Screenie tonight! I forgot to e-mail it to myself this morning.
Posts I have half written in my head:
Anoyone have anything they want to hear my wonderful opinion on 🙂
I’m ridiculously close to 77. Should be able to get my flying mount and Cold Weather Flying tonight when I get home. I’m really excited about that, it should make questing a lot easier. We’re now questing in Zul’Drak. Finished up Borean Tundra just before Thanksgiving and then went to Dragonblight which we finished on Sunday. Dragonblight felt like a lot of running around. Maybe we just weren’t doing our quest loops efficently enough. In Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord we were able to do all quests in a town/hub and then move on to the next. In Dragonblight it felt like we had to go back to Venomspite like 8 times.
Azjol-Nerub… all I have to say is ewwww. Thank goodness it’s short.
The herb node shortage seems to have lessened. Dragonblight and Zul’Drak seem to have a lot more nodes. My Herbing is VERY close to maxed (448 I think), and Inscription is finally comming along. I can now make both Weapon and Armor Vellums, the 2 Off-Hands, and all the Shoulder Inscriptions. I felt really stupid immediatley after learning all of them, they can only go on MY gear… learning the AP Inscription was a waste of gold. Oh well, I’m a completionist at heart. It would have bugged me to have those patterns untrained. The discovery process for Inscription kinda sucks. I know I complained about it in my last post, but it’s still true. Getting form 390 to 400 was brutal. Northrend Inscription Research is the only orange recipe and of course you can only do it once a day. I got over that hump and I think I’ll be able to get the last 25 levels in the next week and a half or so.
I’m still plugging away at my Raiding guide. I’m mostly shamelessly copying other people’s theorycrafting, but I’m at least putting it all in one place for you 🙂 I expect to have it done some time after the 1st of the year. I’m going to have 12 days off of work for Christmas this year so I should be able to get some good work on it then.
(I’m currently listening to Dominck the Christmas Donkey on the local radio station that plays Christmas music… just look for it on Google or YouTube, I’m sure you’ll find it… and yes, it’s a funny as it sounds)
I’m thinking about a series about Achievements (the easy ones, hard ones, tips for getting them, etc.) I really like the Acheivement system and I plan on getting as many as I can. What I really want is the Acheivement for doing all of the Holiday Acheivements, the reward is a Violet Proto-Drake… it’s got to be the most badass mount I’ve ever seen. I don’t know this for a fact, but I was told it’s also one of three 310% riding speed mounts outside of PvP rewards. It will be next Haloween at the earliest that I’ll be able to get it. I’m not really looking forward to the Lunar Festival one, but it’ll all be worth it when I have that mount!
In other news Ashley won my quilt that I donated to BBB’s Child’s Play raffle! I’m currently working with her to figure out what she would like on the quilt. When I get it finished I’ll post some pictures (don’t hold your breath or anything, it’ll probably take me a few weeks).
Think that’s all I’ve got. Have fun out there in teh intarwebs, hopefully I’ll be 80 then next time you hear from me!
I’m 72 now. We pretty much finished Howling Fjord (tho I’ve got a small area on the map that never got uncovered so I’m thinking we might have missed a quest hub… maybe it’s Alliance only? Must look into that) and are now working our way through Borean Tundra. I agree with almost everyone I’ve read on this matter, I like HF a lot more than BT. Although I haven’t had any quests in HF that I went “Damn that was cool!” but the tank thing in BT… that was a BLAST!!! I do, however, love the daily sea lion quest… sooooo cute!
I feel, like others, that there is a distinct lack of herb nodes. Maybe there’s just too much competition right now… maybe there really aren’t that many nodes… maybe I need to get to the higher level zones… I’m not sure what the issue is, but it’s making leveling Inscription a bit of a pain. We did the quests ins Coldarra last night and I was able to herb all the walking trees (the Hubby and I call them Ents… I know, we’re mixing mythologies, but that’s what they are!) I got a whole lot of new herbs that I can’t even pick yet, unfortunatley not enough of anything to Mill. Speaking of Inscription… I have horrible luck with discovering Minor Glyphs. I seem to be able to discover Every. Single. Worthless. Stupid. Glyph. Except for the worthless, stupid one that I want! I’m sick and tired of needing Light Feathers gosh darnit!! I’m actually using Levitate a lot these days with all of the elevation changes in the terrain and I’d really like to not take up bag space with feathers.
