Into a New Land: Part One: The Scout

It's a near-certainty that I'm going to transfer servers. It's not a common experience for me, so I figure I'll write about it. Who knows what strange things I might encounter. Maybe they'll all use a different set of acronyms or have slightly different AH prices.

I log in. I log out to disable my pile of addons, many of which I do not ever use and did not realize even stil existed.

I log in. I pick frost specialization. I no longer have a 'finisher', since Blood Strike is supposedly replaced by Death Strike or Obliviate, not available until 56 and 58, respectively.

I get a guild invite. While I write this I get another one. The first was at least for my own server.

Auto-loot is off. This is the first thing that frustrates me with all alts. At least I didn't spent ten minutes grinding mobs and wondering why I wasn't getting quest drops.

Instructor Razuvious does not use Oxford commas when he talks. I regret that his words are allowed to appear on my screen.

I receive the second invite for a guild on Galakrond. He asks that I press Accept. I decline to inform him that the options are "Join Guild" and "Decline Invitation".

As I run through the DK starting area I find myself torn between being eager to run through Outland and eager to run through Northrend. I end up picking the fourth guild invite I got, a level 2 that, of course, has big plans. In the meantime I am getting 5% more xp and someone gets some free guild leveling. Their invite macro seems to be working well, with equal parts Blackhand and Galakrond.

It all looks promising, but I still have that nagging question, "Would I be better off spending my $25 on a flying mount?" And then a voice says, "No, that's a stupid question. One of these will improve your playing experience while the other is a flashy thing that you'd never use, just like every other flashy mount you own."

Looking for an Alliance PvE server

My paladin is looking for a home. I'm not aiming for a particular guild, just a PvE server, within an hour of CST, where the Alliance isn't terrible and where the population is high enough to have a decent AH and guilds.
Quel'dorei, Blackhand, Draka, and Rexxar look promising: high population, decent faction balance (for the BG queues). Does anyone have any experience with of these servers?

Or does anyone have any advice in general? I've never needed to look for a realm, just found some friends and followed them for a few years.

I wish there was something like a 'realm preview' feature. Pay your money and then you get to play your chosen character on a selection of five realms, with a month to pick one.

"I'm not afraid." "You should be."

The other day I got over my fear of meaningful roles in LFR. I tanked. Other players were generally helpful or at worst, indifferent. It was gloriously fun. In fact, the only bit that wasn't much fun was when I somehow got placed in the Gates of Retribution as... well as retribution.

Galakras made no sense. The Iron Juggernaut was a bit of fun thanks to the "step on the land mines on purpose" mechanic. The Dark Shaman was just awful. It's a chaotic mess of messes and chaos that never felt like we had the slightest bit of control of the situation. I'm all for a dynamic fight, but I don't like feeling like we're getting thrown around randomly. Maybe if I had been the tank it would have been different. Nazgrim was boring and I was annoyed that people kept attacking during defensive stance when there were still adds up.

Today I got in as a tank for The Underhold. Unfortunately, the queue popped as I was reading the fights, so I wasn't as prepared as I'd have liked, particularly since the first boss was already dead. Even worse, the Spoils of Pandaria fight sounds much different in text. I was much slower than I would have been had I seen the fight before; I'd thought the boxes opened on their own. People yelling at "tank" weren't much help, given that there were two tanks with much different situations and I couldn't be focusing on figuring out where the whiner was. Thok seemed to go okay, once started ignoring the jailers and letting the other tank figure out where they went. Again, a fight that didn't translate so well into text. We ended with me being yelled at to kite, so I kited, then I was told it was too fast, so I went slower. DPS died in the fire. He enraged. I left after someone started insulting both of us tanks. My ignore list grew. I have no time for people whose response to problems is senseless insults.

You might be thinking that I'm in the wrong for queueing without having watched a video first. To that I say, "fuck off." If I'd queued as DPS then my ignorance would be no issue. However, the queue times for me, and for all the other DPS, would be an issue. Furthermore, I'm not going to spend my time to please these sorts of assholes. Frankly, they should be grateful I queued as a tank at all to carry their mindless, abusive selves through the fights.

