Thursday (30 Dec) - Cata Level 85 Dungeon Sweep
Wild's guildie friend, Rs, had offered his tanking services to help Wild gear up for Heroics and raids. We hadn't been able to hook up yet, but when Wild logged in Thursday night I was hoping he would be on. Rs was on, but he was in the middle of a dungeon. No problem, Wild had things to do in Orgrimmar.
In vanilla WoW the biggest and most populated horde city in all of Azeroth was Orgrimmar. Maxed out level 60 players set their hearthstone there, and the tales are legendary of the lag and DCs (disconnects) of those early days in the crowded city. When Outlands arrived on the scene, Org became an afterthought, a stopover for leveling toons. There were still a few level 60s and soon to be 70s hanging out there, but it's boom days were over. The new city for level 70s (the new max level) was the city of Shattrath. Then along came Northrend, and Dalaran became the home of nearly all the level 80s.
Today, the city of choice for horde is Orgrimmar once again. The blasted and reshaped city baffled Wild for awhile, but the underlying framework of the city had not really changed. Wild soon began recognizing the familiar layout beneath the changes and has settled in, comfortable once again in his old haunting grounds with it's new face.
Philly still had her hearthstone set to Dalaran, and when she logged in Thursday night the place was a ghost town. All of the portals that once offered instant travel to almost every major city in the world had been dismantled. Philly had to fly to one of the outlying zones of Northrend to catch a zep to Orgrimmar, where she set her hearthstone, and did a little business with Wild. Org is a happenin' place again, and the Christmas lights are still up. For a few more days, anyway.
Before Rs finished up his dungeon run, another guildie friend, Bd, (and the raid leader for the now defunct ICC10 G2) asked in guild chat if anyone wanted to run some dungeons on normal mode. Bd only recently got to 85 due to some real life issues and wasn't quite at heroic ilvl yet. He was interested in helping other guildies improve their ilvl and offered to tank. Bd is a superb tank and provides good explanations of boss fights. Wild immediately offered to heal. Another familiar face, Lady Hunter, joined us, as well as a warlock. We then got a nice surprise when an old friend from our FS days joined the guild, and we roped him into our group even though he was barely geared enough to get in and had just returned to playing. He protested a bit that he wasn't even sure he was playing his fury warrior right with all the changes, but we would not let him back out.
Let's get to it. Just remember that I have a hard enough time sorting out the details of one dungeon run. Thursday night we ran two.
No one in the group needed the daily (Wild was very happy he'd gotten that done earlier in the day), and Bd wanted to stick with the level 85 only dungeons as they drop the best loot. So instead of using the dungeon finder to pick a random dungeon and random players, we used it to send our entire group to the dungeon of our choice. That choice was The Lost City of the Tol'vir. I don't know what acronym is being used for that long title, yet. LCT maybe, or perhaps it will be TV. I'll go with TV for now.
TV is where the cat people who were created in the Halls of Origination are. Along with various other shady and deadly races. TV is also an outdoor dungeon, kind of like Zul'Aman. I kept expecting to see trolls (For those who don't know, most of the outdoor dungeons and raids in WoW - and there aren't very many - feature trolls).
Like HOO, there are a lot of mobs to kill, and they all come in clumps. The tank, Bd, made it a habit to mark mobs for crowd control and set a kill order for the DPS to follow. We may eventually get to where we over-gear these dungeons, but right now, prudence required we take a cautious approach. We worked our way to the first boss. We had one near wipe on the trash, but Wild popped into Tree of Life form and only two players died. Bd quipped during the battle, "Oh noes, Wild has gone Tree!" "Going Tree" usually means stuff has hit the fan and things are getting out of control.
The first boss was General Husam. A pretty standard boss with pretty standard abilities and we killed him. He dropped [Spirit Creeper Ring] and Wild won it. It wasn't completely to my liking, since it did not have any haste, but it was i333 and Wild needs to build up his ilvl. It'll replace an i325 ring. It was the only thing that dropped that Wild had any interest in the rest of the run.
High Prophet Barim was considerably more interesting, but mostly only for the tank and DPS. The fight starts as a tank and spank - until one of the eggs in the area hatch a Phoenix that moves slowly toward the tank, leaving pools of fire behind. The Phoenix will heal Barim if it reaches him, so the DPS have to bring it down before that happens. Once killed, it becomes an egg again and will then hatch into another Phoenix. Barim tosses about other nasty stuff, too, but all of that Wild had no trouble handling. Barim died.
Lockmaw and Augh are a paired fight in Heroic, but in normal mode only Lockmaw can be fought. Actually, I hear that Augh can be attacked, too, but he can't be killed in normal mode - he can certainly kill his attackers, though.
Lockmaw is an easy fight. The deadliest thing he does is target one raider at a time with Scent of Blood, which spawns three elite crocodiles that attack the target. Oh, did I mention that Lockmaw is a croc? Bd discovered a trick of positioning that took Scent of Blood out of the picture. Behind Lockmaw is a croc statue. The tank positions on the head of the croc statue, and the rest of us stand on it's tail. Since we are off the ground, the spawning crocs don't attack. Easy peasy.
Siamet is the final boss in TV. He stands at the center of a large terrace open to the sky. A convenient stationary tornado on the ground floor provides a quick, windy trip up to the terrace. The floor is ribbed with low walls that players can walk across, but which sometimes causes pathing problems for pets, which see the low walls as barriers to go around instead of over. When we started the fight, Siamet immediately cast a Shield which made him immune to all damage. A series of mobs spawned which were easy to kill, but upon dying they spawned mini-tornadoes which moved slowly around the room, doing damage and tossing players around who got tangled in them. Wild was constantly on the move, and very aware that there was no railing to keep himself or anyone else from falling or being thrown off. Siamet then entered a new phase where he can be hit. The tank picked Siamet up quickly. More adds spawned which attacked but didn't spawn tornadoes. Siamet, though, blasted back at us with lightning strikes that have a knockback. Sure enough, Wild was knocked off the terrace. But no sooner did I fall than an unseen hand plopped me back on the terrace. So, you can't really fall. [Side note: I read that if you get knocked off in the first phase, you are NOT automatically dropped back on the terrace. But you can run to the tornado elevator and use it to get back to the top]. We managed to wipe on our first attempt on Siamet, mostly because Wild got tossed around so much I was having a hard time healing. Wild's instant heals no longer carry the power they did pre-cata, and Wild can't cast his other spells unless he's standing still. That part of cata healing sucks. Says Wild. We took Siamet down on our second try.
During the run Bd was of course checking Wild's mana level, as any good tank would. Finally, after the third boss, he suddenly exclaimed in party chat, "Dam, Wild, I've been watching and you always seem to have at least 80% mana!" Apparently, that's not what he has been seeing with other healers. It made Wild feel pretty good, particularly since I know the other druid healers in the guild are better geared than Wild. He was interested in how Wild was managing that, and I told him that one big reason was to make 100% use of Clearcasting. Clearcasting is a proc making the next spell cast mana free. In a dungeon run, it procs pretty often, and Wild takes advantage of that to cast mana-free spells. "Really?" said Bd. "It makes that much of a difference?" Yep, Wild told him. Casting one regrowth takes away about 8% of Wild's mana. So about 12 clearcast regrowths add up to a full mana bar of saved mana. That is a lot of mana. I'll add one more aside on mana. When Wild pops into Tree of Life form, regrowths become instant cast spells. It is VERY enticing to spam regrowth in that situation because, as noted earlier, things are already getting out of control at that point. But spamming regrowth without a clearcast is a very fast way of running out of mana. The guidance is that lifebloom should be spammed, not regrowth.
After completing TV, Bd asked us where we'd like to go next. Most of us had yet to visit Grim Batol (GB) yet, so that was our next target. Stay tuned for Part 2 - Grim Batol.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Thursday (30 Dec) - Halls of Origination (second post of the day)
Thursday (30 Dec) - Halls of Origination (second post of the day)
In Wild's first week of Cata he healed a guild group that completed the level 80-81 dungeons Throne of the Tides and Blackrock Caverns. On normal mode, of course. Wild did not do much right as the healer on those back-to-back runs, but we were so well geared for those dungeons that we still muddled through and got them done with only a "few" deaths and no wipes. We went directly into those dungeons without going through the dungeon finder.
I don't know what it is about signing up on the random dungeon finder, but it makes Wild nervous. Perhaps it's not knowing what dungeon you'll be facing, so it's hard to prepare ahead of time unless you've done them so many times you know them all by heart, or you study strategies and memorize everything you need to know for each one. Sorry, but Wild doesn't do either of those things, and plopping him into an unknown instance, with four strangers, is not his idea of a good time.
All that said, Wild really HAS to do dungeon runs, both for the gear drops and for the justice points that Wild needs to buy even better gear. So, I spent half the morning putting together the "Wild Takes Stock" post just to avoid getting in game to do what Wild has to do. Great site, by the way, DER, but you know you became an facilitator of Wild's vacillations. Another way to put that is Wild used you as an excuse to delay his dungeon run.
There has to be a dungeon run, though, and Wild finally tossed his name in the hat. There was about a five minute wait, just long enough for Wild to start to forget about it, and then up popped the invite. Wild took a deep breath and accepted.
The dungeon Wild arrived at directly by portal was Halls of Origination (HOO). There are seven cata dungeons, four of which are rated level 84 or lower. Did Wild get any of those? No, HOO is one of three dungeons rated for level 85 only. Wild got to start his first cata random dungeon run in one of the tougher dungeons.
The tank was a warrior. We had a rogue, warlock, and a paladin for DPS. The tank marked our first target, one of four mobs in a doorway past the entrance, and asked the rogue to stealth in behind the marked target. Everything then went to hell pretty much right away. The paladin rushed in at the same time as the tank, pulling the marked target away and ruining the rogues' opening move. When the rogue did hit the marked target, he drew aggro while the paladin punched away at another mob, drawing aggro on himself. The tank had corralled two of the mobs, but by now no one was sure who to shoot at and Wild was faced with trying heal damage going on all around him. Heck, Wild was still fumbling around remembering which spells he'd moved to which button. However, I don't think it was Wild's fault that we wiped. Yea, wiped. On the first trash in the dungeon.
The paladin immediately started complaining. The tank sucked, he said. The healer should "lern2heals!" The tank whispered Wild. "Seems like we have a complainer." The tank didn't seem too put out by the wipe. The paladin was asked to tone it down. He didn't. We then kicked him out of the group.
We immediately received a shaman to replace the paladin. With targets marked and the rogue positioned and ready, we started again. The four mobs went down smoothly.
HOO is located inside an Uldum temple and is used as a research facility. It created the Tol'vir, a race of half man-half cat, although Wild didn't recall seeing any of them in HOO. There are a lot of mobs in HOO, though. Wild got a lot of practice with his healing as we worked through group after group. Wild worked to establish a good pace of healing. I refused to heal a DPS until his health dropped below 90% for starters, since I knew that one Nourish would get his health back near the top. Wild was able to keep the tank healed with stacks of lifebloom, using Nourish for additional healing if the damage wasn't coming too fast, and keeping a rejuv on him so that I could instantly swiftmend him for a quick heal. The very expensive rejuv instant heal that Wild loved so much was pretty much restricted only to the tank. The rest of us, DPS and healer, made do with nourish to keep up our health along with wild growth if damage spread across the whole group. In other words, Wild was being as frugal as he could with his mana use while still feeling he was getting adequate healing out. Even so, Wild generally ended a battle with around 80% mana when in the past such fights would barely move the meter off 100%. Over the course of the run Wild would twice have to use innervate for additional mana during boss encounters, and once, on an out of control pull of multiple trash mobs, resorted to his Tree of Life (ToL) to keep the group alive. I was pretty proud of Wild for even remembering to use ToL.
The first boss we came to was Temple Guardian Anhur. The tank asked the group if anyone didn't know the fight. Wild was the only one who raised his hand. The tank just laughed and said something like "Healing is healing." Typical tank attitude, but I liked him anyway.
We started the fight as a tank and spank, with Wild setting up in his favored spot to the right of the mob and in range of all, but a bit apart to avoid any DPS aggro. Looking at the boss's abilities, he had a fairly nasty spell that siphoned health from targeted raiders, a rather limp AoE, and a Shield that made him immune to damage. The Shield could only be brought down by turning two levers. Wild knew nothing about the levers and just kept pouring on the healing. I did note the Shield, though. Apparently there are also snakes involved, and two levels to this fight. Wild stayed with the tank on what I believe was the upper level while two DPS dropped below to turn the levers. Wild never saw any snakes. We killed Anhur and nobody died. A +hit trinket dropped, which Wild "Greeded" but expected it to go to a DPS, which it did.
There was more trash to kill, and Wild very nearly became one of the dead. There is an area of several groupings of mobs, some of which we worked around to avoid. Other groups of mobs would spawn randomly, I believe, and Wild happened to be standing in range of a group that just spawned. The rest of Wild's group didn't notice as Wild started doing the funky tree trying to survive five elite rock like things that were chasing me around. "Ooops!" called out the tank, and came to Wild's rescue.
Wild needed a mana break for that, and called it out in party chat. The tank whispered Wild, "Thanks for the heads up, I'm also keeping an eye out and will slow down as needed." Like I said, a good tank.
The second boss was Earthrager Ptah. He throws flame bolts and smashes people with an AoE spike that shoots up out of the ground. He kind of looks like Marrowgar from ICC. The most interesting thing about this fight is that we get to do it on camelback. Yep, we all have to chase down and mount up on camels. This is not a "vehicle" type fight where you use special skills and buttons, though. All the same abilities we have on foot were still available to us on our camels. The battle wasn't too bad, even though the DPS (and Wild, once) didn't run out from under the spikes before they erupted. Wild was able to heal through that as well as keep up the tank. There was more movement required on this fight, and Wild used that time to use his instant casts. The button arrangement I'd changed to made moving and casting instants easier to do. The practice was helping, too. Another dead boss and still no deaths in the party. Ptah dropped [Soul Releaser], an ilvl 333 caster staff with everything Wild could want on it - sta and int, of course, but also spell power, spirit and haste. It was perfect and far better than Wild's AH purchased i325 staff. Wild "Needed" and won the roll. Wild absolutely loves his new staff.
Did you know that there were still five more bosses to kill? In Wild's mind they all started to run together very quickly. I do remember that we had to take a large platform elevator to another floor, and that four of the bosses are part of a quest and must all be killed to unlock the final boss. I think. Anyway, at one point the tank said "wrong boss" and changed direction. One of the DPS did die on one of those four bosses. Wild quickly battle rezzed him and we finished with no problem. Wild rolled on one other piece of gear, but didn't win it.
The final boss is Rajh. He has the head of a hawk, a similarity with the Egyptian god Ra. Rajh was fun, and this boss really put Wild to the challenge. Rajh can toss meteors at targeted players, but the tank knew that and interrupted those casts most of the time. The few that got through did healthy damage but wasn't fatal and Wild could heal through it. The second ability Rajh has is Inferno Leap, which forms a flame pool beneath the target. Too many players weren't getting out of that pool of flame, and the collateral damage to nearby players was also a concern. Wild was having a hard time keeping up with the level of damage, burning his emergency heals on the DPS as the fight progressed, a mistake Wild would pay for. Rajh uses energy, and when his energy reached zero he ran to the center of the room and cast a major AoE that hit - and continued to hit - everyone. Damage done to Rajh doubles during this period so it became a DPS race to kill him before the AoE killed us. Wild had spent so much effort on the DPS (and, frankly, a lot of self healing) Wild missed a heal on the tank and he died. Again, Wild's battle rez got him back in the fight, and Rajh fell. Wild will excuse his letting a tank die since the tank was doing the least amount of damage anyway, and Rajh wasn't going anywhere while casting his AoE, so having all three DPSers up was the better choice. Yea, and if you think that's what went through Wild's mind at the time - Well, of course I'll tell you it's true.
Wild would have loved to roll on the [Solar Wind Cloak] in Rajh's loot, but he dropped plate bracers instead, won by the tank.
Wild made a lot of progress getting his healing in line with cata. I have a much better idea of the kind and size of damage I'll see and what spells I need to heal it. Nourish worked for me, despite it's slow cast time and Wild poo-pooing it. There were times when I felt I had to go to nourish's more expensive cousin, healing touch, but mostly I didn't need it. Most of Wild's healing ultimately went to the tank, which says good things about the DPS staying out of trouble. Lifebloom and rejuv were Wild's two highest heal spells, both of which were largely reserved for the tank. Wild growth came next, then nourish, and far behind was regrowth, which pre-cata often topped the meter. I probably would have forgotten about regrowth all together, but another thing that I'd forgotten about caught my attention half way through the run. Wild suddenly became aware of his Clearcasting notice. It's two big slashes of yellow on either side of Wild, but of course most of the time I'm looking at the left side of the screen at the group health, not at the center of the screen. Once I saw it, though, I remembered that I wanted to practice using regrowth (a great spell, but mana expensive) whenever clearcasting came up, because I could cast it without it costing me any mana. For the rest of the fight I always found someone to cast regrowth on (usually the tank, but not always) every time I got the clearcasting notice - which happened pretty often once I was looking for it. Finally, Wild worried about his mana throughout the run, but I never felt like I was in danger of completely running dry.
I don't want to make too much out of HOO. This is just one run, after all. Overall, though, Wild was very pleased.
In Wild's first week of Cata he healed a guild group that completed the level 80-81 dungeons Throne of the Tides and Blackrock Caverns. On normal mode, of course. Wild did not do much right as the healer on those back-to-back runs, but we were so well geared for those dungeons that we still muddled through and got them done with only a "few" deaths and no wipes. We went directly into those dungeons without going through the dungeon finder.
I don't know what it is about signing up on the random dungeon finder, but it makes Wild nervous. Perhaps it's not knowing what dungeon you'll be facing, so it's hard to prepare ahead of time unless you've done them so many times you know them all by heart, or you study strategies and memorize everything you need to know for each one. Sorry, but Wild doesn't do either of those things, and plopping him into an unknown instance, with four strangers, is not his idea of a good time.
All that said, Wild really HAS to do dungeon runs, both for the gear drops and for the justice points that Wild needs to buy even better gear. So, I spent half the morning putting together the "Wild Takes Stock" post just to avoid getting in game to do what Wild has to do. Great site, by the way, DER, but you know you became an facilitator of Wild's vacillations. Another way to put that is Wild used you as an excuse to delay his dungeon run.
There has to be a dungeon run, though, and Wild finally tossed his name in the hat. There was about a five minute wait, just long enough for Wild to start to forget about it, and then up popped the invite. Wild took a deep breath and accepted.
The dungeon Wild arrived at directly by portal was Halls of Origination (HOO). There are seven cata dungeons, four of which are rated level 84 or lower. Did Wild get any of those? No, HOO is one of three dungeons rated for level 85 only. Wild got to start his first cata random dungeon run in one of the tougher dungeons.
The tank was a warrior. We had a rogue, warlock, and a paladin for DPS. The tank marked our first target, one of four mobs in a doorway past the entrance, and asked the rogue to stealth in behind the marked target. Everything then went to hell pretty much right away. The paladin rushed in at the same time as the tank, pulling the marked target away and ruining the rogues' opening move. When the rogue did hit the marked target, he drew aggro while the paladin punched away at another mob, drawing aggro on himself. The tank had corralled two of the mobs, but by now no one was sure who to shoot at and Wild was faced with trying heal damage going on all around him. Heck, Wild was still fumbling around remembering which spells he'd moved to which button. However, I don't think it was Wild's fault that we wiped. Yea, wiped. On the first trash in the dungeon.
The paladin immediately started complaining. The tank sucked, he said. The healer should "lern2heals!" The tank whispered Wild. "Seems like we have a complainer." The tank didn't seem too put out by the wipe. The paladin was asked to tone it down. He didn't. We then kicked him out of the group.
We immediately received a shaman to replace the paladin. With targets marked and the rogue positioned and ready, we started again. The four mobs went down smoothly.
