There are several theories out there about the best method for faster levelling. One theory is that killing "hard" monsters at or just above your level earns more experience per hour than killing easier ones a couple of levels below. I set out to test this theory recently on a couple of lower level alts. The results are inconclusive.
My testing was done on a level 25 warrior and 26 priest. Both were fully rested and have unexceptional gear. No heirloom items were used.
The warrior started out killing the level 20-22 humans at Durnholde keep. Syndicate Watchman for example. These guys showed up as green difficulty. After 30 minutes of slaughter, he'd gained about 12,000 exp. Unfortunately my noob warrior skills got him killed 3 times. The corpse runs were relatively short so should not impact too much on the end result.
After repairs and handing in relevant quests, the now level 26 warrior moved on to killing the farmers and townsmen over at Hillsbrad Fields. These guys are anywhere from 22-28 and the ones I was mostly killing were about level 26. After another 30 minutes of slaughter, this time with no deaths, he'd gained about 11,800 exp.
The easier kills earned slightly more exp, even with the unfortunate character deaths. Both grinding areas are fairly densely populated so there was little time between encounters.
I killed lots of the same farmers with the priest a little later. She kills things slower since there was a lot of drinking between battles. The kills were rated as green or yellow. I didn't record the starting values for experience so I'm not sure just how much she gained in the 30 minute test but it felt like a similar amount to the warrior.
The priest tried to move on to killing the tougher guys in the azurelode mines. The high density of mobs and the fact that they flee when low in health made this really tough. No deaths were suffered but the rate of kills was very much slower. I feel the warrior may make better headway in this area.
The numbers don't really come out clearly in favour of any strategy being superior. There may be a slight edge to killing the easier mobs since the higher number of kills offsets the lower experience per kill. I didn't test the effects of questing on the rate of gain. Again there is probably a slight edge to quickly completing the easier quests. Though its satisfying to kill orange and red mobs its just not efficient.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Monday, November 30, 2009
Farming?
So, the harvest festival was pathetic. Pilgrim's Bounty more than makes up for it. I was busy with real life stuff until the last few days of this festival so just used it as an opportunity to level up cooking skill on all my main alts. Each of them are now at around 300 skill thanks to a single run of the dailies and associated cooking recipies. This one event has improved the tradeskills of my little army more than I have in the last year of mucking about!
The Pilgrim's Paunch achievement made me chuckle. Aside from the obvious greed stuffing your face at each cities' tables, nearly every recipe for these foods contained lots of honey. Very likely you WOULD become obese eating that much sweet and fatty food!
I've spent a fair bit of time recently playing Aion. My guys are all still relatively low level so haven't yet experienced the massive grind that others have complained about. Since I don't really care about levelling, a long grind for each level wont affect me much so long as there are still things to amuse myself along the way.
Tradeskills are one area thats annoying me though. Its a horrid time and money sink with little to show for it as yet. Standard crafted items are generally as good or slightly better than drops at the same level, and the rare special items are significantly better but the process to get there is hideously expensive. Crafting also involves a lot of different materials. Just the basic stuff I'm doing at the moment has mostly filled my limited bag space. Its much worse in this respect than the crafting in WoW.
Many of the people who started blogging about Aion at or before release seem to have dropped out, even though the game is barely 2 months old in the west. It hasn't grabbed my attention the way WoW did but so far is significantly better than the free-to-play games I listed in my earlier post. I've actually found that playing Aion has revitalised my Wow experience. At this stage I'm enjoying both!
The Pilgrim's Paunch achievement made me chuckle. Aside from the obvious greed stuffing your face at each cities' tables, nearly every recipe for these foods contained lots of honey. Very likely you WOULD become obese eating that much sweet and fatty food!
I've spent a fair bit of time recently playing Aion. My guys are all still relatively low level so haven't yet experienced the massive grind that others have complained about. Since I don't really care about levelling, a long grind for each level wont affect me much so long as there are still things to amuse myself along the way.
Tradeskills are one area thats annoying me though. Its a horrid time and money sink with little to show for it as yet. Standard crafted items are generally as good or slightly better than drops at the same level, and the rare special items are significantly better but the process to get there is hideously expensive. Crafting also involves a lot of different materials. Just the basic stuff I'm doing at the moment has mostly filled my limited bag space. Its much worse in this respect than the crafting in WoW.
Many of the people who started blogging about Aion at or before release seem to have dropped out, even though the game is barely 2 months old in the west. It hasn't grabbed my attention the way WoW did but so far is significantly better than the free-to-play games I listed in my earlier post. I've actually found that playing Aion has revitalised my Wow experience. At this stage I'm enjoying both!
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Ravasaur!
My three highest Horde characters have recently been working on their Ravasaur mounts. Here is a selection of screenshots.
First, Cryptography, a rogue, is considering a career change to hunter.
My Ravasaur pet was about 16 at the time. He grows a little more!
That shot was taken just before handing in the final quest. He's now a mount as shown below. My friend Nybor is there as well with her very young hatchling for comparison.
Kytlin is an orc hunter. She came across a heart-rending scene in Ungoro:
Two orphaned Ravasaurs standing by the corpses of their parents crying piteously. Bite marks on the adults probably came from one of the giant T-rexes that patrol the crater. Kytlin enticed the twin ravasaurs with tidbits of food then took them to Tanaris for a proper feed.
Bug Eggs are great for the growing Dino! They also wanted slabs of dinosaur flesh and crunchy bits from the silithids in Un'goro. They even wanted to dress up like the adult raptors and demanded feathers from the biggest birds in the area, Tanaris Searing Rocs. Some time later, they traveled to the goblin city of Gadgetzan.
Cryptoknight, an undead Deathknight also has a ravasaur pet but he's camera shy. All ravasaurs are now on day 20 and can be handed in for the mount training. A 20-day grind for each but well worth it. I just wish we could keep the pet as well as the mount!
First, Cryptography, a rogue, is considering a career change to hunter.
My Ravasaur pet was about 16 at the time. He grows a little more!
That shot was taken just before handing in the final quest. He's now a mount as shown below. My friend Nybor is there as well with her very young hatchling for comparison.
Kytlin is an orc hunter. She came across a heart-rending scene in Ungoro:
Two orphaned Ravasaurs standing by the corpses of their parents crying piteously. Bite marks on the adults probably came from one of the giant T-rexes that patrol the crater. Kytlin enticed the twin ravasaurs with tidbits of food then took them to Tanaris for a proper feed.
Bug Eggs are great for the growing Dino! They also wanted slabs of dinosaur flesh and crunchy bits from the silithids in Un'goro. They even wanted to dress up like the adult raptors and demanded feathers from the biggest birds in the area, Tanaris Searing Rocs. Some time later, they traveled to the goblin city of Gadgetzan.
Cryptoknight, an undead Deathknight also has a ravasaur pet but he's camera shy. All ravasaurs are now on day 20 and can be handed in for the mount training. A 20-day grind for each but well worth it. I just wish we could keep the pet as well as the mount!
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Non-Warcraft Adventures
World of Warcraft is the game that occupies most of my online time but is far from the only game I play. I have a lot of older PC games that I play when I'm not feeling particularly social. One example is X2:the threat, a space sim I picked up at the bargain bin recently for $3 or so. Pretty cool title.
I also dabble in a number of other MMO games. Even before I took up Wow, I was and continue to play Eve online. This well established space game is pretty awesome. Its not one for the faint-hearted though, as the PvP can be pretty full on even in the "safe" zones, and the cost of death is much steeper than in most games. Eve is great fun when you get yourself into a decent corporation. Solo play is fine too but it can be hard and lonely. Most of the web reviews for this game are many years out of date; the game is much more stable and polished now than it was back near release. I maintain three active subscriptions to this game even though I'm currently not playing it a lot.
As a person with a pre-order in for AION, I was able to play in its latest closed Beta this last weekend. The visuals in this game are absolutely beautiful! Gameplay seems ok too, though at barely level 13 I've hardly touched the surface. AION features flying characters once you ascend at level 10. This adds another interesting aspect to fights and travel. My little taste in the beta has got me hungry to try more though I doubt it will steal me away from wow for too long.
I've also investigated a number of the free-to-play MMO's. A long time ago when my PC was old and pathetic, I played Runescape. People seem to hate this game and taunt anyone who plays. I re-activated my account about 6 months ago just to see how it was going. Its visuals have improved somewhat but its gameplay has all the annoying features that made me leave ages ago. I guess there's still some appeal to people since the server was quite busy and the price is right but I doubt I'll be back.
Another free to play game is Archlord. This game has been out for a few years now. It got mostly terrible reviews in the gaming press. I think it's been judged harshly. Its graphics and music are pretty good. It features PvP very heavily, with siege combat and control of castles by guilds being a big part of end-game. My rampant alt-itis is a big problem here since I never spend enough time on any one toon to progress very far. Archlord suffers from having poorly translated quests and lore. I couldn't make any sense at all of the storyline on the game's main page and quest text in-game is hardly better. The rewards from questing seemed fairly poor too compared to what I'd obtain from drops. The resulting grind-fest was tedious at best. Once a character gained some AOE abilities, usually around level 14, things went along better. WoW is leagues ahead of this game but if "free" is your price limit, its decent enough.
