So, new daily quests have opened up, the second stage of the Shattered Sun Offensive. A new opportunity to travel around the world, get some gold, get some rep with this faction, and a wonderful chance to see people at their worst.
No, I am not talking about members of the opposite faction trying to kill you over a Mana Cell, most of the people I have encountered up there in Blade's Edge seems to have been intent on finishing the quest as fast as possible and haven't bothered with some world pvp.
I am talking about people like this guy I just encountered, a priest from one on the larger raid guilds on this server. (An aptly named guild it seems, if this guys behaviour is any indication).
Have you done the daily quest Intercepting the Mana Cells where you have to gather Mana Cells in Bash'ir Landing, Blade's Edge Mountains? You fly up there, you kill an ethereal and get a Bash'ir Phasing Device which phases you into a shadowy version of the normal sunny cheery world.
It's a bit dark and hazy and you don't see who is moving around up there until you are pretty much on top of them.
Anyways, the Mana Cells you are gathering are lying scattered around on the ground, usually guarded by a Mana Wyrm that you have to kill before you can pick up the cell. I had just finished off a wyrm and was starting to pick up the cell when this alliance priest runs up next to me and tries to pick up the same cell.
Well, I was first, I got it, and he ran off somewhere else.
I spotted another cell further away and ran there to pick it up. It was guarded by a Mana Wyrm and just as I was getting closer I spotted the guy again, this time standing a bit away from the Mana Cell and its guardian Wyrm, waiting silently for me to engage the Wyrm so he could snag the cell. I figured he could have the cell but without me helping him get it, so I turned to go find another. Unfortunately I had been too close to the Wyrm so it attacked me.
And, surprise surprise, the leech immediately ran for the cell and picked it up. And, to make sure I knew it was no honest mistake on his side, some oh-I-didn't-realise-you-were-up-here-doing-the-same-quest-moronic-attitude, he said "Hehe" as he did it.
Wtf is wrong with people like this? There are plenty of cells up there, you don't spend many minutes doing the quest even if you have to kill a Mana Wyrm for every cell you take. This guy rather waited silently for me to engage the wyrm than kill it himself and get the cell - Jools am holy with gear from Kara and badges and I kill them easily - a priest from a guild that raids the Black Temple should have even less trouble with them. And still he preferred to be a total jerk and act like this? Sad and pitiful behaviour indeed.
Two minutes later I had finished my quest and flew off to do the next daily in Netherstorm.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Daily Quest Leechers
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Star Wars Spirit of Redemption
The Isle of Quel'Danas is the new ganksta heaven it seems, the summoning stone more cluttered with skeletons and dead bodies than the one at Kara even. As we were trying to summon a friend here we got killed (of course) by the many sad loser hordes who should do as their parents tell them and go to bed members of the opposite faction engaging in world pvp. And as my priest Jool is specced for Improved Death of course the blue-white angel poofed up above the slaughtering scene. 
Since I didn't need to heal anyone, it being a lost cause anyhow, I moused over the icon to click down the angel form. And the icon tooltip was this:
Has this always been the case? Can't remember ever reading that before. Or maybe I just never bothered reading it, since usually when you click down the angel form you are pretty pissed at being killed until dead anyways.
But the tooltip is very much reminiscent of the conversation in Star Wars between the old jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi and his former disciple Darth Vader:
Darth Vader: Your powers are weak, old man.
Obi-Wan: You can't win, Darth. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
So does this make me a Jedi?
I think it does.
And if you disagree, I am going to quote another line from Star Wars to you:
Darth Vader: I find your lack of faith disturbing.
And you better remember what the black-clad cyborg did to the man he was speaking to as he uttered those words... You don't want Obi-Jools to end up Darth Jools, now do you?
(But as a side note, I am not really sure I agree with the tooltip, because (and to quote yet another character from the Star Wars movie)
Han Solo: I don't know, I can imagine quite a bit.)
Friday, March 28, 2008
Brilliant Glass
Ever wondered what you were saving those stacks of green gems for? The Draenites, the Azure Moonstones, the Garnets? Wonder no more, because now there is a new design at the Jewelcrafting Trainer called Brilliant Glass.
Non-jewelcrafters are also in luck here, because as a result of this new spell the prices on the green gems have gone up as well. Where before you were lucky if you were able to flog a stack of them for more than a few gold, you now can sell them for 10-20 gold.
The design requires 3 of each gem:
and produces a glass-like shard thing:
Inside the Brilliant Glass there is a random blue gem. On my first try I got a Living Ruby. Not bad, eh?
