Last night was a big night for me. For starters, I finally finished up the last of my holiday achievements (Midsummer Festival) and earning the achievement "What a Long, Strange Trip it's been". Oh, and that achievement came with a beautiful, shiny violet proto-drake.
Which now put me up to 99 mounts, and I knew if I just got one more I'd get the achievement "Mountain O' Mounts". I'd been doing the argent crusade dailies to get all the mounts, but I realized this would take several weeks. 5 mounts at 100 champion's seals each, and I can only earn ~15 seals a day doing all the dailies. It's a long-term goal. But I wanted another mount NOW!
So I went and dropped 15k gold on a mechano-hog. It put me below 100k (NOOOO) but man, this thing is sweet! It's so much more badass than the goblin trike, and it does this awesome bounce animation when you jump on it. AND it has a side-car! I gave some lowbie friends a ride in it and they loved it!
Getting the mechano-hog put me up to 100 mounts, which awarded the achievement and as a reward, the red dragonhawk mount as well. While it's a pretty mount to look at, I hate actually flying on the dragonhawk. It does this bizarre up-and-down motion that gives me a headache.
Anyways, all this achieving actually put me on top of the achievement point leaderboard in our guild! I'm kind of amazed that I'm the nerdiest person out of an entire guild full of nerdy people...I'm not sure if I like it at the top.
Friday, June 24, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
This is how noobs do it
It's so funny, the things I hear sometimes when I give advice to other players. I mean, I understand that not everyone MUST think exactly the way I do, but like, some things just don't seem like common sense to anybody's mind.
Take my husband, for instance. Despite having played the game for 2 years now, he is quite noobish at times. He has a morbid terror of putting points into the wrong talent. Every time he gets a new point he will go online and look up the most popular spec before spending that point. Or worse, he will hold onto several points until he's had time to do this research. He's level 50-something, a point in the game where it really isn't that big of a deal where your talents go into. Yes, it matters a lot more than when you were level 20. But it's not going to make or break your character in any way, you know? Might I also remind you that you can re-spec at any time? Like, when you hit 85, maybe? The first time you respec it costs like 30 silver, and the maximum you pay for a respec is only like 35g, I believe. That's not a lot of money.
Then yesterday, I noticed a friend on his new DK with 0 talent points. I pointed this out, having done a similar thing myself (when they reset points for cata, I forgot about my DK and played her with 0 talents, thinking, "why are things taking so long to die???"). His excuse was that he didn't want to commit to a spec without doing the research first. My response was, of course, ???? Seriously, it takes all of 15 seconds to fill up your talent tree. Even if they're the shittiest talents, your dps and survivability will improve 100%.
Well there I go again, sounding like an elitist asshole. My point is that, I just don't get why people are so afraid of this. Maybe they're still stuck in Diablo mode where you couldn't re-do your talent trees and so you had to get it right the first time. Yes, I will scratch my head and go "huh?" if you have a weird talent tree. But trust me, it's much worse to have no talent tree. It's like gimping yourself for no good reason when it's 1. completely reversible, 2. helps you level faster, and most importantly, 3. helps you learn that class all the better.
My approach to talents is pretty simple. Some good general guidelines to follow are:
1. Anything that boosts the damage (or healing if you're a healer and mitigation if you're a tank) of an ability you use frequently is good. ie, things like Improved Shadow Word: Pain, Improved Sinister Strike, etc. Make sure to max out these talents, but ONLY if it's an ability you use frequently. If it's some pvp talent you'll never use, don't waste points in them.
2. Distinguish between pvp and pve talents. If you plan on pvp-ing, use your secondary spec. Don't try to combine pve and pvp in one spec because you'll suck at both. Talents that reduce CC effects on you are almost certainly pvp talents. Other talents that are not exactly for your role (ie, damage reduction for anything but a tank, increased speed effects for ranged DPS) are also more or less pvp talents. Some trees have more of these talents than others, and they are generally THE pvp talent tree of choice. Trust me, you'll never see a subtlety rogue in a raid. If you do, he is terribad.
3. Talents that increase your core stats such as agility, stamina, critical strike, hit rating etc, are almost always worth the points. Obviously if you're a mage you odn't want increased stamina, but a talent like Piercing Ice - improves the critical strike chance of all your spells by 3% - that's fantastic. Especially since frost mages have some spectacular crit chances.
