Leveling with other people can be such a pain in the butt. It sounds like a great idea in the beginning - hey we can do quests together! We can do dungeons! We will be invincible!
But inevitably level gaps start happening. Either someone charges off into a much higher level and complains that no one else is catching up, or someone just falls behind and everyone else has to wait for them to catch up.
The problem gets exacerbated when you try to play with someone who has fallen behind. Most quests have a level requirement, and chances are if you're tackling a quest that is orange or yellow, that person who is 2-3 levels behind you will not be able to pick up that quest. Experience is also capped by your level and thus if you're doing dungeons that are too much beyond your level, your experience gain will be slower compared to the other people. All of this means that if you're behind, you will likely stay that way or even fall further behind.
What do you do in that situation? There's nothing to do except catch up!
The best way to level quickly in my opinion, is without a doubt questing. If you hate questing, too bad. It's the quickest and most reliable. Some say dungeons, but that's only if you're a beast tank leveling with a beast healer. Otherwise there's a fair chance you'll get stuck with a bad group and end up spending a long time in a dungeon with very little to show for it. There's also a good chance you'll get stuck in some low level dungeon and not get much xp out of it compared to what you would get if you had spent that time questing.
The best place to quest are where there are a large number of generic "kill this many of that" type quests in one hub. The worst thing you can do is do one-off quests over and over - you'll waste a lot of time just travelling back and forth. You want to be able to do at least 3-4 quests in one round without having to go back to turn them in.
It takes some experience to figure out where the best questing zones are. Some of my personal favorites are (in no particular order): Feralas, Un'goro Crater, Western Plaguelands, Stranglethorn Vale, the Hinterlands, Nagrand, and Borean Tundra. You will find a big cluster of quests in one questing hub and be able to knock out at least a couple levels in an hour.
And let me just take the time to say that if you're a completionist and feel like you have to do every single quest, even ones that have fallen beyond your level, then save that energy for when you hit level cap. When you're pre-85, your biggest goal should be to get to 85, not to dawdle here and there and try to get the loremaster title or whatever. Quests in the Azeroth zones take a mere fraction of the time when you're 85 than when you were level 45. If you really want that stupid loremaster, focus on leveling to cap then going back. Trust me, you will save yourself so much time that way and I honestly don't know anyone who actually got loremaster during the leveling process.
Some things that give absolutely garbage experience relative to the time you would spend doing them:
- gray level quests that you couldn't do 10 levels ago
- daily quests (most dailies are meant to be a level-cap grind anyways)
- escort quests
- any azeroth quests once you're past 60
- any outland quests once you're past 70
- any northrend quests once you're past 80
Some things you should be actively doing to speed up xp gain:
- gathering tradeskills - mining, herbing, skinning all give xp now, so when you see that node, go get it. It's usually 1.5-2x the xp you'd get for a creature kill, plus you get something nice out of it. Don't ignore nodes.
- always logging out at an inn
- skipping a quest if you just can't solo it, or if some ally is camping you. It wastes time, just don't do it.
- have a spec that minimizes downtime - you can always respec to raid if you're so inclined later on. Pick talents that maximize self-healing, mana conservation, burst damage and what have you so you can glide effortlessly from mob to mob getting your shit done.
- try to level your cooking - not because it helps you level faster, but it's one of those things that's a bitch to try to go back and do later on. At the least save all the meats and mats you're collecting.
Again, these are things you don't learn until you've leveled a toon up to 85 and kind of get a feel for what works and what doesn't. Just as a comparison, my rogue took over 6 months to get to 80, whereas my 2nd character paladin took less than 2 months. You just know better the second time around.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Rise of the Zandalari
Since the recent valor to justice point conversion, dungeons have gotten much easier. Before Patch 4.2, I tried the Zandalari dungeons once, and swore I'd never go back in there until it was nerfed to wrath level.
I beat each dungeon exactly once just to get the damn achievement and stayed far, far away from them since. Every time I even thought about queuing up for one, I recalled the nightmarish run of Zul'Gurub I did with 4 people from the same guild who were constantly laughing at me over my numerous deaths (although they weren't jerks to me nor did they kick me - they just lol'ed at me a lot).
It was a really, really horrible run. I had read up on the encounters and came prepared with potions and foods and whatnot, but I was far from ready for this place. The damage output was off the charts - most special abilities were simply one-shot mechanics where if you don't move a split second fast enough, you will die. I mean, there is just no way to survive a ~40k damage tick without moving out of the fire pre-emptively.
