Wednesday, October 13, 2010

First impressions of 4.01

This is going to be a little on the jumbled up side. There are major mechanical changes that seemed to affect every class in the game, and although I don't have one of everything (ok, I've joked before about being the Noah of Wow, but I don't in reality have 2 of everything), I have a lot of impressions about the changes made to the game.

First of all, I think the change of giving every class signature abilities sooner is AWESOME. Being able to dual wield as an enhancement shammy before level 40 really makes you feel like a melee badass. Having to wait till 40 to really get an identity kind of sucked. I also like how classes have a lot of similar abilities. Fury warrior has some similarity with enhancement shammy (dual wield, flurry, etc), and talents seem to be a lot more fun.

OMFG HEIRLOOMS ARE EXPENSIVE!!! I really wish I would have bought some before the change. Had I known this would be the case live, I would have. I really only have 2 70+ level characters left I want to level to 80 (I have just lost the desire to level druid), but 2k+ Justice points?!?!? I believe that would be on the order of 80 frost emblems. So instead of just being able to downgrade 40 triumph badges which I could farm in 3-4 hours, it takes 2-3 weeks of raiding? WTF BLIZZARD!?!?!?

Speaking of the two characters I'm going to level to 80, Fury warrior and arcane mage look AMAZING. My mage was previously frost specced, and I basically wasnt using it to it's full potential for leveling. I did great DPS in instances, but leveling was basically frostbolt spam, fireball when it procc'd free, ice lance when fingers of frost procc'd. Slow being added to Arcane blast seems awesome, I was looking forward to trying out an arcane build and it just seems SO FUN! Speaking of something else that seems a ton of fun, FURY WARRIOR. My biggest propblem in playing the warrior was that health was a constant issue. I was taking a ton of damage and with no self heals besides herbalism, it just wasnt fun. Being a Draenei would have helped, but that wasnt an option. Enter new 4.01 awesomeness where most of the cool warrior abilities now heal you!

The main effect of this is I have lost the desire to instance and now want to level my guys. Maybe even some new guys!