Back in the Saddle

So last week I called Blizzard Account Services and had them disassociate my authenticator with my account. Then I convinced my wife to let me upgrade my account to the Cataclysm expansion with the understanding that I would play over the holiday season (I have a lot of time off this month) and see how things went and decide if I would keep playing after the holidays. Then I reactivated my subscription.

I logged on to my storage alt. My decision to quit playing back in January was rather abrupt so I made little to no preparation to do so. Both his personal bank and the 5-tab guild bank that I maintain for storage were full of Wrath of the Lich King materials. Lots of cloth, cooking mats, some enchanting mats, raw epic gems, and almost everything that I had held onto from when I leveled my main character’s Inscription skill at the beginning of the WOTLK expansion and never bothered to get rid of. I put everything on the auction house. All told it was about 26k gold worth of auctions.

I logged onto my Hunter. I reconfigured his talent points after a little toying around with the Wowhead talent calculator.

Then I did some work and reconfigured the key bindings and redid my macros and bindings for my Nostromo n52te and MX Revolution mouse. After I got the basic controls to work, I started flying around. I purchased the new riding/flying skills and set my hearth to Stormwind. Then I set off for the new leveling area in Mount Hyjal. After some stumbling around, I got used to the new Hunter mechanics, the main one being the switch from Mana to Focus as a resource. After questing for a bit, it really started to become second nature.

After I hit level 82 I decided to try out one of the new dungeons. I went to Burning Steppes and discovered the new Blackrock Caverns zone. I queued up for the dungeon and got started. After a few tentative pulls learning how things were going to work, I started going full on with the DPS. I topped the damage meter for the run. Not bad for my first dungeon run in the new expansion, especially after a nearly 11 month layoff. After I hit 83, I ran a few more dungeons, including Stonecore. I have topped the damage meter in every run I have done so far with my numbers getting higher every time, partially attributable to gear upgrades … partially attributable to my growing comfort level with the class mechanics. The last run I did, I topped the damage meter with over 7k DPS. I’m still 83 and I pulled 10.6k single target DPS on the second to last mob in the zone Ozruk. I can’t wait to finish off 85 so I can run Heroics.

I have heard a lot about the difficulty of the content in this new expansion. So far I haven’t seen it. The leveling routine seems rather easy. Almost as easy as WOTLK was. the regular difficulty dungeons seem as easy as anything in WOTLK. I am assuming that the difficulty scales up significantly in the Heroic level dungeons. I talked to one friend who was so concerned about the difficulty level of the new zones that he is seriously considering quitting over it. That intrigues me but frustrates me at the same time. A lot of my old friends don’t play anymore, so I am concerned about fiding a group of good players to run with. I do NOT want to subject myself to failing with bad groups if these zones really are that much harder.

WOTLK taught WoW players to be lazy. It taught players to expect to go into a zone with 4 random players and blow through it with minimal effort. I remember back early on in The Burning Crusade expansion. Heroic groups were very well thought out, and pickup groups tended to be doomed to failure. I often ran with top notch players because my skill in the crucial area of crowd control was much appreciated by those with whom I played. The dungeon runs were easy for us, but most other players had a hard time. Eventually, with the changes to game mechanics and the natural scaling that came along with the improved gear in the expansion really trivialized everything in the game. But early on they were hard. WOTLK was different. Everybody was ready for Heroics the instant they turned level 80 because the game was just so easy.

I am very curious what kind of DPS I can pull in Heroics with a good group and with a few more gear improvements.

And of course that leads naturally to the next question … do I still have what it takes to be a top notch raiding Hunter, and will I have the time and/or desire to be one going forward … time will certainly tell. For the time being, I have a few more levels to go … I am halfway to 84. I  have been playing a few hours here, a few hours there … trying to spend quality time with my wife and dogs, and still get things done around the house. My approach is totally different this time around.