There are alot of nasty nasty things with truly quick spawn times in the new Cataclysm zones. The water goblins and naga in Vash'ir or the twilight cultists and fire elementals in Hyjal. Both repop quickly and hit like a truck. I was getting beaten up.
Demonology spec helped. Crafted Emberweave helped. Getting out of my 200 iLevel gear helped. Apparently, my warlock was so far behind the curve, that the new expansion was daunting.
My hunter was Tier 10 and ate up the mobs. My Tier 10 Enhance shaman was nearly immortal and had a blast. My DK was beastly in Tier 10.5 and never stopped.
The lock? FAR FAR behind in gear. Almost a 100 points below Cataclysm quest rewards. I paid for that deficit with alot slower progression. Those of you who are making the jump from level 76 to level 80. Remember, gear gets a HUGE jump in Cataclysm but the difficulty has a HUGE hump as well.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Friday, October 9, 2009
Dailys give HOW much??
The first two daily quests available to Alliance players in Northrend are commonly the pirate bombing run and the Dwarven excavation Air Support. They each reward 24k xp ( 26k with relic bonus ), a handful of gold, 250 Faction ( 275 if you're human ), and the excavation run gives two healing potions plus incidental loot.
Arrg! Cluster bomb Again!!
The goblin Zepplin captain ( Gotta love Led Zepp references! ) is being held prisoner at the Alliance fortress on the western edge of the Howling Fijord. He's not happy about it, but we alliance creeps get to ride around in a zepplin and drop bombs on scurvy pirates! Yarrr!! Lots o pirate love in that zone. Great job by the devs on plotline and interesting quests. Hint: Group up for this quest. Five individuals on the zepplin bombing the pirates = 5 people with 6hits each and 2 cannon kills. 1 group of players can get all 25 pirates and 10 cannons blown up with time to spare. If you're late and miss the zepplin, you can fly onto the platform. If you've missed the first ship, you may need to repeat the process. Also, if you're solo, you should be able to get line of sight and do the quest by yourself on one pass. Either way group up when you can. Don't be a douche-bag. Dead pirates and hand grenades. Come on! You'll wait at most 5 minutes for the zepplin to return. Easy money + XP.
Aerial Fire Support!
The Dwarven excavation team is clearing the dig site for Northrend relics. Sjaberorn is sending stone gargoyles daily to disrupt the operation and kill the archeologists. You get to fly a roto-plane armed with machine guns and rocket salvos. Wooot! This plane handles like a dream. Hover, speed boost, and is very easy to master. There are 3 big buttons for god's sake! Machine gun, Rockets, and Boost. The machine gun is single target stream of low level damage. The rockets are awesome. They have a 5 second recharge, but they can hit multiple targets for multiple hits. I usually have a hard time killing gargoyles in the pit, chasing them down, and taking them out in classic dogfight combat. That's how the devs intended you to have fun in this encounter.
Me?> I flew past the quarry and hovered as intercept near Sjaberon waiting for gargoyles. Two reasons: 1) The gargoyles come in waves and clusters. That makes the rockets much more effective. Tab target the gargoyle groups and you'll have a dozen of them aggroed and hovering. Just keep tabbing and gun them all down with rockets. 2) The gargoyles fall down in a VERY close pattern when they die. I just fly back to base when 8 of them have been killed. Usually when ALL of the wave is wiped out actually. Then I collect my quest reward and zoom back to the grassy clearing on the far side of the quarry. Littered in a neat little line of bodies is my loot from 12 dead gargoyles. In Total, it's over 1g of Shiny stone + the occasional green (blue) quality item from the haul. Not bad for 3 minutes of combat.
Easy to knock out these every day until you hit 74. Then I'd go into sholzar basin and get busy with Nestingwary >> The Oracles >> The Lifewarden >> Icecrown. You'll easily make 3 levels in Sholzar Basin. Sholzar is a haven for Herbalism, Skinning, and Mining. There are a number of Rares as well as a ton of Lore and multiple daily quests. Your first two zones in Northrend should be preparing you for the trip to the Basin. A Flying book is just a shortcut to getting there earlier.
