Combined 10/25-man raid lockouts mean...

nothing to me. actually it kinda does. so my friend, who raids 25mans, cannot join me for a 10man run, if I could make her 10man raid time. but other than that, a guild cannot, anymroe, do a 25man run, then split into three or four groups for 10mans with lower geared members or alts. for badge farming and to help gear up the rest of the guildies.

sad times for that. the only time I really do raid is when my friend is on and doing alt/10mans. not like it matters. I do it once in a blue moon anyway. all it means for me now is that I do raids with other alts in the guild. woohooo!

JC has me depressed. =[

So I kinda figured gem prices were going to drop, but I didn’t know it was going to be so bad.

So bad where? on my low pop server. and why is it so bad? because of patch 3.3.3. I was used to collecting about 1k a day on average (and spending only about 30% of that on more mats) from my JC profession last year. this was pre 3.3.2. I had gems flying off the shelves. but as time goes by, my high pop server has turned into a medium pop server. not only that, but since patch 3.3.3, people have found an alternative to buying gems. they farm BG's, or have already farmed BG's and have a billion stone keeper's shards and honor out the ears, and end up buying epic gems with honor. they either sell that, or have it cut for a tip (usually 10-15g). done. so rare gem sales (and ultimately, prices) are dropping as well as epic gem sales.

I was a little apprehensive about doing JC in a low pop server, but I figured that it shouldn’t be so bad. people will still need gems, and people will always be gearing up new alts. what I fail to realise is that gems are not really an option until outlands. and even then, there's very few items that needs to be gemmed. some people don’t even gem (even with the low level gems, although my mage/priest/druid/lock all had runed bloodstones on everything, AH cost is about 2g a piece, every affordable for the leveling toon), so I figured I may have tapped into a dying profession. maybe what I need to do is collect recipes (I do the dailies, but am not 80 yet so I cannot run the instances for some of the other cuts) and wait until enough people get fed up with the gem market that they quit. I can then step in and sell various gems. I do not think I'll offer a wide selection as in my previous realm. what I think I also need to do is keep gems selling slowly, and when I finally hit 80, I can actually learn to cut the epic cuts. I will have a list of rare gem cuts that I think will sell well (usually red/yellow, and one blue) and the rest will have to be epic cuts. this will cut down on my spending tokens on useless cuts. some cuts sell for as little as 6g. that results in a sale, but I've also seen 6g cuts come back unsold. srsly.

so, my plan for gems is this: save up JC tokens to use on epic recipes. made due with what I have now. upon reaching 80, I can then run instances for the rare gem cuts. also, I will purchase the random world drop recipes with gold. that’s my plan with JC. Now since manders is done farming herbs, we can finally, finally do some outland instances and quests. Manders is my friend from my old realm that had to switch. so I switched with her and are slowly progressing towards level 80. she spent several days just running around azeroth and flying around outland picking flowers in order to level her alchemy. with sungrass going for 60g a stack, and other herbs going for the same ridiculous prices, we're better off farming our own herbs or mining our own ores. im still making decent change from Adamantite ore and Cobalt ore.

RET Talent: Tier 1: Benediction vs. Deflection

A lot of people look at guides on how to spec ret and choose benediction. god only knows why. actually I know why, and it is because benediction reduces the cost of all instant spells and attacks by 10%. yep… 10 very awesome percents. but that's great for the raider, or the heroic grinder. but as im leveling through Azeroth, and currently at level 34, I find that deflection is a much better talent to take up than benediction.

Here's what they do:

Benediction: 5 points. reduce your mana cost for instant spells by 10%.

Deflection: 5 points. increases your parry chance by 5%.

one increases your mana efficiency. the other, your survival.

I picked deflection (yes, I know it’s a "tanking" talent, but its not just that, it’s a melee talent) for two reasons.

1) parry keeps me alive longer. yes, when im out questing (and we do that at our levels), im face-to-face with another mob or two. I need that. 5% extra deflection is 5% more chances I will not be taking damage. this is completely different than taking 5% less damage per hit. it is definitely not the same as taking 5% less damage overall.

2) my usual instant spells are… judgment. and judgment. and judgment. yep. just that. and I can only do one every 8 seconds. not only is it limited once every 8 seconds, at my level it costs me 37 mana to cast. 37 mana. my mana bar is 1,100 mana at level 30, just under my health of about 1,200. at 34, my numbers should be a little higher but I do not have that noted. I should just armory myself but I am at work and cannot reach the armory's site.

** I do believe the mana cost is based on the % of your base mana, so any +int in the gear that I have (which isnt much) will not count towards the cost of the spells, including consecrate, judgment, shields, etc. **

anyway, my point is this, I can save myself 4 mana each time I judge, or, I can have 5% increased chance to not get hit.

Here are some other instant spells that I use seldomly. Blessing of Protection. Blessing of Kings. Blessing of Might. Switching Seals. lay on hands? maybe. divine shield. ok, those are all situational. and out of combat spells should not count. those are my reasoning why Benediction sucks for levelers.

last argument: consecration. that's instant and takes up a buttload of mana (22% I think). So I will save myself a good 2% mana. which is great, but will that 2% savings equial one more consecrate? it can, with judgment of wisdom going and maybe some replenishment from another class or totem, it may be useful. but during instances, if I am having to cast consecrate again for the fifth time during a pull due to more mobs entering the fight, I think we have more of a problem than just mana. besides, I top damage meters already. not only that… consecrate isnt my top damaging spell.

my top damaging attack is… auto attack. so consecration is next right? nope. second highest attack is seal of command. in groups of course. (what about solo? I don’t even use consecrate in solo. why the heck would i?) then its consecrate. so even if its third, it is still one of the top three attacks. true. but seal of command costs zero. and seal of auto attack costs zero. jk. auto attack costs zero. so 5 talent points will help consecrate be more mana efficient. 5 talent points to help 30% of my dps do… well, just a little better. does it increase throughput? no. (throughput: basically increasing dps) so it doesn’t help 30% of my dps do more dps, it helps 30% of my dps save mana. with instances the way they are, I miss out on the beginnings of a new pull because I am drinking. do I care? not really. does it matter? not at all. im sitting there with the healer and mage drinking while the tank and rogue are running to the next group. that’s fine with me. and again, in solo, I almost never use consecrate unless I have more than two mobs. seal of command takes care of 3 mobs anyway.

again, consecration can be situational. where seal of command procs wherever I go, consecrate is stationary. depending on the instance, and the skill of the tank, consecrate can actually be my highest dps, or it can be my third. or second. its in the top three. if a tank is able to hold aggro well, then I have no problems having consecrate be my top damage dealer. but if the party is plagued by an aggro happy hunter, or a tank that runs around and pulls a new group when the first group isnt completely dead, or if adds appear and we run back and forth a lot, then consecrate will drop from top, to third. what I do find is that, of the three attacks, Consecrate, Auto attack, and Seal of Command, they all fall within 25-35% (and very often they're all at 30%) of my damage. So essentially 90% of my damage comes from these three attacks. in instances, I don’t even use exo unless im OOC (out of combat) and have time to cast (cant wait to get that talent that gives me insta-exo). so with consecrate being 30% of my damage, it could be beneficial to put 5 points into benediction. but, if everything is perfect, I will always have time to drink (I usually drink more than the healers drink, but we often sit and drink while the warrior tank runs off to the next group). so in instances, mana isnt that important. 3-minute boss fights are rare, actually, are non-existent at my level. so again, Benediction isnt really used here, in groups, or solo.

last last argument: some will say that since getting seal of light, I'll be getting health back quicker than ever, so why not just skip deflection and go for better uptime with benediction? the health gained from seal of light will outshine the 5% chance to parry anyway. good point. as for how much? I do not know. I'll let the theorycrafters do that over at EJ forums. but what I do see is that this is a very good counter to my arguments and I do like this idea very much. with seal of light, I can constantly pull mobs one after the other for longer durations before I have to drink. I don’t have to use mana for healing, and I'll be using judgment of light or judgment of wisdom depending on what I need more. but keep in mind that this argument still has holes. one, I am using only one instant spell that's super cheap. my main mana sink here is exo. and that's not instant. I consecrate in the case I have three mobs on me, and that’s it, and if I have three mobs on me, I know for damn sure I'll be using more than just my auto attacks. so after every fight like that, I'll want to drink and heal anyway. in addition, using seal of light means less dps. so I often switch back and forth. meaning I switch to seal of light if I have enough mana and just want to get some health back. then switch back to command. the dps loss inst noticible on quest mobs, so its not so bad. still, a dps loss is more time required to kill mobs (it is not necessarily more time you're taking damage, since health is refunded almost as fast as its lost). over the course of say, an hour, that loss of exp/hr adds up and when Seal of Light is up, that’s about a 20-25% loss in dps. . argument rebutted.

so with that said, the first five points in the ret tree are almost completely useless (hahaha, all that to say it sucks? well not really useless) but that’s ok. the first tier of every tree sucks anyway. what im trying to say is that the difference is minimal. especially with a paladin and our ability to switch seals, judge different judgments, and toss up some bubbles or heals, the difference in picking the first tier talents is merely a matter of personal taste. it's not until you get to the third or fourth tier that there's something to actually drool over. in my case, pursuit of justice and seal of command. and the rest just adds more damage or crit percentage. all are awesome. but when half of my leveling is questing, and my only instant spell is used only in certain situations, most of which isnt essential to survival, then I would say, you can go either way with this. deflection? sure. benediction? sure. for me, I chose deflection due to the above reasons (and until level 50, I wont be seeing any more instant spells anyway). it isnt gamechanging or gamebreaking either way. just know what the tradeoffs are.

