Right now, most World of Warcraft players are diving into the Broken Isles, but I’m holding back for a few days until the crowd dies down. Bar a, uh, minor detour or two…

In the meanwhile, let’s check up on my alt addiction, shall we?

When last I reported on the self-imposed initiative I’m calling the Mustering of Azeroth, there were three classes left I had nowhere near ready for the new expansion: druid, hunter, and priest. I was struggling to decide which to use my free level 100 boost on, knowing that the others would be left behind.

But shortly after I posted that, Blizzard re-buffed the experience from the demon invasions event. They not only restored it to its previous, absurd height, they made it even more rewarding.

And a dark, sultry voice whispered in my ear, “You could have it all.”

It was crazy. But it was doable. So I buckled down, engaged full No-Lifer Mode, and set about grinding invasions. Over the space of about a week, I gained a combined total of 101 levels and got both my hunter and druid to level 98, the minimum for Legion content.

I doubt this did my mental or physical health any favours, but what’s done is done, and now I can reap the benefits of even more high level characters.

The hunt is on:

Despite a poor initial impression, the current incarnation of marksmanship spec for hunters is growing on me. The main problem is that it’s so visually bland — it shares the title of “most boring looking spec” with affliction — but mechanically it’s not bad. I’m enjoying the mobility and the relatively fast pace.

After all these years, hunters are finally starting to feel like how I imagine an archer class should. Agile and versatile, dancing around their enemies and peppering them with arrows. And thank the Blizz gods for the lone wolf talent. It’s so good not to be shackled to a pet.

I haven’t bothered to investigate the other hunter specs, and while there’s good odds I will at some point, I’m not feeling a strong desire to. Beast mastery is all pets and is by all reports pretty slow — two cardinal sins for me — and the whole appeal of being a hunter to me is being able to use bows, so survival seems a bit pointless right now.

My one reservation about the character right now is her race. It’s not that I don’t like being a panda. I do — quite a bit, in fact. But in my heart of hearts an Elven archer is what I’ve always wanted. In retrospect I’m not sure why I made her a panda in the first place. I think I wanted to play through the Wandering Isle again?

It’s not helping that I don’t have much backstory or personality in mind for her. It’s hard to come up with interesting histories for Pandaren, seeing as they are for the most part a happy-go-lucky bunch that have not experienced much hardship until very recently. It’s not like Blood Elves where there’s no end of potential for angst-ridden backstories.

Howl at the moon:

My druid has not impressed me so much. It soon became clear that the new version of balance spec doesn’t excite me any more than the previous one did. I don’t hate it, but I don’t take any particular pleasure from it, either.

Doge durid. Such fite. Very balance. Wow.

I’m not sure what the issue is. Maybe it’s the asymmetrical DoTs, or lunar strike still being such a long cast. I adore the visual and sound effects for starfall, but it’s got too much ramp up time, and without it, balance’s options for AoE are woefully inadequate.

Whatever it is, the character isn’t doing much to grab me. I should probably try the other specs at some point, but I found them all very boring the last time I did so. Granted, that was a few expansions ago now.

I’m looking forward to doing the Scythe of Elune artifact quest for the story, but beyond that my druid will be at a very low priority in Legion.

Embrace the shadow:

That solved my indecision over what to use the boost on. Priest was the only class left.

I was still torn between Undead and Blood Elf for race. Ultimately, and perhaps unsurprisingly, I settled on Blood Elf. I already had a good name reserved, and I came up with a good backstory for her, so those things broke the tie.

Nowadays boosted characters are apparently put into a brief tutorial scenario. I found it a bit tedious, but it’s probably a good thing to have for less experienced characters.

The one strange thing is that you’re locked into discipline as your spec to start. I find this an odd choice because the consensus seems to be that disc is one of the game’s most challenging specs right now, and based on my limited experience so far, I’d be inclined to agree.

The only rationale I can think of is that they picked disc because it combines both damage and healing, giving you a taste of both playstyles out of the gate. Even so…

I did try healing a dungeon as disc, and while nobody died on my watch, I wouldn’t call it a good run. I’m not sure if disc is underpowered, or if I suck, but I suspect a bit of both.

WoW’s UI just isn’t set-up to properly support a DPS healing playstyle. Disc would work much better in TSW. As it is, it’s a mess of constant target switching.

The one thing disc has in its favour is spectacular mobility compared to most other casters in WoW. Most of its core spells are instant cast, and penance can even be cast on the move. Not sure how that survived WoD’s crusade against caster mobility, but I won’t complain.

