One advantage of rampant altitis is having most trade skills covered. This enables efficient use of almost any materials and much less wastage while levelling up.
My highest level characters are generally equipped as gatherers. They farm materials while I level up and mail them on to the trade skill alt. Crafted materials are made up and then either mailed to the banker alts, or passed on to another alt for more crafting.
Cryptography my "main" rogue is a skinner and leather worker. I've kept up the skinning but LW has lagged behind. Occasionally I'll make a bit of effort to get it going again but usually find some other distraction. Mostly the leathers are sold on the markets. I have considered dropping LW on several occasions but have resisted so far.
My new Death knight Cryptoknight is a herbalist and enchanter. This is my main farming character at the moment since AOE farming of low level areas is supremely awesome. He uses the enchanting almost exclusively for disenchanting of BoP items in instances. Herbalism is still quite low but is progressing and every one of the mats found is passed on to another alt for use. Excess enchanting mats are passed on to the banker for resale.
Mortified is my primary bank alt. She's now a level 35 mage, so has increased her maximum trade skills to 300. Enchanting is the main priority at the moment. She disenchants almost everything that gets sent to her from other characters and sources hundreds of items each auction session. She is also an accomplished tailor. Both tailoring and enchanting were level capped at 225 for a long time but now have room for expansion. Tailoring provides gear for my cloth wearing alts and also supplies market and disenchanting opportunities. Eventually I'll have to get her out and questing for more levels to keep up.
Afterdeath is a lowbie priest. She was originally herbalism and alchemy but has dropped herbalism in favour of inscription. Eventually I'll have to get some her some levels but for now I am well below the level cap on either trade. Herbs are supplied by Cryptoknight then used in either inscription or herbalism. Inscription is starting to supply decent glyphs for my alt army or for guild use but is also making lots of weapon and armour vellums for my enchanters. I do not use a lot of potions on any alt and those that I do use are higher skill ones.
Rigormortis my warlock blacksmith and miner has been transferred off the server. He is now the highest level alt on his new realm and may end up dropping the blacksmith in favour of enchanting or something. He used to supply reasonable green and blue items to my lower level alts, or supplies for disenchanting. Mining of course is always financially rewarding in the AH.
Decrypted is a miner/blacksmith. Both of these have been neglected since Rig did most of the work. He's also a warrior and probably the least likely alt to be properly played any time soon. When I originally planned out the trades, he was going to be an armour smith to complement Rig's Sword smithing. Not sure which way he will go though I do have three plate-wearers now.
Ashnazg my Paladin is also a neglected character. Mining and jewelcraft are his token efforts. One day I might actually spend some time getting this guy levelled up since AOE farming is so fun on the Death knight! When and if I do, Ash will add further to his current trade skills.
Methane my druid gets an occasional workout. He is purely a gathering character with skinning and mining as professions. Most of his output has been passed on to my lesser leveled alts. I chose to make him a dual gatherer becasue druids are so versatile. Stealth in cat form, travel form, swimming form and flight forms all make for a character that can get to places easily.
Insolence is a blood elf warlock. I originally had jewelcraft and mining but dropped jewlcraft for herbalism a while before wrath was released. Now that Cryptoknight has much better herbalism I am considering going back to jewelcraft! Either way, she is my primary non-enchanter bank alt and doesnt get much sun at the moment. Jewelcraft generated a lot of enchanting materials but there are many other low level jewelcrafters producing rings and necklaces so theres not a lot of profit at the low end.
Cyanade the shaman is a skinner and leatherworker. For a long time I was passing scraps to her from Crypto's lower level adventures, so her leatherworking skill isnt too bad for the amount of play she gets! Back in the day I had planned that my two leatherworkers would specialise in one of the three types but that is still a long way off if it ever happens!
Last but definately not least is Kytlin, a hunter just barely short of level 50. Mining and engineering are her professions. Both are lagging behind where they should be, mostly becasue being a hunter is so much fun I forget to mine! Engineering so far has just been a massive gold and materials sink with very little to show for it. I have the gnomish remote control trinket that is supposed to be good on mechanicals... but I cant even remeber trying it out!
Anyway, the synchronicity part of this is the several chains of supply that I can have between my characters.
A fair few quests require crafted items. In theory, my alt army has been able to supply most of these... but in practice, the AH has been too tempting. Alchemy, Blacksmithing and Engineering crafted goods are the ones most often needed in quests. Be aware that the quest rewards are often worth a lot less than the cost of the crafted items!
Most craft skills can make objects that fuel the enchantment market. A large proportion of tradeskill gear gets consumed this way. If you are not an enchanter, be sure to price your junk greens on the AH at a price that is attractive for disenchantment. Blue gear is rarely worthwhile either to craft for sale, or for disenchantment.
My current best chain of recycled crafts is this: Herbalist farms herbs. Inscriber mills them for ink, then makes weapon or armor vellum. Enchanter uses farmed enchanting mats to place enchantments on the vellums, which then are passed on to other alts for use or resale. If everything works out I could get 4-5 skillpoints on three characters from the same stack of herbs!
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Friday, December 5, 2008
So much to do in so little time!
So its several weeks since Wrath was released and the queues have died down. At most times of the day its possible to log in without waiting though most of the realms I check are "full". My main problem now is that I have too many things I want to do yet limited playtime available.
On VeCo, I have just last night levelled my hunter to 30 and got his mounts. My time on VeCo has been fairly short since my last blog post. Each visit I would work on the auction house for a while, then march out and work on my hunter. He has been using three of his 5 pets in rotation. Bear, Carrion Bird and Cat have seen the most action. Of the three, probably the Carrion Bird is the most generally useful. The bear is a great little tank but the limitations on positioning with Swipe make him a bit hard to use effectively. Cats as usual are awesome single target tanks. Without any form of AOE, they require frequent retargetting to handle groups. Both Bear and Cat could regularly handle 1-3 same-level mobs without too much trouble. Bear has slightly better survivability and cat kills quicker but otherwise theres not much difference.
My Carrion Bird however was significantly easier to use than either of the others. Screech will hold the attention of any additional mobs long enough to allow the primary target to be burnt down. If you can wait long enough for two screeches to go off before using mend pet there should be no problems with aggro. Earlier casting of mend pet would sometimes cause problems.
Changeabull and Replaceabull, my druid and shammy alts have mostly remained in town. Changeabull is at level 18, fully rested, so should get level 20 and cat form the next time I actually make use of him. Poor Replaceabull is still level 6 and hasnt been touched for months. He might end up becomming a true bank alt for the others.
VeCo mercantile activity has been going quite well. On each of the 5-6 times I've logged in, I've hit the AH pretty hard. Traceabull scans the whole auction house to set baseline values then uses auctioneer's scan ability to find loads of disenchantable items.
On any particular scan, Trace will find upwards of 500 auctions to buyout or bid on, just for disenchantable objects below skill level 225. The buyouts are immediately disenchanted and then relisted. Quite a few of the bids are outbid by other people but even so I can expect another 200+ items to arrive in the mailbox over the next 48 hours. All these will be disenchanted and relisted as I find them.
At this time I am being fairly indiscriminate on what materials I'll try to sell. Any object that can be disenchanted with the current maximum 225 skill is fair game. Often I have won auctions on ridiculously low bid prices, even when the buyout was set well above average. Even some blue items have fallen into my hands in this manner.
The resulting shards, dusts, essences etc are relisted on the auction house. In most cases, a greater essence sells for less than its component parts, so I break them apart and sell the lesser essences. I still sell some as greater essence though as it seems not everyone is aware they can be split in this way!
Another thing I do to increase sales is set stack sizes to less than 10 or 20.
Many things I sell in groups of 2 or 3 or 5. Shards I usually sell individually. Mostly this is because the enchants that require these materials use small quantities, but it is also because some people cannot do the maths to see that my prices are actually a bit higher than the average!
When listing my auctions, I will sometimes buyout my competitiors if they are sufficiently undercutting for me to relist and still make a profit. I also look to see opportunities to bid cheaply on otherwise overpriced materials.
So, does all this market stuff make any money? Hell yes!
I have repeated this cycle about 5 times since my last post. In the initial round I invested just under 200g into materials, out of a net worth of about 350g at the time.
Last night's scan saw me invest about 700g in new materials. I have about another 700g worth of unsold auctions and about 1400g in cash. Total net worth would be edging close to 3,000g, nearly all earned within the safety of capital cities. Time spent on purely AH related stuff would be no more than 4 hours in that period.
On VeCo, I have just last night levelled my hunter to 30 and got his mounts. My time on VeCo has been fairly short since my last blog post. Each visit I would work on the auction house for a while, then march out and work on my hunter. He has been using three of his 5 pets in rotation. Bear, Carrion Bird and Cat have seen the most action. Of the three, probably the Carrion Bird is the most generally useful. The bear is a great little tank but the limitations on positioning with Swipe make him a bit hard to use effectively. Cats as usual are awesome single target tanks. Without any form of AOE, they require frequent retargetting to handle groups. Both Bear and Cat could regularly handle 1-3 same-level mobs without too much trouble. Bear has slightly better survivability and cat kills quicker but otherwise theres not much difference.
My Carrion Bird however was significantly easier to use than either of the others. Screech will hold the attention of any additional mobs long enough to allow the primary target to be burnt down. If you can wait long enough for two screeches to go off before using mend pet there should be no problems with aggro. Earlier casting of mend pet would sometimes cause problems.
Changeabull and Replaceabull, my druid and shammy alts have mostly remained in town. Changeabull is at level 18, fully rested, so should get level 20 and cat form the next time I actually make use of him. Poor Replaceabull is still level 6 and hasnt been touched for months. He might end up becomming a true bank alt for the others.
VeCo mercantile activity has been going quite well. On each of the 5-6 times I've logged in, I've hit the AH pretty hard. Traceabull scans the whole auction house to set baseline values then uses auctioneer's scan ability to find loads of disenchantable items.
On any particular scan, Trace will find upwards of 500 auctions to buyout or bid on, just for disenchantable objects below skill level 225. The buyouts are immediately disenchanted and then relisted. Quite a few of the bids are outbid by other people but even so I can expect another 200+ items to arrive in the mailbox over the next 48 hours. All these will be disenchanted and relisted as I find them.
At this time I am being fairly indiscriminate on what materials I'll try to sell. Any object that can be disenchanted with the current maximum 225 skill is fair game. Often I have won auctions on ridiculously low bid prices, even when the buyout was set well above average. Even some blue items have fallen into my hands in this manner.
The resulting shards, dusts, essences etc are relisted on the auction house. In most cases, a greater essence sells for less than its component parts, so I break them apart and sell the lesser essences. I still sell some as greater essence though as it seems not everyone is aware they can be split in this way!
Another thing I do to increase sales is set stack sizes to less than 10 or 20.
Many things I sell in groups of 2 or 3 or 5. Shards I usually sell individually. Mostly this is because the enchants that require these materials use small quantities, but it is also because some people cannot do the maths to see that my prices are actually a bit higher than the average!
When listing my auctions, I will sometimes buyout my competitiors if they are sufficiently undercutting for me to relist and still make a profit. I also look to see opportunities to bid cheaply on otherwise overpriced materials.
So, does all this market stuff make any money? Hell yes!
I have repeated this cycle about 5 times since my last post. In the initial round I invested just under 200g into materials, out of a net worth of about 350g at the time.
Last night's scan saw me invest about 700g in new materials. I have about another 700g worth of unsold auctions and about 1400g in cash. Total net worth would be edging close to 3,000g, nearly all earned within the safety of capital cities. Time spent on purely AH related stuff would be no more than 4 hours in that period.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Wrath of the impatient player
Its YOUR fault. Yes, you over there. You and your 1500 mates ahead of me in the queue. I cant play on my main realm, nor my secondary realm. All those Death Knights are spoiling my fun.
Ah well.
Luckily, I play on several realms, some of which are in the US time zones as well as the oceanic ones. There is no way I'm waiting through an hour long queue when my playtime is at best 2 hours. I have lowbie hunters and druids with lots of rested exp to use up, and some decent funds to invest in the market.
So that's what I've been doing since wrath hit the servers. VeCo at 4am server time is without a queue. There are 15000+ items on the auction house and my enchanter alt is currently maxed at 225 skill. That is a fair amount of enchanting materials available. I invested about 200g in bids and buyouts on green items, disenchanted the lot and put the resulting materials up on the market. Nearly all of that stock sold first time through and I've re-invested the money into more raw materials. I will continue to reinvest into enchanting materials for a while yet. I am also aiming to get my hunter/enchanter to level 35 fairly quickly to improve his disenchanting abilities. If I am fast enough, that will enable me to capitalise on the crop of deathknights needing level 60+ enchantments.
I've been online enough to have seen several realm-first level 80 achievements, as well as those maxing various profession skills. I would expect that nearly all realm-firsts for classess will be done by the next weekend at the latest.
My hunter is going reasonably well. I've grabbed a bear pet for him to level up with and also to evaluate some of the criticisms people have had with swipe. Mania on her maniasarcania blog has asked for comments on bears performance. Bears are single target tanks with some AoE ability to help control adds. They are not really suitable for true AoE and volley pulls. This is reflected in the comments on the thread. The main difficulty is positioning the mobs all in the front aspect so the swipe can hit all of them. Volley is only available at level 40 and above so switching to a gorilla or croc then would make sense.
Ah well.
Luckily, I play on several realms, some of which are in the US time zones as well as the oceanic ones. There is no way I'm waiting through an hour long queue when my playtime is at best 2 hours. I have lowbie hunters and druids with lots of rested exp to use up, and some decent funds to invest in the market.
So that's what I've been doing since wrath hit the servers. VeCo at 4am server time is without a queue. There are 15000+ items on the auction house and my enchanter alt is currently maxed at 225 skill. That is a fair amount of enchanting materials available. I invested about 200g in bids and buyouts on green items, disenchanted the lot and put the resulting materials up on the market. Nearly all of that stock sold first time through and I've re-invested the money into more raw materials. I will continue to reinvest into enchanting materials for a while yet. I am also aiming to get my hunter/enchanter to level 35 fairly quickly to improve his disenchanting abilities. If I am fast enough, that will enable me to capitalise on the crop of deathknights needing level 60+ enchantments.
I've been online enough to have seen several realm-first level 80 achievements, as well as those maxing various profession skills. I would expect that nearly all realm-firsts for classess will be done by the next weekend at the latest.
My hunter is going reasonably well. I've grabbed a bear pet for him to level up with and also to evaluate some of the criticisms people have had with swipe. Mania on her maniasarcania blog has asked for comments on bears performance. Bears are single target tanks with some AoE ability to help control adds. They are not really suitable for true AoE and volley pulls. This is reflected in the comments on the thread. The main difficulty is positioning the mobs all in the front aspect so the swipe can hit all of them. Volley is only available at level 40 and above so switching to a gorilla or croc then would make sense.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Hunter Pet reviews -pre wrath patch 3.x
[last update 15 Dec 2008]
*****
Forthcomming PTR 3.0.8 patch includes nerfing for scorpid poison and cat rake as well as several other hunter nerfs. Volley will be reduced by 30%. I suspect that this will actually help gorillas (and carrion birds and crocs and bears as well) maintain aggro on groups.
I'll revise the below pet families once the changes hit live servers.
*****
Note for patch 3.0.3:
Some exotic pets got a boost in overall DPS. This should make 51-point Beastmaster specialists happy, since their special benefit is now more on a par with the other tree's 51 point talent. The difference however should be minor, enough so that even BM specialists do not need to take exotics to be viable.
Cat's Rake ability has been weakened somewhat. I'll have to retest and compare them with raptors. *done*
The cost for pet specials has been reduced to 20 (from 25) focus. This should help autocasting priority so they go off more frequently when cooldowns are up.
*****
There are a great many changes in the way pets work in the new expansion. Inspired by the fine work done by Znodis at The Mystic Hunter I've attempted to do a quick PvE focused guide to pet choices.
More than at any time in wow history, all pet families are now viable as levelling pets. They can also probably all serve well enough in PvP, Arena and as tanks in instances. Properly specced Tenacity pets can even tank heroic instances, as evidenced by the competition going on now at Big Red Rhino
My reviews were done on various hunters in the level 20 to 30 range. They all spent the first 12 talent points in marksmanship, to get the go for the throat talent, then moved over to beastmastery. None of these hunter alts has particularly spectacular gear for their level. I used aspect of the hawk for most fights, switching to viper when low on mana.
Pets get a talent point at level 20, 24 and 28. Nearly all pets were freshly tamed wild ones, so started out up to 5 levels below the hunter. I spent talent points in dash/dive or charge, then the next in cobra reflexes. Some hunters had bought the glyphs for mend pet and serpent sting, both a minor boost to overall longevity in the field.
None of the Outland only, Northrend only, or exotic pets were able to be tested due to using low level hunters. These reviews are only of families available to hunters as they level up. Nearly all families are accessible by the mid 20's, so there's plenty on offer.
Cunning
The pets in the Cunning families are not always first choices for a levelling pet. They are mainly aimed at PvP and utility in groups but can still serve admirably as a general use companion.
Bats: Tested Vampiric Mistbat*
When testing Dragonhawks on a level 21 hunter, I also grabbed a bat from the same area then levelled them up to 20. Bats are ok as pets and their stun effect will be useful in PvP, but like other disabling effects its on a too-long cooldown to be useful as a general use pet. Little Vlad, my bat, would tank several similar level mobs easily enough but struggled against tougher opponents. This was one of the last pets I tested so perhaps rushed a bit. Bats are decent but not great pets for levelling.
Birds of Prey: Tested Strigid Hunter.
Blizzard stole my screech AOE effect from this pet. Snatch has plenty of potential in PvP but I'm not yet convinced of its effects in PvE. This pet has barely left the stables since patch, so this test is not yet complete.
Chimaeras: Exotic, Untested.
