Week 12 - Warrior Appreciation

Here we are at the end of the road, at least as far as it goes for appreciating the different classes. Warrior week. Well, no surprise that I expected this to be a struggle!

Meet Brennah, my (yes, you guessed it) female dwarf warrior.

Brennah with "L'il Swan" the Sunborne Val'kyr

This was another character that had done very little in-game besides getting to 110. She had terrible gear and had done no content aside from getting to 110. Actually, that isn't quite true. Last week, The Author gave me a little assist to get her through her class hall quest dungeons so that they wouldn't slow me up this week. Our team called a raid break after last week too, so I had this week free to do as I pleased as far as my gameplay went. I went all in. First I finished off the class hall quests and got the Broken Shore chain finished. I also threw in 20 world quests for the weekly quest to set her up with plenty of resources. Then came the class mount chain and the argus chain.

Warrior class mount

I usually use the Ironforge Ram or Rusted Proto-Drake as mounts for her as they match her transmog nicely, but I thought I'd better pose with the class mount as I'd earned it. I did enjoy that when you are presented with your mount as a warrior, the first thing you do is punch it in the face to show it who is boss! I'm pathetic, I know it.

I don't think I'll ever be able to bring myself to enjoy playing a warrior. They feel squishy and tedious to me even when compared with other melee classes that I already have a bit of an aversion to. However, I soldiered on through it and made another little dwarf happy.

Finishing the warrior's class hall also earned me another treat:

I'm also proud of myself for completing a few other things this week too. I managed to do the feral druid's mage tower challenge and did the weekly 20 world quests thing on 12 different characters to stockpile some resources. Let's say I'm a tad sick of world quests today!

That brings us to the end of the alt appreciation and I need to put some work in to try to get my characters and their bank balance ready for the new expansion. I hope you are all getting prepped too :)

Week 11 - Warlock Appreciation

Our penultimate week of alt appreciation takes us to Warlock Appreciation week and time to introduce to you Camigwen the Gnome Warlock! I have to admit, I did slightly go off Gnomes after the character model upgrade. For me, the new version feels like the features are just stuck on as an after effect...sort of like a Mrs Potato Head toy if you see what I mean.

This will likely surprise anyone that knows me well (especially as we are talking about a DPS character), but of all the characters I still actively play, this is the oldest. She was created on the first day of Classic WoW release and has transferred through servers with me. My priest came along too and priest was the first class I played, but I started with a human priest and only replaced her with my dwarf at the end of Classic WoW (yes, WoW babies, there were no nice race changes back then).

Camigwen on the Warlock Class mount (Affliction version) with Erik the Netherspace Abyssal

I had already completed the class hall and mount quests on my warlock so I contented myself with enjoying the silithus artifact stuff this week. When it comes to the Warlock, I tend to go a bit back and forth on which I enjoy more out of affliction or destruction specs. Both have their pros and cons, and for the most part, I enjoy playing them. I just cannot make myself like demonology though for some reason. It's changed so much over the years and is about to change drastically again, but I still haven't found a way to enjoy it in any of its variants.

http://www.wowhead.com/dressing-room#Rkzs0zJ8z9MMV0zV9m8iwD808iwH87ciwB87kiwJ808ibB87cBzP808MUf87c

For some reason, My warlock is also one of the few characters I seem to dress in transmogs that do not have the helm hidden. I guess that could have a lot to do with how I feel about the current Gnome character models perhaps. Currently, I am using the outfit below as it matches in nicely with one of the artifact appearances but the one on above was my favourite for a very long time.

Prideful Gladiator's Felweave

So, one more week of alt appreciation to go and we end with one of the classes I struggle most with: Warrior!

Week 10 - Shaman Appreciation

I like my shaman.

I love the versatility of the class. There always seems to be a specialised tool for any situation. However, I always seem to get flustered and tired and forget said special tool just when I could have used it. As a healer, they have some really lovely healer cooldowns, but their healing itself can be a little limited compared to some other healers depending on how the raid is arranged. The raids I end up healing for are rarely arranged optimally either!

Pictured here with her Elemental Transmog and Erik the Squirky.