Awesome use of boss drop.

Mimiron's Head. wow. i love it. i wants it.

RET vs. PRT: Mana

As far as differences go regarding Retribution and Protection, I find that my have more trouble with mana as prot while questing and ret while in instances. really? yes, even with blessing of the sanctuary up. this is because a lot of quest mobs are scattered, and many are casters. to keep a prot paladin's mana bar full, I will need to run up to about 3 or 4 melee mobs (or hope a caster or two will stand in melee range and take a swing at me, or pull the two melees towards the caster and tank them at the caster's position) and take them down together, as a group. I'd be halfway down in health, but my mana bar will be full. I just need to cast heal on myself and move to the next set of mobs. although this works well with cats and raptors, this doesn’t work well with humanoid or undead mobs who cast spells. so instances are the best places for prot paladins to work. but overall, questing isnt so bad if you plan out the pulls.

as far as ret leveling goes, questing is slow enough that I do not need to sit and drink often. switching to seal of light basically negates all need to heal after combat, even when judging wisdom, leaving my mana for better things like exo or judgments or lolturnevil. I don’t even use turn evil. I may have to one day tho. so after several mobs, I sit to drink, then continue with my kills. for one-target pulls, I pull with exo, then judge and walk to my fridge to look for a bite to eat. come back--mob's dead. its that simple, and im so glad that in cata expansion, pallys will have one more attack to work with.

now, as ret in instances, things get a little tricky. since it is a group effort fighting other groups, starting off with an exo might be a dps loss, unless it’s an undead I am trying to kill. so I run in with judgment, then consecrate. I keep consecrate up as long as there's three or more mobs. im using seal of command instead of seal of light, and the tanks do not seem to have problems ever, so im keeping ret aura up instead of devotion or whatever else. sometimes I am surprised with my mana regen and im at 75% mana after a big pull. and sometimes I find myself completely out of mana.

for example, in SMGY, after the first hallway there is a torture room with 10-12 mobs. some tanks pull the whole room. some pull half but end up getting the whole room pulled due to fleeing mobs. sorry, judgment of justice has an 8 second cooldown. if mobs die one at a time, we usually finish them off before they aggro a new group, but when two or three decide to flee at once, in different directions, we end up with more groups being pulled. this isnt too much a problem. but I find myself running back and forth a lot, which is always fun. in this room, I usually deplete my mana supply. then I drink and move up to the actual graveyard. I deplete my mana supply there as well, right before we enter the mausoleum. now if the group decides to kill all the mobs in the graveyard (instead of killing only the ones on the path), then I drink midway through the graveyard and once again before we enter the mausoleum. im at about 25% mana before we hit the boss, but I find that that is just enough mana to finish off the boss.

so there, some minor nuances in mana management between prot and ret. please note that I leveled prot almost two years ago, and that was before the changes made to the paladin class in patch 3.0. and even then, i only leveled prot to 60 before picking it back up again several months ago, during patch 3.3.2. so many prot leveling is a little different now. or maybe the same. some input may be required. =]

Remember last weekend?

Remember last weekend where I decided to level a paladin and got him to level 20 by the end of the weekend? well this weekend I started off at level 26 and ended up level 34. its not the 20 levels from last week, but it is still a significant change. howso? at the start of the weekend I was pretty happy doing 60 dps. now im trying to hit 150 each time through SM:GY. Scarlet Monastery: Grave Yard. Graveyard is probably the shortest of the four SM instances and also the lowest leveled. Not only is it the lowest level instance, it's probably the only instance at level 30. when I started the weekend, I was doing RFK and Gnomers, but at 30, its only SM:GY. only.

sure, I can q for another instance manually, althought the choices are pretty limited (I cant even choose SFK to complete a quest that's green to me), but at level 30-32 I was doing all graveyard runs. and when my group wanted to re-q, we got graveyard again. how random is that when there's only one instance that LFD will pick? Gnomers/stocks/rfk is green? so what, send me there I don’t care. they should really do at least one lockout if we've done maybe the same instance like 3 times in a row. then remove the lockout once we've done a new one. that would work. programming that in would not be so hard would it? how many times do I have to deal with listening to the torturer yelling "Naughty Secrets"? I don’t want to. but sadly, I think im not given much options in the future. next group of instances: Library and… that’s it.

next after that: RFDowns, SM:Armory.

next after that: Uldamon, SM: Cath, Zul Farak

next after that: Maraudon, Sunken Temple

next after that: Scholomance, Stratholme, BRD, BRS: upper and lower.

So honestly, I don’t think I'll even get to do all of the last tier instances before I hop over to outland. those instances are much better planned, better laid out, gives better loot and gives better exp. all better unless I really want to get some kinda acheivement. or that rare enchanting recipe from that rare spawn in brd. I don’t even know what formula it is, I just know its there. So with the list above, I'd say my best chance to actually enjoy random instances is with Ulda/Cath/ZF, or… Scholo/Strath/BRD/BRS. In the early 50's, I'll be stuck with Mara and Sunken Temple. and right now, I will be stuck with Library. just library. until I hit one more level and then I can do RFD. Razerfen downs. So I guess it's not soooo bad. but still.

anyway, so at level 33, I think I was able to get into random SM:Lib. Scarlet Monastery Library. 34, maybe RFD with some SM:Lib still. and then hopefully at 34 or 35 I can start doing Armory. it doesn’t help when most of the gear that drops from armory can only be equipped at 35-38. so for most of my time there, I will probably come across Herod's axe like 10 times, and each time I will roll need on it because I will claim I do not have it. and each time I will save it so I can take a screen shot of how ridiculous Armory is… in terms of drops. its all mail and an axe. so warriors, paladins, hunters and enhancement shamans, this instance is for you, even if you cant use the drop for four levels. hopefully I can run this place long enough to come across all the pieces to the chain set of the scarlet crusade and then the tabard, shield, and a shoulderpiece from herod. I think I'll be all set for two levels. that’s when plate gear kicks in and I'll be switching to that. although I've done this grind before and I really don’t transition out of mail completely until well into my mid 40s or even late 40s. there is no real hurry anyway, as my dps is rockin and my survival isnt so bad when questing "yellow" or "orange" mobs. now have me fight off two orange mobs and I might run low on health. but that’s about it. 3 orange mobs and im basically dead if I don’t BOP and run.

This weekend, I also tried to level my cooking and fishing. fishing was pretty easy actually. I remember the days where I tried to fish at a certain spot and would not be able to because my fishing skill was too low. now I can fish anywhere, but what I catch can either be junk, or a sickly fish. either way, it still increases my fishing skill. and that's really all I am after. really. I can now fish in hillsbrad and catch decent fish without a lure. I still get the occassional junk, but I get more fish than not. also, I try to seek out the pools, which will get me more "good" fish and some junkboxes. those trunks do have nice goodies. I did get a book that taught me how to spot fish pools on my minimap. it hasn’t really helped since im still stuck on "sense undead" haha. but I cant say for sure if its actually helpful. I mean I run along the riverbank and yea, there's a pool. did I need a minimap finder for that? nope. I also discovered there are fish that only live in fresh water, and others that only live in salt water. interesting. I stopped using lures now, but I know I can probably fish better with it. I need to keep it in mind.

cooking isnt so bad either. I started off making the simple sweet bread, then herb baked eggs. this was done last week. I spend about an hour running through the zoram strand the other day for crawler meat, then went and killed the naga for clams. then, I went to hillsbrad and killed the naga there for higher level clams. the naga in hillsbrad drop the zesty clams. then I went and hit 175 and learned to make soothing turtle bisque. so cooking will be easy for now. I do remember the last few items to cook in azeroth were fished, so that might be a problem. but I did read somewhere that cooking was made easier so I don’t have to really deal with having to buy lobsters at 295 in order to reach 300 cooking skill.

So far, everything's stuck at 200-225. I learned to make mageweave bandages, my fishing is almost 200, and my cooking is at 190ish. my enchanting is stuck at 235 and my second profession should be coming right along… soon. yea, soon. I am still tossing up two options. one is inscription, and the other is blacksmithing. I'll ponder more about this later.

One last thing im discovering, if there's a shaman with a mana spring totem, he's usually overriding my blessing of wisdom. which causes smartbuff to go bonkers. I really like smartbuff, but I am having some problems tweaking it, specially with all the other buffs out there and everyone asking for something else. blessing of wisdom and mana stream doesn’t stack. so I just put on kings.

I also joined a guild this past weekend. we're called Durotan's Children. or was it Children of Durotan? something like that. it’s a social/leveling guild. there's some nice people, with lots of "gratz" going on. I really don’t like congratulating people of small acheivements. if its hitting 30, or 60, or 80, then sure. if its for buying an epic flyer then sure. if its for downing some difficult raid boss then sure. if its for getting journeyman mining, then no. no no no. that’s not an acheivement. that's something you would do anyway. but other than that rant, theres a lottery! I don’t know what else is in store for me, but hopefully the guild leader remains in the guild, doesn’t get caught up with real life (or give leadership to appropriate person to lead in their absence), and doesn’t do stupid things. well stupid can be subjective. but anyway, I am hoping for something fun. maybe a bunch of people to level with. I see a lot of people who are level 20, 30, 40, and so on. My DK is still in my other guild with my friend, but she's barely on and almost no one is on in the other guild. so I figured I might as well try a "social leveling" guild for now.

so that’s pretty much what went down this past weekend. hopefully I can post a bit about some of the small details of ret leveling and spec soon. its quite interesting how the same class can level differently based on spec. and how talent choices can matter depending on levels, style of play and just plain ol' preference. of course, pally leveling has changed drastically since a few years back (all for the better, ofc).

