These past two weeks have been a little boring for me.
I get home from work around 7pm pacific and log on to my JC'ers. yes, it's plural. grab the successful sales and relist the gems i didnt sell. i sell four gems at a time, but since i have most of the cuts, my acutions usually end up being about 100 total. (i get annoyed when a new seller decides to put 50 fractured amberjewels up, only to be undercut in 3 minutes by someone else. its annoying yet funny. they dont add anything to the market besides dropping prices. people are so impatient these days.) anyway, back to my topic. i then will not log on to any of my 85s to see if anyone will do the harder dungeons with me. instead, i log on to my worgen hunter alt (created two weeks ago) or my goblin shaman alt (created a month ago) to level up. and i have to tell you, its pretty boring. its soooo boring i dont know what to tell you. actually i do. here.
low level grinding goes like this: getting a level appropriate quest, which leads me to level appropriate mobs and quest objectives, which leads to boredom. it was this way before but it seems really bad now. on my hunter, i've only died once. the battle starts off with a steady shot, followed by a concussive shot and then some arcane shots. serpent sting doesnt even last that long so i skip it. then, by the time i am halfway done with a zone, my five levels higher, ready for another zone or two. its pretty bad. its pretty dull. there's no challege. the only challege i have is to figure out where my new spells will go on my action bar. seriously. that's it.
I also queue for dungeons hoping that it will give me some challenge. However, it only exacerbates the problem by giving me a whole experience bar's worth of experience in ONE dungeon. but even then, its a little more difficult. for one, there's random people of random experience trying to work together. sometimes it gels well. sometimes its a total disaster. most of the time we work through it. i'd say 25% disaster, 25% awesome groups and 50% not optimal. the not optimal groups will have a combination of undergeared tank, healer with no water, mage that does half the usual damage/dps, afk'ers, people getting lost, at least a couple of wipes, etc. you get the picture. there's room for improvement, it its not a total disaster. so 75% of the time i'm having a decent time. but it's still boring.
after getting my rotations together (yes, hunters still use a rotation even though we have "priorities".) rotations only comes out a certain way because i am trying to do two things. 1) regen focus. 2) maintain haste buff. the remainder just comes in between. its easy. its pretty boring. its still somewhat fun to learn, and fun to adapt to the situation. but honestly, the challenge isnt really the dungeon or the bosskill. the challenge is really dealing with the various groups i've been in.
that's the real challege. it tests my patience and challenges me to use my defensive cooldowns. that's the only fun times i get. so far, i have disengage and fiegndeath with wingclip and concussive shot to keep the guys away. i'll get a few more abilities soon. i need to start using my traps more. but yes, rotation is boring. maybe that's the way it was designed. by now i have my rotations down and i dont really need to think about it. i still need to keep my focus and buffs up. but that isnt hard to do at all.
I was talking to a guildie yesterday who told me that hunter dps was boring to him. he has one at high levels but it's still very boring. maybe i was just "new" to this hunter thing and it kept me going for a while. i still think its fun to be a hunter but totally boring to go through content, again and again with zero challenge. maybe that's the issue. we're bored. we go through too much easy content. i went through scholomance yesterday with my girlfriend. we were both dps. we had a decent tank and healer combo and we carried the last dps. it was new to go through the whole experience with a tank that actually line-of-sights mobs to avoid grabbing the whole room. it's very refreshing to see the tank talk in chat that certaim mobs are immune to this or that. wow. challenge! sort of. we still facerolled everything. boring.
My guildie also said something that i thought should never be the case. he auto-shoots most of the fights and still wins. i was not going to try that in the groups i was in, mainly because i figured trying to be as good as my gf in dps requires more than auto-shots. but overall, the feel is the same. i can go through the entire dungeon doing auto-shots and still come out OK. i mean the mage we carried through the dungeon with 1/2 the dps me and my gf were doing was doing OK. i mean i could have just dropped my dps to almost nothing too and still benefit the same. but then, i'll be even more bored.
and i am trying. i really am. i am trying to keep sane but i have no desire to go through another night of mindless dps. i have no desire to sit there for four hours thinking how maybe i should add a new shot into my boring rotation. heck, i might as well level using the target dummies. because that's how it feels right now.
So here's the story. i made a new shaman to learn to dps as enhancement. im learning the spells and stuff and its going well. i am just dreading the next 60 levels because it will simply be the same thing over and over again. the only challege will be trying to work with bad groups. the shaman is also a guild leader in a guild that i was hoping to form and make better. but my girlfriend had different plans. that's OK i guess. but she went ahead and made some alliance characters. now there's a problem. we cant play together if that's the case. and to top that, its on a different realm. so what's the point of playing an MMO of we cant play together? right. so i just put the guild project on hold so she can level her toons. i guess. i dont know why i am even playing alliance. so i picked the best looking alliance character (they're all dumb looking, really they are.) and ended up rolling a worgen. female. the males are dumb looking. as an afterthought, i guess i could have rolled a dwarf, but i figured that's too close to the true american human form it makes playing a dwarf a little creepy.
so i made a worgen hunter to play with my gf over on Ravenholdt US. i figured why the hell not. it's new. its not as dumb looking (excluding the casting animation), and its got that "horde" feel. you know that feeling where you're the underdog, the outcast, the refugees? well that's basically the horde. the more refined, civilized and cultured peoples with broomsticks in their asses? that's the alliance. so with that reasoning, i picked a worgen. they're outcasts, misunderstood and fighting for survival as a people and as a species, i guess. they're made refugees after the whole ordeal with the forsaken, and that's when it began to become boring... because somehow we become night elves and played along helping them in darkshore, ashenvale and stonetalon. yea. pretty epic. /sarcasm.
So back to the grind i go. uninteresting lore. uninteresting quests. uninteresting everything. doing the worgen starting quests was great. levels 1-14 done. it was fun. now i have to go through a new world of dullness because someone put the difficulty on too low. honestly, i enjoy a good challenge. i really like working hard to figure out a dungeon or a boss. i get way more satisfaction from spending time learning to beat a boss with a group i am given than dinging four times in one night. dinging four times might be great, but i did almost nothing to get it (in all honesty, leveling in and of itself is an illusion of progressing, almost to the point of delusion in WoW). killing a boss that wiped the group five times? that feels like an accomplishment. maybe i need a break from leveling. it's just THAT dull. or maybe i need to find a new game.
Showing posts with label leveling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label leveling. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
The Rogue Experiment
I have a rogue. His name is Bruno (post character re-customization). He's been leveling on and off for the past several years. Although i've never really taken any sustained interest in playing a rogue, i find that since i've leveled up through Northrend and now in Cata stages, i've begun to actually like my rogue more and more.
Perhaps the problem, in the beginning, is that i had a druid who leveled as Feral and about 80% of the rogue's major attacks and fight mechanics are copied directly on to the feral druid "cat" form style of play. From openers to finishing moves, to even combo point makers, they all seem so very similar. For example, Hemmorage = mangle, backstab = ravage, sinister strike = claw, maim = kidney shot, etc. After levels and levels of playing a rogue, it felt almost the same as leveling a feral druid. And i've told myself many times that i would probably never want to level a feral druid again.
Maybe the problem wasnt just the similarities these two classes/specs have, but also the differences make playing a rogue seem a little limiting to me. For one, as a druid i can simply switch into bear form and tank should a pull go bad. As a rogue, my only option is really to blind one, then switch back. When the blind wears off, its time to evasion aura. If things go really bad, i can vanish and start over. Now after the fight, my druid will heal, stealth and move on to the next mob almost seamlessly. With the rogue, i'll sit there eating or waiting for my health to replenish. Simple differences like that does make a difference when deciding what's more "fun" to play. Back then, i was unhappy with the way rogues cannot heal themselves apart from bandages and how they always have to remember to coat their daggers with poisons. Also the complexity of weapon choices with different specs also turned me off a little regarding this class. With a feral druid, pretty much any weapon is good, with the added bonus that you will never have to learn that weapon skill. of course, weapon skill is now built into your level and makes it easier to switch between swords, maces and daggers for rogues.
Now i dont want to make this post about Feral Druid Cats vs. Rogues of all Specs, but a background needs to be included somewhere. When Wrath of the Lich King hit, i went from feral dps to feral bear tank and never looked back at feral dps. in fact, i tried dpsing once or twice again and never enjoyed it. So there you have it. For the longest time, i have always felt that i am playing the rogue class with some limitations and would be better off playing feral dps. then, since i've already played feral dps, i never really cared to level up a melee dps class that relied on energy again. Well now im sitting here writing about energy-bassed rogue dps.
Actual Rogue-related Stuff
In any case, it has been an experience trying to get used to the rogue class. I leveled several months ago from 60-70 and found that Subtlety was quite simple and boring. I had to attack from behind constantly and realized that 50% of my damage comes from the first 5 seconds of play. The remaining damage just trickles resulting in a DPS in the first 5 seconds of 5k, then after a 15-20 second fight, it goes down to less than 1k. Sad huh? that's what i thought. I was a little dismayed but i figued i could work this to my own advantage. In outland dungeon fights where im stacked with delicate bloodstones, fights last 10 seconds max. and even boss fights dont last too long either. I was satisfied with 1k dps at level 65 anyway since most dps classes barely get to break the 1k
Enter northrend and things changed a little. Mobs have more health so fights last a little longer. Thats good and bad. Although it does favor the rogue in terms of dps in longer fights, it doesnt favor a subtlety rogue, who's usually great at opening damage but fails at sustained damage in the long run. So after several dungeons between 69 and 72, i was resigned to doing lowest dps in all dungeon fights. This did lead to days of non-play on my rogue and eventually, loss of play completely.
Then one day, my gf decides to level up a death knight and i leveled with her when she hit 70. The experience was relatively the same so i decided to switch specs and grab different weapons. Although i knew that Sub wasnt ideal for dungeon play, i really liked the idea of shadowstep. Keeping hemmorage up to buff rupture was simply familiar to me when i was playing a feral druid. Playing combat simplified things a little. one, i had no "buff" to maintain besides slice and dice, and two, i never really had to stealth. =D
As a combat rogue, my main concern was to activate slice and dice, rupture if the fight will be long, otherwise, eviscerate. my combo maker is sinister strike, which can be used from any direction (further simplification). Now there are a few items that are tossed into this spec that acually makes it different from Sub. I have two cooldowns to play with and one toggle-able ability that allows me to cleave. And those are the difference. But those differences make leveling a rogue so awesome this time around.
Bruno is now level 82 and working on leveling through vashjir. He basically sat in LFD queue for the first level and a half since hitting level 80.
Perhaps the problem, in the beginning, is that i had a druid who leveled as Feral and about 80% of the rogue's major attacks and fight mechanics are copied directly on to the feral druid "cat" form style of play. From openers to finishing moves, to even combo point makers, they all seem so very similar. For example, Hemmorage = mangle, backstab = ravage, sinister strike = claw, maim = kidney shot, etc. After levels and levels of playing a rogue, it felt almost the same as leveling a feral druid. And i've told myself many times that i would probably never want to level a feral druid again.
Maybe the problem wasnt just the similarities these two classes/specs have, but also the differences make playing a rogue seem a little limiting to me. For one, as a druid i can simply switch into bear form and tank should a pull go bad. As a rogue, my only option is really to blind one, then switch back. When the blind wears off, its time to evasion aura. If things go really bad, i can vanish and start over. Now after the fight, my druid will heal, stealth and move on to the next mob almost seamlessly. With the rogue, i'll sit there eating or waiting for my health to replenish. Simple differences like that does make a difference when deciding what's more "fun" to play. Back then, i was unhappy with the way rogues cannot heal themselves apart from bandages and how they always have to remember to coat their daggers with poisons. Also the complexity of weapon choices with different specs also turned me off a little regarding this class. With a feral druid, pretty much any weapon is good, with the added bonus that you will never have to learn that weapon skill. of course, weapon skill is now built into your level and makes it easier to switch between swords, maces and daggers for rogues.
