to hate that about myself. I love passive talents. I'm that guy that played Naix in DotA because managing anything more than clicking was painful. Then again I love sub rogues, and its useless talents, scattered all around the tree.

I hate arcane mages

At some point, somewhere blizzard decided to make classes more dynamic. For instance, though I never played back in burning crusade, enhancement shaman was very much a strength based dps, with as far as I can tell, no access to wolves, no maelstrom weapon, and shields that costed mana. Basically they were a "hit storm strike" class.

Blizzard has done a fantastic job of keeping most classes dynamic, having a FCFS system, or a fairly length rotation (unholy and blood DK's tend to be rotational, but since the cool downs come at different times it really feels FCFS)

This has not happend with arcane mages. I've said I loathe elemental as a valid dpsing spec. It's essentially "spam 1, dont let 2 drop too long, and hit 3 when it comes up"

Arcane mages are worse. "hit 1 four times. hit 2. repeat"

I hope arcane gets nerfed into the ground. There is no reason to be proud of your "fantastic deeps" if you're not even struggling to do the said rotation. "But what if I have to stop casting!" oh no! what if everyone else does? Either this, or it needs to be reworked heavily.

I like how DK's function. I like how enhancement functions. I've toyed with destruction and affliction, and they're VERY hard for me to get used to which is unbelievably great. Most caster classes are very lucky, in that for the most part their rotation is unfettered by positioning but man, I can't get used to that. On my affliction lock I end up standing about 10 feet from a monsters face, just because I'm so very used to melee.

My problem is still not with casters as they have their own issues over melee, its with simple rotations. Arcane is the newest of my hatred.

Is everyone on my server miserable or am I awesome?

No seriously! Enhancement is not a particularly strong spec, granted it's one of the few classes that scales from pretty much every buff in the game, except divine spirit I believe.

However it's not a top preforming spec. It's the better than elemental, but everything is. I don't actually know exactly where we stand but I'd assume out of 23 dps specs, I'd say enhancement is around 13-15th best or something. So while I am in generally middle of the line gear, and I'm doing the second best in terms of damage.

I'm sure I'm doing my share of skilled damage. I know my class inside and out (although I just realized I should gem expertise instead of enchanting it, how fun is it to realize that? Yay math.) I know my rotation, I know my gear, I know what classes benefit most from me. Could it be everyone lags? Are people just sandbagging and expecting to be carried? I honestly don't understand it.

At least VoA pug was completed. Success. 25 people with 2 more frost emblems.

DK tank is starting to fall into welled oiled machine territory. If I get an over-geared healer, it's not even worrisome. However I have really fun stories, consisting of forgetting minor details, or luck based pulls where crazy things happened (getting punched down stairs, floating slowly woo)

Ran naxx because I picked up an older weekly. Started with 5 people and it did not work. I had 34 stacks from the add before I finally kicked the bucket. picked up another 2 guildies, and bam completed with no ill consequence. I don't think I'll ever be a very good tank, but hey

melting faces is cool.

Gear + Effort = More effort

Well blizzard finally decided to toss the RNG in my face. I had to tank FoS. And not just regular old FoS, oh no. heroic!

This is how it went down.

We all pop in. Shaman healer goes "I'm not healing a DK and drops" Prompt vote-kick. Confidence in me looks very high. I state "yeah if you're lazy it's not good to heal me, i can get you killed." Breaks the ice, everyones in a pretty decent mood. Had an overgeared warrior, a death knight and a hunter with me. Generally when I say "overgeared" i mean "to the teeth" Rocking 264 gear all over generally. How he managed not to pull off of me every pull is nothing short of miraculous, and awesome huntering.

Our replacement healer was a paladin, who, not only didn't bring anything to drink, but seemed to ignore the fact that he may have had to do something. Generally I don't pay too much attention to my health (or rather I'm trying not to as much) but when healer bob decides "I'm too good to have to heal" people die. He left at the first wipe, which was really nothing more than him not healing. Not more than one flash heal occurred, and I'll give you a hint, casters did not kill me. my love, anti-magic zone prevailed greatly against casters, so I died to simple "being beat in the face" damage

We finally replaced him with a tree, unsure of his healing. Sweet, new healer, new tank, we're a winning combination!

But in all honesty, he did a fantastic job.

Devourer was a story all his own though. I kited him out of his little puke puddles, and such thankfully. (kiting is so hard to remember to do. positioning is so easy, but after I'm comfortable its so weird moving things) It was all pretty smooth until laser beam time. our healer and overgeared warrior get caught in beam of awful. Oh no healths are dropping. Phantom blast is coming! anti magic zone! phew! Another! anti magic shield. Phew! another! oh crap, eat the damage, DEATH STRIKE DEATH STRIKE! eat more damage! and his limb corpse falls over. Check my health, 1300. I cry a little bit.

Tanking is freaking scary. I hope i don't get shoved into H PoS anytime soon, let alone H HoR

Oh hey there silithus. I see you have a prisoner.

Imagine if you will a game where you have to go to the ends of the earth to get materials to create armor that will not benefit you at all in order to shred it from this cosmic plane so you could use the base materials to become more proficient at enchanting pants to let you hit someone with a stick a wee bit harder.

Welcome to blacksmithing and enchanting at skill levels 270.

I've been fiddling around silithus for the past few days, as jaxx was our weekly, and lets face it, no one on this realm is doing it. I've delighted in the time off to properly level my trade skills on this budding DK because I want delicious stamina any way I can get it (well in theory I want lots of dodge, to artificially inflate my bone shield uptime, but thats another story entirely)

You know what, I've lost all interest in this post. Silithus does that.

