Having boosted my level 60 Prot Paladin to 90, I was surprised to find that all my abilities and talents had been locked away. I couldn’t even summon the Paladin mount. It was effectively like being a first level character again - Crusader Strike and Judgment were my only skills. It felt very underpowered after blasting through dungeons on the way to 60. As I ventured into Draenor, quests started rewarding clusters of abilities - damage boosts, mitigation, healing - and talent tree unlocks.

Thinking about it, I realised this is obviously the mechanic for Blizzard to introduce newly boosted level zero characters to their abilities. I wonder if they could have made it less abrupt by leaving abilities unlocked for characters that were boosting from a higher level, but that would pose it’s own problems - what level did they boost from, which abilities are left, how to introduce them. The main problem I think is that even though the abilities were gradually unlocked, there was nothing in the way of explanation as to what they were and how to use them. When levelling, you get one at a time and can read the ability text and work out (or look up) how they are best used. With the boost, you just unlock three new abilities and hope for the best.

The other problem is the unlocks are not matched to what’s happening in game, so getting the defensive abilities wasn’t because a quest was about to call for them. It also had the strange effect of making me feel vulnerable - some of the quests were harder than expected due to a lack of skills, which I think would be off-putting for a fresh player. It seems like there is an opportunity to create an isolated boost scenario which would match the skill and talent unlocks to events and challenges in the scenario. Similar to the Proving Grounds, but tailored more toward teaching. And because it’s quarantined from the game story, it can scale to each expac as they are released, before launching the fresh player into the storyline. It would be a lot of work for Blizzard given all the classes and specialisations, but given boosting characters appears to be the new normal it might be money well spent.

After a man-flu hiatus, I managed to logon for some mid floor HFC this week. I’m still a bit shaky and nervous on mechanics - throwing Iskar’s bauble to the wrong person, or the total floor chaos of Xhul. And pretty sure I pulled some trash with a badly placed Barrage, yike. Least it wasn’t a boss!

On those bosses my DPS was better, but still pretty poor - staying alive isn’t enough. The better news was on the bosses where I felt more at ease - Zakuun, Socrethar - I graduated from bottom of the pile to mid-list. Success! Mild success, but still. I was surprised about Zakuun as that was a fight I still wasn’t 100% on my responsibilities, but it worked out ok. Helped as usual by some good strong voice directing from the raid leaders.

Comparing my combat logs in AMR to similarly geared players shows I’m still below average, but the encouraging thing is seeing improvement. And it’s still only 5 or so goes that I’ve had at each of these bosses in Heroic, so I guess a steep learning curve is to be expected. I’m super appreciative to Frostwolves for being able to do this so late in the Warlords piece. I think next is seeking some feedback. What am I doing right, what wrong, is there any hope!?

Bhagpuss writes a lovely lyrical paean to the joy of the MMO zerg¹:

EverQuest began with no formal raiding structure but players invented one of their own, bringing larger and larger gangs to clear entire zones in a rolling wave of terror. When SOE formalized matters with the Planes of Power expansion the raid size was set at 72, a number that sounds pretty massive even today.

A spontaneous ‘rolling wave of terror’. Lovely. Reminds me of the very occasional WoW groups I’ve joined that would attempt to raid opposing faction capital cities (all of which have fallen apart due to lack of leadership - and the lack of PvP skills in a typical PvE player).

Every time Bhagpuss writes about GW2 I want to go and try it (again). But every time I do I get bogged down in the starting areas and abandon ship. It doesn’t help that the racial selection is so limited, and all the Norn female faces look like supermodels, but there’s something that stops me continuing each time. I’m not sure what exactly it is. Maybe the clunky storytelling (those cut scenes) or the endlessly spawning events (didn’t I already kill the Direwolf?). Maybe it’s the lack of rails, the free form nature of ‘do what you want how you want’ is too imtimidating, especially when trying to get a grasp on a whole new game and UI.