The only downside is that the glass-making is on a 23 hour cd:
Magister's Terrace - 2 and a half runs
Now I have run through the normal version of Magister's Terrace 2,5 times. Once as a bear tank and 1,5 times as a holy priest healer (a half time when our tank dc'd just before the 3d boss and we couldn't find a replacement, be it tank, healer or dps).
Some reflections on the runs:
Party
I have played with most of the people I ran with many times before and all of us were Kara-or-better geared, so we were sort-of confident that we would pull it off with ease. Well, we downed all the bosses along the way but there were some unneccessary deaths and wipes that we will hopefully learn to avoid in coming runs :-)
The group set-ups varied a little:
Run 1
Warrior tank
Holy priest healer (me)
Demo warlock
Mage
Hunter
Run 2
Bear tank (me)
Resto shaman healer
Mage
Shadow priest
Enhancement shaman
Run 3
Fury warrior tank
Holy priest healer (me)
Shadow priest
Hunter
Enhancement shaman
As you can see we had at least 2 cc's with us at all times, which we utilised as best as we could. Sheep, banish, frost trap, mind control, seduce and enslave, all of it used as often as we could.
Dungeon
The dungeon itself is pretty nice, all made up in the style of Silvermoon with the light airy beautifully foliaged gardens and tastefully (?) decorated halls and hallways.
Most of the pulls along the way are group pulls, 4-6 elite mobs, many of them casters, and sometimes an imp along just to spice things up. There are multiple groups in every location, placed pretty near each other, and some 1-2 mob patrols between them. This makes it all too easy to accidentally pull a second group or patrol while you are fighting the first one, so pull back a bit to keep it safe. I will say this again: Pull back so you only have to fight one group at a time.
In all 2,5 runs we managed to pull multiple groups on several occassions. Sometimes we managed to kill all mobs in both groups with none or just a few deaths on our side (and with ensuing joyful shouts of our imbaness!), but other times (most of the times) we were caught between the rock and the hard place and smashed to little dead pools of red goo (at least those of us not lucky enough to be able to run out).
Since many of the mobs are casters the tank needs to pull and then go hide around a corner to make the casters come running to her. (Do I make this sound easy? It's not! Trust me on this!)
And if you see a lone non-elite imp on some path in the garden or hallways, DON'T kill it! Learned the hard way that the imp is linked to a 4-mob group that will come running from far away if you kill the little twitchy bugger.
Healing
It is rather easy most of the times to find good spots to heal from, where you have LoS to everyone and still be a bit away from the fray.
Some notable abilities of the mobs (from a healing priest's perspective) are:
Mage Guards drop some sort of magic field (looks almost like an arcane explosion frozen in time) that lowers spell damage and healing considerably - stay out of it! These nasty buggers also throw their glaives around, creating a hard-hitting AOE stun effect. The stun lasts for a few seconds only but it feels like a long time! Be ready with Renew and Circle of Healing to get all back to health . If you have a shaman healer, stay bunched up so the Chain Heal may come to full use.
The Physicians use a nasty poison on their weapons (notable for me since I can't remove poisons).
Tanking
Tanking in here is a mess. Period.
(I haven't tanked in months and I said from the start I was a bit rusty, but my friends seemed to have confidence in me and treated me like I had done nothing but tank for ages... ie sheep-pull, dish out a shitload of dps and completely ignore my properly marked kill-order, making me run around like a desperate sheep dog to keep the nasty blood elves hitting on me and not my over-dpsing, triggerhappy friends ;P. I am sure they do this on purpose! We wiped on occasion, but we did manage to survive most of the times, not in any way thanks to my tanking skills but rather luck and the skills of my friends.)
The casters make the pulls rather difficult, they seem to find a LoS to you where they shouldn't, so they are not bunched up sweetly and easily for you to take down. Oh noes, they are spread around and somewhere in between them is a sheep that you don't want to break.
The stun of the Glaive throw affects tanks as well, so suddenly you find that the melee mobs that you do have bunched up around you are going for some of your clothies instead and you just stand still looking confused, unable to move for those seconds-that-last-forever!
And then suddenly one of the cc breaks and you have another mad mob running for another of your friends and not you...
It was sweaty, what more can I say... (or maybe I just was a bit rusty in my tanking reflexes...)
Bosses
The first boss, Selin Fireheart, is on a platform with some crystals on it. Make sure everyone is in the room before you engage him, because the sudden appearance of a crystal door will bar everyone outside from coming in.
Its a simple tank and spank fight, he draws energy from the crystals at intervals and then you have to destroy the crystals asap.