HOO is located inside an Uldum temple and is used as a research facility. It created the Tol'vir, a race of half man-half cat, although Wild didn't recall seeing any of them in HOO. There are a lot of mobs in HOO, though. Wild got a lot of practice with his healing as we worked through group after group. Wild worked to establish a good pace of healing. I refused to heal a DPS until his health dropped below 90% for starters, since I knew that one Nourish would get his health back near the top. Wild was able to keep the tank healed with stacks of lifebloom, using Nourish for additional healing if the damage wasn't coming too fast, and keeping a rejuv on him so that I could instantly swiftmend him for a quick heal. The very expensive rejuv instant heal that Wild loved so much was pretty much restricted only to the tank. The rest of us, DPS and healer, made do with nourish to keep up our health along with wild growth if damage spread across the whole group. In other words, Wild was being as frugal as he could with his mana use while still feeling he was getting adequate healing out. Even so, Wild generally ended a battle with around 80% mana when in the past such fights would barely move the meter off 100%. Over the course of the run Wild would twice have to use innervate for additional mana during boss encounters, and once, on an out of control pull of multiple trash mobs, resorted to his Tree of Life (ToL) to keep the group alive. I was pretty proud of Wild for even remembering to use ToL.
The first boss we came to was Temple Guardian Anhur. The tank asked the group if anyone didn't know the fight. Wild was the only one who raised his hand. The tank just laughed and said something like "Healing is healing." Typical tank attitude, but I liked him anyway.
We started the fight as a tank and spank, with Wild setting up in his favored spot to the right of the mob and in range of all, but a bit apart to avoid any DPS aggro. Looking at the boss's abilities, he had a fairly nasty spell that siphoned health from targeted raiders, a rather limp AoE, and a Shield that made him immune to damage. The Shield could only be brought down by turning two levers. Wild knew nothing about the levers and just kept pouring on the healing. I did note the Shield, though. Apparently there are also snakes involved, and two levels to this fight. Wild stayed with the tank on what I believe was the upper level while two DPS dropped below to turn the levers. Wild never saw any snakes. We killed Anhur and nobody died. A +hit trinket dropped, which Wild "Greeded" but expected it to go to a DPS, which it did.
There was more trash to kill, and Wild very nearly became one of the dead. There is an area of several groupings of mobs, some of which we worked around to avoid. Other groups of mobs would spawn randomly, I believe, and Wild happened to be standing in range of a group that just spawned. The rest of Wild's group didn't notice as Wild started doing the funky tree trying to survive five elite rock like things that were chasing me around. "Ooops!" called out the tank, and came to Wild's rescue.
Wild needed a mana break for that, and called it out in party chat. The tank whispered Wild, "Thanks for the heads up, I'm also keeping an eye out and will slow down as needed." Like I said, a good tank.
The second boss was Earthrager Ptah. He throws flame bolts and smashes people with an AoE spike that shoots up out of the ground. He kind of looks like Marrowgar from ICC. The most interesting thing about this fight is that we get to do it on camelback. Yep, we all have to chase down and mount up on camels. This is not a "vehicle" type fight where you use special skills and buttons, though. All the same abilities we have on foot were still available to us on our camels. The battle wasn't too bad, even though the DPS (and Wild, once) didn't run out from under the spikes before they erupted. Wild was able to heal through that as well as keep up the tank. There was more movement required on this fight, and Wild used that time to use his instant casts. The button arrangement I'd changed to made moving and casting instants easier to do. The practice was helping, too. Another dead boss and still no deaths in the party. Ptah dropped [Soul Releaser], an ilvl 333 caster staff with everything Wild could want on it - sta and int, of course, but also spell power, spirit and haste. It was perfect and far better than Wild's AH purchased i325 staff. Wild "Needed" and won the roll. Wild absolutely loves his new staff.
Did you know that there were still five more bosses to kill? In Wild's mind they all started to run together very quickly. I do remember that we had to take a large platform elevator to another floor, and that four of the bosses are part of a quest and must all be killed to unlock the final boss. I think. Anyway, at one point the tank said "wrong boss" and changed direction. One of the DPS did die on one of those four bosses. Wild quickly battle rezzed him and we finished with no problem. Wild rolled on one other piece of gear, but didn't win it.
The final boss is Rajh. He has the head of a hawk, a similarity with the Egyptian god Ra. Rajh was fun, and this boss really put Wild to the challenge. Rajh can toss meteors at targeted players, but the tank knew that and interrupted those casts most of the time. The few that got through did healthy damage but wasn't fatal and Wild could heal through it. The second ability Rajh has is Inferno Leap, which forms a flame pool beneath the target. Too many players weren't getting out of that pool of flame, and the collateral damage to nearby players was also a concern. Wild was having a hard time keeping up with the level of damage, burning his emergency heals on the DPS as the fight progressed, a mistake Wild would pay for. Rajh uses energy, and when his energy reached zero he ran to the center of the room and cast a major AoE that hit - and continued to hit - everyone. Damage done to Rajh doubles during this period so it became a DPS race to kill him before the AoE killed us. Wild had spent so much effort on the DPS (and, frankly, a lot of self healing) Wild missed a heal on the tank and he died. Again, Wild's battle rez got him back in the fight, and Rajh fell. Wild will excuse his letting a tank die since the tank was doing the least amount of damage anyway, and Rajh wasn't going anywhere while casting his AoE, so having all three DPSers up was the better choice. Yea, and if you think that's what went through Wild's mind at the time - Well, of course I'll tell you it's true.
Wild would have loved to roll on the [Solar Wind Cloak] in Rajh's loot, but he dropped plate bracers instead, won by the tank.
Wild made a lot of progress getting his healing in line with cata. I have a much better idea of the kind and size of damage I'll see and what spells I need to heal it. Nourish worked for me, despite it's slow cast time and Wild poo-pooing it. There were times when I felt I had to go to nourish's more expensive cousin, healing touch, but mostly I didn't need it. Most of Wild's healing ultimately went to the tank, which says good things about the DPS staying out of trouble. Lifebloom and rejuv were Wild's two highest heal spells, both of which were largely reserved for the tank. Wild growth came next, then nourish, and far behind was regrowth, which pre-cata often topped the meter. I probably would have forgotten about regrowth all together, but another thing that I'd forgotten about caught my attention half way through the run. Wild suddenly became aware of his Clearcasting notice. It's two big slashes of yellow on either side of Wild, but of course most of the time I'm looking at the left side of the screen at the group health, not at the center of the screen. Once I saw it, though, I remembered that I wanted to practice using regrowth (a great spell, but mana expensive) whenever clearcasting came up, because I could cast it without it costing me any mana. For the rest of the fight I always found someone to cast regrowth on (usually the tank, but not always) every time I got the clearcasting notice - which happened pretty often once I was looking for it. Finally, Wild worried about his mana throughout the run, but I never felt like I was in danger of completely running dry.
I don't want to make too much out of HOO. This is just one run, after all. Overall, though, Wild was very pleased.
Thursday (30 Dec) - Wild Takes Stock
=2010-12-30 Wild Takes Stock =
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Thursday (30 Dec) - Wild Takes Stock
DER sent Wild some heavy duty math from a site called cynwise that created a formula to calculate the affect various levels of haste have on Wild's heal over time (HoT) spells. It works for DoTs (damage over time) spells as well, but since Wild is getting ready to start doing dungeon runs, I'm focusing on healing. In the Pre-Cata world adding haste reduced the global cooldown (GCD, which is the time you have to wait before you can cast the next spell). Obviously, the lower the GCD, the sooner you can cast the next spell. Cata added a new element by adding additional tics of the HoT based on haste. So, this isn't about how much healing is done per tic, but about how many tics the spell has. Of course, more tics mean more overall healing assuming all tics are used (which is another discussion all together). All HoT spells have a base number of tics. All of the below spells tic once per second, but HoT/DoT spells can have differing tic times. Wild has three primary HoTs:
Rejuvenation: 12 tics
Lifebloom: 10 tics
Regrowth: 6 tics
Using this information, the formula provided a chart with some very interesting information.
For example, it showed Wild that to increase the number of tics by one on all three of the above spells, Wild would need to have a minimum haste rating of 1152. Wild is happy to report that his current haste rating is well above that, at 1453. However, that might not be a good thing. If Wild only wanted one extra tic of his Hots, then he actually has too much haste and could then be looking for gear with other stats with a higher priority.
The chart also tells Wild that the next jump in tics comes at haste rating 1665, and that it would give Wild one more tic on his rejuv spell, but not change the other two. To get one more tic on all three spells, Wild would need 3202 haste rating! Wild can't choose which spell gets the tic increase - the more tics a spell has, the sooner it gets a tic increase as haste is added. So, rejuv will get a tic increase first, then lifebloom, and then regrowth.
Wild didn't include Wild Growth (another HoT) ini the formula but it will be easy to add that one in. WG has 7 base tics so would increase tics only slightly faster then regrowth. Since it takes 3202 haste rating to get one more tic of regrowth, WG would need only slightly less than that. A 3202 rating might be too big a stretch for Wild, but Wild could get tic increases for both rejuv and regrowth at 1921 rating, which would be an easier goal to work toward.
How many tics is the right number? I have no idea, but the information is very useful in determining what stats have priority.
All very interesting to ya'll out there, I'm sure. Fantastic information for me.
Here is where Wild really needs to take stock, though. I had a look at the other druids in MM. We have a lot of level 85 druids in our guild, more than I thought we had - 9 of them. On the Armory three of those druids logged out in resto/healing spec, including Wild. A fourth I know will heal as much as he DPS's, so I'll include him as a fourth healer.
I'm going to use ilevel for a general assessment of gear. Remember that an ilvl of i272 is required to get into normal dungeons, with i329 required to get into heroic mode dungeons. Wild is currently at i321.
Moonkin/feral druid ilvls: 336, 341, 342, 345, 347
Resto/Healing druid ilvls: 321, 325, 336, 338
See where Wild is on that list? Wild's gear basically sucks right now.
Excuse me, I need to go run some dungeons.
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Thursday (30 Dec) - Wild Takes Stock
DER sent Wild some heavy duty math from a site called cynwise that created a formula to calculate the affect various levels of haste have on Wild's heal over time (HoT) spells. It works for DoTs (damage over time) spells as well, but since Wild is getting ready to start doing dungeon runs, I'm focusing on healing. In the Pre-Cata world adding haste reduced the global cooldown (GCD, which is the time you have to wait before you can cast the next spell). Obviously, the lower the GCD, the sooner you can cast the next spell. Cata added a new element by adding additional tics of the HoT based on haste. So, this isn't about how much healing is done per tic, but about how many tics the spell has. Of course, more tics mean more overall healing assuming all tics are used (which is another discussion all together). All HoT spells have a base number of tics. All of the below spells tic once per second, but HoT/DoT spells can have differing tic times. Wild has three primary HoTs:
Rejuvenation: 12 tics
Lifebloom: 10 tics
Regrowth: 6 tics
Using this information, the formula provided a chart with some very interesting information.
For example, it showed Wild that to increase the number of tics by one on all three of the above spells, Wild would need to have a minimum haste rating of 1152. Wild is happy to report that his current haste rating is well above that, at 1453. However, that might not be a good thing. If Wild only wanted one extra tic of his Hots, then he actually has too much haste and could then be looking for gear with other stats with a higher priority.
The chart also tells Wild that the next jump in tics comes at haste rating 1665, and that it would give Wild one more tic on his rejuv spell, but not change the other two. To get one more tic on all three spells, Wild would need 3202 haste rating! Wild can't choose which spell gets the tic increase - the more tics a spell has, the sooner it gets a tic increase as haste is added. So, rejuv will get a tic increase first, then lifebloom, and then regrowth.
Wild didn't include Wild Growth (another HoT) ini the formula but it will be easy to add that one in. WG has 7 base tics so would increase tics only slightly faster then regrowth. Since it takes 3202 haste rating to get one more tic of regrowth, WG would need only slightly less than that. A 3202 rating might be too big a stretch for Wild, but Wild could get tic increases for both rejuv and regrowth at 1921 rating, which would be an easier goal to work toward.
How many tics is the right number? I have no idea, but the information is very useful in determining what stats have priority.
All very interesting to ya'll out there, I'm sure. Fantastic information for me.
Here is where Wild really needs to take stock, though. I had a look at the other druids in MM. We have a lot of level 85 druids in our guild, more than I thought we had - 9 of them. On the Armory three of those druids logged out in resto/healing spec, including Wild. A fourth I know will heal as much as he DPS's, so I'll include him as a fourth healer.
I'm going to use ilevel for a general assessment of gear. Remember that an ilvl of i272 is required to get into normal dungeons, with i329 required to get into heroic mode dungeons. Wild is currently at i321.
Moonkin/feral druid ilvls: 336, 341, 342, 345, 347
Resto/Healing druid ilvls: 321, 325, 336, 338
See where Wild is on that list? Wild's gear basically sucks right now.
Excuse me, I need to go run some dungeons.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Tuesday (28 Dec) - Tidying Up
Tuesday (28 Dec) - Tidying Up
On our first Monday night post-Cata Sis and Wild attempted to enter a dungeon through the random dungeon finder. We were summarily cast out and refused entry - twice. We figured it was a bug or that the dungeon servers were choked up or offline. After listening to guild chat for a week I suspect there might be another answer - our item level (ilvl) was too low.
Some background is in order. Giving each piece of gear a score to use in comparing gear is a relatively recent change in the Blizzard mindset. Prior to this change of heart, gear showed a level requirement to equip and that was it. Quest gear often didn't even have that, since if you were high enough level to receive the quest you could receive the quest rewards. In the past Blizzard consistently resisted efforts at using gear scores to measure how "good" a player was, but that didn't stop players from making up their own gear scores using either of two third party addons that computed and compiled a gear score based on the gear being worn.
Then along came item level (ilvl). Blizzard began tagging every piece of gear with an ilvl. A rough comparison between gear could now be made based on that one piece of information. As examples, in WotLK ilvl 251 gear was associated with ICC 10 man level of gear, while i264 was associated with ICC 25 man. Low level Cata greens are rated at i272, giving us a quick idea of it's value and strength compared to pre-Cata. I'm not sure anyone but Blizzard knows how they decide what ilvl to assign a piece of gear, but I do know it is based on all of the stats each piece has. Gear itself is built based on mathematical formula that in theory ensures that no player gets an unfair advantage simply because of a discrepancy in the amount of stats on a piece of gear. Anyway ...
Blizzard then took the next step, a step they swore they would never do. They started using the average ilvl gear score of a player's gear to "rate" his/her worthiness to enter a dungeon through the dungeon finder. I wondered what those limits were, and here they are from Wowpedia:
The first part is the dungeon Level (minimum level to enter the dungeon) followed by the average ilevel gear score required. Both conditions must be met to get into a dungeon through the dungeon finder. However, you don't have to use the dungeon finder. If you form up your own party, physically travel to the dungeon and enter through the front door, then only the dungeon level requirement must be met and ilvl is ignored.
Level 80-81, average ilvl 226 (Throne of the Tides, Blackrock Caverns)
Level 82-85, average ilvl 272 (all normal mode dungeons)
Heroics, average ilvl 329 (all Heroic mode dungeons)
There have been a few complaints about the restrictions, since certain pre-cata gear may have more value than a higher ilvl cata piece due to sockets, Tier combinations, or hard to replace items like trinkets or relics. These items will bring down the overall ilevel. Bottom line, though, is that it only affects the dungeon finder.
Since those heady, early days of Cata, when we were snubbed by the dungeon finder, both Wild and Sis have reached level 85. Sis's ilevel is now 316 (according to the Armory) and should be accepted by every Cata dungeon in normal mode. Wild's ilevel is 321, which puts Wild in the same category with Sis. Neither of us yet meet the requirement for Cata Heroics.
Wild has also been looking at using some of his Justice Points (JP) to buy higher level gear. JPs can be earned by doing the daily normal mode dungeon run through the dungeon finder. Players who had accumulated pre-cata points had those old points converted to JPs automatically. The maximum amount of points each player can have is 4,000. Wild has a bit over 3600 JPs. That's not really that much. Wild has his eye of two pieces of gear, and those two pieces will cost him 3200 JPs. Wild is still thinking about it.
Wild also knows he is going to have to start getting serious about the enchants and item enhancements and gems he is going to need to get prepared for Heroics. And maybe for normal dungeon runs, too. I keep hearing how tough things are for healers now even in normal mode. That means paying through the nose for them right now since neither Wild nor Philly have done much to raise their skills in enchanting, tailoring, inscription, or jewel crafting to be able to make those things themselves. I just hate putting expensive accoutrements on gear that I know I will be replacing, and replacing often as Wild moves from questing to normal dungeons, to Heroics, and then raids.
Wild did finally raise his enchanting from the pre-cata max of 450 up to 475. Was forced to, pretty much, since he needed at least that skill level to disenchant (DE) green cata gear that he didn't need. His bank bags were bulging with the stuff and something had to be done. Wild still can't DE blue gear, needing to get to skill 500 for that. Those 25 skill points could be very, very costly to get. Beware, Happy, Wild may be coming after your gold.
Two tailored items that make a pretty nifty profit for Happy is the Satchel of Cenarius (for storing herbs) and the Bag of Jewels (to store, you guessed it, gems). There are better herb bags available, but the Satchel holds 24 slots and is priced to sell to new herb gatherers who haven't the gold to buy the bigger bags (up to 36 slots). For some bizarre reason, though, the 24 slot Bag of Jewels remains the highest slot gem bag you can buy. And if you want to hear something even more strange, for the past several months (yes, real life months) no one sells the gem bags - except for Happy. Sinc Cata the demand for both of these bags has gone way up. Despite Happy's best effort, stocks of the materials to make those bags have dwindled. In particular, runecloth (used to make the satchel) has become difficult and expensive to get.
Here comes the sad part. The Wild family has a tradition of sending our 50-60 ish level players to Dire Maul to farm for runecloth. This goes all the way back to Wild himself. I'm not talking about going into Dire Maul proper, which is a level 60 dungeon full of nasty elites. I'm talking about the extensive outer area that is crowded with almost limitless ogres, all of whom drop runecloth in abundance. So, when things got tight, Wild enlisted level 56 Mery to head to Feralas, ride to Dire Maul, and slaughter ogres. Not only is that good for the runecloth drops, it helps level the player as well.
Cata changed all that. Mery made the trip the Dire Maul. The first thing she noticed was that the countryside lane that leads to the stone wall and steps leading into the outer ramparts was deserted. There should be several camps of ogres, but they were gone. Mery continued on, riding up the steps to the ramparts, and there she found the ogres. Only, instead of being level 50-ish ogres, they were level 37 ogres. Well, easier to slaughter, you say. Sure. But level 37 mobs don't drop runecloth. Mery went so far as to enter the dungeon itself. Yep, level 60 Dire Maul has been reduced to a level 37 dungeon. I know now that other level 60 dungeons, such as Stratholme and Scholomance, have also been recast as lower level dungeons. All well and good - except that now there is no where to farm runecloth easily. The dungeons Blackrock Depths and Sunken Temple are now the farming areas of choice, but a player would need to be in his mid to late 60s to even think about trying to farm for runecloth there. Wild's family tradition will die out. And the price of runecloth keeps rising.
Oh, and one last thing. Up until a few days ago my second account, which included Philly, had not been upgraded for Cata. That wasn't a big deal, but Philly was chafing a bit about it. Both accounts are now full Cata accounts. Philly is going to start getting some leveling in, a little at a time (since Wild still has a lot on his plate). The intent is for Philly to take a slower path, one that will allow more time to enjoy the lore and the amazing quests - which she will share with the rest of us in more detail than rushed Wild was able to.
PS - Special GRATZ! to Lao, who made level 70 Tuesday night! I'll let Lao tell the tale:
"Ms Lao also hit 70 last night in an AV win. She was dominating the BG all the way through 69. If she was not the top DPS she was in the top three. There was even one AB that she had 25 killing blows, but alas, 5 deaths between them so she did not get the achievement she so covets. That one she was top dps but she had a very good goblin priest healing her. Healers make a huge difference on how many you can kill. That game she retook 5 flags, too! She had a really fun row up at the lumber mill in one game. The alliance had just taken it or were trying to, and all the hordies had/were dying off. She stood off to the side (the alliance did not seem to notice her) and she picked off four of them and was the last one standing. Yes, I am being boastful about my girl but it was a grand night of pvp yester eve, you would have loved it.