Now i dont want to make this post about Feral Druid Cats vs. Rogues of all Specs, but a background needs to be included somewhere. When Wrath of the Lich King hit, i went from feral dps to feral bear tank and never looked back at feral dps. in fact, i tried dpsing once or twice again and never enjoyed it. So there you have it. For the longest time, i have always felt that i am playing the rogue class with some limitations and would be better off playing feral dps. then, since i've already played feral dps, i never really cared to level up a melee dps class that relied on energy again. Well now im sitting here writing about energy-bassed rogue dps.
Actual Rogue-related Stuff
In any case, it has been an experience trying to get used to the rogue class. I leveled several months ago from 60-70 and found that Subtlety was quite simple and boring. I had to attack from behind constantly and realized that 50% of my damage comes from the first 5 seconds of play. The remaining damage just trickles resulting in a DPS in the first 5 seconds of 5k, then after a 15-20 second fight, it goes down to less than 1k. Sad huh? that's what i thought. I was a little dismayed but i figued i could work this to my own advantage. In outland dungeon fights where im stacked with delicate bloodstones, fights last 10 seconds max. and even boss fights dont last too long either. I was satisfied with 1k dps at level 65 anyway since most dps classes barely get to break the 1k
Enter northrend and things changed a little. Mobs have more health so fights last a little longer. Thats good and bad. Although it does favor the rogue in terms of dps in longer fights, it doesnt favor a subtlety rogue, who's usually great at opening damage but fails at sustained damage in the long run. So after several dungeons between 69 and 72, i was resigned to doing lowest dps in all dungeon fights. This did lead to days of non-play on my rogue and eventually, loss of play completely.
Then one day, my gf decides to level up a death knight and i leveled with her when she hit 70. The experience was relatively the same so i decided to switch specs and grab different weapons. Although i knew that Sub wasnt ideal for dungeon play, i really liked the idea of shadowstep. Keeping hemmorage up to buff rupture was simply familiar to me when i was playing a feral druid. Playing combat simplified things a little. one, i had no "buff" to maintain besides slice and dice, and two, i never really had to stealth. =D
As a combat rogue, my main concern was to activate slice and dice, rupture if the fight will be long, otherwise, eviscerate. my combo maker is sinister strike, which can be used from any direction (further simplification). Now there are a few items that are tossed into this spec that acually makes it different from Sub. I have two cooldowns to play with and one toggle-able ability that allows me to cleave. And those are the difference. But those differences make leveling a rogue so awesome this time around.
Bruno is now level 82 and working on leveling through vashjir. He basically sat in LFD queue for the first level and a half since hitting level 80.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Tankin and Spankin
For the last couple of weeks, my gf has been leveling a priest. I got her started with the basics (look for cloth gear with int, spell power, spi, stam, ignore the rest for now) and saw her heal more and more. now she's more pro than before. now she's healing bad tanks and just complains about them behind the screen (but will keep them alive anyway just to get the instance over with) like its normal. We talked about holy and disc and how they're different and all that. she chose Disc because i chose disc... on three of my priests. Yes, there're three disc priests. dont ask. i just like them.
anyway, she got her priest leveled up to about 60 when i decided its finally time to break out my old tank and practice a little. He's a burly orc warrior, with massive teeth and a dogface stare, ready to kick some butt. i started off looking at my reset talents. as i stared at the new tree, i realized that it was pretty much a no-brainer what i should get: more survival, more threat, more rage, better mobility. i wasnt able to get shockwave tho, as it was one of my favorite spells. i'll get it at level 67.
i then got all my new spells at the warrior trainer and then started on part two of my night: macros.
it didnt take long before i realized several things about the macros. its not different from before. just about every spell i used before was still there. nothing has really changed except for my macro to shockwave. that just gives me a red question mark. i'll get that spell soon enough so i didnt bother changing it.
i went into ragefire chasm and started running around to practice. there were two people hoping for a run, so i took them with me. they dinged in the two runs i was there. grats to them. after two runs i got used to the buttons, made some changes in my macros and decided it was time to take on some more solid content.
seeing that my gf was 60, we started the night in ramps. i grabbed, and grabbed and grabbed. it was fun. almost chain pulling, but making sure that the current group was just about dead before i moved on to the next group. most of the night, i was at near full health. of course, i was 65 doing a 60 dungeon.
several tries at ramps and then blood furnance, i ended the night at 66, almost 67 (and ready to do some durnhold, save my hero thrall, keep runs). he's not really my hero. he's my orc's hero. he'll be a warrior just like... wait... thralls a shaman. nevermind.
my gf got from 60 to.... 61! yep. rocked. but i knew that once i hit 69 or 70, i wont be able to do randoms with her anymore. i can, however, queue up for specific dungeons with her. that sucks. the extra bonus exp will not count since im too high level? really? that's really sad. anyway..... i got on my rogue (who's level 61 as well, who i havent played since forever. to put this into perspective. she has slow riding, which was about 90gold at level 40, back in the days. and at level 60, we would get journeyman, fast land riding for about 600g. that, i would not pay for since i wanted to stop playing my rogue. yea, thats how old this rogue was. wasnt played with for a long while). i got on and repsec'd subably, made some macros for stealth, openers, finishers, and combo point makers. then i configured my buttons to just the way i liked it.... and queued up with my gf. at the start of the day, at level 61, i was doing about 500 dps.
okay i lie. i started off doing about 350dps. then, as i got the hang of it, ended the instance with about 500dps. several quests and several instances later, i was doing slightly more damage. it wasnt until late last night, about level 65, with several dungeon pieces (mostly gemmed with delicate bloodstones (yes, just bloodstones)) that i finally broke 1k dps. 1k dps!! wtf??? yes. its awesome. then by the end if the instance, it leveled out to about 800-900 dps. not bad for a 65. what happened is this. i found out that my biggest damage came at the beginning of a fight, and only coming out of stealth. so i wait for the perfect time to shadowstep, then ambush (3cp), someone will crit (4cp) and i will simply do a backstab (5cp).... then finish with Evis. they die. in about 6 seconds i just did 10k-12k damage. the rest of the fight has me applying backstab+evis, or hem+rupture.
there really isnt much else to do because after the first mob dies, everyone else is at about 1/2 health anyway. there is absolutely not enough health or time left to get a full stack of combo points to really do anything useful. and then there's the bosses. =] love those fights.
anyway, hopefully spending some time as a rogue will help me with my paladin dps. lol fat chance. but will hope.
as for my warrior, this was how it was played for the several instances that i actually tanked.
for trash, i would charge in and rend immediately. then thunderclap to apply rend to everyone (and slows them), then cleave. thats it. all done. actually i'd demo shout at times, shieldslam as often as possible, revenge when proc'd, shield slam when proc'd, thunderclap on cooldown (unless i see more mobs coming into the picture, i can save it for them) and cleave to dump my rage.
on bosses, i charge, shield slam, devastate, rend, devastate, devastate, revend on proc, shield slam on proc, keep sunders up (and increase my threat lead) with devastate.
i find that devastate is pretty useless with trash unless its one of those "theres nothing left to press" situations. trash dies quickly enough. healer has no problems healing me, and i rather save my global cooldown for some more aoe moves than a single target move. that said, devastate the boss, cleave the trash.
one other thing, my gear is made for questing. my spec is for questing. i leveled up as prot for a while and it was awesome. even in outland, lack of defense gear is not doing any harm to me. i'll save the dodge gear for later, when i hit 70 and have to get the cobalt set. my design before was this, to allow myself to be hit more, thus gaining more rage, but also being able to heal myself as i fight. this worked well, but those days are gone. now that i am doing dungeons regularly, i dont want to be hit more to gain rage. i'll be hit plenty, so i'll have to slowly switch over to more mitigation, avoidance, and stamina gear. my talent tree is not as customizable any more, so im stuck with a cookie cutter spec. thanks bliz. now we're all the same.
anyway, thats just my update. it feels like the weekend but its not... yet. have a great weekend everyone!
anyway, she got her priest leveled up to about 60 when i decided its finally time to break out my old tank and practice a little. He's a burly orc warrior, with massive teeth and a dogface stare, ready to kick some butt. i started off looking at my reset talents. as i stared at the new tree, i realized that it was pretty much a no-brainer what i should get: more survival, more threat, more rage, better mobility. i wasnt able to get shockwave tho, as it was one of my favorite spells. i'll get it at level 67.
i then got all my new spells at the warrior trainer and then started on part two of my night: macros.
it didnt take long before i realized several things about the macros. its not different from before. just about every spell i used before was still there. nothing has really changed except for my macro to shockwave. that just gives me a red question mark. i'll get that spell soon enough so i didnt bother changing it.
i went into ragefire chasm and started running around to practice. there were two people hoping for a run, so i took them with me. they dinged in the two runs i was there. grats to them. after two runs i got used to the buttons, made some changes in my macros and decided it was time to take on some more solid content.
seeing that my gf was 60, we started the night in ramps. i grabbed, and grabbed and grabbed. it was fun. almost chain pulling, but making sure that the current group was just about dead before i moved on to the next group. most of the night, i was at near full health. of course, i was 65 doing a 60 dungeon.
several tries at ramps and then blood furnance, i ended the night at 66, almost 67 (and ready to do some durnhold, save my hero thrall, keep runs). he's not really my hero. he's my orc's hero. he'll be a warrior just like... wait... thralls a shaman. nevermind.
my gf got from 60 to.... 61! yep. rocked. but i knew that once i hit 69 or 70, i wont be able to do randoms with her anymore. i can, however, queue up for specific dungeons with her. that sucks. the extra bonus exp will not count since im too high level? really? that's really sad. anyway..... i got on my rogue (who's level 61 as well, who i havent played since forever. to put this into perspective. she has slow riding, which was about 90gold at level 40, back in the days. and at level 60, we would get journeyman, fast land riding for about 600g. that, i would not pay for since i wanted to stop playing my rogue. yea, thats how old this rogue was. wasnt played with for a long while). i got on and repsec'd subably, made some macros for stealth, openers, finishers, and combo point makers. then i configured my buttons to just the way i liked it.... and queued up with my gf. at the start of the day, at level 61, i was doing about 500 dps.
okay i lie. i started off doing about 350dps. then, as i got the hang of it, ended the instance with about 500dps. several quests and several instances later, i was doing slightly more damage. it wasnt until late last night, about level 65, with several dungeon pieces (mostly gemmed with delicate bloodstones (yes, just bloodstones)) that i finally broke 1k dps. 1k dps!! wtf??? yes. its awesome. then by the end if the instance, it leveled out to about 800-900 dps. not bad for a 65. what happened is this. i found out that my biggest damage came at the beginning of a fight, and only coming out of stealth. so i wait for the perfect time to shadowstep, then ambush (3cp), someone will crit (4cp) and i will simply do a backstab (5cp).... then finish with Evis. they die. in about 6 seconds i just did 10k-12k damage. the rest of the fight has me applying backstab+evis, or hem+rupture.
there really isnt much else to do because after the first mob dies, everyone else is at about 1/2 health anyway. there is absolutely not enough health or time left to get a full stack of combo points to really do anything useful. and then there's the bosses. =] love those fights.
anyway, hopefully spending some time as a rogue will help me with my paladin dps. lol fat chance. but will hope.
as for my warrior, this was how it was played for the several instances that i actually tanked.
for trash, i would charge in and rend immediately. then thunderclap to apply rend to everyone (and slows them), then cleave. thats it. all done. actually i'd demo shout at times, shieldslam as often as possible, revenge when proc'd, shield slam when proc'd, thunderclap on cooldown (unless i see more mobs coming into the picture, i can save it for them) and cleave to dump my rage.
on bosses, i charge, shield slam, devastate, rend, devastate, devastate, revend on proc, shield slam on proc, keep sunders up (and increase my threat lead) with devastate.
i find that devastate is pretty useless with trash unless its one of those "theres nothing left to press" situations. trash dies quickly enough. healer has no problems healing me, and i rather save my global cooldown for some more aoe moves than a single target move. that said, devastate the boss, cleave the trash.
one other thing, my gear is made for questing. my spec is for questing. i leveled up as prot for a while and it was awesome. even in outland, lack of defense gear is not doing any harm to me. i'll save the dodge gear for later, when i hit 70 and have to get the cobalt set. my design before was this, to allow myself to be hit more, thus gaining more rage, but also being able to heal myself as i fight. this worked well, but those days are gone. now that i am doing dungeons regularly, i dont want to be hit more to gain rage. i'll be hit plenty, so i'll have to slowly switch over to more mitigation, avoidance, and stamina gear. my talent tree is not as customizable any more, so im stuck with a cookie cutter spec. thanks bliz. now we're all the same.
anyway, thats just my update. it feels like the weekend but its not... yet. have a great weekend everyone!