The completionist urge is also a problem - I don’t feel like I can leave the starter area until I have all the vistas, events, hearts, etc. In other words, it’s not the game, it’s me. When GW2 launched a bunch of WoW friends all jumped in arms open, but the only one that stuck around was the PvP fiend. Which, reading Bhagpuss, makes sense. The WvW game seems so strong, when it works, and while I tried it WoW drew me back pretty quickly.

I feel now like it’s too late to begin or catch up, though I still have a lonely browser tab of ‘GW2 tips for beginners’ open, just in case, and for next time the bug bites. And damn if I wouldn’t love to be part of those zergs.

As planned, I respecced to the recommended talents for Beast Mastery, redid my keybindings for the new priorities, and spent all the Valor I had on the upgrades recommended by Ask Mr. Robot. AMR is great, well worth the ~$10 for a yearly subscription. Without it I would have probably upgraded the wrong stuff, and definitely defaulted to higher iLvl gear when something lower might be more beneficial. The ability to export and import gear lists using their add-on is invaluable.

New rotation and gear in hand I dutifully queued for some Cataclysm Timewalking. Which was probably unfortunate for the first couple of groups as I was making all kinds of muscle memory mistakes. But I pretty quickly settled into it - there was a definite improvement in the key mapping, making things more obvious and faster to reach. Timewalking doesn’t give a good idea of DPS output so I queued for all the LFR wings, hoping to also pick up the final Tomes.

The good news was there was a definite improvement in damage output - phew! From being mid list I was steady in the top 5, which has the added bonus of knowing the healers will pay you a little more attention. Speaking of, I think anyone who heals or tanks LFR is a saint. So many people on follow, or just standing in the fire, dropping things at the tanks feet, pulling bosses early, etc. Chaos!

In any case, it’s pleasing when you set to work on improving something and there is a clear result. Sure it was only LFR, but the improvements were pretty obvious. Added bonus: Barrage is much more fun than Glaive Toss. Serendipitously, all four remaining tomes dropped after only running 6 bosses, including 3 for 3 on the last section. So I’m the proud owner of the Legendary Ring, at a similar expansion stage to when I got the MoP cloak. Maybe for Legion I’ll be ahead of the curve instead of waaaay behind!

Spent another night raiding Heroic HFC on Thursday, with mixed results. Still can’t seem to put out decent DPS, despite my iLvl reaching around 705 now. So I’m going to review all my talents and rotation and upgrades, as it seems my current choices were superseded somewhere along the line without me noticing (probably because I wasn’t raiding so it didn’t matter). Given patch 7.0 will change all this very soon, it’s probably a bit silly, but it will force me to be realistic about skill vs gearing, and compare better with similarly geared players.

Downed a few new bosses I’d only seen in LFR which was good, died on obvious mechanics which was bad. Archimonde (N) was a classic case: we got the meta (which gave me the final piece for Glory of the Hellfire Raider), but we got it while I was lying dead in the Twisting Nether as I didn’t realise you had to ‘exit’ and was busily attacking a worthless Void Star. Sigh.

On the plus side, I was lucky enough to get the Tier Gloves, so I now have the 4 piece set bonus (albeit with the LFR chest), and need only 5 more Tomes before getting the Legendary Ring (despite going 1/10 on Tomes in LFR last week!).

In other news the profession Q&A was quite interesting, and I think confirms the plan to go gatherer/crafter on my twin tank alts. Seems like the traditional gatherer/crafter match is the favoured playstyle once again, after Warlords blew that up with the Garrison Mine & Herb Garden.

I’ve avoided reading too much about Legion stuff, wanting to discover it organically in game rather than through the beta coverage. So I was pretty excited to see there is going to be a Fishing Artifact! When the Q&A asked about how to acquire it:

Purposely meant to be kept vague, having hidden things in the world keeps things fun. Don’t believe everything you datamine; you don’t need to complete the Wish Remover achievement. This is meant to be something for people who love fishing.

/raises hoof I love fishing. Prepping my fishing lines, reels, rods, and special hats!