Now Sis needs to farm mats for her new flying machine since she refuses to spend 1500 gold on the mats off the AH."
On our first Monday night post-Cata Sis and Wild attempted to enter a dungeon through the random dungeon finder. We were summarily cast out and refused entry - twice. We figured it was a bug or that the dungeon servers were choked up or offline. After listening to guild chat for a week I suspect there might be another answer - our item level (ilvl) was too low.
Some background is in order. Giving each piece of gear a score to use in comparing gear is a relatively recent change in the Blizzard mindset. Prior to this change of heart, gear showed a level requirement to equip and that was it. Quest gear often didn't even have that, since if you were high enough level to receive the quest you could receive the quest rewards. In the past Blizzard consistently resisted efforts at using gear scores to measure how "good" a player was, but that didn't stop players from making up their own gear scores using either of two third party addons that computed and compiled a gear score based on the gear being worn.
Then along came item level (ilvl). Blizzard began tagging every piece of gear with an ilvl. A rough comparison between gear could now be made based on that one piece of information. As examples, in WotLK ilvl 251 gear was associated with ICC 10 man level of gear, while i264 was associated with ICC 25 man. Low level Cata greens are rated at i272, giving us a quick idea of it's value and strength compared to pre-Cata. I'm not sure anyone but Blizzard knows how they decide what ilvl to assign a piece of gear, but I do know it is based on all of the stats each piece has. Gear itself is built based on mathematical formula that in theory ensures that no player gets an unfair advantage simply because of a discrepancy in the amount of stats on a piece of gear. Anyway ...
Blizzard then took the next step, a step they swore they would never do. They started using the average ilvl gear score of a player's gear to "rate" his/her worthiness to enter a dungeon through the dungeon finder. I wondered what those limits were, and here they are from Wowpedia:
The first part is the dungeon Level (minimum level to enter the dungeon) followed by the average ilevel gear score required. Both conditions must be met to get into a dungeon through the dungeon finder. However, you don't have to use the dungeon finder. If you form up your own party, physically travel to the dungeon and enter through the front door, then only the dungeon level requirement must be met and ilvl is ignored.
Level 80-81, average ilvl 226 (Throne of the Tides, Blackrock Caverns)
Level 82-85, average ilvl 272 (all normal mode dungeons)
Heroics, average ilvl 329 (all Heroic mode dungeons)
There have been a few complaints about the restrictions, since certain pre-cata gear may have more value than a higher ilvl cata piece due to sockets, Tier combinations, or hard to replace items like trinkets or relics. These items will bring down the overall ilevel. Bottom line, though, is that it only affects the dungeon finder.
Since those heady, early days of Cata, when we were snubbed by the dungeon finder, both Wild and Sis have reached level 85. Sis's ilevel is now 316 (according to the Armory) and should be accepted by every Cata dungeon in normal mode. Wild's ilevel is 321, which puts Wild in the same category with Sis. Neither of us yet meet the requirement for Cata Heroics.
Wild has also been looking at using some of his Justice Points (JP) to buy higher level gear. JPs can be earned by doing the daily normal mode dungeon run through the dungeon finder. Players who had accumulated pre-cata points had those old points converted to JPs automatically. The maximum amount of points each player can have is 4,000. Wild has a bit over 3600 JPs. That's not really that much. Wild has his eye of two pieces of gear, and those two pieces will cost him 3200 JPs. Wild is still thinking about it.
Wild also knows he is going to have to start getting serious about the enchants and item enhancements and gems he is going to need to get prepared for Heroics. And maybe for normal dungeon runs, too. I keep hearing how tough things are for healers now even in normal mode. That means paying through the nose for them right now since neither Wild nor Philly have done much to raise their skills in enchanting, tailoring, inscription, or jewel crafting to be able to make those things themselves. I just hate putting expensive accoutrements on gear that I know I will be replacing, and replacing often as Wild moves from questing to normal dungeons, to Heroics, and then raids.
Wild did finally raise his enchanting from the pre-cata max of 450 up to 475. Was forced to, pretty much, since he needed at least that skill level to disenchant (DE) green cata gear that he didn't need. His bank bags were bulging with the stuff and something had to be done. Wild still can't DE blue gear, needing to get to skill 500 for that. Those 25 skill points could be very, very costly to get. Beware, Happy, Wild may be coming after your gold.
Two tailored items that make a pretty nifty profit for Happy is the Satchel of Cenarius (for storing herbs) and the Bag of Jewels (to store, you guessed it, gems). There are better herb bags available, but the Satchel holds 24 slots and is priced to sell to new herb gatherers who haven't the gold to buy the bigger bags (up to 36 slots). For some bizarre reason, though, the 24 slot Bag of Jewels remains the highest slot gem bag you can buy. And if you want to hear something even more strange, for the past several months (yes, real life months) no one sells the gem bags - except for Happy. Sinc Cata the demand for both of these bags has gone way up. Despite Happy's best effort, stocks of the materials to make those bags have dwindled. In particular, runecloth (used to make the satchel) has become difficult and expensive to get.
Here comes the sad part. The Wild family has a tradition of sending our 50-60 ish level players to Dire Maul to farm for runecloth. This goes all the way back to Wild himself. I'm not talking about going into Dire Maul proper, which is a level 60 dungeon full of nasty elites. I'm talking about the extensive outer area that is crowded with almost limitless ogres, all of whom drop runecloth in abundance. So, when things got tight, Wild enlisted level 56 Mery to head to Feralas, ride to Dire Maul, and slaughter ogres. Not only is that good for the runecloth drops, it helps level the player as well.
Cata changed all that. Mery made the trip the Dire Maul. The first thing she noticed was that the countryside lane that leads to the stone wall and steps leading into the outer ramparts was deserted. There should be several camps of ogres, but they were gone. Mery continued on, riding up the steps to the ramparts, and there she found the ogres. Only, instead of being level 50-ish ogres, they were level 37 ogres. Well, easier to slaughter, you say. Sure. But level 37 mobs don't drop runecloth. Mery went so far as to enter the dungeon itself. Yep, level 60 Dire Maul has been reduced to a level 37 dungeon. I know now that other level 60 dungeons, such as Stratholme and Scholomance, have also been recast as lower level dungeons. All well and good - except that now there is no where to farm runecloth easily. The dungeons Blackrock Depths and Sunken Temple are now the farming areas of choice, but a player would need to be in his mid to late 60s to even think about trying to farm for runecloth there. Wild's family tradition will die out. And the price of runecloth keeps rising.
Oh, and one last thing. Up until a few days ago my second account, which included Philly, had not been upgraded for Cata. That wasn't a big deal, but Philly was chafing a bit about it. Both accounts are now full Cata accounts. Philly is going to start getting some leveling in, a little at a time (since Wild still has a lot on his plate). The intent is for Philly to take a slower path, one that will allow more time to enjoy the lore and the amazing quests - which she will share with the rest of us in more detail than rushed Wild was able to.
PS - Special GRATZ! to Lao, who made level 70 Tuesday night! I'll let Lao tell the tale:
"Ms Lao also hit 70 last night in an AV win. She was dominating the BG all the way through 69. If she was not the top DPS she was in the top three. There was even one AB that she had 25 killing blows, but alas, 5 deaths between them so she did not get the achievement she so covets. That one she was top dps but she had a very good goblin priest healing her. Healers make a huge difference on how many you can kill. That game she retook 5 flags, too! She had a really fun row up at the lumber mill in one game. The alliance had just taken it or were trying to, and all the hordies had/were dying off. She stood off to the side (the alliance did not seem to notice her) and she picked off four of them and was the last one standing. Yes, I am being boastful about my girl but it was a grand night of pvp yester eve, you would have loved it.
Now Sis needs to farm mats for her new flying machine since she refuses to spend 1500 gold on the mats off the AH."
Monday, December 27, 2010
Sunday (26 Dec) - DING! DING! DING! DING!
Sunday (26 Dec) - DING! DING! DING! DING!
Wildshard slew his way to level 85 Sunday night in the Twilight Highlands. The DING! came as a bit of a surprise at 3am Monday morning. Wild was totally engrossed in killing pairs of mobs to complete one more quest before turning in a set of four completed quests which he hoped would be enough to level to 85. Killing mobs grants experience, too, and while pounding away at those mobs Wild got enough experience to level before he even turned in those quests. So no climactic event; just a very satisfying late night, business-like grind. Wild's druid friend, Rs, checked in on Wild around 1am, commenting, "You're up late, Wild." Wild responded with "80% to 85 and not sleepy yet." He came back with "Go cow go!"
Things did not look so rosy earlier in the day or even the weekend. There was this thing called Christmas that took a considerable chunk out of Saturday. Not that I'm complaining! We had a great day. But Wild, well, you know Wild. He fit in a little bit of questing, but Saturday ended with Wild at only 28% to 85.
On Sunday morning Wild really had to push to find quests, and by noon all of the obvious (and some not so obvious) quests in Vash'jr, Mount Hyjal, and Deepholm were done. There were one or two quests that stymied Wild, one in particular that required the killing of a level 84 elite elemental which Wild was frustrated with. But there was also Uldum, the Egypt-like zone that had blossomed in the desert south of Tanaris at the far southern end of Kalimdor. Wild had done some questing there already, and Uldum is by far my favorite zone. Uldum incorporates the Indiana Jones theme with a "Harison Jones" character leading the way. If you've seen the movies you'll be right at home in Uldum. There was nothing more surprising and exciting than being saved from a firing squad by Mr. Jones! Except for maybe the sudden appearance of another character from the movies during the climactic quests in the tomb. There were too many quests to remember, and in any event I don't want to give too much away, but I may assemble them together at some point.
Wild eventually ran out of quests in Uldum, and there was more real life to attend to Sunday afternoon. Wild did not get back in game until after dinner. Wild was 47% of the way to 85.
Wild knew he had to make a big push Sunday night. There was one more new zone, the Twilight Highlands, that Wild had yet to enter. The truth was Wild did not know where it was or how to get to it. Maps are a pet peeve of mine. Cataclysm rearranged the world differently than any other expansion. In BC the floating island of Outland came into being, and all level 60-70 leveling was accomplished there. With WotLK it was the new zone of Northrend, where all level 70-80 was done. In both of those expansions the rest of the world was left largely alone. In Cata the new land masses for leveling 80-85 were mixed in with the old land masses and scattered about the world. And all of the major sites catering to the Warcraft crowd just seemed to assume that everyone knew where these new zones were located. No map that I could find clearly shows the world changes that includes the simple labeling of each zone. Baffling and frustrating.
Wild was able to eventually deduce where Twilight Highlands was - it's pushed into the Eastern Continent south of the Arathi Highlands and butted up against the Wetlands. All of the other Cata zones had pretty clearly marked quest lines that not only provided a clear path to get to the zones, but also established portals in the main Horde city of Orgrimmar where players could teleport directly there. Where was the same courtesy shown with Twighight Highlands? There didn't seem to be any.
Wild decided to take the brute force approach, traveling to the Arathi Highlands and then flying directly into the Twilight Highlands zone. Wild completely mapped out the zone, but found no quests and nothing resembling a Horde town. Now that was strange. In desperation Wild went back to Uldum and rummaged around until he found a few more quests. When even that vein of quests petered out Wild reluctantly returned to Orgrimmar to clear his bulging bags and figure out what to do.
Orgrimmar had some quests. There were dailies - fishing and cooking. Wild needed to get into the habit of doing those each day, just as he's done with daily quests since they were invented. So he did them, and the xp was good. So Wild checked out some other local quests, did them too, and even considered doing the holiday quests since they were at least worth a little experience. Well, the holiday tree with the bulk of the quests is next door to the Warchief's headquarters. The Warchief and a couple of his aides had quests, but very early on Wild had checked them and they involved Azshara, which is a level 40-ish zone north of Org, and therefore Wild ignored them. Wild was really reaching, now, but what would it hurt to take another look at them?
To Wild's surprise the quests, which started with a "talk to me" quest that sent Wild to the southern border of Azshara, offered considerable experience. Well, that was intriguing. Wild took the quests. The Valley of Honor is the northern most area of Orgrimmar and was completely enclosed pre-Cata. Cata, however, opened another gate into and out of Org through the Valley of Honor. That path led directly into Azshara. Wild knew it was there but had never gone to check it out other than note that it had become the zone for the goblins, the new Horde allies. That is where the quests took him. That led to more quests involving a battle with the Twilight Hammer cult. And that led to Wild finding himself on a zeppelin along with an air lifted army headed for - the Twilight Highlands. Wild had finally found the quest chain which opened up the rest of the zone, and from there and until 3am Wild happily quested away. The main theme of Twilight Highlands involved an internal war between two factions of the Horde. That's another very interesting and lore soaked story that Wild had to rush through in his single minded leveling mode. When that internal strife got sorted out a new portal was established in Org next to all the other portals. Very well done, as all of it has been.
As a final wrap up I believe the lore and storylines behind the quests in the Cata zones were among the best that Blizzard has done. The zones themselves are gorgeous and creative. The addition of numerous cut scenes enhanced the story and was like the "glue" to the quests that was a terrific addition.
Now, Wild can't wait to get into Heroic dungeons and, very soon I think, guild raiding.
Oh, one other thing. Wild was so active over the weekend he earned the #1 spot on the guild achievements list for the week! Wild doesn't get anything but bragging rights, but it was nice to know that Wild was contributing to guild leveling. The MM guild is at level 5 and working hard to get to level 6.
Wildshard slew his way to level 85 Sunday night in the Twilight Highlands. The DING! came as a bit of a surprise at 3am Monday morning. Wild was totally engrossed in killing pairs of mobs to complete one more quest before turning in a set of four completed quests which he hoped would be enough to level to 85. Killing mobs grants experience, too, and while pounding away at those mobs Wild got enough experience to level before he even turned in those quests. So no climactic event; just a very satisfying late night, business-like grind. Wild's druid friend, Rs, checked in on Wild around 1am, commenting, "You're up late, Wild." Wild responded with "80% to 85 and not sleepy yet." He came back with "Go cow go!"
Things did not look so rosy earlier in the day or even the weekend. There was this thing called Christmas that took a considerable chunk out of Saturday. Not that I'm complaining! We had a great day. But Wild, well, you know Wild. He fit in a little bit of questing, but Saturday ended with Wild at only 28% to 85.
On Sunday morning Wild really had to push to find quests, and by noon all of the obvious (and some not so obvious) quests in Vash'jr, Mount Hyjal, and Deepholm were done. There were one or two quests that stymied Wild, one in particular that required the killing of a level 84 elite elemental which Wild was frustrated with. But there was also Uldum, the Egypt-like zone that had blossomed in the desert south of Tanaris at the far southern end of Kalimdor. Wild had done some questing there already, and Uldum is by far my favorite zone. Uldum incorporates the Indiana Jones theme with a "Harison Jones" character leading the way. If you've seen the movies you'll be right at home in Uldum. There was nothing more surprising and exciting than being saved from a firing squad by Mr. Jones! Except for maybe the sudden appearance of another character from the movies during the climactic quests in the tomb. There were too many quests to remember, and in any event I don't want to give too much away, but I may assemble them together at some point.
Wild eventually ran out of quests in Uldum, and there was more real life to attend to Sunday afternoon. Wild did not get back in game until after dinner. Wild was 47% of the way to 85.
Wild knew he had to make a big push Sunday night. There was one more new zone, the Twilight Highlands, that Wild had yet to enter. The truth was Wild did not know where it was or how to get to it. Maps are a pet peeve of mine. Cataclysm rearranged the world differently than any other expansion. In BC the floating island of Outland came into being, and all level 60-70 leveling was accomplished there. With WotLK it was the new zone of Northrend, where all level 70-80 was done. In both of those expansions the rest of the world was left largely alone. In Cata the new land masses for leveling 80-85 were mixed in with the old land masses and scattered about the world. And all of the major sites catering to the Warcraft crowd just seemed to assume that everyone knew where these new zones were located. No map that I could find clearly shows the world changes that includes the simple labeling of each zone. Baffling and frustrating.
Wild was able to eventually deduce where Twilight Highlands was - it's pushed into the Eastern Continent south of the Arathi Highlands and butted up against the Wetlands. All of the other Cata zones had pretty clearly marked quest lines that not only provided a clear path to get to the zones, but also established portals in the main Horde city of Orgrimmar where players could teleport directly there. Where was the same courtesy shown with Twighight Highlands? There didn't seem to be any.
Wild decided to take the brute force approach, traveling to the Arathi Highlands and then flying directly into the Twilight Highlands zone. Wild completely mapped out the zone, but found no quests and nothing resembling a Horde town. Now that was strange. In desperation Wild went back to Uldum and rummaged around until he found a few more quests. When even that vein of quests petered out Wild reluctantly returned to Orgrimmar to clear his bulging bags and figure out what to do.
Orgrimmar had some quests. There were dailies - fishing and cooking. Wild needed to get into the habit of doing those each day, just as he's done with daily quests since they were invented. So he did them, and the xp was good. So Wild checked out some other local quests, did them too, and even considered doing the holiday quests since they were at least worth a little experience. Well, the holiday tree with the bulk of the quests is next door to the Warchief's headquarters. The Warchief and a couple of his aides had quests, but very early on Wild had checked them and they involved Azshara, which is a level 40-ish zone north of Org, and therefore Wild ignored them. Wild was really reaching, now, but what would it hurt to take another look at them?
To Wild's surprise the quests, which started with a "talk to me" quest that sent Wild to the southern border of Azshara, offered considerable experience. Well, that was intriguing. Wild took the quests. The Valley of Honor is the northern most area of Orgrimmar and was completely enclosed pre-Cata. Cata, however, opened another gate into and out of Org through the Valley of Honor. That path led directly into Azshara. Wild knew it was there but had never gone to check it out other than note that it had become the zone for the goblins, the new Horde allies. That is where the quests took him. That led to more quests involving a battle with the Twilight Hammer cult. And that led to Wild finding himself on a zeppelin along with an air lifted army headed for - the Twilight Highlands. Wild had finally found the quest chain which opened up the rest of the zone, and from there and until 3am Wild happily quested away. The main theme of Twilight Highlands involved an internal war between two factions of the Horde. That's another very interesting and lore soaked story that Wild had to rush through in his single minded leveling mode. When that internal strife got sorted out a new portal was established in Org next to all the other portals. Very well done, as all of it has been.
As a final wrap up I believe the lore and storylines behind the quests in the Cata zones were among the best that Blizzard has done. The zones themselves are gorgeous and creative. The addition of numerous cut scenes enhanced the story and was like the "glue" to the quests that was a terrific addition.
Now, Wild can't wait to get into Heroic dungeons and, very soon I think, guild raiding.
Oh, one other thing. Wild was so active over the weekend he earned the #1 spot on the guild achievements list for the week! Wild doesn't get anything but bragging rights, but it was nice to know that Wild was contributing to guild leveling. The MM guild is at level 5 and working hard to get to level 6.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Saturday (25 Dec) - Merry Christmas!
Saturday (25 Dec) - Merry Christmas!
When we last met Wild was 45% of the way to level 84 and fighting for time to at least keep up with Sis, who had recently DINGED! to 84 and still had the lead on the race to 85. That was on Wednesday after maintenance ended.
On Thursday Wild had the whole morning to push to level 84, but his game time was cut short by yet another obstacle. While questing in Uldum my UPS suddenly yelped and started battering my ears with the high pitched whine that meant "Power Surge!" Instantly, everything connected to the UPS (and it was studded with the maximum number of power cables it could handle - ten) went dead. My first thought was that power went out over the entire area - we were getting an insane amount of rain for our sunny locale and there were streets underwater and potential mudslides. But it wasn't an area blackout. It wasn't even a blackout of my house, as everything except the equipment connected to the UPS was still powered. No problem with the circuit box. Ok, so this was caused by something attached to the UPS. Was the UPS itself the culprit? The steady whine could also be a dead UPS battery. I unplugged everything. I cleared the warning whine and turned the UPS back on. It worked fine and reported that the battery was fine as well.