This is Anwen, my dwarf shaman. I have to admit, I really like the outfits I managed to get for this shaman. The elemental outfit is a little how I imagine a Valkyrie to be. It manages to be slightly more revealing, but still covers most of the body. Most of it is the cosmetic mail set from the WoD garrison, but it ties in so well with this version of her artifact appearance too. I usually have her riding along on Tyreal's charger too!

For healing, I chose an outfit that matched nicely with the green snake appearance of her artifact. Green dragonscale armour for the most part with a few newer parts added in. And of course, she had to be accompanied by a snake.

I do like the shaman class mounts, but every shaman seems to live on them on my server and I wanted a little variation. I have collected them though. Actually, I've done most of the things I could think of on my shaman this time around as I've been healing raids for my guild with her. There was very little to do with her this week than just enjoy the ride! I think when Battle for Azeroth is released, this will be one of the dwarves that definitely remains a standard dwarf. I really love these transmogs and they just would not look as good on a Dark Iron Dwarf.

Join me next week on the dark side for Warlock week!

Week 9 - Rogue Appreciation

Rogue week.

Well, the good news was that there was not a lot for me to do with my Rogue as I'd already finished her class hall at least. I'd done the follower quests and started the mount quest chain too. I did stop there though and no Rogue week was going to convince me to complete it. Being forced to do PvP to get the class mount sucks. I did attempt this a few times, but even at silly hours of the morning, there were always people on my server just hanging about waiting to annoy rogues trying to finish the quest. I've seen it happen on both factions though so it's not exclusive to one side or the other. I did get the Silvermoon kill, but after that, I decided I did not want that mount enough to bother with all the crap.

Here's Rhiawen, my Rogue, and yes, you guessed it, she's a Dwarf!

I wish I could hire Dwarven  Bards for my Garrison...

She's pictured here in her usual outfit which is an uncommon set from Classic WoW (Swashbuckler's). Accompanying her, is her usual pet, Erik the Grommloc.

I did do something constructive though (aside from celebrating my birthday this week - all on my own as Mr Wench had to work) and worked on the Argus quest chain to finally put her to work earning me some gold. I'm now waiting for armour token missions, but most of the grunt work is done.

The odd thing is, I love the idea of a rogue class and often play them in other games. I like the whole stealth side of things and the fantasy of the class. Just, in practice, it doesn't actually feel fun to me once I play the class in game. I know a lot of that is due to not enjoying melee classes, but this one had all the promise the others didn't and feels less enjoyable than them to me.

Join me next week for Shaman appreciation!

Week 8 - Priest Appreciation!

My favourite!

Since the EU release of Classic WoW, this has been my favourite class. It was edged out slightly by the Druid in beta, but by the time release came around, the Priest was my firm favourite. I've always been a healer at heart and no other class gives you more than one healing specialisation to choose from. I am guaranteed that each expansion I will find a healing spec that I like with two options to choose from. Over the years, my preferences slip from one to the other dependant on changes made to the class, but I always find a way to enjoy healing with a priest.

Swan in her Holy Transmog set with "L'il Swan" the Sunborne Val'kyr. Note the subtle stick for dealing with unruly raiders.

My main character, Swanhild, had very little to do really. I worked on her fishing for a while, trying to finish the reputations with Margoss and the Fisher Friends, but I didn't get as much WoW time this week as I had family visiting. I did complete the rep grind with Margoss and all but two of the Fisher Friends though. I still have to earn the drowned mana to buy the items from Margoss but the hard work is done there.

Swanhild in her Disc transmog  set with Erik the Singing Sunflower (always my favourite pet)

I love the transmog sets I have for this character. They were carefully designed to look like they were wearing as much metal as possible as it almost feels wrong having a Dwarf in just cloth, even if she is a Priest. I do like the way they turned out though and I love this specific set of shoulder armour with its subtle wings.  I am currently trying to decide whether to allow this character to race change to a Dark Iron Dwarf in BfA. She has always been hugely sympathetic of Moira's storyline and it would fit...but I'm not sure I can bring myself to change the appearance of the character I play the most often. Besides, there will already be several others in my character list that I will switch over. More thinking required.

The Holy version of the Priest class mount

So aside from doing some fishing on Swanhild, what did I do with the rest of the time I had for Priest week? Enter Phoxxie the Goblin! While I do already have 110 Goblin Priest I don't really like the server she is on, and I figured it wouldn't take long to use the 100 boost I had sitting about and level a new one on a different server. I had started this a week or two ago but had only taken her to 105 so far, so I pushed the last 5 levels to finish her off. I still have to finish her class hall stuff and get some gear on her as I mostly levelled through invasions but that's one more at 110 at least.