Dragonhawks: Tested *
All the lower level Dragonhawks used to be the weaker "caster" pets pre patch. That has thankfully been fixed in the 3.x world. Their flame breath attack has been nerfed back to being a single target effect rather than a short range AOE. Unfortunately they also seem to suffer the range attack bug that some other pets now seem cured of - they "stutter" forward until in range of their breath. Once in melee they are ok, autocasting breath fairly reliably but the initial attack is annoying. Overall, the Dragonhawk did rather well as a levelling pet. He made short work of Luzran and Knucklehead, then burnt down several adds that had joined in all without much trouble. Quite a likeable pet, despite its flaws.
Nether Rays: Outland only, Untested.
Ravagers: Tested Ravager Specimen.
A ravager makes a decent enough pet. I like the various animations, especially swim. Easy diet, strong dps. The special attack is a 2 second stun but on a longish 40 sec cooldown so doesn't see much usefulness in PvE. Might be better bound on a macro. The ravager has most definitely fallen from its perch as the favourite raiding pet.
Serpents: Tested Deviate Viper.
The serpent special attack poison spit is quite a useful one. With a 10 sec cooldown, its ready to go frequently during fights. It is both a DoT and an anti-caster debuff. It seems that the run-back-to range behaviour that these guys used to have before the patch has gone. A serpent with Dash is a really nice companion.
Silithids: Exotic, Untested.
Spiders: Tested Wildthorn Stalker.
I grabbed a random spider while travelling through Ashenvale. Pre-patch, a spider was a barely adequate pet. Now they are pretty handy creatures to have at your side. Mine easily tanked two mobs 4 levels above it with only mend pet to keep it going. The 40 second cooldown on its web ability is a bit long for levelling use, but if bound to a macro rather than autocast is a handy trick for preventing fleeing mobs. It will be extremely useful in PvP as well.
Spore Bats: Outland only, Untested.
Wind Serpents: Tested Deviate Stinglash.
Once the premier raiding pet for well geared hunters with lots of crit %, Wind serpents have never been one of my favourites. The 10sec cooldown on their lightning breath means its available often in a fight... but its rather underwhelming. Serpent's poison spit is faster, does more damage, shoots further and has a nice debuff that LBr lacks. They seem to have had the annoying run-to-range bug mostly fixed which is nice. The little winged snakes tank reasonably well and have some really nice skins but I'd prefer some other pet. Raiders might still be interested if LB scales with ranged attack power, but poison spit doesn't. I have no data either way as yet.
Ferocity
The ferocity families generally offer skills aimed at increasing damage. They generally lack the pure toughness and survivability of the tenacity pets but make up for it by killing things quickly. Raiders will favour Ferocity pets when they are not expected to tank. A ferocity pet will likely prove to be a good choice for a general use companion.
Carrion Birds: Tested Swoop.
Screech pre-patch was one of the best skills for hunters taking on multiple opponents. It is pretty much unchanged in 3.02, remaining single target damage, and multiple target debuff. I've only briefly tested my original pet, a Swoop from Mulgore, but it looks like it holds up fairly well. Carrion birds were lesser cousins to Owls pre-patch but now have come to the fore as levelling pets.
Cats: Tested Ghost Saber, and several others. (re-tested for 3.0.3)
Cats were third on the DPS totem pole pre patch. Testing by other hunter bloggers indicates they may now be top, at least until the exotics get their buff in a forthcoming patch. (* implemented in 3.0.3). Regardless, cats are an awesome pet. They come in a huge variety of skins to chose from at every level range making them readily accessible. Prowl, though it will be turned off most of the time, makes a nice addition on the occasions it can be used. Rake, the main family skill, is on a short timer, does reasonable damage and is a DoT. It is listed as bleed damage, so some monsters will be immune. Overall, cats still make great pets.
The slight reduction in damage on rake that was introduced in 3.0.3 makes little difference. Rake still contributes roughly 14% of the cats damage output vs 3% for raptor's Savage rend.
Core Hounds: Exotic, Untested.
Devilsaurs: Exotic, Untested.
Hyenas: Tested Hecklefang Stalker. *Updated*
Hyenas are ferocity pets with utility in pvp. Tendon Rip is one of the disabling moves with the shortest cooldown of the lot at 20 seconds. It is also a slight DoT but it is mostly its slowing effect that makes it nice. Hyenas also have a fairly extensive series of animations and interesting sound effects. A better than average pet for levelling.
Moths: Tested Vale Moth.
Moths are a curious inclusion in the ferocity tree. Their family special "Serenity Dust" is both an attack power buff and a minor heal to the pet, helping it fight and survive longer. It is on a longish 1-minute cooldown so isn't as useful as it could be for a levelling pet but does help in most fights. The only currently tameable moth for low level characters is the dirty white one in Azuremyst isle, past a bunch of high level guards making it a hard tame for horde players. It might just be worth the trip though; in my fairly limited testing, the little flying bug tanks like a champ and the self-heal keeps it going longer than otherwise. It also goes quite well with one of the moth small pets as a companion.
Raptors: Tested Deviate Slayer. (re-tested vs cat in 3.0.3 patch)
Raptors are yet again second string cats. Savage rend is a slightly more powerful version of cat's Rake, but its on a way too long cooldown of 1 minute. This makes it useful in most fights if you are pulling one at a time but not so good if you have a bunch at once, or chain fights really closely. A fierce raptor is a fine companion to have at your side. Mine helped me mostly-clear wailing caverns solo at level 23 - but frankly wasn't as good as the trash pet cat I took in originally.
The retest at patch 3.0.3 indicates that the long cooldown on rend is really hurting. Savage rend represented only 3-4% of the raptor's total damage output. Cats are still much better.
Spirit Beasts Exotic, Untested.
Tallstriders: Tested Fleeting Plainstrider.
Tallstriders need some love. Their Dust Cloud skill has some possibilities as an AOE grinding skill but has too limited an effect and a stupidly long cooldown. If left on autocast, it will be used at the start of a fight, before you've gathered a bunch of mobs and its special effect will be wasted. As a member of the ferocity family, a tallstrider does decent damage and its talent tree has some excellent abilities but then again, so does every other ferocity pet. There are far better choices. Almost any other pet is a better choice!
Wasps: Outland only, Untested. (The ones in Azeroth are all untameable at this time).
Rumour has it that wasps suffer slightly lessened damage per second than other similar pets. This is believed to be a bug!
Wolves: To be tested*
I had a brief test of an Ashenvale wolf at the time I tested spider. They did ok, but their family skill is mainly a group oriented ability. For a levelling pet, they are like a slightly buffed tallstrider.
Tenacity
The tenacity family mostly have skills that improve their ability to tank... by increasing damage, by debuffing enemies, or by protecting themselves. Tenacity pets at higher levels have talents that make them viable tanks or off-tanks for parties in instances, something that is beyond the reach of most other families. They also make good choices for solo play but are perhaps less useful in PvP.
Bears: Tested Ashenvale Bear and similar.
Bears are great pets. Charge makes them fast enough to get to the enemy and their family skill, Swipe, is a fast, damaging, MULTI TARGET attack. Bears are great for the kind of limited AOE grinding that most levelling as a hunter seems to consist of. They are tough as nails and hold the attention of a small group through any mend pets needed. The charge animation on a low-level bear looks like an attack wombat on a skateboard! There are a fair variety of looks to chose from and they are reasonably well animated. Overall, a great pet choice.
Boars: Tested Corrupted Mottled Boar, and others. (Bugfix to gore in patch 3.0.3. Needs retesting)
Several patches ago, Boars were THE premier levelling pet. Their gore and charge abilities made for the single best threat generation in the game. That has all changed now though. All Tenacity pets can get charge and gore has been somewhat nerfed. Gore is still a pretty good skill with a shortish cooldown but there are better tenacity pets to look at. Still a good choice for pet.
Crabs: Tested Encrusted Surf Crawler. *Updated*
Crabs get Pin for their family skill. Its a 4-second immobilise (not stun) and channelled DoT on a sadly long 40-second cooldown. I feel this is of more use on a pvp cunning pet than a tenacity tank and the cooldown is far too long for general use. Like the other tenacity families, a crab does fine but lacks that extra something to make it a great pet.
Crocolisks: tested Deviate Crocolisk.
Bad attitude has potential as an AOE grinding skill. It is a bit like Druid's thorns spell, in that its reactive damage to any attacker. It has a long 2 min cooldown but also lasts for 45 seconds so should last through most fights and be ready to go again when you pull the next bunch. Crocolisks have an incredibly annoying breathing sound and somewhat dubious animation which probably put me off this pet too quickly. I'll have to test again more thoroughly... with sound off!
Gorillas: To be tested* (Note: the lowest level Gorilla is level 32, a bit high for this project.)
I've grabbed a gorilla on my level 43 hunter. Even unfed, poorly talented and with only leather gear on the hunter, this guy is dynamite. Thunderstomp is absolutely brilliant for AoE work. The combination of TS, volley and aspect of the viper makes levelling and farming activities so easy! This guy is quite clearly the best available pet for levelling. I'll be going back and continuing to work on this, with a properly equipped hunter and a tanking focussed pet talent tree.
Rhinos: Exotic, Northrend only, Untested.
Scorpids: Tested Silithid Creeper. *Updated*
(Patch 3.0.3 reduced the damage of the scorpid poison skill, but also reduced the focus cost of the ability. This may make this pet more viable)
As a tenacity pet, Scorpids are nice hardy little tanks, able to take on several mobs around their level at once. Scorpid poison is a decent enough skill with a short cooldown. The problem for lowbie hunters is that its competing for focus with the claw skill. This means that it often fails to go off at all, or gets only one or two in a stack. Turning off claw allows full 5-stacks to build up quickly, but it decreases your dps.
Turtles: Tested Oasis Snapjaw. *Updated*
Shell Shield is the defining ability of Turtles. It's 50% damage reduction for 12 seconds every 1 minute. This could potentially be the strongest pure tanking pet in the game, great for taking on tough elites, or perhaps tanking in heroics. However, in the lower levels he's just slow and boring. I might re-test this family on my highest hunter to see if one with a bunch more talent points is better.
Warp Stalkers: Outland only, Untested.
Worms: Exotic, Untested.
*****
Forthcomming PTR 3.0.8 patch includes nerfing for scorpid poison and cat rake as well as several other hunter nerfs. Volley will be reduced by 30%. I suspect that this will actually help gorillas (and carrion birds and crocs and bears as well) maintain aggro on groups.
I'll revise the below pet families once the changes hit live servers.
*****
Note for patch 3.0.3:
Some exotic pets got a boost in overall DPS. This should make 51-point Beastmaster specialists happy, since their special benefit is now more on a par with the other tree's 51 point talent. The difference however should be minor, enough so that even BM specialists do not need to take exotics to be viable.
Cat's Rake ability has been weakened somewhat. I'll have to retest and compare them with raptors. *done*
The cost for pet specials has been reduced to 20 (from 25) focus. This should help autocasting priority so they go off more frequently when cooldowns are up.
*****
There are a great many changes in the way pets work in the new expansion. Inspired by the fine work done by Znodis at The Mystic Hunter I've attempted to do a quick PvE focused guide to pet choices.
More than at any time in wow history, all pet families are now viable as levelling pets. They can also probably all serve well enough in PvP, Arena and as tanks in instances. Properly specced Tenacity pets can even tank heroic instances, as evidenced by the competition going on now at Big Red Rhino
My reviews were done on various hunters in the level 20 to 30 range. They all spent the first 12 talent points in marksmanship, to get the go for the throat talent, then moved over to beastmastery. None of these hunter alts has particularly spectacular gear for their level. I used aspect of the hawk for most fights, switching to viper when low on mana.
Pets get a talent point at level 20, 24 and 28. Nearly all pets were freshly tamed wild ones, so started out up to 5 levels below the hunter. I spent talent points in dash/dive or charge, then the next in cobra reflexes. Some hunters had bought the glyphs for mend pet and serpent sting, both a minor boost to overall longevity in the field.
None of the Outland only, Northrend only, or exotic pets were able to be tested due to using low level hunters. These reviews are only of families available to hunters as they level up. Nearly all families are accessible by the mid 20's, so there's plenty on offer.
Cunning
The pets in the Cunning families are not always first choices for a levelling pet. They are mainly aimed at PvP and utility in groups but can still serve admirably as a general use companion.
Bats: Tested Vampiric Mistbat*
When testing Dragonhawks on a level 21 hunter, I also grabbed a bat from the same area then levelled them up to 20. Bats are ok as pets and their stun effect will be useful in PvP, but like other disabling effects its on a too-long cooldown to be useful as a general use pet. Little Vlad, my bat, would tank several similar level mobs easily enough but struggled against tougher opponents. This was one of the last pets I tested so perhaps rushed a bit. Bats are decent but not great pets for levelling.
Birds of Prey: Tested Strigid Hunter.
Blizzard stole my screech AOE effect from this pet. Snatch has plenty of potential in PvP but I'm not yet convinced of its effects in PvE. This pet has barely left the stables since patch, so this test is not yet complete.
Chimaeras: Exotic, Untested.
Dragonhawks: Tested *
All the lower level Dragonhawks used to be the weaker "caster" pets pre patch. That has thankfully been fixed in the 3.x world. Their flame breath attack has been nerfed back to being a single target effect rather than a short range AOE. Unfortunately they also seem to suffer the range attack bug that some other pets now seem cured of - they "stutter" forward until in range of their breath. Once in melee they are ok, autocasting breath fairly reliably but the initial attack is annoying. Overall, the Dragonhawk did rather well as a levelling pet. He made short work of Luzran and Knucklehead, then burnt down several adds that had joined in all without much trouble. Quite a likeable pet, despite its flaws.
Nether Rays: Outland only, Untested.
Ravagers: Tested Ravager Specimen.
A ravager makes a decent enough pet. I like the various animations, especially swim. Easy diet, strong dps. The special attack is a 2 second stun but on a longish 40 sec cooldown so doesn't see much usefulness in PvE. Might be better bound on a macro. The ravager has most definitely fallen from its perch as the favourite raiding pet.
Serpents: Tested Deviate Viper.
The serpent special attack poison spit is quite a useful one. With a 10 sec cooldown, its ready to go frequently during fights. It is both a DoT and an anti-caster debuff. It seems that the run-back-to range behaviour that these guys used to have before the patch has gone. A serpent with Dash is a really nice companion.
Silithids: Exotic, Untested.
Spiders: Tested Wildthorn Stalker.
I grabbed a random spider while travelling through Ashenvale. Pre-patch, a spider was a barely adequate pet. Now they are pretty handy creatures to have at your side. Mine easily tanked two mobs 4 levels above it with only mend pet to keep it going. The 40 second cooldown on its web ability is a bit long for levelling use, but if bound to a macro rather than autocast is a handy trick for preventing fleeing mobs. It will be extremely useful in PvP as well.
Spore Bats: Outland only, Untested.
Wind Serpents: Tested Deviate Stinglash.
Once the premier raiding pet for well geared hunters with lots of crit %, Wind serpents have never been one of my favourites. The 10sec cooldown on their lightning breath means its available often in a fight... but its rather underwhelming. Serpent's poison spit is faster, does more damage, shoots further and has a nice debuff that LBr lacks. They seem to have had the annoying run-to-range bug mostly fixed which is nice. The little winged snakes tank reasonably well and have some really nice skins but I'd prefer some other pet. Raiders might still be interested if LB scales with ranged attack power, but poison spit doesn't. I have no data either way as yet.
Ferocity
The ferocity families generally offer skills aimed at increasing damage. They generally lack the pure toughness and survivability of the tenacity pets but make up for it by killing things quickly. Raiders will favour Ferocity pets when they are not expected to tank. A ferocity pet will likely prove to be a good choice for a general use companion.
Carrion Birds: Tested Swoop.
Screech pre-patch was one of the best skills for hunters taking on multiple opponents. It is pretty much unchanged in 3.02, remaining single target damage, and multiple target debuff. I've only briefly tested my original pet, a Swoop from Mulgore, but it looks like it holds up fairly well. Carrion birds were lesser cousins to Owls pre-patch but now have come to the fore as levelling pets.
Cats: Tested Ghost Saber, and several others. (re-tested for 3.0.3)
Cats were third on the DPS totem pole pre patch. Testing by other hunter bloggers indicates they may now be top, at least until the exotics get their buff in a forthcoming patch. (* implemented in 3.0.3). Regardless, cats are an awesome pet. They come in a huge variety of skins to chose from at every level range making them readily accessible. Prowl, though it will be turned off most of the time, makes a nice addition on the occasions it can be used. Rake, the main family skill, is on a short timer, does reasonable damage and is a DoT. It is listed as bleed damage, so some monsters will be immune. Overall, cats still make great pets.
The slight reduction in damage on rake that was introduced in 3.0.3 makes little difference. Rake still contributes roughly 14% of the cats damage output vs 3% for raptor's Savage rend.
Core Hounds: Exotic, Untested.
Devilsaurs: Exotic, Untested.
Hyenas: Tested Hecklefang Stalker. *Updated*
Hyenas are ferocity pets with utility in pvp. Tendon Rip is one of the disabling moves with the shortest cooldown of the lot at 20 seconds. It is also a slight DoT but it is mostly its slowing effect that makes it nice. Hyenas also have a fairly extensive series of animations and interesting sound effects. A better than average pet for levelling.
Moths: Tested Vale Moth.
Moths are a curious inclusion in the ferocity tree. Their family special "Serenity Dust" is both an attack power buff and a minor heal to the pet, helping it fight and survive longer. It is on a longish 1-minute cooldown so isn't as useful as it could be for a levelling pet but does help in most fights. The only currently tameable moth for low level characters is the dirty white one in Azuremyst isle, past a bunch of high level guards making it a hard tame for horde players. It might just be worth the trip though; in my fairly limited testing, the little flying bug tanks like a champ and the self-heal keeps it going longer than otherwise. It also goes quite well with one of the moth small pets as a companion.
