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."
Friday, June 24, 2011
Mountain O' Mounts
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.
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.
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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