The second boss, Vexallus, is like the Curator fight. He spawns adds that needs to be taken down asap, otherwise its a pretty simple fight-
Third boss, Priestess Delrissa, has 4 random thugs accompanying her. The Priestess heals her friends a lot and needs to be taken down fast.
The shaman thug, Apoko, purges the beneficial spells that your party have, so be aware and reapply if you really need them.
The warlock thug, Ellrys Duskshallow, and the naga warrior, Warlord Salaris, fears and if you haven't cleared the room you will probably draw another pack if this happens. On my second run here, when I tanked, we had 2 shamans who both put down Tremor Totems to remove the fears, but if you don't have that its advisable to clear all first, since the fight is pretty chaotic and you may have to run around a little.
All the mini-bosses are immune to taunt.
The fourth boss, Kael'thas Sunstrider himself, summons a phoenix that does AoE damage and needs to be kited away from the party. When the phoenix dies the egg that he lays must be destroyed or a new phoenix will be born.
He then makes you all come afloat in the air, tethered to him by some umbilical cord-lookalike, and sends purple orbs of arcane damage flying around you. Stay away from the orbs but if it's clear around the boss swim down and hurt him. Be careful, if you touch the ground you bounce right back up and might hit and orb. Otherwise ranged dps is very good here.
After a while he tires of keeping you all afloat and needs to rest a little, but then its up in the air again. This continues till he is dead.
And this is the only boss that drops an epic item in normal mode! On my first run he dropped Gloves of Arcane Acuity for our warlock and on the second Hauberk of the War Bringer for our enhancement shaman. Gratz, guys!
Monday, March 24, 2008
Epiphany: Totem placement
Muhahaha I just discovered something! Your totems are always placed in the same spot relative your own position when you cast them.
I was in IF fiddling around with my new addon Totem Timers when I realised that no matter which the casting order was, they were always placed in the same way!
The Fire totem is to your front left, the Earth to your front right, the Air behind you to your left and the Water behind you to your right.
If you want to place all totems on top of each other you have to turn between each cast.
(Maybe not ground breaking news, but it was an aha-thing for me ;P)
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Larue
So you play Alliance. So you are a wow-nerd. So TBC hits and of course you pick up you pre-ordered copy as soon as the shops open. And after you have explored the new world a little with your lvl 60's, what do you do?
Why, you roll a draenei shaman of course, the one class denied the Alliance for so long.
And I did. Larue came as far as about lvl 10 and then I didn't play her for a long time. A looong time.
I pulled her out of hibernation some months ago and played her occassionally. After I quit raiding recently I have been mostly lvling my alts and Larue is currently lvl 56, going for Outland as soon as she can.
I did all the new quests in Azuremyst and Bloodmyst Isle, moved on to Darkshore and Ashenvale but when she was about lvl 30 I went to Teldrassil and did all the noob night elf quests to get as much rep with rep with Darnassus as possible. Why? Well, she would be lvl 40 soon and get her first mount and I did not want an elekk. Clumsy looking, a little pathetic, my heart feels a little sorry for them, but I did not want to have to look at a huge purple butt all the time when Larue was riding around.
And at the tender lvl of 38 or so Larue was Exalted with Darnassus. Besides the areas mentioned above there are some quests in Desolace that give Darnassus rep. So when she dinged 40 she went straight to the night elf capital and bought herself a shiny white Frostsabre. Happy Larue!
(Getting a mount always makes me happy, no matter that I have so many chars and have bought so many mounts, its always a happy feeling reaching that milestone :-)
Talents
Larue lvled with a very random spec, talent points placed without any particular plan, but at 40 she specced Enhancement. Windfury Weapons, Lightning bolt, Stormstrike, Eartshock, pew pew, mob dead in a crackling display of Nature damage.
I have not yet tried Elemental, but am thinking of doing that after she's been in Outland for a while. And at 70 if not before, I think I will go Resto. I enjoy healing with my priest and the shaman way of healing seems very interesting.
Professions
Larue stared out as a jewelcrafter and miner, but since I had 375 JC on Jools when I started playing Larue for real I switched her to skinning and leatherworkig, figuring I could make her some nice leather gear to wear, especially at the later levels.
Current goals
Well, she actually has only one current goal atm:
- Ding 58 and hit Outland ;P
Also a goal, although not measurable like the one above, is to explore the different specs available to the shaman and become more proficient in all of them. It is still a little of a mystery to me, especially when to use what totem.