Monday, November 1, 2010
I have done zilch on my 80s
I just wanted to say that, for about the past month or two, i have done zilch, zero, nada on my 80s.
This is in part due to getting my girlfriend to play. Now she has several characters, six of them being bloodelf warlocks. But she does enjoy playing her paladins. yes, with an S. There are several classes she does get bored of though. She doesnt like hunters and elemental shamans. she likes the melee classes more but sometimes goes and plays her mage. even as a mage, she casts things in melee. no really. that's how you know she's one of those up-close and personal (or in-your-face, depending on perspective) kinda people. She now has a rogue which has leveled past 50 in about a week. she's into combo points and stuff (which i really hate, and hate even more now that it has infected other classes), being sneaky, backstabbing folks, etc. she's dual spec'ed assassination and subtlety (which, after about two hours of practice, she is able to pronounce that word correctly).
"so i am trying out my subly spec"
"its suttleteeeee".
"so anyway, subaly is.."
"SUT-TLE-TY"
"yea subably is great"
Anyway, lets talk about her two paladins.
One is level 78, almost 80. We're getting there. The paladin is paired with my shaman, who's a healer. and i figured i could have simply dual spec'd Resto/Elem and not have to deal with gear changes much. She's dual spec'd Tank/DPS on the paladin. Preferring tanking more since somehow, it does more dps. odd or what? the only problem is that she's never seen many of these dungeons in northrend before, so playing with guys who have played for years is difficult, mainly because no one wants to wait. if that was me, i'd let the anxious dps die. actually i do let them die since i heal on my shaman. Healing on the shaman is quite fun actually. i dont bubble spam. i dont rejuv spam. i only have one shield, my HoT has a cooldown and my AoE heal is limited due to a long casting time and proximity issues. which allows me to THINK. =] Thank you bliz on this one!
The second paladin is a Holy/Tank. More tank, less holy. about level 50 just waiting for paladin #1 to ding. She's liking the healing but does have mobility issues due to not having a shield/rejuv like mechanic, which stays on the targets even when she's not in LOS. I did install Vuhdo for her so things got a lot easier (the easiest being the ability to tell who really needs a heal) since she's able to see the health bars better and can tell who has aggro. Unlike me, she's into the whole combo point/holy power thing. for healing, its just holy shock, holy shock, holy shock, word of glory. that's half of the healing. the other half is Holy Light spam. that's it. i've been trying to get her to use her "hand" spells more but often, they're not needed until level 80. and even then, some people still do not know how to use their spells. but i digress.....
Anyway, so there's an update about me and my gf. we're going to level our DK's next. im blood tanking and she's unholy dps (and still wonders why she's doing 2k dps while her paladin, 6 levels higher, is only doing 1k dps. my opinion: dumb combo points). we're early 70s getting queues for AN and OK, if that gives you some kinda perspective.
And so, this is why for the past two months i've basically neglected all my 80s. It is not why i havent been posting much, however. This is due to moving to a new job environment. Im doing the same thing, just with another team of people (old boss retired, they wanted to keep me in the company so i had to work for another team). Different location too! I'm in the edge of the financial district in San Francisco. Awesome place to be in the early mornings. there's about three coffee shops on every block. and my new team is giving me a lot more to do, so less time blogging. I'll also get to those Patch 4.0.1 changes when i can, but i've been playing more on my shaman to try to get him to 80 these past two weeks that i havent really been able to really write about any other class. oh, and they took away treeform. it almost makes me want to close this blog.
Anyway, im hoping my posting pattern doesnt drop off like it did in october. Six. SIX POSTS!!! grrrr.
This is in part due to getting my girlfriend to play. Now she has several characters, six of them being bloodelf warlocks. But she does enjoy playing her paladins. yes, with an S. There are several classes she does get bored of though. She doesnt like hunters and elemental shamans. she likes the melee classes more but sometimes goes and plays her mage. even as a mage, she casts things in melee. no really. that's how you know she's one of those up-close and personal (or in-your-face, depending on perspective) kinda people. She now has a rogue which has leveled past 50 in about a week. she's into combo points and stuff (which i really hate, and hate even more now that it has infected other classes), being sneaky, backstabbing folks, etc. she's dual spec'ed assassination and subtlety (which, after about two hours of practice, she is able to pronounce that word correctly).
"so i am trying out my subly spec"
"its suttleteeeee".
"so anyway, subaly is.."
"SUT-TLE-TY"
"yea subably is great"
Anyway, lets talk about her two paladins.
One is level 78, almost 80. We're getting there. The paladin is paired with my shaman, who's a healer. and i figured i could have simply dual spec'd Resto/Elem and not have to deal with gear changes much. She's dual spec'd Tank/DPS on the paladin. Preferring tanking more since somehow, it does more dps. odd or what? the only problem is that she's never seen many of these dungeons in northrend before, so playing with guys who have played for years is difficult, mainly because no one wants to wait. if that was me, i'd let the anxious dps die. actually i do let them die since i heal on my shaman. Healing on the shaman is quite fun actually. i dont bubble spam. i dont rejuv spam. i only have one shield, my HoT has a cooldown and my AoE heal is limited due to a long casting time and proximity issues. which allows me to THINK. =] Thank you bliz on this one!
The second paladin is a Holy/Tank. More tank, less holy. about level 50 just waiting for paladin #1 to ding. She's liking the healing but does have mobility issues due to not having a shield/rejuv like mechanic, which stays on the targets even when she's not in LOS. I did install Vuhdo for her so things got a lot easier (the easiest being the ability to tell who really needs a heal) since she's able to see the health bars better and can tell who has aggro. Unlike me, she's into the whole combo point/holy power thing. for healing, its just holy shock, holy shock, holy shock, word of glory. that's half of the healing. the other half is Holy Light spam. that's it. i've been trying to get her to use her "hand" spells more but often, they're not needed until level 80. and even then, some people still do not know how to use their spells. but i digress.....
Anyway, so there's an update about me and my gf. we're going to level our DK's next. im blood tanking and she's unholy dps (and still wonders why she's doing 2k dps while her paladin, 6 levels higher, is only doing 1k dps. my opinion: dumb combo points). we're early 70s getting queues for AN and OK, if that gives you some kinda perspective.
And so, this is why for the past two months i've basically neglected all my 80s. It is not why i havent been posting much, however. This is due to moving to a new job environment. Im doing the same thing, just with another team of people (old boss retired, they wanted to keep me in the company so i had to work for another team). Different location too! I'm in the edge of the financial district in San Francisco. Awesome place to be in the early mornings. there's about three coffee shops on every block. and my new team is giving me a lot more to do, so less time blogging. I'll also get to those Patch 4.0.1 changes when i can, but i've been playing more on my shaman to try to get him to 80 these past two weeks that i havent really been able to really write about any other class. oh, and they took away treeform. it almost makes me want to close this blog.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Brd is the Word
Rockdarr, Lv. 55 Orc Shaman
Imagine that, three nights in a row and we end up doing BRD, blackrock depths each night. My shaman Rockdarr and my gf's paladin Kriss7 ended up in BRD for the 15th time this past week. Since people start brd around level 52, and move on to BRD Uppoer City!!! at level 54, we have been through this dungeon more times than we'd like. especially when no one can figure out how to really get the "random dungeon completion" for doing the upper city.
through one of my first trips to brd, after a wipe, i picked up the stoneforge key quest that got me the, well, stoneforge key. this just gave me access to the rest of the city. it wasnt all that awesome really. basically i had to kill a boss, turn in the quest, and from between this dead guy's legs, out comes a key. yep, thats how it happened. i kid you not.
but brd holds several items of interest to me. one, full clears means 1 more level (actually now, about 80% of a level). two, i get to see some super silly accidental mass pulls. three, the opportunity to see the highest dps die several times. and four, craptastic items that actually look cool, especially weapons.
but other than those things, there's really not too much i want to take from these instances. like SM or Uldaman or Sunken Temple, i wanna get out of there as soon as possible.
BRD isnt like Maraudon. Mara is split up into three sections. but each section has a different look and feel. it could have possibly been three different instances, each with a different entrance and no connection between them. Instead, we're given a massive dungeon with two different entrances and a possible item to teleport us to the beginning of the third section. kinda involved, which is good, but still. i'd rather be told i cant enter Mara-falls because i havent done Mara-ugly yet.
BRD changed that. They added the requirement of a key and still do! Not only that, they drop us into BRD thinking we'll do the upper city. but we're sent to the beginning of the map and no one really knows we're in the dungeon group for "upper city" until after we kill the prison boss. everyone stands there confused and wonders where their ballsack of goodstuffs is. but its not there. we dont get the message that we're done. so we move on forward and try to kill as many bosses as possible. i have the key, so i open the locks and we go through every single boss we can kill. NONE gives us the acheivement for finishing the upper city portion of BRD. none. /sad
Am i complaining? sort of. i dont mind the large dungeon. with a good group, thats a lot of experience. i went from level 52-55 over the weekend. it was easy. i did get a few groups that stopped after a few bosses. there's really no incentive to stay after the prison boss. but others stayed, and thats how i got my key. i find that the level 55's would rather finish the whole instance than requeue because its basically the final push to get to outland. everyone's sick and tired of dungeons. everyone's sick and tired of trying to deal with groups and fail tanks (i dont know why, but they all seem to be druids).
Queue times have increased. from 10 minutes to 20-30 minutes. why? because no one wants to run the dungeon any more. i mean at level 55, there's just a few more levels til we hit the next continent. some are already out there trying to kill things. others are better off questing or finishing off some chain quest they've been meaning to do. others dont mind a little bit of pvp. but really, before i hit outlands, i'd like to complete blackrock spire (another stupidly long dungeon, and doesnt look like a spire at all), scholomance and stratholme. when people hit 55, they're able to make themselves a deathknight. but there's so many people i see playing on alts that this reason is a bit pushing it. so... why the queue times have gone up i have no idea. these are only my guesses.
in any case, i think the last azeroth dungeon we'll be doing in LFD will be blackrock spire and scholo. on my other alts, i've never been in a group for stratholme. scholo, yes. UBRS yes. upper black rock spire. ubrs.
most scholomance groups make it all the way to the end. most ubrs groups usually die out since no one knows where the hell to go for anything. we dont even know how to capture the worg for the pet.