So, I started plugging things back in. First, the modem and router and other associated network/internet stuff. All working, as confirmed through the Mrs computer, which is in another room. My older backup computer also powered up and gave me the thumbs up.
My main computer was dead. Couldn't get a peep out of it. Changed the power cord, hoping against hope. Nope, still no power. I popped open the side panel, not knowing what to expect. Nothing looked obviously fried; nothing was burning or smelled like it had been. Best guess was that the power supply was toast. What it might have taken with it when it died I wouldn't know until I tried a new power supply. Only I was fresh out of power supplies. Well, almost. I thought about swapping in the power supply from the older computer. There was a risk that all that would accomplish was me blowing up another power supply - if there was some other electrical issue besides the power supply. Then I wouldn't have either computer running. The other issue was that the main computer needed a power supply rated for at least 600w to keep the CPU cooled, and the older computer was only rated to 450w. Even if it worked, I would be risking frying my CPU. No deal.
My main computer is over two years old, but has never had any trouble running WoW. I really couldn't afford a new one, so I had to know what could be salvaged from this one. I had had the computer built for me by a local computer store. Non-chain computer businesses come and go here - great deals, but rarely do they last long. This store, though, was still (amazingly) in business. Of course the computer was out of warranty, but I knew the people there and knew they would do a good job checking everything out.
I took the computer to them and they told me they were (of course) rushing to get orders out before Christmas and that it would be a couple of days until they could get to it. Uh, I reminded him, a "couple of days" is Saturday - I got a blank look - Christmas day? Oh! Right. It'll be early next week. I left the computer with them.
Back at home, I considered my older computer. It's two years older than my dead one, which makes it four years old. The CD/DVD drive only works when it feels up to it, and sometimes the external connections forget to work. But the innards were still sound, even though the components were dated. I don't run anything more strenuous on it than letting Happy check the Auction House, though. The addons hadn't been updated and there were probably two maintenance patches that weren't yet loaded. Well, let's see what it will do.
Well, it worked. Kinda sorta, anyway. Loading times were long. Transitioning through a portal or a phased area (which is essentially a portal) could hang up the game. Once in game it would play smoothly for decent periods, and then lag would kick in and everything took twice as long to do. Wild did his best to persevere. Sis was in game with Wild on occasion and we'd keep each other amused while we plowed through our separate quest lines. Sometime on Thursday night Wild finally made it to level 84. Sis finished her evening without dinging to level 85 and was would be off visiting for the weekend.
There was more plowing to do on Friday morning, with Wild making it 28% of the way to level 85. We had visitors of our own coming Friday afternoon, and that ended Wild's sojourn.
Wild got a call early in the afternoon on Friday to say that they'd had a chance to check out my PC. Yes, they said, the power supply was in fact dead. The cause of the power supply to fail, though, was the CPU fan. It had failed, and the heat generated had apparently set something off which torched the power supply. The good news was that everything else seemed to have escaped damage and was working fine. The great news was that they could have it fixed that same day.
I was able to slip away and retrieve the fixed PC before our quests arrived, but I did not have time to get it hooked back up. Time for some Christmas Eve partying and Christmas morning ... more to follow.
When we last met Wild was 45% of the way to level 84 and fighting for time to at least keep up with Sis, who had recently DINGED! to 84 and still had the lead on the race to 85. That was on Wednesday after maintenance ended.
On Thursday Wild had the whole morning to push to level 84, but his game time was cut short by yet another obstacle. While questing in Uldum my UPS suddenly yelped and started battering my ears with the high pitched whine that meant "Power Surge!" Instantly, everything connected to the UPS (and it was studded with the maximum number of power cables it could handle - ten) went dead. My first thought was that power went out over the entire area - we were getting an insane amount of rain for our sunny locale and there were streets underwater and potential mudslides. But it wasn't an area blackout. It wasn't even a blackout of my house, as everything except the equipment connected to the UPS was still powered. No problem with the circuit box. Ok, so this was caused by something attached to the UPS. Was the UPS itself the culprit? The steady whine could also be a dead UPS battery. I unplugged everything. I cleared the warning whine and turned the UPS back on. It worked fine and reported that the battery was fine as well.
So, I started plugging things back in. First, the modem and router and other associated network/internet stuff. All working, as confirmed through the Mrs computer, which is in another room. My older backup computer also powered up and gave me the thumbs up.
My main computer was dead. Couldn't get a peep out of it. Changed the power cord, hoping against hope. Nope, still no power. I popped open the side panel, not knowing what to expect. Nothing looked obviously fried; nothing was burning or smelled like it had been. Best guess was that the power supply was toast. What it might have taken with it when it died I wouldn't know until I tried a new power supply. Only I was fresh out of power supplies. Well, almost. I thought about swapping in the power supply from the older computer. There was a risk that all that would accomplish was me blowing up another power supply - if there was some other electrical issue besides the power supply. Then I wouldn't have either computer running. The other issue was that the main computer needed a power supply rated for at least 600w to keep the CPU cooled, and the older computer was only rated to 450w. Even if it worked, I would be risking frying my CPU. No deal.
My main computer is over two years old, but has never had any trouble running WoW. I really couldn't afford a new one, so I had to know what could be salvaged from this one. I had had the computer built for me by a local computer store. Non-chain computer businesses come and go here - great deals, but rarely do they last long. This store, though, was still (amazingly) in business. Of course the computer was out of warranty, but I knew the people there and knew they would do a good job checking everything out.
I took the computer to them and they told me they were (of course) rushing to get orders out before Christmas and that it would be a couple of days until they could get to it. Uh, I reminded him, a "couple of days" is Saturday - I got a blank look - Christmas day? Oh! Right. It'll be early next week. I left the computer with them.
Back at home, I considered my older computer. It's two years older than my dead one, which makes it four years old. The CD/DVD drive only works when it feels up to it, and sometimes the external connections forget to work. But the innards were still sound, even though the components were dated. I don't run anything more strenuous on it than letting Happy check the Auction House, though. The addons hadn't been updated and there were probably two maintenance patches that weren't yet loaded. Well, let's see what it will do.
Well, it worked. Kinda sorta, anyway. Loading times were long. Transitioning through a portal or a phased area (which is essentially a portal) could hang up the game. Once in game it would play smoothly for decent periods, and then lag would kick in and everything took twice as long to do. Wild did his best to persevere. Sis was in game with Wild on occasion and we'd keep each other amused while we plowed through our separate quest lines. Sometime on Thursday night Wild finally made it to level 84. Sis finished her evening without dinging to level 85 and was would be off visiting for the weekend.
There was more plowing to do on Friday morning, with Wild making it 28% of the way to level 85. We had visitors of our own coming Friday afternoon, and that ended Wild's sojourn.
Wild got a call early in the afternoon on Friday to say that they'd had a chance to check out my PC. Yes, they said, the power supply was in fact dead. The cause of the power supply to fail, though, was the CPU fan. It had failed, and the heat generated had apparently set something off which torched the power supply. The good news was that everything else seemed to have escaped damage and was working fine. The great news was that they could have it fixed that same day.
I was able to slip away and retrieve the fixed PC before our quests arrived, but I did not have time to get it hooked back up. Time for some Christmas Eve partying and Christmas morning ... more to follow.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Tuesday (21 Dec) - A Hitch in the Grind
Tuesday (21 Dec) - A Hitch in the Grind
Sis's respeccing tales and the enforced idleness from the surprise maintenance on a Wednesday drove Wild to take a look at his own talent specs now that there are level 85s out there running Heroics and refining their healing strategies. While questing Wild primarily works from his moonkin spec since it delivers much higher damage while still providing plenty of self-healing when needed. But for dungeon runs and the raids that are coming just around the corner, Wild needs to be in top form with his healing talent spec.
Wild considered himself "old school" as far as healing strategies go, but during WotLK had let himself be lulled into the "never out of mana" strategy of spamming expensive spells on everyone all the time, never mind whether they needed it at that moment or not. Wild did have to make some adjustments to reduce mana consumption during the seemingly endless nights of battling the Lich King, but that was really the only time Wild needed to watch his mana bar. Wild's cata dungeon experience is limited to just the two normal mode dungeons that are the starter dungeons for cata. Wild had no problem with mana there, either, and so didn't make any changes to his healing strategy - however, everyone in that group way overgeared those dungeons, so I don't think that was a true test.
The end result of that, though, is that Wild's talent spec decisions look more like WotLK style healing than the kind of healing that is expected in Cata. I can sum up those differences pretty easily:
WothLK Healing: Spam rejuv. Spam regrowth when rejuv isn't enough. Spam rejuv some more. Toss Wild Growth around whenever you feel like it. When tank healing add lifebloom. Innervate the priest so she can spam her own spells without worrying about mana. Repeat until boss is dead.
According to the pundits, the WotLK way of healing will end seconds after it started when the healer goes out of mana and the group/raid wipes.
Cata Healing: (1) Lifebloom stack on the tank at all times. (2) Spam Nourish on the tank, and use it on DPS, too, unless there is an urgent need for something faster. (3) DO NOT spam rejuv. Rejuv is now an expensive spell and WIll run you out of mana if over-used. (4) Secondary spell procs from the above will create conditions called Clearcasting and Omen of Clarity. When these proc the next spell can be cast mana-free. USE THESE PROCS by casting regrowth (primarily) the player most in need of a heal. It's free mana, so look for it and use it! (5) Don't forget Tree of Life (ToL). I know Wild is going to forget. It is an amazing increase in healing, but can only be used once every three minutes. Use to lifebloom the whole group (normally LB can only be used on one target) and for the instant regrowths. (6) Tranquility is useful again! The channeled spell is instant, has no cooldown, and heals up to five players. It's only downside is that it's a channeled spell, so Wild can't do anything else during the channeling. (7) I say again that Nourish is now the spam spell of choice because it's cheap and helps proc other nice things. (8) There are still differences of opinion on whether wild growth (pre-cata a superb AoE heal that could be spammed every few seconds) should be in heavy use or only situational use. It's more costly to cast than before, but ... my take is to use it often, unless you start to see mana problems, since it's instant and hits up to six players.
Ok, first an admission from Wild - Wild HATES Nourish. It takes two plus seconds to cast the dang thing, and the heal at the end of it is pretty lame. BUT - a decent tank with a stack of lifeblooms ticking should be able to survive most of the time using nourish spells. Poster after poster in the forums have said this. Wild doesn't have to like it, but he'd better learn to use it. Often. I'm going to have to make the rejuv spell difficult to reach on the keyboard - my fingers are so conditioned to hit that spell I've seen Wild cast it three times in a row before it hits me what I'm doing. Going to put nourish on that key - gah, that will be hard to get used to.
I haven't mentioned one other healing spell - Healing Touch. It's a BIG heal - and it's three times as expensive to cast as nourish. But it has the same cast time as nourish, so when the situation calls for a bigger heal than nourish can provide, and you don't have time to cast two nourishes instead, then HT should be used. That will be even harder for Wild, because HT is the least used spell of all time.
After all the above, the question now is - How does this affect Wild's talent specs? Well, in several ways.
1) Wild ignored talents that affected nourish and HT. To add those talents, Wild will have to give up some others, particularly some that improved his rejuv spell, which he isn't supposed to use as much now. Wild will be swapping Blessing of the Grove for Naturalist. The miss-placed Nature's Ward will go to Malfurion's Gift. Wild has one unspent talent point to use in Empowered Touch. At level 85 Wild gets 41 total points, and so has three still to use. One will got to get a second point in Empowered Touch. The other two will go to Fury.
The Why -
Naturalist - Reduces the cast time of nourish/HT by 0.5 seconds.
Malfurion's Gift - a chance to proc OOC (only putting one of two points here)
Empowered Touch - increases nourish/HT healing, and refreshes the lifebloom stack when those spells are used, saving an LB cast.
Fury (from the feral tree) - increases mana pool.
Wild kept Nature's Swiftness, although the "stock" spec no longer includes it. NS is basically an instant HT, useful in emergencies, and Wild likes to have as many options as possible for emergencies. If it proves not needed, then Wild can change it.
In combat mana regen is going to remain a concern until Wild starts to get some dungeon/raid experience. The stat spirit, which provides mana regen, has been in depressingly low availability in gear drops. The huge +spi numbers Wild has on his pre-cata gear is taking a big hit as it's replaced by cata gear without it. So, if things go really bad mana regen wise, Wild may be going back to some of that "old" gear to increase mana regen.
You know, I just noticed that I hadn't included the latest news from Sis and DER. Here goes!
DER (respomnding to Sis's comment that she probably wasn't going to be questing on Tuesday night) - I’ll bet she makes 85 tonight as I can easily see “I don’t think I will be on tonight” being translated tomorrow to, I only got on to level to 85, then ended up staying up until 3 AM. :P
Sis did get in game Tuesday night, but DER would have lost that bet - I did get on, but I did not do a single quest with my Hordies, and only the cooking/fishing with Neekia. But I was on a lot longer than I was thinking I would be.
I cleared out Sis’s first tree, that cost 32g. Then I cleared out the second tree, that cost 62 or 64 gold. So 94 or 96 gold for both trees :P At least it is money that will very much improve her game, I hope. She then saw that she won her big on some shards and cracked them to skill up her enchanting and create 70-80 material for Lao’s enchanting needs. It was a downward spiral then. She decided to clear out her bank of old low level enchant material and posted that on the AH (even undercut Happy on one of the shards). Then it was the “redo” the action bar.. bah. So 45 minutes later..
Finally Kia got on and did her cooking and fishing quests. Also got to buy a new recipe using Blood Shrimp to make a strength food.
But I am off all day Thursday, the sprint will begin then. More that I want to see how some of these quest chains go.
From Wild - Wild was on for a bit last night, following Sis’s bloody trail through Deepholm and taking on those stone troggs. Got as far as getting the invite to head to Egypt land (Uldum). Despite being rested and finishing many, many quests with 60k plus experience, Wild called it an evening only 45% of the way to level 84. The grind to 84/85 is a long one. Wild was also shocked to find out that he can’t disenchant gear at ilevel 318. I had no idea there was a level requirement for disenchanting as Wild has been able to disenchant cata gear below that level. Haven’t been able to find out what level Wild needs to be; for now, the junk is going to start collecting. I hope Wild has room for it all.
Yesterday I finally finished the large Christmas project I’ve been working on for the Mrs and powered up the computer this morning expecting to get in several hours of “catch up” grinding. But wait …
When I logged in I discovered that Blizzard had decided to do maintenance – on a Wednesday. Sigh. No grinding this morning, at least not before 11am. Right after I logged in last night my druid tank/moonkin friend whispered me demanding that Wild get to 85 “like now!” He misses his healer. Most of the guild raiders are already level 85 and the guild is starting the planning to establish raid groups for cata raids.
The one bit of good news for Wild is that one day after upgrading his pre-cata main hand weapon for a sweet two hand, another main hand mace dropped along with an off hand that out gears the two hand. Wild also changed out two more pre-cata pieces for cata gear. Wild is now wearing 8 pieces of Cata gear, which is almost half his gear. Since quest rewards heavily favor leather feral gear and not leather caster gear, Wild has also accumulated a pretty fine set of cat/agi gear to play around with. Not much gear for a tanking bear, though.
So you’re off Thursday? Hope I’m on when you hit 85 (of course, you could hit it tonight as well). And I hope I won’t be too far behind ya. :-)
Sis's respeccing tales and the enforced idleness from the surprise maintenance on a Wednesday drove Wild to take a look at his own talent specs now that there are level 85s out there running Heroics and refining their healing strategies. While questing Wild primarily works from his moonkin spec since it delivers much higher damage while still providing plenty of self-healing when needed. But for dungeon runs and the raids that are coming just around the corner, Wild needs to be in top form with his healing talent spec.
Wild considered himself "old school" as far as healing strategies go, but during WotLK had let himself be lulled into the "never out of mana" strategy of spamming expensive spells on everyone all the time, never mind whether they needed it at that moment or not. Wild did have to make some adjustments to reduce mana consumption during the seemingly endless nights of battling the Lich King, but that was really the only time Wild needed to watch his mana bar. Wild's cata dungeon experience is limited to just the two normal mode dungeons that are the starter dungeons for cata. Wild had no problem with mana there, either, and so didn't make any changes to his healing strategy - however, everyone in that group way overgeared those dungeons, so I don't think that was a true test.
The end result of that, though, is that Wild's talent spec decisions look more like WotLK style healing than the kind of healing that is expected in Cata. I can sum up those differences pretty easily:
WothLK Healing: Spam rejuv. Spam regrowth when rejuv isn't enough. Spam rejuv some more. Toss Wild Growth around whenever you feel like it. When tank healing add lifebloom. Innervate the priest so she can spam her own spells without worrying about mana. Repeat until boss is dead.
According to the pundits, the WotLK way of healing will end seconds after it started when the healer goes out of mana and the group/raid wipes.
Cata Healing: (1) Lifebloom stack on the tank at all times. (2) Spam Nourish on the tank, and use it on DPS, too, unless there is an urgent need for something faster. (3) DO NOT spam rejuv. Rejuv is now an expensive spell and WIll run you out of mana if over-used. (4) Secondary spell procs from the above will create conditions called Clearcasting and Omen of Clarity. When these proc the next spell can be cast mana-free. USE THESE PROCS by casting regrowth (primarily) the player most in need of a heal. It's free mana, so look for it and use it! (5) Don't forget Tree of Life (ToL). I know Wild is going to forget. It is an amazing increase in healing, but can only be used once every three minutes. Use to lifebloom the whole group (normally LB can only be used on one target) and for the instant regrowths. (6) Tranquility is useful again! The channeled spell is instant, has no cooldown, and heals up to five players. It's only downside is that it's a channeled spell, so Wild can't do anything else during the channeling. (7) I say again that Nourish is now the spam spell of choice because it's cheap and helps proc other nice things. (8) There are still differences of opinion on whether wild growth (pre-cata a superb AoE heal that could be spammed every few seconds) should be in heavy use or only situational use. It's more costly to cast than before, but ... my take is to use it often, unless you start to see mana problems, since it's instant and hits up to six players.
Ok, first an admission from Wild - Wild HATES Nourish. It takes two plus seconds to cast the dang thing, and the heal at the end of it is pretty lame. BUT - a decent tank with a stack of lifeblooms ticking should be able to survive most of the time using nourish spells. Poster after poster in the forums have said this. Wild doesn't have to like it, but he'd better learn to use it. Often. I'm going to have to make the rejuv spell difficult to reach on the keyboard - my fingers are so conditioned to hit that spell I've seen Wild cast it three times in a row before it hits me what I'm doing. Going to put nourish on that key - gah, that will be hard to get used to.
I haven't mentioned one other healing spell - Healing Touch. It's a BIG heal - and it's three times as expensive to cast as nourish. But it has the same cast time as nourish, so when the situation calls for a bigger heal than nourish can provide, and you don't have time to cast two nourishes instead, then HT should be used. That will be even harder for Wild, because HT is the least used spell of all time.
After all the above, the question now is - How does this affect Wild's talent specs? Well, in several ways.
1) Wild ignored talents that affected nourish and HT. To add those talents, Wild will have to give up some others, particularly some that improved his rejuv spell, which he isn't supposed to use as much now. Wild will be swapping Blessing of the Grove for Naturalist. The miss-placed Nature's Ward will go to Malfurion's Gift. Wild has one unspent talent point to use in Empowered Touch. At level 85 Wild gets 41 total points, and so has three still to use. One will got to get a second point in Empowered Touch. The other two will go to Fury.
The Why -
Naturalist - Reduces the cast time of nourish/HT by 0.5 seconds.
Malfurion's Gift - a chance to proc OOC (only putting one of two points here)
Empowered Touch - increases nourish/HT healing, and refreshes the lifebloom stack when those spells are used, saving an LB cast.
Fury (from the feral tree) - increases mana pool.