Instance Leveling on Speed. Literally.

busy time. Work has been a little busy lately (although it feels like I cant get anything done) and lots of things are finally being worked on. this gives me very little time to blog except for those 30 minutes before the boss arrives or the 30 minutes before I end my day. so, this is the 30 minutes before I end my day and start my weekend where I have just a little bit of time to just say hi and update you dear readers with what im up to.

my leveling paladin is now level 24 and a hair away from 25. he did two instances last night. actually one and a half. I zoned into a halfway finished razorfen krual (or was it downs? it’s the one with the big giant pig) and I hear the drama about the last guy who was kicked. lol. he was chosing "need" on every roll. this didn’t sit well with everyone else so he got booted. I joined and did 2nd on dps. woot. 60 dps ftw. yes… sixty. its funny how I noticed my dps at 16 to 24 basically doubled. but at 16, I had a bunch of greens enchanted. now I have several blues and 8 more levels. also, I noticed that my health went from 200 pre teens, to 600 at 20, and now 1100 hp. that’s also a big jump. I knew I had 600 ish health at 20 because that’s what I had to work with against luz and knucklerot. I am not sure when the next big jump in health and stats will be tho, but I do know that when I jump into outlands, I should have 3k to work with and hopefully get 5k by the end of the starting zone. 10k health by the time I reach northrend and 18-20k health by the time I hit 80. these are just health guages. I guess if I play my own style of play, I should also note how well my dps is at all levels, just to guage myself vs. other classes.

second instance: I did stocks again, actually we did it twice since it was so fast. I went from 0% exp to about 90% exp. gonna ding tonight. hopefully I'll be able to hit 26 also. there are no real loot drops there. just a bunch of bosses the alliance folks can get quest completions by killing. but nothing special for the horde. its ok though. we get a lot of wool from it and the bag of useful crap is always nice. wool sells well. but I never expected linen to sell so well. 7gold a pop. seriously. that’s crazy for linen. but my server has messed up prices anyway. I sold a one-handed level 12 sword for 19 gold. 19.99.99 actually. crazy.

I also never expected to be leveling this fast. before I knew it, I was out of ghostlands and currently have nowhere to really level. I will travel to STV shortly. =] but I've only really gone through SFK twice, WC once, VC once, and RFC once. now I really don’t have much fondness for WC, but the other instances are the awesomeness. I really would love to do SFK several more times along with VC (for the hordies, vc is deadmines). SFK is my fav instance to do mass pulls at 70, and now at 80, its even easier. being a latecomer to Wow, I started wow about two and a half years ago. my first instances were pretty bad, but I did ok. I was always afraid of joining a group because I never thought I would do well at all. I actually didn’t do my first ramps run until I was 65. most people were doing ramps at 58-60. yea, kinda afraid of all that in the beginning. but yea, when I started wow, not a lot of people were running SFK. many were getting runs from higher level friends and I felt it wasn’t worth the time and energy to run through these instances at all. now I somewhat regret it but am glad the LFD is making it a great way to level through your low levels. sometimes I wonder if bliz had us in mind for the most part when they made LFD. Of the two times I queued last night, one was an insta-que, the other was a wait of about 3 minutes. Amazing. at level 74, my dk is waiting 15 minutes (but that also could be due to the large numbers of DK's out there). I notice that my dk has never joined a group with another dk. never. (ok maybe once, but that's because i was dps and he was tanking. but never two dps dk's)

Other items: I have not tried making the herb bag on my warlock yet. I havent been back to do a daily random yet either. lol. JC on my new realm sucks, still. I am still contemplating making alliance toons, and leveling one to be able to at least get one profession down to max (I believe level 65 is minimum level for the grand master skill, so I have to pick a profession that does not require northrend quest).

final thought for today: I want to raid. but I was given a reminder why I cannot just last night. my daughter, now 30 months, or 2.5 years old, has taken a liking to playing wow. she doesn’t do much, but likes to watch my warhorse winnie. so I mount up and let her press the spacebar to make it winnie. also, she likes to make it walk… backwards. every now and then I have to walk by the computer and press M to remount. my mount is keybound to M, my map is keybound to Ctrl+M. side note: im thinking of unbinding F9-F10 because those are just bag shortcuts. I use B and it opens all my bags thanks to bagnon. so even if I cant raid because my daughter wants my attention instead of, baby einstein, or my neighbor totoro, jane and the dragon, or pecula or ni hao kai lan. isnt that pretty awesome? I'd rather spend some time playing with her anyway. so when she gets the itching to mess with my game, I cant keep a raid waiting 30 minutes to an hour just for father-daughter time. so no raids for me yet.

Like playing a melee mage

So paladin reached level 20 the other night and is now 21. He's picked up some really cool spells (really cool comparied to Judge+auto attack, anything is cooler than that, srsly) that include Exorcism, or exo, Consecration, not concentration, and retribution aura. Oh and i talented into seal of command. the awesomeness. so with those additions to my routine, my fights begin with exo to pull, then judge light/wisdom depending on what i need, and its usually wisdom now with exo in the mix. before exo, i had zero mana issues. i mean i only run low on mana when i have to heal myself. but now, im actually using it to cast exo. and maybe a consecration depending on the pull.

I remember the days of magery... in fact, i started off as a mage a very long time ago. i didnt know too much about the game then, or about how best to play a mage. all i did was cast frostbolt and fireblast, and then learned frost nova was great to use against melee's who are too close. at around level 40, i got used to dying, but also got good enough to know my surroundings, path out the pull/fight, and nuke them down without gaining adds. this paranoia of my surroundings has lead to pretty decent tanking skills. decent. yes. so when i got exo, i felt like i was back on my mage again, this time without the frostbolt animation or the many many deaths. dying as a mage is never fun, since running back to your body requires a lot of time, but also when rezzing, i needed to make sure no one was around. a mage with half their mana/health isnt going to last too long to wolves.... or hogger. but a pala... they can rez and be fine and dandy. not only are they tougher, their cooldowns are reset. yep, BOP, or HOP now... hand of protection can solve any aggro problems upon rezzing. just heal yourself and pop a mana pot and its like you've never died.

and so exo makes it feel like im playing a mage. but a melee one. only because once the mob actually gets to me, i attack with my sword. i really need an upgrade to my gear tho, since running into deatholme, i've found myself needing to toss on my shield to survive. it doesnt really matter much since i saw that my 1hander does the same damage as my old 2hander. i've hand my 2hander since level 12. granted, getting an appropriate-level 2hander may have been the better choice, but considering i had a shield and sword as quest rewards, i found it more expedient to just use them. i survived longer. plus every single low level hammer, sword, or axe was being sold by one guy, for 30 gold a pop. he's basically cornered the 1-30 market in terms of gear and weapons. but not jewelery. aparently there's still a billion others leveling up jc, which drives down the prices for necklaces and rings so much that the guy doesnt even bother with that market. its great for my pala, as he's an enchanter who may need to DE some cheap wares soon. However, its horrible for my JC, who's at 420 skill, and ready to make more jems to hit 450, because everything that he makes will have to be sold off cheaply since EVERYONE is a JCer. lol. no really... there's so many JCers and so little demand, it drives me kinda nuts. but anyway, back to the topic at hand.

so back on track. i like exo to pull, and the 12 seconds or 15 seconds cooldown isnt that bad, until you get mobs that die after 5 seconds of combat. it seems that, when killing undeads, i finish looting about a second or two before exo refreshes. with non-undeads, since exo does less damage, its usually refreshed by the time im done with the mob. it also has a casttime, so using it while in melee isnt really a good idea. tho it can be done. so its great as an opener, but useless during the fight.

seal of command is probably doing just the same amount of damage as seal of righteousness. i havent really experiemented with recount, but the difference is this... with SoComm, i get several hits per fight for decent damage per hit. with SoRight, i get a constant stream of damage per fight with very low damage per hit. what does this all mean? it means that the damage totals the same, but SoComm is bursty, and SoRight is a bit of a slow burn. Overall, im not sure which is better 1 on 1. but im for dam sure that SoComm is better when up against more targets.

Consecration. Oh the mana hog. only good when up against 3 or more targets, otherwise, its not mana efficient. it may help with killing mobs faster (slow burn, like seal of right, but slow burns on everyone in its area of effect). so its a tossup. if i have a few targets, i will use it. if i have one, i wont. if i have two, depending on how rich i am, i will use it or not. all depends. its really not all that. i dont even really use it when tanking heroics, so why use it here?

Retribution aura. quite possibly why i've been taking more damage lately. how? i dropped devotion for retribution. less armor, more damage returned. good stuff if you want to kill things faster. bad if you're killing an elite or boss. not much else to say about this.

So those are all the notable things at level 20. oh and at 21 i dropped a point into Pursuit of Justice. absolutely zero dps boost. but it helps when running from one mob to another, or when riding to my next quest objective, or when running away from mobs. My second point into it will increase my run and mounted speed by 15%. huzzah!