In any case, i've seen BRD more times than i really care to see. although i am a healer and i look mostly at healthbars the whole time. i still find it very dull to see the same content over and over and over. i dont mind having choices, but make them well-defined. the way brd is laid out, no one really knows where to go. if we're doing upper city, drop us off in upper city. if we're doing prison, make sure everyone knows we're doing prison. tell us who we have to kill to finish the dungeon. i think we've killed every boss in brd without getting the upper city acheivement (although i got the acheivement for completing all of BRD. what??)
Xylie, Lv. 36 Belf Priest
My priest is named after two things. One of my friends on wow is named something similar. Xylie is also named after one of my daughter's mermaids. actually from the movie A Mermaid's tale. tail, tale. get it? old pun. i know.
I got into a random the other day. Yes i know, randoms are so much easier to do than questing. why? because i get to learn healing. as very many people know, leveling as a healer sucks. the old way of doing it was to level as dps then switch to healing/tanking at level 60, or 70, or now, 80. but those days are gone thanks to LFD. it has made finding groups, and leveling as holy, restoration, disc, "heals" much much easier. sure, people can get sick of dungeons. but that's the nature of anything you do over and over and over again (besides sleep, ofc). In any case, leveling as a healer is much eaiser (minus the stupid tanks and stupid dps out there) now.
Stupid tanks still exist, especially those who insist on pulling large quantities of mobs while the healer is drinking. also for the druid who insists on pulling more and more mobs, especially when the healer jumped into the dungeon mid-fight, fuck you. learn to respect that others zone into dungeons and most often, expect a minute to ready themselves. the grim guzzler isnt exactly the best place to chain pull anyway, especially with knockdowns and curses up the wazooo.
Speaking of curses. i landed in a RFK group the other day and was healing the tank pretty effortlessly. its funny that the tank mentioned that i was pretty good at healing. not only that, that i was spot on with my decursing and dispelling. why isnt that what healers do anyway? but he's mentioned that his whole day was littered with horrible healers. i gave myself an immaginary pat on the back. but decursing is as easy as a mousewheel scroll up/down (i made it that way). mouseover macros are awesome. remind me to add that function to Rend on my warrior. that would be a nice addition in between thunderclaps. thats all tanks do anyway. run in, thunderclap, revenge, rend, thunderclap. thats really all i need to do to hold aggro. but that's an aside and i should really talk about healing. lol
in any case, at level 36, my healing consists of Power Word: Shield, which is a stupid name for "Shield". or "Bubble". but i think of Divine Aegis as the "bubble" and PWS ans the "shield". so lets leave it at that. i've yet to get divine aegis anyway. what im really looking for is mana returns on used shields. meaning, whenever one of my shields gets used up completely, i get some mana back. this will be awesome although i really dont need mana regen right about now. i put a shield up on a tank, stand there for 30 seconds, then run to the next group, reshield. i might toss a heal. and that's about it. things get hairy when i get tanks that insist on tanking several groups at once. although it is a little more fun that way, my mana drops like a rock.
Here are my priorities when healing.
People Priority:
Me. Tank. Good DPS. lowest dps last.
Spell Priority:
Shield. Flash Heal. Greater Heal. Prayer of Healing. Renew.
Renew is last? yes. its an aweful spell for disc. it has its uses. like if i shielded someone, and let renew do the ticking. that would usually be used on a dps and not the tank. coming from a druid healer, who has HoTs of every flavor, you'd expect renew to be up at the top of my priorities. i would too! and that's what i used to do when playing my priest. but after a long time playing disc, i have switched over to a more direct heal and mitigation approach to healing. it just takes a little getting used to. but after seeing how lackluster renew is for a disc priest firsthand, it wasnt hard to shed the habit of blacketing HoTs.
tanks get more direct heals if i can help it. its mainly because the tank's health is going down faster than the rest, and a renew wont fill up a health bar. however, it will help to keep him from dying should i get a nasty chain pulling tank. i usually keep flash heal very handy, which is why my next talent points would be to lower the cost of my flash heal. lately though, my flash heal only heals for about 15% of the tank's health. hopefully, my spells will catch up. i do like to see about a 25% gain on each heal, much like how most other "flash" heal type spells work. oh well. it will improve in time.
Imagine that, three nights in a row and we end up doing BRD, blackrock depths each night. My shaman Rockdarr and my gf's paladin Kriss7 ended up in BRD for the 15th time this past week. Since people start brd around level 52, and move on to BRD Uppoer City!!! at level 54, we have been through this dungeon more times than we'd like. especially when no one can figure out how to really get the "random dungeon completion" for doing the upper city.
through one of my first trips to brd, after a wipe, i picked up the stoneforge key quest that got me the, well, stoneforge key. this just gave me access to the rest of the city. it wasnt all that awesome really. basically i had to kill a boss, turn in the quest, and from between this dead guy's legs, out comes a key. yep, thats how it happened. i kid you not.
but brd holds several items of interest to me. one, full clears means 1 more level (actually now, about 80% of a level). two, i get to see some super silly accidental mass pulls. three, the opportunity to see the highest dps die several times. and four, craptastic items that actually look cool, especially weapons.
but other than those things, there's really not too much i want to take from these instances. like SM or Uldaman or Sunken Temple, i wanna get out of there as soon as possible.
BRD isnt like Maraudon. Mara is split up into three sections. but each section has a different look and feel. it could have possibly been three different instances, each with a different entrance and no connection between them. Instead, we're given a massive dungeon with two different entrances and a possible item to teleport us to the beginning of the third section. kinda involved, which is good, but still. i'd rather be told i cant enter Mara-falls because i havent done Mara-ugly yet.
BRD changed that. They added the requirement of a key and still do! Not only that, they drop us into BRD thinking we'll do the upper city. but we're sent to the beginning of the map and no one really knows we're in the dungeon group for "upper city" until after we kill the prison boss. everyone stands there confused and wonders where their ballsack of goodstuffs is. but its not there. we dont get the message that we're done. so we move on forward and try to kill as many bosses as possible. i have the key, so i open the locks and we go through every single boss we can kill. NONE gives us the acheivement for finishing the upper city portion of BRD. none. /sad
Am i complaining? sort of. i dont mind the large dungeon. with a good group, thats a lot of experience. i went from level 52-55 over the weekend. it was easy. i did get a few groups that stopped after a few bosses. there's really no incentive to stay after the prison boss. but others stayed, and thats how i got my key. i find that the level 55's would rather finish the whole instance than requeue because its basically the final push to get to outland. everyone's sick and tired of dungeons. everyone's sick and tired of trying to deal with groups and fail tanks (i dont know why, but they all seem to be druids).
Queue times have increased. from 10 minutes to 20-30 minutes. why? because no one wants to run the dungeon any more. i mean at level 55, there's just a few more levels til we hit the next continent. some are already out there trying to kill things. others are better off questing or finishing off some chain quest they've been meaning to do. others dont mind a little bit of pvp. but really, before i hit outlands, i'd like to complete blackrock spire (another stupidly long dungeon, and doesnt look like a spire at all), scholomance and stratholme. when people hit 55, they're able to make themselves a deathknight. but there's so many people i see playing on alts that this reason is a bit pushing it. so... why the queue times have gone up i have no idea. these are only my guesses.
in any case, i think the last azeroth dungeon we'll be doing in LFD will be blackrock spire and scholo. on my other alts, i've never been in a group for stratholme. scholo, yes. UBRS yes. upper black rock spire. ubrs.
most scholomance groups make it all the way to the end. most ubrs groups usually die out since no one knows where the hell to go for anything. we dont even know how to capture the worg for the pet.
In any case, i've seen BRD more times than i really care to see. although i am a healer and i look mostly at healthbars the whole time. i still find it very dull to see the same content over and over and over. i dont mind having choices, but make them well-defined. the way brd is laid out, no one really knows where to go. if we're doing upper city, drop us off in upper city. if we're doing prison, make sure everyone knows we're doing prison. tell us who we have to kill to finish the dungeon. i think we've killed every boss in brd without getting the upper city acheivement (although i got the acheivement for completing all of BRD. what??)
Xylie, Lv. 36 Belf Priest
My priest is named after two things. One of my friends on wow is named something similar. Xylie is also named after one of my daughter's mermaids. actually from the movie A Mermaid's tale. tail, tale. get it? old pun. i know.
I got into a random the other day. Yes i know, randoms are so much easier to do than questing. why? because i get to learn healing. as very many people know, leveling as a healer sucks. the old way of doing it was to level as dps then switch to healing/tanking at level 60, or 70, or now, 80. but those days are gone thanks to LFD. it has made finding groups, and leveling as holy, restoration, disc, "heals" much much easier. sure, people can get sick of dungeons. but that's the nature of anything you do over and over and over again (besides sleep, ofc). In any case, leveling as a healer is much eaiser (minus the stupid tanks and stupid dps out there) now.
Stupid tanks still exist, especially those who insist on pulling large quantities of mobs while the healer is drinking. also for the druid who insists on pulling more and more mobs, especially when the healer jumped into the dungeon mid-fight, fuck you. learn to respect that others zone into dungeons and most often, expect a minute to ready themselves. the grim guzzler isnt exactly the best place to chain pull anyway, especially with knockdowns and curses up the wazooo.
Speaking of curses. i landed in a RFK group the other day and was healing the tank pretty effortlessly. its funny that the tank mentioned that i was pretty good at healing. not only that, that i was spot on with my decursing and dispelling. why isnt that what healers do anyway? but he's mentioned that his whole day was littered with horrible healers. i gave myself an immaginary pat on the back. but decursing is as easy as a mousewheel scroll up/down (i made it that way). mouseover macros are awesome. remind me to add that function to Rend on my warrior. that would be a nice addition in between thunderclaps. thats all tanks do anyway. run in, thunderclap, revenge, rend, thunderclap. thats really all i need to do to hold aggro. but that's an aside and i should really talk about healing. lol
in any case, at level 36, my healing consists of Power Word: Shield, which is a stupid name for "Shield". or "Bubble". but i think of Divine Aegis as the "bubble" and PWS ans the "shield". so lets leave it at that. i've yet to get divine aegis anyway. what im really looking for is mana returns on used shields. meaning, whenever one of my shields gets used up completely, i get some mana back. this will be awesome although i really dont need mana regen right about now. i put a shield up on a tank, stand there for 30 seconds, then run to the next group, reshield. i might toss a heal. and that's about it. things get hairy when i get tanks that insist on tanking several groups at once. although it is a little more fun that way, my mana drops like a rock.
Here are my priorities when healing.
People Priority:
Me. Tank. Good DPS. lowest dps last.
Spell Priority:
Shield. Flash Heal. Greater Heal. Prayer of Healing. Renew.
Renew is last? yes. its an aweful spell for disc. it has its uses. like if i shielded someone, and let renew do the ticking. that would usually be used on a dps and not the tank. coming from a druid healer, who has HoTs of every flavor, you'd expect renew to be up at the top of my priorities. i would too! and that's what i used to do when playing my priest. but after a long time playing disc, i have switched over to a more direct heal and mitigation approach to healing. it just takes a little getting used to. but after seeing how lackluster renew is for a disc priest firsthand, it wasnt hard to shed the habit of blacketing HoTs.
tanks get more direct heals if i can help it. its mainly because the tank's health is going down faster than the rest, and a renew wont fill up a health bar. however, it will help to keep him from dying should i get a nasty chain pulling tank. i usually keep flash heal very handy, which is why my next talent points would be to lower the cost of my flash heal. lately though, my flash heal only heals for about 15% of the tank's health. hopefully, my spells will catch up. i do like to see about a 25% gain on each heal, much like how most other "flash" heal type spells work. oh well. it will improve in time.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
This is hard work
Black Rock Depths is hard work. It's long. So long, in fact, that it took a group of us over an hour to do the first half of the instance. Yes. just a tad over an hour. Not only is the place super confusing, but its laid out in such a fashion that doesnt have any real path for the raiders to go (especially if we zone in for the random, "Prison" section of the instance, no one really knows where the hell that is).