Wild kept Nature's Swiftness, although the "stock" spec no longer includes it. NS is basically an instant HT, useful in emergencies, and Wild likes to have as many options as possible for emergencies. If it proves not needed, then Wild can change it.
In combat mana regen is going to remain a concern until Wild starts to get some dungeon/raid experience. The stat spirit, which provides mana regen, has been in depressingly low availability in gear drops. The huge +spi numbers Wild has on his pre-cata gear is taking a big hit as it's replaced by cata gear without it. So, if things go really bad mana regen wise, Wild may be going back to some of that "old" gear to increase mana regen.
You know, I just noticed that I hadn't included the latest news from Sis and DER. Here goes!
DER (respomnding to Sis's comment that she probably wasn't going to be questing on Tuesday night) - I’ll bet she makes 85 tonight as I can easily see “I don’t think I will be on tonight” being translated tomorrow to, I only got on to level to 85, then ended up staying up until 3 AM. :P
Sis did get in game Tuesday night, but DER would have lost that bet - I did get on, but I did not do a single quest with my Hordies, and only the cooking/fishing with Neekia. But I was on a lot longer than I was thinking I would be.
I cleared out Sis’s first tree, that cost 32g. Then I cleared out the second tree, that cost 62 or 64 gold. So 94 or 96 gold for both trees :P At least it is money that will very much improve her game, I hope. She then saw that she won her big on some shards and cracked them to skill up her enchanting and create 70-80 material for Lao’s enchanting needs. It was a downward spiral then. She decided to clear out her bank of old low level enchant material and posted that on the AH (even undercut Happy on one of the shards). Then it was the “redo” the action bar.. bah. So 45 minutes later..
Finally Kia got on and did her cooking and fishing quests. Also got to buy a new recipe using Blood Shrimp to make a strength food.
But I am off all day Thursday, the sprint will begin then. More that I want to see how some of these quest chains go.
From Wild - Wild was on for a bit last night, following Sis’s bloody trail through Deepholm and taking on those stone troggs. Got as far as getting the invite to head to Egypt land (Uldum). Despite being rested and finishing many, many quests with 60k plus experience, Wild called it an evening only 45% of the way to level 84. The grind to 84/85 is a long one. Wild was also shocked to find out that he can’t disenchant gear at ilevel 318. I had no idea there was a level requirement for disenchanting as Wild has been able to disenchant cata gear below that level. Haven’t been able to find out what level Wild needs to be; for now, the junk is going to start collecting. I hope Wild has room for it all.
Yesterday I finally finished the large Christmas project I’ve been working on for the Mrs and powered up the computer this morning expecting to get in several hours of “catch up” grinding. But wait …
When I logged in I discovered that Blizzard had decided to do maintenance – on a Wednesday. Sigh. No grinding this morning, at least not before 11am. Right after I logged in last night my druid tank/moonkin friend whispered me demanding that Wild get to 85 “like now!” He misses his healer. Most of the guild raiders are already level 85 and the guild is starting the planning to establish raid groups for cata raids.
The one bit of good news for Wild is that one day after upgrading his pre-cata main hand weapon for a sweet two hand, another main hand mace dropped along with an off hand that out gears the two hand. Wild also changed out two more pre-cata pieces for cata gear. Wild is now wearing 8 pieces of Cata gear, which is almost half his gear. Since quest rewards heavily favor leather feral gear and not leather caster gear, Wild has also accumulated a pretty fine set of cat/agi gear to play around with. Not much gear for a tanking bear, though.
So you’re off Thursday? Hope I’m on when you hit 85 (of course, you could hit it tonight as well). And I hope I won’t be too far behind ya. :-)
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Monday (20 Dec) - Scratchin' For Game Time
Monday (20 Dec) - Scratchin' For Game Time
My email box is a lot more interesting than my game time at the moment so I am going to let Sis and DER take center stage.
Sis: For Your Reading Pleasure
Excitement abounds!
Lao learned a whole new level of engineering and is now clamoring for ore. Since she is not a miner Sis had to drag herself out of a long bout of ennui and start questing in the new areas so she could mine ore along the way.
Wow! Blizzard sure did a great job on the expansion. Narcissus has been questing for days and does not want to stop.
She started out in the aqua land (just to see herself and ship get attacked by a giant octopus). From there she found herself, not only in the grasp of tentacles, but in the mouth of Gnaws (set up by a nutter she should have known not to listen to) and in the mouths (with only her feet sticking out) of large Groupers that took issue with her killing them for their meat.
Blizzard has set up great story lines in all of the new areas that Sis has been in so far. She very much recommends reading the quests. In the aqua land she uncovered a very deep Naga agenda before she was invited by another quest to check out the Maelstrom in the middle of the ocean that Thrall was in the mist of trying to handle.
Now Maelstrom Narcissus loved. The shattering caused the world's pillar to crack and three fragments are now missing and are needed to restore some stability. On top of this Twilight Cultists are up to no good. Of course, since when are cultists up to any good? So Sis runs off and gets a fragment from the cultists and surprise, she finds Millhouse in the middle of their schemes. Now, you may recall Millhouse was also up to no good in BC and you end up rescuing him by fluke in one of the Netherstorm dungeons. In this one it looks like you can now kill him in a Maelstrom dungeon. Which Sis has not gotten around to doing yet.
For the next fragment she runs off to talk to the stone men. I am sure they have some other name, but she is horrible with names, so that will have to do. To earn their trust she needs to help them fight back the troggs (harry subhumanoids that are handy with clubs), bog creatures, and to rescue their leader. She does all this and they give her the next fragment. Woohoo!
Lastly she sets off to deal with the elementals, specifically earth elements that are trying to lay siege to her base camp. They are none too happy with the interlopers and are clumping the “good guys” with the cultists. Sis had to go around to several different earth elementals to earn their trust. Sis finishes with her last elemental and is excited to retrieve her last fragment only to hear that they will “speak” to the elemental mother. Thinking she missed something Sis flew around the cavern to see if any new quests would be listed to give her guidance… nothing.
Well, at a loss she heads off to Egypt.. err I mean Ulderman or some such place. Looked pretty close to Egypt though. On her way there her and her escort (which includes the same nutter from the Gnaws quest) are captured! A lot of climatic scenes in this new expansion. Sis frees them, and the son of a pharaoh, and starts a new quest chain for said cat pharaoh. Now she just has barely arrived here, but learned down in Maelstrom that the pyramid here is not just a pyramid but a weapon the cultists were trying to activate. She has not gotten that far in her questing yet, but did have a fun side quest going with Harrison Jones, the archeologist from the BC raid Zul something.. So far she got them almost blown up (and thrown up in the air while hiding in trunks), found a staff that pin pointed some sacred location (see Indiana Jones and the Lost Ark), and helped Dr. Jones destroy some rather nice statues of a pharaoh in their adventures.
All of this! And all in one weekend. Stay tuned, DER, for more! Oh, and Sis has been remembering to send Lao the ore she comes across.
Sis: The Next Saga
Well, Sis has progressed a little bit further. Still in Egypt, she has helped the King push back an invasion, but it is not yet over. The enemy has set up a new strong hold and that is where Narcissus will next have to assist. While she was doing this she got a side quest to exterminate some gnomes that became crazed due to a curse. This was fun. She first had to hack into the mainframe, which a computer said would be difficult but that it could walk me through it. Sis said ‘forget that’ and hacked it her way, with an axe. This helped her reprogram it and let her enter the power source/core and become a flaming ball of death and killed a thousand of crazed gnomes (no, really a thousand, that is how much the quest called for). I have screen shots of them flying aflame into the air, I will have to send them. Towards the end of this, ding, 84. But there is a quest here, a daily, that many people have commented how cool it was. There are these pygmy guys that sit three tall on each other’s shoulders in order to try to steal the cities dates. You job is to go out with a mallet and wack them apart. The audio and video make this a very cool daily to do. I have laughed each time.
Shortly after, while taking stock of her enchanting (which she needs to skill up on) and emptying her bags into the bank Wild came on. We finally decided to stay on Wild and Sis to do a dungeon, but this was a no-go. There was either a bug with the que system for random dungeons or maybe the dungeon server was down, but we could not que up. So next we took off to Deepholm/Maelstrom to blaze through some quests that Wild had. Sis already wanted to go back there since the Quest Achievement says there are at least 20 more out there that she did not find.
Wild killed off cultists, freed slaves, slew dragons, and went through two mini cinema events before Sis started to yawn and went off to bed.
DER: Sure, rub it in! Who is going to make 85 first???
Sis: Who knows. As of last night, as she left, I think Sis was about half a level higher, but I don’t think I will be on today, other than for daily cooking. So the field is wide open.
Wild: Wild had a blast with Sis Monday night. Although she had already done every quest that Wild still had on his to do list, she stayed with Wild to help him kill things. Every time I showed her the next quest I was going to do, Sis would fly to the spot where I needed to go to do the quest. What a memory! I had warned Sis that Wild's questing methods were likely to drive her nuts, but she remained exceedingly calm - except for that one time having to do with killing crocodile like creatures. Wild and Sis killed a bunch of them but Wild was not getting any credit for the skins I was supposed to get. Finally, Sis suggested that Wild might want to use the skinning knife he had been given when he picked up the quest. Oh yea, that might help. Wild claimed he was just getting a bunch together so he could skin them all at once. Right.
Monday night was the first night Wild has been able to quest and level since I left on the Monterey vacation. Despite the night of questing Sis still has a substantial lead. Wild retired for the night 15% of the way to level 84. Sis is already level 84 and halfway to 85. Don't think I'm going to catch her. She's got that crazed, obsessed look in her eye - the lore of Cataclysm beckons!
My email box is a lot more interesting than my game time at the moment so I am going to let Sis and DER take center stage.
Sis: For Your Reading Pleasure
Excitement abounds!
Lao learned a whole new level of engineering and is now clamoring for ore. Since she is not a miner Sis had to drag herself out of a long bout of ennui and start questing in the new areas so she could mine ore along the way.
Wow! Blizzard sure did a great job on the expansion. Narcissus has been questing for days and does not want to stop.
She started out in the aqua land (just to see herself and ship get attacked by a giant octopus). From there she found herself, not only in the grasp of tentacles, but in the mouth of Gnaws (set up by a nutter she should have known not to listen to) and in the mouths (with only her feet sticking out) of large Groupers that took issue with her killing them for their meat.
Blizzard has set up great story lines in all of the new areas that Sis has been in so far. She very much recommends reading the quests. In the aqua land she uncovered a very deep Naga agenda before she was invited by another quest to check out the Maelstrom in the middle of the ocean that Thrall was in the mist of trying to handle.
Now Maelstrom Narcissus loved. The shattering caused the world's pillar to crack and three fragments are now missing and are needed to restore some stability. On top of this Twilight Cultists are up to no good. Of course, since when are cultists up to any good? So Sis runs off and gets a fragment from the cultists and surprise, she finds Millhouse in the middle of their schemes. Now, you may recall Millhouse was also up to no good in BC and you end up rescuing him by fluke in one of the Netherstorm dungeons. In this one it looks like you can now kill him in a Maelstrom dungeon. Which Sis has not gotten around to doing yet.
For the next fragment she runs off to talk to the stone men. I am sure they have some other name, but she is horrible with names, so that will have to do. To earn their trust she needs to help them fight back the troggs (harry subhumanoids that are handy with clubs), bog creatures, and to rescue their leader. She does all this and they give her the next fragment. Woohoo!
Lastly she sets off to deal with the elementals, specifically earth elements that are trying to lay siege to her base camp. They are none too happy with the interlopers and are clumping the “good guys” with the cultists. Sis had to go around to several different earth elementals to earn their trust. Sis finishes with her last elemental and is excited to retrieve her last fragment only to hear that they will “speak” to the elemental mother. Thinking she missed something Sis flew around the cavern to see if any new quests would be listed to give her guidance… nothing.
Well, at a loss she heads off to Egypt.. err I mean Ulderman or some such place. Looked pretty close to Egypt though. On her way there her and her escort (which includes the same nutter from the Gnaws quest) are captured! A lot of climatic scenes in this new expansion. Sis frees them, and the son of a pharaoh, and starts a new quest chain for said cat pharaoh. Now she just has barely arrived here, but learned down in Maelstrom that the pyramid here is not just a pyramid but a weapon the cultists were trying to activate. She has not gotten that far in her questing yet, but did have a fun side quest going with Harrison Jones, the archeologist from the BC raid Zul something.. So far she got them almost blown up (and thrown up in the air while hiding in trunks), found a staff that pin pointed some sacred location (see Indiana Jones and the Lost Ark), and helped Dr. Jones destroy some rather nice statues of a pharaoh in their adventures.
All of this! And all in one weekend. Stay tuned, DER, for more! Oh, and Sis has been remembering to send Lao the ore she comes across.
Sis: The Next Saga
Well, Sis has progressed a little bit further. Still in Egypt, she has helped the King push back an invasion, but it is not yet over. The enemy has set up a new strong hold and that is where Narcissus will next have to assist. While she was doing this she got a side quest to exterminate some gnomes that became crazed due to a curse. This was fun. She first had to hack into the mainframe, which a computer said would be difficult but that it could walk me through it. Sis said ‘forget that’ and hacked it her way, with an axe. This helped her reprogram it and let her enter the power source/core and become a flaming ball of death and killed a thousand of crazed gnomes (no, really a thousand, that is how much the quest called for). I have screen shots of them flying aflame into the air, I will have to send them. Towards the end of this, ding, 84. But there is a quest here, a daily, that many people have commented how cool it was. There are these pygmy guys that sit three tall on each other’s shoulders in order to try to steal the cities dates. You job is to go out with a mallet and wack them apart. The audio and video make this a very cool daily to do. I have laughed each time.
Shortly after, while taking stock of her enchanting (which she needs to skill up on) and emptying her bags into the bank Wild came on. We finally decided to stay on Wild and Sis to do a dungeon, but this was a no-go. There was either a bug with the que system for random dungeons or maybe the dungeon server was down, but we could not que up. So next we took off to Deepholm/Maelstrom to blaze through some quests that Wild had. Sis already wanted to go back there since the Quest Achievement says there are at least 20 more out there that she did not find.
Wild killed off cultists, freed slaves, slew dragons, and went through two mini cinema events before Sis started to yawn and went off to bed.
DER: Sure, rub it in! Who is going to make 85 first???
Sis: Who knows. As of last night, as she left, I think Sis was about half a level higher, but I don’t think I will be on today, other than for daily cooking. So the field is wide open.
Wild: Wild had a blast with Sis Monday night. Although she had already done every quest that Wild still had on his to do list, she stayed with Wild to help him kill things. Every time I showed her the next quest I was going to do, Sis would fly to the spot where I needed to go to do the quest. What a memory! I had warned Sis that Wild's questing methods were likely to drive her nuts, but she remained exceedingly calm - except for that one time having to do with killing crocodile like creatures. Wild and Sis killed a bunch of them but Wild was not getting any credit for the skins I was supposed to get. Finally, Sis suggested that Wild might want to use the skinning knife he had been given when he picked up the quest. Oh yea, that might help. Wild claimed he was just getting a bunch together so he could skin them all at once. Right.
Monday night was the first night Wild has been able to quest and level since I left on the Monterey vacation. Despite the night of questing Sis still has a substantial lead. Wild retired for the night 15% of the way to level 84. Sis is already level 84 and halfway to 85. Don't think I'm going to catch her. She's got that crazed, obsessed look in her eye - the lore of Cataclysm beckons!
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Weekend (19 Dec) - Back From the Road
Weekend (19 Dec) - Back From the Road
The traveling circus that is our RV made it back from Monterey Saturday afternoon. The five of us - yours truly, the Mrs, the cat twins, and the dog - all had a great time. There were a few hiccups, such as our refrigerator refusing to work on the morning we were leaving. We eventually figured out that our deep cell battery (the battery that provides the juice to the fridge and other appliances) had died on us. Once we knew what was wrong it was an easy fix as even lefty and all thumbs me can swap out a battery. But our 10am start was delayed until 1:30pm by the time everything was ready to go. Not to be out done on the backside of our trip, the driver side seat belt froze and refused to function the morning we were leaving. I had just enough belt to get it around my shoulder, but not enough to latch it. We made it back without getting caught by the "click it or ticket" boys and we'll get it fixed before we head out again. The most unusual aspect of this trip was that it rained every single day. SoCal is under what for us is a deluge of rain that is expected to continue into mid-next week. We had one sort of sunny day in Monterey and spent that day walking the beaches. We did our Cannery Row afternoon in the rain, but that only made the superb clam chowder that much better. On the drive home it rained the whole time all the way from Monterey to our driveway in San Diego. I've never seen anything like it.
For those looking for something about WoW, I got nuttin! But both DER and Sis tortured me during the week away with some excellent tales and research that I am sharing below. Now I have to go see what mess Happy and Lost are in after a week without the Auction House.
From the Sis/Lao family: Well, I broke into Cata this weekend. Not as vigorously as Wild (as there was competition for game time) but I am in none the less. Neekia got the first exposure. Since she was my very first WoW toon, I though she should be the first to run in. So off she went onto the boat, wondering if she as well, would be attacked. She was, and weighted down with her heavy plate began to sink. Once she recovered she began the chain of quests. Took her a bit to remember what end of the sword to hold onto (she has just been fishing and cooking for too long) but after a few deaths.. maybe half a dozen, she now seems to have the hang of it. The last death she had she can thank Wild for the fact that it was not many more. It was the flame spewing guy that you had to “weaken” but run out when his flame aura kicked on. She got toasted by the first round of fire and had the “Ah, this is the one that killed Wild” memory, and ran out after that. Unlike Wild, all of her purples are lvl 200 pvp gear, so half of her armor (and both weapons) has been replaced with quest greens (and one blue). Any time the quest giver shows plate it seems to be an upgrade. Oh, and I think Neekia got turned off by being used as bait in the Gnaws quest chain. She likes to fish for fish, not to be used as bait and caught up in giant jaws.. *shudder* see if she ever takes quests from nutters again.
But it seems that it is quests (I am sure among other things) that gives you guild points. I think I will work on Sis next (mainly due to Lao wanting the new Obsidian ore) and get our guild some points. Kia is content to sit on the side lines, she discovered the new daily cooking and fishing quests and is excited to get back to her true passions in that regard.
DER, meanwhile, has been doing some research on Arena and battleground pvp changes for Cata. An amazing addition is War Games. Read on:
"Beginning with Arena Season 9, we’re giving Arena and Battleground teams the option to challenge each other to War Games, a new kind of skirmish that allows teams to practice, set up matches against friends or rivals, or even try out potential recruits.
War Games allow you to engage in a PvP scrimmage with other people on your server. It’s like a /duel, with groups, only you get to choose where you fight. You don’t gain any Honor or Conquest points here, nor Honorable Kills – but you do get to send your group and another group into any BG or Arena to practice your skills.
This is a great thing for casual and hardcore PvPers alike, allowing people to practice without consequence. You’re in a group that you choose, so you no longer have to pug a battleground to learn how it works. You can explore at will if your opponents are friendly (hellooooo, better BG screenshots!) or use it to actually compete with other groups in your guild.
I read over the FAQ Blizzard posted above and it covers a lot of possibilities War Games modes opens up. I think this is a great tool, one that can be creatively applied to make battleground PvP a better experience for everyone. You can bring new players into Battlegrounds and teach them how it works without the pressure of competition. You can try out different group compositions and strategies. You can hold intraguild competitions – my own guild leader is already planning a 2v2 bracket event with prizes.
One of the biggest challenges to getting people into battlegrounds and Arena is unfamiliarity with the game, combined with the pressure of having to learn very quickly. War Games will definitely help make them more accessible, while also giving a tool that high-end players will use to perfect their play.
I’m really excited that Blizzard implemented this. It’s due out this week, and I can’t wait to try it out. "
Discovered at:
http://cynwise.wordpress.com/2010/12/14/would-you-like-to-play-a-game-of-chess/
Oh, and I have to report that Sis is now level 82, only one level behind Wild at just barely level 83. Given how much I still have to do to get ready for Christmas morning, it may be another week before Wild reaches level 85. Sis may well beat me to it. But not if I can help it!
