Level 35 Warlock now. I'm enjoying this job a lot more compared to Druid, which I took the last time. While Druids are very flexible, able to shift between the tanking bear form, to the heavy damage feral form to the flexible spell-casting form, all the shifting did was confuse the heck out of me. WoW is also significantly faster than FFXI, where split second decisions need to be made. Spell casting time is either instant, or measured in a few seconds, where in FFXI, a basic cure spell casts 3-4 seconds to cast. As a Druid, I'd often screw up, not healing in time or worse, switching forms at the wrong time and using up all my MP for nothing!
Warlock is surprisingly fun... Basic strategy is simple: Throw up as many DoTs as I can against the mobs I'm facing, then drain their life to keep my own HP up in a technique known as "Drain Tanking". It's surprisingly effective, and even though I don't have that much HP in the first place, I can easily take on 4-5 mobs that are equal level to me just by throwing up DoTs and keeping myself alive this way. On Druid, I'd be lucky if i can take on two mobs that are the same level.
So... grinding through the levels through quests. I'm moving a little slower compared to last time since I'm actually exploring the zones this time instead of blowing through levels like the last time with Vivid, and I'm holding back so that Ghiren & I can quest together and take full advantage of 3x exp. Still, WoW is reaching the point again where it is starting to get a little boring as we do basically the same things over and over again... Aqqy, Varg, Ghir & I are trying to mix things up a little by doing dungeon instances every Thursday night for a change of pace. I'd also like to drag Ghir out to try some PvP again! Maybe a Warlock would be a little more fun compared to a druid!.
Oh yeah, so here's an update on my interface. I've finally figured out a good balance between 3rd-party add-ons and how I want things laid out:
Basically I put all the text in the bottom part of the screen, giving room for actionbars to go just above the chat box on the left, and the combat box on the right. Unfortunately, my actionbars have been growing upwards recently, and the interface is taking up almost the entire bottom 1/3 of the screen. I still use a 4:3 monitor, so moving things to the left or right sides of the screen isn't really an option.Addons I currently use:
- Titanbar (top bar) -- Mainly for a status on my current ping time to the server + how much gold I have
- Necrosis (weird circles in the middle) -- Warlock management tool. Keeps my Soul Shards under control and gives easy access to common, and rarely used Warlock spells. Also has really cool verbal prompts to tell me whenever I can trigger certain spells, like when Shadow Trance procs
- QuestHelper -- I'm pretty sure EVERYONE has this
- ActionBars 4 -- Easy to move those bars around
- Omen4 -- Threat level gauge... though with drain tanking, I'm almost always at the top of the threat list
- Gatherer -- Keep track of where I've gathered herbs... also lets me find out where my AP guildmates have found things!
- Auctioneer -- Helps me easily manage auctions. I think this, or another addon also lets me know how much things vendor for, making it easy to figure out which item I should toss when I'm out of inventory
- Chatter -- Formats the chat boxes nicely. Also prevents chat from fading away and alerts me whenever someone says my name.
- BuffBars -- Changes buffs from being icons to bars with durations remaining.
Truthfully, I'm not sure if I'm even playing Warlock "correctly" since half the game I'm soloing and experimenting, and the other half I'm with Ghiren, who is even more of a newbie to WoW compared to me :) We'll have to see what happens when I go for some real fights!
2 comments:
My Eyes! Seriously though... how can you stand all that clutter? I like the base WoW interface for the simple fact that there is almost no clutter... I think out of all those addons you listed, I'd probably use 2 of them. But I also played WoW, off and on, since beta, so I kind of already know what's good for what, and where to find things.
I guess I'm that way regardless of the game. I don't like too much clutter on my screen cause you can't see the game. The nice thing about video games is that they're visual... unlike the old boardgames that they were born from like D&D which are mostly numbers and words. Hence why I usually make female chars in WoW... none of the male chars look decent to me like they did in FFXI.
Now WoW is far from an art style I'm crazy about, but it's not as bad as others while having great gameplay as well. My biggest peave though... My character does the exact same thing over and over for special attacks... Blood elves and Night elves spin, other classes do other things, but regardless of attack, it's always the same motion. Casting is the same... Arms bent at the elbows about 160 degrees and glowy hands that move into a straight-arm, hands facing enemy stance... instant casts do nothing more than skip the bent arms part. This is the exact reason I'm going into game design with a strong focus on animation... I'm sick of seeing games with only a small number of animations while fighter games are nothing but impressive and creative, as well as unique, animations.
Anyway, just a little on what I do and don't like about WoW. I could truly go on for the rest of the day, but I doubt this comment window allows that much text, nor would anyone want to read that much. =P
I wish I could get you guys to come out to my server. >< We've been running a lot of the fun end game stuff. I finally found someone for 3x xp, but he also knows my brother and other friends.
Now I'm trying to save up 16000g so I can buy the 3 person mammoth mount with vendors on it :D
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