Raptors: Tested Deviate Slayer. (re-tested vs cat in 3.0.3 patch)
Raptors are yet again second string cats. Savage rend is a slightly more powerful version of cat's Rake, but its on a way too long cooldown of 1 minute. This makes it useful in most fights if you are pulling one at a time but not so good if you have a bunch at once, or chain fights really closely. A fierce raptor is a fine companion to have at your side. Mine helped me mostly-clear wailing caverns solo at level 23 - but frankly wasn't as good as the trash pet cat I took in originally.
The retest at patch 3.0.3 indicates that the long cooldown on rend is really hurting. Savage rend represented only 3-4% of the raptor's total damage output. Cats are still much better.
Spirit Beasts Exotic, Untested.
Tallstriders: Tested Fleeting Plainstrider.
Tallstriders need some love. Their Dust Cloud skill has some possibilities as an AOE grinding skill but has too limited an effect and a stupidly long cooldown. If left on autocast, it will be used at the start of a fight, before you've gathered a bunch of mobs and its special effect will be wasted. As a member of the ferocity family, a tallstrider does decent damage and its talent tree has some excellent abilities but then again, so does every other ferocity pet. There are far better choices. Almost any other pet is a better choice!
Wasps: Outland only, Untested. (The ones in Azeroth are all untameable at this time).
Rumour has it that wasps suffer slightly lessened damage per second than other similar pets. This is believed to be a bug!
Wolves: To be tested*
I had a brief test of an Ashenvale wolf at the time I tested spider. They did ok, but their family skill is mainly a group oriented ability. For a levelling pet, they are like a slightly buffed tallstrider.
Tenacity
The tenacity family mostly have skills that improve their ability to tank... by increasing damage, by debuffing enemies, or by protecting themselves. Tenacity pets at higher levels have talents that make them viable tanks or off-tanks for parties in instances, something that is beyond the reach of most other families. They also make good choices for solo play but are perhaps less useful in PvP.
Bears: Tested Ashenvale Bear and similar.
Bears are great pets. Charge makes them fast enough to get to the enemy and their family skill, Swipe, is a fast, damaging, MULTI TARGET attack. Bears are great for the kind of limited AOE grinding that most levelling as a hunter seems to consist of. They are tough as nails and hold the attention of a small group through any mend pets needed. The charge animation on a low-level bear looks like an attack wombat on a skateboard! There are a fair variety of looks to chose from and they are reasonably well animated. Overall, a great pet choice.
Boars: Tested Corrupted Mottled Boar, and others. (Bugfix to gore in patch 3.0.3. Needs retesting)
Several patches ago, Boars were THE premier levelling pet. Their gore and charge abilities made for the single best threat generation in the game. That has all changed now though. All Tenacity pets can get charge and gore has been somewhat nerfed. Gore is still a pretty good skill with a shortish cooldown but there are better tenacity pets to look at. Still a good choice for pet.
Crabs: Tested Encrusted Surf Crawler. *Updated*
Crabs get Pin for their family skill. Its a 4-second immobilise (not stun) and channelled DoT on a sadly long 40-second cooldown. I feel this is of more use on a pvp cunning pet than a tenacity tank and the cooldown is far too long for general use. Like the other tenacity families, a crab does fine but lacks that extra something to make it a great pet.
Crocolisks: tested Deviate Crocolisk.
Bad attitude has potential as an AOE grinding skill. It is a bit like Druid's thorns spell, in that its reactive damage to any attacker. It has a long 2 min cooldown but also lasts for 45 seconds so should last through most fights and be ready to go again when you pull the next bunch. Crocolisks have an incredibly annoying breathing sound and somewhat dubious animation which probably put me off this pet too quickly. I'll have to test again more thoroughly... with sound off!
Gorillas: To be tested* (Note: the lowest level Gorilla is level 32, a bit high for this project.)
I've grabbed a gorilla on my level 43 hunter. Even unfed, poorly talented and with only leather gear on the hunter, this guy is dynamite. Thunderstomp is absolutely brilliant for AoE work. The combination of TS, volley and aspect of the viper makes levelling and farming activities so easy! This guy is quite clearly the best available pet for levelling. I'll be going back and continuing to work on this, with a properly equipped hunter and a tanking focussed pet talent tree.
Rhinos: Exotic, Northrend only, Untested.
Scorpids: Tested Silithid Creeper. *Updated*
(Patch 3.0.3 reduced the damage of the scorpid poison skill, but also reduced the focus cost of the ability. This may make this pet more viable)
As a tenacity pet, Scorpids are nice hardy little tanks, able to take on several mobs around their level at once. Scorpid poison is a decent enough skill with a short cooldown. The problem for lowbie hunters is that its competing for focus with the claw skill. This means that it often fails to go off at all, or gets only one or two in a stack. Turning off claw allows full 5-stacks to build up quickly, but it decreases your dps.
Turtles: Tested Oasis Snapjaw. *Updated*
Shell Shield is the defining ability of Turtles. It's 50% damage reduction for 12 seconds every 1 minute. This could potentially be the strongest pure tanking pet in the game, great for taking on tough elites, or perhaps tanking in heroics. However, in the lower levels he's just slow and boring. I might re-test this family on my highest hunter to see if one with a bunch more talent points is better.
Warp Stalkers: Outland only, Untested.
Worms: Exotic, Untested.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
A Hunter's Dilemma
Patch 3.0.2 opens up lots of possibilities for hunters, even lowbie ones like most of mine. There aren't too many talent changes at the lower end of things so most of mine have spent the first 12 points in marksman to get Go for the Throat, then moved over to beastmastery for their remaining points. Where the pets are high enough, I've spent points in dash/dive and cobra reflexes. Only a couple are high enough to get tier two stuff yet.
The simple choice available of course is to spend money on new stable slots. Almost all my characters had bought the original two stable slots and now hunters have to cough up 200g more for the new two slots. This hasn't been an issue on my main realms where a lazy 200g is easy to come by. The dilemma then arises in what pets to take to fill the slots. Most of my hunters had two pets already. I want to have at least one member of each talent tree, Tenacity, Ferocity and Cunning. None of my hunters are high enough yet to take exotic pets. Most have a cat pet already, then either a boar or a bird. So far, cats are still great pets. My carrion birds are still nice but I'm not sure I like what they have done to my owls and boars.
I'd like to have 2 ferocity and 2 cunning pets on each hunter, with a tenacity pet to take up he 5th slot. Most of my existing pets are ferocity. I grabbed a WC snake last night to start testing cunning pets.... so far its not bad!
Of tenacity pets, I like the AOE of bears and gorillas. I might give scorpids another try too, I quite liked them pre patch. The other accessible families aren't too interesting.
I guess I'll just have to trial them all in various situations to see how they play. I'm not fond of turtles, bats, moths, but the rest are ok for aesthetics. I'll also try out all the exotics once my main hunter gets high enough.
The other dilemma that arises is of course what to do with temporary pets. Not all pet families will have an attractive skin near my level. Some pets will only be found deep in dungeons, and I'd need a temporary pet to find my way to them. Just last night I grabbed a Barrens cat from just outside crossroads as a temp pet to get inside Wailing Caverns. That young lioness served me well battling hordes of raptors and blob creatures until we got deep into the caverns. Ahead I saw a likely specimen, a purple and blue viper. I fed cat one last hunk of meat, gave her an affectionate pat and thankyou, then released her. She had been my companion for only half an hour or so, and was just a sandy coloured cat like thousands of others, yet I was growing attached to her already. A pat and a feed are barely acceptable thanks for saving my hide so often!
The simple choice available of course is to spend money on new stable slots. Almost all my characters had bought the original two stable slots and now hunters have to cough up 200g more for the new two slots. This hasn't been an issue on my main realms where a lazy 200g is easy to come by. The dilemma then arises in what pets to take to fill the slots. Most of my hunters had two pets already. I want to have at least one member of each talent tree, Tenacity, Ferocity and Cunning. None of my hunters are high enough yet to take exotic pets. Most have a cat pet already, then either a boar or a bird. So far, cats are still great pets. My carrion birds are still nice but I'm not sure I like what they have done to my owls and boars.
I'd like to have 2 ferocity and 2 cunning pets on each hunter, with a tenacity pet to take up he 5th slot. Most of my existing pets are ferocity. I grabbed a WC snake last night to start testing cunning pets.... so far its not bad!
Of tenacity pets, I like the AOE of bears and gorillas. I might give scorpids another try too, I quite liked them pre patch. The other accessible families aren't too interesting.
I guess I'll just have to trial them all in various situations to see how they play. I'm not fond of turtles, bats, moths, but the rest are ok for aesthetics. I'll also try out all the exotics once my main hunter gets high enough.
The other dilemma that arises is of course what to do with temporary pets. Not all pet families will have an attractive skin near my level. Some pets will only be found deep in dungeons, and I'd need a temporary pet to find my way to them. Just last night I grabbed a Barrens cat from just outside crossroads as a temp pet to get inside Wailing Caverns. That young lioness served me well battling hordes of raptors and blob creatures until we got deep into the caverns. Ahead I saw a likely specimen, a purple and blue viper. I fed cat one last hunk of meat, gave her an affectionate pat and thankyou, then released her. She had been my companion for only half an hour or so, and was just a sandy coloured cat like thousands of others, yet I was growing attached to her already. A pat and a feed are barely acceptable thanks for saving my hide so often!
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
The Claytons blog entry.
Wow patch 3.02 is downloading on my laptop now. There are a lot of things to look into once I'm finally able to log back in. First off I think I'll look at my lowbie hunters, or maybe my soon to be sacrificed 50's warlock. I think I'm more excited by the many game mechanics changes than I am about the impending release of Wrath and the new continent. Once wrath hits and the servers are a bit more stable, I think I'll start levelling Crypt again... but mostly in outland, not in Northrend!
Monday, September 29, 2008
Leaving the experince bar behind with a bang.
With a little help from several guildies I'd spent several play sessions this last week grinding down that elusive experience bar. Last weekend I got involved in a couple of kills on the Brewfest boss in BRD. No drops of note and I got lots of snide remarks since I was level 68 vs the rest of the team of geared level 70's. Thanks ever so much Bliz, your changes to Brewfest this year really suck.
I returned to Nagrand and completed a bunch of quests leaving mostly the group quests only, then grouped up with guild members and ex-guildies to complete them. Durn the Hungerer hits very hard and smashed through a hunter "tank" and myself without trouble. I came back again later with a pally and we 3-manned him fairly easily. The same group finished off Tusker on the way past, neatly finishing off the Nessingwary series. Somewhere amongst this I dinged 69.
My pally friend and I continued on to Shadowmoon Valley, where I had never been before. He died attempting the stupid jump-a-tron quest in Nagrand on the way past. I picked up a flightpoint in Terrokar and the ones in SMV.
Our friend Uvuros bit the dust easily before we headed over to Black Temple.
Here I was treated to the most awesome display of AOE grinding I've seen. My friend is a 70 pally, in post-kara HEALING gear. He would run in and gather up 10-15 of the level 67-70 humanoid mobs that are on both sides of the entryway to Black temple and then AOE them to death. I was picking up around 500 exp per kill. That is around 7k exp per pull for me at level 69. Lucky my bags were almost empty! We also managed to pull several of the elite dragonkin while doing this; they went down almost as easily as the lower mobs! We would average 2 pulls per side before we would go catch the respawns on the other ramp. Once we got greedy and pulled about 30 mobs at once, but they managed to break his tank. I lasted, oh, half a nanosecond once he was down! The piles of corpses after each pull were amazing.
Doomwalker rained on our parade somewhat. Our accidental deaths earlier had applied a debuff that meant if we got close to doomwalker, his aura of death would instantly kill us. We kept out of range to continue grinding. I had gained almost 50% of level 69 just hanging on my pally friend's coat-tails before he got an invite to a raid and left me to my own amusements. I believe this was the fastest session of levelling I have had since before level 20!
After returning to Nagrand to hand in quests I was about 80% of the way through to level 70. I flew to Blades Edge Mountains and rode over the bridge into Area 52 and Netherstorm. A little bit of grinding and the completion of a handful of quests saw my experince bar creep up to within 4,000 points of levelling. Apparently my guild had plans to celebrate with me as I hit 70, so I hearthed to Shattrath to wait.
By Sunday afternoon I'd been playing alts for a while. Someone talked me into a runthrough of SM and since I needed lots of silk for my alts I agreed. I logged in to Crypt again and headed to Undercity. I got there just in time to help defend against a fairly large Allied raid. They had initial success in invading the bank and auction house areas before meeting fairly stiff resistance. The main group of allies got bogged down here near the auctioneers but some other groups broke off and ran riot through parts of UC's shopping areas. PvP madness ensued, and this time I survived well enough to inflict a bunch of kills. A mage and priest got caught in an alcove near the sewers entrance. Both fell to my blade flurry attack. A warrior got knifed in the back while busy fighting the lag monster and a druid engaged in a game of cat and mouse that ended up with another kitty corpse in the sewers.
Stragglers were still hiding out in various locations around UC even 20 minutes after the main raid was over. Several more scalps were added to my collection. PVP is a lot more fun when you don't die almost instantly!
After all that fun I took my guildmate for a quick run through SM-Cath and then SM-Lib. I farmed up a lot of silk for my alts and my guildmate got some new gear, though got growled at for rolling need on cloth gear he didn't actually need.
Later, after a break for dinner,I returned to the game. I took Cryptography to Org to bank and auction some stuff and do the Brewfest quests one last time. I arrived in time to "fight" the Dark Iron dwarves and then completed both the barrel race and barking quests while drunk. The Dark Iron invaders came back for some more while I was checking out the vendors, so I got completely smashed again fighting them off. It was then that I made possibly the biggest mistake of my whole adventuring career.
While "completely smashed", I went to the nearest quest giver to hand in for my brewfest tokens reward. However, I went to the wrong questgiver and actually ended up handing in Corens Dire Brew instead. Sure, I got a hefty sampling of tokens for this, but I also got some 15,000 exp.... which, if you've actually read this great wall of text, you will notice had the immediate effect of giving Crypt a nice golden glow and a chiming gong sound effect. Yes folks, after 38 days, 11 hours, 28 minutes and about 15 seconds, Cryptography made it to level 70. Hooray! I'm sure he had a good time of it, but he was too drunk to remember and couldn't see clearly enough to take a screenshot. He's also disappointed many guildmates who were organising some sort of special event. It wont be quite the same any more.
What does a newly minted level 70 do?
Smart ones probably start to do something about their crappy gear. Crypt is in quest greens for the most part. A few items might even be pre-outland actually. He's not set foot inside any of the outland instances nor a battleground since level 19. Decent quality items need gems and enchants. I have no decent gear, hence no need (yet) for either of these.
No, I've done nothing about the gear.
Smart level 70's grind out the last bits of their trade skills. As a skinner, Crypt had an easy time maximising that particular trade skill. First aid was also maximised very early on in Outlands. Fishing, cooking and leatherwork have languished behind since about level 45 or so. I do intend to max them all out, but am in no particular hurry to do so.
No, I havent improved any of my trade skills.
Smart level 70's start down various instance attunement quests, or faction grinds. Crypt has casually worked on Thrallmar and Mag'har rep while levelling up. Hes also dabbled with the Consortium and Cenarion Expedition. Progress for most of these now requires instance runs, which he hasn't yet done.
Nope, not done much here either.
Other smart level 70's go get their flying mount. My army of bank alts have been working hard on this for months. They gathered their resources and mailed a chunk of change over to Crypt, who accepted the Shatt flightmaster's quest and flew to Shadowmoon Village. Once I found the flight trainer and mount vendor I had the hard decisions to make: Do I shell out for just basic flyer at 800g + 100g mount, or go full out and pay the extra 5000g + 200g mount for the epic flyer, especially as patch day and wrath release are possibly going to reduce these costs?
Noooooo!
Continuing the long tradition of blowing money on fast mounts and loose women, Cryptography bought out the whole damn dealership.
800g for artisan riding skill (basic flyer)
5000g for master riding skill (epic flyer) (or is it the other way round? )
100g for tawny windrider
100g for green windrider
100g for blue windrider
200g for Swift Purple windrider
200g for Swift Red windrider
200g for Swift Green windrider
200g for Swift Yellow windrider.
Yes, that's 6900 gold. Every single copper of it is worth it though. Flying is AWESOME.
I now have 10 bag slots dedicated to mounts. Roll on patch day and the new way of handling mounts! I have three different random mount selection macros for Crypt. One for the epic riding mounts, one for the basic flyers and the other for the shiny new epic flyers.
After flying round for a bit, my friend and I made a start on the Netherwing quest chain. The first few steps were pretty easy and we both got up to the group quest to kill Zuluhed the wacked. We tried for a while to get a group going but to no avail. Then my pally friend showed up, and another rogue in our guild wanted a go at it. Pally supertank, 2 rogues and a holy priest downed that sucker twice (since one party member didn't have the quest!), then a bit later we downed him again for a mage in an allied guild.
Crypto is now flying around as a stealthed Fel Orc, poisoning peons and stealing netherwing eggs at every opportunity. Looks like I will be on a grind of daily quests for reputation for some time. Netherwing eggs seem to be fairly rare, or perhaps just over farmed, so they will not provide a massive shortcut for reputation gains. While doing these quests, I have assisted several other guildies to get started. Most of them don't have the epic flight skill yet so get stuck just after killing Zuluhed.
I also plan on starting the Shattari skyguard grind, and more cenarion expedition grinding, for their epic mounts as well as the dragon. I will very likely buy all the different varieties - I collect mounts!
On the way I'll look at getting some decent gear but am not looking to spend too much on that since more greens in Wrath will likely be sufficient... and if not, a few extra levels then back into the dungeons should make it even easier.
I returned to Nagrand and completed a bunch of quests leaving mostly the group quests only, then grouped up with guild members and ex-guildies to complete them. Durn the Hungerer hits very hard and smashed through a hunter "tank" and myself without trouble. I came back again later with a pally and we 3-manned him fairly easily. The same group finished off Tusker on the way past, neatly finishing off the Nessingwary series. Somewhere amongst this I dinged 69.