4. Max out your talents! If a talent gives you 2% increased damage/healing/stam per point, MAX IT OUT! Don't just stick 1 point here and 1 point there. The effects scale non-linearly, and you'll get a much greater benefit from maxing out a good talent over spreading it out over different ones. The only exception to this is if you're trying to max out a tier so you can put points into a different tier. If you just need 1 more point in something to get to the next tier, then by all means invest it in something without maxing it out. Or after filling out all your trees you only have a couple points left, stick it in the most useful talent you can find without worrying about maxing that talent. You can't, you have no more points.
When I level I just fill out my own talent trees using these guidelines, and most often when I compare them with the "optimum spec", there is very little difference. Another thing to remember is that the optimum spec you find on the internet might not be suited to you for whatever reason. If you can do your job well, no one will say "lol why do you have 2 points in this talent instead of 3". Maybe you're not interested in hardcore raiding and want to farm low level dungeons. By all means, spec for that purpose. Maybe you want to do arenas exclusively with a certain group composition, by all means spec to suit that specific group.
It's really not the end of the world to put a point into the wrong talent. It is good to research so that your leveling pace is faster and you can learn your class better. But really, this morbid fear of speccing incorrectly is quite beyond my comprehension.
Take my husband, for instance. Despite having played the game for 2 years now, he is quite noobish at times. He has a morbid terror of putting points into the wrong talent. Every time he gets a new point he will go online and look up the most popular spec before spending that point. Or worse, he will hold onto several points until he's had time to do this research. He's level 50-something, a point in the game where it really isn't that big of a deal where your talents go into. Yes, it matters a lot more than when you were level 20. But it's not going to make or break your character in any way, you know? Might I also remind you that you can re-spec at any time? Like, when you hit 85, maybe? The first time you respec it costs like 30 silver, and the maximum you pay for a respec is only like 35g, I believe. That's not a lot of money.
Then yesterday, I noticed a friend on his new DK with 0 talent points. I pointed this out, having done a similar thing myself (when they reset points for cata, I forgot about my DK and played her with 0 talents, thinking, "why are things taking so long to die???"). His excuse was that he didn't want to commit to a spec without doing the research first. My response was, of course, ???? Seriously, it takes all of 15 seconds to fill up your talent tree. Even if they're the shittiest talents, your dps and survivability will improve 100%.
Well there I go again, sounding like an elitist asshole. My point is that, I just don't get why people are so afraid of this. Maybe they're still stuck in Diablo mode where you couldn't re-do your talent trees and so you had to get it right the first time. Yes, I will scratch my head and go "huh?" if you have a weird talent tree. But trust me, it's much worse to have no talent tree. It's like gimping yourself for no good reason when it's 1. completely reversible, 2. helps you level faster, and most importantly, 3. helps you learn that class all the better.
My approach to talents is pretty simple. Some good general guidelines to follow are:
1. Anything that boosts the damage (or healing if you're a healer and mitigation if you're a tank) of an ability you use frequently is good. ie, things like Improved Shadow Word: Pain, Improved Sinister Strike, etc. Make sure to max out these talents, but ONLY if it's an ability you use frequently. If it's some pvp talent you'll never use, don't waste points in them.
2. Distinguish between pvp and pve talents. If you plan on pvp-ing, use your secondary spec. Don't try to combine pve and pvp in one spec because you'll suck at both. Talents that reduce CC effects on you are almost certainly pvp talents. Other talents that are not exactly for your role (ie, damage reduction for anything but a tank, increased speed effects for ranged DPS) are also more or less pvp talents. Some trees have more of these talents than others, and they are generally THE pvp talent tree of choice. Trust me, you'll never see a subtlety rogue in a raid. If you do, he is terribad.
3. Talents that increase your core stats such as agility, stamina, critical strike, hit rating etc, are almost always worth the points. Obviously if you're a mage you odn't want increased stamina, but a talent like Piercing Ice - improves the critical strike chance of all your spells by 3% - that's fantastic. Especially since frost mages have some spectacular crit chances.
4. Max out your talents! If a talent gives you 2% increased damage/healing/stam per point, MAX IT OUT! Don't just stick 1 point here and 1 point there. The effects scale non-linearly, and you'll get a much greater benefit from maxing out a good talent over spreading it out over different ones. The only exception to this is if you're trying to max out a tier so you can put points into a different tier. If you just need 1 more point in something to get to the next tier, then by all means invest it in something without maxing it out. Or after filling out all your trees you only have a couple points left, stick it in the most useful talent you can find without worrying about maxing that talent. You can't, you have no more points.