Also out in "open beta" now for a long while is 2Moons. This game is a fair bit more polished than Archlord is but also seems to be a grind-fest. Quests, while at least readable, aren't terribly engaging. All of the available character types seem viable and mostly fun to play. Graphics and audio are pretty nice, perhaps better than Wow in some ways but movement can sometimes be jerky and there doesn't seem to be any jump/swim third dimension.
I haven't played either this or Archlord consistently enough to be a member of a decent guild so a lot of the social aspects I've encountered so far have been negative ones. A lot of selfish dickwads on these free games. There was some licensing issue with 2moons and it seems that this is now restricted to North American players only, but since my account was created before the lockdown it still works fine.
The most recent free game I've tried has been Runes of Magic. This game is often described as a WOW clone. It certainly does have a lot of similarities but here are enough points of difference to make it interesting in its own right. Its a very polished game compared to others I've seen. I love the dual-class mechanism where you can access some of the secondary class's skills while in a different primary class, eg priest healing while a warrior. Quests, audio and visual, as well as game community seem generally better than the other games I've listed here. I've linked to the US site, but there's one for Europe as well on different servers. The micro payment options for this game are its weak point however. They are much more blatant about it, sending regular in-game announcements of "special" offers. It looks like spending some RL cash will be necessary to go far in this game. Other free-to-play games make items available for purchase that make life a lot easier but RoM seems to be making lots of "must have" items as part of their payment system - and they are hideously expensive. The player imbalance that results from this is a very undesirable aspect in gameplay. The game itself is the best of the free ones I've sampled here but this blatant cash grab is a real turn-off, to the point where I'm reluctant to play any further.
I also dabble in a number of other MMO games. Even before I took up Wow, I was and continue to play Eve online. This well established space game is pretty awesome. Its not one for the faint-hearted though, as the PvP can be pretty full on even in the "safe" zones, and the cost of death is much steeper than in most games. Eve is great fun when you get yourself into a decent corporation. Solo play is fine too but it can be hard and lonely. Most of the web reviews for this game are many years out of date; the game is much more stable and polished now than it was back near release. I maintain three active subscriptions to this game even though I'm currently not playing it a lot.
As a person with a pre-order in for AION, I was able to play in its latest closed Beta this last weekend. The visuals in this game are absolutely beautiful! Gameplay seems ok too, though at barely level 13 I've hardly touched the surface. AION features flying characters once you ascend at level 10. This adds another interesting aspect to fights and travel. My little taste in the beta has got me hungry to try more though I doubt it will steal me away from wow for too long.
I've also investigated a number of the free-to-play MMO's. A long time ago when my PC was old and pathetic, I played Runescape. People seem to hate this game and taunt anyone who plays. I re-activated my account about 6 months ago just to see how it was going. Its visuals have improved somewhat but its gameplay has all the annoying features that made me leave ages ago. I guess there's still some appeal to people since the server was quite busy and the price is right but I doubt I'll be back.
Another free to play game is Archlord. This game has been out for a few years now. It got mostly terrible reviews in the gaming press. I think it's been judged harshly. Its graphics and music are pretty good. It features PvP very heavily, with siege combat and control of castles by guilds being a big part of end-game. My rampant alt-itis is a big problem here since I never spend enough time on any one toon to progress very far. Archlord suffers from having poorly translated quests and lore. I couldn't make any sense at all of the storyline on the game's main page and quest text in-game is hardly better. The rewards from questing seemed fairly poor too compared to what I'd obtain from drops. The resulting grind-fest was tedious at best. Once a character gained some AOE abilities, usually around level 14, things went along better. WoW is leagues ahead of this game but if "free" is your price limit, its decent enough.
Also out in "open beta" now for a long while is 2Moons. This game is a fair bit more polished than Archlord is but also seems to be a grind-fest. Quests, while at least readable, aren't terribly engaging. All of the available character types seem viable and mostly fun to play. Graphics and audio are pretty nice, perhaps better than Wow in some ways but movement can sometimes be jerky and there doesn't seem to be any jump/swim third dimension.
I haven't played either this or Archlord consistently enough to be a member of a decent guild so a lot of the social aspects I've encountered so far have been negative ones. A lot of selfish dickwads on these free games. There was some licensing issue with 2moons and it seems that this is now restricted to North American players only, but since my account was created before the lockdown it still works fine.
The most recent free game I've tried has been Runes of Magic. This game is often described as a WOW clone. It certainly does have a lot of similarities but here are enough points of difference to make it interesting in its own right. Its a very polished game compared to others I've seen. I love the dual-class mechanism where you can access some of the secondary class's skills while in a different primary class, eg priest healing while a warrior. Quests, audio and visual, as well as game community seem generally better than the other games I've listed here. I've linked to the US site, but there's one for Europe as well on different servers. The micro payment options for this game are its weak point however. They are much more blatant about it, sending regular in-game announcements of "special" offers. It looks like spending some RL cash will be necessary to go far in this game. Other free-to-play games make items available for purchase that make life a lot easier but RoM seems to be making lots of "must have" items as part of their payment system - and they are hideously expensive. The player imbalance that results from this is a very undesirable aspect in gameplay. The game itself is the best of the free ones I've sampled here but this blatant cash grab is a real turn-off, to the point where I'm reluctant to play any further.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Pet choice for the levelling hunter
Here I am expanding on what was an already long comment on Mania's latest RFC: whats-the-weakest-leveling-pet. I am slowly in the process of revising my own pet reviews and this RFC is something I feel fully qualified to comment on.
My original comment is number 59 on Mania's site. I've reposted it here and expanded some.
****
Back in October last year I wrote a review of every pet family available to low level hunters. Blizzard have made several changes to pets since I last updated my post but it is still broadly relevant now.
The reviews are at: http://wowdecrypted.blogspot.com/2008/10/hunter-pet-reviews-pre-wrath-patch.html
The main changes since then have been the change to +5/+5/+5 to family stats, adding thunderstomp as a talent for all tenacity pets and tweaks to furious howl and rake.
Mania specifically asked – “For this post, I am mostly interested in levelling and questing before level 40 (although I would love to hear your thoughts on higher levels as well). That’s pre-exotics, and also pre-Thunderstomp for the Tenacity pets.”
Pets get their first talent point at level 20. The first few points make little difference to pet usability, its only when a bunch of talents stack up that it is really noticeable – usually around level 40. The biggest factor then in the lower levels is the pet’s family skill.
Diet can be removed as a factor in pet choice by use of the minor Glyph of Mend Pet. Spam mend pet a few times out of combat and your pet is happy again.
So, what factors make a good family skill for use by a low level “noob” hunter?
– aids in threat management.
– has a short cool-down or longer uptime.
– ease of use.
So, in the 3.1 environment:-
Poor: (5 families)
Bats – Sonic Blast
- 2 second stun and small damage on 20 yard range, long cooldown. Sometimes seems to stutter.
Birds of Prey – Snatch
- limited single target/ humanoid only effect on long cooldown.
Moths – Serenity Dust
- Heal over Time and 10% attack power boost on long cooldown. If left on autocast its often too little too late. Tied to a macro its much more useful. The healing is at best 20% of the pets health for most of the level ranges considered here. Rated poor because its tricky to use well.
Tallstriders – Dust Cloud
- Causes all attackers within 10 yards to miss one attack. 8 second duration, 40 sec cooldown. Hardly worth the effort. What I hadn't considered here is the AOE threat generation. In my testing last year I found they couldn't hold aggro very well on a single target compared to others in the same talent tree.
Crabs – Pin
- a 4-second channelled pin that does little damage on a longish cooldown. This skill is never available when you need it and it's channelled nature makes it more difficult to use successfully. Like most of the immobilise moves, it gets better when tied to a macro.
OK: (7 Families)
Dragonhawks – Fire Breath
- smallish direct damage and 2-sec DoT on fast 10-sec cooldown. The problem with this skill is its 20 yard range - the pet has a tendency to "stutter" into range before it eventually gets its attack off.
Ravagers – Ravage
- decent damage attack, with a 2-second stun. The long 40 sec cooldown is the main issue here. Like other stuns, its better bound to a macro.
Spiders – Web
- 40 second cooldown, 4 second immobilise. Its a bit better than bat's Sonic Blast, simply because its more likely to fire off at a useful time and lasts longer. Much better when bound to a macro.
Wind Serpents – Lightning Breath
- 20-yard range, 10 sec cooldown smallish nature damage attack. The 20-yard range and stutter effect are the problem here.
Boars – Gore
- decent damage, 10 sec cooldown melee attack. Its special bonus is tied to successful use of the charge talent, so should go off about every 2nd fight. Rated as OK simply because other pet's specials don't require talents to be effective.
Turtles – Shell Shield
- 12 seconds per minute of 50% damage reduction. Its pretty nice in an emergency, but on too long a cooldown for general use, plus it doesn't help retain aggro.
Raptors – Savage Rend (Demoted from "good" for this revised post!)
- 1 minute cooldown medium damage + medium damage DoT. Its extra damage boost only comes into play when the pet gets a crit hit using this ability. Low level hunters will not see the benefit from this.
Good: (8 Families)
Serpents – Poison Spit
- 30 yard range, 10 sec medium-high nature damage DoT (8 seconds uptime). It also has a slowing effect on casting times. This ability is great. The 30-yard range means the pet gets off its first shot at the same range the hunter does most times. It has a short cooldown and is effectively up 80% of the time. The anti-caster effect is an added bonus.