Armory link for Larue
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Jools
Fourth one out was Jools, the Night Elf priest. There seemed to be a perpetual shortage of healers, so I figured a priest could be useful. Ironically though, she levelled by solo playing and a heavy Discipline spec, moved into Shadow at around 67 and never really turned to the healing way until she had been 70 for quite a while.
I did do some talent reshuffling at around 65 or so, when I went as far down the Holy tree as the Spirit of Redemption, and about this time I was asked to heal in a pug for one of the Auchindoun dungeons. I reluctantly agreed, telling them I was Disc specced and not used to healing, but they didn’t heed my warnings…
It was a rather messy pug, seemed like all dps wanted to have a target of their own and not let the tank build aggro and such things, and of course I failed miserably at both staying alive and keeping the rest alive. Spreading my heals over the entire group created so much healing aggro that the mobs went straight for my little made-of-glass elf priest and smashed her to pieces. And when she died the blue-white angel appeared and I watched the rest of the group go down. As we ran back to the instance one of the party members kindly asked me “You do know you can heal while in angel form, right?”. Eeh, right, of course I do. Now I do. Thank you for reminding me of this…
The Disc spec is not that bad for healing, really, and I think if I had been doing this today it wouldn’t have been as catastrophic as it was then, I have a lot more of healing practice and more tuned reflexes now (and I have read some of the excellent articles of the Egotistical Priest, which gave me a lot more confidence in my healing). Still, that run deterred me from trying to heal for a long time.
Talents
Like I said, Jools is truly madly deeply Holy now, she even has the 41-pt talent Circle of Healing even though she is currently not raiding anymore, but I really love that one. I miss the Improved Divine Spirit and the Reflective Shield from the Disc Tree but the fun although questionable usefulness of Circle of Healing is too good to pass.
I really enjoyed her stint in the Shadow Tree as well, and may go back to that someday. Not for survivability or damage, she is pretty tough on her own as she is, Holy in her max spell damage gear, but just for a change, maybe for some BG weekend or something.
She is Exalted with the Scryers for the neat shoulder enchant, Greater Inscription of the Oracle, and she is working her way to Exalted with many, many, many other factions...
Professions
Jools started out as an enchanter and miner, and she spent much of her levelling solo grinding rep with different factions for their enchanting recipes, like Timbermaw, Thorium Brotherhood
Unlike many of my fellow enchanters, I didn’t find the skilling up that much of a pain and she maxed it out at 375 just a few weeks after hitting 70 if I recall correctly.
At level 51 or so I dropped mining, got her trained in Jewelcrafting and powerleveled that to 300 or so in a week. Expensive, expensive, expensive... She had about 2 k gold that she had made selling enchantment mats and I blew them all skilling up that JC of hers, and I didn’t even get it maxed out! But after a few more weeks of Jewelcrafting she did reach 375 and started collecting those damn expensive designs.
Current goals
Jools was a faction rep grinder to start with and she still is, since many of the sweet designs and formulas require Exalted status.
- About 13 k more rep to get Exalted with the Sha’tar for the Threat on gloves enchant
- About 18 k more rep to get Exalted with Honor Hold for the Subtlety on back enchant
- About 12 k more rep to get Exalted with the Violet Eye for the Agility on weapon enchant
- About 15 k more rep to get Exalted with the Keepers of Time for the Agility on gloves enchant
- About 15 k more rep to get Exalted with the Consortium for the Agility meta gem
- And of course collect Badges of Justice...
Like Tessy, Jools does not yet have an epic flier and I sure would like to get her one, but my gold farming has been on hold lately and with one char just dinged 60 (Dizzie) and another coming up there real soon (Larue) my gold is currently going to epic riders for them instead of fast birds for my 70’s.
Might be just as well, because I still haven’t decided which kind of bird she will have – Joaquime has her pretty purple flight form, Paynne has her green Nether Ray, and Tessy will have a Blue or Red Swift Gryphon. I was thinking of maybe a Cenarion War Hippogryph for Jools, but that will add one more rep grind to her already very long list…
Armory link for Jools
(She may be logged out in her spell damage gear)
Update - mind-numbing grind
Dizzie is now 850/12000 Revered with the Wintersabre Trainers!
She has unlocked the third quest, the Rampaging Giants, and done it once. I don't see her doing it many more times though, since the ride down to the far south of Winterspring takes a while and you have to kill (at least) 8 lvl 59-60 Elite Giants. Easily doable solo for a lvl 61 Fury Warrior with some new green Outland gear sure, but it still takes a lot of time.
