Hi Folks, just a line to say hi really, but while I have you, you captive audience you, I’ve recruited a friend to wow…well, re-recruited Spiffie. Yes, he’s creating another account and we’re going to power level a few characters to 60 over the next 90 days. We’ll only level while the other one is on(these toons at least). I’ve deleted a few toons in their50’s-60’s I wasn’t happy with on dawnbringer, so we’ll see what hapens…
~Sy
Gozz Mount # 83.
83 Down.
17 to Go.
~Uncle Sy
Hey guys Sy again. What? WHAT? Yes, you read it right, Sy gets two posts in a row, and they aren’t months apart! What’s everyone been up to? Yeah, great to hear. What have I been up to? Glad you asked. Now I can tell you all about my exciting week. Well, by exciting I mean too cold to go outside and do anything of real value, so I stayed inside and played wow, watched part of Lost season 5, Farscape season1(why did I never watch this before?), and way too much Family guy on TBS/Cartoon Network/online at Hulu and Tbs.com. Yes, my week was pretty worthless to be honest! It was however my last week before I start student teaching, so basically my last week to goof off before the begining of my semester. Let me shorten that entire paragraph to one sentence. IT WAS AWESOME!!!!
The only downside was making the decision to make use of the free time I had to level my death knights blacksmithing and mining to 450… I made it for the mining, easy as Pie. Now, the blacksmithing sucked. Sucked bad. Needless to say it is not 450. It’s 403 at the moment. I hate it passionatly. I got that high for no other reason than the extra socket bonuses for my bracers and gloves. mmmm, extra sockets. I think those are getting filled with +20 parry rating each. mmmm, parry rating. Yeah, he’s a tank, what of it, wanna fight about it? Now my goal is to have it finally maxed out by next wednesday. My last free day. We’ll see if that happens. Now, for your viewing pleasure, because we all know without pictures most people wouldn’t even stop by here to read!(totally ripping off this pic, because I love it)
Heya bloggers and blog readers! I thought I’d take a break from my holiday merriment to stop in and say hi. Hi! I’ve been running a few heroics here and there adn have recently decided to take me death knight out for a test drive. I’ve respecc’d him with a frost DW build for tanking. It’s very fun and alot easier to hold aggro than with my old build. As well as alot more survivability as well. So I ran an instance with a good friend of 4theHorde yesterday. That’s right, good ol’ Rozzy of Repgrind fame. She was all happy, we got to be humans(dirty stinkin humans) and I was happy because I got my bronze drake on my DK. All in all a Win Win situation. Here’s some before and after shots of the lovely pair.
Here we are Dirty Dirty humans.
And back to Normal. (Damn Dirty Apes!)
Okay, back to the grind for me. I’ll try not to be as much of a stranger, but it looks like Pie’s holding down the 4theHorde fort with Nelfs….seriously Pie, Nelfs…. Oh The Shame.
~Uncle Sy
Meet Wrasam, Night Elf Hunter.
Sadly my Mohawked wore off before I got this pic.
My attempt to level this hunter with a large amount of cash or heirlooms from my level 80’s begins now. As I progress through this guide, the goal is to not tell you how to play each level, or to complete quests, or even go into a lot of detail on certain hunter skills. Quite simply, why invent the wheel. I will link you to the spells you get, through Wowhead. In addition, any tips I might have for doing the things hunter do best, or ways to avoid being a huntard if possible, will be given when the spell or ability is attained. For example, I won’t talk about kiting until you have the shots and abilities needed to actually kite a mob.
Let’s begin, shall we?
Level 1, bright eyed and bushy-tailed, you enter the world of Azeroth with a few things. As a hunter, you get a 2 handed axe, a bow/gun (I suspect Dwarves get guns, perhaps Draenei), 200 arrows/bullets, a backpack, a 4 slot quiver and a hearthstone. To be honest, hunters get it good here, the quiver provides you one more slot that other folks don’t get. Keep this quiver until you get enough bags, I would suggest until you can step up to 10 slot or bigger bags.
Sadly, Hunters have to melee for the first 10 levels, without a pet. Yes, you get to shoot things, using your ranged weapon, but most times that mob is going to end up in melee and you are going to end up flailing at it with your melee weapon. This, in my not so humble opinion (and others too), establishes bad habits in the beginning hunter, that must be unlearned when you get your pet at level 10. More on that later.
At level 1, you have auto-attack (now called Attack) which is the melee attack and Auto Shot, which is your ranged attack. In addition, you get Raptor Strike, which is your only mana using ability until level 4.