Carrion Birds – Demoralizing Screech
- 10-sec cooldown AOE Attack Power debuff (that generates threat) to all in melee, with 100% uptime AND a single target medium-damage attack (also generating threat), thats also available widely at any level you like? Sign me up!
Cats – Rake
- 10 sec cooldown, low damage, low DoT melee attack that has almost 100% uptime. Easy to use, decent ability that can occasionally be paired with a successful Prowl.
Hyenas – Tendon Rip
- 20 sec cooldown low-medium damage melee attack with a 6-second slow. Like all disabling moves, this would be better on a macro but even autocast the combination of duration and cooldown means its ready to go when needed most fights. The damage it does is a nice threat boost too.
Raptors – Savage Rend (moved to OK section for this revised post)
Wolves – Furious Howl
- 40 sec cooldown, 20sec duration Attack Power boost for both pet and hunter. For most fights this is a better than 50% uptime DPS boost that is fairly easy to manage. This skill was reworked somewhere between 3.0.3 and 3.1. It is a much better levelling skill than when initially reviewed.
Bears – Swipe
- 5 second cooldown (!) AOE melee damage. Uncomplicated and deadly. It appears that the front-facing limitation has been removed in a recent patch. One of the best skills available for a levelling pet.
Crocolisks – Bad Attitude
- 2 minute cooldown, 45 sec uptime melee AOE medium-high reactive damage. This skill is interesting. Every attacker that hits the pet takes damage. Every single attack, for 45 seconds. Great for AOE aggro generation and generates significant damage in the right circumstances. Probably better taken off autocast and tied to one of the hunter's attack buttons so its not triggered too early.
Scorpids – Scorpid Poison
- 10 second cooldown medium-low DoT nature damage with 100% uptime. Simple to use. Rarely resisted. Sustained aggro generation.
Not available to low levels: (12 Families)
Chimaeras – Froststorm Breath
Nether Rays – Nether Shock
Silithids – Venom Web Spray
Sporebats – Spore Cloud
Core Hounds – Lava Breath
Devilsaurs – Monstrous Bite
Spirit Beasts – Spirit Strike
Wasps – Sting
Gorillas – Pummel *lowest level gorilla is level 32.
Rhinos – Stampede
Warp Stalkers – Warp
Worms – Acid Spit
By the time a hunter can get one of these pets, they and the pet have significant talent points to spend. Individual family skills make less difference in most cases than appropriate talent choices. The exotic pet families usually combine skills that are similar to others reviewed above. Also by this stage, most hunters have learned a thing or two about playing their class, further smoothing out the rough edges in family skill differences.
What pets would I recommend? Probably Bear and Carrion Bird for most playstyles. Both are AOE, but only in melee range. Serpents are awesome if you are regularly going against humanoids. Thunderstomp for tenacity pets, available at the earliest at level 44, is an awesome addition. Ferocity pets become essentially unkillable once they get bloodthirsty by the mid-30's.
My original comment is number 59 on Mania's site. I've reposted it here and expanded some.
****
Back in October last year I wrote a review of every pet family available to low level hunters. Blizzard have made several changes to pets since I last updated my post but it is still broadly relevant now.
The reviews are at: http://wowdecrypted.blogspot.com/2008/10/hunter-pet-reviews-pre-wrath-patch.html
The main changes since then have been the change to +5/+5/+5 to family stats, adding thunderstomp as a talent for all tenacity pets and tweaks to furious howl and rake.
Mania specifically asked – “For this post, I am mostly interested in levelling and questing before level 40 (although I would love to hear your thoughts on higher levels as well). That’s pre-exotics, and also pre-Thunderstomp for the Tenacity pets.”
Pets get their first talent point at level 20. The first few points make little difference to pet usability, its only when a bunch of talents stack up that it is really noticeable – usually around level 40. The biggest factor then in the lower levels is the pet’s family skill.
Diet can be removed as a factor in pet choice by use of the minor Glyph of Mend Pet. Spam mend pet a few times out of combat and your pet is happy again.
So, what factors make a good family skill for use by a low level “noob” hunter?
– aids in threat management.
– has a short cool-down or longer uptime.
– ease of use.
So, in the 3.1 environment:-
Poor: (5 families)
Bats – Sonic Blast
- 2 second stun and small damage on 20 yard range, long cooldown. Sometimes seems to stutter.
Birds of Prey – Snatch
- limited single target/ humanoid only effect on long cooldown.
Moths – Serenity Dust
- Heal over Time and 10% attack power boost on long cooldown. If left on autocast its often too little too late. Tied to a macro its much more useful. The healing is at best 20% of the pets health for most of the level ranges considered here. Rated poor because its tricky to use well.
Tallstriders – Dust Cloud
- Causes all attackers within 10 yards to miss one attack. 8 second duration, 40 sec cooldown. Hardly worth the effort. What I hadn't considered here is the AOE threat generation. In my testing last year I found they couldn't hold aggro very well on a single target compared to others in the same talent tree.
Crabs – Pin
- a 4-second channelled pin that does little damage on a longish cooldown. This skill is never available when you need it and it's channelled nature makes it more difficult to use successfully. Like most of the immobilise moves, it gets better when tied to a macro.
OK: (7 Families)
Dragonhawks – Fire Breath
- smallish direct damage and 2-sec DoT on fast 10-sec cooldown. The problem with this skill is its 20 yard range - the pet has a tendency to "stutter" into range before it eventually gets its attack off.
Ravagers – Ravage
- decent damage attack, with a 2-second stun. The long 40 sec cooldown is the main issue here. Like other stuns, its better bound to a macro.
Spiders – Web
- 40 second cooldown, 4 second immobilise. Its a bit better than bat's Sonic Blast, simply because its more likely to fire off at a useful time and lasts longer. Much better when bound to a macro.
Wind Serpents – Lightning Breath
- 20-yard range, 10 sec cooldown smallish nature damage attack. The 20-yard range and stutter effect are the problem here.
Boars – Gore
- decent damage, 10 sec cooldown melee attack. Its special bonus is tied to successful use of the charge talent, so should go off about every 2nd fight. Rated as OK simply because other pet's specials don't require talents to be effective.
Turtles – Shell Shield
- 12 seconds per minute of 50% damage reduction. Its pretty nice in an emergency, but on too long a cooldown for general use, plus it doesn't help retain aggro.
Raptors – Savage Rend (Demoted from "good" for this revised post!)
- 1 minute cooldown medium damage + medium damage DoT. Its extra damage boost only comes into play when the pet gets a crit hit using this ability. Low level hunters will not see the benefit from this.
Good: (8 Families)
Serpents – Poison Spit
- 30 yard range, 10 sec medium-high nature damage DoT (8 seconds uptime). It also has a slowing effect on casting times. This ability is great. The 30-yard range means the pet gets off its first shot at the same range the hunter does most times. It has a short cooldown and is effectively up 80% of the time. The anti-caster effect is an added bonus.
Carrion Birds – Demoralizing Screech
- 10-sec cooldown AOE Attack Power debuff (that generates threat) to all in melee, with 100% uptime AND a single target medium-damage attack (also generating threat), thats also available widely at any level you like? Sign me up!
Cats – Rake
- 10 sec cooldown, low damage, low DoT melee attack that has almost 100% uptime. Easy to use, decent ability that can occasionally be paired with a successful Prowl.
Hyenas – Tendon Rip
- 20 sec cooldown low-medium damage melee attack with a 6-second slow. Like all disabling moves, this would be better on a macro but even autocast the combination of duration and cooldown means its ready to go when needed most fights. The damage it does is a nice threat boost too.
Raptors – Savage Rend (moved to OK section for this revised post)
Wolves – Furious Howl
- 40 sec cooldown, 20sec duration Attack Power boost for both pet and hunter. For most fights this is a better than 50% uptime DPS boost that is fairly easy to manage. This skill was reworked somewhere between 3.0.3 and 3.1. It is a much better levelling skill than when initially reviewed.
Bears – Swipe
- 5 second cooldown (!) AOE melee damage. Uncomplicated and deadly. It appears that the front-facing limitation has been removed in a recent patch. One of the best skills available for a levelling pet.
Crocolisks – Bad Attitude
- 2 minute cooldown, 45 sec uptime melee AOE medium-high reactive damage. This skill is interesting. Every attacker that hits the pet takes damage. Every single attack, for 45 seconds. Great for AOE aggro generation and generates significant damage in the right circumstances. Probably better taken off autocast and tied to one of the hunter's attack buttons so its not triggered too early.
Scorpids – Scorpid Poison
- 10 second cooldown medium-low DoT nature damage with 100% uptime. Simple to use. Rarely resisted. Sustained aggro generation.
Not available to low levels: (12 Families)
Chimaeras – Froststorm Breath
Nether Rays – Nether Shock
Silithids – Venom Web Spray
Sporebats – Spore Cloud
Core Hounds – Lava Breath
Devilsaurs – Monstrous Bite
Spirit Beasts – Spirit Strike
Wasps – Sting
Gorillas – Pummel *lowest level gorilla is level 32.
Rhinos – Stampede
Warp Stalkers – Warp
Worms – Acid Spit
By the time a hunter can get one of these pets, they and the pet have significant talent points to spend. Individual family skills make less difference in most cases than appropriate talent choices. The exotic pet families usually combine skills that are similar to others reviewed above. Also by this stage, most hunters have learned a thing or two about playing their class, further smoothing out the rough edges in family skill differences.