She has abandoned her first plan of only doing the Winterfall Intrusion quest, and does the Frostsaber Provisions quest as well. The drop rate of the quest items still suck, and the mobs themselves rarely drop anything useful, but killing them gives xp and it feels so much better to turn both the quests in and get 500 rep per visit to Rivern than running back and forth and just get 250.
Also, sometimes you have to wait for respawns of the Winterfall Shamans or Ursas because someone else has been there killing them, and you might as well have something useful to do while you wait.
An unforeseen bonus of killing bears and chimaeras for the Provisions quest was also that there are quite a few veins of Thorium around in Winterspring, which she never would have discovered taking the fastest route between the Winterfall Village and Frostsabre Rock all the time. Thanks to this, she has now managed to level her mining to 315 and her engineering to 325!
So, while there still is about 32 more hours of grind to do, it actually seems doable now!
Pretty pink tiger, here I come!
Related post: The most mind-numbing grind ever?
Friday, March 14, 2008
The third char I made was my little gnome warlock Paynne. I wanted to call her Pain, figured that would be a good name for a warlock, but it was not available so after some fiddling around with alternate spellings I named her Paynne.
Gnomes are by far the cutest race in WoW in my opinion. Especially the spellcasters, the mages and the warlocks, they look so small and about as deadly as little bunnies... but woe thee who haven't seen Monthy Pyton's the Holy Grail and know the deadliness of bunnies...;P
As most people know, warlocks have it dead easy getting their first mount, the Felsteed, and then a lot harder getting their epic land mount, the Dreadsteed. (Hey! Other races only have to farm gold to be able to buy their epic mount, a warlock has to do a long expensive difficult chain quest to get that fiery horse :-)
Sadly enough, there are no special flying mounts for warlocks, so Paynne had to settle for an Ebon Gryphon as her first flier but then she went off and grinded rep with Sha'tari Skyguard to get a Green Nether Ray, which is also kind of cool-looking.
Professions
Tailoring seemed to be a good choice for a cloth wearer, but there was no obvious counterpart to it like skinning-leatherworking or mining-blacksmithing, so I chose mining for her second profession.
Since Joaquime is a druid and herbalist and perpetually out of bag space, Paynne got herself Friendly with Cenarion Circle so she could make the Cenarion Herb Bag and then Revered with the same for the Satchel of Cenarius - very handy for Joaq when she's out herbing.
She is a Shadowcloth specialist and made the pretty Shadow's Embrace set for herself as a ding-70 gift.
She also got Exalted with the Scryers to be able to make Runic Spellthread and for that nice shoulder enchant Greater Inscription of the Orb.
Talents
Paynne levelled as Destruction or Affliction up to about 50, when she respecced to Demonology to try out the new Felguard. She's been Demo ever since, with some respeccs shuffles for raiding.
Current goals
- Get Revered with the Sha'tar for the Glyph of Power.
- Get some honor and BG marks to replace some of her blue gear (not sure which should go first, and I think I'll just farm honor for a while since the rumours of S2 being released soon is getting more frequent)
- Maybe grind the last few k to Exalted with Ogri'la as well for the Crystal Orb of Enlightenment (but this will require me to replace her Staff of Infinite Mysteries with a one-hander)
Armory link for Paynne
Monday, March 10, 2008
Joaquime was my second WoW char, and I made her basically because I wanted some Elixir of Defense for Tessy to make Toughened Leather Gloves, and research showed that this elixir was made by Alchemists.
So I needed an Alchemist.
Lo and Behold, enter Joaqime, my pretty sneaky cuddly druid.
Btw, it is pronunced the frenchy way, with a sh-sound and the emphasis on the second syllable and a silent e in the end. At least, this is how I pronounce it, and I made up the name, so I get to call the shots on how to say it ;P
So, questions like "What professions should I choose?" out of the way (Herbalism sort of being the natural choice to go with Alchemistry because I needed the herbs to make the elixir), it was time to learn to play a druid.
It was a bit difficult getting the hang of when to use what skills (Root a mob and the shift into bear to fight another? Too many mobs - shift into Travel form an run away like the wind?), but I soon realised that the versatility of the druid was pretty amazing.
And they could stealth, one of the absolutely best abilities in the game. After having fought your way into that maze-like cave to get that special quest item, it's pretty neat to just prowl your way back out instead of the usual kill-all-scenario, and then you can get yourself some well-earned kittycat rest.
My "farming alt" turned out to be very fun to play and Joaquime dinged 60 just a few weeks before TBC came out, when she got all caught up in the Honor craze preceding the release, when everyone and their grandmother was pvp'ing their arses off to get the pvp sets (pretty nice gear which became obsolete about the same time you entered Outland and got the first green quest rewards).
