The Queue: Back again

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!

I loves me some Affliction, but playing it in these early stages of Legion has felt like an exercise in frustration. First of all, I’m playing my warlock in our livestream group, so there’s no opportunity to multi-DoT things with a slow and agonizing death, so that’s a factor. But also, until you start getting into mythic dungeons, dungeons are all about the AOE burst damage. Multi-dotting is not super useful there, either. Affliction only really flexes its muscle against bosses, it seems.

I do still really love Affliction, but for what it’s worth, I ended up going Destruction. Demonology … I had no idea what the hell I was doing with it. I couldn’t tell whether I was doing well or doing awful. It felt like I was just mashing buttons and things may or may not have been happening. That doesn’t mean it’s bad or you shouldn’t play it, it just didn’t click with me.

Xavius, ever the backstabbing dingus, hopped off the Legion Train and is currently riding the Old God Express. It is a bit confusing as to what, exactly, the situation is in Val’Sharah, though. Xavius is definitely working for the Old Gods, but he’s a demon, and other demons are hanging out with the Nightmare-related stuff in Val’Sharah. The Old Gods don’t like the Burning Legion and the Burning Legion doesn’t like the Old Gods, but they appear to be colluding in that zone in particular. Initially, I thought there were only satyrs hanging around in Val’Sharah, but I remembered that’s not true: There are felbats, which are easily dismissed as just mounts they’ve tamed/enslaved, but there’s that big ol’ doomlord fella right outside the Temple of Elune. If it were just the satyrs, they could all be Xavius loyalists, but the doomlord is a bit harder to explain.

As for Il’gynoth, I see no reason to trust anything he says. Talking crap is what the Old Gods do. What Il’gynoth whispers is, essentially, a more eloquent version of C’Thun saying your friends will abandon you and your heart will explode. Yogg-Saron also tells you your friends have betrayed you and you should kill them. Il’gynoth says the same stuff, he just does it poetically. Somehow, waxing poetic about your friends betraying you makes people think it’s legit.

I haven’t touched my Ret Paladin since beta, but in beta, Ret always felt particularly squishy. I constantly needed to heal up my Paladin even while leveling, whereas all of my other characters tore through everything that came close. If this problem is only rearing its ugly head at 110, I take that as good news, because playing Retribution sucked even at level 101 in the beta. Seriously, that Paladin felt squisher than cloth classes.

If you didn’t have that problem while leveling, it might simply be a result of being a fresh 110. All classes struggle a little bit when they’re fresh 110s, but once you start getting even a little gear, it all smooths out.

I’m neither a developer nor a Shadow Priest main which completely disqualifies me from answering this question. However, I’m gonna use it to  talk about what used to be one of my favorite alts. The Legion Shadow Priest is another one of those things that didn’t click with me. I understand many Shadow Priests love it, so I’m not even going to suggest the developers change it, but I’m a little sad I don’t like it. The OG kick-ya-teeth-in Shadow Priest spells were Shadow Word: Pain, Mind Flay, and Vampiric Embrace. All three of those spells have vastly reduced significance now. All three of them are kinda junky buttons to push. There’s higher emphasis on Vampiric Touch and direct damage spells such as Mind Blast.

Surrender to Madness, mechanically, is the opposite thing of what I want from a Shadow Priest. The DoTs and laser beams get kicked to the curb in favor of direct damage. I didn’t play a Shadow Priest for direct damage spells. That’s what Mages were for. Surrender to Madness takes the part of the new Shadow Priest I dislike and doubles down on it. Oh, and the entire ‘madness’ thing, too.

Everything Old God-related in WoW is pulled directly from Lovecraft, and let’s be real: Lovecraft was wholly a product of his time. In fact, he’s often considered a particularly egregious product of his time! Adhering to that man’s 1920s and 1930s concepts and terminology is silly. The whole thing is rather crass in 2016. I’m not saying throw Lovecraft in a dumpster, but maybe consider your Lovecraft-inspired terms and ideas a little. And, personally, I just don’t want to play a character who would “surrender to madness” for power. I don’t want “insanity” to be a resource indicative of how strong I am in combat. None of these things are good to me. Yes, I would much rather summon and enslave demons versus my mental stability having a combat role. It’s both not at all heroic and quite disturbing.

So… I have no answer to your question. There’s my griping about another alt I’m not playing this expansion. Luckily, there are other alts who are now more exciting to me than ever, so no biggie. There are people who enjoy the new Shadow, so I don’t want them to change it just because I’m whining about it.

Yes.