What Not to skin
Note to the overconfidant newbies... Know your limitations on skinning. I hit the forward Argent Crusade camp in Icecrown and tried to kill the Lv 78 / Lv 79 spiders. They died allright. However, the Argent Crusaders will not give you quests unless you're level 77 or better. They also didn't want to heal/buff me, but they did assist sometimes. With enough +hit, I could apply DoTs and nuke down the Lv79 stuff. Stuff 6 levels above me, right?? Dam it's good to be a warlock. It did take longer than expected and multiple adds caused some problems. I couldn't regen enough mana to keep 100% efficiency and the spiders slowly chewed up my poor little Lv73 Voidwalker. His taunt was useless as well as his melee damage in keeping aggro.
I got 10 mobs killed and skinned. Then decided this was a big uphill fight trying to "farm" red color mobs. I'd rather nuke a zillion green / yellow creatures than the long 1 on 1 fights. The xp actually works out better vs level 72-73 mobs. At level 80, this would be THE spot. Before then, it's just tough going.
Stay outta Icecrown.
Arrg! Cluster bomb Again!!
The goblin Zepplin captain ( Gotta love Led Zepp references! ) is being held prisoner at the Alliance fortress on the western edge of the Howling Fijord. He's not happy about it, but we alliance creeps get to ride around in a zepplin and drop bombs on scurvy pirates! Yarrr!! Lots o pirate love in that zone. Great job by the devs on plotline and interesting quests. Hint: Group up for this quest. Five individuals on the zepplin bombing the pirates = 5 people with 6hits each and 2 cannon kills. 1 group of players can get all 25 pirates and 10 cannons blown up with time to spare. If you're late and miss the zepplin, you can fly onto the platform. If you've missed the first ship, you may need to repeat the process. Also, if you're solo, you should be able to get line of sight and do the quest by yourself on one pass. Either way group up when you can. Don't be a douche-bag. Dead pirates and hand grenades. Come on! You'll wait at most 5 minutes for the zepplin to return. Easy money + XP.
Aerial Fire Support!
The Dwarven excavation team is clearing the dig site for Northrend relics. Sjaberorn is sending stone gargoyles daily to disrupt the operation and kill the archeologists. You get to fly a roto-plane armed with machine guns and rocket salvos. Wooot! This plane handles like a dream. Hover, speed boost, and is very easy to master. There are 3 big buttons for god's sake! Machine gun, Rockets, and Boost. The machine gun is single target stream of low level damage. The rockets are awesome. They have a 5 second recharge, but they can hit multiple targets for multiple hits. I usually have a hard time killing gargoyles in the pit, chasing them down, and taking them out in classic dogfight combat. That's how the devs intended you to have fun in this encounter.
Me?> I flew past the quarry and hovered as intercept near Sjaberon waiting for gargoyles. Two reasons: 1) The gargoyles come in waves and clusters. That makes the rockets much more effective. Tab target the gargoyle groups and you'll have a dozen of them aggroed and hovering. Just keep tabbing and gun them all down with rockets. 2) The gargoyles fall down in a VERY close pattern when they die. I just fly back to base when 8 of them have been killed. Usually when ALL of the wave is wiped out actually. Then I collect my quest reward and zoom back to the grassy clearing on the far side of the quarry. Littered in a neat little line of bodies is my loot from 12 dead gargoyles. In Total, it's over 1g of Shiny stone + the occasional green (blue) quality item from the haul. Not bad for 3 minutes of combat.
Easy to knock out these every day until you hit 74. Then I'd go into sholzar basin and get busy with Nestingwary >> The Oracles >> The Lifewarden >> Icecrown. You'll easily make 3 levels in Sholzar Basin. Sholzar is a haven for Herbalism, Skinning, and Mining. There are a number of Rares as well as a ton of Lore and multiple daily quests. Your first two zones in Northrend should be preparing you for the trip to the Basin. A Flying book is just a shortcut to getting there earlier.