She was the first of my char to actually hit 70, and I have been playing her a lot.
Professions
Herbalism turned out to be a good choice for a druid, especially after you get the flight form, when you can just fly around and gather herbs without ever having to shift out. Very handy when there are nearby mobs and you don't feel like fighting them, just fly away. And absolutely imba when you get the Epic Flight Form!
And the Alchemistry was pretty neat too, I made Joaq a Master of Transmutes and she's been transmuting for herself and for her friends almost daily. And yes, that Transmute Mastery do procc occasionally. She grinded to Revered with the Sporeggar for their Primal Earth to Primal Water transmute and then she grinded to Exalted with them for the Shrouding Potion. She knows all the Primal Transmutes except Mana to Fire, which is a discovery so I think it will drop in sooner or later.
As an Alchemist, she made herself the Alchemist's Stone, for which the Transmute Mastery came in handy, and I wonder if I will have to make a new one with the reported upcoming specialised Alchemist's Stones in 2.4?
Talents
Joaq's feral to the heart, although she did level as a moonkin from the mid-60's to 70 or so. Feral with a slight slant to the Resto side, actually, since she has 19 points in that branch of her talent tree.
She's been tanking most of the bosses in the 60+ dungeons and Karazhan, she has a pretty decent catsuit, she can offheal in a pinch or range-dps the mobs down with her pretty flashing offensive spells (what can I say, she's a druid...)
Current goals
Although Joaq is feral, I find that a few of her current goals are to improve her healing set...
- Get Revered with Honor Hold for Glyph of Renewal
- Get the Idol of the Emerald Queen from the first boss in Shadow Labyrinth. Even with the announced nerf to Lifebloom in 2.4 it seems to be a good item to have.
- Collect Badges of Justice for sweet badge rewards to improve her feral gear.
Armory Link for Joaquime
(She may be logged out in gear or a form that does not properly reflect her bear tanking stats)
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Tessy
Tessy was my first char in WoW, a human female rogue and thus she started her career as a young newbie running around in Northshire Abbey.
More by chance than by actual planning she picked up Leatherworking and Skinning as her professions, and also Fishing, Cooking and First Aid.
Back then, the game was new to me and I actually spoke to every (and I do mean every) NPC I found, read all the quest texts carefully and generally explored a lot.
I was no richer than anyone else but I got lucky and looted two blue items from the spiders in Duskwood while out questing there one night, and managed to sell them at the AH for a hefty amount of gold (something like 30 gold apiece if I remember correctly). Suddenly Tessy was rich and she had no problem getting enough more gold for her mount once she dinged 40. (It must be true what they say, it isn't necessary to be rich and famous to be happy. It's only necessary to be rich ;P)
Well, to be truthful, a contributing factor to Tessy's wealth was probably my habit of getting along on quest gear or looted items. The times I bought new gear on the AH were easily counted.
I travelled all around the world to find her a Black Stallion, the vendor at the logging camp in Elwynn was out of them but I found one in Menethil Harbor. It was a happy Tessy riding around just for fun the rest of that night :-)
Tessy also was my first char to ding 60. This she did back in the old misty pre-TBC days, so she actually got to explore a bit of the end-game content there, albeit briefly, with some pugs for Molten Core and Zul'Gurub.
Never been that much of a fan of world pvp, but at 60 I discovered that pvp in Alterac Valley can be quite fun, actually. Tessy managed to get the distinguished title of Sergeant Major (rank 5 of 14) in the old honor system, which is not that bad for a type 11-pvp'er.
And when TBC hit, Tessy was my first char to go through the portal. She was not the first to ding 70 though, my druid Joaquime got the honour of doing that, but she did get there eventually.
Professions
Tessy stayed with the Leatherworking and Skinning, and spent many hours committing mass extinction on the Clefthoofs in Nagrand to skill up those last 10 points in her LW with the Heavy Clefthoof Leggings that turned yellow at 365 and Heavy Clefthoof Vest that turned yellow at 370. Ah, that was a skill-up grind of the good old hard school, not for today's weakling leatherworkers who get a truckload of easy new patterns to skill-up on.
She has maxed out her Fishing and Cooking and gathered all cooking recipes that she can lay her hands on, includng the ones for pets. Tessy's Catering, anyone?
Talents
She has been subtlety specced ever since Shadowstep was introduced, I just fell in love with that sweet talent (and it was a major disappointment that it got a little nerfed in a later patch!).