When I level I just fill out my own talent trees using these guidelines, and most often when I compare them with the "optimum spec", there is very little difference. Another thing to remember is that the optimum spec you find on the internet might not be suited to you for whatever reason. If you can do your job well, no one will say "lol why do you have 2 points in this talent instead of 3". Maybe you're not interested in hardcore raiding and want to farm low level dungeons. By all means, spec for that purpose. Maybe you want to do arenas exclusively with a certain group composition, by all means spec to suit that specific group.
It's really not the end of the world to put a point into the wrong talent. It is good to research so that your leveling pace is faster and you can learn your class better. But really, this morbid fear of speccing incorrectly is quite beyond my comprehension.
Monday, June 13, 2011
I'm HEALIN over here!
Get it? It's the line from Midnight Cowboy. I didn't know how to quite capture a New Yorker accent in terms of spelling...
Yes, I've been furiously leveling a healer for our little 4-man party of me, my husband and 2 RL friends. I started out with a druid who mainly just sat around most of the time except for healing a dungeon once a week. Recently our friend the tank decided to go DPS so my husband took up the responsibility and leveled a warrior. I told him when we started, "pick a hybrid in case one of them wants to switch". I mean, that's why I rolled a druid and lugged around 2 completely different sets of gear...but no, he just had to play a hunter. Well, now he was rolling a warrior. A little goblin warrior at that.
Partly to keep him company and to keep him motivated on his grueling sojourn, I rolled a new priest alt. Our friends were well into 40s, almost pushing 50s when we started our alts. And I'm amazed that we actually made it to our goal - level 50 in a week. It was a goal that we joked about as we donned every heirloom we could get and began our trek, him starting out in Kezan and working his way through Kalimdor and me tackling on the Eastern Kingdoms from Silverpine to Hillsbrad to Hinterlands. Level 10, 20, 30, and 40 rolled by in a matter of hours as I chain-completed quests and dungeons.
One thing I noticed about playing a shadow priest is that it's a lot like my warlock. My lock rotation was usually: curse, bane, life drain x 2-3 until dead, and shadow bolt when it procs. With the Spriest, it's the same deal: devouring plague, shadow word, mind flay x 2-3 until dead and mind blast when you proc shadow orbs. My damage output was very good except for the fact that I was going oom. Constantly. When leveling I was sitting down to drink pretty often which was alright, but in dungeons it was a problem. Sometimes my que would pop as DPS and I would spend the whole dungeon struggling to get mana regen, resorting even to wanding to sustain at least some semblance of DPS. Finally I figured out I can get mana back by using shadow word: death and that vastly improved matters.
Last night I healed Zul Farrak and about half of Blackrock Depth, which was a lot of fun. ZF was pretty easy and I actually healed part of it in shadow spec because there was hardly any incoming damage. The mobs in BRD was the perfect difficulty level for our 4 man group. The tank was taking enough damage where I wasn't just sitting around twiddling my thumbs, but not so much that I was struggling to keep up.
I do have to say that threat generation seems to be a constant problem. I don't know if it's a problem with the DPS or with the tank, but sometimes it felt like literally healing 3 tanks. The DPS were constantly getting bashed by mobs and eating a lot of damage. It was fine with the pally DPS, what with wearing plate and all, but when a rogue is trying to tank, it makes for a headache. Luckily we had no serious problems, and it actually kept me busy without draining my mana too much.
I can definitely start to see the side of healing everyone gripes about, which is that it's more or less a thankless job. Everyone's too focused on DPS meters to realize that while they're off killing something, the healer is sometimes sweating bullets pumping out heals. People end up pulling an entire room and say "oh we're doing fine" and that's kind of a big weight on your shoulders as a healer. And when people die you feel like you didn't do a good job. It's definitely stressful, though in my opinion tanking is more stressful when you're dealing with DPS who like to pull threat. Unless you're a pally who can drop consecration every time, aoe threat is pretty difficult especially at low levels.
All in all, I'm enjoying healing and BRD was quite fun. That place is freaking huge though! There's no way any group can get that done in less than 3 hours. Split that shit up!