All in all, I think I died around ~20 times or so. Thank god there was a repair NPC right at the entrance. Every single boss fight I got 2 b-rezzes - one from the druid then another from the DK. I managed to stay alive for a whole whopping 30 seconds on the panther boss but on all the other ones I was pretty much dead as soon as the fight started. The fights were lightning fast-paced, the damage was practically unhealable, and the mechanics were unforgiving and relentlessly brutal.
Zul'Aman wasn't nearly as bad, but we did go through about 4 different tanks and healers just to clear it. After spending 2 hours in that place I also had no desire to go back in there.
Besides, I didn't need the extra valor points anyhow - my guild was clearing enough raid content for me to cap out my VP every week, and my gear was already full 359. The only use I had for VP was to buy the BoE boots and give them to my paladin, or sell them. Heck, towards the end I was trading them in for conquest points to buy epic PvP gear.
With the new patch came the conversion, and everyone could now buy tier 11 gear with justice points. It also brought tier 12 gear which I desperately wanted, and in order to buy them I knew I would have to repeat the gruelling dungeon crawls to cap out my VP every week. But I did notice everyone's ilvl was generally higher than they had been pre-patch, and heroic dungeons were getting noticeably easier. People weren't CC'ing meticulously like they used to, and more often than not a beast tank would come in and chain-pull an instance in about 30 minutes.
I figured I'd stick to regular heroics, but in the end I wasn't happy with earning half the VP cap for the week and decided to give the Zandalar dungeons one more try. My first attempt went badly when I died during the boulder toss gauntlet. In fact, I kept dying to it and finally left out of frustration and embarrassment. I mean, come on, what kind of bullshit mechanic is that? Is this frogger or is this WoW?
My next attempt went quite smoothly, however. I managed to get dropped in right at the Bloodlord Mandokir fight, thankfully having skipped the dreaded venomancer (in my opinion he's there to weed out people right at the start) and the stupid boulder toss. One person died here and there but overall no wipes occurred for the rest of the fight. With the help of DBM screaming at me and telling me where to go, and by watching what everyone else was doing, I managed to stumble my way through all the encounters and even put out some decent damage.
I marveled at the fact that as long as you just avoid that single one-shot mechanic every boss has, the rest of the fight becomes more or less trivial (with the exception of the venomancer). For instance with the Bloodlord, as long as you avoid the devastating slam rupture lines, you're fine. the bloodletting mechanic ticks off a lot of hp, but it's unavoidable and it CAN be healed through, whereas the slam damage is a bona-fide one-shot. For the Zanzil encounter, as long as you grab the poison resist buff cauldron before he does the poison spray, you're good to go - the rest of the phases are easily healable.
As I mentioned, the venomancer is an exception - you need to avoid ALL his abilities because all of them are more or less one-shot killers. Everything is poison-based, so if you get hit you'll be taking a few ticks which can be lethal. The toxic link can certainly be a one-shotter if you're unlucky and get linked with another melee right next to you. His breath is particularly dangerous in that he can cast it in any direction, not necessarily at the tank. Combine that with the fact that stepping in any of the myriad of poison pools on the ground which start exploding throughout the fight - you'd better have a hair trigger on your mouse.
Anyways, I gained some confidence from clearing ZG relatively easy. Zul'Aman was also much easier with everyone having better gear and better knowledge of the encounters. There also aren't quite as many one-shot mechanics in ZA - mainly the ones to watch out for are the flame breath during the dragonhawk encounter (you can survive one or two ticks, or three with a great healer who's on the ball), and getting the proper charge order set up during the bear encounter. Other than that the only part of ZA that might be tricky is if the final boss Daakara decides to shapeshift into the Lynx. But as long as the tank knows when to taunt it's not a big deal.
Now I know I can cap my VP each week running a combination of ZG/ZA and a few heroics (maybe toss in a couple raid bosses too). But it still has me missing the good old days of wrath when a dungeon would take 15 min from start to finish...
I beat each dungeon exactly once just to get the damn achievement and stayed far, far away from them since. Every time I even thought about queuing up for one, I recalled the nightmarish run of Zul'Gurub I did with 4 people from the same guild who were constantly laughing at me over my numerous deaths (although they weren't jerks to me nor did they kick me - they just lol'ed at me a lot).
