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.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Alliance Scum!
Well, it has finally come to this. I have started a (semi) serious alliance alt.
Oh, believe me, I've tried it before. I don't think any of my alliance alts have made it past level 15 up till now. I just get so bored of questing with no bags, no mount, no money, that after a few levelups I just end up deleting them to make room for another horde alt. But this time I stuck through with it.
I made a human mage - originally a night elf but ugh, I just can't stand those self-righteous night elves. Same with the dranei - so haughty and smug. I considered gnome but I have to admit they do creep me out, plus gear just looks so ridiculous on them. Worgen was another serious candidate but I decided in the end I wanted to look pretty (don't I already have numerous scary-looking horde characters?) and so I went with a human.
Luckily I had room for another alt on my main's server, so I gathered up all the caster heirlooms I had (which is...all of them - chest, shoulders, cape, hellm, staff, two trinkets) and sent them to her. I couldn't send any bags or money, both of which are kind of crucial in expediting early questing/training, but oh well.
Compared to my very first character's leveling experience, things have been like night and day. Being decked out in great gear right off the bat really trivializes any content below level 10. Within about 10 minutes I was already out of Northshire in search of higher level mobs and quests. Within about 3 hours I had hit level 20 and was scraping together enough gold to purchase a mount!
Things improve SO much when you finally get that mount. No more tedious running everywhere, that mount just makes a world of difference.
Aside from gear another thing that really helped me out was my general experience playing the game. I was dirt poor when I made the character about a week ago, and now she's level 34 and already has 250g in her pockets. Even questing in a low level zone you pick up things here and there - maybe a tailoring recipe, cooking ingredients, some cloth or a couple gems - that you would've just vendored had you not known better. For instance when I had a stack of wool cloth instead of making bandages (I can always go back later to get my first aid skill up when I had plenty of money) I sold it for 15g each. When I got a stack of clam meat (always in high demand to raise cooking skill), instead of using it myself I just sold it for 20g and farmed other mats to raise my cooking. It was little things like that here and there that really helped out - 20g can buy you a few 12-slot bags, and you have no idea how nicer they are than the 6 slot ones.
And then of course when I got my professions started I made even more money. I think inscription is definitely the way to go for a new alt, unless you just got for two gathering professions. But my, that gets so boring very quickly. There is just not as much fun or satisfaction on simply mining, gathering, skinning over and over without making something out of it. Any gathering profession is always a money-maker, whereas the production professions require some strategy to actually generate any profit.
Inscription is so economic compared to the other production professions since you can raise your skill levels very easily just by making glyphs. Glyphs require some parchment (cheap from vendors) and a couple of inks (milled from herbs).
Compare that, for instance, with blacksmithing, where in order to raise a few skill points you need several stacks of ores and expensive gems, sometimes even random things like cloth or leather. Even after spending all those resources to craft something, you normally end up just vendoring or throwing out all the crafted items because the AH is usually so flooded with random low-level green items, and most people just rely on quest rewards or dungeons to gear up anyways. It's not until you start crafting level 85 stuff that you'll make any money.
But glyphs, if you make the right glyphs, will sell for quite a bit. The popular glyphs sell for 50-100g, which is very good given that all it cost you was a parchment and a couple of inks. Of course the trick is knowing which glyphs sell well and which don't, and figuring it out may take a few trips to the auction house or some trial and error.
Not to mention all the other nice perks inscription gets you: you can make darkmoon cards, which always sell for a few gold or if you can make a whole deck yourself, will sell for ten times that. You can make scrolls to buff yourself at very low cost. You can make scrolls of recall which is basically a second set of hearthstones, a very handy feature when you're leveling and have to do a lot of going back-and-forth to turn in quests and whatnot.
Ah, this topic has been derailed. Enough about inscription, back to my mage. Despite my hatred for casting delays, it actually hasn't been that bad. I chose frost so I could get good survivability and I've put talent points into reducing as much casting delay as possible, which has helped. I can wait through a 1.2 sec cast frostbolt, which will usually take a mob down to half its health. Then arcane missiles will usually pop, finishing off the mob. Otherwise I just ice-lance (instant cast!) the mob to death. If it gets close, I frost nova (another instant cast) and blink away. I generally cast nothing else.
