Ailis in Hunterland

I was waiting for the official announcement before making a post and it’s happened, so here we go.

Unless you’ve been without internet or under a rock or in the desert, you’ve undoubtedly heard the bombshells coming from Blizzcon regarding the next expansion, Cataclysm.  New races, new race/class combos, Azeroth being completely remapped, a complete revamp of the stat system, new Path of the Titans, Mastery, Guild Leveling, and bears oh my!

Okay, maybe not bears.  But who knows?

If you have been missing it, head over to WoW.com or MMO-Champion or even the Cataclysm website and get caught up.

Since this blog deals with Shamans, let’s talk about the initial sweeping changes that will influence Shamans – specifically, the stat changes.

Here’s the basic breakdown of the ones that influence us directly:

• Attack Power on gear is gone. Instead, some classes will get 2 AP from each point of Agi (Rogues, Hunters, Shamans, Druids), and other classes (presumably Warriors, Paladins, and Death Knights) will get 2 AP per point of Strength. Side effect: no more plate wearers stealing your gear
• Spell Power is gone. It comes from Int now.
• MP5 is gone. Spirit is the mana regen stat, and all classes that need it will get some form of Meditation.
• Haste now increases your rate of resource regeneration (energy, rage, runes, focus).
• Stamina is going to be more equal across different armor types – no more “plate HP envy.”
• Enhancement Shamans do not use INT anymore and will be given talents to not need it just like Retribution Paladins.

Digest that for a moment.

For the Enhancement Shaman, this makes our stat itemization vastly simpler – once your hit and expertise are capped, gem and enchant to kingdom come for Agility.  That’s it.  Just Agility.  (For now, until we get more information)

This is a really nice change and one I’m seriously in favor of mostly for the fact that Plate wearers will no longer be rolling on my gear (just Hunters) because it will, frankly, be shitte for them.

The other major addition to the game that will help with gear itemization will be the new skill of Reforging.  Little is known about it other than this will enable you to move stats around on your gear and potentially add new ones (presumably with restrictions and at a price).  I see this coming into play during gear transition periods when it’s a PITA to keep your hit and expertise properly capped without sacrificing other stats.

For Elemental and even Resto Shamans, your itemization got not only turned on its head but easier as well.  Welcome back to Spirit!  You will be stacking Spirit and Int now.  Maybe Haste – information keeps getting changed on that one.  This actually makes sense seeing is how our largest base stat is Spirit and yet, currently, we shun it like some transmitted disease.

Add to this the new Path of the Titans and the Mastery system (more on that as it’s revealed) and you have an overall rebalancing change that could make huge strides towards getting rid of “cookie cutter specs” and clones running around Dalaran.  No more “have X spec, Y and Z professions and these glyphs and you’re top DPS” – there is the actual potential of many paths being just as viable as the other and purely dependent on playstyle.

I, for one, as a raider and enormously excited about this change as I’m tired of having to fit Ailis into a mold that she sometimes doesn’t like or having to adopt a particular style of play just for the sake of higher DPS.  The game should be about what you enjoy to play and how you have fun and your DPS/Healing/Tanking output shouldn’t suffer because you have fun doing things slightly different from the norm.

This gets a huge thumbs up from me.

Old World Makeover

On the other end of things, the changes that affect everyone is the actual world event behind the Cataclysm itself.  Azeroth is about to get a major makeover and, I have to say, this was a brilliant move on Blizzard’s part.

The Old World is definitely showing its age when stood next to the sweeping zones of Northrend and is more of a nostalgia area, a place to go to complete achievments, or something to race through as quickly as possible on alts.  Completely redoing the old world zones essentially makes World of Warcraft a new game for new and old players alike.  The old world zones will be vastly different, with different quest chains, different paths to take, the ability to fly, and new NPCs and races to play and meet.

TBC and WotLK were made for the end-game player and rightly so as that’s what everyone loves.  But, in the hurry to reach the end game, we forgot about where we came from.  Powerleveling and heirloom items just made it even more blurry.

When it came time for a new expansion, Blizzard could have just as easily tacked on another ten levels, another continent and more end-game frivolity.  Instead, they returned to level one and decided to actually progress the whole story, the whole world, and push it back to the forefront where it should be.

Brilliant.

I can’t wait to level an alt from level 1 to 85 and experience a brand new World of Warcraft and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this sentiment.  Yes, Ailis will always be my girl and she will be the first to get to 85 and dive into the massive new raids and new heroics.

But then…

Worgen Druid, here I come.

So it’s Friday and here, in my corner of Azeroth, it’s raining.  Rainy Fridays are good because you can snuggle in your favorite chair with a hot cup of Honeymint Tea.  Or you can get drenched to the bone in the hunt for more Scourge to maim, dismember or otherwise pulverize.

Your choice, really.

Today feels like a mellow day for me, a rather nostalgic day if you will.  I’m going to steal a question from a fellow blogger (whose blog rocks, by the way) and talk about “that moment.”  The moment when this game became more than just another video game to you.  When you decided to actually carefully craft your character into the shining example of perfection they are today.

I look back on my days in WoW with a bit of fondness.  I picked up the game about a year ago with my husband, purely on a whim.  We’d heard about this game and heard it was so popular and, us being the shunners of all things popular, we avoided picking it up.  So there we were, in Fry’s, staring at the box and the little “for sale” sticker on it.  We looked at each other and shrugged and picked up two copies.

When we got home, I realized the race I wanted to play (at the time, Blood Elf) wasn’t available until I got the Burning Crusade so I hopped on Blizzard’s website and downloaded it.  I rolled a Blood Elf mage and started bumbling my way through this new game.  The opening cinematic had me in awe as it gave me this sense that this was a tiny, tiny piece of something much larger and much more grandiose.

A friend of ours found out we’d entered the world and got us to roll on a new server on the Alliance side with him.  That’s when Ailis was born.  The concept of a Shaman appealed to me greatly.  So my little blue-skinned, curvy-horned baby Shaman entered the world of Azeroth having no idea what lay in store for her.

I fondly remember riding a Hippogryph for the first time and thinking that was the coolest thing ever.

I remember struggling to reach level 40 so I could dual-wield.  That’s all I wanted to do, hold two weapons.  That felt like the ultimate in awesome.

I remember standing there amazed when I zoned through the Dark Portal into an all-out war.

I remember riding into Nagrand for the first time and thinking it was the most beautiful zone I’d ever seen.

I have two turning points in the game for me.  I can’t really pick between the two because one was an experience and the other was help from a friend.

The first major turning point came when I hit 70.  I dinged 70 about three weeks before Wrath came out, which means I still haven’t experienced much of the Burning Crusade content but that’s another story.  The second I dinged 70, my GM at the time sent me my first raid invite.  Another guild had graciously agreed to let these newb 70’s in on one of their Kara farming runs.  I was in awe, scared, excited, confused and intrigued all at the same time.  I had never been on a raid before.  I didn’t even fully grasp the concept of a raid group or raid mechanics or anything of the sort.  But I was hooked and absolutely needed to find out more.

The second major turning point came when I was barreling through my 70’s in the effort to ding 80 so I could keep raiding.  The same now-guildie who dubbed me “Alice” in vent had a Shaman at the time who was an enchanter.  He took one look at my enchant-less gear and said that wouldn’t do so he had me meet him in Valiance Keep while he chanted up all my gear free of charge.  I realize that he had the mats in a stockpile and it wasn’t much skin off his nose but that gesture and the five minutes he took to teach me about enchants did wonders for me and really set me on the path to bettering myself as a player and as a Shaman.

So, what about you?  What was your “moment” when this became more than just another game to you?