My World of Warcraft Characters

I've been so busy playing WoW, I haven't had much opportunity to blog about it. :) So now I want to talk a bit about the two characters I'm playing on the Icecrown server:

The higher level character is Waldin, the night elf druid. The name is a historical artefact, my wood elf druid in Everquest, 5 years ago, was called Waldin, so since then all my druids have this name. Unlike EQ, in WoW the druid is not the easiest character to solo. But he is the most versatile by a large margin. This is due to his ability to shapeshift into different animal forms.

The bear form is a classical tank, with a big bonus to armor. When in bear form, the druid works exactly like a warrior, having rage slowly build up during combat, which then can be used for different special moves. In cat form the druid transforms into a rogue, having an energy bar and hitting enemy with combo points and finishing moves. He can also prowl, that is moving slowly in a nearly invisible form. As sea lion the druid can breathe under water. And soon I will gain a fourth animal form, a cheetah which has a higher run speed.

Besides his animal forms, the druid has different spells. On the one side he can heal, and it is the healing where I put my talent points in to specialize. Some of the healing talents, like harder to interrupt healing spells, are useful in solo play too, but otherwise this is a more group friendly specialization. Another branch of spells is of the root and nuke type. And finally I got buffs and debuffs. These, plus the potions I brew with my alchemy tradeskill, make me a reasonably good melee fighter. So all in all I have some skills or spells for every situation. I'm missing the teleport spells the EQ druids had, but at least I got one more teleport than most characters, which brings me to a special druid place, Moonglade, which is conveniently connected to the night elf homelands by gryphon flight.

My second character is Tobold, the dwarven paladin. He is a lot less versatile. His spells are basically limited to different buffs, and a minor heal. Before I learned to throw bombs with the engineering tradeskill, he didn't have any possibility to pull at range, neither with weapon nor spell. He only does one thing well, and that is melee combat. But boy, he is a hard nut to crack there. Wearing good mail armor (partially financed by the higher level druid), with an armor buff aura, and some talents that make his self-heal spells harder to interrupt, he is the archetypical tank. Only his taunt skills are lacking a bit in comparison with the warrior.

Now at level 18, the paladin did his first major group effort and joined a group for the Deadmines instanced dungeon. Although being on the low level side for that dungeon, and grouped with people of much higher level, he wasn't relegated to the side lines, but efficiently worked as main tank, even against Van Cleef the end boss.

Tobold the paladin also seems to be the more lucky one, winning a roll for a rare (blue) two-handed axe in that dungeon. Waldin, at level 28, is a lot less lucky. I'm trying to get a rare staff for him, which drops about half of the time from another boss mob, Lord Kelris, in the Blackfathom instanced dungeon. I've been through the dungeon four times now. Twice he didn't drop the staff, twice somebody else won the roll for it. And with me in a different time zone, getting a group there during the off-peak hours I'm usually playing during the week isn't easy. But I'll try again, until either I get that staff, or an even better one.

Both Tobold's axe and the staff Waldin wants are "binds when picked up" items. That means that whoever gets them in the loot is stuck with it. He can't sell them, or give them to another character. Either he uses the item, or he sells it far below worth to an NPC. But these rare items are the best a character of my level range can hope to achieve. The second best source for equipment is the auction house, where you can equip yourself with uncommon (green) items. You also find uncommon items as loot, or quest reward, but these are usually a bit lower in level than you are, unless it was a particularly long and hard quest. Only if you are really poor should you use the common (white) items you buy from NPC vendors or find often enough a loot from monsters. Common items don't give bonuses to your stats, and it is the stat bonuses which really make your characters more powerful. The system in which items become "soulbound" either when picked up, or when equipped, prevents the so-called mudflation, where people flood the market with their old equipment. That is working well enough, hunting for equipment is enjoyable. Even if one isn't always lucky (see above).
- posted by Tobold @ 10:55 AM Permanent Link