My pally friend and I continued on to Shadowmoon Valley, where I had never been before. He died attempting the stupid jump-a-tron quest in Nagrand on the way past. I picked up a flightpoint in Terrokar and the ones in SMV.
Our friend Uvuros bit the dust easily before we headed over to Black Temple.
Here I was treated to the most awesome display of AOE grinding I've seen. My friend is a 70 pally, in post-kara HEALING gear. He would run in and gather up 10-15 of the level 67-70 humanoid mobs that are on both sides of the entryway to Black temple and then AOE them to death. I was picking up around 500 exp per kill. That is around 7k exp per pull for me at level 69. Lucky my bags were almost empty! We also managed to pull several of the elite dragonkin while doing this; they went down almost as easily as the lower mobs! We would average 2 pulls per side before we would go catch the respawns on the other ramp. Once we got greedy and pulled about 30 mobs at once, but they managed to break his tank. I lasted, oh, half a nanosecond once he was down! The piles of corpses after each pull were amazing.
Doomwalker rained on our parade somewhat. Our accidental deaths earlier had applied a debuff that meant if we got close to doomwalker, his aura of death would instantly kill us. We kept out of range to continue grinding. I had gained almost 50% of level 69 just hanging on my pally friend's coat-tails before he got an invite to a raid and left me to my own amusements. I believe this was the fastest session of levelling I have had since before level 20!
After returning to Nagrand to hand in quests I was about 80% of the way through to level 70. I flew to Blades Edge Mountains and rode over the bridge into Area 52 and Netherstorm. A little bit of grinding and the completion of a handful of quests saw my experince bar creep up to within 4,000 points of levelling. Apparently my guild had plans to celebrate with me as I hit 70, so I hearthed to Shattrath to wait.
By Sunday afternoon I'd been playing alts for a while. Someone talked me into a runthrough of SM and since I needed lots of silk for my alts I agreed. I logged in to Crypt again and headed to Undercity. I got there just in time to help defend against a fairly large Allied raid. They had initial success in invading the bank and auction house areas before meeting fairly stiff resistance. The main group of allies got bogged down here near the auctioneers but some other groups broke off and ran riot through parts of UC's shopping areas. PvP madness ensued, and this time I survived well enough to inflict a bunch of kills. A mage and priest got caught in an alcove near the sewers entrance. Both fell to my blade flurry attack. A warrior got knifed in the back while busy fighting the lag monster and a druid engaged in a game of cat and mouse that ended up with another kitty corpse in the sewers.
Stragglers were still hiding out in various locations around UC even 20 minutes after the main raid was over. Several more scalps were added to my collection. PVP is a lot more fun when you don't die almost instantly!
After all that fun I took my guildmate for a quick run through SM-Cath and then SM-Lib. I farmed up a lot of silk for my alts and my guildmate got some new gear, though got growled at for rolling need on cloth gear he didn't actually need.
Later, after a break for dinner,I returned to the game. I took Cryptography to Org to bank and auction some stuff and do the Brewfest quests one last time. I arrived in time to "fight" the Dark Iron dwarves and then completed both the barrel race and barking quests while drunk. The Dark Iron invaders came back for some more while I was checking out the vendors, so I got completely smashed again fighting them off. It was then that I made possibly the biggest mistake of my whole adventuring career.
While "completely smashed", I went to the nearest quest giver to hand in for my brewfest tokens reward. However, I went to the wrong questgiver and actually ended up handing in Corens Dire Brew instead. Sure, I got a hefty sampling of tokens for this, but I also got some 15,000 exp.... which, if you've actually read this great wall of text, you will notice had the immediate effect of giving Crypt a nice golden glow and a chiming gong sound effect. Yes folks, after 38 days, 11 hours, 28 minutes and about 15 seconds, Cryptography made it to level 70. Hooray! I'm sure he had a good time of it, but he was too drunk to remember and couldn't see clearly enough to take a screenshot. He's also disappointed many guildmates who were organising some sort of special event. It wont be quite the same any more.
What does a newly minted level 70 do?
Smart ones probably start to do something about their crappy gear. Crypt is in quest greens for the most part. A few items might even be pre-outland actually. He's not set foot inside any of the outland instances nor a battleground since level 19. Decent quality items need gems and enchants. I have no decent gear, hence no need (yet) for either of these.
No, I've done nothing about the gear.
Smart level 70's grind out the last bits of their trade skills. As a skinner, Crypt had an easy time maximising that particular trade skill. First aid was also maximised very early on in Outlands. Fishing, cooking and leatherwork have languished behind since about level 45 or so. I do intend to max them all out, but am in no particular hurry to do so.
No, I havent improved any of my trade skills.
Smart level 70's start down various instance attunement quests, or faction grinds. Crypt has casually worked on Thrallmar and Mag'har rep while levelling up. Hes also dabbled with the Consortium and Cenarion Expedition. Progress for most of these now requires instance runs, which he hasn't yet done.
Nope, not done much here either.
Other smart level 70's go get their flying mount. My army of bank alts have been working hard on this for months. They gathered their resources and mailed a chunk of change over to Crypt, who accepted the Shatt flightmaster's quest and flew to Shadowmoon Village. Once I found the flight trainer and mount vendor I had the hard decisions to make: Do I shell out for just basic flyer at 800g + 100g mount, or go full out and pay the extra 5000g + 200g mount for the epic flyer, especially as patch day and wrath release are possibly going to reduce these costs?
Noooooo!
Continuing the long tradition of blowing money on fast mounts and loose women, Cryptography bought out the whole damn dealership.
800g for artisan riding skill (basic flyer)
5000g for master riding skill (epic flyer) (or is it the other way round? )
100g for tawny windrider
100g for green windrider
100g for blue windrider
200g for Swift Purple windrider
200g for Swift Red windrider
200g for Swift Green windrider
200g for Swift Yellow windrider.
Yes, that's 6900 gold. Every single copper of it is worth it though. Flying is AWESOME.
I now have 10 bag slots dedicated to mounts. Roll on patch day and the new way of handling mounts! I have three different random mount selection macros for Crypt. One for the epic riding mounts, one for the basic flyers and the other for the shiny new epic flyers.
After flying round for a bit, my friend and I made a start on the Netherwing quest chain. The first few steps were pretty easy and we both got up to the group quest to kill Zuluhed the wacked. We tried for a while to get a group going but to no avail. Then my pally friend showed up, and another rogue in our guild wanted a go at it. Pally supertank, 2 rogues and a holy priest downed that sucker twice (since one party member didn't have the quest!), then a bit later we downed him again for a mage in an allied guild.
Crypto is now flying around as a stealthed Fel Orc, poisoning peons and stealing netherwing eggs at every opportunity. Looks like I will be on a grind of daily quests for reputation for some time. Netherwing eggs seem to be fairly rare, or perhaps just over farmed, so they will not provide a massive shortcut for reputation gains. While doing these quests, I have assisted several other guildies to get started. Most of them don't have the epic flight skill yet so get stuck just after killing Zuluhed.
I also plan on starting the Shattari skyguard grind, and more cenarion expedition grinding, for their epic mounts as well as the dragon. I will very likely buy all the different varieties - I collect mounts!
On the way I'll look at getting some decent gear but am not looking to spend too much on that since more greens in Wrath will likely be sufficient... and if not, a few extra levels then back into the dungeons should make it even easier.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Mercentile Madness - Roundup.
Its about two months since my last post in this series. In that time, I've had precious little chance to work on my two "Newbie" servers.
I did manage to catch up with Ideale/Ahami on VeCo and had some fun showing off the scenery in southern Tanaris. Traceabull my hunter was only level 22 or so and proved to be an absolute magnet for aggro in Tanaris. One thing I did notice is that hunters have a large advantage vs almost any other class when fighting much higher level monsters. Spellcasters find it nearly impossible to fight anyone 5 levels above them due to their primary attacks being resisted nearly all the time. I took a 29 warlock with some guildies into SM recently and could barely contribute at all due to this. Previous adventures with my rogue have shown that his melee attacks are also heavily penalised against higher level monsters, to the point where he would be lucky to hit for 5-6 damage each attack. Hunter's melee and special shots seem to suffer from this reduction also... but not so their white-damage autoshots. Traceabull was hitting the level 45-50 mobs in southern Tanaris for reasonably respectable 30-40 hits a shot, about what he does on same-level targets. These guys are 20 levels above him! This may partly explain why hunters are so good at taking on mobs a couple of levels above their own whereas other classes are not so lucky. Even warlocks in the mid-20's struggle more than hunters do.
After the sight-seeing trip was done, we hearthed out. I met up with Ideale's druid alt and her housemate's priest, to whom I gave some enchants with the crappy mats I had available. Hopefully they made a bit of difference. I do have better enchants available if you want, ladies... just give me a chance to scrounge some mats.
Ideale was a "bad friend" and hadn't supplied a wand, so when one turned up later while I was questing I gave that to the priest as well. The two girls were busy finishing off their quests and I was off elsewhere doing my own for a bit too, though we remained in a party to facilitate chat for a while longer. I burned through the rest of my rested experience then switched over to Changeabull my druid for a bit.
Changeabull had a fairly full quest log so spent some time handing in. Once that was manageable again, he visited the auction house. Between the two characters I now have quite an inventory of stuff for sale though little spare cash on hand. Much of the money I do make is spent on obtaining cheap items for disenchantment. Some of this is still being absorbed leveling enchanting on Traceabull; he's nearly maxed it for his current level. Any of the lower level materials are returned for auction and are starting to generate decent funds.
Over a couple of days I spent several hours trawling through the AH, finding cheap stuff and disenchanting it, then using or reselling the materials. I also spent about 150 gold in market manipulation.
There was a mid level enchanting material that was in quite large supply. I bought out virtually the entire stock, leaving only a handful of very overpriced suppliers in the market. I actually then consumed probably 80% of that stock levelling up enchanting. The remaining materials were then listed back on the AH at a price higher than average but still undercutting the market. Since this was still the weekend peak, most of my stock has since moved at those inflated prices and I've made nearly all my money back using only 20% of the stock! I do have some more of the same material, since several people tried to undercut my inflated price, but I've bought them out and re-listed.
There is a second, quite expensive, enchanting material that I now have significant stock in. It has not been as successful an investment and I had several 48-hour auctions expire. Luckily I need these to continue levelling my skill anyway so it won't matter much.
I also sacrificed an unused hunter alt on a "normal" US server. I found some random guy in razor hill and gave him all my stuff before suiciding that character. I then returned to VeCo and saw the birth of "Replaceabull", a Tauren shammy. He's had a little help from his bigger brothers and is motoring along nicely at level 6.
I've also found some time to visit Cael. I got distracted by my alts on the horde side when I should have been looking after the alliance guys. Nevertheless, I've managed to boost both warlock and hunter to level 21 and have done some more market and enchanting work. Unfortunately, the friends from Dath who were playing here have more or less abandoned their characters so some of my motivation to continue has gone. I am still feeling uneasy having both Horde and Alliance on the same server... its just wrong. Anyway, once I've done a few more market scans here and rebuilt my prices, I'll hit that auction house fairly hard while casually levelling the characters.
On Dath, most of my time has been spent in various instances. I've managed about 10 levels on some of my lower alts but have done little work on Crypt, despite a fair bit of encouragement from friends and guildies. I've been very busy with work so by the time I get on wow I'm interested in instant gratification that I can get by quickly levelling an alt.
I did take Crypto in as tank to Scholomance with two level 60-ish shammies from my guild and a warlock and hunter from the LFG channel. We did mostly ok. One wipe happened early when our healer went afk (unavoidably) and was then feared right into the middle of the room pulling a truckload of mobs. We wiped again later when I made a spectacularly bad pull that somehow managed to drag two extra groups of mobs, who then aggroed a few more on their way over to beat me into a pulp. We had several more individual party deaths when I either lost aggro, or didn't gain it in the first place - rogues are not designed to tank! Once people got used to the unusual group composition though, things went well. I also ran Crypt through RFC dragging along a level 11 guildie. A full clear in 20 minutes isn't bad! (Yes, this completely goes against my "runthus are evil" policy, but he'd already been in with an unsuccessful group earlier so I took pity on him.)
I did manage to catch up with Ideale/Ahami on VeCo and had some fun showing off the scenery in southern Tanaris. Traceabull my hunter was only level 22 or so and proved to be an absolute magnet for aggro in Tanaris. One thing I did notice is that hunters have a large advantage vs almost any other class when fighting much higher level monsters. Spellcasters find it nearly impossible to fight anyone 5 levels above them due to their primary attacks being resisted nearly all the time. I took a 29 warlock with some guildies into SM recently and could barely contribute at all due to this. Previous adventures with my rogue have shown that his melee attacks are also heavily penalised against higher level monsters, to the point where he would be lucky to hit for 5-6 damage each attack. Hunter's melee and special shots seem to suffer from this reduction also... but not so their white-damage autoshots. Traceabull was hitting the level 45-50 mobs in southern Tanaris for reasonably respectable 30-40 hits a shot, about what he does on same-level targets. These guys are 20 levels above him! This may partly explain why hunters are so good at taking on mobs a couple of levels above their own whereas other classes are not so lucky. Even warlocks in the mid-20's struggle more than hunters do.
After the sight-seeing trip was done, we hearthed out. I met up with Ideale's druid alt and her housemate's priest, to whom I gave some enchants with the crappy mats I had available. Hopefully they made a bit of difference. I do have better enchants available if you want, ladies... just give me a chance to scrounge some mats.
Ideale was a "bad friend" and hadn't supplied a wand, so when one turned up later while I was questing I gave that to the priest as well. The two girls were busy finishing off their quests and I was off elsewhere doing my own for a bit too, though we remained in a party to facilitate chat for a while longer. I burned through the rest of my rested experience then switched over to Changeabull my druid for a bit.
Changeabull had a fairly full quest log so spent some time handing in. Once that was manageable again, he visited the auction house. Between the two characters I now have quite an inventory of stuff for sale though little spare cash on hand. Much of the money I do make is spent on obtaining cheap items for disenchantment. Some of this is still being absorbed leveling enchanting on Traceabull; he's nearly maxed it for his current level. Any of the lower level materials are returned for auction and are starting to generate decent funds.
Over a couple of days I spent several hours trawling through the AH, finding cheap stuff and disenchanting it, then using or reselling the materials. I also spent about 150 gold in market manipulation.
There was a mid level enchanting material that was in quite large supply. I bought out virtually the entire stock, leaving only a handful of very overpriced suppliers in the market. I actually then consumed probably 80% of that stock levelling up enchanting. The remaining materials were then listed back on the AH at a price higher than average but still undercutting the market. Since this was still the weekend peak, most of my stock has since moved at those inflated prices and I've made nearly all my money back using only 20% of the stock! I do have some more of the same material, since several people tried to undercut my inflated price, but I've bought them out and re-listed.
There is a second, quite expensive, enchanting material that I now have significant stock in. It has not been as successful an investment and I had several 48-hour auctions expire. Luckily I need these to continue levelling my skill anyway so it won't matter much.
I also sacrificed an unused hunter alt on a "normal" US server. I found some random guy in razor hill and gave him all my stuff before suiciding that character. I then returned to VeCo and saw the birth of "Replaceabull", a Tauren shammy. He's had a little help from his bigger brothers and is motoring along nicely at level 6.
I've also found some time to visit Cael. I got distracted by my alts on the horde side when I should have been looking after the alliance guys. Nevertheless, I've managed to boost both warlock and hunter to level 21 and have done some more market and enchanting work. Unfortunately, the friends from Dath who were playing here have more or less abandoned their characters so some of my motivation to continue has gone. I am still feeling uneasy having both Horde and Alliance on the same server... its just wrong. Anyway, once I've done a few more market scans here and rebuilt my prices, I'll hit that auction house fairly hard while casually levelling the characters.
On Dath, most of my time has been spent in various instances. I've managed about 10 levels on some of my lower alts but have done little work on Crypt, despite a fair bit of encouragement from friends and guildies. I've been very busy with work so by the time I get on wow I'm interested in instant gratification that I can get by quickly levelling an alt.
I did take Crypto in as tank to Scholomance with two level 60-ish shammies from my guild and a warlock and hunter from the LFG channel. We did mostly ok. One wipe happened early when our healer went afk (unavoidably) and was then feared right into the middle of the room pulling a truckload of mobs. We wiped again later when I made a spectacularly bad pull that somehow managed to drag two extra groups of mobs, who then aggroed a few more on their way over to beat me into a pulp. We had several more individual party deaths when I either lost aggro, or didn't gain it in the first place - rogues are not designed to tank! Once people got used to the unusual group composition though, things went well. I also ran Crypt through RFC dragging along a level 11 guildie. A full clear in 20 minutes isn't bad! (Yes, this completely goes against my "runthus are evil" policy, but he'd already been in with an unsuccessful group earlier so I took pity on him.)
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Instance roles
Just thought I'd put down some ideas for tactics in small groups and low level instance running. This isn't the complete guide, just various tips and tricks.
The same roles are mostly valid in higher level instances but class specialisation has a noticeable effect; no more rogue tanks in higher instances please!
In any group there are certain roles to be filled. These can be filled by various classes at times, but obviously some classes suit a role better than others.
The Roles:
The TANK
A tank is the character doing the up close and personal melee combat with the monsters (MOB, NPC). Their role is mostly to soak up damage and prevent the mob from attacking other group members. Other aspects of this role are preventing spell casting and preventing fleeing. Damage dealing is NOT the primary requirement here, but is important in "holding aggro".
Warriors and Paladins are the tank of choice due to much better armour than other classes. Bearform Druids get boosted armour and abilities to handle this role well. Rogues, Hunters and Shamans can tank lower level instances if there isn't someone else available. No spell casting cloth wearer should ever be the primary tank. Warlock and Hunter pets can tank to some extent but have real aggro management problems.