Level 2 brings you Track Beasts, which allows your mini-map to show dots that represent beasts. Green dots are friendly, yellow are neutral and red dots represent aggressive beasts. In the starter area, you should have no red dots, unless the opposite faction is in the area and has a beast present.
Until you get Serpent Sting at level 4, you should pretty much follow this attack pattern. Click mob you want to kill, get to the max range you can attack using your Auto Shot ability (35 yards at this point in your WOW life). Start firing by either right mouse clicking the mob (if you have the setting selected) or by hitting the button Auto Shot is assigned to, or by left clicking the ability. When the mob closes to melee, activate Raptor Strike. If necessary, if it comes off it’s cooldown, activate it again. Rinse…repeat. Depending on your hits, crits and damage, the mob may not make it to melee.
You think this is bad, go read the paladin guide, when it get’s posted.
At level 4, you get Serpent Sting and Aspect of the Monkey. You will be in Aspect of the Monkey (Aspects are referred to by just the part after the, e.g. Monkey) until you get the next aspect at level 10. Aspects are like warrior stances or paladin auras, in that they serve roles for you. Monkey is your melee damage reducer by buffing your ability to dodge. Serpent Sting will now be the shot you open with on the mob. This will put a DoT on the mob. It’s not really that mana efficient, but at this stage you aren’t using mana a lot, and the mana regen at the lower levels is incredible, so use it. It will help for those mobs that take off and run when their health drops to 20%.
At level 5, you can train professions. I recommend training First Aid and Cooking and working on them, so that you can max them when you have time and money and mats. For the primary professions, I would recommend Herbalism and Skinning, if this is your first character and whatever you want, if you have the bank of an 80 backing you up. Why? Herbalism gives you a healing spell, that unless you are Draenei, hunters don’t have. Skinning gives you crit rating and crit is always welcome. Plus skinning doesn’t require tracking. Fishing is up to you. Seriously, my 80 hunter is maxed, and I fish a lot, for mats for food buffs that all my characters use, but I can understand why folks wouldn’t want to do it.
At level 6, you get Hunter’s Mark and Arcane Shot. Congrats, you can now effectively kite the mob if you’d like. While moving, your Auto Shot will not work. So you’ll be left with only 2 shots, Serpent Sting and Arcane Shot. You may find it quicker not to kite mobs at this point, but to continue letting them run toward you why you put bullets or arrows in their mug.
I won’t go over how to kite a mob. Quite simply, BRK has put out the best example on how to do so in this video and this, it involves jump shooting and to be honest, while I can do it, I am not great at it. If you click the BRK link, you’ll find all of his “guide” posts. Most of that stuff still applies, but I want to update the changes that have been made.
Hunter’s Mark each mob? You can. The bonus isn’t great and it does use mana and you may find it’s not really helpful. Either way, not a big deal at this point in your life.
At level 8, you get Concussive Shot and Rank 2 of Raptor Strike. Not really going to spend a lot of time on new ranks, unless they add something to the mix. Concussive shot….when do I use in my rotation? Well, I’ve found that I open with Serpent Sting, then Concussive Shot, then Arcane. This usually makes the mob die or really close, that if they run, they still have the slowing debuff and I can keep them from running away too far.
LEVEL 10!
Congratulations, you’ve made it past the worst part of being a hunter, after a few quests and a lot of running, you’ll be able to tame a pet of your choice and your leveling speed and ability to burn through mobs will increase exponentially.
First, when you level, you get a talent point to spend. Quite simply, my advice is to put a point in Endurance Training. I know you can realistically level as any of the specs, but I think your downtime and ability to survive is just better, especially at the lower levels, with Beastmastery.
When you get to your trainer, and I would advise getting there quickly, you learn Parry, a passive skill, Rank 2 of Serpent Sting and Track Humanoids, which like Track Beasts will cause Humanoid mobs to show up on your mini-map, if you are tracking them. A note here, apparently abilities are being added to you bars automatically. You can remove the Tracking as their is a button on your mini-map you can use to access the tracking abilities.
Your trainer also has a quest chain for you to start. Start it. No really, stop reading and go do it. It’s the chain that gets you to learn how to tame pets. First you get a rod and you go train 3 mobs. After the 3rd mob is trained and you return you learn the following abilities: Call Pet, Dismiss Pet, Tame Beast and a quest to run to your major city. There you will learn Feed Pet and Revive Pet.
