Ah telt ye that thon bloody Paladin wis gonnae end up healin’ an’ a wis right.  Ah caught him goin’ we some other adventurers tae the Deadmines (they still huvnae sorted that wee problem oot it seems…) and he had some interestin’ clothes on.  In fact, when he came oot he had even more interestin’ clothes oan…

What is this monster I’ve created….

Sometimes ye know ye have the right tool fer the job - and ye know that cos ye kept it away in a corner when ye really shoulda thrown it oot! (and so the missus told ye five times).  Some things ah cannae bear tae part with - even if it means bein’ creative aboot findin’ a place for it.

Siha, over at Banana Shoulders, has asked us what we have kicking about our inventories which we don’t want to delete or vendor.  I didn’t think I could keep it to a sensible length for a comment so I figured I’d make a post about it.  This may be the first of several nostalgia-esque posts that seem to have crept into my mind in the last few weeks.

First off, I am a ‘mid-level’ hoarder.  I keep a lot of things - especially on the classes on which I enjoy more than one spec - but I am prone to ‘clear outs’ where I delete a pile of things which I no longer need.  I was never fortunate enough to gain tier armour from Pre-Burning Crusade so I don’t have that big a bag-space commitment for old gear but there are a few things that are taking up space which I can’t bring myself to give up.

Gear:

[Bloodrazor] + Letter
This sword was given to me by my other half who found it whilst grinding in Western Plaguelands.  The sword, plus the letter it came with, have their own special spot in my bank.

[Wolfshead Helm]
Given to me by the awesome Az, this helm became a staple of mine for grinding all the way from when I could first equip it until I hit Outlands.  Having this helm, with outfitter set to auto-switch it out after going into form, meant lots of energy and rage right at the start of combat.

Idols / Totems

I never throw any of these out, ever.  It’s one of those… things.  They seem connected to my characters in a way other equipment is not.

[Sang'thraze the Deflector]
I have this on my druid in the odd, odd hope that one day I will get [Jang'thraze the Protector] whilst boosting someone and can make them into [Sul'thraze the Lasher] … so that it can continue to sit in my bank and do nothing!

5 ‘Slow’ Mounts

I can never bear to get rid of my old mounts even if I never use them - I think I’ve only ever deleted one and it was an Alterac Valley Ram which I had only bought to get rid of some tokens… and even then I felt bad about doing it.  It’s a little silly but I wish they’d term it something different to ‘delete’ when it concerns pets / mounts.

Pets

Those of the non-combat variety.  I find it hard to delete any of these, even if I know that they’re only going to sit and gather dust.  I try to keep one or two in each characters bags to pull out when bored.  There’s a list of the ones I have squirreled away here.

Other Random Stuff…

Nagrand Cherries, Voodoo Skull, Mirren’s Drinking Hat, Red Rose and Simple Wildflowers.  I just can’t bring myself to delete any of these because I might just ‘want’ or ‘need’ them for something.

Wow is a paradise for collectors items - they throw them at you with every event and make numerous things avaiable whose only use is, for the most part, to sit in your inventory.  After looking at all of these I feel little like I should be taking the time to mabe utilise some of the random things I have in my bank rather than just leaving them to rust but I bet that in a years time most, if not all, of them will still be there…

So, as usual, this post is coming terribly late /sigh

I had the wonderful fortune, last time I was pottering about on the beta realm, to bump into a fellow EU-ite blogger!  Just as I was wandering through the leatherworking trainer’s shop I ran past an oddly familiar female human priest.  Cue a double take when I realised it was none other than Sephrenia from Guild Mum.  Oddly enough I’d just commented on her site saying I’d like to see her around on the beta if she was figuring on doing anything fun!

We chatted for a little bit, but I had to go grab some things on another char and made my farewells.  Since Softi was on and also chatting back and forth I suggested we make a wee channel for the EU bloggers instead of struggling to play about with a million whispers (multi-tasking, whassat?).

So, for any EU bloggers who happen to be on the beta, if you want to chat we’ve started a chat channel: eubloggers (yes, we’re terribly imaginitave *ahem*).  It’s not often we’ll get the chance to hang out together on one realm so I’d love to see anyone who happens to be about!

I don’t often rant here - in fact, I shy away from it like some sort of plague.  I do this as I know my rants tend to be very different to my usual writing form and, often, get slowly angrier as they progress.   However, I ask your forgiveness in this matter as, in reality, it is only my wish to put my point across vehemently which makes my wording so extreme or my writing a little more emphatic than usual.

