The Barrens Sucks

Logged onto my mage yesterday and found myself at Crossroads in the Barrens. Lucky for me he's level 21 already so I'm only gonna do a few quests there before moving on to Stonetalon, just for a little extra XP before I go. I really hate the Barrens though, it's such a big zone for characters to run around without mounts, and everything is so spread out that it's not easy to find multiple quests to do in a circuit before going back to turn them in. Because of this I decided to pick and choose some quests to do that will get me to good XP but with minimal time wasted running. Well, no matter what I'm gonna have to get those quests out of the way, so next time I'm on I'll do that and hopefully hit level 22 before heading over to Stonetalon. I didn't get to play very long yesterday, RL called and I did some other fun stuff instead.

I think I'm starting to get the hang of the whole mage thing. I managed to kill three mobs at once, each two levels below me. I hit one with an ice bolt, then fire bolt, then fire blast, then rooted them all, which killed the first target. Ran a little distance away and fire bolted the second mob, followed by another fire blast and then wanded him to death (had to save mana for the last one). Last one got rooted again, then fire bolted, then ice bolted and fire blasted and then a few wand hits and he was done. I was sort of surprised at how well I did, but I've been reading some strategies about mages and what spells are good for which situations and then put those skills to some use. Actually, thinking back on it I should have sheeped one of the mobs, but turns out I didn't really need to, although I probably could have managed to take them out with a lot less damage taken if I had.

I think the thing I like the most about mages is how fast you can take down a mob. With melee attacks you take a bunch of swings, each one slowly chewing away at the mob's health, but with a mage you cast two spells and the mob has less than half of his health remaining. It's a little ridiculous sometimes, and then if you happen to crit you can sometimes kill a mob with just two spells. I'm becoming a big fan of the ice tree, keeping mobs at a distance and blasting away while they can't do anything to me. It's a lot different trying to keep mobs at range when you don't have a pet, and being the squishiest of squishies you can't take very many hits before you're in trouble.

I think as I play further with each class it helps me understand them better and if I ever get to the endgame stuff again I will have a pretty good advantage as far as not only know what I can do, but what my entire party can contribute. I've found a lot of people don't know more than a few skills that their other party mates can use, and I always hated when someone would try to tell me how to play my class when they didn't have the first clue about what they were talking about. I try to let people play the way they want and trust they know what they're doing until they prove otherwise, at which point I might give them pointers, but never be mean about it, that just discourages them and makes the resent you, and will probably make your party do worse rather than better.

The other thing I learn as I play further on my alts is how much I regret rolling a rogue as my first character. I enjoyed playing him of course, but that was before I knew better. Now I don't think I can bring myself to use him because I like pretty much every other class so much more (besides maybe the warrior). So any rogues out there that have tried other classes and still love their rogue, more power to you, but I don't think I will be joining the ranks again any time soon.