The Queue: Sonya

That’s it. Just Sonya. I don’t need to trumpet her. You all know.

Let’s talk about some Blizzard games now. If you have a question, leave a comment, Alex will see you tomorrow.

The way I always approach starting a new healer is, first I PvP on it.

PvP healing isn’t much like PvE healing, but it had the advantage of forcing you to think quickly and work hard to keep yourself and your group alive and if you’re terrible at it, no one is really going to notice or care in most random BG’s. (I’m not saying jump into arenas or Rated BG’s here.) It’s stress testing, but it definitely gets you to start thinking about what you’re doing and how to do it better.

After that, I start healing dungeons, especially if I’m leveling. I’m told by a lot of healers that low level healing is a bit off right now, so if you find yourself just unable to keep up with the damage, don’t assume that you won’t be able to handle it at higher levels. Give yourself the chance to come back and try again in a few levels. Heirlooms can help, though, and if you have them try and stick with it longer.

So yeah, my advice is PvP, then PvE as you get more comfortable.

Wait, I’m one of those people!

Okay, so Legion involves a lot of callbacks. With Suramar and the Broken Isles, Illidan and Maiev, Demon Hunters an Elf only class, I think Night Elves have to get some lore love here. I’d like to see Maiev get a prominent role, perhaps as a sort of ‘Sure, she tried to kill Malfurion, but there are literal demons invading so we’ll overlook it’ thing. We’re told this is the worst demonic invasion in Azerothian history, and that means someone like Maiev would be a lot more useful fighting demons than rotting in a cell somewhere.

With Genn involved, I hope we see some Worgen action as well. I really think it’s time to let the Worgen win something against the Forsaken, even if it’s on the Broken Isles and not retaking Gilneas (which I’d love to see them do).

Part of the problem is, almost every Alliance race has tons of unresolved story. The dwarves have that whole Council of Three Hammers deal, Gnomes need to get Gnomeregan recovered already, Draenei just discovered an alternate universe where they weren’t all wiped out (that’s got to have an effect on them) plus the Legion have been chasing them for 25,000 years and now here they are invading another world they’ve tried to settle on, and we already mentioned Worgen and Night Elves (and really, I could go on and on about both of these races having several other hooks in Legion, like the secret druid place where Malfurion learned to druid and all) — so it’s hard to pick out one race and say these guys.

Pretty much the entire Alliance could use some story time. Even Humans, with the uncertainty over Varian’s fate and the whereabouts of Jaina.

My explanation for this is that AU Broxigar, Saurfang and whoever their brother was who is Thura’s father either never existed or died at some point prior to the expansion, much as how in our timeline Rulkhan died and in this Draenor she lived and left Ner’zhul. In our timeline, the Saurfang lineage lived and did great things, but in AU Draenor, they were all killed.

But there’s no in-game or canonical explanation as to where they are. They’re just not in the story. Keeping in mind that both Brox and Varok were grunts who fought in the First and Second War as grunts, we may have killed them. After all, the Iron Horde has plenty of grunts, and we did kill a lot of them.

I totally do that too.

Well, the Horde pretty much cleaned the Alliance’s clock in Cataclysm — the whole 1 to 60 experience was a series of humiliating defeats and retreats from the encroaching Horde war machine.

As to why one would play Horde, there are several reasons.

A lot of people rolled Horde back in Vanilla because they liked the idea of playing the underdogs, or they were attracted to the Horde’s aesthetic, or wanted to play a more monstrous race — the Horde had Orcs, Tauren, Trolls and Forsaken back then, all what you’d call ‘monster races’ in some regards. People who played Warcraft 3 tended to see the Horde as outcasts looking to forge a new future for themselves, and that has held true even today after eleven years of World of Warcraft — Vol’jin’s emphasis on the Horde as ‘family’ dates back to this conception of the Horde as comprised of people who wanted a fresh start.

Also, you might just plain prefer a Horde race. I freaking adore Tauren, and I’m currently leveling another one I like them so much.

Finally, in terms of PvE players, most of the top raiding guilds are Horde. Looking on WoWProgress, I took the following SS.

That’s fifteen of the top twenty raiding guilds in the world in red. PvE, Horde seems to be doing okay by some measurements at least.

Okay, that’s the Queue for today.

Yeah, I like her that much.