After a cooling off session involving a great deal of profanity I queued again. Again, I got a raid with the first boss dead. I jumped into the action and did a fine job of tanking the rest of the place with no issues. The tank switches were a glorious thing to see, if I say so myself.

I still find myself a little more reluctant to do LFR. I could run it as DPS for the visuals and then go again as a tank. Since I don't enjoy the DPS I might as well just watch some strat video and suffer through the awful explanations and accents that come from some part of the UK that is as indecipherable as the Welsh but without having the excuse of living inside a whale. Some part of me rebels at this idea. It seems contrary to the idea of LFR. Isn't it a place for less-geared, less-organized, less-prepared randomly formed groups to get some gear and learn a bit? Or is it just an awful alternative to real raiding? I intend to do some more LFR in order to get more gear and learn some more in anticipation of finding a guild. Maybe I'm doing it wrong.

Cowardice is the Killer of Fun

I'd been avoiding tanking in LFR. I didn't know the fights and didn't quite trust guides to get the ideas across. Obviously this was stupid. LFR is the training ground for raids. It's where people go to learn. Yet it all seemed so complex.

That's only because I'd been in as DPS and DPS are stupid. It's just something that happens when you switch role. Healers are smart. Tanks are smart. DPS are barely literate cave beasts. They run after a crowd hitting things. Sometimes they try to appear smart by quantifying their contribution with damage meters. It never works.

In actuality the fights only seemed complex because I was too stupid to see the basic patterns. Going in as a tank meant that I had to have some understanding of the fights. Stand here, keep aggro on these, interrupt that. Keep the holy power rolling and be ready with a CD in case there is a damage spike. A few mechanics are still over my head, but I don't play a draenei.

It turns out LFR can be rather fun to tank. It's a little more dynamic, a little more engaging, than DPS.

Oddly, people aren't as horrible as I thought. A more experienced tank gave me some pointers on a fight and things went well. A tank of my experience (lol, nub) hoped I could do the same, which I tried, and it worked fairly well. I stood in slightly the wrong spot, someone pointed it out, I moved, and they thanked me. Afterward I thanked them for their patience. I suspect I have a magical power to make people like my tanking, regardless of the quality of it. Perhaps they appreciate a quality transmog. I got a neat 2h sword and some vendor trash along with the opportunity to do more LFR.

During my daily shopping at the PvP vendor I was invited to do some arenas. I haven't done those since sometime in mid-Cata. They didn't go well or last long then. They never were my forte. I accepted, on the condition that they not mind that I am terrible.

Perhaps the matchmaking tool has gotten better. Maybe at this point in the season the arenas are filled with bad players. Whatever the reason, we won a bit more than we lost and I walked out with some conquest points, which I spent on a cloak. That then got me killed because a shaman knocked me off the lumber mill before I'd remembered to add a parachute to it. I don't blame arenas for that. In fact, they turned out to be a good bit of fun. Even losing isn't so bad when it doesn't take long. Lose, think about it, then get ready for the next fight. It's not like a BG where you can clearly see that your team is losing and yet it won't have officially lost for a few more minutes. Then you find yourself wishing the Horde would cap a fourth so you could get to another, less-losing match.

I'm going to find more arenas. I don't expect much winning, but the payout for a win is pretty generous, so I can't complain too much. Coupled with BGs and converted justice points I anticipate that my PvP set will steadily become less awful. In fact, I've even reached the point where my PvP and tanking sets are not identical.

Like an action movie set in Arathi Basin

I have a habit of checking who is defending the less-active spots. Then I keep an eye on health and debuffs in the raid area. That way I can see if there is an attack even if they can't say anything.

I'm at blacksmith farming defender honor off the glorious zerg at farm. I see the priest at mine is getting hurt a lot. Mount up, jump down, and break out the parachute cloak. It looked to me like the priest was about to die. I hit the two Horde with my shield since I expected they'd be capping by then. The priest was not dead. So while still in the air I stuck sacred shield or her.

I landed and started hitting people. She still was not dead, but seemed sufficiently close that I'd expect two melee characters to kill her very soon. Hand of Protection made them laughably ineffective. Next thing she's at full health and casting with the uninterrupted cast bar of someone who can't be hurt by physical damage. That means the Horde are dead.