So, what is this issue that has me irked, annoyed and agitated?  Well, at the moment quite a few things concerning the beta and people scrambling to denounce specs and classes as OP / UP before they’ve even had a chance to mature or even be completed.  Most of these I will not defend overly as I also do not know what will happen and arguments where both sides are based on speculation are generally somewhat… pointless?

One particular argument is one which is mostly based around personal feelings and beliefs (of which I have plenty experience *ahem*) is that of ‘Big Green Blob Syndrome’, or, “omg all the classes are losing their uniqeness /crai”.

My view on this? Mostly complete and utter nonsense.  Gaining a similar buff to a class or an ability which overlaps a now available buff does not make one class more or less unique than another.

The reason I’ve seen cited for these changes, by blue posters, is to make it so that you do not have to rely overly on stacking one class or deny a friend and good player a place on your raid team simply because they do not enjoy or have the gear for a ‘good’ raid spec (boomkins, retridins, MM hunters, frost mages for example).  Now I know you may wail and cry that there are examples of these specs already raiding and doing well but I have not yet heard of a guild who stacks boomkins - feral or resto are more useful for the ‘class benefits’ - in this case, battle res, innervate etc. - and the benefit of bringing two along is negligible - improved faerie fire cannot stack and the aura competes with the better buffs an elemental shaman could bring in their place, for example (alongside self res, a full set of totems, heroism…).

So, allowing a lot of classes to share buffs or simply making it so that similar buffs don’t stack no matter what the class is means that you only need “some dps, one with an AP booster, some tanks, one with an armor / AP reducer or slower, and some healers capable of… healing” rather than “we need at least two shamans, two priests, one warrior, one paladin tank, one survival hunter, two rogues, three warlocks and two mages minimum”.  The direction they are going in will allow for more freedom of choice for the player and for the raid as a whole.

You should be able to play with your friends and you should be able to play in a spec you like competitively. Burning Crusade was a step towards that (Wow, druids, shamans and paladins don’t have to be healers all the time?) and I’m hoping Wrath will continue the trend.  In fact, in my opinion, this allows for a far greater degree of individualism than if classes were restricted to one or two ‘amazing’ raid specs with the other being left in the dirt.

Crossover does not equal cross out, for example:

On my Shaman I rely heavily on +healing and mp5, holy Paladins in my guild also rely partially on these.  We both heal, use shields and choose similar ‘extras’ (rings, trinkets, food etc.). Does that mean we lack flavour compared to each other?  I don’t think so.  We’re very different classes.  If I gain a good, fast single target heal worth casting it still doesn’t make me a Paladin and a Paladin gaining some multi-target healing does not make them a Shaman.  Big mechanics - like totems and blessings, magical shields versus elemental shields, mitigation versus off-spec dps will always make these two healing specs feel very different.

However,  if need be I could single-target heal or they could raid heal without gimping the raid.  If we only have 8 paladins available for one evening why should that stop us from just saying ‘lets go!’?  Having similar skills across multiple classes simply means that a big glaring gap in their toolset (using the above example) as a healer has been reduced a little, allowing them to fill a healer spot rather than just a ‘paladin’ or ’shaman’ spot.

More specifically, having only certain classes able to ‘cleanse’ certain debuffs means having to build a raid around those classes for specific encounters.  Having these sorts of abilities as available from certain talents (without adding them as general class skills) means being able to have each specialist-spec have a tool-set wide enough to not be a burden simply by playing a class and spec they enjoy.

This is why I am supportive of the efforts to spread the love around, talents wise.  This is why I am glad they are doing so and why, I hope, others might begin to see all of this in a more positive light.

After half writing this post I noticed that Rohan at Blessing of Kings touched on another aspect of what I was trying to say in his post on the new buff system:

I think that, on the whole, this will be a good change for the game. There are some posters at EJ however, who feel that this will lead to a new form of raid stacking. Essentially, you figure out the minimum number of characters to cover all the buffs and debuffs, and then stack the rest of the raid with the flavour-of-the-month DPS class.

This is a possibility. However, in my view, there are essentially two types of raiding guilds: guilds which have access to multiple characters of every class and spec; and guilds which don’t. Maybe the first type of guild will stack, but they would have stacked anyways. But this change will make life a lot easier for the second type of guild, allowing much more leeway in recruitment and raid make-up.

I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment - hardcore raids who must have optimal setups will find a way to ‘exploit’ the new system.  Other guilds, who are more based around friendships or friendly, more paced raiding, will be able to raid more comfortably with an un-balanced number of one class or other.  I refuse to believe, at the moment, that granting buffs and abilities to multiple different classes will mean a loss of uniqueness for that class.  I believe, in fact, it does almost the opposite - allowing any one person to play their class in the spec they enjoy with the knowledge that they are a positive force for their raid group and friends.