OHAI, there's a Mage! and Other Stuff

As I suspected, I got lazy at this whole blog thing. It's exam season, so I've been working on last-minute end of school projects and studying, so my time's pretty limited.

I've also, in my "well, crap, engame is on farm" boredom, started leveling a few alts. Most notably, my Death Knight Chaostí, who I'm leveling in tandem with my boyfriend's shaman Lampyridae. I also (guiltily) started a mini-druid, Siuan.

Druids are a lot of fun. Things... die. Really fast. I guess this is a characteristic of melee classes, since my OP Death Knight (in the true nature of the class) whacks things to death faster than my mage can cast at them. I watch my roommate (Burstãngel) destroy things on her retadin, and I get jealous. Not to mention, not being squishy helps a lot too.

When I was in high school, a group of friend and I started a, um, "club" called G.E.E.K. Stood for Gifted English Enrichment Klub, but really we were playing Dungeons and Dragons. With our grade 11 English teacher. Yes, I played a spellcaster (a wizard, if I recall, but sorcerers are more fun) and wandered around in my cloth armor, carrying my greatstaff and hoping that I didn't die.

In WoW, you're restricted to only certain armor proficiencies. A mage cannot don mail shaman gear. However, armor works differently in D&D. Rather than outright restrict you, they penalize you.

Here's how it works. If a caster that's a cloth wearer wants to wear a Leather Jerkin of +1 Asskick, rather than be locked out from it, they gain an additional chance that their spell will fail. I like this mechanic. Many leather and mail pieces are simply superior to cloth, and the added armor and less-squishiness is nice, too.

If this mechanic were to translate into WoW, I assume it would simply decrease our hit chance. For some classes (poor rogues and paladins), hit cap is merely something they'd like, but will never, ever see. Rogue hit cap is something along the lines of 800+ hit rating, and ret pallies actually lose overall DPS by striving for hit capping. However, for us lucky mages (Arcane mages even more so), hit cap is actually too easy to obtain.

For example, up until Monday (when I grabbed a few new hit rating-less pieces) I was over hit cap, self buffed, by 0.90%. Not even with an SPriest or Boomchicken. A lot of our item budget is wasted on excess hit. If you were to wear what is largely considered best in slot, a mage would have over 400 hit rating, which would translate into something around 25% hit. Excessive.

Now, I'd gladly take a hit chance penalty to wear, say, Unravelling Strands of Sanity. I'm always reading over loot and wishing I wasn't locked from the remaining 3 armor classes. Shaman grab cloth boots and bracers, Druids like some cloth pants, ret Pallies have leather items that are almost best in slot. I'm stuck with lousy cloth, with no other options.

A Warlock in my guild suggested a lore-friendly reason why he should be able to wear leather: due to their mastery of demonkind, Warlocks have learned to craft leather armor from their hides. If only mages could, say, "control the elements of earth and space, and gain proficiency with mail".

So I'll be off to enjoy my non-squishy alts until Ulduar, and try to get Lampy raid-worthy (crossing my fingers, we could always use another shaman). Until then, my Arcane-wielding, world-shattering Mage will take the back burner.