Friday, July 2, 2010

yes I'm writing blogs again. . .

I wasn't sure how to get back into playing Wow, but it seems my blogging follows my playing pretty closely. I had a few things to get out there after my absence, so I guess the best thing to do is just have at it.

Firstly, I've had some problems researching this particular topic, but it is around hardware performance and Wow. Believe me when I say, I'm not looking for excuses for my poor performance. If my lack of DPS was due to me sucking in general, I'm comfortable with that. However, as I had mentioned in a previous post, that has been called into doubt. I've been running at 30-60 FPS which seems decent, and a latency of 150-400, which I've heard is not. Unfortunately, I've had a hard time researching benchmarks, what performance "should" be and what this means to my overall performance. I will be picking up a new computer in the not too distant future (probably saturday), so we'll see how that affects my performance.

Secondly, something I found a little curious. Wow was almost a 40 hr a week job for me while I was playing in my heaviest times. However, it's funny how quickly it goes away. When I reloaded the game, I forgot what addons to get, what did what, rotations, I even had problems remembering how to get my gear repaired. Most of it came back pretty quickly, but I thought it was interesting how quickly it went away. Well, I guess 7 months isnt exactly quick.

My latest "project" character is my shadow priest. I really haven't touched my shammy or my paladin since I've come back. I leveled my shadow priest to 70 and got him to northrend pretty quick, and I'm finding him pretty fun to play and generally useful. I've always wanted to try a pure caster. While I LOVE elemental shammy, a lot of their damage isn't instant, and whether its a lag issue or what, I find by the time I want to hit something, it's dead already. I am kind of liking the thought of dropping dots on everything, replenishing the group in the process. I find mobs die fairly quick and I can handle a few at a time.

I chose shadow priest over the other 2 cloth casters for a number of reasons. First, I love my mage. I love being able to handle multiple mobs and the general survivability of frost. However 11111111111111111 is about as boring as I can think of. I couldn't think of re-speccing Arcane, it just seems wrong. He's always been frost, he will always be frost. Then there is the warlock. Decent, has some utility, drain tanking is ok, I love the felguard, I've heard they can do some great damage. However, shadowform is just so cool looking! And the ability to heal myself if need be is pretty great. Would I like some sort of cool looking bolt spell? Absolutely, but thats just not how priests seem to work. But as far as clothy casters go, I think I made a solid choice.

10 levels to go till grindy progression interestingness. . .