The Queue: Playable Vrykul When?

I really want playable Vrykuls — we even have a leader all ready to go — and the fact we don’t have them yet is super disappointing. The culture of the Norse combined with the fashion sense of Dwarves? Who wouldn’t want to play them?

So while my wishes continue to fall on deaf ears, I’ve gone ahead and made my own Vrykul-y human. And before you get on me for making him a Paladin, remember that the Prot Pally artifact Truthguard was once possessed by a Vrykul. Someday a Vrykul Paladin will wield Truthguard in combat again, but until that day, let’s answer some questions!

There’s a temptation to say Cataclysm due to the world’s revamp, but I tend to think of these things from a “behind the scenes” perspective and I’m going with Legion because that was the beginning of the attempt to organize the technical/patch aspects of each expansion along predictable lines. While Shadowlands didn’t adhere to the general outline of the plan because of the pandemic, it still largely held just with the likelihood that some content was cut or incorporated in a different patch than originally planned. I’m expecting Dragonflight‘s release pattern to resemble Battle for Azeroth almost exactly.

If you’re looking at the topic from a Lore perspective, I’m going to throw out a different possibility: Dragonflight itself is the start of modern WoW. We’ve now reached the point in the narrative where pretty much every major villain concern dating back to WC3 has been dealt with in the narrative — the Old Gods may be no more, the Burning Legion are scattered and their leader is imprisoned, and whatever machinations attributed to the Jailer and Sylvanas going back to Arthas are cleaned up. While I don’t expect them to completely ignore everything that happened before, I’m getting a sense in Dragonflight that the stories going forward are being created now rather than 20 years ago.

Not to make this queue all about Paladins, but I gave this question a lot of thought and decided that Wake of Ashes would be a killer band name.

Speaking of Paladins…

Depending on who you read, either the spec has been so utterly hollowed out that no one would ever play it or it’s so ridiculously overpowered that it threatens to be the only tank viable for raiding. Seriously, though, I haven’t seen too many concerns about Prot Pally outside the standard comments that pretty much every spec is dealing with at this point in the development cycle.

On the plus side, Paladins now get a battle rez so that’ll be cool.

Of course, I’ve decided to main Prot Pally in Dragonflight so the biggest concern is whether I leave the reputation of the spec in tatters.

Speaking of complaints regarding the new talent trees …

The answer is clearly Y’shaarj as the more souls it gains the sooner its glorious resurrection may occur.

I understand the idea that not every spec has to have the same abilities in their toolkit, but interrupts are just so necessary especially out in the open world. Sure when you’re progression raiding you’ll have other players around to do interrupts, but there are always mobs that a lack of interrupt can be fatal or just prolong a fight indefinitely (Mists of Pandaria was especially bad about this).

I have the same issue with Warlock interrupts being tied to a pet. Every class spec should have a simple interrupt available; doesn’t have to have an additional silence or stun or disorient associated with it, just give players the opportunity to stop a cast on a max 24-second cooldown.

This is a tough one because after some 300+ bosses it feels like every possible iteration has been seen. That said, there are some things it would definitely have:

• 8 minute berserk timer. Super long fights like Sylvanas’ are awful in my opinion.
• Phases that rotate. The other problem with Sylvanas’ fight is that you can master the first and second phase and then spend hours having to go through them again while working on the third phase. I’d rather have a fight where the third phase is actually the same as the first phase but with a slight variation or additional challenge.
• No more than 2 other adds. I hate boss fights that feel like you’re clearing trash.

But most importantly I’d spend all my raid budget on getting the people from Final Fantasy XIV to give me music as epic as this for the fight.

There’s always a question in my mind of “what are the NPCs doing?” when I go into raids. Normally the game will “distract” them in some ways, but every now and then you wonder why the heck Bolvar and company are just hanging around in the background while we take out the trash in the first boss fight of Sepulcher of the First Ones. I bring this up because the answer hinges on whether or not NPCs can do what we do to avert disaster.

The answer is pretty much always yes. Heck, the only reason we beat Arthas is because Tirion and Lux Ex Machina save the day. There are very few situations where the PCs accomplish something that NPCs can’t, so I think the answer is: Deathwing.

Yes, the NPCs are intimately involved in that battle as well, but Deathwing was not operating with a full deck. He could’ve destroyed Stormwind but didn’t because I guess he got bored and wanted to go destroy something else? He spent the first half of the expansion setting fires everywhere else he could, and nothing was able to stop him. He even got Ragnaros to help out.

You know how we beat Deathwing? He sent Ultraxion into melee range instead of having him cast outside of our ability to effect it. Long story short (too late), if Deathwing was operating with a clear and organized mind we don’t stop him. Deathwing beat himself, and that’s the only thing that saved Azeroth.

Well that’s all the questions I have time and space to answer, so apologies if I didn’t get to yours. Hopefully I was an effective substitute for Mitch, but if not this week’s birthday gal Liz should be up tomorrow so toss a few questions her way.