What Not to skin
Note to the overconfidant newbies... Know your limitations on skinning. I hit the forward Argent Crusade camp in Icecrown and tried to kill the Lv 78 / Lv 79 spiders. They died allright. However, the Argent Crusaders will not give you quests unless you're level 77 or better. They also didn't want to heal/buff me, but they did assist sometimes. With enough +hit, I could apply DoTs and nuke down the Lv79 stuff. Stuff 6 levels above me, right?? Dam it's good to be a warlock. It did take longer than expected and multiple adds caused some problems. I couldn't regen enough mana to keep 100% efficiency and the spiders slowly chewed up my poor little Lv73 Voidwalker. His taunt was useless as well as his melee damage in keeping aggro.
I got 10 mobs killed and skinned. Then decided this was a big uphill fight trying to "farm" red color mobs. I'd rather nuke a zillion green / yellow creatures than the long 1 on 1 fights. The xp actually works out better vs level 72-73 mobs. At level 80, this would be THE spot. Before then, it's just tough going.
Stay outta Icecrown.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Northrend Grinding
I was initially going to be casual with leveling my Relic-equipped warlock. Take things slow and tour around nuking things.
Then I found out that I'm a demigod and nearly immortal compared to the squishyness of the other locks in greens and outland blues. I'm in Tier freakin 6 gear!! The rest is all Relic items. I'm using the Relic shoulders, Chest, Staff, and both trinkets. That puts me at a huge 126 Hit, 18% Crit, and 1026 Spell damage at level 70. Quite respectable. I was blowing up stuff in Nagrand. Multiple things and lifetapping / Haunting my way back to full health + full mana. Then moving onto the next pack of critters.
Northrend.... Not much has changed. Just the xp amount went up to 1200 per mob. Taking on 6 to 10 at a time means some really fast fast levelling. I decided to quest thru some of Borean Tundra and then grnid up some of the Howling Fijord. I did get myself Northrend Flying at Level 71. That Account Bound book of Cold Weather Flying rocks. Sure I have 1000g to spend on flying. Can I skip waiting for level 77? Hells Yea!!
Anyway. Got to 72 Tuesday after skinning + quest grinding. Then made 73 yesterday after more of the same. Vendoring all of the plate quest rewards that I'm getting. Gear is still superior to Northrend greens. Probably change out my outfit by level 75. Quests are giving 24k to 30k. Mobs are giving 1200 to 2400 xp per kill. Still Affliction spec is working out Very nicely.
Why change a good thing? Not enough dps? I'm doing 1k dps to 8 mobs at once at level 72 and then skinning them for decent loot + enough shoveltusk meat to last me 10,000 years. I can't remember my wife's rogue doing that much at level 80 in 178 ilevel blues. I'll change out the relic gear once I get to 80 and replace with Lv 200 epics. Till then, the relic gear is a great investment. TTFN.
Then I found out that I'm a demigod and nearly immortal compared to the squishyness of the other locks in greens and outland blues. I'm in Tier freakin 6 gear!! The rest is all Relic items. I'm using the Relic shoulders, Chest, Staff, and both trinkets. That puts me at a huge 126 Hit, 18% Crit, and 1026 Spell damage at level 70. Quite respectable. I was blowing up stuff in Nagrand. Multiple things and lifetapping / Haunting my way back to full health + full mana. Then moving onto the next pack of critters.
Northrend.... Not much has changed. Just the xp amount went up to 1200 per mob. Taking on 6 to 10 at a time means some really fast fast levelling. I decided to quest thru some of Borean Tundra and then grnid up some of the Howling Fijord. I did get myself Northrend Flying at Level 71. That Account Bound book of Cold Weather Flying rocks. Sure I have 1000g to spend on flying. Can I skip waiting for level 77? Hells Yea!!