Back in the old days she was heavy into the Combat tree, but she has never really liked Assassin, so maybe it's time to try that out again.
Current goals
I haven't played Tessy very much and she could use improvement in pretty much every area, but the most prioritised would be
- Getting revered with Cenarion Expedition for the Glyph of Ferocity. Check!
- Getting 1 Primal Nether to make the Primalstrike Belt and 2 more to make the Primalstrike Vest. I will probably wait til 2.4 gets live and buy me the Nethers from the AH then, since I very rarely run a heroic with Tess. Check!
And let's not forget her epic flyer - she still doesn't have that! Only need about 5 k gold more and then she will soar through the skies!
Armory link for Tessy
Saturday, March 8, 2008
More warlock macros
I am a sucker for macros to save key space, and my warlock Paynne has quite a few of them for her most common spells.
I know there are addons and stuff like that to help out with many of these things but I like fiddling around with the macros, trying to make them work :-)
Banish
#showtooltip Banish
/focus [harm, modifier:shift]
/clearfocus [target=focus, dead]
/cast [target=focus, harm] Banish
You target the mob you want to banish and click the macro while pressing down SHIFT to set your focus to this mob and banish it, all in one click. If you just want to set the focus to be prepared, if you are not ready for the pull yet or something, just jump after you have clicked the macro to cancel the spellcasting. Click the macro again (without SHIFT) and you will Banish the focused mob, regardless if you have any other mob currently targeted, like the skull mark perhaps.
The white glow around the Infernal portrait shows that it is my current focus and pressing my macro will keep banishing him.
When the mob dies, the focus is cleared and you can chose another focus if you like.
This macro also works well when you want to Enslave something, (provided of course that you replace the Banish with Enslave Demon in the macro ;P)
Pet Attack/Follow
Have you ever had that horrible sinking feeling in your gut when you see your minion storming up to a mob with his/her axe/whip/whatever raised, pulling way too soon and maybe even wiping the group/raid? And you realise that you have accidentally clicked the wrong key, perhaps left-clicked instead of right-clicked when you were being a good warlock and turning off your Felguard's Cleave to not risk breaking any CC?
If you ever experience something like that, this might be useful to you: I have mapped the Attack and Follow commands to a macro, and placed it on my Q key for easy access.
/petfollow [target=pettarget,exists]
/petattack [target=pettarget,noexists]
Press Q once to attack, click it again to make your minion come back.
DoT
Paynne also has a macro for the most common DoT-sequence that she uses when grinding or farming
#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=combat/target Immolate, Curse of Agony, Corruption
When the target dies the castsequence resets so you always start with Immolate on a new target (or whichever DoT you want to start with).
(For some more warlock macros see my earlier post Demonic macros)
Friday, March 7, 2008
The most mind-numbing grind ever
Do you know what this is?
This is a Frostaber Mount, purchasable by those who are Exalted with the Wintersaber Trainers in Winterspring.
I just know Dizzie would look so cool on a mount like this, the pink and lavender stripes of the tiger matching her pink pigtails just beautifully.
As the avid readers know Dizzie went through the portal to Outland at the tender level of 58. She picked up some quests, set out to do them and died. And she died. And she died again. And again. Her aggro range seemed to cover all of Hellfire Peninsula and she could hardly take down one mob on her own, let alone two or more.
On closer inspection, her gear was perhaps not all that up to date, her pretty blue Knight's Cloak of the Bear was for lvl 29, her cool Herod’s Shoulder for lvl 37, and so on.
I called out for help and my husband came to the rescue. With his help Dizzie managed to finish the quests, get some new green imba gear, double her HP and AP and ding 59 in about an hour and a half.
She headed back to the old world then, figuring she could do some easy questing there now that she was a little better equipped. She had a lot of unfinished quests in Winterspring, so she set course to the snowy north.
And there, surrounded by pink-purple hostile tigers, on a huge cliff shaped like an inverted fang, she found Rivern Frostwind, Wintersaber Trainer, and the Wintersaber Mounts. And she knew she just had to have one of those.
What can I say? A pink-haired girl’s gotta have a pink-furred mount, right? (Yeye I know it's lavender, but it's still pink-ish)
The only way to get rep with this small faction is to do the quests they offer. You start at 0/3000 Neutral and there is one quest available – Frostsaber Provisions. You have to kill Shardtooth bears for 5 Shardtooth Meat and Chillwind chimaeras for 5 Chillwind Meat. The droprate is horrendous, it must be something like 20%. The meats don’t drop unless you have the quest, and once you have the 5 meats required they don’t drop no more until you turn the q in and take it again. The mobs rarely drop anything useful but a lot of Big Bear Bones that won’t stack and thus takes a lot of space in your bags, and Dizzie is a miner/engineer and can’t skin the damn dead carcasses.