Of course, since its so long the first half of the instance got me one whole level, i still find the place a horror to run through (even if i know the paths). I still get confused and lost at times. And in an instance where i'd like to play and relax a little, i find myself stressed, annoyed, delayed quite often, especially with corpse runs. cant they make graveyards a little closer? At least it will help alleviate the length of the instance.
Holy Paladin is hard work. They do crap dps. Yes, they do. I was in my pvp holy gear trying to figure out how to do nessingwary's quests (really, i just wanted the kungaloosh recipe) and did a few of them in sholazar. My dps meter shows a whopping 400 dps. kills were annoyingly long. but i did come away from that experience with 100% health and usually 75% mana. Judge, Holy Shock, Consecrate and Auto Attack. those were my three spells. although i should have just turned on Ret aura and let that tick as well, the core of my attacks are from the above four things. Lets just say i felt like i was beating a horse. i could probably live for a while, but i would also be doing my 15th holy shock on the mob before it dies. i know leveling as holy/resto/disc is hard since you have all the healing capabilities in the world but zero damage, but i really do wish that more of our healing spells can be used for damage too, on enemies. i know we have penance and holy shock, but there should be more. just my thoughts.
Healing is hard work... until we get chain heal, circle of healing or wild growth. and paladins get this half baked version of it called beacon of light (whose duration should be a whole lot longer, even when glyphed). But seriously, its hard work for a healer to try to heal tanks who are in a hurry, dps who are in a hurry and dps with pets who are in a hurry. i know some hunters who love to pull a mob away from the pack and have their pet handle the mob. it makes healing a little easier since the tank is not taking as much damage. but it does require that i also heal the pet (which i do anyway, but still). when i see a tank shoot an arrow to pull mobs, then seeing those mobs get hit by some AoE before the tank even does his thunderclap (need i remind people that the tank needs to attack and be attacked before he can even thunderclap?) i build a little bit of rage. when i see tanks running around grabbing mobs with their face and thinking they'll get healed, i roll my eyes a little. Please note that a heal would bring all aggro to me, yes. that's how it works if you facepull. stop, do some damage, then move on. that works much better. tanking is an art, and if you cant do it then learn to do it. at level 50 you should already know how to do it. but no, there's stupid play everywhere i go.
Tanking is hard work. Especially with an AoE happy mage in heirloom gear thinking she (he, 14 y/o, irl) can tank it instead because he's so special. and the healer that keeps healing stupid? come on. stop it. i know you want to get through this instance, but its a 10 minute instance. really. just kick the dumb fuck. its fine and we'll get through it even without his sorry ass. anyway, i won the roll on the boss drop and left. no need to be idiots in an instance. sure, rfc isnt that intensive. but do that in ramps and i'll let you eat floor the whole instance.
Rolling greed is hard work. especially for a group who doesnt know where the greed button is. and then to have them tell me its just a game, things drop in here all the time, its just level 35, give it a break. and when ninja looter ninjas what you actually needed, then left? thats poetic justice (at work, dont have time to relay the whole story, sorry).
And running alts is hard work. no really, i dont know who really loves doing low level stuffs at all. it is an archaic style of leveling (it was novel in 2005, but its 2010 and its not a new game) that needs to go. i know cata expansion might fix it, but still. life today sucks because leveling alts through levels 1-58 is tedious. and i have to do it four times in the past three weeks. please, for the love of god, level to 80 first. i dont want to level four characters through at the same time. do you know what that means? instead of running mauradon 15 times to level up, i have to see that fucking place 60 times (4x15). yes, 60 fucking times. is that fun? no. sunken temple? i dont ever want to see that place again. SM? scarlet monastery sucks, especially when there's FOUR sections, with FOUR characters, and each character needs to go through each section about 10 times each. 4x4x10= 160 friggin times. so instead, we're going to do some quests and find out the story behind all of these instances. problem is, we level so fast now we only get half (or 1/4) of the story before we move on to the next sets of instances with their own stories. really annoying dont you think? I declare WotLK version of WoW officially broken for leveling.
Of course, since its so long the first half of the instance got me one whole level, i still find the place a horror to run through (even if i know the paths). I still get confused and lost at times. And in an instance where i'd like to play and relax a little, i find myself stressed, annoyed, delayed quite often, especially with corpse runs. cant they make graveyards a little closer? At least it will help alleviate the length of the instance.
Holy Paladin is hard work. They do crap dps. Yes, they do. I was in my pvp holy gear trying to figure out how to do nessingwary's quests (really, i just wanted the kungaloosh recipe) and did a few of them in sholazar. My dps meter shows a whopping 400 dps. kills were annoyingly long. but i did come away from that experience with 100% health and usually 75% mana. Judge, Holy Shock, Consecrate and Auto Attack. those were my three spells. although i should have just turned on Ret aura and let that tick as well, the core of my attacks are from the above four things. Lets just say i felt like i was beating a horse. i could probably live for a while, but i would also be doing my 15th holy shock on the mob before it dies. i know leveling as holy/resto/disc is hard since you have all the healing capabilities in the world but zero damage, but i really do wish that more of our healing spells can be used for damage too, on enemies. i know we have penance and holy shock, but there should be more. just my thoughts.
Healing is hard work... until we get chain heal, circle of healing or wild growth. and paladins get this half baked version of it called beacon of light (whose duration should be a whole lot longer, even when glyphed). But seriously, its hard work for a healer to try to heal tanks who are in a hurry, dps who are in a hurry and dps with pets who are in a hurry. i know some hunters who love to pull a mob away from the pack and have their pet handle the mob. it makes healing a little easier since the tank is not taking as much damage. but it does require that i also heal the pet (which i do anyway, but still). when i see a tank shoot an arrow to pull mobs, then seeing those mobs get hit by some AoE before the tank even does his thunderclap (need i remind people that the tank needs to attack and be attacked before he can even thunderclap?) i build a little bit of rage. when i see tanks running around grabbing mobs with their face and thinking they'll get healed, i roll my eyes a little. Please note that a heal would bring all aggro to me, yes. that's how it works if you facepull. stop, do some damage, then move on. that works much better. tanking is an art, and if you cant do it then learn to do it. at level 50 you should already know how to do it. but no, there's stupid play everywhere i go.
Tanking is hard work. Especially with an AoE happy mage in heirloom gear thinking she (he, 14 y/o, irl) can tank it instead because he's so special. and the healer that keeps healing stupid? come on. stop it. i know you want to get through this instance, but its a 10 minute instance. really. just kick the dumb fuck. its fine and we'll get through it even without his sorry ass. anyway, i won the roll on the boss drop and left. no need to be idiots in an instance. sure, rfc isnt that intensive. but do that in ramps and i'll let you eat floor the whole instance.
Rolling greed is hard work. especially for a group who doesnt know where the greed button is. and then to have them tell me its just a game, things drop in here all the time, its just level 35, give it a break. and when ninja looter ninjas what you actually needed, then left? thats poetic justice (at work, dont have time to relay the whole story, sorry).
And running alts is hard work. no really, i dont know who really loves doing low level stuffs at all. it is an archaic style of leveling (it was novel in 2005, but its 2010 and its not a new game) that needs to go. i know cata expansion might fix it, but still. life today sucks because leveling alts through levels 1-58 is tedious. and i have to do it four times in the past three weeks. please, for the love of god, level to 80 first. i dont want to level four characters through at the same time. do you know what that means? instead of running mauradon 15 times to level up, i have to see that fucking place 60 times (4x15). yes, 60 fucking times. is that fun? no. sunken temple? i dont ever want to see that place again. SM? scarlet monastery sucks, especially when there's FOUR sections, with FOUR characters, and each character needs to go through each section about 10 times each. 4x4x10= 160 friggin times. so instead, we're going to do some quests and find out the story behind all of these instances. problem is, we level so fast now we only get half (or 1/4) of the story before we move on to the next sets of instances with their own stories. really annoying dont you think? I declare WotLK version of WoW officially broken for leveling.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Shadow Priests
Why are priests, the dps kind, so low on the dps charts as I level through content? currently, I am at my mid 40s with my shaman and I've not seen a shadow priest beat my totem in dps.
This actually kinda start when I started SM:GY and for 15 levels, I've been noticing the same thing. my magma totem gets dropped, it pulses. and, if I have enough mana and don’t need to heal much, will blow it up. once, I was top dps. but that was just once. other times, I've usually been very conservative in using my nova. I would place my magma totem down and let it pulse. at the end when everyone's about to die I would hit nova just to finish everyone off before they start running too far. this happens a lot in SM. everyone runs away in fear. its so annoying. but this helps.
What I don’t understand is why the shadow priests (and its every single shadow priest I tell you) do so much less damage than everyone elses (not just me, although I do enjoy being second to last, I don’t mind being last on the charts)? in fact, once I posted the meters and asked everyone to please do more dps than the healer, and the s.priest decides to tell me to stop dps-ing. in which I replied, I wasn’t, it was my totem. yes, the only dps totem I have. one totem… can beat your sorry ass in dps. and when the instance was all over, everyone beat me on dps and total damage. except for the s.priest.
Now I want to know a few things about these shadow priests that maybe I never considered. I played one a long time ago and got bored of it quickly. although there are "dots" to apply and some dark beam with a ripple effect thingey you guys do, I figured that's really all that's needed for dps in level 40 content anyway, correct? I don’t even see mindflay (which was their signature move years ago) but now I see Deviouring Plague, SW:P, then Mind Sear. Shouldn’t that rock the dps charts? perhaps these guys arent into the whole AoE frenzy. but that's not the point. the point is to do the most damage given the situation, correct? so if you see four mobs together, you bust out your Mind Sear. If you see one, you'd be stupid to pull out mind sear. correct?
Just like me on my paladin, one boss, Seal of Corruption. four adds? Seal of Command. easy to understand. one mob or boss, cast lightning bolt. four mobs, cast chain lightning, drop magma totem and nova. chain lightning on cd. for mages, one boss/mob, cast fire/frost bolt or arcane missles. more than two, arcane assplode, blizzard, fire ground thingey.
see? its very easy to differentiate between single target, and multiple targets. you just have to… erm…. COUNT. and then adjust your rotations accordingly.
Am I totally missing something? is it because the s priest was going to use up all his time alternating SW:P that by the time he was ready to mindsear, everyone's dead? maybe. mobs do die pretty fast. but so adjust! I do this often with my warlock. there are many times I know that my dots will not last its full duration. and what do I end up doing? I improvise. I only use one dot, then switch to some AoE if I can (seed of corruption/rain of fire) and woot! dere it is.
So I do not know. someone please enlighten me to shadow priest dps. is there no other AoE alternative than to use DP, then SWP on everything, then Mind Sear? I know this does take a while to actually accomplish, but am I correct to say that Mind Sear would still do a decent amount of damage even if everyone isnt "swp'ed" up? Am I treating shadow priests unfairly?
screenshots or it didnt happen?
