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)
