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 So I’m going to review all my talents and rotation and upgrades, as it seems my current choices were superseded somewhere along the line without me noticing (probably because I wasn’t raiding so it didn’t matter).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!

The Warcraft movie seems to evoke love/hate responses, and after about 15 minutes I was a bit worried. The start is pretty exposition heavy, and also seemed to assume a fair amount of lore knowledge (what’s ‘Fel’, what’s Ironforge and who are these Dwarves). But thankfully it pretty quickly settled into a rhythm and story that felt compelling and (mostly) made sense.

The Orcs were amazing, so huge, solid, thick, and powerful. The movie captured their brutal tribal warlike ways perfectly, while also showing a community that cares deeply for one another even amongst the chaos. The orc camps are dirty and busy, with plenty of thumping and growling going on. But they’re not portrayed as beasts, and there’s a genuine sense of care amongst the clans. Pleasingly Durotan’s deeply honourable Frostwolves are front and centre, a nice parallel to my new guild.

On the other side of the coin, the Humans were all pretty weak and humourless. It seemed like all the best actors ended up greenskinned, and the leftovers played wooden Human caricatures. Only Lothar stood out, and even he seemed often to be half tipsy (unintentionally) and not really present. The actor playing Medivh was clearly heavily influenced by the brilliant portrayal of Merlin by Nicol Williamson in the highly highly underrated Excalibur¹, but couldn’t bring the same sense of barely contained madness and power. King Llane and family are straight backed and boring, and Khadgar is strangely unsuited to the role with his baby face and constantly morphing accent.

The human world is neat, tidy, and their armour is sadly weightless. The Horde/Alliance portrayal in the film is kind of apt given how I feel about the game’s factions - boring puny Humans vs virulant chaotic passionate Horde. So I’ll put down the dull Humans to intention on the part of Director Duncan Jones. Horde bias confirmed!

The movie was full of fan touches, with murlocs lurking on riverbanks, namechecking of much travelled zones, and some nice spell callbacks. And Karazhan features heavily, though while the interiors bring memories flooding back (that library pull!), it’s weirdly unrecognisable from the outside.

Unfortunately, but maybe typically for (pre-Overwatch) Blizzard, there is only one major female character. Garona is great, dominating her scenes with huge presence and character, and she’s a crucial bridge between the Orcs and Humans. But she’s also part of a love story, which is a shame and such a tired sexist trope. They try hard to make her independent and non-needy, but can’t quite resist making her an object of desire for half the men in the film.

I saw it with a bunch of current and former players, and all were pleasantly surprised. It didn’t hurt to have such low expectations (Chinese box office notwithstanding), but the movie rises above the ‘game film’ curse, largely due to the strength of the Orc storyline. I’m not sure what a non player would make of it, but Game of Thrones has conditioned people to the idea of a fantasy world, and one ex-player I went with enjoyed it despite not having played for years and having zero lore knowledge.

My only disappointment was there was no Tauren cameo - the post credit scene had me hoping, but it wasn’t to be. Maybe the sequel?

Here’s a collection of other blog reviews for those interested: Navimie Superior Realities Not All Hunters The Ancient Gaming Noob

Yesterday I finished levelling my Druid tank to 60, all through LFD runs. It’s a fun way to level, with not many repeat dungeons until the 50-60 Stratholme/Blackrock Depths/Blackrock Spire zone. Spire is a great run - it’s long, complicated, some interesting pulls, bonus bosses, pet drops, the works. It’s a marvel of 3D mapping too, with lots of bridges and fissures where you can see the lower levels you’ve already traversed (and fall if you’re not careful). And it’s the first Dungeon where the bosses might actually kill you even in these days of OP Heirlooms - namely Vosh’gajin who likes turning everyone into frogs.

So I now have two level 60 tanks (the other being a Paladin), and two boosts to spend. I’ve still got the level 90 Boost from Warlords, and a level 100 from Legion. Beyond the enjoyment I get from low level dungeon tanking, the logic behind getting the toons to 60 was to take advantage of the ‘free’ profession levelling that comes with the boost. I have Engineering, Tailoring, Leatherworking, and Skinning already maxed, and I want to add Alchemy, Blacksmithing, Mining and Herbing to the mix. I dropped Mining during Warlords as there was no point in having a dedicated gatherer with the Garrison Mine, but it sounds like we’ll need gatherers again in Legion.

The main decision to make is whether to go dual crafting/dual gathering, or mix and match the appropriate skills. Because crafting is so much slower, I’m tempted to go Alchemy/Blacksmithing on the Paladin and boost him to 100, which will give full 700 profession skills. Then put the gathering skills on the Druid, boost her to 90, and easily grind the professions from 600 while she’s out levelling herself. Having said that it’s nice to have self sufficient crafter/gatherers, so maybe I’ll just have to knuckle down and level Alchemy the slow way.

There’s also the matter of the BoP Blood of Sargeas crafting mat to consider. Similar to the MoP Spirit of Harmony, the Blood being BoP makes a dual gatherer less attractive. Decisions, decisions! I might wait for the next Legion Q&A, which will focus on Professions and may make the choice more obvious.

In between playing my Hunter main, I seem to spend a lot of time levelling alt-Tanks. I love levelling up tanking 5 man dungeons, and as a result have far too many mid level tanky types. Having done it a lot, I noticed there’s a lot of endgame tanking guides, but barely anything for the learner who wants to try this tank thing.

So I wrote another Wowhead guide - Tanking 101: Protection Paladin. Covers all you need to know up to Level 15 and tanking your first dungeon. Probably not the best time with the Legion class changes just around the corner, but hopefully the low level experience hasn’t changed too much. I have a vague intention to add similar guides for Guardian Druids and Protection Warriors if this one proves worthwhile. Tank well!