What pets would I recommend? Probably Bear and Carrion Bird for most playstyles. Both are AOE, but only in melee range. Serpents are awesome if you are regularly going against humanoids. Thunderstomp for tenacity pets, available at the earliest at level 44, is an awesome addition. Ferocity pets become essentially unkillable once they get bloodthirsty by the mid-30's.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Hunter Pet Reviews -Revised Edition 3.X
I had a partially complete review of all pet families as a draft post. I referred to it in a couple of other places but since its now superseded by the release of wow 4.0.X I've trashed it and will just post this place-holder. I intend to put up a review in the revised world but this is likely to only get done well after Cataclysm is released, so sometime after December 2010.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Hunter testing methodology
I've been playing some of my hunters again recently with a view to updating my Hunter Pet Reviews for the current state of play.
My highest hunter is at 56 or 57 now and will probably comfortably level into Outlands during this process. Most of the other hunter alts are still languishing back in the mid 20's or early 30's so are much the same as they were when the original tests were done last year.
A hunter and pet in the 20's is a vastly different experience to a hunter in the higher levels. The hunter's own talents are only just developing and the pets are barely started. I have kept a very similar talent set for each hunter and pet for these tests. Hunters spend the first 15 or so points in Marksman to get the Go For The Throat talent, then switch to Beastmaster for their remaining talents. Pet talents are first a movement option: Dash/dive or charge, then points in cobra reflexes. With so few talent points there is little difference between talent trees.
On my higher level hunter I have roughly followed a MM/BM hybrid levelling spec, somewhat similar to one that Pike posted over on her blog. For the pet talents, I have continued a mostly dps-focussed build on Cunning and Ferocity families and a tanking/survivability build on Tenacity families. Where possible I have grabbed the Thunderstomp talent.
All talent choices for hunter and pet are loosely based around benefiting a "levelling" play style. I hate downtime. I hate micromanagement. Talents such as bloodthirsty are essential to this play style.
Cower is removed from autocasting. I wish I could just unlearn it completely! Growl, the family focus dump and special ability are all on autocast. Prowl is the notable exception; it's off autocast and is manually used when I remember to do so.
I use recount to track damage. I have Omen running to help manage aggro but am not carefully watching these while fighting. My testing is purely for PvE levelling. A typical test will start with a tame of a fresh pet. I will spam mend pet and/or feed the pet until it is happy then set its talents. Once ready, I clear the recount meters then go farm some mobs.
Testing starts with attacking single mobs that are around or just above the pet's new level. If the pet is the full 5 levels below me, I'll also ease back on my hunter's DPS. I repeat single mob fights until around 10,000 damage has been done (50k for the higher level hunter - its about 20 kills for each stage of the test). During this time I evaluate subjectively how well the pet holds aggro and watch for the effects of its family skills. Hunter shot rotation is some variant of serpent sting as opener, then arcane/auto with multishot where possible. I try to avoid aggroing multiple mobs during this stage but it does not invalidate the test if adds join in. Mend pet is used whenever needed. Aspect of the hawk is up for as long as possible, then aspect of the viper is used to regenerate mana. Hunter and pet keep moving and killing almost continually, fighting one mob at a time without much downtime.
Once the 10,000 damage threshold is reached, I pause for a bit and take a look at recount. If the pet's family skill is a DPS based one, I note the percentage of the pet's DPS this represents. Overall, for a BM/MM hybrid, the pet gets 30-55% of total dps for this type of fighting, probably averaging out at about 40%. Some family special skills get about 10-15% of the pet's damage.
After a brief rest and refit, I will switch to grinding on multiple targets. The pet will be sent in to attack a mob. Serpent sting will be applied, then I'll target another mob and send in the pet again. Dash/Dive is great for this as it allows the pet to pick up small groups of targets very quickly. Targets are again chosen based on the pet's level rather than the hunter. If the targets are lower than the pet, I'll grab bunches of 5 or so. Higher level targets are gathered in smaller groups, or staggered in waves but the pet is taking on at least 2 at a time. Mend pet is used where needed, often when the pet still has higher health than in single target fights. Shot rotation for the hunter is mostly about keeping serpent sting up on the multiple targets and burning down the most-damaged target quickly. Pet families with an AOE aggro skill are awesome for this kind of fight, but some pet target swapping is often needed to manage aggro on groups. Careful use of traps and AOE shots are added in where possible. Aspect of the viper is sometimes used to reduce hunter threat output, though it has to be balanced against the massive drop in DPS it causes.
Again, a further 10,000 damage is recorded in recount. The counters are not reset between these parts of the test. It is rare for me to lose aggro in fights of less than 4 targets but a string of crits and some healing can cause problems with larger groups. Few pets can survive groups of 6 or more at once unless the targets are quite low level.
After both sets of testing, a BM/MM build usually has the pet doing around 50% of total damage. This is usually higher than after the single target tests, mostly due to use of Viper to manage aggro. Similar percentages seem to apply even after volley is added into the shot rotation on the higher level hunter, though this is one of the things I'm testing in this current round.
A third round of testing is performed for those pets with non-dps based family skills. Those pets with snare-type abilities are usually tested against humanoid targets that flee. The snare is manually triggered, not autocast. Caster-debuff skills are tested against caster mobs. Hard to manage family skills like dust cloud are tested manually against suitable targets (groups of melee in this case). Recount is usually left running but it is hard to evaluate the effectiveness of the skill in terms of damage done.
Sometimes I will do some "extreme" testing on particularly promising pets, where they try taking on multiple mobs significantly above their level, or we will take on elites of similar level. Very few pets should take on elites more than a level or two above them in a solo hunter/pet scenario.
Pet looks, animations and sounds are observed throughout this process. These evaluations are going to be entirely subjective and will be mentioned only where they are particularly noticeable.
At this stage, only the same pet families as evaluated last time will be done. I still do not have the 51-point BM talent to tame exotics and most of the outland only pets will still be out of reach by the end of this test. I intend to test all other families with a lower level and higher level hunter.
My highest hunter is at 56 or 57 now and will probably comfortably level into Outlands during this process. Most of the other hunter alts are still languishing back in the mid 20's or early 30's so are much the same as they were when the original tests were done last year.
A hunter and pet in the 20's is a vastly different experience to a hunter in the higher levels. The hunter's own talents are only just developing and the pets are barely started. I have kept a very similar talent set for each hunter and pet for these tests. Hunters spend the first 15 or so points in Marksman to get the Go For The Throat talent, then switch to Beastmaster for their remaining talents. Pet talents are first a movement option: Dash/dive or charge, then points in cobra reflexes. With so few talent points there is little difference between talent trees.
On my higher level hunter I have roughly followed a MM/BM hybrid levelling spec, somewhat similar to one that Pike posted over on her blog. For the pet talents, I have continued a mostly dps-focussed build on Cunning and Ferocity families and a tanking/survivability build on Tenacity families. Where possible I have grabbed the Thunderstomp talent.
All talent choices for hunter and pet are loosely based around benefiting a "levelling" play style. I hate downtime. I hate micromanagement. Talents such as bloodthirsty are essential to this play style.
Cower is removed from autocasting. I wish I could just unlearn it completely! Growl, the family focus dump and special ability are all on autocast. Prowl is the notable exception; it's off autocast and is manually used when I remember to do so.
I use recount to track damage. I have Omen running to help manage aggro but am not carefully watching these while fighting. My testing is purely for PvE levelling. A typical test will start with a tame of a fresh pet. I will spam mend pet and/or feed the pet until it is happy then set its talents. Once ready, I clear the recount meters then go farm some mobs.
Testing starts with attacking single mobs that are around or just above the pet's new level. If the pet is the full 5 levels below me, I'll also ease back on my hunter's DPS. I repeat single mob fights until around 10,000 damage has been done (50k for the higher level hunter - its about 20 kills for each stage of the test). During this time I evaluate subjectively how well the pet holds aggro and watch for the effects of its family skills. Hunter shot rotation is some variant of serpent sting as opener, then arcane/auto with multishot where possible. I try to avoid aggroing multiple mobs during this stage but it does not invalidate the test if adds join in. Mend pet is used whenever needed. Aspect of the hawk is up for as long as possible, then aspect of the viper is used to regenerate mana. Hunter and pet keep moving and killing almost continually, fighting one mob at a time without much downtime.
Once the 10,000 damage threshold is reached, I pause for a bit and take a look at recount. If the pet's family skill is a DPS based one, I note the percentage of the pet's DPS this represents. Overall, for a BM/MM hybrid, the pet gets 30-55% of total dps for this type of fighting, probably averaging out at about 40%. Some family special skills get about 10-15% of the pet's damage.
After a brief rest and refit, I will switch to grinding on multiple targets. The pet will be sent in to attack a mob. Serpent sting will be applied, then I'll target another mob and send in the pet again. Dash/Dive is great for this as it allows the pet to pick up small groups of targets very quickly. Targets are again chosen based on the pet's level rather than the hunter. If the targets are lower than the pet, I'll grab bunches of 5 or so. Higher level targets are gathered in smaller groups, or staggered in waves but the pet is taking on at least 2 at a time. Mend pet is used where needed, often when the pet still has higher health than in single target fights. Shot rotation for the hunter is mostly about keeping serpent sting up on the multiple targets and burning down the most-damaged target quickly. Pet families with an AOE aggro skill are awesome for this kind of fight, but some pet target swapping is often needed to manage aggro on groups. Careful use of traps and AOE shots are added in where possible. Aspect of the viper is sometimes used to reduce hunter threat output, though it has to be balanced against the massive drop in DPS it causes.
