I'm back playing World of Warcraft... can anyone tell?

Well I'm back to playing World of Warcraft as anyone that can read this blog should know. But more obvious I am back to bitching about World of Warcraft stuff. Let me get one thing straight... I bitch about a lot of things, but it doesn't mean I don't enjoy them. I bitch when my Green Bay Packers have a bad year or a bad game, but I still love them. It's this love/hate relationship with World of Warcraft that has me so dumbfounded, but I'm with a new and fun guild and most of what I bitch about won't have any effect on that!

Warcraft Weekly - 06/02/06

The Shaman was my first class in WoW. My first true love. My baby... my shiny. Along with that class came big ass axes and big ass windfury crits. Well the Shaman class is getting a revamp and here are the early notes... well just one note that bugged me.

"Windfury Weapon - Attack power bonus reduced. (This spell's effectiveness will now be more in line with other weapon enchantments)."

The age old question of "Nerf or buff?" comes to mind. Blizzard decided to nerf windfury instead of buffing the other weapon enchantments like rockbiter. Even though I was in love with my +ATK power gear and my big ass axe; I understood you couldn't always count on "luck" aka windfury. Rockbiter and a 1H mace + shield saw me through many fights and was my setup of choice against rogues. Problem was Rockbiter just wasn't exciting whereas windfury was a bomb waiting to explode! Effectively this change makes any Shaman going for 2 handed weapons a retard. Oh well it makes Blizzard's job of cornholing play styles with high end armor sets that much easier.

Other than that I have to put some applause together for the remaining changes. While not every problem is fixed the majority are. A lot of the changes focus around the totems which is great to see because that is what makes the shaman class so unique. Now just to get those damn totems to follow you around...

Next up we have the Draeni and Blood Elf racial abilities. My only comment: Blizzard has no plans to ever fix the bullshit racial abilities that the bastard children of WoW(aka Trolls/Gnomes/Dwarves) already have. I really don't think balance will be that HUGE of a problem with these, but "racial ability envy" will be. The Draeni and Blood Elf racials just sound fucking cool. They sound like FUN! Look at the Troll racials and I won't be offended if you start laughing.

With these abilities in mind here are the expansion FOTM race/class/profession combos. Draeni Paladin Gemcutters and Blood Elf Rogue Enchanters. I'm rolling Blood Elf rogue and you should too.

Moving on; Concerning PvP Reward Changes. Basically the new rewards are much stronger than the old rewards, but are not retroactive. So if you spent months getting rank 14 prior to the changes then you have to do it all over again to get the new rewards. Makes sense to me... if you didn't want to maintain the rank then you don't deserve the new rewards. Blizzard explained how the system worked so don't blame them.

Playing devil's advocate I can see how gear has progressed. Originally the PvP sets were fairly powerful compared to the epic gear in game at the time (tier 1). But with the release of Black Wing Lair and so forth that same PvP gear has become weak. On top of this the PvP gear like most epic armor sets are geared specifically towards the classes main roll. So if you are a Shadow Priest or an Attack Power Shaman then you won't have any end game gear with stats that are useful for you. Either conform or stay with blue/greens (which I was more than happy to do with my shaman).

And last but not least...

We're moving more towards outdoor PvP objectives, the first of which you will see in 1.12. The Burning Crusade expansion will continue this even further and integrate the objectives as a core purpose of specific areas within the zones.

Blizzard finally is realizing how fucking retarded and how crappy Battlegrounds have become. It's good to see this change in attitude.

UPDATE: 14 Nov, 2009 - Updated labels and corrected spelling. Removed dead links.