I realize that I'm wearing so many heirlooms that mobs die quickly and quests are a breeze. This is fine with me - I don't have anyone to keep pace with and now that I have experienced the ally starting zone, I'm not interested in spending hours doing all the same quests I did as horde. I might try my hand at pvp once I'm high level. Or maybe I'll just faction switch once I hit 85. Or I could always have a high level alliance alt standing by to gank fellow hordies I don't like!
Oh, believe me, I've tried it before. I don't think any of my alliance alts have made it past level 15 up till now. I just get so bored of questing with no bags, no mount, no money, that after a few levelups I just end up deleting them to make room for another horde alt. But this time I stuck through with it.
I made a human mage - originally a night elf but ugh, I just can't stand those self-righteous night elves. Same with the dranei - so haughty and smug. I considered gnome but I have to admit they do creep me out, plus gear just looks so ridiculous on them. Worgen was another serious candidate but I decided in the end I wanted to look pretty (don't I already have numerous scary-looking horde characters?) and so I went with a human.
Luckily I had room for another alt on my main's server, so I gathered up all the caster heirlooms I had (which is...all of them - chest, shoulders, cape, hellm, staff, two trinkets) and sent them to her. I couldn't send any bags or money, both of which are kind of crucial in expediting early questing/training, but oh well.
Compared to my very first character's leveling experience, things have been like night and day. Being decked out in great gear right off the bat really trivializes any content below level 10. Within about 10 minutes I was already out of Northshire in search of higher level mobs and quests. Within about 3 hours I had hit level 20 and was scraping together enough gold to purchase a mount!
Things improve SO much when you finally get that mount. No more tedious running everywhere, that mount just makes a world of difference.
Aside from gear another thing that really helped me out was my general experience playing the game. I was dirt poor when I made the character about a week ago, and now she's level 34 and already has 250g in her pockets. Even questing in a low level zone you pick up things here and there - maybe a tailoring recipe, cooking ingredients, some cloth or a couple gems - that you would've just vendored had you not known better. For instance when I had a stack of wool cloth instead of making bandages (I can always go back later to get my first aid skill up when I had plenty of money) I sold it for 15g each. When I got a stack of clam meat (always in high demand to raise cooking skill), instead of using it myself I just sold it for 20g and farmed other mats to raise my cooking. It was little things like that here and there that really helped out - 20g can buy you a few 12-slot bags, and you have no idea how nicer they are than the 6 slot ones.
And then of course when I got my professions started I made even more money. I think inscription is definitely the way to go for a new alt, unless you just got for two gathering professions. But my, that gets so boring very quickly. There is just not as much fun or satisfaction on simply mining, gathering, skinning over and over without making something out of it. Any gathering profession is always a money-maker, whereas the production professions require some strategy to actually generate any profit.
Inscription is so economic compared to the other production professions since you can raise your skill levels very easily just by making glyphs. Glyphs require some parchment (cheap from vendors) and a couple of inks (milled from herbs).
Compare that, for instance, with blacksmithing, where in order to raise a few skill points you need several stacks of ores and expensive gems, sometimes even random things like cloth or leather. Even after spending all those resources to craft something, you normally end up just vendoring or throwing out all the crafted items because the AH is usually so flooded with random low-level green items, and most people just rely on quest rewards or dungeons to gear up anyways. It's not until you start crafting level 85 stuff that you'll make any money.
But glyphs, if you make the right glyphs, will sell for quite a bit. The popular glyphs sell for 50-100g, which is very good given that all it cost you was a parchment and a couple of inks. Of course the trick is knowing which glyphs sell well and which don't, and figuring it out may take a few trips to the auction house or some trial and error.
Not to mention all the other nice perks inscription gets you: you can make darkmoon cards, which always sell for a few gold or if you can make a whole deck yourself, will sell for ten times that. You can make scrolls to buff yourself at very low cost. You can make scrolls of recall which is basically a second set of hearthstones, a very handy feature when you're leveling and have to do a lot of going back-and-forth to turn in quests and whatnot.
