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The QueueFeb 7, 2016 12:00 pm CT

The Queue: Superb Owl Sunday

Welcome back to The Queue, our daily Q&A feature for all of Blizzard’s games! Have a question for the Blizzard Watch staff? Leave it in the comments!

The Vault of the Wardens has a lot of owls in it. So many. This is the 50th Superb Owl I found, and is thus far more superb than any previous owl. I totally counted, I swear. …let’s just get to your questions, shall we?


WRATHSOME ASKED:

There seem to be some max geared players cut adrift right now who want to show up on our Raid nights to “help us out” and “show us the way” which is generous on one level and really sad on another.

Question: is now the best time to learn tanking for raids in that we know the encounters and are rehearsed to a fine pitch? Or, will the world be more forgiving if one waits for Demon Hunter tanking and the folded in expectation of mishaps from a new class?

It’s actually kind of nice that they’re offering to help out — spending some time learning raid techniques and the like isn’t exactly a bad way to spend the end-of-expansion lull. That said, sure you might have a better time learning tanking right now. Since you know the encounters already, it means that the raid can have proper back-up plans in place if there’s an unexpected whoops mid-fight. And tanking isn’t just about knowing which sequence of buttons to press, it’s also about being aware of positioning, abilities, where your raid is sitting at any given time, and other general situational awareness. That can be a little overwhelming in a brand-new raid that nobody has any experience with, so getting a feel for the rhythm of tanking in general while things are fairly calm isn’t a terrible idea at all.

But — and you know there’s going to be one — keep in mind that abilities and classes are changing fairly substantially in Legion. Those buttons that you’re getting used to pushing right now and those abilities you’re learning to use may not look the same in the next expansion — or they might simply cease to exist. Or, in the case of Demon Hunters, you might be dealing with a new class with an entirely new toolkit of abilities to learn.

However, while the buttons, or maybe even the class, might be changing, that situational awareness that tanks need to have isn’t going to change. So why not rehearse now and get a feel for it while you’ve got the time? I’d say go for it.


MIRANDA ROSE ASKED:

Q4tQ: When is your main no longer your main? I’ve played the same character since Wrath (a Nelf Hunter), and have done the most on her (rep, achievements, etc), but recently I’ve started playing a completely different class (a Troll Priest – the farthest I’ve ever leveled a Priest – before now my highest level priest got to level 20 at the end of BC) and I’m enjoying her a lot more than I am currently enjoying my hunter (though I am excited to see how things are in Legion with the class changes coming). In the last few weeks I’ve logged onto my hunter one time, and only to deal with her garrison. So again I ask, when is your main no longer your main?

I don’t really know about anyone else, but as far as I’m concerned, that line between main and alt tends to get really, really blurry at the end of an expansion. For me, my main is the character I level first when a new expansion is launched — the one I use to clear every dungeon, the one I immediately start to gather gear for, the one I raid with (if I’m raiding). But when we get to the end of an expansion, I usually find myself with very little left to do on that main character, because I’ve already spent the entire expansion going about the business of doing it all.

That’s when I usually hop to another class or another alt and play the heck out of it. And yeah, that alt might start to feel like a main at some point, especially if I’m spending all my time on that character — but when a new expansion arrives, I’ll inevitably drift back to my main to do the leveling process with first, and the cycle will start all over again. I think if I ever got to the point where I played one of those end-of-expansion alts enough to decide that I wanted to immediately level that character first when the next expansion came out, that’s when I’d say my old main is no longer my main.


HONORSHAMMER ASKED:

I love tanking and Prot is my favorite spec, but my playtime is irregular which means I tank 5 mans and for the Raids I can show up for, I go Ret since our tanks our fairly regular and its easier on the group to replace a DPS than a Tank on the nights I can’t go.

So how does this work in Legion? Do I have both Truthguard (Prot Artifact) and Ashbringer (Ret Artifact) and level them up separately?

We don’t know just yet. We’ve been told there will be a way to get a second Artifact for your offspec, and some kind of catch-up mechanism in play for that second Artifact, but we don’t know how that will be implemented, or what that catch-up mechanism will be. Once we have that information, we’ll definitely be covering it, though!


ADAMC777 ASKED:

Q4Q You have been given the chance to select a preexisting game franchise to me used for a new MMORPG. What do you pick? Me I’m picking the Suikoden series likely picking up some time after the events of Suikoden 3

Mass Effect. It would require a slightly different approach (after all, not everyone can be Shepard simultaneously in an MMO), but the way Bioware fleshed out the lore of the different alien races and cultures leaves plenty of room for an expansive MMO. And there are plenty of side stories and opportunities for villains that aren’t necessarily of the universe-ending variety, but still pretty lethal nonetheless. Plunk it somewhere in the nebulous fallout post-ME3, and I think there’s room for some pretty compelling stuff.


@HETELLSASTORY ASKED VIA TWITTER:

If WarcraftDevs decided to scrap the Dalaran sewer location, and asked you where the Rogue Hall should be, you say…?

I know you want me to say Ravenholdt here. I mean, I guess I could say that. But given how the story in Legion has been playing out so far on the alpha, I don’t know if Ravenholdt is actually a good choice, weirdly enough.

Now before you rip my head off, let me clarify — the Class Halls are currently concerned with that whole Burning Legion situation down in the Broken Isles. So it almost makes sense that the Rogues of the world have gathered in the shadowy depths of the city sitting smack on top of the situation, rather than out in the middle of nowhere. They can gather information from Dalaran that they couldn’t get just sitting around in Ravenholdt. Heck, stand by the right grate down there and you can probably overhear some pretty choice gossip. Plus, everyone else is sort of collected around Dalaran, which means hey, if there’s various shiny things to be pilfered, that’s where all that shiny stuff is going to be.

In the absence of the sewers however, the logical pick would be Ravenholdt as the next step down the chain — although one has to wonder about the state of the manor, after what happened to it during the Rogue legendary quest chain in Cataclysm. It’d be a nice way to find out, though!

Alternatively — they could take over the abandoned parts of Gilneas. I mean, nobody else is using it, right?


@CLADRIAH ASKED VIA TWITTER:

Will Dalaran ever return to the Alliance?

If Jaina Proudmoore had her way, it absolutely would. But Jaina’s not in charge anymore, Khadgar is. And Khadgar hasn’t got any qualms at all about working with the Horde, considering the Burning Legion is knocking down our door. Keep in mind that even while it was in the Alliance of Lordaeron, Dalaran itself didn’t really get too involved in politics — and when the Alliance of Lordaeron fractured after the Second War, Dalaran remained loyal, but stayed completely out of politics and didn’t really want to get involved.

As a whole, Dalaran and the Kirin Tor are kind of walking this line between faction alliances and simply wanting to save the world from whatever dreadful thing happens to threaten it. The Horde happened to be that thing threatening the world in Mists of Pandaria, so Jaina turned Dalaran’s support and defenses towards stopping it — and rightfully so, although she definitely had her own personal vendetta surrounding that one as well. But if that dreadful thing threatening the world turned out to be the Alliance itself at some point, I’m pretty sure Dalaran and the Kirin Tor wouldn’t hesitate to turn and open fire.

Dalaran is basically less concerned in the politics between Alliance vs. Horde, and far more concerned with not letting Azeroth itself get wrecked by whatever happens to be threatening it at the time.

That’s it for today’s Queue — if you have any questions you’d like to see answered, be sure to leave them in the comments below!

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