MOG MADNESS round 3: the Element-Tamer

Amateur Azerothian, Effraeti, and Tome of the Ancient have teamed up to bring Mog Madness to the WoW blogosphere! There will be five rounds, and each round will have a different “Mog Build” prompt. For the third round, the Mog Build criteria are these: mail, shoulder armor must be the Wavemender’s Mantle.

Persona-wise, I thought of an Elemental Shaman who has spent her life out in the wilds dealing with truculent elementals, so I looked at staves and axe/shield combinations for the weapons. In an effort to avoid cross-contamination by influences from the ensembles presented in Round 2, I decided immediately to use the bronze/brown tones of the Wavemender’s Mantle as the main color for my ensemble, keeping the blue as an accent color in very small amounts. And as soon as I’d decided that, I knew that I wanted to use the Battle Scarred Leggings for the pants. I loved how the Helm of Pilgrimage interacted with the shoulderpiece as soon as I saw it; although this helm may bring “Val’kyr” most immediately to mind because of all that time we spent in Northrend, its design is actually quite similar to the classic Tier 1 Earthfury Helmet, making it very appropriate for a Shaman.

My junior Shaman, Kryztalya, Kilauea, Kjerstin, Keshona, and Kermione, will be the models for this round.

Helm of Pilgrimage, Wavemender’s Mantle, Veteran’s Armor, Vicious Gladiator’s Links of Accuracy (ilevel 371), Battle Scarred Leggings, Gloves of Foolish Innocence, Earthen Netherscale Boots, cloak hidden, Icecore Staff

Some alternate weapon choices:

Ruthless Gladiator’s Battle Staff; Spell Axe of the Farseer (Alliance Shaman-only) + Lost Pavise of the Blue Flight (Normal)

Frostbite (Horde-only) + Grunt’s Shield; Frostbite + Zom’s Crackling Bulwark

I won’t be making an “also-rans” post for this round, because I didn’t come up with any dramatically different ideas for the overall ensemble, and the variations for this one are limited to the weapon combinations shown above and the two alternate chestpieces shown below.

The Circuit Design Breastplate (Heroic) looks made to go with the Battle Scarred Leggings, even though one first appeared in Cataclysm and the other in Burning Crusade! The Battle Scarred Leggings & Earthen Netherscale Boots also have a matching pair of gloves, the Murkblood Oven Mitts, but those did not work well in the context of the rest of the outfit. Although a matching chestpiece style is available in BC, it only comes in blue, and not in bronze.

The necklace of teeth strung across the Cuttlefish Scale Breastplate gives it a rather wild sort of appearance.

Round 3 Results!

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all the colors of The Elements

The Elements was the classic first Dungeon set for Shaman in vanilla WoW, obtained from creatures and bosses in Stratholme, Scholomance, and Blackrock Spire. It can now be purchased from Barum at the Darkmoon Faire.

By going through a lengthy, expensive, and difficult quest chain, The Elements set could be upgraded to The Five Thunders. It can now be purchased from Baruma at the Darkmoon Faire.

A recolored version of The Elements can be obtained from Outland dungeons.

The chestpiece for a fourth coloration of The Elements, the Stormstrike Vest (shown here with the regular blue Elements kilt), is available from a quest in Hellfire Peninsula.

A more complete version of this coloration can be seen on a couple of NPCs, but only the vest is available to players.

This fifth coloration of The Elements is only found on NPCs.

Kamalia just doesn’t have the bank space to collect all this stuff herself, and besides, she has her Tier sets to play with. Instead, I’ve decided to collect The Elements and its recolors with mini-Kam.

(Am I going to do this for the other classic Dungeon sets? Probably not. I only really noticed all the colors of The Elements because my main is a Shaman, and I haven’t paid enough attention to the sets of other Classes to notice if NPCs are wearing alternative colorations of those sets.)

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Kamalia, then and now

I wanted to participate in Vidyala’s “Then and Now” challenge, but I had a little bit of a hitch. I don’t have very many really old screenshots. I think I only took a few screenshots, from the character selection screen, on the first computer I played WoW on. I took lots of screenshots in 2008 and 2009 on my second computer, but then the hard drive failed in early 2010, and I hadn’t considered my WoW screenshots valuable enough to back up and didn’t consider them valuable enough to pay for data recovery. Only a few of my pre-2010 screenshots survived — the ones I’d printed out for my WoW notebook or posted to the Kirina’s Closet forum. A scan of a poor-quality printout isn’t great, but it’s the best I’ve got.