Ah, this topic has been derailed. Enough about inscription, back to my mage. Despite my hatred for casting delays, it actually hasn't been that bad. I chose frost so I could get good survivability and I've put talent points into reducing as much casting delay as possible, which has helped. I can wait through a 1.2 sec cast frostbolt, which will usually take a mob down to half its health. Then arcane missiles will usually pop, finishing off the mob. Otherwise I just ice-lance (instant cast!) the mob to death. If it gets close, I frost nova (another instant cast) and blink away. I generally cast nothing else.
I realize that I'm wearing so many heirlooms that mobs die quickly and quests are a breeze. This is fine with me - I don't have anyone to keep pace with and now that I have experienced the ally starting zone, I'm not interested in spending hours doing all the same quests I did as horde. I might try my hand at pvp once I'm high level. Or maybe I'll just faction switch once I hit 85. Or I could always have a high level alliance alt standing by to gank fellow hordies I don't like!
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Am I all alone?
Someone in my guild pointed out to me the other day that you don't see many girls playing a rogue. "A decent rogue who actually knows what she's doing", he added.
I haven't really given it much thought until now, but yeah, it's more or less true. Racking my brain in search of all the wow players whom I know for a fact are females (vent confirmation), I can't think of a single rogue amongst them. In fact, if you just search for rogues on my server, I'll bet you most of them are male characters OR female blood elf characters. And when you see a female blood elf, 95% of the time it's actually a dude playing that char. Yeah, shocking but true.
So I've gone and made a list of all the characters I've seen/know of that are played by actual females, and here's the breakdown (counting only mains, unless they have a pretty actively raiding alt as well):
3 Shaman - all were resto/ele. No enhancement.
2 Paladin - Both dedicated holy spec. No prot/ret.
3 Warlocks - I believe either demo/affliction spec, not that it's important.
4 Mages - frost/arcane? Again, not important as all specs are DPS specs.
3 Druids - 2 bear tanks, 1 balance.
5 Priests - 1 dedicated shadow, the rest holy/disc.
No warriors, no DKs, and no rogues.
The conclusion that I draw from this is that:
1. Most girls prefer casting over melee. Not a single enh shammy, ret pally, DK, warrior, or rogue indicates that smacking things with a sword does not appeal to the ladies.
2. Girls like to heal. God, that's such a stereotype and sexist but it's true. In every guild I've been in the 1 or 2 girls we had were always healers. What is up with that?
I understand that the population I sampled isn't exactly the most comprehensive, but seriously...it is rather disturbing that not a single girl I know who plays wow enjoys tanking or meleeing. Just shocking. Apparently I'm an oddball - I LOVE playing my rogue, I love playing melee characters (am I the only one in the world who enjoys playing an enhancement shammy?), and I enjoy tanking, to a degree.
I hate casting, too. I hate waiting for casts to finish (yes, 2 seconds is just too long for me) and I hate relying on mana. I hate being far away from the action and having to worry about mobs getting too close. I like to charge in and kill things, not nuke it from a mile away.
No, but seriously, what gives? Not a single rogue? Really??? I mean, REALLY???
I haven't really given it much thought until now, but yeah, it's more or less true. Racking my brain in search of all the wow players whom I know for a fact are females (vent confirmation), I can't think of a single rogue amongst them. In fact, if you just search for rogues on my server, I'll bet you most of them are male characters OR female blood elf characters. And when you see a female blood elf, 95% of the time it's actually a dude playing that char. Yeah, shocking but true.
So I've gone and made a list of all the characters I've seen/know of that are played by actual females, and here's the breakdown (counting only mains, unless they have a pretty actively raiding alt as well):
3 Shaman - all were resto/ele. No enhancement.
2 Paladin - Both dedicated holy spec. No prot/ret.
3 Warlocks - I believe either demo/affliction spec, not that it's important.
4 Mages - frost/arcane? Again, not important as all specs are DPS specs.
3 Druids - 2 bear tanks, 1 balance.
5 Priests - 1 dedicated shadow, the rest holy/disc.
No warriors, no DKs, and no rogues.
The conclusion that I draw from this is that:
1. Most girls prefer casting over melee. Not a single enh shammy, ret pally, DK, warrior, or rogue indicates that smacking things with a sword does not appeal to the ladies.
