Week 5 - Mage Appreciation

Apologies for being slightly late this week. Sickness just will not be scheduled, damn it!

So this week was Mage appreciation week. My Mage is actually fairly well-rounded out already. Whilst I don't play her in groups much, she is my main tailor and enchanter so I like to get her levelled early.

Introducing Rhiannon, Dwarf Fire Mage!



I tend to find myself gravitating to fire spec a lot each expansion. Last time we did the alt appreciation, she was still a Pandaren but I finally afforded a race change. It's funny really...I changed so many characters from dwarves to other races for a little diversity, but a few years later, all I wanted to do was get my Dwarves back! Here she is pictured with Erik the cinder pup on the flaming disc that is her class mount. A lot of people seemed unhappy with the class mount saying that it was too similar to the disc mount we'd had before, but I thought the discs suited the class and having a different version for each spec made it work.

There was very little for me to do on this character as she'd already completed her class hall, Argus quest chain and professions but then I remembered that she was still missing one polymorph (polymorph: porcupine). It seemed like a good time to go and farm for it. Now she has all the polymorphs currently available (I am still bitter that the glyph to have polymorph penguin was removed and keep hoping for it to be reintroduced as a baseline polymorph). The porcupine is a little boring really, but I wanted it for completion's sake.

Then, of course, I got sick, and I'm somewhat glad there was little for me to finish off on this character!

I do prefer ranged DPS classes to anything bar a healer, but for some reason, I find it hard to connect with the Mage in groups. I don't enjoy arcane or frost specs much and fire always seems to be ridiculously gear and RNG dependant which makes it unlikely to ever perform well as an underplayed alt character. Still, I like the fantasy of throwing fireballs about and it's nice to do something different some days.

Join me next week for Monk!

Alt Appreciation: Week 4, Mage

I have realised this week, that a lot of the alt characters I pushed to higher levels are actually Pandaren this time around and not as many Dwarf wenches. I must rectify this! The choice hasn't been because I favour the Pandaren models (although playing with the much better range of hairstyles may have side-tracked me) but more to do with the profession combinations I had on a given class at the time. If I look across my entire account I have many characters, certainly several of most classes and many are Horde as well as Alliance. I am however favouring the characters from the same server and faction as my main character for this, and it does seem to be more Pandas than I had realised.

This is Brennah, and as you can probably tell, a Frost Mage. I do much prefer playing Fire Mages but with not much time and lower levels of gear, Fire Mages struggle a lot as their current design leaves them very dependant on getting lucky with numbers. However, switching to playing Frost spec, did give me the challenge of a new Transmogrification set. I really do like my characters to be dressed in plainer outfits rather than the flashing shining tier pieces that many players favour, so I am so glad that its possible to alter the appearance now. Brennah was named for a very wonderful friend of mine that never played WoW. It just made me feel a little closer to her to have a character named after her in my game. She does have a bit of a love of anime though, so I think the choice of Pandaren race, in this case, was apt.

She is pictured above with Erik the Pandaren Water Spirit, one of several water-themed pets that occasionally accompany her, and of course, her Water Elemental (which we know would be called Erik if they let us name it).

She usually uses the Silver Covenant Hippogryph as her mount of choice, although occasionally the Swift Windsteed sneaks in just for a change.

I do find it annoying that when I choose to play my Mage I am constantly interrupted with whispers from people begging for portals. It feels very invasive and always interrupts whatever I am doing, whether I choose to help or not. I think this may be why I don't play my Mage as often anymore. Brennah is also my tailor and one of my enchanters, which comes in very useful for helping out my cloth-wearing main character. She was already level 90 at the start of this week, so I have spent most of the small amount of time I had working on her transmog set and setting up her UI to be ready to use for levelling in the expansion.