This picture is probably the oldest of them all.

Kamalia crafted the Turtle Scale set for herself as soon as she could both wear and make it, around level 42. The picture is annotated “42″, and I’m pretty sure that Kamalia was around that actual character level at the time I took the picture. Her horns are still the stub size I chose when I first created her; I later changed them to the upward pointing style when the Barbershot debuted. I wouldn’t have kept that shield after I upgraded it, and I probably didn’t keep that weapon around for very long after I upgraded it, either.

Here she is in her level 70 raiding gear, as good as it got.

I think I might have come back to Shattrath to take this picture at level 80 prior to deleting most of those items at the beginning of LK.

At level 80, in her Naxx gear.

I was so proud of my first complete Tier set, even though it was from mixed difficulty levels. I only kept the T7 chestpiece, though, because I thought I could make it work with the T6-lookalike kilt from the Nexus.

I took screenshots of each of her Tier sets, either when they were completed or at the time that I’d fully replaced them with the next tier and was ready to discard them.

Here is Kamalia on the Armory today. She’s still wearing her T12 set, though she’s upgraded her weapon to early T13. The shield is the Ward of the Red Widow, Transmogrified to Zom’s Crackling Bulwark, which I though matched the Vagaries of Time quite nicely. Her belt is also Transmogrified.

I have tokens for a couple of T13 items in my bags, but the T12 4pc bonus is so good that I was reluctant to replace it until I could get the T13 4pc bonus all at once. And then I stopped doing regular guild raiding, and I haven’t felt like venturing into LFR… If I did have full T13, I’d take a screenshot of it for the record — and then I’d Transmogrify it into something else for everyday wear.

Among other reasons, one big reason why I haven’t done any LFR is that I’m not particularly enthusiastic about either the Shaman or the Druid T13 designs. I just don’t covet the look of that gear for my characters. (In contrast, if Blizz retrofitted BoT and BWD with an LFR setting, I’d be running it regularly to get Kerisa the T11 shoulders she’s lusted after all expansion.) I’ve also been thinking that I probably won’t raid in Mists unless the T14 designs are really super beautiful and exciting to my sense of aesthetics.

I also found this fun picture from way back when Ketura was level 28. BTH’s Hunter, Farrier, was about the same level, and he suggested that we go do the Nesingwary quests in Stranglethorn together.

That was back when the end quests for each part were group quests, and when Stranglethorn was a few levels higher than it is now. We were barely high enough level to get the Nesingwary quests at all. It was a crazy, crazy day, with lots of trapping and kiting and running away, but in the end, we completed Big Game Hunter and got our Nesingwary Master Hunter’s Rifles.
Though she has tamed a variety of other pets, Cosmo has remained Ketura’s faithful companion for almost all of her questing. Farrier has gone through several preferred pets.

Ketura spent a lot of time just idling, and then she’s spent a lot of time doing alternative leveling — holiday travel-the-world quests, archaeology, dailies, grinding for mats, that sort of thing. She’s currently level 82 and schlepping around in Icecrown doing Argent Tournament dailies and debating whether or not she really wants to do the Orgrim’s Hammer questlines and get herself exalted with the Horde Offensive so that she can buy the Chopper schematic.

BTH spent the last week or so before LK power-leveling Farrier. He wanted her to be level 70 before she set foot in Northrend, hoping that would make her a little less of a target for PvP in those earliest days of the expansion. Farrier has been BTH’s secondary main throughout LK and Cataclysm, and he did quite a bit of LFR with her over the holidays.

I don’t have any pictures that show an old UI, but I still play with more-or-less the default UI, and all there would be to see is at what points I added Grid and Power Auras.

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art post: orc vs elf

I’m amused by the idea of a purple-skinned, green-haired Night Elf facing off against a green-skinned, purple-haired Orc, as if they were some sort of bizarre inversion of each other.

Not long after I drew this picture, I had the opportunity to create the scenario in-game in Ashenvale, although my Orc character was a Shaman instead of a Hunter.

Of course, turning off one’s interface and taking screenshots while in combat is often a good way to get killed — but at least Keshona and her opponent went down at the same time!