Anyway. Got to 72 Tuesday after skinning + quest grinding. Then made 73 yesterday after more of the same. Vendoring all of the plate quest rewards that I'm getting. Gear is still superior to Northrend greens. Probably change out my outfit by level 75. Quests are giving 24k to 30k. Mobs are giving 1200 to 2400 xp per kill. Still Affliction spec is working out Very nicely.
Why change a good thing? Not enough dps? I'm doing 1k dps to 8 mobs at once at level 72 and then skinning them for decent loot + enough shoveltusk meat to last me 10,000 years. I can't remember my wife's rogue doing that much at level 80 in 178 ilevel blues. I'll change out the relic gear once I get to 80 and replace with Lv 200 epics. Till then, the relic gear is a great investment. TTFN.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Heroic badge gear.
Since I'm twinking my lock out with enchants and potions.... I may as well go all the way.
Cashed in some heroic badges for the Relic spellcaster trinket, the Relic cloth shoulders, and the Relic staff. Those un-familiar with Relic gear... you trade a truckload of badges for a shiny beige colored magic item. This item is "Account bound" and can be freely emailed to ANY character on your server on your account. It's always level 1, so this limits the enchants one can place on it. The gear is also super-malleable. On a level 1 character, the staff would be +3 int +2 Sta and +1 spell power. On a level 80 character, the same staff would become +45 Int +40 Sta +95 spell power and +25 Crit rating. Nice eh? An item that levels with you!! The staff works for any Priest + Warlock + Druid + Mage and possibly Elemental Shaman twink you'd want to build.
Still, I'll probably buy one more piece of Relic gear for my Shaman + Feral Druid + Rogue + Paladin. I'm thinking the mace since its gives a good melee boost at every level. Since my shaman does alot of melee. I can't help wanting a 1H + shield.
Why? My wife plays her mage kinda haphazard. I have a level 80 mage and you can do almost all of your fights without letting things get into melee range. Burnt to a crisp at my feet or sheeped and frozen several yards away. Melee is for Melee classes. Her? Different playstyle altogether. One quick blast to pull, and then she exchanges spells at point blank range. She'd be a good Warrior. It also makes her an odd Mage. When I step in to heal or nuke, it makes my Elemental shaman the tank + healer + nuker. THAT is a tough road to travel. I should switch to Enhancement spec and bulk up on armor. That way I can use the same play style and partner up better.
Cashed in some heroic badges for the Relic spellcaster trinket, the Relic cloth shoulders, and the Relic staff. Those un-familiar with Relic gear... you trade a truckload of badges for a shiny beige colored magic item. This item is "Account bound" and can be freely emailed to ANY character on your server on your account. It's always level 1, so this limits the enchants one can place on it. The gear is also super-malleable. On a level 1 character, the staff would be +3 int +2 Sta and +1 spell power. On a level 80 character, the same staff would become +45 Int +40 Sta +95 spell power and +25 Crit rating. Nice eh? An item that levels with you!! The staff works for any Priest + Warlock + Druid + Mage and possibly Elemental Shaman twink you'd want to build.
Still, I'll probably buy one more piece of Relic gear for my Shaman + Feral Druid + Rogue + Paladin. I'm thinking the mace since its gives a good melee boost at every level. Since my shaman does alot of melee. I can't help wanting a 1H + shield.
Why? My wife plays her mage kinda haphazard. I have a level 80 mage and you can do almost all of your fights without letting things get into melee range. Burnt to a crisp at my feet or sheeped and frozen several yards away. Melee is for Melee classes. Her? Different playstyle altogether. One quick blast to pull, and then she exchanges spells at point blank range. She'd be a good Warrior. It also makes her an odd Mage. When I step in to heal or nuke, it makes my Elemental shaman the tank + healer + nuker. THAT is a tough road to travel. I should switch to Enhancement spec and bulk up on armor. That way I can use the same play style and partner up better.
