To a certain extent, I got my framerate issues straightened out. I’m pulling down around 35 FPS in highly populated areas and exceeding 65 FPS in ghost towns like, say… Ironforge. With that headache out of the way, I decided to roll a Death Knight. Sticking with the Italian naming convention, I created Predatore as a Human male DK. If your Italian is a little rusty, drop the “e” and Bob’s your uncle. Simply put, Predatore is a badass. He’s at level 58 right now and I’ve decided to hold off until level 60 to shoot him through the Dark Portal. It’s not that he couldn’t handle the mobs there right now. There’s just something deeply satisfying about plowing through Hellfire Peninsula like a steamroller.
When I first started racking up talent points, I decided to go deep into the Frost tree. It seemed to have slowing and AoE type attributes similar to a Frost Mage. But it didn’t take long for me to realize that Frost wasn’t the best soloing spec. Between some forum posts, articles on WoW Insider, and this post over at Arcane Blaster, I decided that Blood was the way to go. As of about two hours ago, Predatore is 49 points into the Blood tree.
So far, I’ve gotta say that every point was well spent. When I was specced Frost, I had to be very careful not to bite off more than I could chew. Since moving to a Blood spec, I haven’t died. Not once. To give a good basis for comparison, I was taking on mobs that were three or four levels below me in WPL when I was specced Frost. After speccing Blood, I went to the northern part of EPL and took on five level 60’s at once. I threw Mark of Blood on one of the mobs and intentionally saved him for last. When his body finally dropped and I stood before the carnage, I took a glance at my health bar. Full. I’m not kidding. I had just knocked out five mobs that were all two levels higher than me and I came away literally unscathed. This Death Knight business is gonna be a good time.
As though I didn’t have enough to do with Devv working her way to 80 and Predatore rekindling the flames of love I once felt for this game, another distraction entered the mix last night. My wife and son and I went to Target on one of those completely pointless, need to spend money for no reason trips. Since discovering a couple killer deals on the clearance endcaps, I’ve become obsessed with scouring them for deals. It’s to the point where my son and I nearly jog to the front endcaps in excitement the second we walk in the door. In his defense, he’s 3 1/2, so he’s pretty much just going along with what Daddy does. I, on the other hand, have no excuse. I just love catching bargains. At any rate, last night’s trip was no exception My first discovery were some insanely-priced PS3 and XBOX 360 games. None of the titles really gave me an adrenalin rush, so I moved to the next endcap. There I discovered Age of Conan for $19.98. Although I’ve read mixed reviews of the game and certainly didn’t need another monthly fee, I figured twenty bucks was worth it even if I didn’t wind up playing it beyond the free month that came with the game. I pay $15 a month to play WoW. My rationale was that I’d be paying $15 for one month of AoC and only $5 for the game itself.
After convincing myself that purchasing AoC was the only logical thing to do in that particular situation, I started doing a little reading. I was committed to researching all of the different character classes to determine which one would be most appealing to me. When I started playing WoW, Starman over at World of Warcast recommended that I play a Mage. I did literally no research. I just took his advice and rolled a Mage. And I don’t regret doing it.
But this time, I decided that I was going to get knee-deep in articles, blog posts, and wikis to make the most educated decision. When I actually started doing my research, I realized that all of those articles, blog posts, and wikis were a lot of words. So, rather than read all of that material, I took a quick peek at what the PvP armor looked like for the female Mage classes. Pretty sweet. Pretty… sweet. Much like my wife decided that she was a Vikings fan because she liked their uniforms, I came to the conclusion that a Mage was right for me because their PvP gear looked badass. That and, let’s be honest… a Mage is really all I know. The Demonologist class appeared to be a nice mix of a WoW Mage and Warlock, so there you go.
I haven’t actually rolled my Demonolgist yet. In fact, I haven’t even installed AoC yet. As a cruel twist of fate, I’m always scheduled off of work on Tuesdays. That usually means a lot of staring at the “Suggested Realm” screen until WoW finally comes back online. But I think my new ritaul is going to be working on my Demonologist. I will name her Devv.
Ten Days in Azeroth 