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Dragon Soul, and other Patch 4.3 miscellany

I went into Dragon Soul this week without having updated DBM and without having studied any boss strategies beyond having taken a cursory glance at the Morchok thread on the ES forums. As we were expecting Dragon Soul to be like Firelands, where we only got one new boss down a week for about the first month, until we got stuck on Alsyrazor for a few weeks, the Morchok strategy was the only boss strategy thread on the forums. It was kind of fun to just examine the dungeon journal and then jump in and see how all those abilities really fit together. Morchok went down with barely a whimper. Then we tried General Whosits, the ping-pong boss. It took us most of the rest of the raid night to master the ball bouncing. In the healer channel, we were all crying “oh, my mana!” When General Ping-Pong was finally dead, we had about fifteen minutes of raid time left, so we went over to Whatshisface the Unsleeping, hoping to get some more epic drops from his trash. When we’d cleared the trash — and indeed gotten some more epic BoE or pattern drops — there were four minutes of raid time left. We decided to pull the boss just to see what he did… and down he went. This fight was a little tougher than Morchok, but we still one-shot it. We were 3/8 on the first night.

Mana was very tight in the ping-pong fight, and tight but not quite as painful in the colored oozes fight. I’d gone into Dragon Soul without having done any reforging, and I wasn’t really surprised that by the time we’d killed General Ping-Pong, I’d decided to reforge out of haste and back to mastery & spirit. Near the end of T11, Vixsin wrote about the oscillating relative importance of haste and mastery for Resto Shaman, and how mastery is king when content is new and gear levels are relatively low, but haste is better when content is old and gear levels are relatively high.

Before raid last night, therefore, I went to visit the reforger. I don’t remember exactly what stats I had when I started; my spirit was under 2000 unbuffed and around 2200-2300 fully buffed, my haste was around 20.5% fully buffed, my mastery was around 13, and I’m not sure what my crit was. After re-enchanting my boots and gloves from haste to mastery and reforging for spirit and mastery instead of haste, I am now sitting at (unbuffed) 2740 spirit, 7.15% haste (the bare minimum), 16.91% crit, and 17.27 mastery.

The Hagara fight was a lot of fun. It’s good to see that Kalecgos managed to get the Eye of Eternity fixed up — I always thought it a bit of a shame the way Malygos smashed it. The frost phase is a nice re-use of the spinning cutters mechanic from the Halion fight (srsly, Halion was a fun fight… it just wasn’t worth beating through all that trash and the 3 minibosses to get to), and the lightning chain phase is really cool. So then we were 4/8.

Then it was time for Ultraxion. I got to take one of the red crystals, and, although I think I look pretty funny as Alexstrasza, oh boy oh boy does being a heavily Mastery-stacked Resto Shaman with the Gift of Life buff ever look sweet on the meters!

This parse is from our last attempt of the night, which ended in a heartbreaking 2% wipe. We’ll get you next week, Ultraxion, you just wait!
For most attempts, including this one, Svenya and I picked up the Gift of Life, Vili and Morniel picked up the Essence of Dreams, and Holydd and Raziel, who were tank healing, picked up the Source of Magic. This parse is also my highest HPS numbers of the night. We tried a few pulls with the red and green teams switched, and then it was Morniel who absolutely OWNED the charts. My numbers were much smaller when I was green, but I wasn’t much surprised by that because the red crystals come out at about 75%, the green at 50%, and the blue at 25%. We decided, however, that overall we got better healing distribution with the original arrangements, so we switched back.

I’m glad that the later fights in the raid seem to be challenging us well. I was a little worried that the conditions I’d set for taking a hiatus from raiding would arrive a lot sooner than I expected. I am enjoying the Dragon Soul fights so far — though I still don’t particularly care to do them on Heroic, especially not Ultraxion! Perhaps I’ll keep raiding until the Mists of Pandaria release date has been announced.

* I eagerly dumped as much stuff into Void Storage as I thought I wouldn’t want for Transmogrification or other dress-up anytime soon. Kamalia’s Void Storage contains mostly Archaeology rares and odds & ends from her pre-Cataclysm pursuit of Loremaster.