---------------------

So my next problem is leveling between 20-40. i know where i'd like to go at 40 (tanaris->hinterlands->searing gorge, as those have been pretty simple questing in the past) but between 20 and 40 there's several places that seem... ugh. thousand needles, ugh. hillsbrad, ugh. stonetalon mtns, ugh. desolace, ugh x10. what i've avoided for the longest time, mainly due to rumors of nonstop gankage, is Stranglethorn vale. So STV->Marsh->STV->Marsh->tanaris. because STV has a 20-ish range at the southern end, and a 30-ish range at the northern end. (obviously i dont have a clue what STV is like, so its late 20s by grom gol and gets higher as you spread out west and south, with the area just outside the nessingwary basecamp as the lowest level) also because Duskwallow marsh has a 20-ish range by Brackenwall village and a 30-ish range by mudsprocket (see how i know the towns in duskwallow marsh? cos i've leveled all my toons through there, but never... never STV. where did i go instead? arathi highlands).

By all means. i wish to skip Desolace.

Fable 2

So my platinum edition fable 2 arrived in the mail today. i got it for $20. one of those all time hits for the xbox360. i'll see if i can even play it with my daughter wanting to touch everything. she's 30 months old and in that terrible-two's stage. i'll be playing this game several times a week, hopefully so i dont have to get burned out with wow too much. my last game, assassin's creed, sucked balls. hopefully this one is better.

as a side note, im cheap, or poor. whatever you want to call it. so i try to buy older games to play. send me your old xbox360 games if you dont want them anymore!!

why i dont like assassin's creed? 1. too many meta-acheivements. meaning, collect 100 flags scattered across the city. ya did? good, here's a health bubble. jump from every waypoint? good, here's another health bubble. save all the citizens from crooked guards? here, another health bubble. then we go kill the target for the level.... turns out i didnt need those health bubbles at all. wtf? and when i kill someone, somehow i magically get transported to another dimension where i can have a final conversation with my victim before he dies (you know, ignoring all the other guards and stuff trying to kill me).

so yea, maybe the story is great. but the game mechanics and such.... suck balls.

Skip to my lou... er.. i mean Skip to ToC 5mans

My warlock, who i've stated before, has been leveling through northrend dungeons and have hit 78 just last night. actually, while waiting for an instance q, she decided (yes, she decided all on her own) to fly to the tuskar encampments and do their daily quest. so off she went to borean tundra to collect supplies. bam! revered! awesome. one small step closer to Pengu. oh and she picked up the recipe for an herb bag. nice! i dont know how well these sell, but i'll find out soon enough. then, she flew over to dragonblight to collect 12 pups. ding! level 78. =] i didnt even notice how close she was to 78. and now, my thoughts were, do i get the pvp garb just for kicks? or stick with some of these instance loot items that's really keeping my dps up? well i wont waste gold on silly pvp starter gear if im not going to pvp. but, what these items have is something i might need for the next two levels. Stam. Stamina increases my health. that's 10 health for every stamina. With pvp gear inherently having more Stam than instance loot, i might consider making them. but why stam?

I am thinking of skipping the 78-80 instances and just q-ing for ToC, FoS, PoS, and HoR (regular/normal mode, ofc). i've had many friends jump into ToC at least, at 78, hoping for a nice item level 219 piece to drop. actually, for an epic piece to drop in NORMAL mode instances is unbelievable. it helps those who are truly determined to skip old content get a jump start on gear. actually, its probably one of the best ways to gear up between 78 and 80. In preparation for 80, not only will my devious warlock have several purple drops from these NORMAL instances, she will also have much more emblems of triumph. as a level 78 character, she will be able to collect one EoT for each boss killed. That's three in ToC, two in FoS, three in PoS and 3 in HoR.... over, and over, and over again. Normal instances have no lockout, and so after running the daily random, i can specifically que for these instances and collect more emblems, enough to basically replace several of the purples i may have picked up along the way. In terms of time, i think ToC and Forge to be the fastest, with Pit and Halls the slower of the four. Halls due to the 10 rounds of mobs then a chase scene, and pitt due to that guantlet up the hill and through the tunnel. Ick and Krik's fight is pretty long too, as there's plenty of gimmicks in that fight. Overall, i am guessing i can quickly knock out ToC and Forge with Pitt and Halls reserved for level 79-80.

I did have a problem with this method of gearing up back several months ago when some friends of mine decided to go at 78 into ToC (this was before ICC 5mans) and had asked me to join them to help carry them through. the friend was a druid tank and his wife was a dps something or other. i was asked to come and heal them on my drood. my drood at the time was a level 80 in some really cool conquest gear and maybe one level 245 item and one crafted bracers that was, i think, also 245. or was it 232? i dont know. and then something off Koralon. i knew it was enough to fall asleep through heroics. in any case, i went to help them out, althought i thought that they were nuts because there's no way they can really use any of that gear at their level. Really, instead of going into utgarde pinicle or Oculus, or halls of lightning and culling, where some of the drops can actually make them better at 78 and 79, went to TOC and annoyed the hell out of me. Sure i could have dropped group, but it wasnt like these guys were terribad. they were just very undergeared and played it like they were geared. Especially the tank, who knew now to tank "OK" but not "good" or "great" (he certianly wasnt bad, but not extremely good), played like how he saw others play in heroic ToC while he was on his mage. actually that was me. he was taking after me as i used to tank as a bear while he would nuke from afar.

Anyway, 3 level 78, one of them a tank, a level 80... s.priest who's somewhat geared for this encounter, and me, a level 80 druid overgeared for this instance, all together in normal ToC5. the friend's wife was a dk, now that i think about it. the other 78 was a dk. yea... how awesome is that? three melees, two that offer no buffs to the group and one was tanking. so as we start, i can foresee death coming. but that's annoying is that the dk would mouth off about things. well i let him die a few times. i think he had a change of ways after dying several times on Paletress and Black knight.

in any case, healing the druid was terrible. as much as i like healing as a druid, there was very little i can do besides nourish spam him to life. it was extremely stressing with three champions up and got a lot better when we downed one of them. paletress was annoying as hell, as our dps was so craptastic that paletress' renew negated all of our efforts. quick question, of the five people there, who was able to dispell that renew? no one? maybe the shadow priest? not sure. but for sure, there was ZERO interrupts on champs and ZERO dispells on the walking nightmare thingey. i could have healed the asshat dk, but instead, figured that if he was getting killed it was because paletress thought he needed to repent more. and so i focused on the tank, who was taking constant damage. imagine healing him to full, then seeing his health bar drop to 50%, then healing him again, only to have it drop to 60%, then 30%, then healing got him to 90% only to have it drop to 50%. ugh. i had zero downtime. it wasnt even the fun kinda healing as mentioned last week in FoS. this was the... you're so undergeared if i spam heals on you... one person might live. the rest will die.

did i mention that our dps (2 dks, 1 spriest) was doing crap damage? i mean 1k dps crap damage. why? miss. miss miss miss. leve 78's trying to hit a level 80... will miss.... often. especially since no one geared or gemmed for much hit at that level. lets be honest, we dont really gear for hit at 78. if there's hit, then we take it. if there isnt, then so what? not only that, but hits and spells do not hit for as much. there will be more glancing blows and more obsorbed magic damage. why? the 2 level difference. im sure that if they were doing culling, their dps would skyrocket above 1k, 1.5k maybe even. but miss dk was at 1k dps. and mr asshat dk was at less. maybe 800 iirc. i forgot about the spriest b/c she wasnt really of much note. so apart from the squishy tank, the abismal dps and everyone taking way more damage than they should... i quiteded. totally. we couldnt get past paletress' renew. seriously. i thought to myself, why the hell are these guys here? they cant do the content, so why try? why not run the instance when you're ready? have they been so used to handouts that they think ToC, with a good healer, can be done? sure, yes. it can. but at the cost of someone's sanity. and for what? gear you cant even wear. srsly. so yes, i quit and got on my dk tank. asked the s priest if they can heal and we rocked the instance. why? bc my dk tank added about 2k dps. paletress got some renews up, but they didnt hurt as bad any more. once we defeated the dark night, black knight, whatevers, i dropped group and logged. i did not want to talk to anyone for the rest of the night. it was pretty frustrating.

so why am i talking about this now? because i want to be that 78 who thinks they can handle a level 80 instance. not just any level 80 instance, those are easy, but a normal level 80 instance that makes half of the heroics look easy. srsly, ToC on normal is like heroic HoS or HoL. so why do i want to do it? Because each boss drops an emblem and maybe some gear i cant equip... yet. so am i being hypocritical? maybe. but i look at it from my point of view. one, i dont stand in fire/poison clouds/etc. two, my dps is pretty decent already (2.5k-3k aoe, and 1.4-1.6k boss). so with already decent dps and a tank's spatial intelligence, i think i would be ok going into, at the very least, ToC, and work it like a fat chick does a pole. that made no sense, i know.

So in any case, hopefully i will be able to q for this instance in the LFD tool. if not, this whole post can be summed up as follows: it annoys me that level 78 undergeared people want to run a hard instance for gear they cant even use yet. so in the event that i am able to q for normal ToC, i will do just that and place my butt in the q. hopefully i can do decent damage and stay out of fires enough to not be a liability to all of the other 80's out there who are looking for those nice and easy purples. superior purples, i might add. superior to all the other heroic purple drops that existed before ToC appeared.


Edit: so i cant use the LFD tool to join normal ToC. i can, perhaps, look around for a Pug.... that works too. will try it out in a day or two. =/

I dont know which is worse

Upon leveling my pala, i realized that between level 1 and level 20, i've been doing three things.
1. Judgment of Light.
2. Auto Attack.
3. Hammer of Justice.