2. Girls like to heal. God, that's such a stereotype and sexist but it's true. In every guild I've been in the 1 or 2 girls we had were always healers. What is up with that?
I understand that the population I sampled isn't exactly the most comprehensive, but seriously...it is rather disturbing that not a single girl I know who plays wow enjoys tanking or meleeing. Just shocking. Apparently I'm an oddball - I LOVE playing my rogue, I love playing melee characters (am I the only one in the world who enjoys playing an enhancement shammy?), and I enjoy tanking, to a degree.
I hate casting, too. I hate waiting for casts to finish (yes, 2 seconds is just too long for me) and I hate relying on mana. I hate being far away from the action and having to worry about mobs getting too close. I like to charge in and kill things, not nuke it from a mile away.
No, but seriously, what gives? Not a single rogue? Really??? I mean, REALLY???
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Damn you warlocks
Sigh...ever since patch 4.0, ie ever since the immediate pre-cata launch and the subsequent cata patches, warlocks have been a thorn in my shoe. Is that an expression? Yesterday I described a coworker as having "a fork in everyone's pie" - I think I made that one up. Anyways...
Before the cata patches hit, rogues were tops, at least in my guild. No one could top me in single-target DPS. Not even the most seasoned veterans, not even ret pallys, not even arcane mages, not even kitty druids. There were two other rogues in the guild (we did 25mans) and the three of us were always in top 5 damage for most boss fights (obviously not fights like gunship or valithira).
And that made sense, you see. Rogues can't really do anything else but DPS. We have no raid-wide buffs, we have very weak slows/traps/CCs, not that anyone used those in wrath. We have tricks of the trade and that's about it. Compare us with any other pure DPS classes like mages, warlocks, and hunters - we bring very little to the table. No mage food, no arcane intellect buff, no soulstones/healthstones, nothing. All we do is stab people but we are good at it!
Since the latest round of patches, however, warlocks seem to be dominating charts. And it's not even a small margin, whenever there's a warlock in the group the gap between the lock's damage and mine (always #2 behind the lock) is over 5% of total damage done. This just doesn't seem fair to me. There's nothing I can possibly tweak in my rotation, gearing, spec, gems, etc at this point to overcome that much damage difference. Maybe if I was decked out in heroic raid gear, but at the same gear level as the lock I feel like I should be doing close to equal damage. But that's not the case.
Which is why I'm kind of happy when there are no locks in the group. Then I get to see my name at the top of the DPS chart once more and I can rest easy knowing that even though I bring very little to the table, at least I'm doing 25% of the damage.
Maybe I should roll a warlock...oh wait, I have one...hmm. Time to dust off those heirlooms again perhaps?
Before the cata patches hit, rogues were tops, at least in my guild. No one could top me in single-target DPS. Not even the most seasoned veterans, not even ret pallys, not even arcane mages, not even kitty druids. There were two other rogues in the guild (we did 25mans) and the three of us were always in top 5 damage for most boss fights (obviously not fights like gunship or valithira).
And that made sense, you see. Rogues can't really do anything else but DPS. We have no raid-wide buffs, we have very weak slows/traps/CCs, not that anyone used those in wrath. We have tricks of the trade and that's about it. Compare us with any other pure DPS classes like mages, warlocks, and hunters - we bring very little to the table. No mage food, no arcane intellect buff, no soulstones/healthstones, nothing. All we do is stab people but we are good at it!
Since the latest round of patches, however, warlocks seem to be dominating charts. And it's not even a small margin, whenever there's a warlock in the group the gap between the lock's damage and mine (always #2 behind the lock) is over 5% of total damage done. This just doesn't seem fair to me. There's nothing I can possibly tweak in my rotation, gearing, spec, gems, etc at this point to overcome that much damage difference. Maybe if I was decked out in heroic raid gear, but at the same gear level as the lock I feel like I should be doing close to equal damage. But that's not the case.
Which is why I'm kind of happy when there are no locks in the group. Then I get to see my name at the top of the DPS chart once more and I can rest easy knowing that even though I bring very little to the table, at least I'm doing 25% of the damage.
Maybe I should roll a warlock...oh wait, I have one...hmm. Time to dust off those heirlooms again perhaps?
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