Friday, August 27, 2010
Leveling Pt. 2
From yesterday's post:
4. Looking for Dungeon: Randomizer. The best thing for leveling since sliced bread. Actually, using the dungeon finder tool will get you leveled up a whole lot faster than doing quests. And its no effort trying to get a group together. Just queue, and eventually you're in. While waiting, you can do quests.
Random dungeons also give you extra experience and a bag which yield blue quality items that you can use to round out your gear. Instance only drops cuffs and robe? fear not! my awesome Satchel of Goods will give me gloves and belt. yep, awesomeness.
5. Heirloom Gear is purchasable by all 80s and can be sent to Alts. Not only are Heirlooms gear pretty cool and sometimes offer stats that are superior to what you'll find in dungeons, the shoulders and chest piece give extra experience. that’s 10% extra from the shoulders, and +10% extra from the Chest/Robe. Total is 20%. Who can complain? And since you're probably never going to switch out the gear, your enchants will stay on the item for a good while. I mean where it matters most (level 1-60 anyway).
I just wanted to continue today about leveling today as compared to leveling two years ago. as you know, I've already gone through several of the changes that make leveling easier (less exp required, lowered level requirement for mounts) and those do have a significant impact on leveling both at level 20 and at level 60. But what I think is probably the biggest boost to leveling has got to be the next two changes that I will be discussing: LFD and Heirlooms.
Although we are able to do dungeons in our own server with random people we find in our level range, blizzard has added a nice little feature that allows us to queue up for dungeons and party with people from various servers. The great thing about this is that there is no effort on our part to attempt to form any parties and entering dungeons requires a wait time. heck, you even get zoomed to the instance.
the old dungeon system had people sign up for various dungeons and wait. if someone was willing enough to form the group, they would look at the signup list and find several (usually DPS) waiting for a group and would ask them if they would want to join the group. The usual slowdown involed finding a healer or a tank. of course, sometimes it would take too long to find a healer or a tank, or both, and one or both DPS would drop from the group. This caused the party leader to have to find more dps as well. Now this system worked somewhat, but it does fall to a lot of abuse and prone to fail.
Oftentimes, myself included, I would have my own criterias for inviting people to join my own group. when I used to play as a druid healer, I would make sure there are no other druids in the party, since I would like to eliminate any competition for certain drops. As a dk, I made sure I was the only dk. heck, I try not to include warriors or paladins as well since they would roll on plate gear against me. I would also make sure I have two ranged DPS and one Melee dps. I would always pick a ranged over a melee. I would pick mages and warlocks over hunters because the chances of getting good dps from mages and warlocks are far better than for huntards. I would always pick a shaman to join. always. but the picking is slim because at any given time, there's always a page and a half of deathknights waiting for an invite. there may be a few rogues too, but that's because their class is often missunderstood (they're not great AoE specialists, so their dps may be lower usually).
Regarding LFD
Now, with the "Looking for Dungeon" or LFD tool, there is no need to profile. Blizz already did that already. Notice how every group has a good mix of people. Two ranged, one melee, and usually there are no duplicates unless it’s they're playing two roles (ie. two warriors, one dps, one tank. or two shamans, one dps, one heal). I have been in parties where I guess blizz couldn’t find anything better and left us with five, yes FIVE paladins. hey, we rocked the instance. You'll hardly see a group with two locks, two mages, two rogues, or two of anything.
Not only has the LFD tool taken cared of the whole profiling and selection of characters for you, it also has a bigger population base for these things. being that each battlegroup (or cluster of servers) is about 10 to 15 servers big, there's plenty of people to match up with. sometimes you'll get people from your own server in these random groups, but most of the time, you'll see people from different servers. Not only does this help people in low population servers find groups fast, it also gives classes that are in low demand (ie dps) a chance to party as well. although there's 3 dps per group, there seem to be an overabundance of dps in the gaming world. I've played dps and I have to tell you, it really does feel like a double edged sword.
So LFD makes it easy for people to find groups to dungeon with. It takes care of the low population server problem, especially running low level instances and it takes care of the DPS abundance problem on all servers. but what it does best is this. it gives you the sense of a true "one night stand", or "no strings attached" feeling when you zone in. don’t like the tank? vote to kick. you'll never see him again so who cares? don’t like the dps doing crap damage? vote to kick. don’t like the whole group? drop party. are you vocal? voice your opinion that the tank sucks. no one will bug you after the party because they're not on your server and most people wouldn’t care to make an alt on your server just to harass you. you go into a dungeon, beat on things, roll on loot and get out. that’s it. thank people and leave. that’s basically everything that goes on. problem is, what happens when you actually find people you do like to party with because they're actually really good or fun to play with? well we're all SOL.
In any case, since LFD makes it so easy and almost painless to run dungeons at low levels now, I see a little less requests in trade chat to boost others. Boosting is this. when I low level asks a very high level (usually a level 80) to go to a dungeon with them and kill everything for them. this is often compensated with gold or by returning the favor at a later time. Low level characters are actually "playing" through their dungeons and actually contributing during the dungeons. This does promote learning in some ways. although most of the time I do see blizzard and rain of fire spams, I still see people doing well and learning to play their class. sometimes different specs and spells are applied during the dungeon to test out how viable one spell is over another. I see lower level paladins use Lay on Hands way more often now (and I do believe they should all know where their cooldown spells are anyway), but this is due to the tank running ahead and pulling large groups while the healer is trying to drink. lessons are learned this way and I find that its much better that these lessons are learned at level 30 than at level 80.
Overall, LFD has helped many who would otherwise be questing all day to run a few dungeons, thereby learning how to perform in groups and using some spells that they would probably never use in solo play. this will lead to better performance overall in later dungeons and even raids. although most dungeons will not punish those who "stand in bad" they will at least have developed some of the tools necessary to play in end game content. Leveling is sped up, people are learning to play together, and the monotony of leveling has been reduced. what more can you ask for with LFD? oh yea, a buddy list that crosses servers. yea.
And last of all, Heirloom Gear.
The mention of Heirloom gear will be shorter than LFD since there isnt much to say about it except that, whether they are the pvp variety or the pve variety, they're both viable for pve content as their stats will benefit the bearer. resilience is just a bonus. The easiest to attain would be those gotten from stone keeper shards, or pvp heirlooms. although they might not have all of the pve stats, it does offer a better alternative than some of the quest or instance gear you might find while leveling up.
Whats most important about the gear is not that they offer better stats so that you can quest/instance easier, but that two pieces (shoulders and chest) offer a 10% bonus to your experience gained. This means a mob who would offer only 100 exp will give the wearer 120 exp. 10 more if he wore the shoulders, and 10 more if he also wore the chest… totaling 20 more exp.
as you can see, not only are you geared well as you level up, you're also getting buckets of extra experience points to go with it. What's else? you're passing up on shoulder and chest upgrades that you'd normally "need" on. instead, passing the items to alts who do not have great stuff. This helps everyone level, I guess. but oftentimes I think that perhaps it helps us level way too fast and the end result is a person who only knows marginally how to play his class at 80 and will have to learn the rest when he does play more after level 80.
My Point
Ever since the change to experience points was given, I wanted to understand the path blizzard was taking and what their plans might have been at the time. I figured this much, that old content, although not necessarily bad content, is outdated content. meaning, although the stories, lore, and whatnot are fine, the execution of telling those stories through quests need improvement. at level 60, we see less and less of those "gather odd mats from all over the universe, one at a time" quests to more of the "go to dude in the field, he'll have 10 quests for you, when you're done, I'll show you to another dude in another field" type questing. this makes things much easier to deal with.
not only do things make sense, traveling to get to your quest destination/objective requires less walking and more doing. take, for instance, the warlock pet quests. the simplest is the voidwalker. however, the felhound requires several trips to various places and back again. same with the succubus. oh how annoying. there's also the shaman water totem quest. omg. did I mention this before? yes I did. annoying as fuck. in outland, everything somehow made more sense. I see whats going on in the environment around me and and not asked to go to three different continents in order to solve a problem that's right in front of me. you guys rock!! now someone fix the druid flight form quest… please? oh yea, its trainable now. nevermind.
Anyway, my point was that the execution of low level content needed an upgrade. instead of changing the quests so that we don’t have to travel everywhere, gather odd materials, or do several unrelated dungeons, we're given many tools to allow us to skip some of these boring content. HOWEVER, some class specific spells and items cannot be skipped like shaman totems, warlock minions, or warrior stance. So there, blizz offered a solution to their very poor initial questing and leveling design. of course, this was great when the level limit was 60, but now that the level limits have increased to 70 and then to 80, and soon to be 85, it would only assume that leveling from 1-60 be changed. the content is dull, drab and boring. the landscape consists of 50% desert. if you include the barrens, I can list all the deserts: barrens, thousand needles, tanaris, silithus, burning steppes, searing gorge, blasted lands, desolace and that dam place where uldaman is. some zones where its just as desert-like: westfall, redridge mountains, stonetalon, and maybe even the plaguelands. arathi basin is like a desert, but green. dun morogh and winterspring is like a desert, but white. All of these zones need a makeover. all of the quests require a change. and frankly, most of us are sick of doing the same quest for the 10th time on the 10th character.
So with all these changes to leveling, it actually has given the player quite a few options on leveling. we do not have to deal with looking at undeads in WPL to level up. we don’t have to deal with running through the barrens to level up. we don’t have to enjoy ganklethorn vale like we did before. its completely optional! and we learn to do instances along the way. we actually learn to do that stuff! neat!!
This leads to phasing out content. it means that the low level "story" is no longer important. MMOs are always changing; it is the nature of the beast. so when I see changes like this, I feel that there's often something coming. but I do realize that maybe its already been announced and I just needed to connect one and one together to make two. its all to ready us for cataclysm. I see the lower level content and I don’t like it. blizz sees our desires and gives us options to level through it easier, faster, and with as little pain as possible. and then blizz decides to make 1-60 just as engaging and up-to-date as outland and northrend. how? by wiping everything out…. come cata, of course.
The other idea is that blizz wants us to play together at 60-80. out comes the death knight at 55 (funny how all of azeroth gets skipped? hardly) and he takes the forefront of this idea. almost everyone makes a dk and plays outland and northrend content together. at 60 and up, it becomes a lot harder to "boost" anyone through content. and with the LFD tool, everyone can easily find groups to join so that they can actually participate in the group.
The game today is not Azeroth. It is Outland. It is Northrend. It is NOT azeroth. sadly, azeroth is just a barren place to farm herbs and minerals. levelers do not want to level through it, well most of it anyway. levelers want to play with all their friends as well. and what best place to play with their friends than at 80? at 80 there's a whole slew of things to do together. dungeons, rep grinds, profession mastering, pvp and raids. why 80? because they cant level further. of course, gear desparity may be present, but at least we're all level 80.
right now, my girlfriend is four levels ahead of me in levels. what this means is that there's very few instances we can do together. I'll have to catch up. she's currently doing SM:Cathedral and im still going through Library. Cathedral is red to me while its yellow to her. she wouldn’t want to queue for grave yard, and I wouldn’t want to queue for cath, so we're stuck with library and armory. see how that limits us? at 80, there's no real "limit" unless you want to consider gear. but even at a high gear level, doing lower level content like heroics or naxx do yield useful items, so the geared do have encouragement to run with less geared people.
This is like killing several birds with five stones. Though im sure there's more stones. These are just the main ones I can think of. Others include RAF and Exp in BGs. RAF are special cases and EXP from BGs cater to only certain individuals. Although BGs are great, leveling speed pales in comparison to dungeons.