That's it. And i save my hammer for certain occassions, like when i dip below 50% health, or if there's two mobs on me. i save my hand of protection for when i need to run and reset the fight (and that's usually only due to having pulled too many mobs).

but otherwise, here is how i fight with my pala...
run in, Judge, then stand there and auto attack. wait about 8 seconds and then blast them again with a judgment of light. then, when im not bored out of my mind, i might get an extra add, that means i switch targets and either hammer him or judge. wow. the choices!

that's basically it. can you now blame arthas for leaving the paladining ways of life? i dont. he turned away to see better, more exiciting forms of combat. but this all happened before TBC, so palas didnt have divine storm, etc. they were stuck with crusader strike forever. yay! something for me to look forward to. i hear that i get to train for exorcism at 20. i've yet to visit the trainer, but yay! another attack. hope this doesnt have an 8 second cooldown. heck, even caster spells dont have a cast time that's 8 seconds. 8 horribly long seconds, at melee. how broken.


so what can be worse? take, for instance, a druid. i've leveled two and so i know it sucks the first 20 levels. why did it suck? i was casting a spell i will never use after level 20. yes, that's how broken it seems to me. but i guess they want us to know that we can be a caster or a seudo-rogue if we wanted to. dont be a bear because you'll take years to level. but really. as a druid all i did for 20 levels was cast wrath. and maybe a rejuvenation every once in a while. thats it. stand at range, wrath x3, collect. every now and then i'd get a crit, so i would only have to cast wrath... 3 times again! cos you know. that crit only got the mob down to 20 health. the rest needs, yep, another wrath to finish it off. melee wont work because my weapon skill is zero. getting hit four times will kill me, yet it will take thorns about 10 hits to actually kill the mob. useless in solo? yes.


so which is better? or worse? doing one special move every 8-10 seconds with auto-attacks in between? or spamming one spell over and over and over and over again? either way, i've put my brain on auto-pilot more times than i can remember. and its only been with these two classes.

whats more fun?
1. mage: fire fire/frost/arcane stuffs out of my hand. frost nova. run a bit. fire some more.

2. rogue: stealth, open with a move. go to 5 combo points. dont use finisher because mob is dead.

3a. warlock: send in pet. put up my two DoTs. dont spam nukes cos i'll pull aggro off the mob. wait. wait. wait. ok collect loot.
3b. warlock: curse, corruption. tab, curse, corruption. tab, curse corruption. howl of terror. fear last mob, reapply DoTs on first/second mob. lifetap. have fun looking for their dead bodies (ok, this method is best used at around level 40, so disregard 3b).

4. hunter: send in pet. pull aggro. frost trap. run away mixing in a few turn-around arcane jump shots.

5. warrior: i started off fury. it was horrible. i forgot everything there is to know about fury. omg. head hurts. prot is so much more fun.... in outlands.

6. priest: no matter what spec, at level 1-20, always, ALWAYS use holy fire. the dot from it will kill your mob by the time they get to you. as shadow, you can mindflay after casting pain. so holy fire, shadow word pain, then mindflay/smite/mindblast and your mob should be dead before they even get to you.

7. dk: there's so much to learn in the first 2 hours of play, only 10% of the people actually "get it" and contribute to a group. the minimum they will do is add the haste buff, or disease buff. or something. meh. dk's dont count in this analysis. a perfectly imperfect analysis, mind you.

i've never really cared too much about shamans. so, sorry if i left that out. im just as bad with warriors, but at least i get a good charge opener.

1-20 over the weekend.

This past thursday i had an inclination to stop doing heroic badge runs or queueing up for northrend dungeons in general. So that meant no 74 DK (who's just been irritated at the AH lately, especially the gem market), no 77 lock topping meters, no 80 resto drood, tank drood, dps DK or tank pala to collect more triumph badges. nope. i decided to go through the lower levels of eversong and ghostlands, again. i dug through my storage drive (i think its drive E) and found joana's belf guide. i didnt follow it too closely until i hit ghostlands, but it did streamline my quests. anyway, one of my bank alts is a paladin whose days consisted of opening mail, sending out mail, and putting junk on the AH. He was my misc and junk alt. as opposed to my level 1 rogue who handles stacks of cloth, ore and outland/northrend gear that i cant seem to sell off on the AH. anyway, this pala-junk-bank-alt sent most of his items to a new alt, or sold enough of his junk to free up abotu 60 bagspaces and off he went to quest.

right around level 10, i stopped and decided to level up a profession. enchanting. no worries. there's about 50 mails waiting in his mailbox full of low level JC rings and necklaces. he also found a few items on the AH to DE, all for about 1 gold each. but it was well worth the gold, as it became mats for enchanting. i got him from 1 to 125 enchanting skill all by re-enchanting a bracer about 60 times. the first 75 skill points came from disenchanting. which is nice.

after i realized that i couldnt skill up past 160 enchanting without hitting level 20, i decided to continue leveling. i enchanted my boots, cape, chest and weapon, then ran out and finished half of the quests in eversong to finally reach ghostlands. This is where i busted out the leveling guide and simply followed the questing guide. i also remembered from my first pala, that there's a resurrection quest at 10 or 12, and i'll get my blood knight tabard and spear at level 20. so keeping that in mind, those are the only things i needed to do that's different from the quest guide.

one quest that the guide had me skip, but i decided to do anyway, was to get supplies from silvermoon city. This was a delivery and delivery quest where i had to take a taxi to the city and deliver a bill of lading. then return (by taxi) with another package to tranquillien to finish the quest. me in my hurried, vision-blurred state, decided that, after dropping off the bill, training, equipping new equipment and checking the AH for possible gear, decided to hearth to tranquillien. now for the next part of my quest, i had to talk to the dragonhawk master outside of SMC. instead, i thought i could just return to tranquillien and turn in the quest there. yea... so i had to hang on to my quest for another two levels because i did not want to return to the city again. stupid quest. i know it is designed to help a beginner understand that they can use a taxi. but making them use it again to return? in a way saying, "i know you were ignorant about taking a taxi, so here it is. oh and you can use it to go back if you want, here's a quest that kinda forces you to visit the taxi masters, even if your best bet is to hearth."

other than that complaint, i basically went through levels 10-20 in a few hours of play (with a few breaks lasting several hours, thanks to the girlfriend wanting to go out, etc). but she does keep me sane and balanced, otherwise i would be playing non-stop. so upon turning in the troll's head, i dinged 20. it felt like a long ride, but it wasnt. actually, it felt a lot faster than when i last leveled in ghostlands. this was mainly because the last character that hit ghostlands was my warlock. or was it my mage? either way, it was one of my squishies that got entangled in the quest to save ghostlands from the plague. my mage is a forsaken, so you can see how well she would have fit into that scene in ghostlands, where there's a mix of forsaken and bloodelves out to save the zone from what was left over of arthas' march through silvermoon (you can play this in the Sylvanas Windrunner campaign of Warcraft 3 after Arthas kills his father. he marches north through elven lands, through the city, and all the way to the sunwell in order to rez kel'thazud and summon archimond. as i can gather here, the scourge consisted of all undead "life" including any human, elves, or whatever else. So it is not far-fetched, actually, to see that the forsaken should have some elvish traits. my undead mage should feel right at home in ghostlands, and she did. i should make a background for her which included highelf ancestry, helped sylvanas defend against the scourge and died fighting, only to be returned as scourge. then, freed from arthas only after sylvanas broke free from arthas' control. something like that. yea that would rock.

so anyway, back to my leveling. i found the guide to be an excellent way to plan my routes. in picking up the quests, i only know enough to do what i have to do now. but i dont know what i will pick up later, or even where the followups will lead me. so with the guild, i was able to pick out all the quests i needed, then run a circuit through an area and return to turn them all in. the pick some more quests and run through another circuit of the map, completing every quest i picked up, plus some that are picked up along the way. guides do rock, but if you're going through a certain area for the first time, you might want to skip the guide and actually learn the story. i leveled up two tauren druids and, although the 1-20 path was not as quick as my belf, it was a great experience learning tauren lore and culture. this is true for my orc, gnome/hunter, human, and night elf as well. tho, my alliance characters have long since been retired.

Also, i did try using the dungeon finder twice. once at level 15, where i was sent to ragefire chasm, which took about 15 minutes to complete, and wailing caverns at level 17, which took about 45 minutes to complete. i was lucky to have been with decent groups, and so we breezed through the content pretty quickly. i've never actually done any of those instances with a group. but by the pace of it, it seemed pretty easy. i guess it was tuned down several patches ago. i did remember that happening, and where the outcry was due to "shadowfang" having essentially a zero chance at dropping after that. going through wailing caverns reminded me of my human mage, who spent several days there at level 35 learning how to best use his tricks. also, he needed to enter it to fish deviate fish since someone said they were good money makers. bleh. gold per hour on those things suck. it also reminded me of the many times i've ran people through it, pulling half of the instance, then aoe-ing them down, with swipe that attacked 3 people at a time. remember that? i learned where to jump to buy me time to heal up before the acutal aoe fest. nowadays, i cant do that anymore because the mobs were given some kind of anchor point somewhere. i jump, they reset, game sucks. anyway.....

my third dungeon didnt count. i zoned into VC and Smite as just about to die. i didnt even want to roll on the sword that dropped because it felt cheap to do so having not even contributed to the kill. we wiped twice on the way up to VC. i helped the tank figure out that there's a quest for defensive stance. also showed them how to jump on the wheel of the ship to reset aggro should anything go wrong. we ended up killing the last three bosses and then zoning out.

so there you have it. a weekend filled with no emblem runs. nope. not one. it was a nice change of pace and a good way of learning how to play a paladin again. actually, since they changed the mechanics (you know that 3.0 patch thing where the fighting style changed), i am just sticking to seal of righteousness, judging, then auto-attacking. it was a little more involved before, and a little confusing at first. today's pala's are a lot easier to play.

post-20, i am thinking of getting SoComm, putting on a 1hander and a shield, and seeing if i can do multi-mob killing as ret. so far, i can handle two mobs without a shield. but when there's a third mob hitting me, i die pretty easy. i do not mind trading killing speed for survivability, but i am not sure if 1h+shield will make it annoyingly slow killing speed (to the point where killing one mob at a time is faster). hopefully, with Seal of Command, killing speed will be quicker than Seal of Righteousness. i'll experiment.