Phoxxie with Erik the Lurky Murloc

See you all next week for Rogue appreciation (or a little more like Rogue tolerance in my case).

Week 7 - Paladin Appreciation

Paladin week came at an inconvenient time. Currently, most of our guild are offline with holidays, work, or having babies and other huge life-changing things, so there have been very few people about to assist with things and the paladin was one of the characters that had a lot to finish.

Featured here with Erik the Skyfin Juvenile and her usual choice of transmog. Details for the transmog can be found listed here

Meet Brenhild. I had levelled her to 110 and then pretty much abandoned her aside from missions each day. Whilst it is a healing class, for some reason I struggle as much with Paladin healing as I do with Monk healing, but this time I have no idea why. It may just be that I hate the levelling part so much as a melee that I put it off until I just feel that the learning curve has escalated out of all proportion. And of course, each expansion I do that just adds to the difficulty of getting back into it. I think I'll make a concerted effort next expansion to get the paladin working a lot earlier to see if that helps.  As healers, Paladins are pretty powerful and always seem to have a very strong role in each expansion.

The Paladin class mount. Matches nicely with her favourite armour too! I love how shocked Brenhild looks to see it!

So, what did I do this week? Well, the first part of the week was very limited as with no one around in guild and my hatred of PuG groups, I was bottle-necked on progress by the need to do dungeons for the class hall quest chain. In the absence of my minions, The Author stepped in to valiantly assist by dragging my sorry plate-clad backside through the necessary dungeons. Thank you, once again! Once that first bottle-neck had been cleared, I rushed on to complete the class hall. I am very thankful that at this point in the expansion, the mission times and requirements for a lot of the quest stages have been reduced as they no longer slow the process down quite as much. After this, it was time to do the class follower and mount chain along with the Broken Shore chain. I had to hold off with the Argus quest chain as  I still needed to level the new followers that were granted from completing the quest hall and one of the early requirements there is "6 followers at 900 ilvl". As I had to go do the start of the Suramar quest chain in order to be able to purchase an item needed for my mount quest, I thought I'd also treat you to a view of just how silly Dwarves look carrying Nightborne.

This leaves us all set for Priest week! See you there!

Week 6 - Monk Appreciation

As the expansion is nearing a close, it's getting increasingly difficult to find guild members online and finding the will to keep doing things on my alts is difficult. For monk week, I decided to finish off the Argus quest chains so that I had access to as much gold from missions as possible.

My monk, Quenhild, doesn't get played often. While it is a healer class, the healing is just too melee orientated to be comfortable for me. I have to admit, I've barely even looked at the healing style this expansion. I levelled her to 110 to complete the collection, but I barely play her. I find the healing playstyle too cumbersome and definitely not instinctive to me. The DPS spec being a melee one is difficult for me as well (you know how I hate melee classes) and I find it a chore to even do world quests on her.

Quenhild with the monk mount and pet.

I had already completed her class hall and done the quest chains for her class mount but now she pretty much just gets wheeled out once or twice a day to check missions and do some alchemy cooldowns.

For her transmog outfit, I am using one of the PvP sets as I quite like the look of it on a female dwarf. It's the Wild Gladiator's Ironskin Armor. I think the combination of the white and teal look lovely against her red hair, and haven't managed to get bored of it yet!



I'm looking forward to next week (Paladin week). My Paladin needs a lot of catch up work, but I have been meaning to actually heal something with her for months and keep putting it off. Maybe I'll even send her into an LFR...

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!

Week 4 - Hunter Appreciation

I have a strange relationship with the hunter class. It has always secretly been one of my favourites, but I only really like playing it solo. Me and my pet. It's always been the default choice I go to when I want to do stuff completely on my own without being bothered by people. I've had many hunters over the years. I daresay I probably have about 10 of them dotted about on different servers/factions.

Ellywick with Skitter the spider and the Bloodfang Widow mount. I love the black hat too! (Fine Pilgrim's Hat)

The hunter I play most frequently, however, is Ellywick. She is a Gnome, although at the time of last doing the alt appreciation posts she was a Pandaren. She was a Dwarf before that too.  I have a tendency to try to match mounts, pets and companion pets together with outfits on the hunter for some reason. I'll include some pictures of my favourites, although I won't include the turtle set as I did that last time!