REBORN on the Alliance Side
Okay. Playing a PvP Affliction lock on the horde side was hella fun. Heck, I can say I made a great bunch of friends playing there. But, life moves on and I'm doing more things with my kids and wife on our common Alliance server.
Wednesday. Level 11 Warlock on Eonar. Since patch 3.2 came out they reduced mounts to 4g cost at level 20. That's just plain giving it way. They've also reduced Epic land mounts to level 40 and scaled back the level to learn flying to level 60. Rapid progression to 70? More lich king exposure?? Blizzard has to be up to something.
That weekend I put my new lock thru 9 levels. The Deadmines were broken so I had to earn the flaming horse thru outdoor quests and just plain grinding mobs. Seems Naxxramas, Ulduar, and the Argent Tournament are the only instances that were working as intended. Daily Heroic instances in WotLK were broken. So was Shadowfang keep and Scholomance. The new patch was a bit much. Every major patch makes content inside instances unstable.
More later. Got my Horse by Sunday.
Wednesday. Level 11 Warlock on Eonar. Since patch 3.2 came out they reduced mounts to 4g cost at level 20. That's just plain giving it way. They've also reduced Epic land mounts to level 40 and scaled back the level to learn flying to level 60. Rapid progression to 70? More lich king exposure?? Blizzard has to be up to something.
That weekend I put my new lock thru 9 levels. The Deadmines were broken so I had to earn the flaming horse thru outdoor quests and just plain grinding mobs. Seems Naxxramas, Ulduar, and the Argent Tournament are the only instances that were working as intended. Daily Heroic instances in WotLK were broken. So was Shadowfang keep and Scholomance. The new patch was a bit much. Every major patch makes content inside instances unstable.
More later. Got my Horse by Sunday.
Friday, April 4, 2008
Stupid Omen bug
While running Underbog last night, we noticed a few problems.
1) Only fools run instances or BGs on laptops. Sure, badmouth me if you have a new Top-o-the-line laptop that doesn't slow to a crawl in heavy traffic. In AV, I can honestly say I'm chasing ghosts. My laptop is a dog. Any Honorable kills are purely accidental. Don't trust it in tight spots where seconds = lives. Main healer on Tank against Prince Malechhazar? Yea. Dead man walking come phase 3.
2) Omen was broke again. Yea I know. Check back every couple of minutes for an update patch to the patch. Still. That string of error messages was annoying. Also, where the Ruck is the minimize feature for Omen 2. Tell me Dat!
3) No blue caster loot. Mail >> Plate >>> Leather.... End of instance. Not even any greens. The dice were surely against me. If it weren't for the 1UP mushroom and the Everlast Everspore Frond.. I'd say it was a wasted trip. Thankfully, I cleaned up in incidental loot, Sanguiine Hibiscus, Knothide Leather, and Admantite ore. Yay me!
/rant off
1) Only fools run instances or BGs on laptops. Sure, badmouth me if you have a new Top-o-the-line laptop that doesn't slow to a crawl in heavy traffic. In AV, I can honestly say I'm chasing ghosts. My laptop is a dog. Any Honorable kills are purely accidental. Don't trust it in tight spots where seconds = lives. Main healer on Tank against Prince Malechhazar? Yea. Dead man walking come phase 3.
2) Omen was broke again. Yea I know. Check back every couple of minutes for an update patch to the patch. Still. That string of error messages was annoying. Also, where the Ruck is the minimize feature for Omen 2. Tell me Dat!
3) No blue caster loot. Mail >> Plate >>> Leather.... End of instance. Not even any greens. The dice were surely against me. If it weren't for the 1UP mushroom and the Everlast Everspore Frond.. I'd say it was a wasted trip. Thankfully, I cleaned up in incidental loot, Sanguiine Hibiscus, Knothide Leather, and Admantite ore. Yay me!
/rant off
When I'm 64
I love The Beatles.