FoS: Fun times again

Last night i hopped on to my warlock for a quick emblem run. She's 77 and has amassed about 40 EoTriumps thus far. by 80, i believe she can purchase two tier gears or maybe a ring+tier gloves. that would rock. Or maybe i should buy the BIS triumph gloves/shoulders. they have haste. i think. i know i bought them for my druid who preferred haste over crit. cloth gear with haste, leather caster gear with crit. wtf?

So i ran it with a friend that i've played with for the good part of a year. he's on a mage that's level 75, and loving the ranged dps thing. i think he's found his niche. We ended up in VH, where we did decently. We both were top two dps with a DK at 775dps. yes. the dk, level 75, at 775 DPS. what the hell? how the hell can you be so bad? i was doing 775dps in underbog/slavepens at level, 63. and its only that low because of all the "miss" strikes. once i hit 64 or 65, the dps shot up to almost 1k. about 800-900 for most pulls. whats interesting is that the dps stayed the same as i progressed to utgarde keep. i think possibly because of the "miss" effect, plus the group composition (ie. no pally for kings, shaman strength of earth cancels my horn of winter, etc). but overall, the dps increase has been steady with my dk. but level 75.... with 775dps. some may say its better than the 80 dk in blues or even purples with 775 dps. and that's true. but still. 775 is at least 50% below your potential. Why? Because the night before, i ran with a level 75 DK, doing 1500dps. 1500 dps x 50% = 750dps. so yes. about 50% below his potential. We were in halls of stone and i was having trouble keeping up with his dps. Although there were some fights where i enjoyed the seed/tab/seed/tab/seed/tab = 4k dps (warlock thing). but on single or two target encounters, he would beat my dps hands down.

in any case, just wanted to share that you can do 1k dps at 75. please aim for that at least. you can get 1k dps even before that (both aoe and single target combined). i actually had a very enjoyable Nexus group where everyone was about 70-72, doing 1k minimum dps.

ok im just complaining about the lack of information blizzard gives us about maximizing our damage output in groups vs. well, doing ok enough to complete your quests. it appears that there is no explanation given at some points. for instance, for dks, someone should say that icy touch and plague strikes do very little damage. actually, make it do ZERO damage. but they should point out the fact that IT/PS are only there to provide a debuff (also a DoT debuff) and that the major players in our arsenal of attacks are Obliterate for frost dks, Scourge strike for unholy dks, and heartstrike for blood dks. this is the same for our runic dumps too. i think. haha. but what's annoying is that most dks never really stop to read their tooltips and say, if my tooltip says i get more damage for every disease up (paraphrased), then maybe i should keep my diseases up, and then do those specials. but no. they start with icy touch and love it. why? because they do not evolve through the whole beginning zone from a lowly dk who's limited and under the lich king's control, to a better geared (with talent points) dk that's participating in the 300 event.

listen, dk's, you've been duped. bliz gave you a char at 55 and expected you to understand that, although you're using icy touch and plague strike for most of the intro zone, you will not be using it as your main damage attack... ever again. then why didnt we get scourgestrike in the beginning? desing flaws. geez. its talented and at 55, you dont have enough talent points until you go through most of the story.

dorknights, deathnoobs, deathtards, etc. these are the names we receive because at level 58, icy touch and plague strike rocks. and also, deathgrip is awesome fun and death and decay can kill your mobs while you stand there to make a sandwich. add to that some plate armor and you get a class that's stupid-proof until northrend. but seriously, how the hell do you do 775 dps at level 75?? i want to take my resto druid and drop him five levels, and see if i can out dps this guy.

so ok... with that topic out of my system, let me talk about what i really wanted to talk about. FoS. yes, the title of the blog. omg i almost forgot.

So my mage friend decided i should check out his tanking gear on his dk. i did and it looked fine. although he needed about 40 more defense to be crit immune, his gear was mainly a mix of solid tanking gear mixed with his dps gear in slots where he hasnt been able to get replacements (shoulders, chest, trinkets, weapon). So i made him some elixirs of defense and asked him to q for NORMAL FoS. its not only because of his +def shortfall, but also he needed some tanking experience. FoS would have been a great place to learn. especially trying to tank four casters who will not step into your DnD, or deal with that blinking phantom that keeps blinking behind the healer. overall, it would have been tank and spank with a bit of running. which, is a great experience for tanks.

Now, we q'ed and didnt get an instant reply. wow, i thought, a tank and healer q-ing and no instaqueue? porque? turns out, my mage-now-dk friend has queue'd as dps. not only that, he signed us up for HEROIC FoS. how annoying. but its fine. once i figured it out, i wispered him to tell him to go dps. which he did. then we proceeded to rock the instance. actually we had a very new 80 mage who was losing 50%-80% of his health on random/aoe damage. it was really fun keeping him up tho. the shaman in our group was doing about 4.5k dps, and my dk friend (who's been in raids maybe twice, so all of his gear was emblem gear) was doing about 3.4k dps. i did zero dps. and the warrior tank was doing about 2k dps.

we were rolling along just fine with aoe and random damage going on everywhere. i always wondered how the hell other healers can do this instance. its like... crazy. but i did it. one tree, heal. and heal i did. it was amazingly fun. much more fun than heroic gundrak? or heroic anything else. even heroic ToC sucked to healing this. i had to use everything.

First, i started off with rejuv (which most druids do, i would assume) on the tank and pretty much all the melee, which is the shaman and dk. for some reason the mage was taking a lot of damage so i had to rejuv him as well. then i'd nourish the hell out of everyone. the first pull was easy. but the second pull, with five mobs, was where the fun began. mage's health dropped like a rock, tank's health steadily spiked down (steadily spiked? oxymoron, no?) dk took major damage at times, and so did the shaman. so after keeping up rejuv's, nourishing as needed, swiftmending as needed, and reapplying wildgrowth, all without stopping to breath, i realized that maybe my mana bar was depleting. sure enough, i was at 50% at the end of that fight. +endless mana pot and we're off to the next group. regen kicked in and i was at 80% for the next pull. i innervated myself about three times. once before jamesbrown. errr. whats his name again? once during that fight, and once on trash after that boss fight. braunjams dropped something useless for us all, which everyone greeded.

i used a NS+HT once when everyone was taking major damage and i had to get the tank up asap. i used swiftmend quite often along with wildgrowth. what i need to practice on is to, especially on the tank, apply regrowth before swiftmend so that the swiftmend healing comes from my rejuvenate instead of regrowth. what? yea confusing. also i need to prioritize more hots on the tank. although adding a lifebloom would add even more cooldowns to watch, i kind if want to just add one stack of lifebloom sometimes as a set-and-forget spell. just in case. i dont know how much less mana efficient that would be compared to a fully stacked LB, but at least i'll be getting more healing in. besides, if i end up with 40% mana at the end of the fight, then of course i know i will have enough mana to waste for just a little more healing. so mana cost shouldnt matter in this instance.

we ran into the ghosts right before the devourer of souls and i saw my first purple bar. OMG what is this? dispell!! so that i did. and omg, the tank said, "heals, good job with the dispells." wait what? isnt that what im supposed to be doing anyway? so i felt good about that. although i was really really really enjoying the healing. im not bored-ass-heals anymore!! screw daily randoms. i just want to pick FoS, PoS, and HoR from now on! ok back to the instance at hand... we ran into the devourer's room and started the fun. people were taking crazy damage everywhere until mr. devourer dropped well of souls. that gave me a bit of a break. then he did that crazy sonic mouth blast of uber bad breath. everyone got out of the way and we ended up beating him shortly after that. crap i didnt want dropped and we all said good group and left.

what i love about this instance, or at least this run in particular as a tree healer: crazy aoe. lots of random damage. low health mage, two melee dps who probably took more damage than they should, and a tank that kept aggro for the most part. i also liked that i had to drink some pots and innervated myself several times. i like the fun that this gives me. its sooo much better than running heroics with t9. my tree heals is in, max, 245 gear with a bunch of 232 gear. some 219's maybe. i dont know. but i felt "appropriate" when healing that instance. healing the older heroics felt like crap. they're boring and repetitive rejuv fests with the occassional nourish.

Making gold on a low pop server

This is not a guide on how to make gold on a low pop server. There are plenty of other blogs out there, as well as forums and guides, that will help you with this endeavor.

