The Queue: In which there are a lot of silly questions

I may have made a tactical error when I asked for Queue questions on Twitter, because I got a lot of them — and a lot of them from Rossi and a lot of them silly. But since they were there… well, I answered them.

If you aren’t here for silliness, you should probably just scroll past the last three or so questions.

Warcraft has had a tough line to walk on class differentiation, and it seems to swing between classes being too similar and classes being too different, so you absolutely need to have specific classes to do some things. Does anyone here remember the days when Dwarf Priests had Fear Ward, which could be cast on tanks so they didn’t lose control — and thus threat — when Onyxia feared everyone? That made the encounter very different (and a lot easier) if you happened to have a Dwarf Priest — so everyone wanted Dwarf Priests. (And Horde players? They just had to deal with it.)

Over time, healers seem to have become increasingly homogenized, because when you differentiate them you wind up with one class that is better — and thus a must have — in certain situations. Today, some classes may be better at particular things but it doesn’t mean they can’t do perfectly well at other healing duties. For example, playing both Paladin and Shaman healers, I can say the Paladin is a lot better at single target healing and the Shaman is a lot better at AOE healing — but when need be, both can perform outside of their speciality. That’s not a bad thing, but it does feel like we’ve lost uniqueness.

So what I’m saying is that I’d love to see something outside of the standard healing box. Other than Discipline Priests, it feels like playing one healer or another is fairly same-y. Heck, when I set up button bars for my healers I set them up in exactly the same way. Single target heals, AOE heals, buffs, and emergency skills all go on the same buttons. The muscle memory transfers very easily from class to class, even though there are certainly advanced strategy considerations to maximize each.

But the real question is… can you make classes that are truly distinct and also balanced? It hasn’t always worked in the past, but I’d enjoy seeing Blizzard give it a try. (Even if it might just wind up with a class that eventually works its way back into being just another healing class.)

I’ve always thought a bard class would be fun, with a focus on buffing and keeping the party powerful rather than straight healing. Does anyone here play handbuff decks in Hearthstone? There’s really nothing more satisfying than casting a dinky 1/1 which your opponent ignores… until next turn when it’s suddenly a 9/9. It’s so satisfying, and I wonder if similar buff-based gameplay could be fun in WoW, too.

However, with World of Warcraft as it is, such a class might be undervalued. (Just imagine how weak they’d look on the damage meters.) And to be a healer, they would need the standard compliment of healing spells, or if they were a DPS they would need to be powerful enough to stand on their own.

Tough balance.

Thrilled. I have plenty of friends on both sides of the Alliance/Horde divide, and I’d love to be able to play with them without starting over on the other side. As to story implications, the factions have worked together before, and they’ve had infighting before. Being able to talk to one another and play together doesn’t have to mean that we all get along… or that we can’t still fight when the situation calls for it. (Hey, just like real life!)

No, but there should be.

When I think about crafting for XP, I think about Fallout 4, where a great way to give yourself a head-start in the beginning of the game was to hang out in your starting town and build stuff. Fences were easiest, so you could just grab bunches of wood and build rows and rows of fence posts or something similarly dumb. Then you could go out into the world ahead of the curve. It definitely feels a bit odd in a combat-based game to spend time crafting so you can be better at killing things.

I would say it trivializes leveling, but in WoW… leveling is already kind of trivial. Even without heirlooms and level boosts, zooming through the levels is pretty fast. Would this really change things up that much? I don’t know.

But considering you already get XP for gathering… why not crafting, too? If you wanted to hit 110 purely with crafting, it’s going to be a big gold investment that may not be very different from buying up WoW Tokens and cashing them in for a level boost. (Though I expect, depending on the profession, it could be a lot cheaper.)

I suppose all of that is a really wordy way of saying “why not?”

My personal hope is that she’s gone to rally Kul’tiras and will return at the head of a glorious army to save the day when all seems lost. Kul’tiras or riot.

I’m pretty sure the right answer to this is Overwatch.

YES.

(You’re just going to have to imagine the above text in font size 42, bright pink and blinking, classic Geocities style.)

Liz: I counter with Stitch vs Khadgar.

Jay: I counter your counter with Stitch vs ALL BATTLE PETS.

Liz: True, he probably wouldn’t have any issues with Khadgar but there are a lot of vicious battle pets.

Jay: But Stitch has (well, had) 4 guns. Even match, regardless of whether he still has them.

Liz: I’m pretty sure Stitch could handle an army of battle pets, too.  Pew pew! Pew pew! Raaahhh!

Okay everyone, that’s it for today’s extra questions, extra silliness Queue. As always, please leave your questions here for Anne to answer tomorrow… and if you asked any lore questions yesterday, try asking them again because Anne is way better at that stuff than I am. See you all back here next week!