So yea. Killing birds. with stones. er… with rockets. yea. that’s better.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
On Leveling and Progressing Pt. 1
I've been thinking recently about the whole leveling process as it is today compared to what it was several years ago and have come up with some conclusions that may very well be an optimistic view of leveling come the next expansion. Now I know I havent talked about the expansion at all, and I really do not intend to based on two reason: it is not expansion time yet so I wont spoil anything and there are a wealth of info on the net about the expansion already. you are free to look elsewhere for people's blogs, reviews and videos on Cataclysm. As for me, I am perfectly fine living dwelling in this current world we now live.
So with that said, let me just list some of the major points in leveling that has changed the face of, well, leveling in wow.
1. Experience points required to level has been decreased.
Needed a million experience points to level? no, not anymore! you only need 990,000 points instead!! yay!
2. Ground mounts are accessible at level 20 instead of 40. Epic ground mounts are accessible at level 40 instead of 60. All for much less gold than before.
This change actually makes sense. Back in the days where level 60 was the highest level, getting an epic ground mount was useless for leveling, since you've already leveled already. see how it makes sense now? kinda.
3. Flying mounts are purchasable at level 60 instead of 70. The cost has been reduced as well. Epic flying is also purchasable at 60. Cost can be reduced based on reputation with Thrallmar or Honor Hold. Cold weather flying can be purchased and learned by level 70s to fly in Northrend. Earlier flying always lead to faster questing.
4. Looking for Dungeon: Randomizer. The best thing for leveling since sliced bread. Actually, using the dungeon finder tool will get you leveled up a whole lot faster than doing quests. And its no effort trying to get a group together. Just queue, and eventually you're in. While waiting, you can do quests.
Random dungeons also give you extra experience and a bag which yield blue quality items that you can use to round out your gear. Instance only drops cuffs and robe? fear not! my awesome Satchel of Goods will give me gloves and belt. yep, awesomeness.
5. Hierloom Gear is purchasable by all 80s and can be sent to Alts. Not only are Hierloom gear pretty cool and sometimes offer stats that are superior to what you'll find in dungeons, the shoulders and chest piece give extra experience. that’s 10% extra from the shoulders, and +10% extra from the Chest/Robe. Total is 20%. Who can complain? And since you're probably never going to switch out the gear, your enchants will stay on the item for a good while. I mean where it matters most (level 1-60 anway).
Now let me try to analyze all of these changes the best that I can. After all, I am an analyst for a bank. I figure I can be an analyst for change in leveling for a game.
Less is More
The first change is the reduced amount of experience needed to level up through to 70. This change allowed for faster leveling but did not offer a change in the game play as it did with other changes. this simply made it so that several quests can be skipped, or zones even. For example, at level 40, there are basically three zones where you can go to level up which included Feralas, Tanaris and Hinterlands. Now Hinterlands does have an area with level 50 mobs, but for the most part, these zones are all accessible for the brand new level 40 player. Before the change to experience, I remember going through all three zones and doing quests in all three zones and still was not able to level out of those zones after having done everything. yes, everything. okay maybe. first I was in tanaris and feralas with trips to hinterlands. eventually, I completed practically everything in feralas, tanaris and half of hinterlands. eventually, when I got the quest to kill preistess hex, I was level 48. she was level 50. it matched perfectly. almost. but today, if I simply quested, I can completely skip feralas and just do tanaris and hinterlands and be level 50 by the time I am ready to kill priestess hexx. that make any sense? I hope so.
Because we are able to skip zones, the leveler will then be able to decide for themselves which part of the content they actually want to play. Some folks do like killing pirates and ogres in tanaris. others prefer the lush green forests of feralas and hinterlands. Others still, would prefer to finish out the late level 30 regions and try their luck at the early level 50 regions once they hit late 40s, but will try their best to drudge through hinterlands just to get there (Do people level in Burning Steppes anymore??). Level 50s have the choice of going to Felwood, Searin Gorge, Blasted lands, UnGoro Crater or Western Plaguelands. You'll only really do two of those areas. Then at 55 to 58, you might just touch Silithus, Eastern Plaguelands, or Winterspring. Then off we all go to Outland. And then Half of outland is basically optional as well.
With the choices at hand, I am sure someone in the background is taking logs of the patterns each and every individual is exhibiting. This will go well towards designing future content, im sure. Although the general idea is clear, offer good rewards, don’t make us travel through five different zones picking up five different items and then going through 3 dungeons we don’t have interest in doing just to get us to do a quest, the players habits and choices in doing content speaks louder than words as to what we are willing to do. We are basically telling blizzard that this zone and this set of quests are preferred over that zone and those types of quests. see how that goes? helpful, no?
So the side effect (by design or not) is that we end up with more choices in our leveling experience through level 70. And even in Northrend, there really isnt one way of going through the zones. Instead, many find that once they hit 80, only half of the zones in NR have been discovered. I've played several characters to 80 and have still to exhaust all of the quests in all of the zones (albiet lately, I've been using the dungeon finder tool way more than before).
Because Elwynn, DunMorogh, the Barrens and Darkshore are effin huge
Honestly, when I was a level 8 mage running to the tower of azora in elwynn, I was hating every minute of it. the walk was ridiculous. then I had to walk everywhere else. it was annoying. flight paths make things faster, but in all honestly, 50% of my gametime was consumed with walking. exciting. I know. especially when im trying to avoid mobs. hey, that is a game in and of itself. If I were a warrior, I would charge at critters to shorten the walk. honestly I would.
When I finally hit 40 I purchased my first horse ever. I was on a human mage at the time and loved running around theremore with the slow ass horse. yes, it was a slow ass horse but it was my horse! not to mention the animation sucked, and it looked a little stupid riding on it, but still. it was my horse and my level 40 "reward". and then I stopped playing my mage. it really felt like hitting level 40 was the highlight of the game. end of game! but nowadays, the reward is cheapened by the cost of the mount and the level in which it is attainable. This doesn’t take away much from the game, because the real "reward" has shifted over a bit to the flying mount. specifically, the epic flying mount.
With this change I am able to travel back and forth to my quests a whole lot faster, especially when they want me to travel to three different places to get certain items that only exist in those spots (the water totem quest that I've done recently is a perfect example of a waste of time trave everywhere quest at level 20. get a quest from the trainer to go to questgiver1. qg1 tells me she needs something that only qg2 can offer. off I go to qg2. she tells me I need item1, return to her. then she tells me I need item2, return to her. then she tells me to go to another contenent and get item3, then return to her. then she tells me to go back to qg1. qg1 tells me I have to return to the other continent and do a quest, then return to her. I do the quest, return to her. then bam!! I get my effin water totem, tyvm.
see all that running? I hope quests like those die in a fire. I wanted to falcon punch qg2 so many times. why not just tell me all the ingredients so I can just get them all at once??? anyway, with mounts, traveling back and forth becomes a little easier and ridiculous quests like these (especially REQUIRED quests like these) can actually become bearable. I got the quest at level 20 and didn’t even complete it until I was level 25 since it took so friggin long just to travel.
I actually like this change. I actually wanted shoe enhancements only for low levels that would help us run faster back when mounts were attainable at level 40. I actually wanted something at level 20 (like a skateboard) that would increase my run speed by 40%. but im glad we got ground mounts now.
Because Outland is just as big as Elwynn, Dum Morogh, Barrens, etc.
One thing I'd like to point out is that the change in level requirements for ground mounts does not change the style of play, or the "game" of leveling at all. it does make things faster, but it doesn’t change the game we play all that much. When we reach outland and are able to purchase flying mounts, the game changes.
Because people are able to fly in outland at level 60, this makes questing infinitely easier, especially when everyone can skip mobs by flying over them and head straight to the quest mobs to kill. I've done this with a character already, and although he only had normal flying, flying helped him to skip the riffraff and focus on getting to what he needed to get to. I don’t have to fight my way through an area, hoping that I can kill the questmob without trouble. because if I die even once, I might have to deal with respawns on the way out. dropping down to kill the questmob or grab some sparkley thing without having to go through the mobs protecting it makes the game quite different. the challenge may be a little different, but the tediousness of having to get there has been removed.
There are still quests where you do have to kill things, and quest objectives inside caves do require you to actually walk through the cave and kill things along the way. This part of the game has not changed.
I will have to make part two. be back!
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Dual Realm Ability
I have been playing with my 80 alts more often. They are mainly on Ravenholdt (RH) but i do have two 80s now on Ysondre (YS) which i do enjoy playing.
Ysondre, US, Horde
On YS, i mainly enjoy playing my paladin because i have yet to have any decent gear, yet im able to do decently on dps. although i often do have problems with dps, as my hit isnt all that great, i am slowly building up my gear to more easily dps in raids. but currently, i have a mix of outland instance blues, some ilevel200 items from heroics, and a pair of pants, ilevel219, from forge of souls. I also got those same pants for my DK, who's also in YS with decent ilevel200 gear. he's kicking butt with about 2.5k dps. all in naxx-ready gear. i might see a boost to 3k dps as i get more gear from normal toc, fos, pos, and hor. i think my main goal will be to run those instances for now as i know the heroic versions are quite a challenge. i dont even feel like i do well in heroics yet, even though my gear and output matches the output of a person who's normally geared for heroics anyway. i really wish i can downgrade my triumph emblems to get some heroism gear, just for purity's sake, but i know that's illogical. mainly because, although i have no problems with dps right now, i know that if i want to do any kind of raiding in icc, i'll have to suck it up and buy some of those emblem gear that i an putting off. big numbers dont mean much to me if i cant make big numbers with my low level gear. and i mean low compared to the current wow population now (who's all decked out in triumph gear, minimum).
my philosophy is this, that is is better to be stagnant in gear, and still improve on my dps through rotations, watching procs, positioning my character, learning when and where i can use certain abilities, etc. once i am able to max out my output and effectiveness, then, and only then will i be willing to upgrade my gear. i think it is much better to improve the player before i improve the gear. think of it this way. if im doing subpar dps, getting gear will only artificially improve my dps. i dont actually get better, although my numbers may state otherwise. and i think this is the problem here. people think that when they get better gear, they will be able to perform better. but they're performing just the same. the numbers might be different, but the type of play remains unchanged. although this IS an improvement now matter how you look at it, it is not maximum potential.
i know people can argue that once you hit a cap on gear, you can also practice on the dummies and things to pull of better damage. but i find some issues with this. one, the only real place you can do this is at the target dummies.
(1) and target dummies can only help you perfect your rotations, but it will not help you improvise during a fight. but it doesnt help you with encounters. it does help you "know" your rotations and spells so that when things go bad in raids, your muscle memory will allow you to never skip a beat.
(2) if you run heroics a lot in 6k GS gear, you might pull off 5k dps overall. in this case, you wont really have time to actually develop a full blown rotation either. so heroics arent a great place to learn your skill anyway, being so high above its level.
(3) tank and spank bosses, depending on who it is (koralon, patchwerk, saurafang) all are good, but you also want to max effectiveness in other encounters as well. additionally, koralon has fires you must step out of, which is awesome. and saurafang has adds you need to deal with. all of these are a great learning tool but leave little room for error. and since people are risk adverse to begin with, i dont find people trying new things, new rotations, new potions, new trinkets, etc on these encounters as much as on target dummies.
With 1 and 3, there's very good opportunity to improve in your skills. but 2 does not offer much opportunity to actually know your character that well. cakewalks usually make people more clumsy about their class anyway. which is why i choose not to upgrade my character's gear because i know heroics (specifically taking twice as long to kill trash and bosses than having t9 gear) will help me develop my play much more than a once a week session with suarafang and banging away at non-responsive target dummies. dont get me wrong tho, they do help. but i find that being "appropriately" geared for heroics make the heroic runs that much more rewarding. an sure, when i do find myself maxing out on my character's dps, i then will look to gear as the only other alternative to improving dps. thats right. exhaust all other options before upgrading gear. i honestly dont intend to buy t9 gear or t10 gear until i've gone through and gotten everything from heroics.