The pet you choose to tame is entirely up to you. A Tenacity pet is really nice because it provides a bit more health and armor and tends to hold aggro better. A Ferocity pet is good because it does more damage and a Cunning pet has some abilities that make them useful in places like PvP. Try out many different types and visit Petopia for more information on pets.
Next time we’ll go through levels 11-20.
Assuming you are new to the game, where do you begin? For those already familiar with the world…of warcraft, this post may not be really educational.
After you setup your battle.net account and log into WOW for the first time, you are offered a server for your characters to live on. Before you take the Recommended server, stop. Ask yourself a few questions.
1) Do I have friends or family that play WOW? Chances are you do know someone, even if you don’t know that they do. If you have friends or family that play, ask them where they play and what faction. Having friends in the game isn’t mandatory, but it sure makes life a lot easier.
2) Where do I live and what time zone is my home? Why? Well, WOW has multiple data centers and all their US/Oceanic Servers are based in these data centers. Just because you live in the Pacific Time Zone doesn’t mean your server’s data center does, even if it is a Pacific Time Zone server. For information on data centers, their location and time zone and type, please look here.
Why is that important? Well for one thing, matching your time zone and your server’s time zone can make it easier for you to group up with people. Although, most folks set their calendars to server time, but also, if you live on the West Coast and your server is on the East coast you may find that it’s harder to find groups that can play as long as you. It’s not game breaking, but it can help. Also, you will may notice some difference in latency if you select a data center closer to you than one farther away. I live in the KC area, so I consistently getter better latency from the Dallas Data Center, than the Seattle one. Your mileage may vary, of course.
Okay, so now you’ve selected your server, you know which faction you are going to play and you’ve figure out the look, name, race and class of your character. Ready to jump in the game?
Some advice.
Watch the opening scene for your race, heck roll up all the different races and watch the opening scenes.
Also, read your quest text, look and listen to the speeches given. Sure the 102380 time you do it, you will race through the quests, but that first time, take your time. For one thing, if you are doing this prior to Cataclysm, that quest, that zone..may not be there when Cataclysm hits.
Lastly, make friends. Perhaps you won’t make friends in the starter zone, but as you group with people, if they seem to be nice, put them on your friends list. Friends are a great thing in WOW, it is a multi-player game for a reason.
If this is your first character, don’t worry about weapon or equipment upgrades. For the most part, the game will get them to you. Don’t go blowing your hard earned gold, silver, bronze and copper on the Auction House(AH).
Casters may want to pick up a wand, but usually you’ll find quite a few Lesser and Greater Magic Wands on the AH, due to they are something enchanters use to level up, they are usually not expensive.
The primary thing you need to gather is bags. Bag space is a concern for the rest of your time in WOW.
OH and don’t be afraid to sign guild charters, especially if folks are offering to give you gold. No, it’s not a scam. In order for guilds to be created they must get 9 people to sign the charter the guild master bought. They have to be from 9 different accounts, so you will probably see people in the starting areas and in the major cities asking for signatures in Trade or General chat channels. A note to you veterans of WOW, offer to pay for your signatures and go to the starter or lower areas and offer these to lower characters. 10 gold doesn’t seem like a lot to you, but to a level 10 who doesn’t have an 80 or a bunch of friends helping them out, it’s a very big deal.
Okay, so let’s take stock of where we are:
1) You have your server, your faction and your character decided on.
2) You’ve watched the opening racial scene and you are now in game, armed with knowledge that the AH is a money sink and you need bags as soon as you can get them. (By the way, you don’t need to buy the biggest bags in the world, even the 4 slot bags will help you at first, just don’t go crazy at first)
3) You are standing in the starting area, staring at the NPC with the big yellow ! over their head.
4) You know this first time, that you are going to read the quests, listen to the speeches the NPCs give and you are going to enjoy the journey.
What now?
Well, join me next time as the Operation: Lowbie series splits between the hunter and the paladin. I am not going to go step by step, quest by quest, but I am going to talk about the leveling process for each class and share with you some tips to making the road to 80 (or 85 in Cat) a bit easier.
Have a Happy New Year!
We here at For the Horde! believe in providing unbelievably helpful posts. They may not be as often as many of you might like, but we never, ever post goofy posts. Never, ever. And if, by chance, one of those goofy posts sees the light of day….YOU fine readers would never make it one of the top posts in the past year.
Seriously Bonk Bonk Bonk?