Basil the Fox and the Llothien Prowler mount complete with a dancing fox kit in the background

I do find that when I play my hunter, I often find myself talking to my pet as I play. No, I have no idea why I do that either. I love the survivability and independence of being a hunter while questing. It's great for the days when the ME/CFS is too much and I can't focus well. My comfort characters! Lately, however, I was talked into taking my hunter along to our normal alt raids which turned out to be less traumatic than I'd expected. My guild leader bribed me with helpful macros so that I wouldn't get tired as easily and it worked! He's always helpful like that by trying to make things less tiring for me to be able to play.

My most common companions at the moment. I love the little baby Elderhorn pet as it has lovely idle animations, and yes, the moose is called Chocolate :D

So what did I do this week? Firstly, I sent Ellywick out to pick up a mechanical bunny pet as I've wanted one for ages and kept putting it off as I didn't want to camp for it. I know most Gnome hunters get one for free, but I didn't start as a Gnome! As it turned out, I managed to find Rabbot really quickly and that didn't take anywhere near as long as I had expected. I had already finished my class hall and Argus quest chains and have the class mount, so next I decided to let her farm for the Cross Gazer pet that I'd been putting off (again due to time constraints). This one totally took as long as I expected though. The grind didn't seem as bad on the hunter, which is a good thing. I'll have to remember that next time I have to grind stuff.

The only hunter pet I have that is actually called Erik! I love the braids so much that I had to get matching hair too!

So that's it for me and the hunter this week. See you next week for some Mage appreciation!

Week 3 - Druid Appreciation

My Druid is already fairly well played. Each expansion, she is usually the first alt I pick up to work on after my main character and as such her Class Hall is already completed, she has her class mount form, she's been doing heroic Antorus raids and even has most of her professions rounded out. This is Seara, originally a Night Elf but race changed once Worgen became available as anything had to be better than playing a race I really dislike. I'm not a huge fan of Worgen either though so I am looking forward to having new Alliance Druid options when more Allied races become available.

Her Restoration healer outfit on the left is just the Cruel Gladiator's Dragonhide armour set and she's followed around by Sombrius, her little Blossoming Ancient. The outfit on the right is what she wears while being Balance and not in moonkin form (rare, but it does happen) along with her little moonkin hatchling pet, Yuli. Both of these pets are named after friends that made those specs shine for me.

Worgen Druid mount form

I did do a little work on trying to get some of the skinning ranks that she hasn't acquired yet this week and managed to get the quest chain for [Mother's Skinning Knife] to drop. As there was so little to finish on her this week, I decided to take a short visit to another Druid alt. I'm levelling a Highmountain Tauren as I'd like to have access to the armour in case I decide to play one at some point. I always liked Tauren. I used to play a lot of Tauren before I started raiding, but when the graphical updates for characters came in, I didn't like the way the faces had changed for the Tauren. I found myself no longer liking any of my Tauren characters and no amount of customising seemed to make one that I could be happy with anymore. The Highmountain Tauren though, manage to work for me. Perhaps the tattoos obscure the face and soften it enough to not annoy me? Whatever it is, I am enjoying my little HM Tauren Druid, Wenona.

Wenona, with Erik the baby elderhorn. Her transmog is something I threw together to show off her tattoos while still looking plain and practical. You can find the individual items linked here 

To make things a little different this time, I decided to level her as a bear (or possibly it might have been a subtle influence from one of my raid leaders who happens to be a Guardian Druid). I'm loving the pretty graphics for the new druid forms but the bear definitely seems to level a lot slower than a moonkin. It might just be that I haven't reached a high enough level to get to the good stuff yet, but I seem to be able to pull just as many enemies whilst levelling as a moonkin and kill them faster. I do like the versatility of Druids. I love that they can cover every role in game (even if I don't tend to play every role in game). Druid was the first class I ever played in WoW. My beta character was a Tauren Druid and I never really lost the love of them. I managed to get my baby Druid from mid-20s to mid-40s though, which is quite a heavy amount of levelling in one week for me.

I really love the Highmountain Tauren druid travel form