Monday - June 16, 2008

 Back into the breach

WoW is an odd thing for me - it ebbs and flows like the proverbial tides. I'll go weeks without playing it, contemplating whether I should just shut down my account, and then I'll play it for an hour, rediscover why I love the game, and then I'm sucked back into it as my primary form of entertainment for another handful of weeks. For better or worse, I seem to be on one of my heavy-WoW iterations currently.

Ed and I have been having quite a bit of fun with my Paladin and his Mage - we've teamed up for what I call the "You hold'm, I'll hit'm" technique. Essentially, my Paladin gathers a ton of monsters from a small area (10-15 suits us fine), pisses them all off with his magic, and then hides behind his shield while Ed's Mage rains down brimstone on them all. The only problem at that point is looting all the dead bodies. It's actually gotten to the point where we can't quest without one another, like an addiction. He simply has lost the ability to control monsters, and can't handle pulling them only one at a time, and I can't handle taking 5 minutes to kill a group of 3 monsters. It's become tedious for us both now that we've gotten a good solid glimpse of how it can be with a little teamwork and no small amount of molten pain.

I've also started in on my own Mage, but unlike Ed, I'm focusing on the Frost abilities rather than the Fire. Fire focuses heavily on destroying things before they ever reach you through extreme damage output. Frost, on the other hand, requires more finesse, but guarantees survivability through permission; that is to say, I dictate when and where my enemy moves by freezing him in place for the short duration we call "the rest of his life." The Frostbite ability is key to this, and while a very random 15% chance to freeze seems spartan, when you look at the sheer volume of chilling effects it has to select its 15% rate from, it becomes more than frequent enough to warrant the expenditure.

I've actually destroyed guys before they have had the chance to move their feet. All things considered, I'll trade the ability to kill a guy in 5 seconds instead of 3 for the ability to survive damned near anything. As Cheryl, my friend and ex-guild leader used to say, "You do zero damage when you're dead."

Currently, my mage, (Bethual, blood elf mage, Arygos) is level 21, and already I'm wowed by the power of Frost. When I get Shatter, I'll be unstoppable.

If anyone has opinions on the Icy Veins talent, please let me know. Mackenzie (a long-time frost-zealot herself) said it's worth having at 70, but can be skipped as a fill-in point later in lieu of more potent talents. If anyone else has knowledge of this, please tell me if you agree or disagree.