I finally played through the Demon Hunter intro zone this weekend - and it’s a winner. Like the Death Knight class before it, Illidan’s converts are given a self contained zone to explore, learning the class one or two skills at a time as it progresses.

I found the DH to be instantly fun - I accidentally discovered the Double Jump and Glide combo, which was a nice surprise, and then spent the rest of the time triple tapping my space bar to zoom around the zone. It changes your perspective on the game world, as I found myself seeking out higher ground so I could glide around on my demonic wings. Combine that with Fel Rush and it’s a super mobile class - like having a flying Warrior Charge. As others have observed, the class plays like a Rogue/Warrior cross with wings and glowing tattoos.

Despite a propensity for tanks, I chose the Havoc spec, which the intro tends to lean toward. It would be interesting to know the breakdown of choice here - I’d guess 95% would be going DPS, but I suppose that’s typical of any hybrid choice.

The intro zone is well paced and atmospheric, as is the storyline that unfolds. There’s even a first person cut scene which seems like a new thing (?), and some interesting story telling options between followers loyal to Illidan and those that think he’s gone too far. It was also great to watch the Harbingers: Illidan animation again, neatly inserted into the DH experience.

I don’t think she’ll unseat my Hunter main, but I found the class more fun than a Rogue due to that amazing mobility - incorporating that into ‘real’ gameplay should be a lot of fun.

One of unexpectedly nice things about the Legion invasions is they give your characters - particularly alts - a great way of trying different builds and rotations in a low stress environment.

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My boosted Paladin and Druid tanks, and neglected Rogue, can all venture out into the thick of battle and start getting a feel for the New Ways without the self inflicted fear of letting down a dungeon group or raid. And as a bonus the less geared alts pick up a full set of iLvl 700 gear, ready for the Legion levelling. If this was part of Blizzard’s plan they deserve a round of applause.

In related news, 7.0 also introduced a new level 100 boost tutorial, making my recent post about the now antiquated level 90 boost, well, antiquated. The new method of a scenario that introduces your key abilities sounds much better, as does the new Class Trial feature that lets you play around with a class before committing.

I’m guessing Blizzard would have liked to have all this stuff in place to be ready when the movie launched, but given it wasn’t the mega success hoped for it probably didn’t matter too much that it’s being delivered late. At least the existing players get the benefits.

The Legion has (finally) arrived¹, and it’s great. Logging in and feeling overwhelmed with options - Invasions? Broken Isles? Demon Hunter? - is a nice change from the late Warlords routine.

I hopped straight in to an invasion. Well not quite straight, as first I mistook the new Dark Moon Faire icon for an invasion icon. Embarrassing arriving in Mulgore to find…nothing except a purple tent. Luckily there was an actual invasion not too far away in Azshara. It’s fantastically epic joining a fight with 80+ other players to take down giant demons as they wreak havoc, and Blizzard have done a great job making that somehow work with little lag and excellent phasing.

It seems that whenever you arrive in the ~3 hour window, the invasion is just starting for you (and everyone else). After turning back the tide there, I - and 1000 others - hopped a zeppelin to travel to the next event in Westfall, Alliance territory.

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Unfortunately 7.x seems to have introduced a bug with v-e-r-y slow or even disconnect zone transitions, which meant by the time the zone loaded I was somehow back in Orgrimmar, having taken a round trip. Instead I joined a raid searching for the elusive Pocket Fel Spreader in Org. Kind of painful, spamming the Doomsayers for the Demon spawn, hopefully they increase the rate as the invasion continues - guild leader Navi got lucky though, yay!

Next I tried the Broken Shores scenario, and once I’d fought the loading screen boss found that again Blizzard had outdone themselves. Terrific storytelling via gameplay and cutscenes, and a real sense of the scale of the invasion. The moment you realise you’re face to face with an actual Alliance raid with other players on the opposite shore is excellent². And the denouement for both Horde and Alliance is shocking. Gee I hope we get to finish Gul’dan off this expansion.

All this and still a Demon Hunter to create. Plus the promise of a return to Karazan next week. Legion is shaping up very nicely indeed.

The world PVP areas coming in Legion sound pretty entertaining - Blizz are tagging it as Wacky Races compared to the Formula 1 of Arena. A dark last-toon-standing gladitorial pit, jousting on the back of mountain goats, and best of all: “You get to turn into a Murloc, you go onto the Murloc faction, you can blow up players as a Murloc.”

You’re going to turn into a freaking Murloc. How do you balance Murlocs? That doesn’t even make sense. You don’t. You make it overpowered. Go and have fun.

Murloc PVP! Time to find out why Murloc’s have been so good at wrecking low level characters for so long¹.

The always thoughtful Rohan at Blessing of Kings has a great proposal: equalising gear in levelling dungeons the same way it is (as of 7.03) in PVP:

The problem is that leveling dungeons need to be balanced such that a group of new players in quest gear can complete them. But if one or more heirloom characters are present, that balance goes out the window. I think stat templates for leveling dungeons would be a great idea. Everyone would be reduced down to an even playing field. Dungeons would be a proper group experience once more. I rather doubt anyone will sheep anything, but maybe it could happen.

Despite the fun of tanking in heirlooms, this is a very worthy idea. I especially like the idea of cc returning!

I remember using Distract to sneak past mobs in dungeons once upon a time, and trying not to hit the sheep with AoE. Another idea for the mooted ‘Pristine’ servers, perhaps, though given they’ve done it in PVP why not implement it into PvE too - the tech is there with the Timewalking gear scaling. This would just be scaling as you level, rather than scaling down from max.