Again, a further 10,000 damage is recorded in recount. The counters are not reset between these parts of the test. It is rare for me to lose aggro in fights of less than 4 targets but a string of crits and some healing can cause problems with larger groups. Few pets can survive groups of 6 or more at once unless the targets are quite low level.
After both sets of testing, a BM/MM build usually has the pet doing around 50% of total damage. This is usually higher than after the single target tests, mostly due to use of Viper to manage aggro. Similar percentages seem to apply even after volley is added into the shot rotation on the higher level hunter, though this is one of the things I'm testing in this current round.
A third round of testing is performed for those pets with non-dps based family skills. Those pets with snare-type abilities are usually tested against humanoid targets that flee. The snare is manually triggered, not autocast. Caster-debuff skills are tested against caster mobs. Hard to manage family skills like dust cloud are tested manually against suitable targets (groups of melee in this case). Recount is usually left running but it is hard to evaluate the effectiveness of the skill in terms of damage done.
Sometimes I will do some "extreme" testing on particularly promising pets, where they try taking on multiple mobs significantly above their level, or we will take on elites of similar level. Very few pets should take on elites more than a level or two above them in a solo hunter/pet scenario.
Pet looks, animations and sounds are observed throughout this process. These evaluations are going to be entirely subjective and will be mentioned only where they are particularly noticeable.
At this stage, only the same pet families as evaluated last time will be done. I still do not have the 51-point BM talent to tame exotics and most of the outland only pets will still be out of reach by the end of this test. I intend to test all other families with a lower level and higher level hunter.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Selected Viewings
Somewhere, off the chain of blogs and their reading lists, I followed a link to some of the warcraft machinima videos on youtube. I watched that one, then several more, then heaps of them. There are a wide variety of quality and styles amongst them.
Here are just some of the ones I liked.
First, some Weird Al songs done with warcraft scenes:
Amish Paradise
Ugly Girl
Then some of Nyhm's works:
Hard Like Heroic
Ni Hao (A Gold Farmers Story)
Just Loot It!
Nyhm has several others, look for more by phrog801.
One of his regular collaborators is "Summergale", the female vocalist in many of Nhym's movies. A very popular work is:
Ulduar
Ulduar was a collaboration between Summergale and Cranius on vocals, and machinima creation by Legs. Also worth a look are LegsMachinima's other movies.
Cranius has put out a few of his own vids. A few use other people's music, some are his own creations. These are some of the best:
Big Blue Dress
Highwayman
Darrowshire
The Lament of Captain Placeholder
Probably the most technically polished of the vids is Percula's
The Craft of War: Blind
This is more of a movie than a music video like most of the others. "Blind" has generated nearly 5000 comments on youtube so is obviously very popular.
There are heaps more out there. A fair few are basically raw in-game footage, but others are well crafted stories or videos like the ones I've linked here.
What are some of your favourites?
Here are just some of the ones I liked.
First, some Weird Al songs done with warcraft scenes:
Amish Paradise
Ugly Girl
Then some of Nyhm's works:
Hard Like Heroic
Ni Hao (A Gold Farmers Story)
Just Loot It!
Nyhm has several others, look for more by phrog801.
One of his regular collaborators is "Summergale", the female vocalist in many of Nhym's movies. A very popular work is:
Ulduar
Ulduar was a collaboration between Summergale and Cranius on vocals, and machinima creation by Legs. Also worth a look are LegsMachinima's other movies.
Cranius has put out a few of his own vids. A few use other people's music, some are his own creations. These are some of the best:
Big Blue Dress
Highwayman
Darrowshire
The Lament of Captain Placeholder
Probably the most technically polished of the vids is Percula's
The Craft of War: Blind
This is more of a movie than a music video like most of the others. "Blind" has generated nearly 5000 comments on youtube so is obviously very popular.
There are heaps more out there. A fair few are basically raw in-game footage, but others are well crafted stories or videos like the ones I've linked here.
What are some of your favourites?
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Stupid Mistakes
You might have noticed that I've not posted in a while. Real Life has severely hampered my game and blogging time recently. Things are still madly busy but at least I get to log in again now.
My last post here was about missing the target of getting my epic flyer within a month. Well, just after that post I re-invested about half my net worth back into the auction house. Then I got side-swiped by real life and didn't visit my VeCo characters for ages.... so long in fact that about 2,500g of auction materials and sales messages have expired from my banker's mailbox!
Ooops!
(The mail hasn't just expired from the auction house, its also expired from my mailbox, so is gone completely. About 2500g gone forever just because RL snuck up on me!)
Ah well. I've already started rebuilding funds but of course it will take some time to fully recover.
My last post here was about missing the target of getting my epic flyer within a month. Well, just after that post I re-invested about half my net worth back into the auction house. Then I got side-swiped by real life and didn't visit my VeCo characters for ages.... so long in fact that about 2,500g of auction materials and sales messages have expired from my banker's mailbox!
Ooops!
(The mail hasn't just expired from the auction house, its also expired from my mailbox, so is gone completely. About 2500g gone forever just because RL snuck up on me!)
Ah well. I've already started rebuilding funds but of course it will take some time to fully recover.
Monday, March 9, 2009
28 days later
Abject Failure.
On the 7th of feb I was chatting to Ahami on VeCo about our blogs and what I should do next. I had my freshly rolled Deathknight with a small starter fund and a beginning enchanting skill. The challenge was set: make enough gold for epic flyer within a month.
Easy!
Well, maybe not.
I also ran the same challenge on my other new DK on Cael as well, but with less funds, and less effort. Both characters started the challenge at level 58, fresh from the newbie zone.
On VeCo, I invested heavily into improving the enchanting skill. I hit around 200 in the first few days but also spent a lot of the starting money in levelling up instead of reinvesting into the market. It took several bidding/disenchanting/selling cycles to get back to the starting point. By about mid-month I was edging above 1000g and starting to realise that I may not meet the target!
Over on Cael I farmed some low level instances (stockades, Deadmines) several times to get starting materials, as well as buying stuff from the auction house. With less money to start with, I concentrated on re-investing what I had. By mid month I was barely at 200 skill and 500g. I had put a lot less effort into it though.
On both servers I tried to log in to process auctions every 48 hours but often missed it. At the end of the month on Cael I had about 1500g in cash and ~700g in pending auctions. On VeCo, I had a little over 3000g in cash, ~900g in unsold auctions and maybe ~400g more in unprocessed materials. This was well short of the ~6500g target.
On both servers there were some mitigating factors. On Cael I invested about 200g into the guild I joined. I also levelled enchanting by enchanting most items in the guild bank, instead of trying to sell the enchants or placing them on vellums for sale. On VeCo, I yet again splurged the 100g to start a guild bank for some randoms who got me to sign the charter. Of course, the guild was disbanded a matter of days later when the GM lost enthusiasm! I've been foolish enough to do this several times now... maybe one day I'll learn!
Also on VeCo, I spent some of the time farming leather and cloth, which I passed off to my friends there to help level their trade skills. In return I got bags and a certain amount of green items. From a purely financial outlook I should have just sold the materials, but the social benefits will more than recoup any loss in the longer term.
Ah well. Both DK's are now level 60 with minimal playtime. They are both continuing to reinvest in the enchanting materials market and over time it is paying off.
On the 7th of feb I was chatting to Ahami on VeCo about our blogs and what I should do next. I had my freshly rolled Deathknight with a small starter fund and a beginning enchanting skill. The challenge was set: make enough gold for epic flyer within a month.
Easy!
Well, maybe not.
I also ran the same challenge on my other new DK on Cael as well, but with less funds, and less effort. Both characters started the challenge at level 58, fresh from the newbie zone.
On VeCo, I invested heavily into improving the enchanting skill. I hit around 200 in the first few days but also spent a lot of the starting money in levelling up instead of reinvesting into the market. It took several bidding/disenchanting/selling cycles to get back to the starting point. By about mid-month I was edging above 1000g and starting to realise that I may not meet the target!
Over on Cael I farmed some low level instances (stockades, Deadmines) several times to get starting materials, as well as buying stuff from the auction house. With less money to start with, I concentrated on re-investing what I had. By mid month I was barely at 200 skill and 500g. I had put a lot less effort into it though.
On both servers I tried to log in to process auctions every 48 hours but often missed it. At the end of the month on Cael I had about 1500g in cash and ~700g in pending auctions. On VeCo, I had a little over 3000g in cash, ~900g in unsold auctions and maybe ~400g more in unprocessed materials. This was well short of the ~6500g target.
On both servers there were some mitigating factors. On Cael I invested about 200g into the guild I joined. I also levelled enchanting by enchanting most items in the guild bank, instead of trying to sell the enchants or placing them on vellums for sale. On VeCo, I yet again splurged the 100g to start a guild bank for some randoms who got me to sign the charter. Of course, the guild was disbanded a matter of days later when the GM lost enthusiasm! I've been foolish enough to do this several times now... maybe one day I'll learn!
Also on VeCo, I spent some of the time farming leather and cloth, which I passed off to my friends there to help level their trade skills. In return I got bags and a certain amount of green items. From a purely financial outlook I should have just sold the materials, but the social benefits will more than recoup any loss in the longer term.