The traveling circus that is our RV made it back from Monterey Saturday afternoon. The five of us - yours truly, the Mrs, the cat twins, and the dog - all had a great time. There were a few hiccups, such as our refrigerator refusing to work on the morning we were leaving. We eventually figured out that our deep cell battery (the battery that provides the juice to the fridge and other appliances) had died on us. Once we knew what was wrong it was an easy fix as even lefty and all thumbs me can swap out a battery. But our 10am start was delayed until 1:30pm by the time everything was ready to go. Not to be out done on the backside of our trip, the driver side seat belt froze and refused to function the morning we were leaving. I had just enough belt to get it around my shoulder, but not enough to latch it. We made it back without getting caught by the "click it or ticket" boys and we'll get it fixed before we head out again. The most unusual aspect of this trip was that it rained every single day. SoCal is under what for us is a deluge of rain that is expected to continue into mid-next week. We had one sort of sunny day in Monterey and spent that day walking the beaches. We did our Cannery Row afternoon in the rain, but that only made the superb clam chowder that much better. On the drive home it rained the whole time all the way from Monterey to our driveway in San Diego. I've never seen anything like it.
For those looking for something about WoW, I got nuttin! But both DER and Sis tortured me during the week away with some excellent tales and research that I am sharing below. Now I have to go see what mess Happy and Lost are in after a week without the Auction House.
From the Sis/Lao family: Well, I broke into Cata this weekend. Not as vigorously as Wild (as there was competition for game time) but I am in none the less. Neekia got the first exposure. Since she was my very first WoW toon, I though she should be the first to run in. So off she went onto the boat, wondering if she as well, would be attacked. She was, and weighted down with her heavy plate began to sink. Once she recovered she began the chain of quests. Took her a bit to remember what end of the sword to hold onto (she has just been fishing and cooking for too long) but after a few deaths.. maybe half a dozen, she now seems to have the hang of it. The last death she had she can thank Wild for the fact that it was not many more. It was the flame spewing guy that you had to “weaken” but run out when his flame aura kicked on. She got toasted by the first round of fire and had the “Ah, this is the one that killed Wild” memory, and ran out after that. Unlike Wild, all of her purples are lvl 200 pvp gear, so half of her armor (and both weapons) has been replaced with quest greens (and one blue). Any time the quest giver shows plate it seems to be an upgrade. Oh, and I think Neekia got turned off by being used as bait in the Gnaws quest chain. She likes to fish for fish, not to be used as bait and caught up in giant jaws.. *shudder* see if she ever takes quests from nutters again.
But it seems that it is quests (I am sure among other things) that gives you guild points. I think I will work on Sis next (mainly due to Lao wanting the new Obsidian ore) and get our guild some points. Kia is content to sit on the side lines, she discovered the new daily cooking and fishing quests and is excited to get back to her true passions in that regard.
DER, meanwhile, has been doing some research on Arena and battleground pvp changes for Cata. An amazing addition is War Games. Read on:
"Beginning with Arena Season 9, we’re giving Arena and Battleground teams the option to challenge each other to War Games, a new kind of skirmish that allows teams to practice, set up matches against friends or rivals, or even try out potential recruits.
War Games allow you to engage in a PvP scrimmage with other people on your server. It’s like a /duel, with groups, only you get to choose where you fight. You don’t gain any Honor or Conquest points here, nor Honorable Kills – but you do get to send your group and another group into any BG or Arena to practice your skills.
This is a great thing for casual and hardcore PvPers alike, allowing people to practice without consequence. You’re in a group that you choose, so you no longer have to pug a battleground to learn how it works. You can explore at will if your opponents are friendly (hellooooo, better BG screenshots!) or use it to actually compete with other groups in your guild.
I read over the FAQ Blizzard posted above and it covers a lot of possibilities War Games modes opens up. I think this is a great tool, one that can be creatively applied to make battleground PvP a better experience for everyone. You can bring new players into Battlegrounds and teach them how it works without the pressure of competition. You can try out different group compositions and strategies. You can hold intraguild competitions – my own guild leader is already planning a 2v2 bracket event with prizes.
One of the biggest challenges to getting people into battlegrounds and Arena is unfamiliarity with the game, combined with the pressure of having to learn very quickly. War Games will definitely help make them more accessible, while also giving a tool that high-end players will use to perfect their play.
I’m really excited that Blizzard implemented this. It’s due out this week, and I can’t wait to try it out. "
Discovered at:
http://cynwise.wordpress.com/2010/12/14/would-you-like-to-play-a-game-of-chess/
Oh, and I have to report that Sis is now level 82, only one level behind Wild at just barely level 83. Given how much I still have to do to get ready for Christmas morning, it may be another week before Wild reaches level 85. Sis may well beat me to it. But not if I can help it!
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Friday (10 Dec) - Back in Action
Friday (10 Dec) - Back in Action
Wild was back on the grinding trail Friday night. It's funny how we now have more guildies in game every night than we ever have, and yet guild chat is much quieter than usual. I think we are all just focused on grinding our way to 85 and there is little time for chatting in between quests.
We have about a half dozen level 85s now and a growing number of level 84s. Wild made level 83 Friday night, but just barely, wrapping up just before midnight. Wild ran out of quests twice in Mount Hyjal. There are still plenty of quests there, but Wild couldn't find them and decided to move on to Deepholm (rated for levels 82-83).
Wild had a tougher time against the mobs in Deepholm despite being level 82 at the time. There were a lot of elemental mobs who could stun, absorb damage, and were immune to some of Wild's spell casting. They also hit a lot harder. The grinding got a little longer, but the quests were still interesting and definitely challenging.
The most fun series of quests brought back jousting - with a twist. Wild was directed to a stalactite and stalagmite filled underground cave bursting with lava pools and falling rocks. Wild was given a lance (the same type of lance used in ToC) and a flying mount. There was one difference with this mount than with other flying mounts. This mount only flew when it's wings were flapped. Yep, there was a mount button labeled "Flap" and repeatedly hitting that button made the mount fly. There were some practice quests which Wild managed to muddle through. Wild is bad enough at jousting as it is, and adding a "Flap" requirement just made it worse. But I have to admit it was fun. Eventually Wild got to chase flying birds around the cave, trying to stick them with the lance. Then the quests got harder as Wild had to joust the birds while avoiding burning rocks and lava falls. The big test was to fly from one outcropping to the next, collecting bird eggs - forty of them. There was one other player also on that quest, so we had a competition on getting those eggs. The burning rocks and lava falls were still coming, so it was pretty challenging. Stopping the dang bird was one of the more difficult maneuvers to make - I lost count of the number of times Wild skittered right off a rock full of eggs because I couldn't get the thing stopped in time. Don't forget to flap, either, or the bird mount will start falling out of control.
Wild had collected a good number of eggs, but was very low on health. Wild stopped on a convenient rock and jumped off the mount so I could heal. That was a mistake. My mount flew off, leaving Wild stranded. The quest giver was on another rock far above Wild. Wild tried to find a way out, but there didn't seem to be any way without flying. And no, neither Wild's own mount or his flying form worked. Wild finally drowned himself in the lava, figuring I could get back as a ghost. While returning as a ghost Wild discovered the ground floor npc who would provide a new mount just for this situation.
The quest chain grants an Achievement, too, and quite a bit of experience. It was worth carting out Wild's rusty jousting skills to get that done.
In another quest Wild got to chase frightened bunnies and squirrels to save them from wildfires. If you've ever seen grown men trying to catch a greased pig you kind of get the idea what that was like. Even more fun was climbing trees to rescue bear pups. Not only did Wild have to climb trees to get to them, he had to toss the bear pups down to a trampoline on the ground. I really get a kick out of quests like these.
In Deepholm the alliance and horde have to work together in the shared battle against Deathwing and it's minions. That doesn't always work so well, as Wild found out when he was dispatched to a flying ship where the two factions had come to blows against each other and Deathwing assassins had managed to get onboard.
That was how Wild ended up helping an npc alliance dwarf (with a distinctly Irish accent) interrogate an ogre who was working for the Twilight Council on the side of Deathwing. The dwarf threatened to drop the ogre into the ship's propellers if he didn't talk. The exchange of threats and pleas between the dwarf and ogre were pretty funny, including one line where the ogre, near his limit, growled in frustration and fear, "Stop it, you tiny angry woman!"
Wild had some luck with gear, as well. Fourteen pieces this time, although just two that looked promising. What made those two drops a little extra special is that one was a necklace, and the other was a pair of bracers. Well, what a coincidence. Those are the two remaining slots where Wild was wearing less than i264 gear. There was i251 gear in those slots. The Cata gear turned out to be nice upgrades for Wild that overcame the loss of +spi I'd reported yesterday. The two pieces are:
[Calcified Gizzard] which is the necklace, a green i272
[Burning Bind Bracers] a green i289
You know, even knowing what was going to happen with gear and stats in Cata, the numbers really boggle the mind. You have to see the numbers to get it. I track ten stats associated with Wild's healing. I'm just going to talk about four: Health, Mana, spell power, and in combat mana regen. The others are important, too, but these are the guts that keep Wild alive and kicking things.
Wild's pre-Cata/Pre 4.0 patch gear was about as good as it could be short of Heroic ICC. Wild was proud of that gear set.
Pre-4.0: Health: 20,977 | Mana: 24,516 | SP: 3,220 | Regen: 388
When Patch 4.0 came out, our "base" stats were adjusted for the coming Cata expansion. Wild's gear remained exactly the same, but this is what happened to the numbers:
Pre-4.0: Health: 20,977 | Mana: 24,516 | SP: 3,220 | Regen: 388
Pst-4.0: Health: 31,987 | Mana: 42,804 | SP: 3,449 | Regen: 593
With 4.0 also came some new ways to adjust the gear using Reforging, and players were granted a bonus if they used 100% gear of the appropriate type. In Wild's case that was leather. Wild took advantage of those and here is how that affected the stats:
Pre-4.0: Health: 20,977 | Mana: 24,516 | SP: 3,220 | Regen: 388
Pst-4.0: Health: 31,987 | Mana: 42,804 | SP: 3,449 | Regen: 593
Adjustd: Health: 32,037 | Mana: 44,201 | SP: 3,523 | Regen: 598
Well, pre-Cata those would be big improvements. Compared to the 4.0 jumps, though, these were more like tweaking. Wild made some more gem, enchant, and gear changes that put him at his best ever stats prior to Cata:
Pre-4.0: Health: 20,977 | Mana: 24,516 | SP: 3,220 | Regen: 388
Pst-4.0: Health: 31,987 | Mana: 42,804 | SP: 3,449 | Regen: 593
Adjustd: Health: 32,037 | Mana: 44,201 | SP: 3,523 | Regen: 598
PreCata: Health: 32,037 | Mana: 44,546 | SP: 3,543 | Regen: 600
And then there was Cata. I'm putting two sets of stats up. The first is the baseline - Wild's gear remained the same, the only difference was the Cata release. The second set of stats further below is what Wild's current stats are now, including the four pieces of Cata gear Wild is now wearing.
Pre-4.0: Health: 20,977 | Mana: 24,516 | SP: 3,220 | Regen: 388
Pst-4.0: Health: 31,987 | Mana: 42,804 | SP: 3,449 | Regen: 593
Adjustd: Health: 32,037 | Mana: 44,201 | SP: 3,523 | Regen: 598
PreCata: Health: 32,037 | Mana: 44,546 | SP: 3,543 | Regen: 600
Catabse: Health: 43,370 | Mana: 42,158 | SP: 3,549 | Regen: 769
Yet another big spike in the numbers! Finally, below are the improvements Wild has made with his gear and his leveling (83) since the release:
Pre-4.0: Health: 20,977 | Mana: 24,516 | SP: 3,220 | Regen: 388
Pst-4.0: Health: 31,987 | Mana: 42,804 | SP: 3,449 | Regen: 593
Adjustd: Health: 32,037 | Mana: 44,201 | SP: 3,523 | Regen: 598
PreCata: Health: 32,037 | Mana: 44,546 | SP: 3,543 | Regen: 600
Catabse: Health: 43,370 | Mana: 42,158 | SP: 3,549 | Regen: 769
Current: Health: 52,758 | Mana: 47,272 | SP: 3,688 | Regen: 881
If you look at pre-4.0, and then at what Wild has now, you can now see how mind boggling these stats are. Pre-4.0, a druid with over 52,000 health was a tank. A druid tank now probably needs over 100k health to survive Cata bosses.
Note: I will be out of town 12-17 Dec. We're taking the RV to Monterey. Back before Christmas!
Wild was back on the grinding trail Friday night. It's funny how we now have more guildies in game every night than we ever have, and yet guild chat is much quieter than usual. I think we are all just focused on grinding our way to 85 and there is little time for chatting in between quests.
We have about a half dozen level 85s now and a growing number of level 84s. Wild made level 83 Friday night, but just barely, wrapping up just before midnight. Wild ran out of quests twice in Mount Hyjal. There are still plenty of quests there, but Wild couldn't find them and decided to move on to Deepholm (rated for levels 82-83).
Wild had a tougher time against the mobs in Deepholm despite being level 82 at the time. There were a lot of elemental mobs who could stun, absorb damage, and were immune to some of Wild's spell casting. They also hit a lot harder. The grinding got a little longer, but the quests were still interesting and definitely challenging.
The most fun series of quests brought back jousting - with a twist. Wild was directed to a stalactite and stalagmite filled underground cave bursting with lava pools and falling rocks. Wild was given a lance (the same type of lance used in ToC) and a flying mount. There was one difference with this mount than with other flying mounts. This mount only flew when it's wings were flapped. Yep, there was a mount button labeled "Flap" and repeatedly hitting that button made the mount fly. There were some practice quests which Wild managed to muddle through. Wild is bad enough at jousting as it is, and adding a "Flap" requirement just made it worse. But I have to admit it was fun. Eventually Wild got to chase flying birds around the cave, trying to stick them with the lance. Then the quests got harder as Wild had to joust the birds while avoiding burning rocks and lava falls. The big test was to fly from one outcropping to the next, collecting bird eggs - forty of them. There was one other player also on that quest, so we had a competition on getting those eggs. The burning rocks and lava falls were still coming, so it was pretty challenging. Stopping the dang bird was one of the more difficult maneuvers to make - I lost count of the number of times Wild skittered right off a rock full of eggs because I couldn't get the thing stopped in time. Don't forget to flap, either, or the bird mount will start falling out of control.
Wild had collected a good number of eggs, but was very low on health. Wild stopped on a convenient rock and jumped off the mount so I could heal. That was a mistake. My mount flew off, leaving Wild stranded. The quest giver was on another rock far above Wild. Wild tried to find a way out, but there didn't seem to be any way without flying. And no, neither Wild's own mount or his flying form worked. Wild finally drowned himself in the lava, figuring I could get back as a ghost. While returning as a ghost Wild discovered the ground floor npc who would provide a new mount just for this situation.
The quest chain grants an Achievement, too, and quite a bit of experience. It was worth carting out Wild's rusty jousting skills to get that done.
In another quest Wild got to chase frightened bunnies and squirrels to save them from wildfires. If you've ever seen grown men trying to catch a greased pig you kind of get the idea what that was like. Even more fun was climbing trees to rescue bear pups. Not only did Wild have to climb trees to get to them, he had to toss the bear pups down to a trampoline on the ground. I really get a kick out of quests like these.
In Deepholm the alliance and horde have to work together in the shared battle against Deathwing and it's minions. That doesn't always work so well, as Wild found out when he was dispatched to a flying ship where the two factions had come to blows against each other and Deathwing assassins had managed to get onboard.
That was how Wild ended up helping an npc alliance dwarf (with a distinctly Irish accent) interrogate an ogre who was working for the Twilight Council on the side of Deathwing. The dwarf threatened to drop the ogre into the ship's propellers if he didn't talk. The exchange of threats and pleas between the dwarf and ogre were pretty funny, including one line where the ogre, near his limit, growled in frustration and fear, "Stop it, you tiny angry woman!"
Wild had some luck with gear, as well. Fourteen pieces this time, although just two that looked promising. What made those two drops a little extra special is that one was a necklace, and the other was a pair of bracers. Well, what a coincidence. Those are the two remaining slots where Wild was wearing less than i264 gear. There was i251 gear in those slots. The Cata gear turned out to be nice upgrades for Wild that overcame the loss of +spi I'd reported yesterday. The two pieces are:
[Calcified Gizzard] which is the necklace, a green i272
[Burning Bind Bracers] a green i289
You know, even knowing what was going to happen with gear and stats in Cata, the numbers really boggle the mind. You have to see the numbers to get it. I track ten stats associated with Wild's healing. I'm just going to talk about four: Health, Mana, spell power, and in combat mana regen. The others are important, too, but these are the guts that keep Wild alive and kicking things.
Wild's pre-Cata/Pre 4.0 patch gear was about as good as it could be short of Heroic ICC. Wild was proud of that gear set.
Pre-4.0: Health: 20,977 | Mana: 24,516 | SP: 3,220 | Regen: 388
When Patch 4.0 came out, our "base" stats were adjusted for the coming Cata expansion. Wild's gear remained exactly the same, but this is what happened to the numbers:
Pre-4.0: Health: 20,977 | Mana: 24,516 | SP: 3,220 | Regen: 388
Pst-4.0: Health: 31,987 | Mana: 42,804 | SP: 3,449 | Regen: 593
With 4.0 also came some new ways to adjust the gear using Reforging, and players were granted a bonus if they used 100% gear of the appropriate type. In Wild's case that was leather. Wild took advantage of those and here is how that affected the stats:
Pre-4.0: Health: 20,977 | Mana: 24,516 | SP: 3,220 | Regen: 388
Pst-4.0: Health: 31,987 | Mana: 42,804 | SP: 3,449 | Regen: 593
Adjustd: Health: 32,037 | Mana: 44,201 | SP: 3,523 | Regen: 598
Well, pre-Cata those would be big improvements. Compared to the 4.0 jumps, though, these were more like tweaking. Wild made some more gem, enchant, and gear changes that put him at his best ever stats prior to Cata:
Pre-4.0: Health: 20,977 | Mana: 24,516 | SP: 3,220 | Regen: 388
Pst-4.0: Health: 31,987 | Mana: 42,804 | SP: 3,449 | Regen: 593
Adjustd: Health: 32,037 | Mana: 44,201 | SP: 3,523 | Regen: 598
PreCata: Health: 32,037 | Mana: 44,546 | SP: 3,543 | Regen: 600
And then there was Cata. I'm putting two sets of stats up. The first is the baseline - Wild's gear remained the same, the only difference was the Cata release. The second set of stats further below is what Wild's current stats are now, including the four pieces of Cata gear Wild is now wearing.
Pre-4.0: Health: 20,977 | Mana: 24,516 | SP: 3,220 | Regen: 388
Pst-4.0: Health: 31,987 | Mana: 42,804 | SP: 3,449 | Regen: 593
Adjustd: Health: 32,037 | Mana: 44,201 | SP: 3,523 | Regen: 598
PreCata: Health: 32,037 | Mana: 44,546 | SP: 3,543 | Regen: 600
Catabse: Health: 43,370 | Mana: 42,158 | SP: 3,549 | Regen: 769
Yet another big spike in the numbers! Finally, below are the improvements Wild has made with his gear and his leveling (83) since the release:
Pre-4.0: Health: 20,977 | Mana: 24,516 | SP: 3,220 | Regen: 388
Pst-4.0: Health: 31,987 | Mana: 42,804 | SP: 3,449 | Regen: 593
Adjustd: Health: 32,037 | Mana: 44,201 | SP: 3,523 | Regen: 598
PreCata: Health: 32,037 | Mana: 44,546 | SP: 3,543 | Regen: 600
Catabse: Health: 43,370 | Mana: 42,158 | SP: 3,549 | Regen: 769
Current: Health: 52,758 | Mana: 47,272 | SP: 3,688 | Regen: 881
If you look at pre-4.0, and then at what Wild has now, you can now see how mind boggling these stats are. Pre-4.0, a druid with over 52,000 health was a tank. A druid tank now probably needs over 100k health to survive Cata bosses.
