As I've detailed, I have an Undead Monk (my first female toon, actually, and also my first healer. I promise I did not set out intentionally to proliferate a stereotype) who I have been playing and leveling.
I geared her up in heirloom pieces from a very early level, and sailed from Tirisfal to Pandaria, tossing out Renewing Mists and Eminence heals every which way.
And then I got to Pandaria. Obviously, heirlooms stopped being so good (I have a love-hate relationship with heirlooms. Now that I've tasted their power, it's hard to go back, which is why I have only to get the two mail armor sets to have them all,) which is fine. But the way that Mists changed the nature of quest rewards has presented a bit of a problem.
My first monk, the Brewmaster (on whom I've been lazy and gone Windwalker since) had an easy time, because his soloing/DPS gear was roughly the same as his tanking gear. But the Mistweaver Monk, not to mention my Blood (now Frost) Death Knight and my Protection (FOREVER!) Paladin have had to deal with the fact that the stuff they're getting for their quests is stuck in a binary "Good for soloing" or "Good for groups" status. Because I'm committed to Penbrooke's status as a healer, I've been willing to suck it up and just take intellect leather and allow my soloing to suffer, or rather I've been forking out most of the gold she's making off quests to buy the vendor-bought gear.
I understand why they've changed the way that quests reward gear. You no longer have to get all the way through a zone before you have a decent weapon just because they decided not to give you the intellect mace until the last five quests. Today, as soon as you get to Pandaria, the very first quest you do (which in neither case requires actual combat) gets you a 272 weapon. It's a way of leveling the playing field, allowing those who played in the previous expansion a way to not suck horribly when entering the new continent.
But the advantage of the old style of quest rewards was that doing all the quests in a zone would typically allow you to outfit both your main set and your off set. I could go through Hyjal and it was pretty rare to see a quest that made me choose between a tanking piece and a strength DPS piece. Hard choices were rare, and so you could live with it if there was one time you couldn't fill every slot with the newest stuff.
The other thing that was nice (and a reason I suspect Blizzard got rid of the old system) is that if you didn't need two sets - like say you were a pure DPS, or your two specs used roughly the same gear, like Feral/Guardian or Shadow/Discipline, you just got a ton of stuff to vendor off for fairly nice amounts of gold. If you quest all the way from 80-85, you're going to probably make a few thousand gold just from quest rewards.
Anyway, longwinded quasi-rant aside, there's reason for hope!
Even if Warlords of Draenor uses the same quest reward system, it's likely that things will work out all right. In Warlords, role-specific stats like bonus armor and spirit will only be on accessories, while armor pieces will switch primary stats. That means that the leather you're wearing as a Windwalker will be perfectly acceptable for you as a Mistweaver. When I take my Paladin to Draenor, I won't need to worry about Dodge and Parry on gear making the piece bad for Retribution, and I won't need to worry about the crit being bad for Protection.
And even on accessories, while bonus armor and spirit will be sought out by tanks and healers respectively, it's likely that the other stats will still be attractive enough that a tank can use the same, for example, Mastery/Amplify piece for both sets.
Really the only area I see this becoming problematic is weapons. Regardless of all the gear changes, the one thing I can't imagine will change is that Protection (of either class) will need a one-hander and shield, while Retribution is going to want two-handers. My hope, then, is that there will be enough quest rewards in a zone to allow a leveling Warrior/Paladin to pick up a two-hander and a sword-and-board.
Leveling in Mists was a bit painful, as I often found myself switching specs to see what the other quest reward would be, and which I wanted more. I expect that the gear changes in Warlords will make both leveling and gearing up a far more enjoyable climb.
Oh, and if you're a Mage, Warlock, Hunter, or Priest, this probably means absolutely nothing to you (Rogues might recognize the plight of a Combat/Assassination conundrum, but I have little sympathy.)
No comments:
Post a Comment