* I like to have the gear for my two specs be visually different in some way, so that I can tell immediately from the character selection screen which spec I was in when I logged out. Currently, Kamalia is in 4pc T12 for her Resto spec and all Firelands T12-lookalike drops for her Elemental set. The two sets visually differed by the weapons — staff in Resto versus dagger+shield in Elemental. The only visible piece that her two sets actually share is the belt. I Transmogrified her Elemental set to the Netherstrike Tunic/Leggings of Beast Mastery set that I’d originally designed for my Hunter, and was pleased to find that the Netherstrike Belt also looks nice with her T12 Resto set. I like T12 a lot and plan to keep it around, so the only other piece of her Resto set that I Transmogrified was her staff. I gave it the appearance of the Resurgence Rod, which has long been her favored weapon for her Ceremonial RP set.

The shield Transmogrification is the Enamelled Disc of Mojo. I didn’t have another dagger I wanted to use, and I like Incineratus well enough anyway.

Kerisa was glad to give up her mis-matched T11/ZA/ZG appearance for this outfit built around Phaelia’s Vestments of the Sprouting Seed. Sadly, Baron Geddon still refuses to drop the T1 shoulders for her.

I discovered that I didn’t like the back view of the armor set I’d designed for Kregga nearly as much as the front view, so I had to make a quick trip to Acherus to pick up the Shroud of the North Wind to Transmogrify her cloak.

* One of Rades’s newest Letters referenced an undocumented patch change. Curious, I went to WoWpedia’s listing to find out what else had changed without having been catalogged in the official patch notes. WoWpedia said that a couple of hairstyles that had been on the Patch 4.2 PTR but had not gone live with that patch were now, at last, available on the live realms. Of course, I had to check that out right away. Sure enough, these two female Orc styles, “Bangs” and “Braided Hawk”, are finally in the Barbershop:

I have updated the “New ‘Dos in 4.2″ page and the appropriate style category pages of the Azeroth Beautician’s Manual of Feminine Style with these new hairdos.

* In another undocumented change, the new model for Tyrande that some correctly assumed would be Tyrande’s image in the Well of Eternity Heroic when it was first datamined also turns out to be her new model for the normal world:

Tyrande has finally gotten the same unique-model makeover treatment as Sylvanas, Jaina, Varian, Garrosh, Thrall, and Malfurion. (Which faction leader will be next?) Her new appearance makes her seem much more haughty and unapprochable to me, more someone to be feared than someone to be adored. I do love the skirt on that dress, though.

* Last year, I wanted to make Liala’s Perfect Potions for Ronada’s birthday, but then we got sick and so I had to resort to something a little more practical:

This year, I had the time to put together some Perfect Potions the way they were intended to be made! I found some fun-shaped little glass bottles (the tallest is about 7 inches) at Michaels. I bought full-page labels for my printer. I imported Liala’s PDFs into Adobe Illustrator and reduced them in size so they’d all fit on a single page. I made a test print (on normal paper) with them reduced to 25% of their original size. That was too small, so I tried 33%. That made the largest size of label just right for my bottles. I filled the bottles with colored water, so they’re just for pretty.

* Finally, I was rather sad last year that I missed out on the Blog Azeroth Secret Santa and Twitter-based art exchange, so I’m pretty excited about this year’s Blog Azeroth Furtive Father Winter event. I’m already thinking about what kind of post I should create to give away, although of course I’ll want to personalize it a bit once I know who it’s going to.

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A Rainbow of Classy Clothes

In which I have an irresistably silly idea to compile a Transmogrification-friendly outfit for each Class using that Class’s color.

Death Knight Maroon: Tyrant’s Epaulets, Breastplate of the Warbringer, Legguards of the Shattered Hand, Thorium Belt, Bloodforged boots & gloves, Sawbones Shirt

Druid Orange: Warchief Kilt, Scorpashi shoulders, Dokebi tunic belt boots & gloves, Orange Mageweave Shirt

Rogue Yellow: Robust set with Headhunter’s Girdle and Bright Yellow Shirt

Hunter Green: Bog Epaulets, Turtle Scale chest & pants, Der’izu belt boots & gloves, Green Linen Shirt

Mage Cerulean: Lunar Mantle, Robes of the Exalted, Belt of Arcane Storms, Runed Spell-Cuffs, Royal gloves & boots, Cerulean Filigreed Doublet
I tried to stick to items that could be obtained solo, but it was very, very difficult to find a belt that layered well with this robe. The golden Sutarn’s Ring also looks reasonably good.

