—for a change!
Although my dear friend Annah would tell you that I’m a warlock at heart (and in many ways, he would be right!), the truth is that my favorite race and class combination is the one I’ve played in raids since Naxxramas 2.0: Tauren shaman.
I blame Churras (Ch-ch-ch-churras!) for this. Back in our bygone Black Temple days, we would occasionally find ourselves short a resto shaman for the healing-intense Gurtogg Bloodboil. Don’t tell Blizzard this, but when that happened, Churras — who was often traveling for work and pleasure at the time — would let me log onto his Tauren shaman and sling some rank 7 Chain Heals.
It was so. much. fun.
I fell in love with shaman healing on Churras, and since the expansion was slowly winding down, I had plenty of time to level a baby spirit-walker of my own.
Naturally, I made her a Tauren.
I changed mains in early Wrath and haven’t looked back since (although I’ll admit I am fairly enamored of paladin healing at the moment — my favorite altadin is currently Holy!). (And to any guildies who may be reading: please accept my sincerest, if two years belated, apologies for waiting until after Sarielle had won our first Turning Tide to make the main change official. It was a coincidence; I swear!)
Qurra — who I am 99.8% sure my subconscious named in honor of Churras, although I honestly didn’t notice the similarity until Annah pointed it out to me — has been my constant in-game companion and avatar through four tiers of content… five if you count T9, but the only thing worth remembering about Trial of the Grand Crusader was how phenomenal our tier sets looked. Otherwise, I think most of us prefer to pretend it never happened.
And yet…
And yet as much as I love my Tauren restoration shaman, playing a Tauren enhancement shaman has been a challenge, to say the least. I am not the most spatially adept person to begin with (Hello, Thaddius Jump; I’m looking at you!). In the increasingly frequent occasions that I am called upon to DPS in raids, I find that I am constantly tripping over my own hooves while attempting to orient myself in melee range.
It’s embarrassing, really.
The main issue is my hit box. (Shut up, Ignus!) Towering over most trash mobs as I do, I waste precious seconds of DPS time attempting to position myself behind a rapidly expiring villain that I often can’t see around my own plus-sized model.
It’s become an exercise in frustration, and two nights ago (while lamenting my perpetually low presence on our World of Logs parse) I decided I’d have enough.
“I want to race change troll,” I told my husband as our raid was winding down.
“Troll.” He stared at me. “Why would you want to be a troll?”
Because trolls are cute. Of course.
Knowing my Horde-hating husband as I do, I didn’t think he’d take that as a good enough reason to spend $25 on a race change. So I bit my tongue and went on to explain the trials and tribulations inherent to playing a Tauren in melee range. (I may or may not have broken out the puppy dog eyes while doing so.)
He thought about it for a few seconds, then replied: “You know, there’s a lot to be said for playing the smallest available race when you’re a melee class…”
From there, it was just a matter of choosing a hairstyle.
With no further ado, meet Ribbitz:
She’s a tiny terror — and not nearly as cute as my mohawked troll would have been! — but she’s growing on me.