Also, halo is an incredibly fun spell to use. Numbers everywhere!

I also tried healing as holy. That went much better, despite a gong show of a group, but it felt a bit vanilla. Which, come to think of it, is true of most healers these days. Blizzard’s push for distinct class identities has not been applied consistently by any stretch of the imagination.

I’ve always been most attracted to shadow out of all the priest specializations, and it does look like it will be my focus. I don’t think it will be my favourite spec in the game anytime soon, but it does feel pretty good.

On paper, the new shadow looks very similar to the old demonology (which I’m still missing terribly), but the more I’ve played it, the less similarity I’ve seen.

Demonology was all about knowing when to jump in and out of metamorphosis. It required a lot of strategy and forethought. With shadow, most of the decisions are made for you.

Once you cap out on insanity, you want to activate void form as soon as possible. There might be occasions where you want to delay it for a short time, but mostly you’d just be wasting damage by doing so. And once you’re in void form, it’s just a madcap dash to do as much as you can before your insanity meter runs out.

It’s still a pretty interesting playstyle in its own right. But it doesn’t bear much more than a superficial resemblance to old demonology.

On the whole I would put shadow together with elemental as the only ranged specs in 7.0 that don’t feel in any way unfinished.

That’s not to say it’s perfect. I do spend a little too much time refreshing shadow word: pain, and mind flay barely tickles (I know it’s a filler spell, but wow). I also wish you could toggle off shadow form without changing specs outright. It really messes up first person screenshots.

But the visuals are nice, the gameplay is solid, and shadow crash is just awesome.

Ywaq maq oou; ywaq maq ssaggh. Ywaq ma shg’fhn.

Lately I’ve felt like I’ve finally started to get my alt addiction under control. But as we’ve learned from SW:TOR, class-specific content is a great way to make the old habit flare up something fierce, and now World of Warcraft is adding exactly that.

It has occurred to me that I have most classes at least somewhat near 100, and the brief period where demon invasions gave awesome XP helped a lot. My goal is to have a wealth of characters ready to do their artifact quests, and maybe class hall stories, too, depending on how much work those are.

Because I like giving things fancy names, I’m calling this effort the Mustering of Azeroth. It fits well with the idea of all races and cultures rising to confront the Burning Legion.

Rogue:

Maigraith is the only character I’ve played at max level in every expansion to date, and I see no reason to stop now. She’s basically my personal mascot at this point.

Given how much I’m enjoying outlaw and how useful the human reputation bonus will be for unlocking flying (grumble, mumble) there’s pretty good odds she may be my “main” for the expansion.

She’s the only character I’ve played heavily in Warlords of Draenor, so she’s plenty ready for Legion. Even got her legendary ring.

Monk:

I got my monk to 100 around the time 7.0 hit. I wish I’d played her more in WoD, but she became a casualty of how much I hated this expansion.

A few months ago I was very gung-ho about making her my main in Legion. She’s a Night Elf Sentinel. This is her expansion.

However, I’m not in love with the new incarnation of brewmaster (I do like windwalker, but she’s always been a tank first in my mind), and between that and the arguments in favour of my rogue mentioned above, I’m much less certain now.

Admittedly, with my altitis flaring up like this, picking a main might be moot entirely.

Warlock:

My warlock has been max level for a while, but she, too, fell victim to my disinterest in WoD, and I haven’t played her much since MoP, where she was my de facto main.

I’m very, very unhappy with what has been done to warlocks in 7.0. I miss metamorphosis so much, and the character just feels like such a shadow of her former self.

I’ve given some serious thought to giving up on her altogether, but I really love the character’s history — both real world and imagined. The only other video game avatar I have this level of attachment to is my rogue.

Artifact and class storylines give me an excuse to soldier on. I can only pray things improve in future.

Despite my earlier comments, I am now leaning towards affliction as my new main spec. I found a talent build that feels okay — you just have to accept being the most visually dull spec in the game. And having unbelievably terrible AoE.

Sigh.

Demon hunter:

The new kid on the block.

Given the state of warlocks, I had given serious thought to switching to playing a demon hunter instead — hence why I modeled my demon hunter after her — but Legion’s encouragement of alts defers that decision for a time.

I’m still not blown away by demon hunters — they still feel lacking in unique mechanics or identity to me — but the vengeance spec continues to grow on me. It may not be very original, but it’s fun, at least. Again, love the sound effects. They’re brutal.

By default all demon hunters are pretty much good to go for Legion immediately, so that’s no issue. Al I’ve had to do is farm up a good transmog set for her.

