Jocelyne Earns an Iron Horde Title

Jocelyne Earns an Iron Horde Title

Jocy spent the night at the Wyvern’s Tail Inn in Orgrimmar’s Valley of Honor. Anxious to get the most out of her day she wolfed down a quick breakfast and headed off on her second trip to the Blasted Lands. This time she brought her arsenal of weapons and spells, ready to take on the Iron Horde at Nethergarde Castle. Jocy quickly found out the hard way that not all of her spells were working. She still had enough muscle to kill a few mobs and pick up some quests without dying.

Jocy waited impatiently while I did some research. I finally located the problem - Macros. Back before Jocy’s boost I must have tinkered with macro settings, or it might have been a transition issue with the new patch. However it happened, several spells that should have been set to attack things, were instead set to heal things. No wonder the spells failed to work. Just remember it’s been more than a year since anyone did any heavy combat (or even light combat, for that matter). My head still hurts from having to remember how to build and set macros.

Once she got the green light, Jocy was off to the Blasted Lands again. The basic storyline is that the Iron Horde has taken over Nethergarde Castle. From the small base camp, Jocy was sent to kill some named mobs and collect artifacts. One thing I like about the revised questing is that there is always an arrow available to point out the nearest quest. Another thing I like is that artifacts belonging to quests are outlined to make them easier to see. Smaller objects, though, tend to get lost even with the outlining, but it is still an improvement.

Jocy learned that the Dreadmaul ogres had allied with the Iron Horde, so she slaughtered a number of them for some more quests. The topper was to take on a big bad orc leader, Gar’mac. That fight pushed Jocy pretty hard. She actually had to maneuver when he went sword crazy and even had to cast a few heals on herself. All that did was to extend the inevitable, though. Jocy killed him.
That ended the quest thread. Jocy was directed to go to Warchief Voljin. Jocy got a slap on the back and a squeeze on the rear for her efforts. She was also given a new title: Jocelyne of the Iron Vanguard, and earned the achievement “The Iron Invasion.”

Ok, the title is nice, but Jocy also got some loot! But let me digress a short moment. One interesting thing about the stats squish is that it didn’t affect item levels. Jocy is geared mostly in Timeless Isle gear with an ilevel of i496. That didn’t change with the new patch. Her newly won gear included a necklace (i515), a cape (i515), a ring (i515), and a trinket (i520). Jocy won two companions as well. All in all a pretty nice haul. Jocy is now ilevel 503.

Note that this quest line is only for level 90 characters. It appears that Wild and Fist both are showing some interest in doing the quests as well. This particular quest line will only be available until the WoD expansion is launched.  Get it while you can.

For Stat Geeks. I wanted to get some basic DPS information down to see how well (or not) Jocy progresses.
Using the Target Dummy with only auto attacks, she logged an upper and average DPS of 61 and 66 respectively. Attacking the dummy with my flawed macro set up yielded 261 DPS average and 276 max.
Once Jocy started killing real mobs, even with some macro problems, she got up to an average 1346 DPS.
Finally, with her equipment pretty much straightened out and fighting real mobs, she raised that number to 1596 DPS.
I don’t know what are good or bad numbers because of the squish and my own lack of playing. Jocy’s plan is to be good enough to do the things she needs to do, and to continue improving.