The OFF-TANK
Similar to the TANK above, the OFF-TANK is a secondary Tank. They have a more specialised role in groups. The off-tank's job is to manage any ADDs (additional monsters) or mobs that break away from the main tank. Spell caster interruption and flee prevention are high priorities here. A general awareness of the combat zone is needed. The Off-Tank must be alert for ADDs or re spawns, capturing their attention and either managing it or drawing them to the main tank.
Almost any non- cloth wearer can be a suitable off-tank in lower level instances. In larger groups it is a warrior, druid or pally that takes this on; in smaller groups Rogues or shammys work well. Hunter pets are often acceptable off-tanks and some of the hunter and mage abilities are useful for mob management.
The PULLER
This is a role where a solo player moves away from the group and attacks the next mob to bring them back to the main group. It generally requires some form of ranged attack, so almost any class can do it.
Pulling is an art form; do it wrong and you will draw far too much aggro and wipe out your group. Done well and just the selected mobs are drawn away from their friends and onto the party's main tank.
The outright best class for pulling is the Hunter. Hunters have a number of abilities that make them great pullers, the main one being the Feign Death ability. At least one of their attacks is a slowing/stunning missile shot and they can place traps and their pet in the way of any incoming mob. They can also then feign death to pass the pulled mob over to the main tank. A failed pull done properly will kill only the hunter and not wipe the whole party.
The next best pullers are probably whoever is the main tank. There are a couple of special varieties of the pull though:
The sheep pull :- a mage uses the pollymorph spell to "sheep" one of a group of monsters. The rest of the mobs then charge straight for the mage. It is the job of the tank to get aggro off the mage really quickly.
The SAP pull:- a stealthed rogue uses SAP or another stunning attack to take out one of a group of enemies.
The DPS
Damage Per Second. People with this role have one main function: making mobs dead really quick. The trick to this is that you don't want to just spam your most devastating attacks, since you will draw more aggro from the mobs and possibly take them off the tank and onto yourself. This is bad... healers are mostly too busy looking after the designated tank and healing everyone just isn't efficient. DPS classes that pull off the main tank too often wont be invited back!
The stand-out classes here are Rogue and Mage. Both have awesome damage dealing abilities... but as noted that can also be a problem. If you moderate your damage output so that you are running at about 80% of max you should be ok. Other good classes are cat-form Druid, shadow spec priests, Shammy, Hunter, some warlock pets and warlocks.
DOTS
Damage over Time (spells). Mostly this is the domain of the priest and the warlock, but other classes have some skills in this area. Damage over time effects are useful for weakening enemies and killing off fleeing mobs.
Can generally be used on multiple mobs at once without pulling them off the tank or off-tank. Be aware that most of these effects will break crowd control.
The Crowdie
Crowd control is an ability that only some classes are good at. It involves assisting the off-tanks in removing any ADDS or just handling the extra mobs above and beyond what the main tank can handle. Rogue sap and gouge abilities, Druid root spell, mage freeze and sheep as well as various hamstring attacks are all aspects of this role. Hunters have traps that can immobilise or slow mobs as well. They get much better at higher levels but are initially quite limited. Priest and warlock FEAR abilities are also useful but run the risk of causing more problems!
The Buffer
Most spell caster classes have some role to play here. Apply bonus effects on other party members outside of combat. Remember to boost pets if applicable. Some pets buff as well.. warlock imp most noticeably.
The Healbot
Not the most glamorous of roles perhaps, but essential none the less. Priests, druids, shammys and paladins are just about the only real contenders here, though anyone with first-aid skill can assist. Without your healers, a group will die often and quickly. Another aspect of healing is of course resurrection. Warlocks have an interesting role to play here, in that they can create stones for healing and soul-storing, as well as having the abilities to drain life to keep themselves alive.
When healing, look after the main tank as much as possible and only assist others if the tank is managing well. Also note that your highest level spells are not always the most efficient.
The same roles are mostly valid in higher level instances but class specialisation has a noticeable effect; no more rogue tanks in higher instances please!
In any group there are certain roles to be filled. These can be filled by various classes at times, but obviously some classes suit a role better than others.
The Roles:
The TANK
A tank is the character doing the up close and personal melee combat with the monsters (MOB, NPC). Their role is mostly to soak up damage and prevent the mob from attacking other group members. Other aspects of this role are preventing spell casting and preventing fleeing. Damage dealing is NOT the primary requirement here, but is important in "holding aggro".
Warriors and Paladins are the tank of choice due to much better armour than other classes. Bearform Druids get boosted armour and abilities to handle this role well. Rogues, Hunters and Shamans can tank lower level instances if there isn't someone else available. No spell casting cloth wearer should ever be the primary tank. Warlock and Hunter pets can tank to some extent but have real aggro management problems.
The OFF-TANK
Similar to the TANK above, the OFF-TANK is a secondary Tank. They have a more specialised role in groups. The off-tank's job is to manage any ADDs (additional monsters) or mobs that break away from the main tank. Spell caster interruption and flee prevention are high priorities here. A general awareness of the combat zone is needed. The Off-Tank must be alert for ADDs or re spawns, capturing their attention and either managing it or drawing them to the main tank.
Almost any non- cloth wearer can be a suitable off-tank in lower level instances. In larger groups it is a warrior, druid or pally that takes this on; in smaller groups Rogues or shammys work well. Hunter pets are often acceptable off-tanks and some of the hunter and mage abilities are useful for mob management.
The PULLER
This is a role where a solo player moves away from the group and attacks the next mob to bring them back to the main group. It generally requires some form of ranged attack, so almost any class can do it.
Pulling is an art form; do it wrong and you will draw far too much aggro and wipe out your group. Done well and just the selected mobs are drawn away from their friends and onto the party's main tank.
The outright best class for pulling is the Hunter. Hunters have a number of abilities that make them great pullers, the main one being the Feign Death ability. At least one of their attacks is a slowing/stunning missile shot and they can place traps and their pet in the way of any incoming mob. They can also then feign death to pass the pulled mob over to the main tank. A failed pull done properly will kill only the hunter and not wipe the whole party.
The next best pullers are probably whoever is the main tank. There are a couple of special varieties of the pull though:
The sheep pull :- a mage uses the pollymorph spell to "sheep" one of a group of monsters. The rest of the mobs then charge straight for the mage. It is the job of the tank to get aggro off the mage really quickly.
The SAP pull:- a stealthed rogue uses SAP or another stunning attack to take out one of a group of enemies.
The DPS
Damage Per Second. People with this role have one main function: making mobs dead really quick. The trick to this is that you don't want to just spam your most devastating attacks, since you will draw more aggro from the mobs and possibly take them off the tank and onto yourself. This is bad... healers are mostly too busy looking after the designated tank and healing everyone just isn't efficient. DPS classes that pull off the main tank too often wont be invited back!
The stand-out classes here are Rogue and Mage. Both have awesome damage dealing abilities... but as noted that can also be a problem. If you moderate your damage output so that you are running at about 80% of max you should be ok. Other good classes are cat-form Druid, shadow spec priests, Shammy, Hunter, some warlock pets and warlocks.
DOTS
Damage over Time (spells). Mostly this is the domain of the priest and the warlock, but other classes have some skills in this area. Damage over time effects are useful for weakening enemies and killing off fleeing mobs.
Can generally be used on multiple mobs at once without pulling them off the tank or off-tank. Be aware that most of these effects will break crowd control.
The Crowdie
Crowd control is an ability that only some classes are good at. It involves assisting the off-tanks in removing any ADDS or just handling the extra mobs above and beyond what the main tank can handle. Rogue sap and gouge abilities, Druid root spell, mage freeze and sheep as well as various hamstring attacks are all aspects of this role. Hunters have traps that can immobilise or slow mobs as well. They get much better at higher levels but are initially quite limited. Priest and warlock FEAR abilities are also useful but run the risk of causing more problems!
The Buffer
Most spell caster classes have some role to play here. Apply bonus effects on other party members outside of combat. Remember to boost pets if applicable. Some pets buff as well.. warlock imp most noticeably.
The Healbot
Not the most glamorous of roles perhaps, but essential none the less. Priests, druids, shammys and paladins are just about the only real contenders here, though anyone with first-aid skill can assist. Without your healers, a group will die often and quickly. Another aspect of healing is of course resurrection. Warlocks have an interesting role to play here, in that they can create stones for healing and soul-storing, as well as having the abilities to drain life to keep themselves alive.
When healing, look after the main tank as much as possible and only assist others if the tank is managing well. Also note that your highest level spells are not always the most efficient.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Finding an Upside to Downtime.
Tuesday night usually means a shutdown of the WoW servers. Sure enough, they are down tonight for about 6 hours or so. I only managed to get on for about 45 minutes before they went down, so I spent that time scouring the Auction House for bargains on VeCo.
Tonight's findings were a mixed bag of stuff. I listed most of my existing stock just to clear my bags. A generic search for bargains via Auctioneer turned up the usual selection of buyouts and short term bids, most of which I have left in my mailbox for now. Several tasty items were snapped up and mailed to my hunter for disenchanting. The other items should likely at least triple the money invested but there wasn't really anything especially exciting amongst it. I had a small win with some linen cloth, in that several stacks that I snapped up cheaply were resold more or less instantly - always a nice bonus.
After the basic scan was completed, I spent about 20 minutes pouring over the weapons and armor sections looking for low-priced items. Mostly these will be disenchanted and any materials not needed for levelling up will be re-listed. Enchanting materials are handy for investments, since they do not cost anything to list on the AH. Not all materials sell particularly well, but since there's no list cost you can just re-list until a buyer is found.
The advantage to doing auction scanning immediately before the shutdown is that I am guaranteed of being high bidder on almost all of the shorter-duration auctions. My mailbox should be fairly bloated next time I log in.
This is only the second time I've logged in to VeCo since my trip. Before I left I basically shut down my auction house activity and its taking me some time to ramp back up on all three servers. It's not uncommon for me to be running 200+ auctions on a server when concentrating on questing. If I focus on trade, that number can be around 1000 active auctions. A lot of money can be made in small value high volume stuff... like the linen cloth earlier. At this stage on VeCo, my bank balance isn't large enough to look into rare or epic item trades - and quite frankly I'm not online often enough to really take advantage anyway. The time difference is also a problem, since I'm usually only on in the early hours of the morning. It's not bad for snapping up late - night bargains but customers are few and far between!
Anyway, sniping the auctions should net me about 150 or so items that can be resold. Probably 80% of them will sell at first listing, all for nice profits. That money will be re-invested in more stock. If I get time this week I may repeat this process twice more before the weekend and have a nice supply of gear to sell during the weekend peak.
What little actual playtime I've had recently has been spent with my guild on Dath. We had a guild run into Zul'Gurub on Monday. We roped in a few PUGgers but the majority were guildies - something that's quite rare for us. ZG is an old-school 20-man raid instance aimed at level 60's . Well skilled and well geared level 70's can do it in groups of 5 or so. My guildies are generally neither well geared nor experienced raiders so we had a number of casualties along the way. It was hardly the neatest run ever, but Hakkar the soulflayer and his minions died messily on our swords and good fun was had by all.
I am keen to hit up all the old-school instances and raids before they become even more irrelevant with the release of Wrath.
Tonight's findings were a mixed bag of stuff. I listed most of my existing stock just to clear my bags. A generic search for bargains via Auctioneer turned up the usual selection of buyouts and short term bids, most of which I have left in my mailbox for now. Several tasty items were snapped up and mailed to my hunter for disenchanting. The other items should likely at least triple the money invested but there wasn't really anything especially exciting amongst it. I had a small win with some linen cloth, in that several stacks that I snapped up cheaply were resold more or less instantly - always a nice bonus.
After the basic scan was completed, I spent about 20 minutes pouring over the weapons and armor sections looking for low-priced items. Mostly these will be disenchanted and any materials not needed for levelling up will be re-listed. Enchanting materials are handy for investments, since they do not cost anything to list on the AH. Not all materials sell particularly well, but since there's no list cost you can just re-list until a buyer is found.
The advantage to doing auction scanning immediately before the shutdown is that I am guaranteed of being high bidder on almost all of the shorter-duration auctions. My mailbox should be fairly bloated next time I log in.
This is only the second time I've logged in to VeCo since my trip. Before I left I basically shut down my auction house activity and its taking me some time to ramp back up on all three servers. It's not uncommon for me to be running 200+ auctions on a server when concentrating on questing. If I focus on trade, that number can be around 1000 active auctions. A lot of money can be made in small value high volume stuff... like the linen cloth earlier. At this stage on VeCo, my bank balance isn't large enough to look into rare or epic item trades - and quite frankly I'm not online often enough to really take advantage anyway. The time difference is also a problem, since I'm usually only on in the early hours of the morning. It's not bad for snapping up late - night bargains but customers are few and far between!
Anyway, sniping the auctions should net me about 150 or so items that can be resold. Probably 80% of them will sell at first listing, all for nice profits. That money will be re-invested in more stock. If I get time this week I may repeat this process twice more before the weekend and have a nice supply of gear to sell during the weekend peak.
What little actual playtime I've had recently has been spent with my guild on Dath. We had a guild run into Zul'Gurub on Monday. We roped in a few PUGgers but the majority were guildies - something that's quite rare for us. ZG is an old-school 20-man raid instance aimed at level 60's . Well skilled and well geared level 70's can do it in groups of 5 or so. My guildies are generally neither well geared nor experienced raiders so we had a number of casualties along the way. It was hardly the neatest run ever, but Hakkar the soulflayer and his minions died messily on our swords and good fun was had by all.
I am keen to hit up all the old-school instances and raids before they become even more irrelevant with the release of Wrath.
Friday, September 5, 2008
Wageslave
Again not too much to say. Work has been hell, and will be for probably another couple of weeks. With what little gaming time I've been getting I've nibbled away at my main projects:
I got both my main and alt Alliance characters to 21 on Cael. I invested a fair bit of my gold back into the market, mostly getting enchanting materials to skill-up. These two guys are doing ok money wise but not as well as the ones on VeCo.
I took a brief moment to log into my guys on VeCo.. and lucky I did, because I'd forgotten I had some outstanding auctions before I went overseas. I had a number of items in my mailbox with only 1-2 days left on the mail duration. I fired off a few emails and scanned the AH but haven't really spent any time there.
Most of my time has been spent on Dath. I was inspired for a few sessions to work on levelling my rogue Crypt. I managed about 3/4 of a level before getting distracted again. Somehow I ended up on a guild run into SM that was massively overpowered. We cleared Lib, Arms and Cath in well under an hour. I ended up swapping out for my hunter, who is at least more level-appropriate for SM. Was mostly pointless for me but was fun and we geared up a couple of lower level guildies.
Since then, I've been tinkering with my hunter. I've had a couple of lower level instance runs with other guildies and spent quite a bit of time helping a friend learn her hunter alt. She's just hit 24 and gained beast lore, so I took her "shopping" for skills. Like many newbie hunters, she'd let her pet languish with the lower levels of bite and growl etc. I'm fairly sure she's got the hang of it now though. The learning of skills from wild beasts is one thing I will miss once Wrath gets here.
I got both my main and alt Alliance characters to 21 on Cael. I invested a fair bit of my gold back into the market, mostly getting enchanting materials to skill-up. These two guys are doing ok money wise but not as well as the ones on VeCo.
I took a brief moment to log into my guys on VeCo.. and lucky I did, because I'd forgotten I had some outstanding auctions before I went overseas. I had a number of items in my mailbox with only 1-2 days left on the mail duration. I fired off a few emails and scanned the AH but haven't really spent any time there.
Most of my time has been spent on Dath. I was inspired for a few sessions to work on levelling my rogue Crypt. I managed about 3/4 of a level before getting distracted again. Somehow I ended up on a guild run into SM that was massively overpowered. We cleared Lib, Arms and Cath in well under an hour. I ended up swapping out for my hunter, who is at least more level-appropriate for SM. Was mostly pointless for me but was fun and we geared up a couple of lower level guildies.
Since then, I've been tinkering with my hunter. I've had a couple of lower level instance runs with other guildies and spent quite a bit of time helping a friend learn her hunter alt. She's just hit 24 and gained beast lore, so I took her "shopping" for skills. Like many newbie hunters, she'd let her pet languish with the lower levels of bite and growl etc. I'm fairly sure she's got the hang of it now though. The learning of skills from wild beasts is one thing I will miss once Wrath gets here.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
The adventure continues...
Not a lot to say this time. I'm getting back into wow, mostly playing my "Main" on Dath, pushing slowly to level 70. I'm at 68 and a third or so now. Tuesday shutdown (last night my time) was annoying, I ended up playing an alt on 2moons instead.
Tonight I might meet up with a guildmate and run through RFC on one of my lower level alts.
We had an interesting bug occur with our guild bank the other day. I went on holidays and transferred guild leadership over to my friend for the duration. When she transferred it back, all the items in the guild bank "vanished". The armory logs didn't show any withdrawals and we had no idea who "stole" our stuff so I petitioned it. The first gamesmaster to talk to me tried the standard Blizzard line of "its a UI issue", but since it was affecting everyone in the guild the same it couldn't possibly be MY UI causing the problem! Eventually the petition was escalated to 2nd level support and they have reset our bank. All our gear is there again, Yay.
This is not the first guild related bug we have come across. We hit 500 members for a period a couple of months back. The guild listing can only contain 500 names but you can still add more members. This shouldn't be a problem, since we rarely have more than 25-30 people online at any time and that is a long way below the 500 limit. However, we found that above 500 members total, new members would not show up at all, in online or offline listings. This made keeping track of members more difficult, especially as our lowest rank has no speech powers!
I spoke to several GM's on this issue but there was no resolution. They suggested posting on the official forums where similar issues have apparently occurred... but I couldnt find an appropriate place in the few minutes I spent looking! We have purged inactive members and are now keeping below 500 simply because its more difficult to manage when we go over that number.
Tonight I might meet up with a guildmate and run through RFC on one of my lower level alts.