Warrior:

Another newcomer. As you may recall, I chose to use my level 90 boost on a warrior purely because their artifact stories sounded cool.

That said, I’ve been enjoying playing a warrior a lot more than I ever expected to. Fury is my main spec, but I also enjoy protection a fair bit.

I leveled her most of the way to 100 through a mix of quests, dungeons, and PvP, and then did invasions for the last two levels. She’s ready and waiting for Legion.

Paladin:

My paladin has a complicated history.

I always wanted a Blood Elf paladin, because Blood Knight lore is outstanding, but my (Alliance) guild needed a healer, so she became a human. My guild needed quite a lot of healing, so she became my most-played character in Cataclysm to an unpleasant degree.

Cue massive burnout. Cue my Alliance guild breaking up and a giant ball of regret over being stuck as a human. I played her to max level in Pandaria but then abandoned her.

I had intended to use one of my level boosts on a Blood Elf paladin to restore balance to the universe — even reserved a good name for her — but with so many class stories to experience, that now seems wasteful.

As a last ditch effort, I decided to come up with a totally new backstory for her and redo her appearance to match. I went for maximum nostalgia factor, so she’s now a Knight of the Silver Hand who fought in the Second War.

It seems to be working. She does feel a lot more “alive” to me now.

As for game mechanics, I’ve tried every paladin spec in 7.0, and they’re all okay but not great. Would be a lot happier if not for light of the martyr and ret’s new judgment mechanic. I still think of her as a healer at heart, but I’ll probably spend most of my time as ret or prot for leveling convenience. Also, Ashbringer.

I got her from 90 to 100 with invasions.

Shaman:

My shaman is one of my oldest characters — I started him around the same time as my rogue — but he was never a major focus for me. I ultimately abandoned him around level 82.

But having dusted him off, I’m surprised how much I’m enjoying playing him again. I’m loving the current incarnation of elemental; it’s the only ranged spec I’ve played in 7.0 that doesn’t feel lacking in some way.

I got him to 85 with invasions, but I’m having so much fun with him I’m actually going to make a point to level him through the story properly.

Mage:

My mage was my original main, but the class started losing its luster after Wrath, and my warlock went on to replace him.

As I’ve already said, returning to my mage has not reignited my love for him. Frost spec is bearable, but overall the class still feels bland and overly simple. That said, their artifact lore strongly appeals, so I’m power-leveling him as best I can. Invasions got him pretty close to 100 before the nerf. I might continue with them, or switch to dungeons/PvP.

Death knight:

My most neglected character. He made it to level 80 at some point, but that’s it. I didn’t even move him to Wyrmrest Accord with the rest of my Horde characters.

I’ve always said I like everything about death knights except actually playing them. Love the lore and aesthetics, but could never quite get the gameplay to click.

But now is the time for all of the alts, even those marooned on a dead server. Surprisingly I’ve been enjoying the new unholy a fair bit so far, though I haven’t played him that much. I like the “set them and knock them down” feel of festering wounds.

What an odd thing to say.

I got him to 85 with invasions and an XP potion. Not sure how to proceed now.

The rest:

That leaves druid, priest, and hunter as the classes I don’t have anywhere near ready for Legion. I do have a level 100 boost currently unused, but whichever two I don’t choose will probably be left behind.

I’m leaning towards a hunter right now. I’ve never quite been able to get into playing a hunter, but I do like archer classes. Maybe the fourth time is the charm?

If I do boost a hunter, there’s a temptation to use it on my lowbie panda, but I’ll probably make a Blood Elf male instead. Maybe RP him as a dark ranger.

That said, I wasn’t impressed by what I played of the new marksmanship on said panda, so the temptation to look to other classes is there.

Priest is another class I’ve always loved the concept of but have never been able to get into. Maybe I’d like it better at high levels? The new shadow spec does sound intriguing.

Not sure what race my hypothetical priest would be. Blood Elf, Undead, and Worgen are the main contenders. I already have plenty of Elves, but the other two don’t look very good in priest gear, and since priests have some of the game’s most beautiful sets, that seems wasteful.

Finally, druid. I have a level fifty Worgen balance druid I haven’t touch in ages, and I have been missing him lately, but it’s the Worgen part I miss more than the druid part. I’ve briefly considered leveling him naturally — which would leave the boost for something else — but fifty levels is a long way to go, especially now that invasion XP sucks.

Further obfuscating the matter is the fact each class has only one artifact that interests me from a lore perspective — the Scythe of Elune, Thas’dorah, and shadow’s Old God dagger.

Any thoughts?