Shaman Blue: Elements set (soon to be available again as “replica”-quality items from the renovated Darkmoon Faire) with Blue Linen Shirt
Okay, I cheated with this one because Shaman have a wonderful class set that is already in their class color — and, as far as the datamining at WoWhead can tell, the replica items will NOT be class-exclusive!

Warlock Purple: Twilight Cultist Shoulders, Death-Speaker’s Tunic, Darkweave Breeches, High Councillor’s belt, Gloves of the Deadwatcher, Kayser’s Boots of Precision, Rich Purple Silk Shirt

Paladin Pink: Bloodscale set with Commander’s Pauldrons & Pink Mageweave Shirt

Warrior Brown: Brutish set with Rustic Workman’s Shirt

Priest White: Gossamer robe and shoulders, Aurora belt, Sage’s boots, Gandling’s Gloves, Formal White Shirt

~*~*~

And here they are again, arranged by armor type:

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Tier 13 and Tier retrospectives: Kamalia’s personal favorites

I wanted to see all of the Tier 13 previews before I shared my opinions on it.

The Shaman T13 looks pretty cool, but not so awesome that I can’t wait to begin replacing my T12. I definitely won’t be showing that hat — I’ll probably transmogrify it to something still wolfish, but a little more classy, such as the Headdress of the First Shaman. The wolf-skull shoulders look awesome on the Orc model, but I’m not sure if I’ll like them on Kamalia. I think it might be fun to play a little Transmogrification mix-and-match between the items of T13 and the items of the black Earthfury (T1) recolor from Outland.

Kerisa’s still in T11, and she’d be perfectly happy to skip right over T12 in favor of T13. Again, I’ll be either not showing the hat or transmogrifying it into something more attractive — most likely the Cenarion (T1) antlers because I haven’t got the Malorne (T4) antlers or the Nordrassil (T5) or Nightsong (T8) crowns. The glowing mushrooms on the shoulders are a neat iteration on previous woodsy shoulder designs, and I hope they provide Akabeko’s leatherworkers with a bit of a respite from the trials they’ve had to endure while crafting other recent Druid tier sets.

Of the other T13 sets, the ones that make me wish I had a raiding character of that class are (from least to most desired) the Vestments of Dying Light (Priest), Timelord Regalia (Mage), and Battleplate of Radiant Glory (Paladin). The Vestments of Dying Light are pretty cool in a spooky sort of way. I love the design of the robe, but I think that helm will look bizarre on a long-faced character such as a Tauren or a Worgen. The steampunk stylings of the Timelord Regalia are a refreshing and fun change from the more usual wizardly look of a Mage. I like the quilted detailing on the upper part of the robe and the way the buckled straps at the bottom hint that the kilt could be refashioned into trousers at a moment’s notice for greater mobility. The gold-trimmed silver of the Battleplate of Radiant Glory is the most classically “Paladin”-like look (to my sense of aesthetics) of Cataclysm so far. To me, the feathery details suggest an avenging, defending, mighty seraphim.

For a brief review of my favorite Tier looks for every class, follow the cut:

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bring on the pandaren power!

I expect that I’ll be rolling at least four new toons come the Mists of Pandaria: Horde-Pandaren Mage (because I have 6 Alliance Mages but only 5 Horde Mages), Alliance-Pandaren Shaman (because I have 4 Horde Shaman but only 2 Alliance Shaman), Tauren Monk, and Blood Elf Monk. My Tauren Monk will be a Mistweaver, possibly with a Brewmaster offspec, and she may very well be a reroll of Katebeka (currently a level 20 Prot Warrior). I’m imagining a barefoot Blood Elf Monk Windwalker with the stern face and the long braid hairstyle.

I’m excited about Pandaren/Pandaria. I’m also excited about the new Monk class. I’m a bit worried about the new talent trees; will I still recognize my Resto Shaman after the 5.0 talent trees go live? I have mixed feelings about the removal of the ranged slot. On the one hand, Ketura the Hunter’s pirate costumes won’t be quite the same without the cutlasses & scimitars, and I’d finally identified the rifle carried by the Bluffwatchers on the TB-to-Org zeppelin to complete Keija the Warrior’s Bluffwatcher RP set (it’s the Flawless Arcanite Rifle/Tribute Gun). On the other hand, I think having wands be a main-hand weapon for casters is a fabulous idea. The PVE Scenarios and Dungeon Challenges sound intriguing. I might rename a few of my best-liked companion pets, but the Pet Battles are a minigame I don’t see myself getting into in the slightest.

