10-26-2005, 01:50 AM
While many of my remarks concern the Lurker guild on Terenas, there are some items of general interest and so I'm posting it here in the Crossroads.
I have been playing World of Warcraft since last December, and yet I do not have a single level 60 character. My highest level character is a level 58 Frost Mage whom I virtually never play. He languishes in EverLook, Winter Spring buying tailoring recipes and mailing them to my auction alt to sell. Why in the world did I ever take a mage in the first place as my main character? And why am I not playing the mage now?
I started the mage and kept with him for two reasons. First of all I noted that he killed much faster. Secondly the mage addressed my biggest complaint about the game. The lack of waypoints for instant teleportation coupled with the long time it takes to travel from place to place sometimes drives me up the wall. The mage's ability to essentially set four waypoints (three capital cities and a home) were the deciding factors in sticking with the mage initially.
History
In the early days on Terenas in the only lurkers with whom I could quest regularly were either Sir Die A Lot or Concillian. Sir Die A Lot, in fact, taught me the ropes when I was a Newb. At some point, most of the leveling with my mage was done in the company of Concillian, a priest. We worked out an effective method of doing area of effect damage which helped us to level quickly. As there were only two of us, instances always had to be run with pickup groups. Some nights we couldn't get a pickup group started at all for the instance we wanted to run. Occasionally we were in a good group, and other times it was not so good. I never finished Uldaman, Maraudon, or the Sunken Temple, and never even entered any of the higher level instances.
When Vor Lord, Bone Mage, Voiceman and the other Terenas newcomers arrived, I started playing some of my lower level characters so that I could keep them company and run instances together with them. I had a lot of fun and finally one night I brought out my mage for a Princess run. We wiped. Part of the reason we wiped was because of a communication problem between my mage and Vor Lord's priest. At one point while we were fighting Princess, she headed right at my mage, and I had to blink away in order to keep from getting hurt. Vor Lord yelled at me that I was now out of range of his healing spells. Therefore when it was safe to do so I ran back to my original position. However, unbeknownst to me, Vor Lord simultaneously ran toward my new position, so that I effectively remained out of range of his healing. Being completely out of practice with the mage I neglected to cast a barrier when Princess attacked me again a bit later on. The mage died and that led to a chain reaction in which the whole party wiped. I felt somewhat responsible, and that has inhibited me from playing the mage again a party.
Pickup Group Mage Party Play
There aresome interesting differences in the style of party play I had to develop when I was doing pickup groups with the mage from the style of party play demanded in the Lurker group. I therefore have to make several adjustments in my play style now that I will be partying with Lurkers.
Sheep
In a pickup group if they are any melee characters near your sheep target they will often break the sheep. As a result I learned that if a mob had to be sheeped at the start of a pull, it was best if I did the pulling with my poly spell. I also learned that sheeping adds was not always a wise idea because invariably somebody attacks the sheep and breaks it even when they've been told multiple times that I would be sheeping adds.
Area of Effect
I died many times casting area of effect spells in pickup groups. Even after waiting a reasonable amount of time for the tank to lock down the elite mobs, and after informing the healer what I was about to do, sometimes I would still die. I therefore tended to restrict myself to casting area of effect spells only on mobs which did not contain any elites.
Aggro Management
A good warrior can be hard to find. A mage in a pickup group has to be extra cautious in his choice of spells and the timing of spells. Of course even with a good warrior one needs to make sure that the mob has been locked down, but a good warrior sure can help a mage be more effective
Frost Mage vs. Fire Mage
Magead (pronounced mage-ee-ad) is a Frost mage. When he soloes, he kites mobs. His play is very repetitive and predictable. (It can get boring -- another reason I stopped playing him for a while.) He seeks to control the enemy before killing. Kherg's mage, Octord, is a fire mage. I imagine he just blasts the hell out of mobs when he soloes. It is actually kind of neat that we have one each of the two basic mage types in our level 50s Terenas group.
Altitis
Of course another reason I haven't been playing Magead is that I get excited about some other character build which is new to me. Once I master one character build I have a tendency to want to go on to the next.
A couple of days ago in a thread on the Meetings Stone forum I said that I would not be playing Magead anymore in the foreseeable future. In retrospect I think that would be a mistake. I believe the adjustments in play style I will have to make in the Lurker parties will help keep my experience interesting and hopefully I will be able to make a good contribution to the party dynamics and success.