We had an interesting bug occur with our guild bank the other day. I went on holidays and transferred guild leadership over to my friend for the duration. When she transferred it back, all the items in the guild bank "vanished". The armory logs didn't show any withdrawals and we had no idea who "stole" our stuff so I petitioned it. The first gamesmaster to talk to me tried the standard Blizzard line of "its a UI issue", but since it was affecting everyone in the guild the same it couldn't possibly be MY UI causing the problem! Eventually the petition was escalated to 2nd level support and they have reset our bank. All our gear is there again, Yay.
This is not the first guild related bug we have come across. We hit 500 members for a period a couple of months back. The guild listing can only contain 500 names but you can still add more members. This shouldn't be a problem, since we rarely have more than 25-30 people online at any time and that is a long way below the 500 limit. However, we found that above 500 members total, new members would not show up at all, in online or offline listings. This made keeping track of members more difficult, especially as our lowest rank has no speech powers!
I spoke to several GM's on this issue but there was no resolution. They suggested posting on the official forums where similar issues have apparently occurred... but I couldnt find an appropriate place in the few minutes I spent looking! We have purged inactive members and are now keeping below 500 simply because its more difficult to manage when we go over that number.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Reality Bites
As you may have noticed, I have not posted in some time. I've had a very busy time at work and then an overseas holiday. Now that I'm back home I'm looking forward to more WoW and more writing. I've just now got to update my computer, the games I play and all the wow mods I use!
Friday, July 25, 2008
15 thousand Kodo - What a load of dung!
I've had an extremely busy couple of weeks at work. It has not been a fun time at all. So, here's the Wow-itized version of why I haven't been posting recently.
I work for a number of Guilds, mostly as stable master and chief herdsman. If there's anything related to mounts or pets, I'm the guy to come see. Each Guild is run slightly differently with different objectives set by the guildmaster and officers. Each guild has certain guidelines and rules set by Bliz that we all must obey but there still remains a fair bit of autonomy in each guild. I get to spend roughly one day each week working at each guild HQ.
Some time ago, Bliz decided to issue a subsidised mount to guildmembers. The current batch of mounts are old and are due to be retired. Normally, we would have a small number of mounts delivered at any one time. We would have plenty of time to train up the new mounts, kit them out in guild livery, round up the old mounts and collect old equipment for return. Guild members would be given a bit of training on how to use their new mount and say a final goodbye to their old one.
This time round has been a comedy of errors. Bliz spent so long renegotiating the contracts with the suppliers that the oldest batch of mounts are now long past their use-by dates. Some of these poor arthritic old creatures are limping along on two legs, or are half-blind. Most guild members look after their mounts and equipment fairly well, but even with careful tending these older ones are slowly dying. These mounts are kept long past the end of the lease term, but Bliz is still billing each guild member, in some cases for a nearly dead mount!
The contracts were signed so late that instead of one smaller batch every six months or so, we are now getting about 40% of the total herd turned over at once. Bliz has made a bulk deal with a knackery, so ALL older mounts must be rounded up and returned. The deliveries of new mounts and the return of old ones was initially scheduled to take place in only 5 days- about a quarter of the time allocated for previous changeovers. Various stuff ups at the supply and delivery stages means that less than a third of the mounts have actually arrived.
Since each guild is different, each mount needs a certain amount of re-training. This can take anywhere from a couple of hours to a day or so for each mount, though several can be being worked on at once. A bit of work also has to be done removing any customised equipment off the old mounts, often moving it to the new ones before handing them over to the guild members. The new owner also needs at least a bit of training in handling the new mount.
Guildmembers were offered a choice between a grey kodo or a green raptor. Most had had a kodo previously and selected the same again. The trouble is, the supplier has used a different training method on the kodo. Kodo's trained in the older method were supposed to be available also but this has not yet happened. The new training means I have a lot of extra training to do to integrate "new" kodos into our existing herd. It seems the new training method really breaks the spirits of the new mounts and they must be extensively encouraged to play along nicely with the rest. At any moment they can turn around and savagely break things.
Adding Raptors to the herd is also somewhat problematic. The raptors themselves are great, sleek, obedient beasts, but they have different feeding and housing requirements, and the riders also need lots of training. Each raptor requires roughly twice the work that a generic kodo does. As far as I know, no raptors have yet been delivered, since a different supplier and delivery company were used. A fair number of additional raptors are expected.
So, the delivery of new kodo has been a shambles. Instead of all new kodo arriving at once, several deliveries of one or two kodo at a time are being made. I was at one of my guilds when the first batch of two arrived. It was such a cantankerous beast that it took about 7 hours of individual training to settle down enough to put into the paddock with some of our existing herd. I didn't even get a chance to start on the second one. Other stable masters have reported that not only are they only half-trained, but that in some circumstances can break down. I suspect this will mean yet more training will have to occur on each mount, but worse, these feral new kodo may have passed on their bad habits to existing mounts.
Today was the last day of the original scheduled delivery period. That, and the return date, have been extended... but not by enough. Basically, there is 5-6 weeks worth of work involved for a smooth transition, which could be done in about 4 if rushed. I think we are being allowed only 2 weeks to do the lot, and as I said, less than a third of the mounts have arrived. One message from Bliz today seems to demand that old mounts MUST be returned ON TIME, even if a new mount has not arrived or been trained for use yet. There will be a lot of very pissed off guild members if they are without mounts, possibly for weeks at a time!
I work for a very large organisation. Individuals within that are often talented, dedicated people. Most of my fellow stable masters are highly skilled, efficient and dedicated practitioners of their art. We are copping a lot of heat from frustrated guildmembers exasperated at the long delays and excessive pressure from Bliz to basically achieve the impossible.
What a load of kodo dung.
Bliz, you suck!
I work for a number of Guilds, mostly as stable master and chief herdsman. If there's anything related to mounts or pets, I'm the guy to come see. Each Guild is run slightly differently with different objectives set by the guildmaster and officers. Each guild has certain guidelines and rules set by Bliz that we all must obey but there still remains a fair bit of autonomy in each guild. I get to spend roughly one day each week working at each guild HQ.
Some time ago, Bliz decided to issue a subsidised mount to guildmembers. The current batch of mounts are old and are due to be retired. Normally, we would have a small number of mounts delivered at any one time. We would have plenty of time to train up the new mounts, kit them out in guild livery, round up the old mounts and collect old equipment for return. Guild members would be given a bit of training on how to use their new mount and say a final goodbye to their old one.
This time round has been a comedy of errors. Bliz spent so long renegotiating the contracts with the suppliers that the oldest batch of mounts are now long past their use-by dates. Some of these poor arthritic old creatures are limping along on two legs, or are half-blind. Most guild members look after their mounts and equipment fairly well, but even with careful tending these older ones are slowly dying. These mounts are kept long past the end of the lease term, but Bliz is still billing each guild member, in some cases for a nearly dead mount!
The contracts were signed so late that instead of one smaller batch every six months or so, we are now getting about 40% of the total herd turned over at once. Bliz has made a bulk deal with a knackery, so ALL older mounts must be rounded up and returned. The deliveries of new mounts and the return of old ones was initially scheduled to take place in only 5 days- about a quarter of the time allocated for previous changeovers. Various stuff ups at the supply and delivery stages means that less than a third of the mounts have actually arrived.
Since each guild is different, each mount needs a certain amount of re-training. This can take anywhere from a couple of hours to a day or so for each mount, though several can be being worked on at once. A bit of work also has to be done removing any customised equipment off the old mounts, often moving it to the new ones before handing them over to the guild members. The new owner also needs at least a bit of training in handling the new mount.
Guildmembers were offered a choice between a grey kodo or a green raptor. Most had had a kodo previously and selected the same again. The trouble is, the supplier has used a different training method on the kodo. Kodo's trained in the older method were supposed to be available also but this has not yet happened. The new training means I have a lot of extra training to do to integrate "new" kodos into our existing herd. It seems the new training method really breaks the spirits of the new mounts and they must be extensively encouraged to play along nicely with the rest. At any moment they can turn around and savagely break things.
Adding Raptors to the herd is also somewhat problematic. The raptors themselves are great, sleek, obedient beasts, but they have different feeding and housing requirements, and the riders also need lots of training. Each raptor requires roughly twice the work that a generic kodo does. As far as I know, no raptors have yet been delivered, since a different supplier and delivery company were used. A fair number of additional raptors are expected.
So, the delivery of new kodo has been a shambles. Instead of all new kodo arriving at once, several deliveries of one or two kodo at a time are being made. I was at one of my guilds when the first batch of two arrived. It was such a cantankerous beast that it took about 7 hours of individual training to settle down enough to put into the paddock with some of our existing herd. I didn't even get a chance to start on the second one. Other stable masters have reported that not only are they only half-trained, but that in some circumstances can break down. I suspect this will mean yet more training will have to occur on each mount, but worse, these feral new kodo may have passed on their bad habits to existing mounts.
Today was the last day of the original scheduled delivery period. That, and the return date, have been extended... but not by enough. Basically, there is 5-6 weeks worth of work involved for a smooth transition, which could be done in about 4 if rushed. I think we are being allowed only 2 weeks to do the lot, and as I said, less than a third of the mounts have arrived. One message from Bliz today seems to demand that old mounts MUST be returned ON TIME, even if a new mount has not arrived or been trained for use yet. There will be a lot of very pissed off guild members if they are without mounts, possibly for weeks at a time!
I work for a very large organisation. Individuals within that are often talented, dedicated people. Most of my fellow stable masters are highly skilled, efficient and dedicated practitioners of their art. We are copping a lot of heat from frustrated guildmembers exasperated at the long delays and excessive pressure from Bliz to basically achieve the impossible.
What a load of kodo dung.
Bliz, you suck!
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Ride 'Em Cowboy!
Methane, my mid-30's tauren Druid on Dath, picked up his Kodo mounts the other night. I hadn't had a kodo on any of my other characters yet. Riding around on these guys is like steering a minibus or a monster truck!
The normal walk animation on a kodo has a definite side-to-side swaying motion. This looks ridiculously funny when combined with various strafe and jumping motions. Performing a full 360 degree turn after jumping off the lifts at Thunder Bluff was rather amusing too. I am reminded of the line from "hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy" where the Vogon starships "hung in the sky like bricks don't."
The normal walk animation on a kodo has a definite side-to-side swaying motion. This looks ridiculously funny when combined with various strafe and jumping motions. Performing a full 360 degree turn after jumping off the lifts at Thunder Bluff was rather amusing too. I am reminded of the line from "hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy" where the Vogon starships "hung in the sky like bricks don't."
Monday, July 14, 2008
Mercantile Madness - The Enchanted Auctionhouse
I've been playing my two "main" alts on VeCo and Cael in roughly equal amounts over the last week. My Tauren hunter is now level 21, with cat and carrion bird pets keeping mostly up-to-date. On Cael, my warlock is now 19 and a bar or so off 20. I want to hit the BG's a bit before he dings. The bank alts are both level 12 or 13 and are getting desperate to see some scenery other than the path between mailbox and Auction House.
The economy on each server is quite different. VeCo Horde is an old, established realm with lots of level 70's. There are also a lot of lower level alts, but apparently few genuine newbies. This means prices tend to be higher, but more stable.
Cael on the other hand is a newish server. I think it opened around Christmas time, originally only for transfers. I created my first horde alt there about a day after it opened to new characters. Of course, my alliance characters are brand new. The server is frequently at "full" or "locked" status so is plenty busy! The Alliance auction house often has over 22,000 (500 "pages") of listings, roughly double VeCo and Dath figures. There seem to be lots of genuine newbies. This means that there are lots of really dodgy prices for items on the auction house and a whole lot of undercutting going on.
At about level 15 on both servers, my "main" abandoned one of the gathering professions to take up enchanting. The Tauren hunter is now skinning/enchanting and the Gnome warlock is mining/enchanting. The bank alts remain skinning/mining.
I invested nearly all my money back into the auction house on both servers, looking for cheap items for disenchanting. Fifty gold sure buys a lot of crappy greens! I was specifically looking for items who's bid or buyout price was no more than 3/4 of auctioneer's lowest disenchantment value. There were relatively few bargains to be had in immediate buyouts but a lot of items had really low bid values. The mailbox on both bankers nearly exploded with the number of incoming messages.
After I cleared the mailbox of all the "outbid on..." messages, I collected and forwarded all the disenchantable items through to my mains. Disenchanting by itself is not sufficient to level enchanting skill, so I had to use some of the resulting materials. Any remaining materials were sent back to be auctioned. Since I have been adventuring with these two mains and still sending back all the stuff I gather while travelling I'm not really sure how much of their money has been due to disenchanting only.
I also got sick of running out of bag space and have blown large amounts of cash on netherweave 16-slot bags. I think all 3 slots on the hunters and 4 slots on the others are now full of netherweave bags. If not, I'll be getting the last ones soon. On VeCo I was lucky enough to meet up with a guy who gave me a 50 gold donation after I farmed up a bunch of leather for him. On Cael, a nice girl gave me a 14 slot bag, which I have since returned after my upgrade.
These two gifts sort of invalidate my experiment in self-sufficiency but then again, WoW is a social game and using social contacts to help advance is almost a necessity . In both cases the value of the gift is fairly trivial compared to my net-worth at the time anyway.
Despite the gold-sink that is 7* netherweave bags and levelling enchanting to at least 75, both sets of alts have net worth of about 175g as of last night. VeCo is slightly easier to manage due to stable pricing.
Lots of money has come from reselling vendor recipes. Some came from the mining of copper and a bit of tin but this is less now on both servers since I've been concentrating on other things. Selling enchanting materials is starting to build up but I still need to use some of these myself to level up. A relatively small proportion of my income has come from buying and reselling stuff in the auction house.
At this stage I look to be on target to get my level 30 mounts as soon as they become available. If Bliz does not introduce those, then level 40 is looking good as well, with money to spare!
The economy on each server is quite different. VeCo Horde is an old, established realm with lots of level 70's. There are also a lot of lower level alts, but apparently few genuine newbies. This means prices tend to be higher, but more stable.
Cael on the other hand is a newish server. I think it opened around Christmas time, originally only for transfers. I created my first horde alt there about a day after it opened to new characters. Of course, my alliance characters are brand new. The server is frequently at "full" or "locked" status so is plenty busy! The Alliance auction house often has over 22,000 (500 "pages") of listings, roughly double VeCo and Dath figures. There seem to be lots of genuine newbies. This means that there are lots of really dodgy prices for items on the auction house and a whole lot of undercutting going on.
At about level 15 on both servers, my "main" abandoned one of the gathering professions to take up enchanting. The Tauren hunter is now skinning/enchanting and the Gnome warlock is mining/enchanting. The bank alts remain skinning/mining.
I invested nearly all my money back into the auction house on both servers, looking for cheap items for disenchanting. Fifty gold sure buys a lot of crappy greens! I was specifically looking for items who's bid or buyout price was no more than 3/4 of auctioneer's lowest disenchantment value. There were relatively few bargains to be had in immediate buyouts but a lot of items had really low bid values. The mailbox on both bankers nearly exploded with the number of incoming messages.
After I cleared the mailbox of all the "outbid on..." messages, I collected and forwarded all the disenchantable items through to my mains. Disenchanting by itself is not sufficient to level enchanting skill, so I had to use some of the resulting materials. Any remaining materials were sent back to be auctioned. Since I have been adventuring with these two mains and still sending back all the stuff I gather while travelling I'm not really sure how much of their money has been due to disenchanting only.
I also got sick of running out of bag space and have blown large amounts of cash on netherweave 16-slot bags. I think all 3 slots on the hunters and 4 slots on the others are now full of netherweave bags. If not, I'll be getting the last ones soon. On VeCo I was lucky enough to meet up with a guy who gave me a 50 gold donation after I farmed up a bunch of leather for him. On Cael, a nice girl gave me a 14 slot bag, which I have since returned after my upgrade.
These two gifts sort of invalidate my experiment in self-sufficiency but then again, WoW is a social game and using social contacts to help advance is almost a necessity . In both cases the value of the gift is fairly trivial compared to my net-worth at the time anyway.
Despite the gold-sink that is 7* netherweave bags and levelling enchanting to at least 75, both sets of alts have net worth of about 175g as of last night. VeCo is slightly easier to manage due to stable pricing.
Lots of money has come from reselling vendor recipes. Some came from the mining of copper and a bit of tin but this is less now on both servers since I've been concentrating on other things. Selling enchanting materials is starting to build up but I still need to use some of these myself to level up. A relatively small proportion of my income has come from buying and reselling stuff in the auction house.
At this stage I look to be on target to get my level 30 mounts as soon as they become available. If Bliz does not introduce those, then level 40 is looking good as well, with money to spare!
Saturday, July 12, 2008
The family that kills together stays together.
With a title like that, this post should be about guilds... but it isn't, its a lore session.
Azeroth has been the home of civilised cultures for at least 12,000 years. At that time, the Night Elves had a thriving if decadent civilisation centred around the Well of Eternity. This magical lake changed the primitive humanoids into the forms we know today and also bestowed immortality. There is some debate that the elves are descended from trolls, who had several powerful empires established even before the rise of the elves.
Over time, the noble classes of the Night Elves studied the energies of the well. One group, favourites of the queen Azshara, became known as the Highborne. Their dabbling in arcane magic eventually attracted the attentions of the great titan Sargeras. The arrogant Highborne were easily corrupted and used the Well to open a portal for the burning legion to invade.
The war of the Ancients was triggered. The non-highborne Night Elves were eventually victorious under the leadership of Tyrande Whisperwind, Malfurion Stormrage, and Illidan Stormrage. Some few of the Highborne regretted assiting the Burning Legion and escaped Azshara's capital before its destruction along with the Well of Eternity. These were later exiled by the Night Elves for continuing to practice arcane magics.
A number of Highborne still loyal to the burning legion survived the destruction of the Well of Eternity and were trapped in the sunken ruins of Azshara's capital. Cursed creatures, these Highborne that survived became the Naga and were lead by Lady Vashj, Azshara's former handmaiden.
The exiled Highborne moved to the new continent of Lordaeron and established the kingdom of Quel'Thalas. They called themselves High Elves and continued practicing arcane magics.