Ah well. Both DK's are now level 60 with minimal playtime. They are both continuing to reinvest in the enchanting materials market and over time it is paying off.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Wow Self Improvement
I had a party written post here but was rudely interrupted by work. It got autosaved as a draft but appeared to nuke my blog... it just showed a blank page!
Luckily all is well now.
I've posted here several entries that show ways to make gold. You have to read through my walls of text to find it but there are specific details in there showing what I did on several servers. Some of the same posts could serve as walkthroughs for new players, particularly the hunter and druid ones.
The main tips posted in "Cure the Cash Flow Blues" are the core truth to self-sufficiency in money. They are such simple concepts that I am astonished that players late in the game have any difficulty with funding essentials. A high level character just has so much greater earning capacity than any of my lowbie alts! I can well understand that a genuinely new player will struggle early on but someone who has played for sixty or seventy levels should surely know something about the game.
One of the things that I offer to members of my guild is loans for mounts. The introduction of the cheaper level 30 mounts has reduced the need for these. Level 30 mounts are cheaper and easier for most people to obtain than the old level 40 ones were. Partly this is due to there being a lot more gold around than there was.
Guildies looking for a loan have to convince me that:
1: they really NEED the item/mount they are borrowing money for.
2: they have made a decent attempt to get there on their own.
3: they have the capacity to repay the loan in reasonable time.
4: that they aren't likely to just take the money and run!
Back before Blizzard introduced the guild bank, most donated funds were intermixed with my own personal funds. Nowadays the money pools are quite separate. Though as guildmaster I have unlimited access to the guild bank funds, all mount loans have continued to come from my own pocket. I choose to do this because the fairly high risk of non-secured loans means I will take more care in assessing the loan than I might if it was "just" guild money.
That first point above, NEED vs WANT, is probably the key.
The first mount makes a massive difference to a character's ability to get around and get things done. The basic flying mount in Outland is similarly a "NEEDED" boost. More recently a few have had loans for cold weather flying in Northrend, also a "NEED".
Warlocks or pallies asking for a mount loan at 30 get laughed at. People looking to upgrade their 60% mount to an epic 100% mount at 60 generally fall into the "WANT" category and will most likely be denied, as will those asking for ~5,000g for their epic flyer. People wanting loans to buy epic weapons, or anyone who thinks they can "twink" their main at my expense generally get a lecture!
If you can't convince me that what you want is a "NEED" and not just a want, then you had better do what one guy did recently: secure your loan.
A guy just new to the guild wanted a significant loan for northrend flying.
Normally, someone who had been in the guild for only a day or so would be told a blunt "NO WAY!" but this guy was sensible. We discussed all the points above:
1: NR flying meets my "Need" criteria for most people. (Yes)
2: He wasn't asking for the whole lot, but had been caught short. His reasons for that were reasonable, but not great. (Maybe)
3: He had some ability to repay via trade skills but suggested questing was his primary income. (Maybe)
At this point, I would have turned him down except that his answer to point 4: above was a winner.
4: will he take the money and run? No, because he secured his loan with a number of level 80 epic items worth far in excess of the loan amount. He was quite rightly concerned that _I_ might be the one doing a runner!
This particular loan was repaid in a short period of time in instalments and he got his items back as COD mail messages for the final payments.
Another guildie has been trying to convince me to loan him funds. He's been around for quite a long time and otherwise would get a loan, except at the moment he fails miserably on point 3: repayment. I have pointed him to my blog in the hope he will read the other messages here and do something about his economic situation. (If you are reading this, fellow guildie, the post isn't entirely directed at YOU, since there have been many others fitting the same criteria!)
This goes a lot further though than just money.
WoW is a game that is both easy, yet complex. Most classes are tuned so that they can be levelled up even if played poorly. Crap gear choices hardly matter in the lower levels. Awful talent choices are barely noticable until the mid 30's or even higher. Poor group skills are able to be overcome by getting runthroughs, or simply leveling outside of instances/group quests.
Most players seem willing to listen to advice or do a bit of research on how to better their play. There are a significant number however who are willfully ignorant.
Maybe I'm just getting less tolerant of newbies as my time in game increases but some of thses are examples of the ignorant:
The warlock who stands in melee right next to the tank, frequently casting drain soul instead of using DOTS. When queried on this, he said he likes using "both kinds of attacks" (melee and spell), and needs to drain soul for healthstones.
The SV or MM spec hunter who refused to use a pet at all becasue it was "insignificant DPS".
All those characters who need-roll on loot that is inapropriate for their class, or those need-rolling on gear for their alts.
PUGgers, or guildies, that AFK in the middle of an instance without explanation, or leave whenever they feel like it. (yes, RL happens. if you really have to go, just say so; dont leave the rest of us hanging!)
The player (usually DPS classes) that aggro extra mobs before the tank gets a shot... and that then winge when the healer lets them die!
The people that complain they have no quests left to do. There are well over 3,000 quests available to each faction and only about 800 are needed to get you to maximum level. If you really have finished an area, move on to another location. Mostly you just need to look harder in the zone you are in. Use the wow website zone guide as a starting point.
Ah well. This post is turning into a rant when it wasn't really meant to. The point is, there are many many places to turn to for information if you only had the motivation to look!
Luckily all is well now.
I've posted here several entries that show ways to make gold. You have to read through my walls of text to find it but there are specific details in there showing what I did on several servers. Some of the same posts could serve as walkthroughs for new players, particularly the hunter and druid ones.
The main tips posted in "Cure the Cash Flow Blues" are the core truth to self-sufficiency in money. They are such simple concepts that I am astonished that players late in the game have any difficulty with funding essentials. A high level character just has so much greater earning capacity than any of my lowbie alts! I can well understand that a genuinely new player will struggle early on but someone who has played for sixty or seventy levels should surely know something about the game.
One of the things that I offer to members of my guild is loans for mounts. The introduction of the cheaper level 30 mounts has reduced the need for these. Level 30 mounts are cheaper and easier for most people to obtain than the old level 40 ones were. Partly this is due to there being a lot more gold around than there was.
Guildies looking for a loan have to convince me that:
1: they really NEED the item/mount they are borrowing money for.
2: they have made a decent attempt to get there on their own.
3: they have the capacity to repay the loan in reasonable time.
4: that they aren't likely to just take the money and run!
Back before Blizzard introduced the guild bank, most donated funds were intermixed with my own personal funds. Nowadays the money pools are quite separate. Though as guildmaster I have unlimited access to the guild bank funds, all mount loans have continued to come from my own pocket. I choose to do this because the fairly high risk of non-secured loans means I will take more care in assessing the loan than I might if it was "just" guild money.
That first point above, NEED vs WANT, is probably the key.
The first mount makes a massive difference to a character's ability to get around and get things done. The basic flying mount in Outland is similarly a "NEEDED" boost. More recently a few have had loans for cold weather flying in Northrend, also a "NEED".
Warlocks or pallies asking for a mount loan at 30 get laughed at. People looking to upgrade their 60% mount to an epic 100% mount at 60 generally fall into the "WANT" category and will most likely be denied, as will those asking for ~5,000g for their epic flyer. People wanting loans to buy epic weapons, or anyone who thinks they can "twink" their main at my expense generally get a lecture!
If you can't convince me that what you want is a "NEED" and not just a want, then you had better do what one guy did recently: secure your loan.
A guy just new to the guild wanted a significant loan for northrend flying.
Normally, someone who had been in the guild for only a day or so would be told a blunt "NO WAY!" but this guy was sensible. We discussed all the points above:
1: NR flying meets my "Need" criteria for most people. (Yes)
2: He wasn't asking for the whole lot, but had been caught short. His reasons for that were reasonable, but not great. (Maybe)
3: He had some ability to repay via trade skills but suggested questing was his primary income. (Maybe)
At this point, I would have turned him down except that his answer to point 4: above was a winner.
4: will he take the money and run? No, because he secured his loan with a number of level 80 epic items worth far in excess of the loan amount. He was quite rightly concerned that _I_ might be the one doing a runner!
This particular loan was repaid in a short period of time in instalments and he got his items back as COD mail messages for the final payments.
Another guildie has been trying to convince me to loan him funds. He's been around for quite a long time and otherwise would get a loan, except at the moment he fails miserably on point 3: repayment. I have pointed him to my blog in the hope he will read the other messages here and do something about his economic situation. (If you are reading this, fellow guildie, the post isn't entirely directed at YOU, since there have been many others fitting the same criteria!)
This goes a lot further though than just money.
WoW is a game that is both easy, yet complex. Most classes are tuned so that they can be levelled up even if played poorly. Crap gear choices hardly matter in the lower levels. Awful talent choices are barely noticable until the mid 30's or even higher. Poor group skills are able to be overcome by getting runthroughs, or simply leveling outside of instances/group quests.
Most players seem willing to listen to advice or do a bit of research on how to better their play. There are a significant number however who are willfully ignorant.
Maybe I'm just getting less tolerant of newbies as my time in game increases but some of thses are examples of the ignorant:
The warlock who stands in melee right next to the tank, frequently casting drain soul instead of using DOTS. When queried on this, he said he likes using "both kinds of attacks" (melee and spell), and needs to drain soul for healthstones.
The SV or MM spec hunter who refused to use a pet at all becasue it was "insignificant DPS".
All those characters who need-roll on loot that is inapropriate for their class, or those need-rolling on gear for their alts.
PUGgers, or guildies, that AFK in the middle of an instance without explanation, or leave whenever they feel like it. (yes, RL happens. if you really have to go, just say so; dont leave the rest of us hanging!)