Note: I will be out of town 12-17 Dec. We're taking the RV to Monterey. Back before Christmas!
Friday, December 10, 2010
Thursday (9 Dec) - Evening Stall
Thursday (9 Dec) - Evening Stall
Wild abandoned Vashj'ir because of the broken quest chain and headed to the other new zone, Mount Hyjal. As interesting as the underwater zone of vashj'ir is, Wild was glad to be back on dry land. Wild also located another new zone, higher level that the first two, called Deepholm. Wild didn't stay, but will likely be back to quest there after he finishes with Mount Hyjal. Wild plowed through the quests during the day, grabbing every quest he encountered and blasting through them without a whole lot of thought. Even the multiple spawning mobs didn't much bother him anymore. Wild just kept killing them until they stopped spawning. There was one quest that really frustrated Wild for awhile. It was a simple "kill four of these mobs" quest, but those mobs were nearly impossible to find. Well, it pays to read ALL of the quest notes. Picking berries was part of that quest. Wild had the berries, but failed to note that he had to feed the berries to the faerie dragons in the area in order to spawn the mobs he had to kill. Doh.
Wild finally came up on a quest that bested him. Baron Geddon is a mighty boss from vanilla WoW days that has returned in Cata. Wild was dispatched to help out the npc priests that were trying to contain the Baron. Wild was given a special weapon to use. Wild found the Baron surrounded by the priests using their own weapons to cast a channeled spell against the Baron. Wild activated his weapon, but he was too far away. Hey, I'm standing right next to a priest, and he's in range! Oh well, Wild moved closer. And then closer. And then scarily closer. Finally Wild was close enough to activate his weapon. Wild blasted away. The Baron then started a pulsing AoE that was doing some pretty serious damage to Wild. No worries, Wild started healing himself. The damage kept spiking. Wild was losing health despite the healing. By the time Wild realized that this particular quest was not conforming to the "blast it till it dies" strategy, it was too late. Wild was the one who died - For the first time in Cata (outside of a dungeon).
Wild rezzed and came back for a second attempt. He died again, but used that attempt to figure out what was going on. Wild could only use his weapon in between AoE pulses from the Baron. Wild moved back and forth to avoid the AoE. Other players were also attempting the quest. It took awhile, but Wild eventually realized that while he was successfully keeping himself alive, the Baron was not losing any health. None. Wild also noticed at that moment that the quest showed Complete. Apparently Wild only had to hang in there a certain amount of time to get the quest completion. No way was Wild going to be allowed to actually kill Baron Geddon. So Wild wasted some time. But did get the quest done.
Wild took a break, with every intention of coming back that evening to grind out level 83. We had visitors come by, though, including a little girl who made it her mission to dominate all of my time. She also likes to play WoW. In her own way. She was fascinated by the underwater world of Vashj'ir and took over Wild to run him around the zone. Discovering that she could "DONK" level 1 critters on the head, and that they would die in funny ways, that is what she set out to do. Wild entertained her the whole evening and was happy to do so, but he didn't get any questing done. Wild is 53% of the way to level 83.
During Wild's "break," I had a chance to refresh my memory of how stats have changed in Cata. I'm far from expert at it, but I picked up a few pointers that will at least get me going in the right direction.
Wild was interested in moonkin and healer stats, so this focuses on those two forms, not cat or bear. The most important stat by a wide margin is intelligence (+int). Next is +haste, which has priority until reaching the haste cap. After that it gets pretty squirrily. Spirit (+spi) provides mana regeneration. If Wild were running out of mana too soon, then I'd want to increase my +spi stat. However, if mana regen is not an issue, then the new stat Mastery would be better. Well, better for healing. It's still not clear if mastery is better than critical hits (+crit) for moonkin.
Wild focused first on his healing gear set. Wild had packed away 16 pieces of gear he'd won from questing, dungeons, and random drops. Wild had equipped none of them. Based on what he had learned, I compared each new piece to what Wild was already wearing. Out of those 16 pieces, Wild found two he thought "might" be an upgrade. That might not sound like a lot, but two upgrades would be a nice bonus. The rest would still be useful to disenchant for the enchanting mats.
The two upgrades were:
[Willowy Crown], a blue ilevel 308 helm (BRC drop)
[Swamplight Scepter of the Fireflash], a random drop green i278 main hand mace
Both pieces have more +int than Wild's current gear. Both improved on Wild's +haste as well. Both added significant Mastery points, too. With weapons you also have to consider spell power (SP) - the Scepter had more SP than Wild's current weapon.
So what's not to like about them? Well, what that gear gives up is +spi. Wild's in combat mana regen goes down from 769 to 720, which is a pretty considerable drop. Will that hurt Wild in dungeons? I honestly don't know. So Wild intends to use the new gear as his primary gear. If I start having trouble with mana I can always revert back to the old gear.
Poor Philly is not going to get that mace after all.
Wild abandoned Vashj'ir because of the broken quest chain and headed to the other new zone, Mount Hyjal. As interesting as the underwater zone of vashj'ir is, Wild was glad to be back on dry land. Wild also located another new zone, higher level that the first two, called Deepholm. Wild didn't stay, but will likely be back to quest there after he finishes with Mount Hyjal. Wild plowed through the quests during the day, grabbing every quest he encountered and blasting through them without a whole lot of thought. Even the multiple spawning mobs didn't much bother him anymore. Wild just kept killing them until they stopped spawning. There was one quest that really frustrated Wild for awhile. It was a simple "kill four of these mobs" quest, but those mobs were nearly impossible to find. Well, it pays to read ALL of the quest notes. Picking berries was part of that quest. Wild had the berries, but failed to note that he had to feed the berries to the faerie dragons in the area in order to spawn the mobs he had to kill. Doh.
Wild finally came up on a quest that bested him. Baron Geddon is a mighty boss from vanilla WoW days that has returned in Cata. Wild was dispatched to help out the npc priests that were trying to contain the Baron. Wild was given a special weapon to use. Wild found the Baron surrounded by the priests using their own weapons to cast a channeled spell against the Baron. Wild activated his weapon, but he was too far away. Hey, I'm standing right next to a priest, and he's in range! Oh well, Wild moved closer. And then closer. And then scarily closer. Finally Wild was close enough to activate his weapon. Wild blasted away. The Baron then started a pulsing AoE that was doing some pretty serious damage to Wild. No worries, Wild started healing himself. The damage kept spiking. Wild was losing health despite the healing. By the time Wild realized that this particular quest was not conforming to the "blast it till it dies" strategy, it was too late. Wild was the one who died - For the first time in Cata (outside of a dungeon).
Wild rezzed and came back for a second attempt. He died again, but used that attempt to figure out what was going on. Wild could only use his weapon in between AoE pulses from the Baron. Wild moved back and forth to avoid the AoE. Other players were also attempting the quest. It took awhile, but Wild eventually realized that while he was successfully keeping himself alive, the Baron was not losing any health. None. Wild also noticed at that moment that the quest showed Complete. Apparently Wild only had to hang in there a certain amount of time to get the quest completion. No way was Wild going to be allowed to actually kill Baron Geddon. So Wild wasted some time. But did get the quest done.
Wild took a break, with every intention of coming back that evening to grind out level 83. We had visitors come by, though, including a little girl who made it her mission to dominate all of my time. She also likes to play WoW. In her own way. She was fascinated by the underwater world of Vashj'ir and took over Wild to run him around the zone. Discovering that she could "DONK" level 1 critters on the head, and that they would die in funny ways, that is what she set out to do. Wild entertained her the whole evening and was happy to do so, but he didn't get any questing done. Wild is 53% of the way to level 83.
During Wild's "break," I had a chance to refresh my memory of how stats have changed in Cata. I'm far from expert at it, but I picked up a few pointers that will at least get me going in the right direction.
Wild was interested in moonkin and healer stats, so this focuses on those two forms, not cat or bear. The most important stat by a wide margin is intelligence (+int). Next is +haste, which has priority until reaching the haste cap. After that it gets pretty squirrily. Spirit (+spi) provides mana regeneration. If Wild were running out of mana too soon, then I'd want to increase my +spi stat. However, if mana regen is not an issue, then the new stat Mastery would be better. Well, better for healing. It's still not clear if mastery is better than critical hits (+crit) for moonkin.
Wild focused first on his healing gear set. Wild had packed away 16 pieces of gear he'd won from questing, dungeons, and random drops. Wild had equipped none of them. Based on what he had learned, I compared each new piece to what Wild was already wearing. Out of those 16 pieces, Wild found two he thought "might" be an upgrade. That might not sound like a lot, but two upgrades would be a nice bonus. The rest would still be useful to disenchant for the enchanting mats.
The two upgrades were:
[Willowy Crown], a blue ilevel 308 helm (BRC drop)
[Swamplight Scepter of the Fireflash], a random drop green i278 main hand mace
Both pieces have more +int than Wild's current gear. Both improved on Wild's +haste as well. Both added significant Mastery points, too. With weapons you also have to consider spell power (SP) - the Scepter had more SP than Wild's current weapon.
So what's not to like about them? Well, what that gear gives up is +spi. Wild's in combat mana regen goes down from 769 to 720, which is a pretty considerable drop. Will that hurt Wild in dungeons? I honestly don't know. So Wild intends to use the new gear as his primary gear. If I start having trouble with mana I can always revert back to the old gear.
Poor Philly is not going to get that mace after all.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Wednesday (8 Dec) - Too Much To Do
Wednesday (8 Dec) - Too Much To Do
I'm starting to get that "overwhelmed" feeling that I can't get things done fast enough. I'm looking forward to our real life trip to Monterey, but I know that I have only three more days to get Wild as far as I can is get. Wednesday night's questing was a lot of fun. Wild got to participate in some huge battles in the underwater city along with a lot of other things. I kinda wish I was paying closer attention to the lore, but the urge to push that xp higher has totally taken Wild over.
Wednesday night Wild DINGED! to level 82. We have about a dozen guildies who've hit level 82 now; two at 83, and even one at 84 already! Wild is still right in there with the fastest levelers, but not only is that trip going to slow Wild down, he ran into major trouble with a quest chain.
The huge underwater battle is part regular questing and part phased questing where Wild is transformed into a sea creature to help another race with the battle. There is a series of quests that are all linked together. To help guide Wild, he was given a sword that he could use to summon up the phase at certain locations. I'm sure this was put in place to help players if they got lost or out of sync doing these quests. Believe me, it's easy to lose track of where you are in the dual quest chains. The short of it is that Wild managed to break the phased chain somehow. Wild is holding a quest he can't complete because it's in the phased chain. The sword Wild needs to re-enter the phase is no longer in Wild's bag, and despite almost an hour of hunting for a way to recover, Wild finally had to put in a ticket to try to get it resolved. Wild is going to move over to Mount Hyjal to quest while waiting for a response from a GM (Game Master), but I expect it will take a very long time for a response. I don't want to abandon Vashj'ir completely. Wild is getting to the quests where the loot starts to get better. Wild received a green level main hand mace as a BOE (ie, it was a random "trash" drop that in Cata Wild would have simply disenchanted). Wild thought that Philly might be able to use it and Wild got as far as opening up the mailbox to send it to her. The stats on that mace then caught his eye. Wild closed the mailbox and compared the i278 mace to Wild's own i264 ICC25 [Frozen Bonespike]. Holy cow, the green mace might be better than Wild's weapon! And a level 78 could equip it! Wild is still holing on to that mace. I need to refresh my memory of the stat changes to determine if this random drop will replace the best weapon Wild has ever owned. Philly is hoping Wild sends it to her, of course.
Anyway, Wild only got 17% of the way to level 83 Wednesday night, which puts Wild a day behind where he wanted to be.
Other pressures are mounting. Happy finally got some game time to figure out what was going on in the Auction House. Wild also sent Happy some of the new enchanting mats so he could start tracking costs. As expected, the new mats are way over-priced as enchanters rush to raise their enchanting skill from the old max of 450 to the new maximum of 525. One thing Happy reported back on was that Frost Wyrm flasks (which had dropped in price from around 20 gold apiece to around 5g) were coming back up. Happy sold the last of his stock at 16g each. Happy predicted this, and JB had the mats to make more.
JB then had to get some game time. In addition to getting the flasks made, she took a moment to check in with the Alchemy and Herbalism trainers so she would be ready to start skilling up those professions - when Wild gave her time. JB demanded time to at least get her flying license. JB was embarrassed she could not fly in the old world yet. She had to ask the flight master to fly her to Org (she was in Thunder Bluff) to get her flying license.
Of course, once in Org, and having gotten her license to fly, she received the quest "A Personal Summons." It's just one quest, and JB talked herself into ignoring Wild's command to be quick. She took flight (the joy of flying again!) and swung by the Portals area to complete the "talk to me" quest. She got another quest. This was a scripted quest and she didn't have to do anything but watch it, so she did that quest, too.
Then there was the next quest, to report to the waterfront outside the gate to Orgrimmar. JB knew where this was leading, and knew Wild would be furious, but she decided to stay with it a bit longer. She flew to the waterfront and completed the quest, and that got her a ticket on the boat to Vashj'ir.
Now, when Wild had gotten on the boat (along with a crush of other players) it was pure chaos. And when that boat got to it's location and was attacked and sunk, Wild and other players were left stranded at the overturned craft. JB's experience was much different.
JB walked over to the wharf after turning in her quest and collecting her ticket (another quest). The boat hadn't arrived yet, but there were several npc orcs hanging around shooting the breeze. Apparently they were going on the boat as well. It was pretty cool just listening to typical soldier talk. There was only one other player waiting with JB (this is early Thursday morning, by the way). The boat arrived and the orcs, JB, and the other player all boarded. The boat was manned by humans, and the orc Boat Master had to order the other orcs not to slaughter them. There was more talk about what was happening and where we were going, none of which Wild had heard during his own trip. It really set the tone and certainly makes a point that slowing down and really getting into the lore does add to the experience.
When the boat got to it's destination in the ocean of Vashj'ir, we were attacked by the giant octopus, just as Wild was. However, JB was grabbed by a tentacle pulled into the sea. I tried to fight it for a few moments, then realized it was a scripted sequence. Released by the octopus, JB was attacked by naga and nearly killed, but was saved by an npc who Bubbled her. JB, safe in her air bubble cocoon, floated slowly to the sunken ship that was being used as a base, and was revived once she was inside.
I believe that is what should have happened with Wild, but that part must have gotten bugged. I suspect there were far more players on that boat than tentacles to grab players and the scripted phase ended before we were all picked up. Wild later learned that there was a flight master on a small strip of land called "The Lightless Reaches" that he could have flown to, but didn't know about at the time.
JB knew she was running out of time (and Wild's patience). She cast an underwater breathing spell and swam to the surface, located some floating wreckage to stand on, and took flight to the Reaches. JB got her flight path and flew to the only place it would take her - to the Undercity in Tirisfal Glades. That was fine. JB could fly back there, or take the portal from Org, when she had the time to do more.
I'm starting to get that "overwhelmed" feeling that I can't get things done fast enough. I'm looking forward to our real life trip to Monterey, but I know that I have only three more days to get Wild as far as I can is get. Wednesday night's questing was a lot of fun. Wild got to participate in some huge battles in the underwater city along with a lot of other things. I kinda wish I was paying closer attention to the lore, but the urge to push that xp higher has totally taken Wild over.
Wednesday night Wild DINGED! to level 82. We have about a dozen guildies who've hit level 82 now; two at 83, and even one at 84 already! Wild is still right in there with the fastest levelers, but not only is that trip going to slow Wild down, he ran into major trouble with a quest chain.
The huge underwater battle is part regular questing and part phased questing where Wild is transformed into a sea creature to help another race with the battle. There is a series of quests that are all linked together. To help guide Wild, he was given a sword that he could use to summon up the phase at certain locations. I'm sure this was put in place to help players if they got lost or out of sync doing these quests. Believe me, it's easy to lose track of where you are in the dual quest chains. The short of it is that Wild managed to break the phased chain somehow. Wild is holding a quest he can't complete because it's in the phased chain. The sword Wild needs to re-enter the phase is no longer in Wild's bag, and despite almost an hour of hunting for a way to recover, Wild finally had to put in a ticket to try to get it resolved. Wild is going to move over to Mount Hyjal to quest while waiting for a response from a GM (Game Master), but I expect it will take a very long time for a response. I don't want to abandon Vashj'ir completely. Wild is getting to the quests where the loot starts to get better. Wild received a green level main hand mace as a BOE (ie, it was a random "trash" drop that in Cata Wild would have simply disenchanted). Wild thought that Philly might be able to use it and Wild got as far as opening up the mailbox to send it to her. The stats on that mace then caught his eye. Wild closed the mailbox and compared the i278 mace to Wild's own i264 ICC25 [Frozen Bonespike]. Holy cow, the green mace might be better than Wild's weapon! And a level 78 could equip it! Wild is still holing on to that mace. I need to refresh my memory of the stat changes to determine if this random drop will replace the best weapon Wild has ever owned. Philly is hoping Wild sends it to her, of course.
Anyway, Wild only got 17% of the way to level 83 Wednesday night, which puts Wild a day behind where he wanted to be.
Other pressures are mounting. Happy finally got some game time to figure out what was going on in the Auction House. Wild also sent Happy some of the new enchanting mats so he could start tracking costs. As expected, the new mats are way over-priced as enchanters rush to raise their enchanting skill from the old max of 450 to the new maximum of 525. One thing Happy reported back on was that Frost Wyrm flasks (which had dropped in price from around 20 gold apiece to around 5g) were coming back up. Happy sold the last of his stock at 16g each. Happy predicted this, and JB had the mats to make more.
JB then had to get some game time. In addition to getting the flasks made, she took a moment to check in with the Alchemy and Herbalism trainers so she would be ready to start skilling up those professions - when Wild gave her time. JB demanded time to at least get her flying license. JB was embarrassed she could not fly in the old world yet. She had to ask the flight master to fly her to Org (she was in Thunder Bluff) to get her flying license.
Of course, once in Org, and having gotten her license to fly, she received the quest "A Personal Summons." It's just one quest, and JB talked herself into ignoring Wild's command to be quick. She took flight (the joy of flying again!) and swung by the Portals area to complete the "talk to me" quest. She got another quest. This was a scripted quest and she didn't have to do anything but watch it, so she did that quest, too.
Then there was the next quest, to report to the waterfront outside the gate to Orgrimmar. JB knew where this was leading, and knew Wild would be furious, but she decided to stay with it a bit longer. She flew to the waterfront and completed the quest, and that got her a ticket on the boat to Vashj'ir.
Now, when Wild had gotten on the boat (along with a crush of other players) it was pure chaos. And when that boat got to it's location and was attacked and sunk, Wild and other players were left stranded at the overturned craft. JB's experience was much different.
JB walked over to the wharf after turning in her quest and collecting her ticket (another quest). The boat hadn't arrived yet, but there were several npc orcs hanging around shooting the breeze. Apparently they were going on the boat as well. It was pretty cool just listening to typical soldier talk. There was only one other player waiting with JB (this is early Thursday morning, by the way). The boat arrived and the orcs, JB, and the other player all boarded. The boat was manned by humans, and the orc Boat Master had to order the other orcs not to slaughter them. There was more talk about what was happening and where we were going, none of which Wild had heard during his own trip. It really set the tone and certainly makes a point that slowing down and really getting into the lore does add to the experience.
When the boat got to it's destination in the ocean of Vashj'ir, we were attacked by the giant octopus, just as Wild was. However, JB was grabbed by a tentacle pulled into the sea. I tried to fight it for a few moments, then realized it was a scripted sequence. Released by the octopus, JB was attacked by naga and nearly killed, but was saved by an npc who Bubbled her. JB, safe in her air bubble cocoon, floated slowly to the sunken ship that was being used as a base, and was revived once she was inside.