Some very few Highborne survived the war of the ancients and were not part of any other group. Some of these have survived through to the present.
After the destruction of Quel'Thalas by the scrouge only a few years ago, the surviving high elves renamed themselves Blood Elves and joined with the horde.
The Elven family tree looks something like this:
References:
Mostly from articles on World of Warcraft encyclopedia
Azeroth has been the home of civilised cultures for at least 12,000 years. At that time, the Night Elves had a thriving if decadent civilisation centred around the Well of Eternity. This magical lake changed the primitive humanoids into the forms we know today and also bestowed immortality. There is some debate that the elves are descended from trolls, who had several powerful empires established even before the rise of the elves.
Over time, the noble classes of the Night Elves studied the energies of the well. One group, favourites of the queen Azshara, became known as the Highborne. Their dabbling in arcane magic eventually attracted the attentions of the great titan Sargeras. The arrogant Highborne were easily corrupted and used the Well to open a portal for the burning legion to invade.
The war of the Ancients was triggered. The non-highborne Night Elves were eventually victorious under the leadership of Tyrande Whisperwind, Malfurion Stormrage, and Illidan Stormrage. Some few of the Highborne regretted assiting the Burning Legion and escaped Azshara's capital before its destruction along with the Well of Eternity. These were later exiled by the Night Elves for continuing to practice arcane magics.
A number of Highborne still loyal to the burning legion survived the destruction of the Well of Eternity and were trapped in the sunken ruins of Azshara's capital. Cursed creatures, these Highborne that survived became the Naga and were lead by Lady Vashj, Azshara's former handmaiden.
The exiled Highborne moved to the new continent of Lordaeron and established the kingdom of Quel'Thalas. They called themselves High Elves and continued practicing arcane magics.
Some very few Highborne survived the war of the ancients and were not part of any other group. Some of these have survived through to the present.
After the destruction of Quel'Thalas by the scrouge only a few years ago, the surviving high elves renamed themselves Blood Elves and joined with the horde.
The Elven family tree looks something like this:
Trolls
|
Night Elves
|
Highborne
|
|------------------------|
High Elves Naga
|
Blood Elves
References:
Mostly from articles on World of Warcraft encyclopedia
Friday, July 11, 2008
More Mercantile Madness
On VeCo, my bank alt has more than doubled his money and is now well over 50g. He's running a little low on stock though since my hunter hasn't been out and about gathering stuff and I don't yet know the market well enough to be heavily investing back into the market. I've made a few contacts with various people in /trade who may supply their unwanted "crap"... some of this can be turned into gold!
On Cael, my friends and I did a bit of cross faction trading. We bought a bunch of items available only to one faction and flipped them over to the other via the neutral AH. I have an alt permanently sat at Booty Bay for this now. So far, we turned a 1-g investment into about 40g, with more items still in stock. This was quite good, but not as good as we'd hoped.
On the solo front, my bank alt there has turned ~2g of investments into well over 50g without really trying much. Cael server is full of very low level characters so competition is fierce in the kind of stuff I'm shifting. Profits havent been as great as I would have hoped on lots of what my characters can farm.
Again, personal networks are shaping up. I have met a newbie tailor who will probably help my enchanter level up when I supply cloth to help their tailoring.
I am playing my Warlock there most as that realm's Main. He is now mining/enchanting since hes high enough now that greens are a regular drop. Mining still supplies a regular income but its merchandise and auctioneering that builds my funds mostly.
At the higher end, my banker on Dath has flipped another 500g or so of stock into 1200 or so in gold. One more week should build my funds sufficent to get Crypt his epic flyer as soon as he hits 70. I do farm a bit on this realm but most income still comes from playing the auctions.
There are some truely unethical sellers out there. I got burnt a bit a few weeks ago buying rune thread off the AH. I got it confused with one of the tailor only blue level items... instead, its a vendor supplied item, that nearly every tailoring and general goods vendor has in unlimited quantity. I did manage to re-list it and get most of my money back over time.
On one of the servers, some devious person is trying to sell vendor bought water for upwards of 6g each, when a 5-stack costs only about 20 copper. I got a small level of satisfaction by listing a bunch of single items at just under a g each.... and all of them were bought out by the "evil seller"to protect his inflated prices!
Market PvP... truely more ruthless than any BG!
On Cael, my friends and I did a bit of cross faction trading. We bought a bunch of items available only to one faction and flipped them over to the other via the neutral AH. I have an alt permanently sat at Booty Bay for this now. So far, we turned a 1-g investment into about 40g, with more items still in stock. This was quite good, but not as good as we'd hoped.
On the solo front, my bank alt there has turned ~2g of investments into well over 50g without really trying much. Cael server is full of very low level characters so competition is fierce in the kind of stuff I'm shifting. Profits havent been as great as I would have hoped on lots of what my characters can farm.
Again, personal networks are shaping up. I have met a newbie tailor who will probably help my enchanter level up when I supply cloth to help their tailoring.
I am playing my Warlock there most as that realm's Main. He is now mining/enchanting since hes high enough now that greens are a regular drop. Mining still supplies a regular income but its merchandise and auctioneering that builds my funds mostly.
At the higher end, my banker on Dath has flipped another 500g or so of stock into 1200 or so in gold. One more week should build my funds sufficent to get Crypt his epic flyer as soon as he hits 70. I do farm a bit on this realm but most income still comes from playing the auctions.
There are some truely unethical sellers out there. I got burnt a bit a few weeks ago buying rune thread off the AH. I got it confused with one of the tailor only blue level items... instead, its a vendor supplied item, that nearly every tailoring and general goods vendor has in unlimited quantity. I did manage to re-list it and get most of my money back over time.
On one of the servers, some devious person is trying to sell vendor bought water for upwards of 6g each, when a 5-stack costs only about 20 copper. I got a small level of satisfaction by listing a bunch of single items at just under a g each.... and all of them were bought out by the "evil seller"to protect his inflated prices!
Market PvP... truely more ruthless than any BG!
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Instance Runthrus - The worst thing you can do for a friend.
Taking your low level friends through an instanced dungeon with your high level character is just about the worst thing you can do to "help" them! Its generally quick and easy and they get good gear from it as well as reasonable exp but is still evil.
Catching a ride on your coat-tails means that the newbie is getting good gear without having to work for it. This spoils their sense of achievement, not only for the dungeon concerned, but their questing/levelling until their gear again falls behind. Levelling becomes too easy and becomes boring quickly.
It teaches them nothing about how to play their character. Most runthrus just involve the newbie looting the corpses of the slain - there's nothing educational in that! Lazy, ignorant newbies get themselves into higher level dungeons with no idea how group play works. They become a liability that no-one wants to group with.
It builds the expectation that you will always be available to help them out. More runthrus, free stuff, mount money... the expectation never ends. Giving in to any of this just feeds more begging behavior. Stop the rot at the start and don't do it!
All this of course mostly applies to someone's first character. Runthrus for alt characters are less evil though some of the problems remain. Of course its almost necessary for Twinks to receive runthrus - but twinks are their own brand of evil anyway.
What sort of things can you do to help newbies without spoiling them? Well, I suggest doing things that remove some of the frustrations of low level play.
Give your newbie a set of 8 or 10- slot bags. Bag space limits really suck. Dont give out higher than 12-slot bags though, thats making things too easy.
Clothies could be given a wand. Priests especially suffer from crap DPS in the early levels. A wand, plus instructions on how to use it, are a great help.
Its generally not worthwhile giving gear or enchants to those below level 20, since they will outgrow anything too quickly. Twinks can damn well pay for anything they want!
The best thing you can do for your newbie friend is advice. Wow is a reasonably complex game with a lot to learn. Genuine newbies are likely overwhelmed by it all.
NEVER give money to lowbies.
Remember, runthrus are a disservice to the newbie and the whole wow community. Stop the rot!
Catching a ride on your coat-tails means that the newbie is getting good gear without having to work for it. This spoils their sense of achievement, not only for the dungeon concerned, but their questing/levelling until their gear again falls behind. Levelling becomes too easy and becomes boring quickly.
It teaches them nothing about how to play their character. Most runthrus just involve the newbie looting the corpses of the slain - there's nothing educational in that! Lazy, ignorant newbies get themselves into higher level dungeons with no idea how group play works. They become a liability that no-one wants to group with.
It builds the expectation that you will always be available to help them out. More runthrus, free stuff, mount money... the expectation never ends. Giving in to any of this just feeds more begging behavior. Stop the rot at the start and don't do it!
All this of course mostly applies to someone's first character. Runthrus for alt characters are less evil though some of the problems remain. Of course its almost necessary for Twinks to receive runthrus - but twinks are their own brand of evil anyway.
What sort of things can you do to help newbies without spoiling them? Well, I suggest doing things that remove some of the frustrations of low level play.
Give your newbie a set of 8 or 10- slot bags. Bag space limits really suck. Dont give out higher than 12-slot bags though, thats making things too easy.
Clothies could be given a wand. Priests especially suffer from crap DPS in the early levels. A wand, plus instructions on how to use it, are a great help.
Its generally not worthwhile giving gear or enchants to those below level 20, since they will outgrow anything too quickly. Twinks can damn well pay for anything they want!
The best thing you can do for your newbie friend is advice. Wow is a reasonably complex game with a lot to learn. Genuine newbies are likely overwhelmed by it all.
NEVER give money to lowbies.
Remember, runthrus are a disservice to the newbie and the whole wow community. Stop the rot!
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Hate, aggro, threat - Managing NPC hostility
An understanding of "aggro" in World Of Warcraft is key to your success against computer controlled opponents. When you understand how mobs react you are able to control the fights to ensure victory.
First, what is "aggro"? The terms hate, threat and aggro are often used interchangeably. They all mean essentially the same thing: how annoyed the mob is at you. This is a measurable, numeric value. The higher it is, the more that mob hates you.
Each term overlaps the others but there are certain loose definitions:
Hate: The numeric value measuring how much a particular mob "hates" you. Each mob keeps a separate value for each combatant in range. These values go up or down as the fight progresses depending on the actions of each combatant. Hate values on each mob are tracked separately.
Threat: The value added to a mob's hate list for each action performed in combat. Each attack adds threat, some special abilities remove threat. Tracked independently by each mob.
Aggro: Loosely defined as being the focus of attention from a mob. "Holding aggro" means you are the one who the mob hates the most and will be attacked by it if possible.
Aggro radius: An area about each mob where it can detect and react to hostile combatants. The aggro radius around individual mobs can interact with other mobs of similar type to cause a chain reaction of hate activation.
In general, actions done by a combatant cause threat to one or more mobs, increasing their hate levels towards that combatant. NPC's can have threat and hate towards each other as well as towards players, if the npcs are of hostile factions. Some actions cause hate to all mobs in range, others only to the mob affected by the action.
On to some examples. A young Cryptography, neophyte undead rogue, is standing safely out of range of a single skeletal soldier near the Agamand Mills. Crypto is well beyond the skeleton's aggro radius, so it does not yet know he exists. As Crypto walks towards the skeleton, he crosses the edge of the aggro radius. Immediately, the skeletal soldier is now aware of Crypto and starts rushing towards him. Crypto now "holds aggro" from that skeleton. Being a cowardly soul, Crypto immediately runs away. The skeleton pursues Crypto for quite a distance before breaking off and returning to its starting location. Crypto caused no threat from any attacks, but, since he was the only one on the skeleton's hate list, he "held aggro".
Some little time later, Crypto returns to face the skeleton. He now knows roughly how close he can get before triggering its aggro radius, so stays carefully outside that range. With careful manoeuvring, he can be in range to attack with his bow but still be outside the aggro radius. He sees an opportunity and shoots the skeleton! Instantly, Skelly-boy is made aware of Crypto's presence - an arrow in the ribs being a rather pointed indicator of something being wrong - and rushes over to chastise the young rogue! After a few exchanges of blows, Crypto is taking the worst of it and runs away again. This time, Crypto made several threat-generating attacks on the skeleton but since he was again the only one on the threat list he still "held aggro" and thus the mob's undivided attention.
Deciding the skeleton is too tough to tackle alone, Crypto teams up with another neophyte undead. Mortified is a young mage, barely out of the academy. She's brash and impulsive, supremely confidant in her abilities but aware of the limitations of wearing cloth armour. The plan is discussed beforehand and Crypt will attempt to "pull" the skeleton with his bow before Mortified opens up with her fireball. A few quick shots should smash the nasty skeleton!
Crypto again walks up to just outside the skelly's aggro radius. Mortified is standing some ways back. Crypto fires his bow and the skeleton rushes towards him waving the large axe vigorously. Mortified starts casting fireball, which completes and zooms off to splash explosively against the skeleton's chest just as it reaches Crypto and takes its first swing. Immediately, the skeleton roars and rushes over to Mortified, smashing her to the ground in a few swings of his axe despite Crypto's best efforts with his dagger in its back! When Mortified is dead, the skeleton turns its fury on Cryptography, who almost manages to kill it before also falling to its attacks.
What happened here is that Mortified's potent fireball attack mean that she overtook Crypto on the skeleton's hate list. Mobs attack the one they hate the most... which was the tissue-paper clad mage. Crypt's attacks with bow and dagger did not generate sufficient threat to retake aggro before the mage died. Mortified "stole aggro" and died because of it. Next (and only) target on the mobs hate list was Crypto, so once Mort died, Crypt was targeted and killed.
A little later, after respawning and healing up, Crypt and Mort wish to try again. This time, Mortified will wait a bit before opening up with her fireball. Hopefully Crypt will survive long enough in his better armour to finish off the skeleton.
Using more or less the same tactics as last time, Crypto gets just within bow range before attacking. Mortified is somewhat further back but waits before casting. The skeleton, arrow bouncing loosely in its ribs, charges at Cryptography. When it gets close enough, Crypt stabs it several times with his dagger and manages to take only a few blows from the creature's axe before the first of Mortified's fireballs crash into it. This time, the skeleton goes down! Crypt is in fairly good shape and Mortified is completely untouched. Victory and loot is theirs!
This time round, Crypto built up a reasonable amount of hate before Mort' s high-threat fireballs kicked in. By waiting a few seconds before opening up with her attacks, Crypto was able to "hold aggro" throughout the fight and his much better armour meant that they both survived long enough to finish off the skeleton.
(I will post this now but plan on editing it later.. got to do some work!)
First, what is "aggro"? The terms hate, threat and aggro are often used interchangeably. They all mean essentially the same thing: how annoyed the mob is at you. This is a measurable, numeric value. The higher it is, the more that mob hates you.
Each term overlaps the others but there are certain loose definitions:
Hate: The numeric value measuring how much a particular mob "hates" you. Each mob keeps a separate value for each combatant in range. These values go up or down as the fight progresses depending on the actions of each combatant. Hate values on each mob are tracked separately.
Threat: The value added to a mob's hate list for each action performed in combat. Each attack adds threat, some special abilities remove threat. Tracked independently by each mob.
Aggro: Loosely defined as being the focus of attention from a mob. "Holding aggro" means you are the one who the mob hates the most and will be attacked by it if possible.
Aggro radius: An area about each mob where it can detect and react to hostile combatants. The aggro radius around individual mobs can interact with other mobs of similar type to cause a chain reaction of hate activation.
In general, actions done by a combatant cause threat to one or more mobs, increasing their hate levels towards that combatant. NPC's can have threat and hate towards each other as well as towards players, if the npcs are of hostile factions. Some actions cause hate to all mobs in range, others only to the mob affected by the action.
On to some examples. A young Cryptography, neophyte undead rogue, is standing safely out of range of a single skeletal soldier near the Agamand Mills. Crypto is well beyond the skeleton's aggro radius, so it does not yet know he exists. As Crypto walks towards the skeleton, he crosses the edge of the aggro radius. Immediately, the skeletal soldier is now aware of Crypto and starts rushing towards him. Crypto now "holds aggro" from that skeleton. Being a cowardly soul, Crypto immediately runs away. The skeleton pursues Crypto for quite a distance before breaking off and returning to its starting location. Crypto caused no threat from any attacks, but, since he was the only one on the skeleton's hate list, he "held aggro".
Some little time later, Crypto returns to face the skeleton. He now knows roughly how close he can get before triggering its aggro radius, so stays carefully outside that range. With careful manoeuvring, he can be in range to attack with his bow but still be outside the aggro radius. He sees an opportunity and shoots the skeleton! Instantly, Skelly-boy is made aware of Crypto's presence - an arrow in the ribs being a rather pointed indicator of something being wrong - and rushes over to chastise the young rogue! After a few exchanges of blows, Crypto is taking the worst of it and runs away again. This time, Crypto made several threat-generating attacks on the skeleton but since he was again the only one on the threat list he still "held aggro" and thus the mob's undivided attention.
Deciding the skeleton is too tough to tackle alone, Crypto teams up with another neophyte undead. Mortified is a young mage, barely out of the academy. She's brash and impulsive, supremely confidant in her abilities but aware of the limitations of wearing cloth armour. The plan is discussed beforehand and Crypt will attempt to "pull" the skeleton with his bow before Mortified opens up with her fireball. A few quick shots should smash the nasty skeleton!
Crypto again walks up to just outside the skelly's aggro radius. Mortified is standing some ways back. Crypto fires his bow and the skeleton rushes towards him waving the large axe vigorously. Mortified starts casting fireball, which completes and zooms off to splash explosively against the skeleton's chest just as it reaches Crypto and takes its first swing. Immediately, the skeleton roars and rushes over to Mortified, smashing her to the ground in a few swings of his axe despite Crypto's best efforts with his dagger in its back! When Mortified is dead, the skeleton turns its fury on Cryptography, who almost manages to kill it before also falling to its attacks.
What happened here is that Mortified's potent fireball attack mean that she overtook Crypto on the skeleton's hate list. Mobs attack the one they hate the most... which was the tissue-paper clad mage. Crypt's attacks with bow and dagger did not generate sufficient threat to retake aggro before the mage died. Mortified "stole aggro" and died because of it. Next (and only) target on the mobs hate list was Crypto, so once Mort died, Crypt was targeted and killed.