Anyways, this quest gives 250 rep per turn-in.
After having done the Frostsaber Provisions 6 times and reached 1500/3000 Neutral another quest opens up – Winterfall Intrusion. This quests asks you to kill 5 Shamans and 5 Ursas in the Winterfall village east of Everlook, it’s repeatable and gives 250 rep per turn-in.
If you have done the quest Winterfall Activity killing the Winterfall mobs will also give you rep with Timbermaw Hold.
By this time Dizzie had dinged 60 as well and flown off to Dun Morogh to get her a Swift Yellow Mechanostrider. The epic rider made the trips between Frostsaber Rock and Winterfall Village a little faster, and she was not as often thrown of her mount while trying to avoid the numerous mobs littering the area.
She skipped doing the Frostsaber Provisions q because of the bad droprate and concentrated on killing furbolgs. A completion of the Winterfall Intrusion quest can be done in about ten minutes if there are no other distractions or obstacles, like a thorium node that needs to be mined, bag space that needs to be freed, or having to wait around for respawns because someone else has killed the mobs you need.
Dizzie is currently at 1000/6000 Friendly and research shows that another quest that gives 350 rep will open up at Honored. However, that quest requires riding down to the south part of Winterspring to kill some elite giants there, and I think the rep grind it will be faster if I skip this. Will probably do it once in a while, just to alleviate the possible boredom of doing what was referred to as the most mind-numbingly grind ever found in WoW.
So, if I only do the furbolg-killing quest, ECT (estimated completion time) of the rep grind will be about 42 hours in total, 3 of which I have done, 38 of which I have left to do. If you think this is insane, consider that before TBC these quests only gave 50 rep per turn-in, making the ECT to something like 5 times longer, or about 200 hours.
Dizzie will also have the benefit of the better Outland gear she’s wearing and the increasing level difference between her and the mobs will make them easier to kill or avoid, so it won’t be too bad I think. I hope.
I don’t have to worry about gearing her up either since a sweet friend gave her a surprise gift consisting of the full Fel Iron set, complete with two Fel Iron Hatchets, enchanted with Fiery Weapon, for her Dual Wield.
This is a grind best done while watching Lost or some other TV-show (laptop ftw!) to avoid death by acute boredom or broken windows from the computer-hurled-through-it-syndrome and I will definitely try to do it while rested so she at least gets some xp out of it.
These 152 quest turn-ins I have left to do will give about 760 k xp (1 520 mobs x ~500 xp/mob rested bonus) which will mean that Dizzie will get her pretty pink tiger at about level 62.
And then she will be as ready for Outland as she can be!
(As a curiosity, the Winterspring Frostsaber seems to be the only epic land mount that only requires 70 riding skill.)
Saturday, March 1, 2008
The Top Orc
Yesterday my husband defeated Captain Skyshatter and became the Top Orc. He got himself the pilot's wings of the Dragonmaw, the Skybreaker Whip, and I am just so proud of him.
He did his first race against that damned elusive Captain Skyshatter more than a week ago now, and he has been swearing and cursing for many days now when he's been thrown off his gryphon-in-disguise in various stages of the chase, accompanied by the demoralizing da-dong sound of quest failure, but he never gave up. And he beat him without having a Riding Crop equipped!
Four (four!) times he has gotten so far that he has actually finished the race laps and landed on the air strip, but just a fraction of a second too late after Skyshatter and the quest failed.
By now he probably knows the exact route of the race, where there are possible shortcuts to shave some milliseconds of your flying time, places where it's safe to be ahead of Skyshatter and where you had better be real close to him to avoid failing because the distance to him got too large.
So when I suddenly heard a joyful shout instead of the usual muttering I knew something good was up. And, yes, indeed it was:
Even the former Dragonmaw champ had to admit it in public...
And of course there was some rep gains and gold to be had as well:
Way to go, love! I am so happy for you! <3!
I wish I had your patience and single-minded determination in cases like this (I still haven't defeated Ichmann, I stopped trying when I got revered with Netherwing and got me the Commander's Badge). But who knows, maybe I'll pick it up again one day and I will become the Top Orc too :-)
For you out there with more patience than me, check out this video or others on youtube of how other's have defeated Skyshatter. Seems like it's easiest to memorize the race course and stay ahead of him as much as possible.
