Wednesday, January 14, 2009

If I could change class for one day

Some of the Google Searches that lead the readers to my blog intrigue me. Not to the extent that I’d make a never-ending series about it as my dear colleague at Armageddon’s coming. But it happens that something triggers my thoughts. This one did:

fire mage for a day”
I really don’t know what the reader was looking for, but I like the idea that this sentence suggests. It makes me associate to old fairy tales. If I remember it right there was one in the Oriental collection Thousand and One Nights, where a boy was turned into the emperor for one day. If I remember it right it wasn’t quite as he had expected it, but he managed to do quite a few good things during that day.

The more I think about it the more I like the idea. What if Larísa could turn into another class just for one day? How cool, challenging and interesting wouldn’t that be? I bet I’d learn a ton of things from it.

I know that one of my weak spots as a player is my lack of experience from other classes and other roles. Of course that could be helped out a bit pretty easily. There’s nothing that stops me from rolling a little priest alt or a warrior any day. The problem is that it takes quite a while of levelling before you get the basic spells of the class. How much would I understand about how it is to heal as a priest at level 80 by levelling one from 1 to 10? Not very much I think.

Imagine instead that I somehow got access to a change-class-elixir, with duration of 24 hours. It would turn my char into a class and spec of my choice – at the same level, which means 80 for Larísa. My gear would change accordingly to something fitting for the class (I’m sure people wouldn’t be too picky about it).

Since everything would be new to me I doubt that I’d be available for normal PUGing or raiding. But doing it with likeminded guildies would be fun. Let the healer dps, the dps tank and the tank heal for a change. I’m pretty sure we’d have a big laugh at our failures, while trying to give each other crash courses about how to play our ordinary classes. It would be like trading characters with each other, with the difference that this would be legal.

What would be your first choice if you could change class for a day? I’m leaning towards a druid. I really would like to try out the shapeskifting for myself, and I can’t help it, but I think I’ve got a bit of a night elf within me.

To the one guy did this Google search: I must admit that I can’t really see the point of being fire mage for a day. If you’re a non-mage wanting to try out the arcane powers for one day I’d rather recommend a frost spec. With that you could do extremely cool things, as breaking records in aoeing or soloing old-raid bosses. Fire mages are good for raiding purposes, but hardly spectacular for a one-day-shot.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

But I disagree!
While I agree that a frost mage may be better for the faint of heart, or perhaps those who have absolutely no idea how to play a mage, I do not think fire offer's nothing.

Cmon! Living bombs! Blasting Waves! Dragons Breath!

This is a nice combo for win, in my mind. But that's my mind. I wouldn't hold it accountable either. =)

Eli said...

I'd like to try a rogue. I've always played hybrids or pet classes, so it would be neat to try out a 'pure' class. Using energy instead of mana would also be interesting to explore.

Blizzard does occasionally indulge us on the test realm by giving us pre-made chars to play with, but I've never really tried it out.

David said...

Next time there is a PTR up with premade characters, you could have your guild sign up all together for an evening of raiding with a different class. It's free, it's instant, and you usually get top level gear.

You could always roll an alt and level it up too ;) As the proud owner of an alt for each class, I can tell you its good fun and teaches you a lot about class mechanics.

Eli said...

Ug, it's like pulling teeth to get people in my guild to do something like that. A lot of people don't want to do things unless it has direct benefit to their characters. I'm boggled when they'd rather do dalies for the 40th time instead of seeing an old-world raid for the first time.

Captain The First said...

Maintaining alts is good for the soul.

Anonymous said...

I would love to be a rogue for definite.

More specifically a gnome rogue would be cool.

If i was to ever reroll i think i would go for a rogue with the stealthness and being able to pretty much 2 hit clothies and as a priest it would be nice to be on the other side for ones.

See an undead priest, stealth up and stun lock him till he is dead without even getting a fear off.

Jong said...

I wanna say druid, but I'm afraid that if I play it for a day, I'm really going to want to level a druid.

Drazmor said...

Yet another great WoW idea out of your head.

You should work at Blizz, it would do this game a world of good.

Dragon's Den said...

As a hunter I don;t do alts ...

apart from my druid (lvl80), frost mage (78), DK (67), shadow priest (60), rogue (43), warrior (42), lock (30), shammy (25) ...

0_o

Anonymous said...

@Theawàkening: it's possible that I get a bit blind for the exclusivity of it since I see it daily. But don't you agree that a huge aoe-kill looks pretty cool in the eyes of a non-mage?

@Delbin: oh yes, rogue is awesome. I've got a level 70 alt, soon to be levelled, which is quite different from the mage, even though it's a dps class.

@David: I've never ever dared to go to PTR... But I guess I'll come to that point one day, when I start to feel like a WoW veteran.

@Delbin: I think that's one of the reasons why PTR isn't attractive to me. No friends around.

@Captain The First: well... AND it's a huge timesink and makes it pretty much impossible to progress with your main. You can't get all of it.

@esdras: yep, they're so cool. You get those fun things like stealthing and pickpocketing pretty early. The roguish feeling comes quickly.

@Jong: that definitly is a risk.

@Drazmor: Really I don't see my self as creative at all. But thank you for the thought, it's very sweet.

@Dragon's Den: you can't help yourself, can you? I've never been caught by the alt bug, but who knows, one day it may reach me too.

Rich said...

@Larisa@Drazmor: what a horrible thing to say about yourself!

The fact that you have a regularly maintained blog alone makes you a creator, and those who are creators are inherently creative.

Many on the internet are consumers, just reading reading reading (reading is good, don't get me wrong, I don't really fit in with the YouTube crowd), but more rare is the person that is the one writing writing writing.

Without the creators, the internet would be stale and stagnant. Eventually everything would be read, and then the internet would lose a huge portion of its appeal... that the content never runs out, because there are people constantly creating new things to read.

One of my favorite parts of switching from the top down writing approach of doing articles for NotAddicted, to the more 'same level' approach of having a blog on Blogger is the sense of mingling I get here that I didn't really get there. I make my rounds and check out what my peers have to say, and that usually inspires me to go off on another tangent and take the train of thought to the next station.

If reading my posts inspires anyone else to start a blog of thier own, then all the better! But a line is drawn for those that made a blog one day, and those of us who keep it going day in and day out... and similarly, those who write a blog for themselves as an online diary of sorts, and those of us who publish 'for our audience'. I believe we both fall in the latter (among others).

Give yourself some credit where it's due :)

Anonymous said...

In my case, and I think it's implied here, "If I could change class for one day [and stay 80]", I think I'd have to go with Druid.

I already have an 80 holy pally, 76 shadow priest, 62 shammy, and a 27 druid.

So there's hope I could switch to holy priest and that a resto shammy could appear in the near future, but the druid...

Yeah I like healing.

Anonymous said...

I think that if I could play one different class for a day it would be a mage. I don't know what spec I would be though. I would probably try them all out.

good topic :)

Anonymous said...

You just have to have a FtF with your guildies.

Log on using your guildies computer so you don't get messed up on their UI and addons.

Then switch seats. Play their character while they play yours.

Of course this involves a HUGE amount of trust, but hey at least if they do something you don't like, you can kick their ass for real.

Larísa said...

@Ixobelle: thank you. I do agree that keeping up a blog for a long time (more than a month) is something very special, which non-bloggers or brand new bloggers probably don't really understand. It takes dedication, really. Still I don't see myself as creative, like a developer or something like that. I just ramble about things I see, rather than coming with bright, unique thoughts. But I shouldn't look down on myself, you're right about that.