I’m a little tired of all the ganking… We’re getting better at defending ourselves so we’re not getting our asses handed to us quite so often, but it’s getting old. I understand that being on a RPPvP server there’s going to be a lot more “Red is Dead” mentality… but I’m a little tired of it. And before you flame me I did not choose this server, it’s where my friends play so it’s where I play, and I’m constantly advocating for a server transfer but no one’s taking me up on that one. We had one hunter last night who just wouldn’t give up. He must have had some kind of vendetta against the Hubby (or he was just really stupid) because he consistently ignored me and tried to kill the Hubby… understandably he was only sucessful if I wasn’t there. Pocket healer = I win button. Aparently we also have some kind of Guild war with an Alliance guild and we are Kill on Sight for them. Kinda sucks. At least they don’t camp.
My last thought is on gear. Since I didn’t raid at all with this toon, just about everything is an upgrade for me. However my bank is quickly filling with gear. So much has changed with the Priest mechanics I don’t really know how much I need for each stat. On top of that I’m not sure what spec I’ll be playing when I hit 80 so I’m having to keep EVERYTHING. The Cloth pieces are usually easy since there will always be alternatives but Trinkets can be hard to come by and each one is a little different. Since they’re all quest rewards I can’t ever go back and get them again. I’m probably stressing about this a little too much but I just don’t want to get to 80 and think “Why didn’t I keep [insert piece of gear here] I got way back when” I’m thinking about things like the Vengance of the Ildari. A lot of us wore that thing well into Kara and it’s a quest reward for a level 62 quest.
I think that’s all I’ve got for today. I think a lot of us bloggers are feeling the lack of anything insightful to say. All this content is so new and most of us are still trying to level. You guys will have to live with our “What I did today” posts for a little while 🙂
After a marathon questing session with the hubby last night we dinged 68! I’m now off to Northrend. The Hybby is going to leave his Druid behind and play his main in Northrend with me. I’m excited to have a built in tank again. Before hitting 60 I was playing my Warlock and we had my minion as a tank. Once we got to Outland I went back to playing my Priest… no more Felguard 😦 His main is a Hunter so we’ll have his gorilladin tank (actually we’ll probably have Sassy, his cat). I actually have an engagement party to go to tonight (congratulations K & K) so I’m not sure how much time I’ll have to play tonight but we’ll at least get out there and get a port/summon to Dalaran from guildies.
I am now 58 and loged out in Thrallmar to begin gathering scrap metal and wood along the Path of Glory tonight!! We played ALL DAY Saturday and ALL DAY Sunday (I feel a little guilty that we skipped church… but only a little). My brain is quite fried from staring at my computer screen for hours on end all weekend long but I think the effort was worth it. I’m not sure we’ll make it to 70 before Wrath ships but we’re going to try like hell to get there. I probably won’t be too heartbroken if we don’t get out to Northrend right away… I’m on a PvP server and I predict quite a bit of ganking while we’re all trying to kill the exact same mobs for the exact same quests! I’m back to playing my Priest now. I had been leveling with my Warlock and we had been gifting levels to the Priest since I wanted to learn how to play the Warlock. I’ve leveled 3 Priests now… don’t need to play every level to know how to play my Priest but getting 30 levels on a Warlock… that would be a little overwhelming. I’m going to miss my Felguard but I’m happy to be playing a Priest again (though she needs gear badly… she’s in level 20ish greens)!
I’m working on a post discussing leveling specs for Priests. Hopefully I’ll get it posted toight or tomorow… not making any promises since we’ll probably be grinding out a few more levels tonight (I think 60 is easily attainable).
Also, I read a great post about gear stats for Priests, there’s a lot of math but it’s worth the read. How our stats interact got quite a bit more complicated with 3.0 and I think we should all have at least a cursory understanding of how our gear choices affect us. Go read it! Weighing Priest Healing Stats by A Dwarf Priest. I’m hoping she writes on for Shadow Priests… hint, hint 🙂 [Edit: see comments for info about stats for Shadow or check out ShadowPriest.com]
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m leveling a Warlock with my hubby (who is playing a Druid). We dinged 40 last night and he respecced from Feral to Boomkin. We’ve been using the Voidwalker for a tank and it’s not working so well any more. Since neither of us currently has a threat dump we need a better tank. I’m looking at respeccing from Affliction to Demonology to make the Blueberry a better tank for us. Since we are working as a pair we are often fighting +4 or +5 mobs where spell hit can be a problem and it takes quite a while to kill them.
