The Queue: I got this

Seriously, I was totally ready to hit this guy in the face, but someone had to teleport me back to the Vindicaar before I had a chance. Ugh. Don’t my Draenei friends understand that it’s my goal in life to hit things in the face? Apparently not.

Dang, all of you people are out there making detailed plans for Battle for Azeroth, and here I am thinking, “Well, I guess I’ll stick with my main.” I mean, it’s already there and I don’t really have any better ideas. So that means Monk on Alliance, and then either Paladin or Death Knight on Horde side (so there’s one decision I have to make).

As to your two Hunters idea… Dang, I would get bored leveling the same class, even through different content. Though maybe that’s why I have a bunch of alts that I’m not great at playing. Hmm….

I’m pro-Mage, but really only because I don’t “get” Warlocks. My very first WoW character was a Warlock, and though I’ve taken it back up lately, I don’t really understand what I’m supposed to do with it. Do I just DOT things and wait? Forever? It confuses me. At some point I’ll finish leveling it, I’m sure, but for now it’s a mystery.

I have known some very fine Hunters in my time, and their CC and their pets always make them a useful member of a party. Back in the olden days when healer aggro was a thing, I often grouped with a Hunter who would always pay attention to my poor, fragile Priest and CC, kite, or sic his pet on any adds that tried to eat my face. Gosh, I miss that guy.

However, I hate to inform you that my own Hunter is of a very modest level and I don’t have any particular affinity towards them. Sorry.

Battle for Azeroth is a strange expansion, as we’re all going in feeling a lot  weaker. We had so many passive buffs from our Artifacts, and all of them are getting stripped away in the pre-patch. Sure, they’re doing a lot of shuffling and rebalancing with the stat squish, but that’s still a huge amount of power to lose at once. And it doesn’t help that Blizzard is paring down abilities (again). I think we’re all going to feel nerfed from the moment they log on in 8.0… and even if it’s not as big of a nerf as the numbers suggest, we’ll all feel nerfed.

But I also don’t think Blizzard has really done a final tuning pass. This is still a PTR/beta, and nothing is final… so I wouldn’t panic quite yet.

Healing Monks and Paladins, my two classes of choice, both seem to be going in a slight damage-to-healing direction, which is a playstyle I usually enjoy. My Paladin plays Holy full-time (it’s just what I’m used to doing from the pre-dual spec days), and I’m wondering if playing my Monk as a Mistweaver all the time would work, too. I already have a basic set of DPS abilities on my Mistweaver, so I could probably get away with it.

I’m also interested in the class buffs/debuffs everyone is getting. On one hand, I hate the idea that Blizzard is going back to the “bring the player, not the class” mentality that they’d gotten away from. On the other hand, it’s an interesting mix of skills everyone is getting, and it could make groups more interesting because they could play significantly differently depending on the party. But then I play relatively casually, so it’s not going to ruin my game — it will just add some variety. For high end players, it’s only going to bring in cookie cutter groups where you need X of each class to play your best.

Honestly, whenever this has been the case in game, it has benefited me tremendously. Back when I played my Warlock in Vanilla, I was in a server-first raiding guild. It wasn’t because I was a good player: it was because I was a Warlock and not many people played Warlocks. But every raid guild wanted at least one, because our curses would buff Mage damage. And in Battle for Azeroth I find myself playing a Monk, which is now one of the least-played classes and gets a debuff that makes targets take more physical damage. Everyone is going to want me around.

But even though this has always been good for me, I don’t think it’s great for the game. We’ll see how it plays out this time around.

Let me preface this by saying I don’t actually know for sure. But because Artifacts are one weapon rather than two — even when they appear to be two — I’m going to go out on a limb and say no. After all, you can’t transmog an off-hand item that, according to your character screen, you don’t actually have equipped.

Okay people. That’s it for today. Tomorrow will be an all-new adventure for all of us, so let’s get ready to dive in.