A second or two later and she'd have died before I got there. That is why you pay keep track of who's where and how they're doing.

It also helps to have a parachute cloak.

Hearthstone: The Light and How to Swing It

Now that I've played it a bit, it's time to write about it.

First, go try it. The odds are pretty good that you own WoW, SC2, Diablo 3, which I think means you can get into the beta. It even pays you to play it. With in-game currency, of course.

This is an easy game to get started in. There are pre-made decks with starter cards. You can unlock heroes just by beating them in practice mode. You'll get flooded with gold early on, so you can expect to buy a lot of packs in your first few days. It slows after that, though it's still at a "fun" rate, in that you can get a pack about very other day.

It is not, however, an easy game to win in. Individual cards are not balanced. Your opponents, having played longer, will have cards that you can only dream of. Yet you can still win.

Luck is a huge component. If you get cards in the right order early on you can take control of the board and start hammering away at an enemy. If not, then the same can happen to you.

Games can turn around extremely quickly. This is not Magic: The Gathering where you have counterspells, blocking, or much of any ability to respond. If someone is rolling you over on their turn, you cannot stop them. The closest to a counter are Secrets, spells that you cast on your turn but which are triggered by a particular effect. For example, Frost Armor will give armor to the mage when they are attacked.

The result is that it can be hard to get any sense for how a game is going. You can be on the verge of death and facing a full board, only to draw a holy nova and completely turn things around. Card synergies can be impressive, such as a Northshire Cleric and a Darkscale Healer resulting in tons of card draw. A full hand means more ability to deal with what just happened.

Here's an example of how things can turn around very quickly, and how much luck can change things:

I'm playing against a warlock. We're going back and forth, but his Dread Infernals have caused a lot of damage, both with their battlecry and their heavy attack. I'm facing one and another demon, so I'm in trouble, but with a little luck I can use nukes and taunting minions to survive. It's not game over, at least not yet, though things do not look favorable. Then he draws Void Terror, which is just a 3/3, but it destroys adjacent minions and gains their attack and health, so now it is extremely powerful and tough. In two turns it can kill me. Even if I get lucky and draw cards with taunt the best I can do is stall. Or draw mind control. Yep, the very next turn that card comes out, and just in time for the 10th mana crystal. I steal the minion. The warlock is almost guaranteed to lose. He life taps, either to hasten the end or in hopes of getting something that can save him. It just puts him in kill range.

If I had not drawn the mind control it would have been game over. Or if he had not drawn the infernals. Or if I had gotten some of my heavier taunters. And so on. The game can be an endless string of what-ifs and you just have to hope that your luck with average out well in the end. And get a lot of card draw. But even that can kill you; with only 30 cards you can burn through a deck surprisingly quickly, especially as a warlock.

You might have noticed that this is all about priest cards. I've found that I very much enjoy playing the priest deck. The mage and paladin decks are pretty good too. I couldn't easily pick a favorite among them. That's a good thing, even if it makes it harder for me to decide which cards to disenchant. On that note, I don't know how much I like the crafting system since it relies on destroying cards at a very inefficient rate to make others, which is terrible for a loss-adverse person like me. I consider that a small part of the game and hardly a game-breaker.

One last thing to remember: Order of operations is critical. You can't heal a minion before it takes damage (well you can, but it does nothing), so my favorite card, Northshire Cleric, means that I have to get my minions injured first. A card like the Gurubashi Berserker has a fairly high health pool, so it can be hard to kill it without turning it into a raging monster of death. But, it starts with very low attack, so hit it with the things that you want to live, such as your important minions and hero. Save the burn spells and disposable minions for when it would kill whatever it touches.

All in all, I find that Hearthstone is a game that is well-suited to casual play. The quests can be stored up, so you don't feel pressure to play every day. They offer a choice of heroes, so you shouldn't often be pressured into ones you dislike (I'm pretty awful at rogue). Matches don't take a terribly long time. Even without spending money you can improve your decks. And the closest thing to trash talk is the person who emotes "well played" before they've actually guaranteed their victory.