Yes, I've been furiously leveling a healer for our little 4-man party of me, my husband and 2 RL friends. I started out with a druid who mainly just sat around most of the time except for healing a dungeon once a week. Recently our friend the tank decided to go DPS so my husband took up the responsibility and leveled a warrior. I told him when we started, "pick a hybrid in case one of them wants to switch". I mean, that's why I rolled a druid and lugged around 2 completely different sets of gear...but no, he just had to play a hunter. Well, now he was rolling a warrior. A little goblin warrior at that.
Partly to keep him company and to keep him motivated on his grueling sojourn, I rolled a new priest alt. Our friends were well into 40s, almost pushing 50s when we started our alts. And I'm amazed that we actually made it to our goal - level 50 in a week. It was a goal that we joked about as we donned every heirloom we could get and began our trek, him starting out in Kezan and working his way through Kalimdor and me tackling on the Eastern Kingdoms from Silverpine to Hillsbrad to Hinterlands. Level 10, 20, 30, and 40 rolled by in a matter of hours as I chain-completed quests and dungeons.
One thing I noticed about playing a shadow priest is that it's a lot like my warlock. My lock rotation was usually: curse, bane, life drain x 2-3 until dead, and shadow bolt when it procs. With the Spriest, it's the same deal: devouring plague, shadow word, mind flay x 2-3 until dead and mind blast when you proc shadow orbs. My damage output was very good except for the fact that I was going oom. Constantly. When leveling I was sitting down to drink pretty often which was alright, but in dungeons it was a problem. Sometimes my que would pop as DPS and I would spend the whole dungeon struggling to get mana regen, resorting even to wanding to sustain at least some semblance of DPS. Finally I figured out I can get mana back by using shadow word: death and that vastly improved matters.
Last night I healed Zul Farrak and about half of Blackrock Depth, which was a lot of fun. ZF was pretty easy and I actually healed part of it in shadow spec because there was hardly any incoming damage. The mobs in BRD was the perfect difficulty level for our 4 man group. The tank was taking enough damage where I wasn't just sitting around twiddling my thumbs, but not so much that I was struggling to keep up.
I do have to say that threat generation seems to be a constant problem. I don't know if it's a problem with the DPS or with the tank, but sometimes it felt like literally healing 3 tanks. The DPS were constantly getting bashed by mobs and eating a lot of damage. It was fine with the pally DPS, what with wearing plate and all, but when a rogue is trying to tank, it makes for a headache. Luckily we had no serious problems, and it actually kept me busy without draining my mana too much.
I can definitely start to see the side of healing everyone gripes about, which is that it's more or less a thankless job. Everyone's too focused on DPS meters to realize that while they're off killing something, the healer is sometimes sweating bullets pumping out heals. People end up pulling an entire room and say "oh we're doing fine" and that's kind of a big weight on your shoulders as a healer. And when people die you feel like you didn't do a good job. It's definitely stressful, though in my opinion tanking is more stressful when you're dealing with DPS who like to pull threat. Unless you're a pally who can drop consecration every time, aoe threat is pretty difficult especially at low levels.
All in all, I'm enjoying healing and BRD was quite fun. That place is freaking huge though! There's no way any group can get that done in less than 3 hours. Split that shit up!
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Anxiety Attack
We recruited some RL friends to wow and they've been steadily leveling their characters. And I have to admit I feel like such a nosy jerk/elitist whenever I check my friends' armory profiles.
Of course my first impulse when they started was to give them all the advice I could on how to play their class, learn mechanics, acronyms, gear and stats, etc etc. I've been trying my damn hardest not to give TOO much information right off the bat though. I know it can be completely overwhelming given how vast and complex wow can be. I also know that there are things you shouldn't worry about learning before you hit max level since you will pick it up eventually anyways. But there's that part of me that feels like a mother hen watching the baby chicks venture out of the nest for the first time and I feel so goddamn worried!
Like, what if some big bad ally ganks them? What if they accidentally vendor an item that's worth a lot of money? What if they choose the wrong gear? What if they do a random dungeon and get called noobs for not knowing how to play?
I'm mainly worried about the last item. I would hate for my friends to get cussed out in a random dungeon for not knowing how to play! People in dungeons these days are such asshats as it is, and low level dungeons are especially bad since no one even pays attention to any mechanics anymore.