Okay, apparently, you fine readers, don’t so much care if we post silly posts…just as long as we post.
But fine readers, and you too Gnomer, we are upon a new year. A time when most of us will make a resolution and then break it…
So, what pray tell, is my resolution, well not resolution, but plan of action, for the new year?
You don’t think the title of this post was just catchy do you?
NOOOOooooo!!!11one42
Fine readers, I am going to create two new characters this year (no Fikkle, not just two, silly Canadianian) with one thought in mind. Creating a how to series. One of those characters will be a hunter, because, I can be a hunter. The second will be a paladin. I am leaning toward making the paladin a human for a couple reasons:
1) They are not Belfs… Any long time reader of my posts or comments will know my loathing of the blood elf. I am so much very happy that the Horde will get Tauren Paladins in Cataclysm. Seriously, even troll paladins would have sufficed, but my second favorite race? Woot!
2) Humans get extra rep, cuz we all know the rep grind is long…
3) Humans get that sweet Every Man for Himself, so I don’t have to invest in a PvP trinket.
Hush it right now Roz. Zip it!, Shhh,
4) Blessing of Kings: who by the way sends the most traffic our way…for some reason.
(yeah you want me to roll your class, start sending folks this way…yeah..I can be bought)
Now, the major question is this. Do I make my hunter an alliance too? If so, what race?
Oh before we go much further, let me explain some of my ground rules.
1) Must be on a server where I don’t have characters
2) Only support should be the DK I roll on said server to provide some bigger bags.
Seriously, Blizz, increase the drop rate of bags in the starter zones or up the bag space to 20 in the backpack. No food or water was a great step /golfclap :rollseyes:
So, here’s my question to you, which server should I roll on. That leaves out: Dawnbringer, Winterhoof and Gnomer’s server in the Oceanic area. (since he gaves me stuff already)
I have no problem rolling both characters as alliance, nor do I have a problem rolling one alliance and one Horde. Realistically, I could do both on the same server. My goal here is to provide a decent leveling guide for the new player. Either new to the game or new to the classes. Sure, I could roll these up on my “home” servers, but let’s be honest, I’ve got lots of alts bankrolled by by level 80’s and it’s just not the same experience. Heirloom shoulders, trinkets, chest and weapons make the leveling process a breeze. No recruit a friend.
This doesn’t mean that I just want to roll on a server I don’t know anyone, so if you’d like Pie to hang out with you on your server, feel free to suggest it. I don’t want boosted through the process, which is one of the other reasons to not roll on one of my home servers. Let’s be honest, my rogue got boosted through BFD and got the sweet bow, where I would normally have to get a group to go.
So there it is boys and girls, give me some suggestions. What would you like to see me do? I am not saying I’ll spend every playing moment playing these characters, but I would like to advance enough to get a few posts a month out of these characters. I’ll split them so one post will focus on the hunter and the other on the pally.
Apparently, I am not the only one who got this idea. Go check out BBB for his project on a new bear tank!
Merry Christmas to you and your families.
A special thanks to those serving, at home and abroad. To those who spend this holiday season away from their families and those in harm’s way. Thank you!
Here’s to a prosperous New Year to all of us. Okay not so much for you alliance peoples…but just maybe a little bit.
Perhaps next week when the family isn’t in town, I’ll tell you of my embarrassing heroic run back in BC…Fellhoof, the druid Tank reminded me of said story.
O Hai Thrall!
I heard you are getting the shaft… Errr I mean getting a cushy diplomatic post.
Guess it was all that mishandling of Sylvanas and letting the competitive Orcs usurp your position.
I hear they are going to clean up out Orgrimmar too…
About time!
As if the smell of Orcs isn’t fetid enough without all that Tauren dung littering the streets.
Take it from me, the best Tauren is the BBQ’d Tauren. Marinated in Belf tears is best, but there’s nothing wrong with a plain old slab of Bessy on the BBQ!
I’m beginning to think your crew are already deserting you… This place is as desolate as Exodar…
Where they all go?
I could have used a slice of Fikkle Sylus Pie for Xmas lunch… Those BGs make me hungry and I have a sweet tooth.
Anyway, I think it’s time to head off… Before I do I think I’ll mark your throne… That should drive the Hunter’s pets crazy… The scent of Gnome pee… They will be gnawing on whoever sits on this throne for years to come.
If you happen to see the folks from For The Horde, say G’day to them for me…
Ohh and wish all the readers a great holiday season while your at it!
For Gnomeregan!