Below is the spec I’m looking at taking. For those of you who might be new readers here’s how I’m going to explain this. I want to get to my 31 point talent so I need 5 points in every tier to get to the next. I’m looking at each Tier placing 5 points and moving on to the next. Sometimes those 5 points will be backfilled into a previous Tier. Doing it this way also shows what order I would take the points in if I were leveling from level 10 while using this spec. Surf on over to a Talent Calculator and follow along with me! If any warlocks happen to be reading I’d love some feedback!
Goals: Want a better Void tank. At current level (40) want to get to Demonic Empowerment. Also going to take talents to improve Sta, threat, and damage of my minion.
That gets me to level 40! Here’s a link to the finished spec. I’m not really sure where I’m going to put talents from here on, need a little more time to think on that one. As I said before I’d appreciate feedback from anyone more knowledgeable about Warlocks!
Hope everyone has a great weeknd! I’m off to Kansas to see my nephew get baptised. I’ve got my iPhone to respond to comments but I won’t be posting until next week. Plus I’m working on a guest post for Matt since he’s swamped 🙂
Since I am going through the drudgery of leveling a new toon I thought I might share some tips for leveling quickly and efficently. Some people really enjoy leveling and following the story lines… I’m not one of them. For me, the game starts at 70 (soon to be 80). I’ve done the whole leveling thing once already, I just want to get to 70. I might feel different if I were leveling another class, but I’m not. Here are some tips for getting to 70 as fast as possible.
Quest Loops
Using quest loops will save you a lot of time running around. The idea is to do all quests in a specific area so you don’t have to keep going back to that area for each indvidual quest. Most leveling guides have you do quest loops (Jame’s guides are well written, easy to follow, and most importantly free!) If you don’t like using guides for leveling there are addons that will help you plan your own quest loops. Light Headed will show you WoWHead info. Take a little time to look at your quest log and plot out a course that will minimize walking time while allowing you to come back to a town often enough to empty your bags and repair.
Skip PITA Quests
This is another advantage of the leveling guide. They will skip quests that don’t give enough XP to make the time/effort worth it. Most of the time Group quests will not be worth doing as it takes too long to find and organize a group. If you are unsure if a quest is worth your effort you can look it up on WoWHead to see what the drop rates look like and try to get a feel for the effort involved. It should also tell you how much XP you will get when turn it in. Then you can make your own decision if it is worth your effort.
Addons
There are several addons that will help you while leveing. I definatley recommend getting some kind of map addon (MetaMaps and Cartographer for example). What you want to look for is a way to display coordinates so you can easily find quest objectives. Some of the paid leveling guides will come with a database of map points that you can upload and will display all of the quest objectives in the guide. Also the ability to see unexplored areas of the map will help you plan quest loops and help you make sure you are walking in the right direction! I also like to have a buff mod that will let me know when my buffs have worn off. Even small buffs will help you last longer and hit harder, both of which will help you level more efficently. An addon to automatically sell off gray items may also be helpful.
Instances
Generally I don’t recommend PUG’ing instances when you are trying to level quickly (VC and Uldaman are exceptions since they are usually easy to find groups for and have GREAT loot for their level). If you can get a regular group to do instances they might be worth your time and energy. Zerging through instances with a high level buddy is not as beneficial as it used to be. If you have someone willing to zerg you the gear can be worth the effort, but don’t plan on significant XP from killing the mobs.
Professions
If you just want to get to 70 as quick as you can then you should probably skip professions. First Aid and Cooking are 2 possible exceptions. FA is really easy to level as you will almost always be gathering cloth while killing humanoids and the Well Fed buffs from cooking are nice to have. If you want to make money while leveling or have the professions leveled when you hit 70 I would recommend 2 gathering professions as they are easy to level while you play. If you plan on having a crafting profession at 70 you can collect mats for powerleveling as you play and then fill in any gaps later.
Hearthstone
While leveling I like to set my hearthstone in Shatt. That way I can easly get to any major city. Being an Inscriptionist makes this even more beneficial since I can use Scrolls of Recall and hearth every 20 mins.
