Friday, March 2, 2018

1/4: Heritage Armor of the Lightforged Achieved!

Man, the Broken Isles quests fly by.

The only hiccup in leveling through the Broken Isles is that, due to the fact that you can start at level 98 (and basically give a big middle finger to Alt-Nagrand,) if you really only focus on the main quests - getting the loremaster achievements in each zone but not sticking around for side-quests like the Nesingwary quests in Highmountain - you'll need a bit extra to get you to 110. However, Legion invasions provide a pretty big bump to XP - you get temporary authorization for world quests when there's an invasion in the zone.

Anyway, leveling up an additional Paladin was perhaps less novel than other classes might be. As a Protection main, I have plenty of opportunities to go Ret while doing world quests and the like, so the rhythm of Retribution, especially before getting Legendaries and the like, was not unfamiliar.

I suspect that my next Allied Race character expected to hit the cap (he's currently 79, nearly done with his time in Northrend,) the Void Elf Rogue, might be fairly different, as I've really stuck mostly to Subtlety for my main Rogue, and with this guy I'm thinking I'll focus on Assassination (Outlaw's tempting, but I already have a Worgen Rogue who's full pirate.)

The Allied Races actually feel a lot like seasonal characters for Diablo III - you're not necessarily going to make them your new main (though I imagine many will,) but it's a fun little challenge that reminds you what it's like to be low-level.

It's an excellent showcase for the new level scaling, and I think they've struck a decent balance of how quickly you get your abilities. Most specs feel pretty complete in the 40s or 50s (Rogues could probably get their AoE tools a bit earlier,) and while the rate of getting new abilities drops off in the higher levels (I think you get a full spellbook at 80 on every class, leaving only talents and eventually artifact abilities at higher levels to look forward to.)

In terms of the specific Lightforged Armor - I mostly like it, though I hate that the helmet (more of a collar really) cuts off the magnificent beard my character has (given that that beard is like 40% why I created that character, I've got his helmet turned off.) I also feel like it's a little too red in places - I get that the Lightforged Draenei don't have the blue/purple aesthetic of standard Draenei, but I'd rather have Gold, White, and Grey as their colors.

I do hope we get some NPCs to flesh out the relationships between the established races and the allied ones a bit more. I'd love them to emphasize the difference between the Lightforged Draenei and original flavor ones - my sense is that Lightforged are very martial and stubborn, more Lawful than Good, while the standard Draenei have a more nuanced view of the Light (much as Velen has demonstrated) and an overall warmer (and somehow also chiller) vibe, being a long-established rag-tag group of refugees instead of a cohesive military unit.

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