So that's my deal on YS server. a dk and a paladin, both dps, trying to dish out as much dps as orcishly and elvishly possible before resorting to the most obvious form of advancement--gear.
Ravenholdt, US, Horde
Life with my new guild isnt too exciting. i think everyone's blaming this pre-expansion slump and summer vacation thing on low attendence. actually, i've seen lots of people in our guild. the only problem is that there's not a lot of people available for raids when raids are announced. last week two of the three 10mans needed to be cancelled because of low attendance. actually, the weekend raid, which i signed up for, included me and one other member. that was cancelled. i didnt know much about the weekday raids, but i think the "Main" group ended up stopping at Sindragosa. the "alt" group never made it off the ground and was cancelled.
But other than that, my guild seems pretty cool. there are a few players willing to do heroics with me, which is cool, but i really dont have much of a need for triumph emblems on any of my toons (except maybe for Diinky, who wouldnt mind more tier pieces, although the 4pc bonus is still iffy). thats in regards to t9 gear. but rejuv critting does add a little excitement. I did spend a lot more time on RH over the weekend, and it was just to be able to pug a few things with other guildies. hopefully i will get to know them more. hopefully. its one of those things i have to ease into, you know? friendships are built slowly and through adversity. its been only a week and there hasnt been any form of adversity thus far. i'll have to see if i really want to stay, although i do enjoy the people so far (although only 1 out of 10 people actually talk). i'll have to see what goes on on vent, as i do believe much of the conversation and chatter happens in private or in vent. so we'll have to see.
One of my friends decided to join a raiding guild as opposed to a "social" guild that raids. well actually i'll call my guild a casual guild that raids. we're not too social.
SO anyway, she joins and hates it. but i tell her to keep on keeping on as its only been one day. although she does feel a bit lonely, its expected as the new guildie. although it is a raiding guild, there are some pretty friendly people in the guild. so although she might think they're unfriendly or cold to her at first, its really because they've already developed in their friendships and spend a lot of their time communicating in private chat or in vent. plus, she joined on a monday, which is an offday for many people. i thinks he really does need to give it a chance to really evaluate if she really wants to stay. there's no point in joining and quitting in a day. and even if she's in another guild, it doesnt stop her from having alts in a different guild. she can log on to her raider during raids and log on to her alt/leveler/main when she's not raiding. but i know, sometimes we're attached to our characters. i dont know what she'll do. i hope she has fun. but sometimes in order to get what she wants, she needs to suck it up a little. i wish her the best. sometimes the rewards are worth the sacrifices. blah blah blah.
i think i'll want to level my priest and warrior now. i have two friends leveling mages. one has reached northrend and will probably hit 80 in a week. the other is a bit slower leveling and i think that's who i want to level with this time. she's hit 58 and is ready to do ramps and bf several times. so i'll go with her on one of my characters. probably my rogue, who's 62, until she reaches 64. once she reaches 64, we can level up with my warrior, as he is 65 and ready to tank.
i made the tank over a year ago when i made a deal with a friend of mine to level the characters together. this friend, instead, decided to level up to 80 without me. kind of annoyed me when she specifically said she'll level the character with me. anyway, when she started doing all the quests in zangarmarsh thereby leaving me to solo many of those quests on my own, i easily grew tired of it and played other characters. she was a healer/dps hybrid troll shaman and was able to easily get into instances as a healer. by the time she was about three levels above me, i just gave up and decided not to play the warrior anymore. after some other unrelated events, we stopped talking to each other. so there he sits. my warrior at 65 with no leveling buddy... until NOW!! yay. thanks buddy!! you rock!! just dont outlevel me like my old friend did. it will be a sad day when i have to stop playing the warrior again.
and so that's my ramblings for today. Yes, this is my lunch break and i think im entitled to ramble on as much as i want. lol. jk. anyway, i hope to NOT have to go to a third realm, but i may if my gf ever plays and chooses alliance. but she's got some project going on now and will probably be at it for another month before she tires of it. only time will tell.
Ysondre, US, Horde
On YS, i mainly enjoy playing my paladin because i have yet to have any decent gear, yet im able to do decently on dps. although i often do have problems with dps, as my hit isnt all that great, i am slowly building up my gear to more easily dps in raids. but currently, i have a mix of outland instance blues, some ilevel200 items from heroics, and a pair of pants, ilevel219, from forge of souls. I also got those same pants for my DK, who's also in YS with decent ilevel200 gear. he's kicking butt with about 2.5k dps. all in naxx-ready gear. i might see a boost to 3k dps as i get more gear from normal toc, fos, pos, and hor. i think my main goal will be to run those instances for now as i know the heroic versions are quite a challenge. i dont even feel like i do well in heroics yet, even though my gear and output matches the output of a person who's normally geared for heroics anyway. i really wish i can downgrade my triumph emblems to get some heroism gear, just for purity's sake, but i know that's illogical. mainly because, although i have no problems with dps right now, i know that if i want to do any kind of raiding in icc, i'll have to suck it up and buy some of those emblem gear that i an putting off. big numbers dont mean much to me if i cant make big numbers with my low level gear. and i mean low compared to the current wow population now (who's all decked out in triumph gear, minimum).
my philosophy is this, that is is better to be stagnant in gear, and still improve on my dps through rotations, watching procs, positioning my character, learning when and where i can use certain abilities, etc. once i am able to max out my output and effectiveness, then, and only then will i be willing to upgrade my gear. i think it is much better to improve the player before i improve the gear. think of it this way. if im doing subpar dps, getting gear will only artificially improve my dps. i dont actually get better, although my numbers may state otherwise. and i think this is the problem here. people think that when they get better gear, they will be able to perform better. but they're performing just the same. the numbers might be different, but the type of play remains unchanged. although this IS an improvement now matter how you look at it, it is not maximum potential.
i know people can argue that once you hit a cap on gear, you can also practice on the dummies and things to pull of better damage. but i find some issues with this. one, the only real place you can do this is at the target dummies.
(1) and target dummies can only help you perfect your rotations, but it will not help you improvise during a fight. but it doesnt help you with encounters. it does help you "know" your rotations and spells so that when things go bad in raids, your muscle memory will allow you to never skip a beat.
(2) if you run heroics a lot in 6k GS gear, you might pull off 5k dps overall. in this case, you wont really have time to actually develop a full blown rotation either. so heroics arent a great place to learn your skill anyway, being so high above its level.
(3) tank and spank bosses, depending on who it is (koralon, patchwerk, saurafang) all are good, but you also want to max effectiveness in other encounters as well. additionally, koralon has fires you must step out of, which is awesome. and saurafang has adds you need to deal with. all of these are a great learning tool but leave little room for error. and since people are risk adverse to begin with, i dont find people trying new things, new rotations, new potions, new trinkets, etc on these encounters as much as on target dummies.
With 1 and 3, there's very good opportunity to improve in your skills. but 2 does not offer much opportunity to actually know your character that well. cakewalks usually make people more clumsy about their class anyway. which is why i choose not to upgrade my character's gear because i know heroics (specifically taking twice as long to kill trash and bosses than having t9 gear) will help me develop my play much more than a once a week session with suarafang and banging away at non-responsive target dummies. dont get me wrong tho, they do help. but i find that being "appropriately" geared for heroics make the heroic runs that much more rewarding. an sure, when i do find myself maxing out on my character's dps, i then will look to gear as the only other alternative to improving dps. thats right. exhaust all other options before upgrading gear. i honestly dont intend to buy t9 gear or t10 gear until i've gone through and gotten everything from heroics.
So that's my deal on YS server. a dk and a paladin, both dps, trying to dish out as much dps as orcishly and elvishly possible before resorting to the most obvious form of advancement--gear.
Ravenholdt, US, Horde
Life with my new guild isnt too exciting. i think everyone's blaming this pre-expansion slump and summer vacation thing on low attendence. actually, i've seen lots of people in our guild. the only problem is that there's not a lot of people available for raids when raids are announced. last week two of the three 10mans needed to be cancelled because of low attendance. actually, the weekend raid, which i signed up for, included me and one other member. that was cancelled. i didnt know much about the weekday raids, but i think the "Main" group ended up stopping at Sindragosa. the "alt" group never made it off the ground and was cancelled.
But other than that, my guild seems pretty cool. there are a few players willing to do heroics with me, which is cool, but i really dont have much of a need for triumph emblems on any of my toons (except maybe for Diinky, who wouldnt mind more tier pieces, although the 4pc bonus is still iffy). thats in regards to t9 gear. but rejuv critting does add a little excitement. I did spend a lot more time on RH over the weekend, and it was just to be able to pug a few things with other guildies. hopefully i will get to know them more. hopefully. its one of those things i have to ease into, you know? friendships are built slowly and through adversity. its been only a week and there hasnt been any form of adversity thus far. i'll have to see if i really want to stay, although i do enjoy the people so far (although only 1 out of 10 people actually talk). i'll have to see what goes on on vent, as i do believe much of the conversation and chatter happens in private or in vent. so we'll have to see.
One of my friends decided to join a raiding guild as opposed to a "social" guild that raids. well actually i'll call my guild a casual guild that raids. we're not too social.
SO anyway, she joins and hates it. but i tell her to keep on keeping on as its only been one day. although she does feel a bit lonely, its expected as the new guildie. although it is a raiding guild, there are some pretty friendly people in the guild. so although she might think they're unfriendly or cold to her at first, its really because they've already developed in their friendships and spend a lot of their time communicating in private chat or in vent. plus, she joined on a monday, which is an offday for many people. i thinks he really does need to give it a chance to really evaluate if she really wants to stay. there's no point in joining and quitting in a day. and even if she's in another guild, it doesnt stop her from having alts in a different guild. she can log on to her raider during raids and log on to her alt/leveler/main when she's not raiding. but i know, sometimes we're attached to our characters. i dont know what she'll do. i hope she has fun. but sometimes in order to get what she wants, she needs to suck it up a little. i wish her the best. sometimes the rewards are worth the sacrifices. blah blah blah.
i think i'll want to level my priest and warrior now. i have two friends leveling mages. one has reached northrend and will probably hit 80 in a week. the other is a bit slower leveling and i think that's who i want to level with this time. she's hit 58 and is ready to do ramps and bf several times. so i'll go with her on one of my characters. probably my rogue, who's 62, until she reaches 64. once she reaches 64, we can level up with my warrior, as he is 65 and ready to tank.
i made the tank over a year ago when i made a deal with a friend of mine to level the characters together. this friend, instead, decided to level up to 80 without me. kind of annoyed me when she specifically said she'll level the character with me. anyway, when she started doing all the quests in zangarmarsh thereby leaving me to solo many of those quests on my own, i easily grew tired of it and played other characters. she was a healer/dps hybrid troll shaman and was able to easily get into instances as a healer. by the time she was about three levels above me, i just gave up and decided not to play the warrior anymore. after some other unrelated events, we stopped talking to each other. so there he sits. my warrior at 65 with no leveling buddy... until NOW!! yay. thanks buddy!! you rock!! just dont outlevel me like my old friend did. it will be a sad day when i have to stop playing the warrior again.
and so that's my ramblings for today. Yes, this is my lunch break and i think im entitled to ramble on as much as i want. lol. jk. anyway, i hope to NOT have to go to a third realm, but i may if my gf ever plays and chooses alliance. but she's got some project going on now and will probably be at it for another month before she tires of it. only time will tell.
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