Back in WOW: The Entrenched Gorilla

While it needles me to find myself back in WOW, that’s what I’m playing.  I enjoyed my stint in W101 and even spent some quality time doing the PVP Arena.  Balance + Death + trickles of Storm are a fun combination to play in a team.  My only suggestion for KI in regards to PVP is please set a timer for when the match should end as a draw.  I was in a 2 v 2, where the system had matched two Life players against two Balance players that went on for 2+ hours!  OMG that’s way too long for a match.  Everyone was complaining but didn’t want to be the team to throw the match.  We would have been more than happy with a draw after 60 minutes!!!!  Trying to avoid the long drawn-out matches I started doing 1 v 1 and those can easily reach 45 to 60 minutes too. Yikes.

This time last year, I was doing a tri-box experiment in WOW.  My objective was to 5-box TBC content that I hadn’t seen - almost all of the instances.  When multi-boxing, a good percentage of 5-box teams are all of the same class or at least 4 of the same class.  My plan was to have a Paladin tank and 4 shadow priests.  Not an obvious choice, I did some research that showed Shadow Priest were workable because of their mana and health regeneration talents.  Fights that required burst damage could however, prove tricky.  The only caster classes I was interesting in playing were Priests or Warlocks.  Although I have a Druid, Boomkin isn’t a spec that’s ever appealed to me.

Ultimately, I decided on priests to avoid soul shard and pet management times 4.  Mage was also an early consideration.  I put a Mage in my trio but I quickly learned that I can’t stand Mage play-style.  And I do mean, I HATED IT!!  You couldn’t pay me to play a Mage as a main, that’s how much I dislike the class.  The plan was to ditch her ass in Outland for the Warlock.  I kept the Mage in the trio even once I realized how much I disliked it, as an option for certain encounters.  That decision necessitated she be moved off being a main account, to being included as a bundle so she could be swapped out as necessary or shelved altogether.  I transferred her to the account with the 70 Druid and Warlock.  Those three on an account would give me nice flexibility in slot 5.

While activating my accounts again to continue with getting the trio to Outland, I found a video demonstrating 4 Priests as Disc/Holy, executing AOE/healing style combat.  Hmm, I found the idea intriguing and decided to give it a go.  The new-to-me dual spec feature would let me flip to Shadow as necessary.  Leveling as Disc/Holy and doing AOE was much easier and faster than the single pulls I'd been doing.   Moving to this AOE spec made me re-think keeping the Mage in the line-up so I could keep the only two things I liked about the class - convenient portals and free water.

Hitting level 54 got me excited to get beyond the dang Dark Portal so I cheated.  Impatient to be in Outland, I enlisted help to summon the trio to Shattrath.  With the stage set for actual 5-boxing, I reactivated accounts 4 and 5.  In just one more level, the trio can enter Hellfire Citadel, where my real journey begins.  In the meantime, I’ve reconfigured to 5-box and will work out the kinks in my new setup by doing some BRD, DM or Strat.  Hellfire Citadel, here I come!