The Queue: It’s not Friday

I’m confused: It’s not my usual Queue day! Turmoil! Chaos! Shadowfiends and Lightspawns living together, Mass Hysteria! What is this…?

This is The Queue, our daily Q&A column where sometimes IRL stuff gets in the way of our plans, and we have to swap Queues momentarily, to hopefully return to our normal schedule next week.

Meanwhile… questions!

I mean, there is one cutscene where she seemingly kills an important character, but it turns out that character was most likely just severely injured, but is still alive. So the answer is probably “no.”

(Plus, she keeps getting attacked by characters with nigh-impenetrable plot armor, so chances aren’t so good for her anyway.)

I guess Xal is a goal-oriented person (or Void entity), laser-focused on corrupting that Sunwell and using it to reach the World Soul at the core of Azeroth or whatever it is that she’s doing. Still, I’m sure her minions, and her bombastic actions, have killed plenty!

I let her have all of her “Juan moments,” yeah — but unlike the premise of your question, I tend to run as a tank myself, with Valeera as DPS, so those moments are considerably rarer. I just want her to get better soon so she can keep dropping caltrops on the ground and doing her interrupts and her executes. Makes my life much easier!

Speaking of, it’s kinda funny that since the latest patch I barely hear “Juan moment” (that’s how she sounds saying “one moment” for those of you who didn’t get the joke yet) anymore. I know some people were annoyed because she was talking too much, but I think Blizzard swung the pendulum too far in the other direction. I miss hearing Tara Platt, man. (It’s true that I kept hearing Edelgard and OG Mitsuru and sometimes Elizabeth, but she has a great voice.)

My Dracthyr Evoker #1, who should become my sixth 90. I really raced to get five toons to 90 as quickly as I could (one after another to be more efficient), so that I could get that +25% Warband XP bonus and become free to play any other toons I wanted without “missing out” on precious XP. Which means that there’s no real need to play only that character all the way to 90 anymore; I could switch up if I run out of rested XP, for example. But the plan is to go Evoker next, even if I play other toons on the side.

As to why? No big reason, but I did have a “soft goal” of playing more of four classes in particular in Midnight: Priest, Demon Hunter, Evoker, and Warrior. Those are my least played classes in the game, and they just happen to fit nicely together because we have one class of each armor type. I was kinda in the mood to give more of a chance to those classes I haven’t played that much — particularly Warrior, since Fury is a spec that has always been one of my favorites in the game, yet I’ve never really dedicated myself to it. Evoker is in that club as well, and I had already prioritized my brand-new Haranir Shaman over it, so now I’m making up for the lost time with the magic lizard.

Agreed. To be honest, when I made my “I wish every class in the game had a tank spec” statement, I wasn’t even thinking about group content; I was mostly focused on stuff like Tier 11 Delves and Nightmare Preys. Those are so much easier as a tank than as a DPS, it’s not even funny. Slower, sure, but I’ll gladly take it.

I agree with what Rossi said yesterday that they don’t even need to be tanking specs, though, and you bringing up MoP Warlock tanks is a good example. Classes could just get optional stances or talents that let them “tank,” and it doesn’t even have to be optimized for dungeons or raids. Just a soloing tool.

I’m sure squishier classes would be super glad to have that option. Imagine if a mega-squishy spec like Fire Mage could just conjure up some “Arcane Armor” and become tanky, at the cost of some damage — not to actually tank a dungeon, but just to have an alternative way to level or do content like Delves and Prey. I think that would be fantastic.

I scoured the internet trying to find some actual confirmation about this and I couldn’t, but the anecdotal evidence that I saw everywhere is that yes, legendaries seem to be dropping less. Some players believe that this might be because new systems like the Horadric Cube and War Plans will allow players to make up for it by customizing and improving their rewards, resulting in fewer loot drops but more power to actually influence the system to get the loot you want.

Funnily enough, some of the sentiment I’ve found about this has been positive, actually. Some players, at least, seem to be glad that they need to spend less time suffering through useless drops until they find what they actually want. Systems that allow players to transmute into or plan around the gear they’re actually aiming towards do sound more enticing.

And yes, you are correct that higher difficulty levels yield higher drop rates for better items, including legendaries — but that seems to only start at Torment I.

There are many tracks that I love in WoW, but I think I can narrow it down to just two (though boy oh boy I’m not even gonna start with the honorable mentions).

In second place, Wolf at the Gates from Warlords of Draenor, by Jason Hayes.

This is “the Alliance” defined in a piece of music for me. The part that starts at 1:41 of this video is some of the most epic music I’ve ever heard on any videogame, or movie, or anything, really. It makes me want to grab a sword and defend Stormwind against any giant dragon, or undead creature, or void lord, or fel-crazed orc, or what-have-you. It gets me pumped. I think if I were a professional athlete and had to go to a big match, I’d blast this on my headphones moments before going in.

And in first place, my favorite piece of WoW music so far is Jaina Homeland, from Mists of Pandaria, also by Jason Hayes.

Quite the opposite from the previous Jason Hayes song, this one is concentrated melancholy. It’s painful, sorrowful, but with just a slight tinge of hope buried underneath it. It starts with grief but ends with the storm passing and the skies opening, because life has to go on. It’s just beautiful. And as you can see in the video linked above, there are several variations of the same theme: more serene (the one at 1:47), more cinematic (3:34), more epic (5:21, with the fantastic choir). And then, at 7:04, you have a version that seems to combine everything that came before it, and then proceed to march to war, almost like a final resolution.

(Addendum: 8:48 for major chills.)

This has been The Queue. Grab your sword, and fight Deathwing, brothers and sisters! Also, leave lots of questions for Liz to answer tomorrow.