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Shaman class feedback

Because I can’t resist a good survey, and this time it’s Blizzard doing the asking.

What type of content do you focus on? [PvE/PvP/Both]
PvE

If PvE, what type of PvE? [Heroics/Raids/Other]
25man raiding as a healer

What are your biggest quality-of-life issues? (For instance, no longer requiring ammo could be considered a quality-of-life improvement for hunters.)
At the moment, my biggest quality of life issue is the fragility of Water Shield. It’s fine that Resto Shaman are so very dependent upon Water Shield for mana regen, but I feel like I spend too much time maintaining my Water Shield when I could be healing instead. It’s annoying that the damage wave that comes immediately after the pull on the Beth’tilac and Alysrazor fights knocks off Water Shield, forcing me to spend a GCD at that early, everyone-at-low-health moment to refresh it. It’s even more annoying to have to spend every fourth or fifth cast during the incredibly healing-intensive scorpion phases of Majordomo Staghelm or second phase of Beth’tilac on putting my Water Shield back up instead of casting a healing spell.
Perhaps some numbers would be helpful: When my guild was in the Firelands this week, I cast Water Shield four times during the Shannox fight, three times during the Rhyolith fight, three times during the Alysrazor fight, and I didn’t need to refresh Water Shield at all during the Baleroc fight. In contrast, I had to refresh Water Shield ten times during my guild’s Majordomo Staghelm kill, and I refreshed it fourteen times during our Beth’tilac kill. Three, four, maybe even five refreshes of Water Shield per boss fight is manageable, but I think that ten or more is excessive.
I’d love to see some talent/glyph changes to Water Shield for Resto Shaman to bring it more in line with the way Lightning Shield works for Elemental Shaman.

What makes playing your class more fun?
In general, spells that are both useful and interesting. Riptide, Healing Rain, Telluric Currents, Unleash Elements, Spirit Link Totem, and Spiritwalker’s Grace all changed the healing playstyle by adding more variety and power without making my job more complicated than I could manage. Lava Burst made questing/doing dailies more fun because mobs started to die a lot faster once I was able to learn that spell.

What makes playing your class less fun?
As mentioned above, having to refresh Water Shield too often. Having to remember to re-drop Healing Stream Totem after I’ve used Mana Tide Totem, or Wrath of Air Totem after I’ve used Spirit Link Totem. Boss encounters that require the raid to be too widely spread out for Chain Heal or Healing Rain to be very effective.

How do you feel about your “rotation”? (Rotation is the accepted order in which abilities are used to maximum efficiency.)
Healing isn’t a rotation as such, but I like the way things are working at the moment pretty well. I enjoy the synergy of Healing Rain and Chain Heal. I like using Unleash Elements to put a small heal on a DPS so that I can power up my next big heal for the tank, or using UE on the tank himself, to give a bit of breathing room while I spool up that big heal. I try to use Riptide as soon after my Power Aura that it’s off CD pops up as I can, but I usually deliberately avoid using Chain Heal on my Riptide targets so as to avoid consuming it. Keeping Tidal Waves up and getting as many of the HOT ticks as I can is more important to me than getting the boost on my CH.

What’s on your wish list for your class?
Something to help Water Shield continue to provide good mana return without having to put it back up every fourth cast during extremely healing-intensive encounters or encounter phases.
To have the healing from Healing Stream Totem benefit the whole raid, not just my own party of five.
A “Mass Water Walking” spell that applies Water Walking to an entire party or raid. If this was done for Shaman, Mages and Priests should be given “Mass Slow Fall” and “Mass Levitation”. They’d still want the single-target versions for situations where only one person needs to be targeted, such as setting off Magma Traps in the Firelands!Ragnaros encounter, though.

What spells do you use the least?
All totems that are NOT Stoneskin, Flametongue, Healing Stream, Wrath of Air, Mana Tide, Spirit Link, Stoneclaw, Searing, Magma, or Fire Elemental. I can’t remember the last time I used Frost Shock.