A little later, after respawning and healing up, Crypt and Mort wish to try again. This time, Mortified will wait a bit before opening up with her fireball. Hopefully Crypt will survive long enough in his better armour to finish off the skeleton.
Using more or less the same tactics as last time, Crypto gets just within bow range before attacking. Mortified is somewhat further back but waits before casting. The skeleton, arrow bouncing loosely in its ribs, charges at Cryptography. When it gets close enough, Crypt stabs it several times with his dagger and manages to take only a few blows from the creature's axe before the first of Mortified's fireballs crash into it. This time, the skeleton goes down! Crypt is in fairly good shape and Mortified is completely untouched. Victory and loot is theirs!
This time round, Crypto built up a reasonable amount of hate before Mort' s high-threat fireballs kicked in. By waiting a few seconds before opening up with her attacks, Crypto was able to "hold aggro" throughout the fight and his much better armour meant that they both survived long enough to finish off the skeleton.
(I will post this now but plan on editing it later.. got to do some work!)
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Training weapons is not such a drag.
(Edit for Wrath of the Lich King: These guys seem to no longer give weapon skill training.)
Something I discovered during a bugged event in Stormwind about 3 years ago is also of value currently to anyone above about level 55.
In Blasted Lands, in the area around the dark portal, are several "Servant of ..." creatures. They are the objects of a quest in the zone that I've never bothered with. They are interesting however in that WITHOUT the quest, they are essentially immortal. Below 5% health, they go transparent. You cannot bring them below 1%, since you are supposed to shatter a crystal... but you can't do it if not on the quest.
This is useful because you can stand there bashing on them with a variety of weapons and get skillups. Some classes may even be able to AFK the whole fight while training!
Wowhead links are:
Servant of Allistarj
Servant of Grol
Servant of Razelikh
Servant of Sevine
Something I discovered during a bugged event in Stormwind about 3 years ago is also of value currently to anyone above about level 55.
In Blasted Lands, in the area around the dark portal, are several "Servant of ..." creatures. They are the objects of a quest in the zone that I've never bothered with. They are interesting however in that WITHOUT the quest, they are essentially immortal. Below 5% health, they go transparent. You cannot bring them below 1%, since you are supposed to shatter a crystal... but you can't do it if not on the quest.
This is useful because you can stand there bashing on them with a variety of weapons and get skillups. Some classes may even be able to AFK the whole fight while training!
Wowhead links are:
Servant of Allistarj
Servant of Grol
Servant of Razelikh
Servant of Sevine
Mercentile madness
My druid Changeabull on VeCo now has 25g at level 11. Mostly this is due to flipping vendor recipes on the AH for stupid mark-ups. When I last played him, Ideale and Ahami took him on a bit of a tour around the world. I grabbed flightpoints at a bunch of places on the way, but also stopped off at the vendors.
Simple stuff like the two cooking recipes for the low level fish cost almost nothing to buy but can be sold for 1 or more gold. Grab a couple, put one or two up on the AH at a time and watch the money roll in.
Simple stuff like the two cooking recipes for the low level fish cost almost nothing to buy but can be sold for 1 or more gold. Grab a couple, put one or two up on the AH at a time and watch the money roll in.
Friday, July 4, 2008
Talent Choices
At level 10 your character gets to select their first talent point. Each level from then on gives you another point. Talents provide boosts to your existing abilities or add in new ones and can play a very significant part in your overall development.
Each character class has three skill trees to select from. In general it is best to concentrate in one particular tree rather than selecting from all of them. As you reach the highest levels in the game you may be able to open up a second tree.
There are heaps of websites that give suggested talent builds for max-level characters. There are also some that tell you where to pick talents as you level. Everyone seems to have their own opinion as to what talents are best. Personally I look for the following when selecting talents for levelling:
A boost to main attack damage, hit, or critical rating.
Reduction in cost or speed of main attack.
Reduction in mana/energy/rage cost for commonly used abilities.
Increased health/mana regeneration
I also look for talents that increase movement speed early in the talent trees. I hate slow walking!
All of these help you to kill stuff more quickly, with less downtime between fights. This will mean that you can complete quests and level more quickly.
Each character class has three skill trees to select from. In general it is best to concentrate in one particular tree rather than selecting from all of them. As you reach the highest levels in the game you may be able to open up a second tree.
There are heaps of websites that give suggested talent builds for max-level characters. There are also some that tell you where to pick talents as you level. Everyone seems to have their own opinion as to what talents are best. Personally I look for the following when selecting talents for levelling:
A boost to main attack damage, hit, or critical rating.
Reduction in cost or speed of main attack.
Reduction in mana/energy/rage cost for commonly used abilities.
Increased health/mana regeneration
I also look for talents that increase movement speed early in the talent trees. I hate slow walking!
All of these help you to kill stuff more quickly, with less downtime between fights. This will mean that you can complete quests and level more quickly.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Losing one's Cool factor.
So, there I was on my freshly rolled gnome warlock doing the newbie quests. A rather rude gentleman thought I was stealing his kills and told me to "Pee off!". At first I didn't even notice, since I was busy clearing trash mobs out of the way so I could get to the ones I needed. When I checked my chat log however I saw the little note. I went back and confronted the little dweeb about this and his only response was even ruder.
What can one do about tactless little shits on a PvE realm? Not a lot really. You can /ignore them. You can retaliate in kind with pointless verbal abuse. You can tag every mob in the area so they get no kills. You can attempt to drag a train of mobs into conflict with them so they die..... or you can note that they have their /pvp flag set on at level 5!
I shamefully admit to trying all of the above, mostly without success. Mr stunted personality seems to have a fairly thick skin to go alongside his thick skull.
But Wait! I have higher level horde characters not too far away and bonehead is flagged. Hmm.
Log out, log in as my horde hunter. She's stationed at Undercity, not too far away from the dwarf lands.... except I hadnt yet picked up the flightpoints on the way. Ah well, I'll walk and get them on the way.
Sephulchure, check.
Taren Mill, check.
Hammerfall, check. Of course, mobs in Arathi are much tougher than my poor hunter, especially the elites! Naked travel makes this a little less expensive than otherwise.
Travel through the wetlands was mostly uneventful. I was joined along the way by a similar level mage from my horde guild. We got past the first dwarf guard in the tunnels, but the second one got us both. On resurection, we were joined by a mid-30's orc hunter. He could handle the level 30 guards without much trouble! We ran through the remaining sections of tunnel and on into Dun Morogh past the guards. Track humanoids helped us avoid the majority of trouble on the way south of Khanoros and into the newbie zone.
The main gate to the newbie zone is guarded by 4 level 65 guards. They can and will aggro on a low level horde from quite a way inside the tunnel. Death by guard swiftly follows! One death is usually enough to get past them however. On into newbie territory we go!
I came here looking to find one particular idiot. Despite a long search, both in the newbie area and the obvious places near Khanoros, I failed to find him. We did however find a couple of other newbies who were foolishly flagged. These were promptly munched on by the Orc's pet.
The newbie area soon lost any attraction so we ran back past the guards (dying again) and on to khanoros. We pointlessly killed several of the quest mobs.. the ones not protected by more level 65 guards that is! Most of the newbies in this area were smart enough not to put their pvp flag on so we were just mucking about killing mobs mostly. One lucky level 9 warlock took out my fellow guildmate when he was weakend by resurection sickness. He then died several times at the Orc's hands. I dont think I got a single kill, and no trace was found of my boneheaded "victim", despite me logging back on the gnome and having a quick scout around!
A completely wasted hour that could have been better spent with a quick /ignore and getting on with the job! I still had fun though so I guess it was worth it!
What can one do about tactless little shits on a PvE realm? Not a lot really. You can /ignore them. You can retaliate in kind with pointless verbal abuse. You can tag every mob in the area so they get no kills. You can attempt to drag a train of mobs into conflict with them so they die..... or you can note that they have their /pvp flag set on at level 5!
I shamefully admit to trying all of the above, mostly without success. Mr stunted personality seems to have a fairly thick skin to go alongside his thick skull.
But Wait! I have higher level horde characters not too far away and bonehead is flagged. Hmm.
Log out, log in as my horde hunter. She's stationed at Undercity, not too far away from the dwarf lands.... except I hadnt yet picked up the flightpoints on the way. Ah well, I'll walk and get them on the way.
Sephulchure, check.
Taren Mill, check.
Hammerfall, check. Of course, mobs in Arathi are much tougher than my poor hunter, especially the elites! Naked travel makes this a little less expensive than otherwise.
Travel through the wetlands was mostly uneventful. I was joined along the way by a similar level mage from my horde guild. We got past the first dwarf guard in the tunnels, but the second one got us both. On resurection, we were joined by a mid-30's orc hunter. He could handle the level 30 guards without much trouble! We ran through the remaining sections of tunnel and on into Dun Morogh past the guards. Track humanoids helped us avoid the majority of trouble on the way south of Khanoros and into the newbie zone.
The main gate to the newbie zone is guarded by 4 level 65 guards. They can and will aggro on a low level horde from quite a way inside the tunnel. Death by guard swiftly follows! One death is usually enough to get past them however. On into newbie territory we go!
I came here looking to find one particular idiot. Despite a long search, both in the newbie area and the obvious places near Khanoros, I failed to find him. We did however find a couple of other newbies who were foolishly flagged. These were promptly munched on by the Orc's pet.
The newbie area soon lost any attraction so we ran back past the guards (dying again) and on to khanoros. We pointlessly killed several of the quest mobs.. the ones not protected by more level 65 guards that is! Most of the newbies in this area were smart enough not to put their pvp flag on so we were just mucking about killing mobs mostly. One lucky level 9 warlock took out my fellow guildmate when he was weakend by resurection sickness. He then died several times at the Orc's hands. I dont think I got a single kill, and no trace was found of my boneheaded "victim", despite me logging back on the gnome and having a quick scout around!
A completely wasted hour that could have been better spent with a quick /ignore and getting on with the job! I still had fun though so I guess it was worth it!
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Out with the old, in with the new Part 3.
My three little projects are going swimmingly so far.
On Dath, my bank alt invested somewhere between 500 and 700 gold on the auction house. A fair bit of that came back to me when I was outbid but I also won a lot of auctions really cheaply. Nearly all that stock was then re-listed for the peak weekend period. My mailbox was flooded with "Auction successful" messages with lots of clinky coinage attached. Not all auctions had sold or expired when I last checked. Still, a net gain of about 800g for a bit over an hour's trawling the AH is pretty fine going!
On Caelestrasz, my new Draeni hunter is busy collecting pet skills on teldrassil. He's got a few more mail messages with gold but I havent looked at them to see how much. I expect he will be at around 5g + bandit mask when I check him next. At some stage I have to check my horde guys there as well and move one to the neutral auction house ready to assist with cross faction transfers.
I have had one setback however, in that my auctioneer data files filled up with stuff from too many realms. I've had to turf away all data and will be rebuilding it for just the 4 main realms I'm currently playing. Other alts will have to manage without it! This isn't such a bad thing anyway, some of the Dath data in particular was corrupt and dodgy. Consider it spring cleaning!
My third little project got somewhat sidetracked, but the details on that can wait for another post. Tauren hunter and druid are both mostly done with Mulgore and are venturing out to the big wide world. Each had moderate success in the market place and have net worth about 10g each, with a bit more on the AH still to come. Things are looking up!
On Dath, my bank alt invested somewhere between 500 and 700 gold on the auction house. A fair bit of that came back to me when I was outbid but I also won a lot of auctions really cheaply. Nearly all that stock was then re-listed for the peak weekend period. My mailbox was flooded with "Auction successful" messages with lots of clinky coinage attached. Not all auctions had sold or expired when I last checked. Still, a net gain of about 800g for a bit over an hour's trawling the AH is pretty fine going!
On Caelestrasz, my new Draeni hunter is busy collecting pet skills on teldrassil. He's got a few more mail messages with gold but I havent looked at them to see how much. I expect he will be at around 5g + bandit mask when I check him next. At some stage I have to check my horde guys there as well and move one to the neutral auction house ready to assist with cross faction transfers.
I have had one setback however, in that my auctioneer data files filled up with stuff from too many realms. I've had to turf away all data and will be rebuilding it for just the 4 main realms I'm currently playing. Other alts will have to manage without it! This isn't such a bad thing anyway, some of the Dath data in particular was corrupt and dodgy. Consider it spring cleaning!
My third little project got somewhat sidetracked, but the details on that can wait for another post. Tauren hunter and druid are both mostly done with Mulgore and are venturing out to the big wide world. Each had moderate success in the market place and have net worth about 10g each, with a bit more on the AH still to come. Things are looking up!
Monday, June 30, 2008
Out with the old, in with the new part 2.
This one should be a lot briefer than the other post!
I mentioned that I rolled a Draenei Hunter on the alliance side of a server where I have existing Horde. This server has a few of my friends from Dath'Remar who are already semi-established.
Draenei males are new to me. They DO look awkward and hugely top-heavy. Looks aside, they are perfectly capable as hunters. I rushed through the first 5 levels in about 45 minutes, slightly slower than the average because of lots of chatting.
I had finished with the newbie zone and was attempting the fishing quest in Azuremyst Island when my friend showed up. Her character is a level 23 paladin, also a Draenei. We were members of a party and the level difference is quite large, so the exp I got per kill was dramatically less than if solo. Having my own personal defender however made rushing through the early quests very easy. Since the majority of my exp was coming from questing, I pushed through lots of the Azuremyst stuff very quickly. Progress seemed to follow along about the same as it has when I've done the quests solo. I hit level 10 at a very fast 3 and a half hours then completed the taming quests solo.
My pally friend was joined by our other hunter friend and they both farmed the blood elf bandit for his mask for a while. I attempted to re-tame the cat from the last stage of the hunter quest, but it timed out and he despawned. As a replacement I grabbed the nearest cat. Not quite as successful as the Tauren from yesterday. With my new pet in tow I rushed through the furbolg related quests up north, spending about 20 minutes killing every Murloc in sight, even long after the quest was completed. I renamed the cat "Purrgatory". He dinged several times chasing the fishmen.
Once done with quests on Azuremyst, I headed over to Teldrasill to get skills and grab a owl pet. I ran out of time so have logged out in the inn at Dolannar. Since this guy had assistance from my friend, I didn't work as hard on self-funding as I normally would. I got a 2g starter fund, with which I bought 3* 8 -slot bags and upgraded my sword. I bought cooking, fishing, first-aid skills, and have again gone with skinning and mining as gathering skills. One annoyance is that the skinning trainer will not talk to you until after you complete the first of the furbolg quests.
Anyway, a quick visit to the AH selling my paltry collection of leather and ores got me about 3g, of which 2g was mailed back to my friend to repay the "loan".
Somewhat redeming myself for earlier foolishness (check the comments), I was walking back to town when I was rudely attacked from behind. My new pet went nuts and I lucked out on the loot: [blood elf bandit mask] This adds to the 2-3 others that my friends have already farmed. We will be looking to flip these over to the horde auction house if they sell for lots more there than on Alliance.
These two new projects have cost me 4 alts on other servers.
RIP
Aula, 22 Human Warlock (f)
Larceny, 15 Gnome Rogue (m)
Leaflitter, 16 ish Night Elf Hunter (m)
Acrinomy, 16 Orc Warlock (f) (yes her name was a spelling error!)
I mentioned that I rolled a Draenei Hunter on the alliance side of a server where I have existing Horde. This server has a few of my friends from Dath'Remar who are already semi-established.
Draenei males are new to me. They DO look awkward and hugely top-heavy. Looks aside, they are perfectly capable as hunters. I rushed through the first 5 levels in about 45 minutes, slightly slower than the average because of lots of chatting.
I had finished with the newbie zone and was attempting the fishing quest in Azuremyst Island when my friend showed up. Her character is a level 23 paladin, also a Draenei. We were members of a party and the level difference is quite large, so the exp I got per kill was dramatically less than if solo. Having my own personal defender however made rushing through the early quests very easy. Since the majority of my exp was coming from questing, I pushed through lots of the Azuremyst stuff very quickly. Progress seemed to follow along about the same as it has when I've done the quests solo. I hit level 10 at a very fast 3 and a half hours then completed the taming quests solo.
My pally friend was joined by our other hunter friend and they both farmed the blood elf bandit for his mask for a while. I attempted to re-tame the cat from the last stage of the hunter quest, but it timed out and he despawned. As a replacement I grabbed the nearest cat. Not quite as successful as the Tauren from yesterday. With my new pet in tow I rushed through the furbolg related quests up north, spending about 20 minutes killing every Murloc in sight, even long after the quest was completed. I renamed the cat "Purrgatory". He dinged several times chasing the fishmen.
Once done with quests on Azuremyst, I headed over to Teldrasill to get skills and grab a owl pet. I ran out of time so have logged out in the inn at Dolannar. Since this guy had assistance from my friend, I didn't work as hard on self-funding as I normally would. I got a 2g starter fund, with which I bought 3* 8 -slot bags and upgraded my sword. I bought cooking, fishing, first-aid skills, and have again gone with skinning and mining as gathering skills. One annoyance is that the skinning trainer will not talk to you until after you complete the first of the furbolg quests.
Anyway, a quick visit to the AH selling my paltry collection of leather and ores got me about 3g, of which 2g was mailed back to my friend to repay the "loan".
Somewhat redeming myself for earlier foolishness (check the comments), I was walking back to town when I was rudely attacked from behind. My new pet went nuts and I lucked out on the loot: [blood elf bandit mask] This adds to the 2-3 others that my friends have already farmed. We will be looking to flip these over to the horde auction house if they sell for lots more there than on Alliance.
These two new projects have cost me 4 alts on other servers.
RIP
Aula, 22 Human Warlock (f)
Larceny, 15 Gnome Rogue (m)
Leaflitter, 16 ish Night Elf Hunter (m)
Acrinomy, 16 Orc Warlock (f) (yes her name was a spelling error!)
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