The player (usually DPS classes) that aggro extra mobs before the tank gets a shot... and that then winge when the healer lets them die!
The people that complain they have no quests left to do. There are well over 3,000 quests available to each faction and only about 800 are needed to get you to maximum level. If you really have finished an area, move on to another location. Mostly you just need to look harder in the zone you are in. Use the wow website zone guide as a starting point.
Ah well. This post is turning into a rant when it wasn't really meant to. The point is, there are many many places to turn to for information if you only had the motivation to look!
Sunday, February 15, 2009
What a DK can do for you
The wonderful folk at Blizzard have now allowed the creation of Death Knights on any realm, so long as you have a character somewhere that is at least level 55. Apart from DK's being a fun class to play, this opens up a host of ways to make money on a new realm.
Each time I've completed the DK starter zone, I have had a starter fund of about 25g. Its not much, but its a lot better than the handful of silver a level 5 character would have when reaching the big city for the first time. It is more than enough to start searching the auction house for bargains.
Death knights start the game with no trade skills except first aid. The old standby gathering professions mining, skinning and herbalism will need to be levelled up from scratch, but it is insanely easy to farm the newbie areas on your epic mount. Even the low level materials can fetch a decent sum on the auction house. Dual gathering works well as always.
The one massive advantage that a newly minted DK has over any other starter class is of course that it is high level and well equipped at the start. They make brilliant farming characters, easily able to run through any lower level instance. Unholy spec seems to be the easiest here, with better AOE abilities. Blood spec makes a decent alternative that is able to self-heal even when swarmed by half an instance's monsters. Frost spec is viable also but not quite as good as the other two in a farming role.
At level 58 or so, probably the best instance for farming would be Scarlet Monastary. Lots of silk cloth, reasonable quantities of green items and heaps of vendor gray make this definately worth your time. Shadowfang keep is another smallish instance that is worth farming, particularly if you have skinning as a profession. Lots of the BOE blues in SFK are valuable for sale to twinks.
The instances inside Orgrimmar and Stormwind, Ragefire Chasm and The Stockades respectively, are worth considering. RFC is much better in this regard, dropping a large ammount of linen cloth and loads of low level greens. Stocks drops linen and wool cloth in decent ammounts but has a very poor rate of green drops. The main reason for quickly farming either of these instances is their proximity to the vendors and auction house!
Death Knights are a boon to anyone starting fresh on a new realm even if the DK itself is not your primary character. I almost miss starting things "the hard way".
Each time I've completed the DK starter zone, I have had a starter fund of about 25g. Its not much, but its a lot better than the handful of silver a level 5 character would have when reaching the big city for the first time. It is more than enough to start searching the auction house for bargains.
Death knights start the game with no trade skills except first aid. The old standby gathering professions mining, skinning and herbalism will need to be levelled up from scratch, but it is insanely easy to farm the newbie areas on your epic mount. Even the low level materials can fetch a decent sum on the auction house. Dual gathering works well as always.
The one massive advantage that a newly minted DK has over any other starter class is of course that it is high level and well equipped at the start. They make brilliant farming characters, easily able to run through any lower level instance. Unholy spec seems to be the easiest here, with better AOE abilities. Blood spec makes a decent alternative that is able to self-heal even when swarmed by half an instance's monsters. Frost spec is viable also but not quite as good as the other two in a farming role.
At level 58 or so, probably the best instance for farming would be Scarlet Monastary. Lots of silk cloth, reasonable quantities of green items and heaps of vendor gray make this definately worth your time. Shadowfang keep is another smallish instance that is worth farming, particularly if you have skinning as a profession. Lots of the BOE blues in SFK are valuable for sale to twinks.
The instances inside Orgrimmar and Stormwind, Ragefire Chasm and The Stockades respectively, are worth considering. RFC is much better in this regard, dropping a large ammount of linen cloth and loads of low level greens. Stocks drops linen and wool cloth in decent ammounts but has a very poor rate of green drops. The main reason for quickly farming either of these instances is their proximity to the vendors and auction house!
Death Knights are a boon to anyone starting fresh on a new realm even if the DK itself is not your primary character. I almost miss starting things "the hard way".
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Reflections on my pixelated fixations.
According to my account information, Azeroth has been my part time home for three years now. I had heard of World of Warcraft ages before, probably sometime around release date but had resisted the temptation to join. It was only after watching a friend play and later sharing his account for a bit that I signed up myself. Initial dreams of levelling up to join my friend and his guildmates soon fell by the wayside as I dabbled in altitis, falling further behind as those more focused players forged ahead towards 60. I was not new to Azeroth exactly, having played Warcraft 1, 2 and 3, as well as most of their expansions. Blizzards other games, Diablo and Starcraft also got regular workouts. The 3-d "Roleplaying" world in an MMO was different to the strategy games I had mostly played before. I loved the game!
My first character was an undead warlock on my friends account. I managed to level him up to about 15 or so in the relatively rare times I got to play. I had fun but probably made every rookie mistake in the book. When I got my own account started, I made an effort to re-create the same character. He still exists, gathering dust along with all his guildmates on one of the US servers, since there were no Oceanics available back then. I ended up inheriting the guildmaster position as most former members transferred off or quit the game. My friend had moved on to another guild to try raiding but found the time difference too difficult. He and some others had also started alts on Alliance on one of the first Oceanic servers. Of course I followed as well, generating one alt of each class and of each race/gender combination. Nearly all of these characters made it to the low 20's before abandonment. I continued creating characters on every oceanic server as they opened up "reserving" my spot. Each of these got levelled up to at least the early teens as well. Before long I had over 20 characters to manage.
My friend fairly abruptly quit the game about June 2006, and most of the other friends and guildmates I had made had dispersed all over the place. Another RL colleague had level 60's on another server, so I played there for a little bit and continued to shuffle between all the various alts for a few months. One evening I was mucking about on Dath'Remar, on an under-used Rogue I'd created some weeks earlier, when the Tirisfal Glades newbie chat was reasonably active.
Someone was moaning about how he couldn't get into a guild, since they were all full of transferred level 60 raiders who were not interested in lowbie scrubs. Several others piped up in agreement. I offered the obvious solution: Make one yourselves! There was a bit of discussion back and forth, mostly about how it was too expensive so I offered to raise the funds myself. 10 silver is a large amount to an unassisted lowbie newb like myself, so I actually spent a couple of hours grinding and _vendoring_ linen cloth and the like to scrounge the cash. By this time, the newbie crowd was all around level 10.
Since this was an alt on a server I was unlikely to visit again soon, I offered to general chat the funds to get that guild started, and were there members willing to sign up? Sure enough one chap called Stickykey volunteered to be guildmaster and there were enough people around to get the charter signed in short order. Several names were discussed before my suggestion was picked as the most likely. Thus was Crimson Legion born.
Guild mastery changed hands several times between Stickykey and myself that evening as we established ranks and set up guild powers. Stickykey had never had access to the guild controls before so basically palmed the role over to me to set up. Ranks established, guild powers loosely defined and about 30 people recruited, I logged for the night.
I forget the exact sequence of events, but Stickykey was going away for a while so I was going to be "temporary" guildmaster. The new guild kept gathering members rapidly and there were enough sensible people in officer positions to keep it running smoothly even when I also didn't log in for a few days early in the piece. We had over 100 members in the first few days then recruitment started to die off a bit as we left the newbie areas. Some players and myself created extra alts and returned to the newbie zones for more recruiting, though even in these early days we did NOT spam the chat channels .... we just offered assistance or grouped up with people and recruited from there.
By the first weekend it was clear the guild needed some structure and basic rules. There had been some silly behaviour and some people left because of it. I searched the web for free forum hosts and found one that looked vaguely suitable. We had a competition to design a guild tabard, and a donation drive to raise funds for it. As usual, I was spending too much time on alts and my main was falling behind the other members as they rushed into the 20's and 30's. We even recruited a few higher levels, most of whom left fairly soon after for late game guilds.
After some discussion on our forums, a revised rank structure was put in place. I organised a few guild wide events that drew reasonable participation levels. Raiding against the Night Elves became a fairly regular event, often involving other guilds as well. Our core leadership group settled in to their positions and we kept a lookout for more talent to join us. Stickykey made a few brief visits but was missing most of the time without much explanation.
By December, we had grown to nearly 300 members and our highest were nearing the level cap at 60. Everyone was eagerly awaiting the release of The Burning Crusade. My stable of alts had grown yet again and I had got most of them on Dath to around level 20. Crypt was nearly 40 and looking forward to his mount.
We lost a few members to raiding just before TBC release, then quite a lot more in about February as people hit 70 and wanted to raid then. A core group of officers moved out and formed a splinter guild only for higher levels. I transferred guild leadership temporarily to Xera, an officer and founding member, who was leaving that night to join a raid guild. Xera then transferred guildmastery back to my alt Decrypted. Cryptography joined the new splinter guild.
Over the next few days I found the demands of actively participating in two guilds to be too much hassle. The leadership team of the new guild were taking it in a direction I didn't feel comfortable with and I missed out on lots of things in Crimson Legion while mucking about on Crypt, so in a short time I quit and rejoined CL.
The splinter guild lasted about 2 months before internal drama, and possibly bank thefts, caused it to almost disintegrate. A few refugees returned to Crimson Legion, others moved on to other guilds and a handful persevered. Eventually the remaining guildmaster quit, handing control over to the bank alt of one of my officers. There are still 6 members listed on the armory website but these are dead accounts or otherwise inactive.