Holiday Quests
I like to do the Holiday events. The quests are usually doable at any level and give good XP. I’m currently trying to do all of the Candy Bucket quests on Galadria, which are giving me a little over 1000 XP at level 24-26. I’ve been able to get all but 4 of them by my self. I probably could do all of them but it would require a lot more corpse walking than I’m wanting to do. My hubby is going to walk around with me to finish up the last few. The other advantage is that while I’m walking around I’m getting the flight paths which will make questing later on easier since I’m getting the walking done now!
I’m going to save Talents for another post! Hope this helps the leveling grind and remember the most important thing: Have Fun!!!
I decided that I couldn’t wait until my friend graduated to start playing (and come to find out she might not play at all) and I re-opened my account. I rolled a pretty little Blood Elf Priest on the Lightninghoof server named Galadria. I’m not really looking forward to leveling on a PvP server but it’s where all my friends are playing so I’ll just have to live with it. I got her up to 15 this weekend and got some professions leveled too. Cooking is aroung 100, Fishing at 75, First Aid is in the 80’s I think and Herbalism is around 60. I’m trying to decide what other profession I’d like but I think I may wait until the expansion comes out and see what’s going to be the most beneficial for raiding. In the end I will probably level another toon and put 2 crafting professions on Galadria and have Herbalism and maybe Engineering on the alt. I’ve always wanted to try engineering!
I’m back to the grindstone here at the office. Hope all you out there on the Intarwebs had a good weekend. Oh, and by the way, OU SUCKS!!!
I had some fun with screenies this weekend (and somehow managed to not get many that were useable) but here’s one of us standing in front of Kael… this is so cool, I never immagined I’d be this far in end-game progression!
I think this is going to be a really fun fight! We’ve got Phase 1 down and started working on Phase 2. I think we need to either focus our DPS better in Phase 2 or bring more AOE and make sure all the weapons are getting taken down. We could get the Bow and Staff down but the others weren’t getting past 30% down. Since the other Weapons were still being tanked, the Advisors were running amok in Phase 3. I started to write a brief explination of the fight, but I don’t know it well enough to be coherent 🙂 If you are curious, go check it out on WoWWiki, there’s a good rundown of all the mechanics there.
I think I’ve mentioned before that I’m working on raid boss strats with the SPriest in mind but as I said earlier I didn’t get the screenshots I wanted this weekend. We’re going back into Kara tonight so hopefully I’ll get more of what I want tonight and we’ll have an Attumen strat for tomorow!
After a rocky start, we eventually got Karathress (I got my T5 Legs, won’t be using them until I get a second piece) and Leotheras down; 2-shots on both of them. We wiped 2 or 3 times and on the next try we figured out the correct configuration of DPS and finally got into phase 3. In that try we got over-run by the bats and poison. The next attempt was textbook. The first 4 Tainted Cores went into generators, the Nagas and Striders were handled very well. Vashj went down and coughed up her loot. As I said in the previous post about Vashj we divide the room into 4 zones. Each zone has a healer and 1 or 2 DPS. The DPS pick up their Tainted Cores and throw them to their healer and the healer throws them to someone up on the platform who “dunks” it into a generator. What worked for us was each hunter took a zone on their own and the other 2 zones had 2 melee DPS each. All other DPS worked on the Nagas and Striders. Naga spawn first so no matter when the Strider spawns the first Naga goes down and the Warlock that kites the Strider gets started building threat. Once the first Naga goes down, everyone onto the Strider and then back to the Naga inbetween Striders. We had one Mage respec Frost to help slow the Striders, 3 Shadow Priests all casting Mind Flay and all 3 of us had Blackout, and Netherweave nets. This allowed the Warlock more wiggle room to kite and more time to DPS so they wend down faster. In phase 3 we had the tank walk Vashj in a circle to try and stay in the clear areas that weren’t covered in poison. We had the hunters working on bats and Warlocks casting instant dots when possible. Everything went very smoothly. The only downside was a little drama over loot. You have to have the loot set on free-for-all so that anyone can loot the Tainted Cores off of the elementals. The GM forgot to move it back to Master Loot before Vashj died so everyone had the ability to pick up any of Epics. Everyone wanted to pick up the Vials for the quest and one of the other SPriests was a ‘tard and took the Fury warrior plate chest. We immediatley opened a GM ticket and it’ll get taken care of, but he still had to click “yes I want to take this item and it will be soulbound”
As I’m sure some of you will know, it seems that most of the world servers are down and that’s why I’m writing this article now and not in the morning 🙂 Go, Go Blizz!!
Galadria's Corner 