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Kamalia of the Earthen Ring, and other thoughts on character identity (TYI 3: representing you, part 1)

Both this topic from Saz’s Through Your Interface,

3. Representing You
Show us an image that represents who you are, either in Azeroth/Outland or in real life.

and the topic of the week at Blog Azeroth, suggested by Akabeko,

How does your character define themself? What part of their identity is most important to their personality and self-presentation?

In meatspace, we have so many affiliations, it’s anyone’s guess whether we consider ourselves a tuba player first, or a student, a Gators fan, a New Yorker, a mother, a nerd, a liberal. Our identities are comprised of so many different aspects of life that it’s hard to tell which parts different people will choose to define themselves.

In game, there are less game-related ways to identify.
You can identify as:

your class – your spec
your race – a particular subgroup (Mag’har, Wildhammer)
your faction – a faction other than Horde/Alliance

deal with the intersection between character identity and personal identity.

One of the things that most severely disappoints me about Cataclysm is that there is no “of the Earthen Ring” title. Given the focus on the elements — and the relationship of Shaman with them — in this expansion, I was really hoping that there would be. If there already was an Earthen Ring title, then I would have had two entries, instead of one, for topics 4 and 5 of Through Your Interface. I still hope that an Earthen Ring title will be introduced in a future 4.x content patch, and if there is, Kamalia will hurry out to do whatever it takes to get it.

To me, Kamalia is a Shaman first and a Tauren second — though it is very important to me that she is Tauren and not one of the other Shaman races. Furthermore, she is not just a Shaman, she is a Shaman whose greatest affinity and skill are with the healing power of Water. She can competently fuse Fire and Air or Fire and Earth to combat foes, but she would rather be mending and soothing than rending and destroying.

Kamalia herself would say that she is Tauren first, Shaman second, or that both aspects are equally important to her sense of who she is. Before she became Loremaster, the title she was most proud of and wore continually was “of Thunder Bluff”. She hasn’t taken off her Thunder Bluff doublet since it first became available at the Argent Tournament.

Kamalia does not consider herself to be “of the Horde”. She appreciates and respects the alliances with the Orcs and the Trolls, and generally likes most individuals of those races. She disapproves of the alliances with the Goblins and the Forsaken, though she is willing to give individuals of those races the benefit of the doubt. Other Tauren think she’s a little odd because she actually likes the Blood Elves; she’s fascinated by them, and she thinks they are amusing and cute in the manner that one might think of a feisty kitten. She was bothered by the way the Orcs at Agmar’s Hammer pressured the Taunka into swearing fealty to the Warchief of the Horde; she’s afraid they may swiftly come to regret having taken such an oath.

Similarly, my other characters’ senses of identity are centered on their races and classes, their chosen specs within their classes, and any class-specific faction associations. They may have quarrels with individuals or groups from the other faction, but not, in general, with the other faction as a pseudo-monolithic whole. Thus, most of them don’t have a lot of Horde/Alliance factional partisanship.

Appearance is also an important component of my characters’ identities. No two of my characters are 100% exactly alike in appearance. Back before the Barbershop, when Kamalia and her sisters all had the same skin tone, they still had distinct hairstyles and differently shaped horns. The Dwarf twins Karolynne and Koralynne have different hairstyles, and one has the warm black hair color while the other has the cool black hair color. For some characters, their appearance is so important to their identity that I am reluctant to change their hair color by more than a shade, or to change their hair style for very long, even though there may be other colors and styles for their race that I like a great deal. When I make changes to a character’s hair color or style for a fashion post, I usually change it right back to her standard appearance as soon as I’ve taken all the screenshots I want. My characters also assert their individuality from others of their same race by the mounts, companion pets, and colors and styles of clothing that they prefer.

Through Your Interface

1. Favorite Hangout
2. Player Housing
3. Representing You
4. Greatest Accomplishment
5. Title of Choice
6. Favorite Line of Poetry/Lyric
7. Screenshot of the Year
8. Vacation Spot
9. Your Character’s Hometown
10. Your WoW Crew
11. Profession of Choice
12. Inspiring Imagery
13. A Fond Memory
14. Place Swap
15. A Fairy-Tale Image

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