I find myself mistified, somewhat disallusioned, that my auctions on my new, low pop server have ended without sales. srsly, when i post gem sales on my medium pop server, i usually sell at least half of them during prime time, then the other half gets relisted (due to undercutters) before going to bed to sell to the overnight market, and i end up with a good amount of gold (even with late night undercutters, or early morning undercutters jumping in). but in my low pop server, i find that there is very little demand for gems, and perhaps that is the reason for the low prices of some of these gems.

lets take an example. titanium ore. this goes for about 275-300 gold a stack on my medium pop server. in my low pop server, they are at 200-250 gold. that's not bad considering gem prices are lower to match supply prices. Basically, the price for ore is set by the demand for gems primarily, and to a lesser degree, metal bars for crafting engineering and bs products.

Since demand on my low pop server is low, prices are low-"er". i find myself in competition with several other gem cutters, which makes supply, or at least, availabily, high. low demand and high supply equals low sales. So what will sell well in a low pop environment? There have been some sales, however. I will not lie. some gems do sell. of the initial, say, 500g i've spent on saronite ore, i made about 500g in return. about 300-350g was on cut gems, and the rest were on selling raw chalcedonys, bloodstones, sun crystals, etc. i dont have accurate figures.

One thing i do notice is that low level crafting mats do sell well. especially for those leveling professions. also, i do see leveling byproducts on the market often. if you go to any of the resource sites with leveling guides, and just check out, say, jewelcrafting or blacksmithing, or leatherworking or whatnot, just make a list of some of the items they suggest you make in order to level your profession. now, go to the AH and search for it. Take, for instance, Pendant of the Agate Shield. Im not going to link it. you can wowhead/alak/thobott it yourself. but when i searched it the other night, i saw 20. yes, someone made 20 to level up JC. propbably for 15 skill points. then moved on. there's a bunch of these out there. people are just tossing these up for half the price of mats, just to get rid of it. i think i'll level a new character and learn enchanting. this may be a prime server to level enchanting. but then again, i havent researched this with medium pop or high pop servers either. so i dont know. i just see the opportunity is there.

What did sell for me? Copper at 15g/stack. Tin at 20g/stack, Iron at 20g/stack. Mithril, depending on time of the week (there's some idiot with 100 million stacks of it posting on certain days) it can go for as low as 30g/stack to as high as 45g/stack. Thorium is a mystery to me. It went for 13g/st on one day (which i should have snatched 20 stacks up) and 35g/st another day. i guess not too many people got the memo that thorium grows like weeds in un-goro crater. but this leads me to think that if someone, or maybe two or three people, are leveling mining at the same time, and happen to be selling their freshly-gathered thorium ores, that the market will drop really fast. there is, after all, less people leveling BS, JC or Eng. so the ores will stay in the AH just a tad longer, long enough for the other guy, who's been collecting thorium in EPL, to drop his cache in the AH at a lower price.

But in a low pop server, what's to do at end levels? for a few, they'd level alts. what attracts new players? a server that's low in population or high? for many people, a low pop server will be less overwhelming and offer more chances to cross paths with people they've met. so with this ASSUMPTION in mind, i think that the most money will be made in the leveling area of progression, and not the end game.

I say this only with the experince of a miner. for cloth, leather, or even fish, it may not apply. but i've found that ore prices, per stack, are ranked as follows:
Titanium
Adamantite/Khorium
Mithril
Cobalt/Fel Iron/Thorium (apart from that strange night where they were going for cheap)
Tin/Iron
Copper/Saronite
Eternium
Dark Iron
Lesser Bloodstone (lol)

So, a low level beginner can pick up mining and earn as much gold as a 77 running around through StormPeaks mining. imagine that. on my server Adamantite is going for 40-50g. i've made about 2k gold just mining in nagrand while waiting for queues (yes, my dk is q-ing as dps) and earning maghar rep. i have a talbuk. =] what's sad is that when i was ready to hit northrend, i stayed in nagrand. but i really didnt care. i just wanted to mine on my slowflyer and finish up maghar rep. so that's what i did until level 70. By the time i was ready (last friday), i went and bought most of the mats needed to level JC. i also had to run around and mine mithril since no one was selling mithril on that day (odd how that one guy who was selling a million stacks did not relist that day, but decidedly undercut me a few days prior). also, i had about 5 stacks of adamantite that i had in my bags, so i bought another 5 stacks and prospected most. i did have to make some bars, turn the dust into mercurial, and make a few rings and chains. I started that day with a little over 3k gold. i ended up with about 1.5k gold. it wasnt that hard to level JC. there are some overpriced items, like moss agate, and small lustrous pearls, but other than that, the prices for mats were decent.

What i did find out:
- Gems from prospected thorium can make a profit, if you buy thorium at a good price. Blue sapphires, star rubies and the yellow one (i forget the name, i'll edit it later) are worthless. but huge emeralds, large opals, and something else, i forget. i'll look it up, but those gems are worth 10g-15g each. so depending on what i am prospecting, i can actually make some gold on my investment.
- gems from outland are, for the most part, worthless, though you might be able to sell your uncut leftovers to those who will not be prospecting ore. but i do like to prospect adamantite for the the dust. the cut gems do not sell well. try to sell the uncut golden dreanites for more tho, as those are the only ones i can think of that sell well. they are pricey due to its demand to make normal flying carpets.
- skip the outland blue gem cuts (350-375). they're useless. skip straight to northred green cuts at 350.
- be friendly with lower city. there's one green cut from the quartermaster that will get you to 350.

that's all i can think of right now. in any case, JC didnt cost me as much as i thought, tho i really stopped at 420 to pick up the dailies and the rare cuts from dalaran. the rest will come in time as i gain more recipes. i still have 8 more levels to... level. so im not even in a hurry to get to 450. those skill levels will come in time.

overall, JC is making me some gold at my level, and has left me with nothing to do between instance queues but quest. i dont really run around mining and killing ogres for their beads any more. yay for that. onwards to gaining rep! Kaluakk for the chest piece and design. then off to either the wolvars or oracles. then.... heroics design drops and faction rep bought designs. i'll have most of the cuts soon enough.

DPS to Tank... in just 5 wipes!

I am currently leveling a DK through northrend. He is an Orc DK, with bright blue eyes and teeth that will make your skin crawl. i love the look of an Orc, especially one of the plate wearing variety. especially with shoulders and a big weapon, these things look monsterious. i've been playing him for about two weeks now since one of my wow friends decided to switch back to her old server (gamer boys drama, what else?) and tried to level as blood dps. it was a snorefest at best. i did find myself tanking a bit, but was rather keen on mining and getting enough funds to start my JC profession. This is the toon that will eventually amass 100k gold for god knows why.

In any case, i've found myself leveling through outlands pretty quickly, mainly through thrallmar quests, then garadar quests, all while waiting on the dungeon q to dps at my heart's content. what i find pretty amazing is that, for my second time around, DK dps rocks. it probably did before as well, but now, as i've already leveled a DK to 80 (leveled unholy, tanked in unholy and dps in frost), i find it so much easier to play even with terribad groups. The reason is that i know a lot of my abilities and what i can and cannot do. also, i know just when to switch to frost presence and emergency tank just in case the tank drops, or adds come. I know how long it takes for my DnD, Howling Blast and death grip to reset (like i have an internal clock ticking for each spell). Heck, i even know when my diseases will drop. so when wandering adds enter a fight and make a beeline for the healer, i know if i can DnD around the healer, or deathgrip the mob, or if i need to run to them and PS/IT them off the healer.

Why doesnt the tank do this? we're all learning. perhaps i stole the opportunity for the tank to actually intercept or dark command or feral charge - bear, or hand of reckoning the fools. but im sorry. im innately a tank in dps garb. well was. upon hitting 70, i donned the cobalt armor set and have seen every little decrease in DPS. in fact, due to the high strength stats the set offers, it has offset some of the wouldbe loss of dps that was inherent in my outland gear. i dont know what they were, dont ask. but i do know they had crit, hit, agi, and some others. but now, its been replaced with strength and stam and a little defense for good measure. i still top dps meters at 70, in nexus or utgarde keep with an overall dps of about 1k. at 72, it hasnt gained much steam tho. my dps remains pretty unspectacular as other classes are slowly breaking the 1k dps mark, overall, espeically the locks with seed of corruption (oh how i love that spell) and the mages with flamestrike+blizzard. there has only been one pally who's given me a run for my money. no now im innately a tank, in tanking garb, doing crap dps. but still liking dps and still wearing tanking gear just in case the tank drops group due to whatevers.

there have been sevearl occassions where this has happened. i dont know tho, im usually fine with a bad tank since i know everyone needs to learn somewhere and somehow, and everyone else needs to experience dungeoning with them (yes, i said dungeoning, its a very common thing to do) in order to remember that there are people still learning the game.

in any case, the other night, i came across a 0/4 boss nexus group that started off fine. i zoned in right before we pulled the alliance commander and immediately /focus'ed my tank. then went at it. we marched our way up the incline hallway to reach the mage boss. the one that splits into three aspects. i've killed her in normal and heroic about 50 times already and still do not remember her name. the sadness. but anyway, as it happens, we pull the groups and kill the mages one by one. it was fine. i get silenced a few times, and sheeped a few times. i tought it was just me, but others were getting the same treatment. during one pull i couldnt do a thing for what felt like forever, but in reality it was only 12 seconds, since i was silenced twice in a row. then i finally pulled out my DnD and went dps crazy. the boss was taken down with zero difficulty. the healer did a fine job but one person did die right before the boss dropped.

