The Queue: Conjured Mana Food

How does it taste? How many calories does it have? Does it just disappear in your stomach? But if so, how does it give you sustenance — how does it restore your health and mana?

As we ponder these important questions and others, let’s Queue.

---

Like you (and a lot of people), I’m also really tired of having expansions where the faction war is the main narrative, since it’s ultimately a fruitless plot direction: it simply can’t be resolved. The Horde will never beat the Alliance, and the Alliance will never beat the Horde, as long as those two factions are playable. It wouldn’t work, ludonarratively (that’s a word now, I decided) speaking, to have an entire half of your player base be deemed “the losers” and have their cities occupied, or whichever other consequences the defeat in the war would have to carry — otherwise it would have no weight in the story.

However, I’m totally fine with small pockets of faction animosity still existing in the game. In fact, I welcome that direction: if the two factions were completely at peace, that would honestly make for a very boring narrative. Conflict drives stories. And while it’s true that there is plenty of conflict between us and the major antagonists, truly great stories are the ones where our protagonists are also at war with themselves.

---

For your first question: I do think their plans were changed, and they had to adapt; but regardless of the pushback, they have added the miniset cards to Arena, and that might have been a way to still try to get players interested in trying out that game mode for the event (and beyond).

As for your second question, there are two parts to this answer. One is how I feel about it, and the other is what I think the Hearthstone team is trying to accomplish.

I think Blizzard’s goal with this is to get players to try out all of the different modes in their game — and I definitely don’t see anything wrong with that in theory. I’m a player of both Constructed and Battlegrounds myself, so I’d play it anyway.

But as for how I feel about it? I think it’s pretty weird. They could have definitely planned this out better: either make it an event for just one game mode — though that would have also come with its share of complaints — or allow players to pick either of them to play, and give rewards for both. I understand what they’re trying to do — probably — but it’s still a bit heavy-handed, and may turn players away.

---

I’m actually considerably more excited for 11.1.7 than I was for 11.1.5 — and I can only blame Blizzard’s decision to postpone a lot of the best content in 11.1.5 for that. But I digress: 11.1.7 has a lot of interesting stuff, but chief among it for me are probably the new Lorewalking questlines that should shed some new light onto the Ethereals and Xal’atath.

I have no reason to level any new characters — I’m more than satisfied with my 26 level 80s — but I’ll still find a way to roll some new alts and experience those two questlines, for sure. (The Arthas one, I can safely pass on for now. No need to see the 30th different iteration of the same story.)

But I also really want some of the new HD T2 recolors, and unlike a lot of our fellow players, I’m actually interested in finding out what’s going on in the Arathi Highlands.

---

Restoration Shaman for sure. I do play all of the healer specs to *some* extent, and Resto Shaman is probably the easiest to learn and the hardest to mess up.

It doesn’t require you to pay that much attention to positioning like Holy Paladin, Preservation, and Mistweaver do, it doesn’t have as many buttons as Holy Priest and Resto Druid do, and it doesn’t require you to rely so much on pre-casting and knowing when people are going to take damage like Resto Druid or Discipline. Healing totems are “fire and forget,” doing your job for you to some extent. Your Earth Shield on the tank gives you a nice cushion. And you have powerful instant-cast heals like Riptide. It shines in group healing, but it can be very effective for tank healing as well. It’s definitely my first choice of healer to introduce someone to the role.

Second choice would be Mistweaver. It’s certainly more complex than Resto Shaman, but depending on how you pick your talents, you can also choose to forgo most of the punching & kicking and make a very strong Renewing Mist build — and Renewing Mist is probably the smartest and most reliable heal in the game, since it heals for you AND jumps to new targets for you, prioritizing whoever needs it most.

---

Stormsong Valley. Cause that zone is beautiful — the most beautiful in the game, in my opinion — but very dangerous. Old god minions, cultists, quilboar, the faction battles — I would never go there alone! But if I had the adventurer to protect me, I’d definitely want to check it out and just enjoy the vistas for a bit.

---

Six games and six wins so far! #winning

I honestly don’t remember having such a good start on any previous season.

I’m having a lot of fun — whether it’s Constructed or Battlegrounds, my favorite time in Hearthstone is this period when people are still just figuring out what to play, how everything works, and there are still plenty of surprises with each new game. I haven’t even tried the new Elementals or Naga yet!

---

Well, it kinda has to be Overwatch, doesn’t it? It’s the only one that even remotely fits. I guess the skins would be:

Panther (Ann) Widowmaker — The femme fatale vibe, the leather outfit… it fits!

Risette D.Va — I just think it could be fun to have D.Va be an idol.

Tae Takemi Mercy — “Punk Rock Woman” Mercy? Goth doctor? Sign me up. Sign me the heck up.

Oracle (Futaba) Sombra — Our beloved hacker would be cosplaying as our beloved hacker.

Junpei Bastion — He already has the cap! He could shoot baseballs at enemies.

Arsène Reaper — A skin modeled after a Persona rather than a human character for a change. But the vibes are there!

Teddie Wrecking Ball — This one is kinda self-explanatory.

By the way, out of curiosity: while it’s not a crossover by any means, WoW does have a very neat Persona 5 reference with a quest chain in Ardenweald, where every quest in the series is named after a song from the Persona 5 soundtrack! You’ve got Blooming Villains followed by Wake Up, Get Up, Get Out There, then Break It Down, and finally Beneath the Mask. Someone in the team is a fan, at least!

---

Knaifu is my usual go-to, but Bae Blade is genius.

---

The silverback gorilla.

wait

Mmm, mage food.

This has been The Queue. I’m hungry.