I believe that is what should have happened with Wild, but that part must have gotten bugged. I suspect there were far more players on that boat than tentacles to grab players and the scripted phase ended before we were all picked up. Wild later learned that there was a flight master on a small strip of land called "The Lightless Reaches" that he could have flown to, but didn't know about at the time.
JB knew she was running out of time (and Wild's patience). She cast an underwater breathing spell and swam to the surface, located some floating wreckage to stand on, and took flight to the Reaches. JB got her flight path and flew to the only place it would take her - to the Undercity in Tirisfal Glades. That was fine. JB could fly back there, or take the portal from Org, when she had the time to do more.
JB in the Clutches of the Giant Octopus
There it is!
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Tuesday Part 3 (7 Dec) - Cataclysm Dungeons
Tuesday Part 3 (7 Dec) - Cataclysm Dungeons
There are a number of new dungeons in Cataclysm, and several old dungeons that have undergone major makeovers.
The two new dungeons of most interest to level 80 players are Throne of the Tides and Blackrock Cavern. Both are rated for level 80-81. At one point in beta level 79 was the minimum level to enter, but on release the minimum was made level 80. Of course, you must have the Cata expansion to access them.
It was 3:09am early Tuesday morning when five intrepid adventurers, somewhat boozed and a bit giddy from lack of sleep and non-stop gawking at the wonders of this new world, assembled outside the entrance to Blackrock Cavern. In the Old World, Ragnaros still rages deep in the bowels of Molten Core below us. In the world of Cataclysm, Ragnaros, long defeated, arises again. But that is another tale for a later day. At this moment the five are working up the nerve to enter an entirely new adventure. We had a rogue and a warrior for melee combat. Wild was healing, of course. We also had a druid in bear form as our tank. And another druid in moonkin form for ranged DPS. Three druids. Great, we'll all be fighting over the leather gear drops. But who cares? We were going to get slaughtered, anyway.
Blizzard had gone to great lengths to explain that things were going to be greatly different in Cata dungeons. No more "AoE tanking" where players could just round up groups mobs and AoE them down. No more overpowering Bosses with withering DPS. No more of "who cares if I stand in the fire" when the healers have an endless supply of mana to save them.
In Cata tanks were going to have to mark targets and position themselves correctly. Crowd Control (does anyone even remember what their crowd control abilities are anymore?) will be necessary. Avoiding damage will be more important to keep healers from running out of mana. Healers will have to think (think? what language are you speaking?) about which spells to use and manage their mana pool.
One thing about the new dungeons that Blizzard seems to have carried over from WotLK is the dungeon layout. In BRC there are no tricky passageways or convoluted layouts. BRC is entered from the west, passes through a smallish circular cavern, into a bigger circular cavern, makes a 90 degree left turn and then follows a single path to it's end. That's the whole thing. Blizzard did manage to cram five Bosses in there, though. They must be feeling a bit crowded.
We entered BRC. These tunnels and rooms are built into the rock of the Mountain, and that look pervades the entire dungeon. The first thing we noted that there were no mobs nearby. There was a quest giver, though, and we picked up the quest "To the Chamber of Incineration!" We then crossed over a short bridge an into a rough hall where several mobs loitered about. They were mostly ogres. All were level 80/81 elites.
"Crowd control?" the moonkin asked. "Should we mark targets?"
"Want me to SAP one of them?" asked the rogue, who was already stealthed and hiding behind one of the mobs. The rogue looked like he'd already been there awhile. I think he was filing his nails.
Since the rogue's target was closest and looked like he could be singled out, the tank opted to take him first.
"Don't bother with the SAP," the tank told the rogue. The bear tank Charged the mob and we engaged. Wild started a stack of Lifebloom but I never got to three stacks. The mob died in a few seconds. I think we all took a big breath, realizing that until that point we'd all been holding it. Our breath, that is. Although that rogue may have been holding something else - he looked that relaxed.
We took on a pair of mobs next, again not bothering with crowd control. They took a little longer to kill than WotLK dungeon mobs, and they may have hit a little harder, but the tank was still taking pitifully little damage, the two melee knew their role and avoided getting in the way of anything that would hurt them, and Wild really had very little healing to do.
At the end of a stream of more mobs that we had less and less respect for was a bigger ogre, Rom'ogg Bonecrusher. Aha! Our quest says "Kill Rom'ogg Bonecrusher." Good thing he was around, then. Let's hope he got that message, too.
We maneuvered to get at and clear the small groups of mobs around him so that we could face our first Cata dungeon Boss one of one - so to speak, since there were five of us. Only one of him, though.
"What do we know about this guy?" the DK asked.
"Nuttin' honey," Wild muttered under his breath. Wild hoped the tank had something better.
"Let's just try him and see how it goes," said the tank. I love it when a strategy comes together.
We didn't have any more time to discuss it, anyway. Bonecrusher wandered about a bit further than we thought. He'd noticed us. We could tell from the the full throated roar and the way he charged in our direction. The rogue I thought was dozing off in a corner appeared and tripped up the big lug, giving the tank time get Bonecrusher's attention. Wild got some fast heals on the rogue and HoTed up the tank.
Bonecrusher's abilities sound dangerous, indeed. Quake, Wounding Strike, Chains of Woe,and Bonecrusher's finishing move, The Skullcracker. It started as a tank and spank fight, but Quake popped up little dust clouds under our feet. Wild could heal through it, but only if the players affected got out of it quickly. We adjusted to that and were then hit with the Chains. We all became best friends with Bonecrusher as those chains dragged us all up under his rather rank underarms. Our quick thinking DPSers realized we could target the chains and we worked on breaking them. What we didn't know is what to do about The Skullcracker, which Bonecrusher started casting at the end of Chains of Woe. Wild and the moonkin were at range when Skullcracker struck. The two melee died instantly. Wild and the moonkin took no damage, being out of range of it, and the tank survived it, although not by a lot, and that was when Wild did a bit of frenzied healing. Finally, Wild gets some action.
Wild rezzed one of the DPS, and we kept at the boss. We broke the chains quickly the second time Bonecrusher used it, and we made sure everyone but the tank was out of the way of Skullcracker when it came. Wild and the tank were ready for it this time and the tank easily handled it.
Bonecrusher died. We had beaten our first Cata dungeon boss. Ok, so two players died. We still won. Had we bothered to read the strat notes on the fight, nobody would have died. But we like living on the edge, ya know.
Here comes the loot drop. This is at Normal difficulty, not Heroic. [Skullcracker Ring] dropped. Item level i279. Odd that it says it can be worn by a level 78, but only level 80s can get into the dungeon. Well, guess there are still a few things to work out about that. It was a +agility ring, and no one needed it. I think the moonkin ended up with it.
Two interesting things happened after we killed Bonecrusher. The first was that we got a little message letting us complete the quest without having to go back to the quest giver. Nice! But there was a second quest, and we discovered we did have to back to the quest giver to get it. Hey, it's a new feature! Can't expect them to think of a little detail like that. The second thing that happened is a huge gorilla looking mob pounced into view. We were caught with mouths open and drawers down, and we were toast. Well, we would have been had the mob been hostile. Turned out he was a friend. His name was Raz the Crazed (I kid you not), and without any urging from us he proceeded to kill all the mobs between us an our next boss: Corla, Herald of Twilight.
Corla has three dragonkin statues that she will try to revive during the fight using a stacking debuff. The idea (had we been reading the strats) was for players to block the beams going from Corla to two of the statues, while letting Corla revive the third. That way the dragonkin could be dispatched one at a time. The beam applies the stacking buff to whatever is in front of it, so players standing in the beam will also start getting stacks.
We knew none of this, of course, and we were hell bent on killing Corla. That wasn't going so well, but we noticed the stacking debuff starting to pop up on us when we intersected a beam, and figured out that "something" was happening with the beam. Corla herself was something of a ditz, first pulling players to her, then Fearing us away.
"Oops, there's a dragon!" pointed out the rogue, which was our first clue at what the beams were doing. We killed it, and the other two at some point as well, whether one at a time or all at once I'm not sure. With the dragons and beams down Corla didn't have much of a chance. I learned later that if a player gets 100 debuff stacks from the beam that player will become a dragonkin and get mind controlled by Corla. Wow, where do I sign up?
Well. I think [Renouncer's Cowl] dropped, a mail armor item with no one in our group being mail wearers. That one was disenchanted. Wild did get really interested in one of the other possible drops - [Armbands of Change]. This is an i279 leather caster item. Really!? This would, sort of, be an upgrade for Wild had it dropped. Let me bore you for just a second with the stats, since it highlights some the changes in stats with Cata. Wild's current armband is called Septic Shock (ss) and is i251.
Stat SS AC
Sta 61 136
Int 61 90
Spi 56 0
Crit 41 53
Haste 0 65
SP 85 0
Wild would LOVE to have all that extra stamina and intelligence, not to mention the haste. I might even be willing to live without the spirit. It's the SP (spell power) that highlights how difficult it will be make the transition to the new gear. Spell power is the be all stat for casters in WotLK. In Cata, spell power comes largely from +Int. Spell power has been removed from nearly all gear, with the exception of weapons. Would an increase of almost 30 int compensate for the loss of 85 SP? I don't know. I know I would have rolled on that gear, though, and tested it out. Wild now has a very good reason to do this dungeon again. And I have to note that this same piece of gear is much, much better in Heroic. That was another change that came late with WotLK and is in full flower with Cata - the gear is the same in both normal and heroic, but the stats are much better in heroic.
This is starting to grow longer than expected. Let me say that Karsh Steelbender, Beauty, and Lord Obsidius all met the same fate as the first two bosses. In one case the tank finished off the boss solo after the other four of us died. And that could pretty much sum up normal mode BRC. The dungeon is very good, and the bosses have interesting mechanics that will make the fights fun and challenging for most. Against the five of us, though, wrapped in our Kingslayer gear that at the moment out gears just about anything the dungeon can offer, there was really only one end to the story.
We pwned it!
We then went after Throne of the Tides and cleared it as well. I'm sure Wild will be getting into that one again as well, and I'll give a thorough blow by blow then.
By morning's end Wild dragged himself back to Orgrimmar. He dumped out and vendored a bunch of stuff, hoping that he wouldn't regret not keeping some of the unfamiliar items in there. Soulbound gear that Wild couldn't use were DE'd, giving Wild some of the new enchanting mats he'll be needing. There were a number of BOE items stuffed in there, too. Those items Wild parceled out, sending them to both Philly and JB, both of whom might really be able to use them.
And then at last Wild was able get some sleep.
Oh, by the way.
Wild is level 81.
There are a number of new dungeons in Cataclysm, and several old dungeons that have undergone major makeovers.
The two new dungeons of most interest to level 80 players are Throne of the Tides and Blackrock Cavern. Both are rated for level 80-81. At one point in beta level 79 was the minimum level to enter, but on release the minimum was made level 80. Of course, you must have the Cata expansion to access them.
It was 3:09am early Tuesday morning when five intrepid adventurers, somewhat boozed and a bit giddy from lack of sleep and non-stop gawking at the wonders of this new world, assembled outside the entrance to Blackrock Cavern. In the Old World, Ragnaros still rages deep in the bowels of Molten Core below us. In the world of Cataclysm, Ragnaros, long defeated, arises again. But that is another tale for a later day. At this moment the five are working up the nerve to enter an entirely new adventure. We had a rogue and a warrior for melee combat. Wild was healing, of course. We also had a druid in bear form as our tank. And another druid in moonkin form for ranged DPS. Three druids. Great, we'll all be fighting over the leather gear drops. But who cares? We were going to get slaughtered, anyway.
Blizzard had gone to great lengths to explain that things were going to be greatly different in Cata dungeons. No more "AoE tanking" where players could just round up groups mobs and AoE them down. No more overpowering Bosses with withering DPS. No more of "who cares if I stand in the fire" when the healers have an endless supply of mana to save them.
In Cata tanks were going to have to mark targets and position themselves correctly. Crowd Control (does anyone even remember what their crowd control abilities are anymore?) will be necessary. Avoiding damage will be more important to keep healers from running out of mana. Healers will have to think (think? what language are you speaking?) about which spells to use and manage their mana pool.
One thing about the new dungeons that Blizzard seems to have carried over from WotLK is the dungeon layout. In BRC there are no tricky passageways or convoluted layouts. BRC is entered from the west, passes through a smallish circular cavern, into a bigger circular cavern, makes a 90 degree left turn and then follows a single path to it's end. That's the whole thing. Blizzard did manage to cram five Bosses in there, though. They must be feeling a bit crowded.
We entered BRC. These tunnels and rooms are built into the rock of the Mountain, and that look pervades the entire dungeon. The first thing we noted that there were no mobs nearby. There was a quest giver, though, and we picked up the quest "To the Chamber of Incineration!" We then crossed over a short bridge an into a rough hall where several mobs loitered about. They were mostly ogres. All were level 80/81 elites.
"Crowd control?" the moonkin asked. "Should we mark targets?"
"Want me to SAP one of them?" asked the rogue, who was already stealthed and hiding behind one of the mobs. The rogue looked like he'd already been there awhile. I think he was filing his nails.
Since the rogue's target was closest and looked like he could be singled out, the tank opted to take him first.
"Don't bother with the SAP," the tank told the rogue. The bear tank Charged the mob and we engaged. Wild started a stack of Lifebloom but I never got to three stacks. The mob died in a few seconds. I think we all took a big breath, realizing that until that point we'd all been holding it. Our breath, that is. Although that rogue may have been holding something else - he looked that relaxed.
We took on a pair of mobs next, again not bothering with crowd control. They took a little longer to kill than WotLK dungeon mobs, and they may have hit a little harder, but the tank was still taking pitifully little damage, the two melee knew their role and avoided getting in the way of anything that would hurt them, and Wild really had very little healing to do.
At the end of a stream of more mobs that we had less and less respect for was a bigger ogre, Rom'ogg Bonecrusher. Aha! Our quest says "Kill Rom'ogg Bonecrusher." Good thing he was around, then. Let's hope he got that message, too.
We maneuvered to get at and clear the small groups of mobs around him so that we could face our first Cata dungeon Boss one of one - so to speak, since there were five of us. Only one of him, though.
"What do we know about this guy?" the DK asked.
"Nuttin' honey," Wild muttered under his breath. Wild hoped the tank had something better.
"Let's just try him and see how it goes," said the tank. I love it when a strategy comes together.
We didn't have any more time to discuss it, anyway. Bonecrusher wandered about a bit further than we thought. He'd noticed us. We could tell from the the full throated roar and the way he charged in our direction. The rogue I thought was dozing off in a corner appeared and tripped up the big lug, giving the tank time get Bonecrusher's attention. Wild got some fast heals on the rogue and HoTed up the tank.
Bonecrusher's abilities sound dangerous, indeed. Quake, Wounding Strike, Chains of Woe,and Bonecrusher's finishing move, The Skullcracker. It started as a tank and spank fight, but Quake popped up little dust clouds under our feet. Wild could heal through it, but only if the players affected got out of it quickly. We adjusted to that and were then hit with the Chains. We all became best friends with Bonecrusher as those chains dragged us all up under his rather rank underarms. Our quick thinking DPSers realized we could target the chains and we worked on breaking them. What we didn't know is what to do about The Skullcracker, which Bonecrusher started casting at the end of Chains of Woe. Wild and the moonkin were at range when Skullcracker struck. The two melee died instantly. Wild and the moonkin took no damage, being out of range of it, and the tank survived it, although not by a lot, and that was when Wild did a bit of frenzied healing. Finally, Wild gets some action.
Wild rezzed one of the DPS, and we kept at the boss. We broke the chains quickly the second time Bonecrusher used it, and we made sure everyone but the tank was out of the way of Skullcracker when it came. Wild and the tank were ready for it this time and the tank easily handled it.
Bonecrusher died. We had beaten our first Cata dungeon boss. Ok, so two players died. We still won. Had we bothered to read the strat notes on the fight, nobody would have died. But we like living on the edge, ya know.
Here comes the loot drop. This is at Normal difficulty, not Heroic. [Skullcracker Ring] dropped. Item level i279. Odd that it says it can be worn by a level 78, but only level 80s can get into the dungeon. Well, guess there are still a few things to work out about that. It was a +agility ring, and no one needed it. I think the moonkin ended up with it.
Two interesting things happened after we killed Bonecrusher. The first was that we got a little message letting us complete the quest without having to go back to the quest giver. Nice! But there was a second quest, and we discovered we did have to back to the quest giver to get it. Hey, it's a new feature! Can't expect them to think of a little detail like that. The second thing that happened is a huge gorilla looking mob pounced into view. We were caught with mouths open and drawers down, and we were toast. Well, we would have been had the mob been hostile. Turned out he was a friend. His name was Raz the Crazed (I kid you not), and without any urging from us he proceeded to kill all the mobs between us an our next boss: Corla, Herald of Twilight.
Corla has three dragonkin statues that she will try to revive during the fight using a stacking debuff. The idea (had we been reading the strats) was for players to block the beams going from Corla to two of the statues, while letting Corla revive the third. That way the dragonkin could be dispatched one at a time. The beam applies the stacking buff to whatever is in front of it, so players standing in the beam will also start getting stacks.
We knew none of this, of course, and we were hell bent on killing Corla. That wasn't going so well, but we noticed the stacking debuff starting to pop up on us when we intersected a beam, and figured out that "something" was happening with the beam. Corla herself was something of a ditz, first pulling players to her, then Fearing us away.
"Oops, there's a dragon!" pointed out the rogue, which was our first clue at what the beams were doing. We killed it, and the other two at some point as well, whether one at a time or all at once I'm not sure. With the dragons and beams down Corla didn't have much of a chance. I learned later that if a player gets 100 debuff stacks from the beam that player will become a dragonkin and get mind controlled by Corla. Wow, where do I sign up?
Well. I think [Renouncer's Cowl] dropped, a mail armor item with no one in our group being mail wearers. That one was disenchanted. Wild did get really interested in one of the other possible drops - [Armbands of Change]. This is an i279 leather caster item. Really!? This would, sort of, be an upgrade for Wild had it dropped. Let me bore you for just a second with the stats, since it highlights some the changes in stats with Cata. Wild's current armband is called Septic Shock (ss) and is i251.
Stat SS AC
Sta 61 136
Int 61 90
Spi 56 0
Crit 41 53
Haste 0 65
SP 85 0
Wild would LOVE to have all that extra stamina and intelligence, not to mention the haste. I might even be willing to live without the spirit. It's the SP (spell power) that highlights how difficult it will be make the transition to the new gear. Spell power is the be all stat for casters in WotLK. In Cata, spell power comes largely from +Int. Spell power has been removed from nearly all gear, with the exception of weapons. Would an increase of almost 30 int compensate for the loss of 85 SP? I don't know. I know I would have rolled on that gear, though, and tested it out. Wild now has a very good reason to do this dungeon again. And I have to note that this same piece of gear is much, much better in Heroic. That was another change that came late with WotLK and is in full flower with Cata - the gear is the same in both normal and heroic, but the stats are much better in heroic.
This is starting to grow longer than expected. Let me say that Karsh Steelbender, Beauty, and Lord Obsidius all met the same fate as the first two bosses. In one case the tank finished off the boss solo after the other four of us died. And that could pretty much sum up normal mode BRC. The dungeon is very good, and the bosses have interesting mechanics that will make the fights fun and challenging for most. Against the five of us, though, wrapped in our Kingslayer gear that at the moment out gears just about anything the dungeon can offer, there was really only one end to the story.
We pwned it!
We then went after Throne of the Tides and cleared it as well. I'm sure Wild will be getting into that one again as well, and I'll give a thorough blow by blow then.
By morning's end Wild dragged himself back to Orgrimmar. He dumped out and vendored a bunch of stuff, hoping that he wouldn't regret not keeping some of the unfamiliar items in there. Soulbound gear that Wild couldn't use were DE'd, giving Wild some of the new enchanting mats he'll be needing. There were a number of BOE items stuffed in there, too. Those items Wild parceled out, sending them to both Philly and JB, both of whom might really be able to use them.
And then at last Wild was able get some sleep.
Oh, by the way.
Wild is level 81.
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