I also love being 64. Holy crap that was fast!!
Blurred thru my 50's. They say that all xp is discounted 40% from level 20 to 60. They weren't kidding. Faction with Timbermaws was reduced by a whole step. Now you just need friendly for quests and within a couple turn ins, you're there. Ridiculously easy stuff. After felwood, I hit winterspring, Un-goro, Silithus, Winterspring, and found myself at level 58.
Well... The outlands are too much of a temptation.
I can say I should have held out at level 58, gotten my outlands gear, and pvp'ed my ass off. It was just TOO easy to make 58, 59, 60, 61, 62. Next thing I knew, I was in Zangarmarsh with a full quest log, a half dozen complete quests. All of my epic mount items, and looking for a team to do Dire Maul West.
Dam that epic mount. Dam that crazy fast levelling in Hellfire Penninsula. I kid you not. I counted every kill I needed for every item upgrade and I couldn't STOP myself from making level 59 after the first few items.
In my own defense, the Blue Quest chest-piece with 44 Spell Damage and 14 Spell crit is way overpowered. Especially since it has 18 STA and 13 INT. Add in a Knothide Armor kit, and you're golden. Now add the Destroyer's Mantle with +35 Spell damage, the Horde Only quest staff with +80 Spell damage, and a couple of other peices.
I went from 2800 Hp and 2400 mana at level 56.... to a bestial 5600 HP and 5500 Mana at level 62 with +331 spell Damage. Now I'm rocking 7k health, 8K mana, and +500 spell damage at level 64. Bestial amounts of growth.
There were 4 instance groups I did at 60, 62, 62, and 64. I had more HP than the tank and more Mana than the priest in every case. Sick amounts of upgrades available. All from quest gear and Sorceror items at the AH. Don't Enchant your gear, aside from Knothide Armor kits. +10 Spell crit to gloves was Too cheap to pass up. I had to get that.
You'll make level 70 quickly.
The next big jump is the blue gear from Durn / Ring of blood.
I also love being 64. Holy crap that was fast!!
Blurred thru my 50's. They say that all xp is discounted 40% from level 20 to 60. They weren't kidding. Faction with Timbermaws was reduced by a whole step. Now you just need friendly for quests and within a couple turn ins, you're there. Ridiculously easy stuff. After felwood, I hit winterspring, Un-goro, Silithus, Winterspring, and found myself at level 58.
Well... The outlands are too much of a temptation.
I can say I should have held out at level 58, gotten my outlands gear, and pvp'ed my ass off. It was just TOO easy to make 58, 59, 60, 61, 62. Next thing I knew, I was in Zangarmarsh with a full quest log, a half dozen complete quests. All of my epic mount items, and looking for a team to do Dire Maul West.
Dam that epic mount. Dam that crazy fast levelling in Hellfire Penninsula. I kid you not. I counted every kill I needed for every item upgrade and I couldn't STOP myself from making level 59 after the first few items.
In my own defense, the Blue Quest chest-piece with 44 Spell Damage and 14 Spell crit is way overpowered. Especially since it has 18 STA and 13 INT. Add in a Knothide Armor kit, and you're golden. Now add the Destroyer's Mantle with +35 Spell damage, the Horde Only quest staff with +80 Spell damage, and a couple of other peices.
I went from 2800 Hp and 2400 mana at level 56.... to a bestial 5600 HP and 5500 Mana at level 62 with +331 spell Damage. Now I'm rocking 7k health, 8K mana, and +500 spell damage at level 64. Bestial amounts of growth.
There were 4 instance groups I did at 60, 62, 62, and 64. I had more HP than the tank and more Mana than the priest in every case. Sick amounts of upgrades available. All from quest gear and Sorceror items at the AH. Don't Enchant your gear, aside from Knothide Armor kits. +10 Spell crit to gloves was Too cheap to pass up. I had to get that.
You'll make level 70 quickly.
The next big jump is the blue gear from Durn / Ring of blood.
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