Well I want to make a BM hunter too, so I can tame a silithid and bite someones face off, but thats another matter entirely.

DK dings 80. Adventures!

So my DK hit 80. I've been mostly having a field day with her. She's undergeared enough where things are dangerous, and she doesn't have enhancements "spirit wolves of might as well be invincible for the next 45 seconds". I can't heal myself whenever I want, so I can't piss off healers for no reason, not that I ever do, but the OPTION to is closed, so that's sad.

I started by buying a few tank pieces until it let me queue as a DPS. I do love that blizzard doesn't care if your gear actually functions well. Dungeon popped and my frost DPS journey began.

Loading screen. Oculus. Oh boy. Two drop right off. Healer says "Neither of you are geared enough for this place" and drops too. Tank and I chuckle about peoples attitudes. We get 3 more. The two dps have never been here, the healer is "undergeared" like us. Ragtag, my style. Tank cleans up garbage while I give a brief summery of how the dragons work. No big problems. It's an incredibly slow run mostly due to the seemingly random nature of how they designed the place. I tried to make the most direct route so people don't get lost. Pretty much works except on occasion where we all dismounted while a dragon was eating our faces, and wiped us.

Long story short, another wipe at Eregos mostly having to due with 2 newbies, but we tried it again and preformed beautifully. (Ps: I was ruby dragon. So easy.)

I mostly kept queuing as DPS and continually getting the "you're not geared enough" spiel over and over. I don't think I ever did less damage than the tank in any run and on a few WONDERFUL occasions i out-preformed geared guy reliably throughout the instance. Why this is fantastic is because I'm literally in worse gear than blizzard approves of. I'm not enchanted almost at all (I managed to get sons of hodir rep completely done since I had a stack of about 300 relics in my bank so I had pretty awful weapons I could actually runeforge). But sure ret pali guy. 4000 gs and 1.5k dps is necessary to participate. Lord forbid I go in with 2400gs and 1.5k dps! Oh wait...

I did eventually pick up enough from heroics to tank (although I'd really love a 2h weapon, so I could runeforge some defense and get some flexibility). I got a few glyphs and ran a few regulars with an encore performance of the oculus incident down to the "you're not geared enough" comment. Yes, not geared enough for regular oculus, when I'm rocking 540 defense. Ok jack.

Playing as an unholy tank feels very satisfying. I've played each tank briefly at mid levels just to get a feel for it. Warrior is frantic and versatile. Paladin is solid and autopilot. Bear is swipe and maul. Unholy feels very niche-y, which it is, but it's a good niche. I feel like a tank, instead of "that guy with more health than everyone" Preventing possible wipes by tossing up anti-magic zone is AMAZING. I really wish I had more talent points though, I can't seem to go for what I want.

This is what I'm rocking currently. Although it's only from experience in regular instances, my necrosis does literally nothing, clocking in at a typical 0.3% of my overall damage. Sure its only 1 talent point but I'm considerably constrained in other ways. I want points in dirge,unholy blight and virulence. Potentially I could shed points from necrosis, black ice, and 2 handed weapon mastery, but I'd never get to max desolation, and that's a full 1% dps increase I'd be missing. I tried the glyph of scourges strike but I really didn't like the uneven diseases, and diseases off my main target falling off (tabbing could work, but the more stuff there is, the more annoying it becomes). I do need to learn to refresh disease around the 3 second mark though. Refreshing before the last tick is a pretty huge dps loss when you consider how often you might do it.

Anyone have a internal dot ticker so I could determine when would be the best time to pestilence for a refresh?

Anyways, I wish bone shield lasted longer, it was off the GCD and didn't cost an unholy. Cmon blizzard add a talent called "improved bone shield" which increases the internal cool down by 1 seconds at 5 talent points! PvPers aren't going to like that huge investment, and tanks will eat faces for it.

Still, I consider AMZ so tree defining. Role defining. Wish it was on a SLIGHTLY shorter cool down, it doesn't exactly prevent a ton of damage. Feels good to soak up an entire blizzard with it, or just generally pretend as if a spell didn't occur. Man, I'd kill for a glyph for AMZ that lowered the cool down, or raised the damage it could take. I don't think a duration increase would do tanks any good; the 10 second window is pretty much perfect.

Ah well. Experiments!

I got to dps!

I got to DPS!

I also decided on the war token from the emblem vendor and remembered I could pick up my "revered" ring from ashen verdict!

Today was a good day for dpsing.

But most importantly, I GOT TO DPS.

And I did fantastic. Jaraxxus interrupter. Snobold getter offer? Hex the whatever the hell I want because hex is awesome. I can pretty much do no wrong when I dps, especially when I'm easily the most versatile of them. Fire resistance? No problem. 20% melee haste. My pleasure. Persistant snare aura during faction champs? I'm there.

I love half guild runs. We get to take the non-retard portion of our guild, and the non-retard portion of another guild, and be AWESOME, and pretty much one shot every boss attempt the second I arrive on the scene. (which makes it all the more awesome I was there, because they were wiping beforehand.)

I suggest everyone let their offspecers take a day off, by doing a half guild run. Only really works for 10 man guilds, where you can either do 5/5 or 12/13s but trust me, the "A-game" folk will really make it shine. When given the chance to FINALLY preform their main spec, they will never disappoint

PS: there might have been some dps. you know, just in case you didn't know.