We periodically go through cycles where members leave, convince others to go with them and start a fresh guild. More often, a member will quit to start a guild with their school friends. Nearly all of these attempts are unsuccessful and a lot return to the CL family.
One recent exception has been Poshmina and her guild. Posh was in CL for only a month or two but was a very talkative and active member when she was here. She left, poaching a number of our members and has gone on to establish what looks to be a very successful guild. They had 275 members when I last looked, including a higher proportion of max level characters than we maintain. I wish them every success!
People come and go all the time, but the essential core of the guild has remained strong. We hit 500 members about 6 months after handing in the charter, despite semi-regular purges of inactive members. I have mentioned in another post that there are limitations imposed by the game that have caused us to keep below the magic 500 from then on. We hit that limit again just last night so we are due for a purge again.
About the time of our first anniversary, an interesting bug manifested itself. Some officers were playing around abusing the demote and remove powers, then re inviting or promoting the victims. Somehow this bugged out and Mannak got guildmaster rank alongside Decrypted. Now, Mannak is a nice enough guy but he should have been about rank 4 or 5 at the time, not a higher officer and certainly not co-GM! Some people made accusations of hacking but I seriously doubt it. It was interesting trying to fix this... he couldn't gquit, becasue the guildmaster powers couldn't be passed on. I couldn't demote him back to his normal rank, because of course he was the same rank as me. Eventually I petitioned it and a Bliz Gamesmaster sorted it all out. I took the opportunity to have Cryptography re-instated as guildmaster and Decrypted gladly stepped down from the hot-seat.
In August 2008 I took an overseas holiday. Before I left I transferred guild master rank to Sebra, one of the rank 1 officers. I think she did an excellent job looking after the place but she was in a hurry to transfer it back once I returned. Any of my top level officers could have held the spot while I was away, but I know Sebra through work which would make sorting out any issues easier. Everything went smoothly except for the guild bank bug that I posted about in another message.
Crimson Legion celebrated its 2nd birthday in October 2008. We have maintained membership of around 400-500 members throughout our existence and are reasonably free of guild drama.
A solid core leadership group have kept it alive and thriving. I am intensely proud of their efforts. World of Warcraft is still a very interesting place to be and I have no intention of leaving any time soon.
Thank you to my guild members for making it a place I'm happy to return to.
My first character was an undead warlock on my friends account. I managed to level him up to about 15 or so in the relatively rare times I got to play. I had fun but probably made every rookie mistake in the book. When I got my own account started, I made an effort to re-create the same character. He still exists, gathering dust along with all his guildmates on one of the US servers, since there were no Oceanics available back then. I ended up inheriting the guildmaster position as most former members transferred off or quit the game. My friend had moved on to another guild to try raiding but found the time difference too difficult. He and some others had also started alts on Alliance on one of the first Oceanic servers. Of course I followed as well, generating one alt of each class and of each race/gender combination. Nearly all of these characters made it to the low 20's before abandonment. I continued creating characters on every oceanic server as they opened up "reserving" my spot. Each of these got levelled up to at least the early teens as well. Before long I had over 20 characters to manage.
My friend fairly abruptly quit the game about June 2006, and most of the other friends and guildmates I had made had dispersed all over the place. Another RL colleague had level 60's on another server, so I played there for a little bit and continued to shuffle between all the various alts for a few months. One evening I was mucking about on Dath'Remar, on an under-used Rogue I'd created some weeks earlier, when the Tirisfal Glades newbie chat was reasonably active.
Someone was moaning about how he couldn't get into a guild, since they were all full of transferred level 60 raiders who were not interested in lowbie scrubs. Several others piped up in agreement. I offered the obvious solution: Make one yourselves! There was a bit of discussion back and forth, mostly about how it was too expensive so I offered to raise the funds myself. 10 silver is a large amount to an unassisted lowbie newb like myself, so I actually spent a couple of hours grinding and _vendoring_ linen cloth and the like to scrounge the cash. By this time, the newbie crowd was all around level 10.
Since this was an alt on a server I was unlikely to visit again soon, I offered to general chat the funds to get that guild started, and were there members willing to sign up? Sure enough one chap called Stickykey volunteered to be guildmaster and there were enough people around to get the charter signed in short order. Several names were discussed before my suggestion was picked as the most likely. Thus was Crimson Legion born.
Guild mastery changed hands several times between Stickykey and myself that evening as we established ranks and set up guild powers. Stickykey had never had access to the guild controls before so basically palmed the role over to me to set up. Ranks established, guild powers loosely defined and about 30 people recruited, I logged for the night.
I forget the exact sequence of events, but Stickykey was going away for a while so I was going to be "temporary" guildmaster. The new guild kept gathering members rapidly and there were enough sensible people in officer positions to keep it running smoothly even when I also didn't log in for a few days early in the piece. We had over 100 members in the first few days then recruitment started to die off a bit as we left the newbie areas. Some players and myself created extra alts and returned to the newbie zones for more recruiting, though even in these early days we did NOT spam the chat channels .... we just offered assistance or grouped up with people and recruited from there.
By the first weekend it was clear the guild needed some structure and basic rules. There had been some silly behaviour and some people left because of it. I searched the web for free forum hosts and found one that looked vaguely suitable. We had a competition to design a guild tabard, and a donation drive to raise funds for it. As usual, I was spending too much time on alts and my main was falling behind the other members as they rushed into the 20's and 30's. We even recruited a few higher levels, most of whom left fairly soon after for late game guilds.
After some discussion on our forums, a revised rank structure was put in place. I organised a few guild wide events that drew reasonable participation levels. Raiding against the Night Elves became a fairly regular event, often involving other guilds as well. Our core leadership group settled in to their positions and we kept a lookout for more talent to join us. Stickykey made a few brief visits but was missing most of the time without much explanation.
By December, we had grown to nearly 300 members and our highest were nearing the level cap at 60. Everyone was eagerly awaiting the release of The Burning Crusade. My stable of alts had grown yet again and I had got most of them on Dath to around level 20. Crypt was nearly 40 and looking forward to his mount.
We lost a few members to raiding just before TBC release, then quite a lot more in about February as people hit 70 and wanted to raid then. A core group of officers moved out and formed a splinter guild only for higher levels. I transferred guild leadership temporarily to Xera, an officer and founding member, who was leaving that night to join a raid guild. Xera then transferred guildmastery back to my alt Decrypted. Cryptography joined the new splinter guild.
Over the next few days I found the demands of actively participating in two guilds to be too much hassle. The leadership team of the new guild were taking it in a direction I didn't feel comfortable with and I missed out on lots of things in Crimson Legion while mucking about on Crypt, so in a short time I quit and rejoined CL.
The splinter guild lasted about 2 months before internal drama, and possibly bank thefts, caused it to almost disintegrate. A few refugees returned to Crimson Legion, others moved on to other guilds and a handful persevered. Eventually the remaining guildmaster quit, handing control over to the bank alt of one of my officers. There are still 6 members listed on the armory website but these are dead accounts or otherwise inactive.
We periodically go through cycles where members leave, convince others to go with them and start a fresh guild. More often, a member will quit to start a guild with their school friends. Nearly all of these attempts are unsuccessful and a lot return to the CL family.
One recent exception has been Poshmina and her guild. Posh was in CL for only a month or two but was a very talkative and active member when she was here. She left, poaching a number of our members and has gone on to establish what looks to be a very successful guild. They had 275 members when I last looked, including a higher proportion of max level characters than we maintain. I wish them every success!
People come and go all the time, but the essential core of the guild has remained strong. We hit 500 members about 6 months after handing in the charter, despite semi-regular purges of inactive members. I have mentioned in another post that there are limitations imposed by the game that have caused us to keep below the magic 500 from then on. We hit that limit again just last night so we are due for a purge again.
About the time of our first anniversary, an interesting bug manifested itself. Some officers were playing around abusing the demote and remove powers, then re inviting or promoting the victims. Somehow this bugged out and Mannak got guildmaster rank alongside Decrypted. Now, Mannak is a nice enough guy but he should have been about rank 4 or 5 at the time, not a higher officer and certainly not co-GM! Some people made accusations of hacking but I seriously doubt it. It was interesting trying to fix this... he couldn't gquit, becasue the guildmaster powers couldn't be passed on. I couldn't demote him back to his normal rank, because of course he was the same rank as me. Eventually I petitioned it and a Bliz Gamesmaster sorted it all out. I took the opportunity to have Cryptography re-instated as guildmaster and Decrypted gladly stepped down from the hot-seat.
In August 2008 I took an overseas holiday. Before I left I transferred guild master rank to Sebra, one of the rank 1 officers. I think she did an excellent job looking after the place but she was in a hurry to transfer it back once I returned. Any of my top level officers could have held the spot while I was away, but I know Sebra through work which would make sorting out any issues easier. Everything went smoothly except for the guild bank bug that I posted about in another message.
Crimson Legion celebrated its 2nd birthday in October 2008. We have maintained membership of around 400-500 members throughout our existence and are reasonably free of guild drama.
A solid core leadership group have kept it alive and thriving. I am intensely proud of their efforts. World of Warcraft is still a very interesting place to be and I have no intention of leaving any time soon.
Thank you to my guild members for making it a place I'm happy to return to.
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