no big deal. we move on and leave the boss' room. then the tank decides to pull the groups to the right of us. you know, those mobs everyone else ignores? yea those. well we did fine for the first, i dont know, 15 seconds. then the magehunter entered the picture. ok two demon hounds and a caster. great. now dont forget this caster (or was it the hounds?) can iceblock the tank and destroy the group, but fortunate, he didnt for this pull. the mages werent so friendly. they sheeped the healer... twice. and we die.

was it all bad luck? no. it was also bad pull planning by the tank. but we're a group so we live or sink together. or whatever that term is. mi casa su casa. my weed your weed. something like that. in any case, i ran back. /danced. waited. then after a minute, the tank decides to inspect the healer. good god. no resto gear? actually i dont know who he was inspecting. there were two shamans. not sure if he was inspecting the right one. then said, "god healer has no healing gear, im out" or something to that extent. so he dropped group. i inspected said healer and he looked fine. plus, i would have typed "skill>gear, and we all survived the last boss fight right?" the healer had outland gear. so what? that works just fine. its nexus, after all.

new tank enters. does a few pulls. goes in the wrong direction, but maintains aggro for the most part. tho there were times where my screen did glow red, so i immediately switched targets. if the mob was about dead, i keep dpsing until they die and risk the one or two blows to me. i can live with that. what happens is that we almost completely clear out the mobs around amolus (the rift monster). so after i politely said, "up the ramp dude" we finally make it up to the platform before facing amolus. he tanks. i dps. dps dps. healer heals. we drop the rift monster and then tank d/c's. yes. DC. didnt even drop group so we had to waste a /kick on him. if he's gonna be a jerk and leave after he gets his quest done, just leave. be the jerk. dont hide behind some gimmicky trick and pretend you're D/C'ed. dooopid trick. doesnt fool anyone. or maybe i've just grown cynical about it. who knows. anyway.

one dps decide to drop group as well. so then there were three. me dps, shaman dps and shaman healer. we wait and i said i would tank. they said they dont care. wow. really? dps who said they will tank and you guys dont care? thats awesome! let me get on my warlock and tank this ish. no really. i dont think they really knew what chaos would have been unleash if i thought like very many others (ret pally tanks, or fury warrior tanks, or dps geared dk tanks... ) but luckily for them, i had tanking gear on. yea stupid. i know. but, well i did switch out my axe.

so i we instantly got 2 dps. ran through to the rock boss with no problems. the new pally thought she'd help me a little by pulling groups for me. i thought it would be funny to let her tank them, but instead, decided to just allow her to pull mobs for me. those impatient little pricks i tell ya. anyway, so we end up almost at keristrasz when someone said that i was doing much better than the other two tanks. much better, huh? i dont know. i felt maybe i should q as a tank from now on, since, after all, im a faker when it comes to being dps anyway. why not just come out there and tank? why hide behind the guise of a dps? although in tanking gear, my dps is keeping up with everyone else. so why even be dps when half the time i itch, yes i itch to tank. maybe it is because i hate looking at some tanks tank. maybe it just causes aneurisms every minute, on the minute, to watch these guys tank. but i know many of them are learning and many of them are just trying to avoid the dps q times (responsibly, i might add).

and then there's those tanks that are awesome. the ones that seem like they have everything under control. the ones that just came out of sunwell and decided to buy wrath finally. those tanks are a pleasure to dps for. i've come across two outstanding ones and a handful of good ones. i love dpsing for them because i can see what they're doing. i can check recount and see what they're using. i can see if they're losing threat, if they do or not. i can see their kill priority, their positioning, their tricks. all of these things help me to evaluate my own tanking. maybe that's why i run as dps.... in tank gear... with a tank spec. yes. grrr. i am spec'ed for tanking. frost tanking.

so with all that said, my reflection today is this. i am a tank at heart, and would love to see how other tanks perform. that is the reason i dps. that is the reason i melee dps. although there are many times where i would just want to turn frost presence on and tell the tank to take a backseat, i dont, because it takes away from their learning experience. i was once a beginner. i needed to learn to tank. it was tough the first few times. but after a while, it became me. i started off as a druid. switch to DK. then went to paladin tanking. my warrior is still level 65. my 2nd dk is now 72. i feel like there's a lot more to learn about tanking. its just refreshing when im lucky enough to group with a good tank and see him or her work their magic. its awesome. its something to look forward to. its one of those moments where i would imagine that the tank i think rocks could be me, or that will be me, cos that's some awesome tanking. and i let them know it.

Treeform on cooldown...

I really do not like this idea. Actually, I hate it. Just saying. Controversial? Sure. Hated? Yes.


I'd rather have an on-cool-down, Super-Living-Forest Form where 20-40 little trees sprout up out of the ground to give me extra healing powers. That would rock. Or... give me Super-Arcane-Infused-Nature-Tree Form. Let it turn me into a mini version of those beautiful crystalline trees you find in Crystalsong Forest. Give it a 20 second duration with a 3 minute cooldown. Superfy my healing powers with some arcane energies while activated. When its over, bring me back to my normal tree form. These two ideas are insanely better than the planned tree form on cooldown.

Edit:
I wrote the above early this morning before settling into my coffee-induced state of auto-pilotness. Let me explain a little about why i really do not like the change, instead of just looking like a QQ with some suggestions to "improve" TOL form. I totally enjoy TOL form even with its many limitations (bad graphics, bad look overall, inability to cast spells from other schools in TOL and, i think, movement limitations). Hell, even my sit/eat animation sucks. But what's the deal with TOL that i do like? It's DIFFERENT. yes folks, different.

One of the major gripes about TOL is that we cannot cast certain spells in that form. One spell i do like to see in TOL is cyclone. Especially in pvp, switching to caster form just to cast a cyclone can result in one of two outcomes: pulling off a CC, or dying from a one-hit, non-crit auto attack. Entangling roots? as a tree? should be the most natural thing for a tree since they have, you know, roots. but for now, the only way i can pull that spell off is when they hit me (melee, i think) first.

I personally do not care if i cant see my tier gear. I really only see shoulderpads anyway. who cares? (please be reminded that you're reading my opinion) That point is moot.

My next concern is survivability in general. So no tree of life form = less armor. what does that really mean? Almost nothing really. Does it matter if we're wearing leather armor and a priest can have their robes plus PW:S? or a shaman with mail armor? or a pally with his plate gear? If a boss decides to pound on us, we're dead anyway. but what about 5-mans? Get aggro? toss in PW:S and run to tank asap. add a psychic scream there for good measure (if safe). shaman? drop grounding totems, run to tank. pala? lol tank the adds?

as a druid with no TOL:
cyclone takes a sec = dead.
entangling roots take a sec = dead.
nature's grasp requiers 1 hit, so get hit, enemy gets entangle, pray to god you can take another 2 hits before you move completely out of their range = dead.
teleport to moonglade = dead. (joke, really).
some will say, bearform man! i say, well how the hell do i heal in bearform, man?
this goes for the next idea also: NS+HT... on myself, then Swiftmend. well, i'd rather be able to take a hit while healing someone else. NS+HT will heal me, but will keep me occupied enough to forget about the others who should have hots on them anyway. But i'd have used two somewhat emergency spells just on myself.

As you can see, my mind is a bit jumbled with thoughts of what this change can mean to my gameplay as well as in comparison to other healers. but other than that, i find that i lose out on the most important thing about being a druid healer. they trees. yes. they are.

I dont want to be a priest with more armor and no shield. if i wanted to heal in people form, i'd roll a priest, shaman, or pala. if i wanted to dps while bored, i'd drop TOL and do so. or i'd roll a priest, shaman, or pala. i WANT to be different. i want a 100% uptime TOL, i want incredible HOTs instead of an energy shield, i want my armor, in TOL to be 400% of normal, or whatever the multiplier is, and have to decide if its safe to switch out to do something else, and i'd like to be able to do the twist. I do not want to be a resto druid if all it will mean in the future is that we'll be like everyone else. what's the point of that?

Anyway, nothing is really final and they may actually make non-tol form actually cool. we'll see.

Welcome

I just wanted to welcome everyone to this blog. This blog will serve as a way to ramble, rant, praise, complain, discuss, theorize and ruminate about WoW, tree healing and everything else I have.

A little bit about me in relation to WoW: I am pretty much addicted to WoW and enjoy leveling alts, professions and learning to play the various classes and specializations of this game. I have several alts, including two 80 Druids, both Horde, 1 Feral tank and another Dual Spec'ed for Healing 5-mans and PvP, one 80 Death Knight that's Frost DPS and Unholy tank spec'ed, one 80 Prot Paladin and several other toons level 60 and up. These toons include a 60 Rogue, a 65 Prot warrior, leveling as prot, a 66 Frost mage, a 72 Disc Priest leveling through BG's (and are given so many BoA honor tokens to give me 250k honor come level 80) and a 77 Affliction warlock who is loving how she tops the dps meters with just one spell. These are my horde characters on one server. I also have a DK in the making (level 71 as of writing) leveling on another server, whose only goal is to make 100k gold before Cata. He's slowly progressing with mining, and now he's up there with JC. once he becomes self-sufficient w/o a gathering profession, i may switch him to JC/Inscription. This toon has several other banking/storage toons with him. I also have several Alliance characters which i may come back to one day. Finnaly, i have one toon i may make a story for. further details to come.

Finally, i will be posting without much punctuation, and probably with bad grammar and misspellings. please forgive the various vices and stick to the content if you're going to complain. thanks.

Anyway, enjoy this blog. will love to keep people updated even though it might just be useless news about something i dont like (aka QQ). So thanks for coming by.