One thing that bothers me to no end is that my nooby friends don't seem to know what stats are important on gear. The last time I checked everything seemed in order, but when they first started...it nearly gave me a heart attack to see a rogue decked out in half spirit/int gear and a paladin equipping a stam/int piece over a stam/str piece. "But it has more armor..." they said to me. "Armor is useless unless you're tanking!" And yet I'd see them rolling need on something that has 2 more armor but 10 less of a stat they need, and saying "woohoo an upgrade!".
Am I being a obsessive elitist bastard? You bet I am. But I'm just so worried because the biggest source of contention in this game is over loot. If my friends were to walk into a random and inadvertently ninja something from another class that rightfully needs it, the drama and cussing and harassment that will ensue is just...too ugly to think about. Plus, you see people in level 85 dungeons ninja-ing shit all the time - do they do it because they're just assholes or do they seriously not know what's good for their class? I don't want my friends to end up like one of those clueless dipshits that everyone cusses at.
Oh god, and their talent trees. Every time I see it I would scowl as if in pain. 1 point into every single talent in a tier...points in pvp talents...skipping all the crucial talents...
I did point them towards elitist jerks, and it seems like they've ironed out the kinks for the most part. But when I used to look at their butchered and mangled talent trees, some part of my soul would weep.
Am I taking this game too seriously? I think so.
I've been coping by remembering that when I first started, I did more than my fair share of nooby things. I used to think stam was the most important stat and would stack it above agi. I used to have a fast main hand and a slow off hand. I used to spend all my gold on potions and only use them for healing (ever heard of eating?). Le sigh.
I just have to remember that knowledge comes in due time. It's nice to have a friend holding your hand but really the best lessons are perhaps the ones you learn the hard way - eg, getting screamed at by some douche in a dungeon.
Of course my first impulse when they started was to give them all the advice I could on how to play their class, learn mechanics, acronyms, gear and stats, etc etc. I've been trying my damn hardest not to give TOO much information right off the bat though. I know it can be completely overwhelming given how vast and complex wow can be. I also know that there are things you shouldn't worry about learning before you hit max level since you will pick it up eventually anyways. But there's that part of me that feels like a mother hen watching the baby chicks venture out of the nest for the first time and I feel so goddamn worried!
Like, what if some big bad ally ganks them? What if they accidentally vendor an item that's worth a lot of money? What if they choose the wrong gear? What if they do a random dungeon and get called noobs for not knowing how to play?
I'm mainly worried about the last item. I would hate for my friends to get cussed out in a random dungeon for not knowing how to play! People in dungeons these days are such asshats as it is, and low level dungeons are especially bad since no one even pays attention to any mechanics anymore.
One thing that bothers me to no end is that my nooby friends don't seem to know what stats are important on gear. The last time I checked everything seemed in order, but when they first started...it nearly gave me a heart attack to see a rogue decked out in half spirit/int gear and a paladin equipping a stam/int piece over a stam/str piece. "But it has more armor..." they said to me. "Armor is useless unless you're tanking!" And yet I'd see them rolling need on something that has 2 more armor but 10 less of a stat they need, and saying "woohoo an upgrade!".
Am I being a obsessive elitist bastard? You bet I am. But I'm just so worried because the biggest source of contention in this game is over loot. If my friends were to walk into a random and inadvertently ninja something from another class that rightfully needs it, the drama and cussing and harassment that will ensue is just...too ugly to think about. Plus, you see people in level 85 dungeons ninja-ing shit all the time - do they do it because they're just assholes or do they seriously not know what's good for their class? I don't want my friends to end up like one of those clueless dipshits that everyone cusses at.
Oh god, and their talent trees. Every time I see it I would scowl as if in pain. 1 point into every single talent in a tier...points in pvp talents...skipping all the crucial talents...
I did point them towards elitist jerks, and it seems like they've ironed out the kinks for the most part. But when I used to look at their butchered and mangled talent trees, some part of my soul would weep.
Am I taking this game too seriously? I think so.
I've been coping by remembering that when I first started, I did more than my fair share of nooby things. I used to think stam was the most important stat and would stack it above agi. I used to have a fast main hand and a slow off hand. I used to spend all my gold on potions and only use them for healing (ever heard of eating?). Le sigh.
I just have to remember that knowledge comes in due time. It's nice to have a friend holding your hand but really the best lessons are perhaps the ones you learn the hard way - eg, getting screamed at by some douche in a dungeon.
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