It was a really, really horrible run. I had read up on the encounters and came prepared with potions and foods and whatnot, but I was far from ready for this place. The damage output was off the charts - most special abilities were simply one-shot mechanics where if you don't move a split second fast enough, you will die. I mean, there is just no way to survive a ~40k damage tick without moving out of the fire pre-emptively.
All in all, I think I died around ~20 times or so. Thank god there was a repair NPC right at the entrance. Every single boss fight I got 2 b-rezzes - one from the druid then another from the DK. I managed to stay alive for a whole whopping 30 seconds on the panther boss but on all the other ones I was pretty much dead as soon as the fight started. The fights were lightning fast-paced, the damage was practically unhealable, and the mechanics were unforgiving and relentlessly brutal.
Zul'Aman wasn't nearly as bad, but we did go through about 4 different tanks and healers just to clear it. After spending 2 hours in that place I also had no desire to go back in there.
Besides, I didn't need the extra valor points anyhow - my guild was clearing enough raid content for me to cap out my VP every week, and my gear was already full 359. The only use I had for VP was to buy the BoE boots and give them to my paladin, or sell them. Heck, towards the end I was trading them in for conquest points to buy epic PvP gear.
With the new patch came the conversion, and everyone could now buy tier 11 gear with justice points. It also brought tier 12 gear which I desperately wanted, and in order to buy them I knew I would have to repeat the gruelling dungeon crawls to cap out my VP every week. But I did notice everyone's ilvl was generally higher than they had been pre-patch, and heroic dungeons were getting noticeably easier. People weren't CC'ing meticulously like they used to, and more often than not a beast tank would come in and chain-pull an instance in about 30 minutes.
I figured I'd stick to regular heroics, but in the end I wasn't happy with earning half the VP cap for the week and decided to give the Zandalar dungeons one more try. My first attempt went badly when I died during the boulder toss gauntlet. In fact, I kept dying to it and finally left out of frustration and embarrassment. I mean, come on, what kind of bullshit mechanic is that? Is this frogger or is this WoW?
My next attempt went quite smoothly, however. I managed to get dropped in right at the Bloodlord Mandokir fight, thankfully having skipped the dreaded venomancer (in my opinion he's there to weed out people right at the start) and the stupid boulder toss. One person died here and there but overall no wipes occurred for the rest of the fight. With the help of DBM screaming at me and telling me where to go, and by watching what everyone else was doing, I managed to stumble my way through all the encounters and even put out some decent damage.
I marveled at the fact that as long as you just avoid that single one-shot mechanic every boss has, the rest of the fight becomes more or less trivial (with the exception of the venomancer). For instance with the Bloodlord, as long as you avoid the devastating slam rupture lines, you're fine. the bloodletting mechanic ticks off a lot of hp, but it's unavoidable and it CAN be healed through, whereas the slam damage is a bona-fide one-shot. For the Zanzil encounter, as long as you grab the poison resist buff cauldron before he does the poison spray, you're good to go - the rest of the phases are easily healable.
As I mentioned, the venomancer is an exception - you need to avoid ALL his abilities because all of them are more or less one-shot killers. Everything is poison-based, so if you get hit you'll be taking a few ticks which can be lethal. The toxic link can certainly be a one-shotter if you're unlucky and get linked with another melee right next to you. His breath is particularly dangerous in that he can cast it in any direction, not necessarily at the tank. Combine that with the fact that stepping in any of the myriad of poison pools on the ground which start exploding throughout the fight - you'd better have a hair trigger on your mouse.
Anyways, I gained some confidence from clearing ZG relatively easy. Zul'Aman was also much easier with everyone having better gear and better knowledge of the encounters. There also aren't quite as many one-shot mechanics in ZA - mainly the ones to watch out for are the flame breath during the dragonhawk encounter (you can survive one or two ticks, or three with a great healer who's on the ball), and getting the proper charge order set up during the bear encounter. Other than that the only part of ZA that might be tricky is if the final boss Daakara decides to shapeshift into the Lynx. But as long as the tank knows when to taunt it's not a big deal.
Now I know I can cap my VP each week running a combination of ZG/ZA and a few heroics (maybe toss in a couple raid bosses too). But it still has me missing the good old days of wrath when a dungeon would take 15 min from start to finish...
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Another day, another patch
Patch 4.2 Rage of the Firelands is here!
Which brings with is a new raid, new loot, a few new pets/mounts, and a new daily questing hub where you will spend the next few months grinding miserably to earn marks to trade in for loot.
Do you detect a hint of bitterness? Well, I am a little bitter that there are no new dungeons released along with the raid. How hard would it have been to throw one together, no matter how sloppy? People are tired of the same 7 or so dungeons that came out with the cata launch, and most people really hate the new (or should I say old) zandalari dungeons. No one likes one-shot mechanics, I'm telling ya.
If you look at the patch history of wrath, with every new patch came a new raid and also new dungeons. The ulduar patch came with it 2 new dungeons, both normal and heroic, the ToC raid came with just one lame little dungeon which was still kind of fun, and ICC brought a whopping 3 new dungeons and an epic raid which kept people entertained for nearly a year.
And then look at cata. Patch 4.1 brought just 2 recycled old dungeons. Patch 4.2 brought a new raid and a new questing hub, but people hate doing dailies over and over. We enjoy the challenges and intricacies of new dungeon encounters and accessible loots. We do not enjoy grinding the same quests day in and day out, saving up tokens for that one epic loot we're going to purchase 5 months in the future.
Sigh, well that is enough QQing for now. We attempted firelands last night and brought Beth'tilac down to 9%. It's a fun fight as melee, and I'm glad that blizzard stopped the recent trend of royally screwing over melee. Spider goes down, you go up, spider goes nuts, you go down, rinse and repeat. Pretty fun fight.
I'm looking forward to the new raids but I do feel a bit overwhelmed at all the new stuff to do. Whenever a new patch hits there's that frenzied feeling of wanting to explore all the new content and getting all the new achievements and unlocking all the new features, and it just seems like there aren't enough hours in the day to do it all. Just need to breathe, and remind myself that it will all be done in a couple months and I can go back to assuming my pseudo-bored "been-there-done-that" veteran wow player identity.
"Oh, the new dailies? Nah, man, I've done them all too many times. Oh, that new achievement? Nah, man, I got them already. Oh, wanna run dungeons for valor points? Nah, man, I got all my gear...I'm just gonna go farm outlands rep."
Which brings with is a new raid, new loot, a few new pets/mounts, and a new daily questing hub where you will spend the next few months grinding miserably to earn marks to trade in for loot.
Do you detect a hint of bitterness? Well, I am a little bitter that there are no new dungeons released along with the raid. How hard would it have been to throw one together, no matter how sloppy? People are tired of the same 7 or so dungeons that came out with the cata launch, and most people really hate the new (or should I say old) zandalari dungeons. No one likes one-shot mechanics, I'm telling ya.
If you look at the patch history of wrath, with every new patch came a new raid and also new dungeons. The ulduar patch came with it 2 new dungeons, both normal and heroic, the ToC raid came with just one lame little dungeon which was still kind of fun, and ICC brought a whopping 3 new dungeons and an epic raid which kept people entertained for nearly a year.
And then look at cata. Patch 4.1 brought just 2 recycled old dungeons. Patch 4.2 brought a new raid and a new questing hub, but people hate doing dailies over and over. We enjoy the challenges and intricacies of new dungeon encounters and accessible loots. We do not enjoy grinding the same quests day in and day out, saving up tokens for that one epic loot we're going to purchase 5 months in the future.
Sigh, well that is enough QQing for now. We attempted firelands last night and brought Beth'tilac down to 9%. It's a fun fight as melee, and I'm glad that blizzard stopped the recent trend of royally screwing over melee. Spider goes down, you go up, spider goes nuts, you go down, rinse and repeat. Pretty fun fight.
I'm looking forward to the new raids but I do feel a bit overwhelmed at all the new stuff to do. Whenever a new patch hits there's that frenzied feeling of wanting to explore all the new content and getting all the new achievements and unlocking all the new features, and it just seems like there aren't enough hours in the day to do it all. Just need to breathe, and remind myself that it will all be done in a couple months and I can go back to assuming my pseudo-bored "been-there-done-that" veteran wow player identity.
"Oh, the new dailies? Nah, man, I've done them all too many times. Oh, that new achievement? Nah, man, I got them already. Oh, wanna run dungeons for valor points? Nah, man, I got all my gear...I'm just gonna go farm outlands rep."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)