I can read: Warcraft books from Cataclysm

I know, MoKFP has released, but really, do you need another impression of the expansion?  I am planning on giving you my impression, but I played from about 2:15AM CDT, took a nap in the middle of the day and then ended my day about 6PM CDT to watch my newly arrived Avengers Blu-Ray.

I like MoKFP. There, in 3 words I summed up the post I may or may not write later on.

Today, though, I wanted to talk about the Warcraft books, specifically, The Shattering and Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects. I just finished Thrall last night, finishing Shattering a few days before. I read fast and I read Thrall pretty much in one day. I am behind on the books and I need to catch up. I’ve started Jaina, but I am not that far into it.

I am not going to get into the Knaak vs Golden debate. I like both.

I love Thrall and for those that have read some of my RP stories, you’ll know Halkale loves Thrall too. I see Thrall as the ultimate Orc. Yes, I know Kor loves him some Garrosh and I’ll be honest, I think Blizz may be doing Garrosh a disfavor by not developing him, but I am not sure every hero needs to be redeemed.

Thrall is about honor and understanding that the Orcs must be about something more than war and destruction. Yes, the game is called World of WARcraft, but let’s be honest, other than a few areas, are we really at war? Is Mists going to change that, as we believe based on rumors and hints?

Shattering really renewed my interest in the dwarven history and lore and made me want to run out and get my dwarven paladin leveled. I also think Varian came out looking okay in the book and I am looking forward to see how they bring Anduin up.

The book Thrall combines my love of Thrall and the Aspects, especially the Life-Binder. Again, if you’ve read my stories you know that the red dragonflight plays a huge part in them. I absolutely love all the quests that deal with them and Halkale will always use the red drake has his flying mount.

I really wish I had read these two books prior to the release of Cataclysm or at least before I went through all the quests in the zones. Seriously, they make a lot of those quests come alive even more. Especially the Call of the World Shaman line.  I really wasn’t planning on buying the Wolfheart book, but I am now.

These books really fill in the holes between WOTLKEE and Cata, but based on the few hours of questing that I did Tuesday, I am not sure there is much needed to explain Panderia. Although, if they released some books on the Panda’s adventures from the Shattering to MoKFP, I am pretty sure WOW folks would buy them, yes?

I do believe that after you read the books you might not hate Varian and Garrosh as much, maybe not at all. Both are flawed, yes, but I think they balance people like Jaina and Thrall and even Cairne who don’t seem to be imperfect. Until you read Thrall and realize how much self doubt the big guy goes through.

I really would like to have a book written on the Tauren perspective. I know there are rumors the next book will be on Vol’jin. Not a huge fan of trolls in game, but hey perhaps I’ll learn a few things from a book.

I know when I was reading the Star Wars books, preparing for TOR, there was a lot of debate on canon. I know in the past, Knaak’s universe vs the other authors was debated. It seems that Blizzard has combined the two story lines a little bit. Characters that never appeared or played so minor roles in other authors, but were main characters in Knaak seem to have a place in Golden’s telling of the world, granted she did kill off one of my favorite reds, but did it with such feeling, I got a little misty-eyed…okay a lot.

I said I wouldn’t get into the debate, but I do think Golden may be the better story teller, the better emotion puller. Perhaps it’s the stories she’s allowed to tell or not. I know a good book when I read one, I know it because I find myself in the characters’ hearts and minds and I go through their emotions. I find a do that with both authors, but maybe Golden just a little more.

I love the books, but I do agree with one blogger (I think it might have been BBB) who said since the books started releasing, Blizz got lazy with in game lore. At the same time, the books allow me to read the “in-between” stuff and make sure I am caught up on both sides of the war.

Read the books, I think you’ll enjoy them.

 

 

Fickle Friday: List Edition

Lok’tar friends,

Yes I know our Friday post is a day late this week, but I blame our self appointed editor and chef (who cuts a mean carrot). He’s had this post for about four or five days and instead makes me post it from an igloo. Anyways…

So I’be been bombing around Azshara with my lowbie Goblin warrior this past week having a blast. My play time has been sporadic and very limited due to work, but I’ve still managed to start a new guild (new server requires new shenanigans guild, for the shenanigans require their own home… Guild is Skullreaver on Winterhoof Horde if anyone’s interested).

Anyways, I know all you Cata players are saying that Azshara was so two years ago, and you’d be right, but this is my first run through of the retuned zone, so for me, it’s all new. But the real topic of today’s post is a list. Two years ago, right before I stopped playing for good, I posted a few lists that were sort of reminiscing about my playtime in WoW up until the end of Wrath. Since I didn’t really play Cata, I can’t do the exact same, but I have played other MMOs so I decided to make today’s list all about “Things WoW Does Wrong”. Now before you get the wrong idea, let me start by saying that wow does a lot of things right. It’s those things that have kept the game going for so long. But there are some things that WoW just doesn’t do right. (By the way, this list is brought to you by the number 6 and the letter PH, because there a lot of sixes who just don’t get enough recognition and there is a lot of PHail out there).

6. FFS Enough With The Rediculous One Off Mini-Games

This is a trend that started in BC with bombing runs, but was taken to a whole new level in Wrath with the real instigator being vehicle combat. There were a few quests using vehicles that prepped players for later usage of them in pvp and raids. Fine. I didn’t love it, but I didn’t hate it either. The jousting is another example.for Cata, I have only done a few of the new zones so far, but there are two types of minigames that are terrible, irrelevant and downright annoying. I’m talking about the archmage questline in Azshara that has you bounding up a mountain a la super mario, and the stupid Hippogryph flapping in Mount Hyjal. Holy Hanna Blizzard. Enough is Enough. Pick a mechanic that is fun and works and stick with it. Wasting time to learn a new mechanic (that often sucks moar with lag) for a single quest (and failies, you figure it out) is terrible game design. If you’re gonna make us learn a new minivans mechanic, make it fun and doable.

5. Expansions do NOT require you to change the way your entire skill / talent / spell / random mechanic system works.

I really hope you’re done doing this to us. Adding a few tiers of abilities was great for the first three expansions. Albeit by the time Wrath hit, there were a lot to learn and there were a lot of spells that needed reworking. I get that. I still hate the way it was done, but whatever, you’re the ones with millions of customers, not me. Still, I was hoping that for the next few expansions we could build on the NEW talent system you developed, And start to develop intricate builds, strange hybrids and wicked cool twists. So what if there were junk talents, that was never something I cared much about. Having to relearn two specs on all eight of the different classes I have at endgame? That sucks. But oh wait, we’re gonna do that all over again, and now, you can just play whackamole with your talents cause they don’t really matter. That’s shitty. That’s like seeing your best friend sleeping with his mouth open and deciding to drop a deuce in it. It might seem cool at the time, but it’s kinda offside.

4. Crafting Isn’t Interesting, More Like Set It and Go Do Your Laundry

Seriously, Star Wars did a really great job with their crafting. I don’t know that it will work for wow, but what I do know is that having to level first aid on my umpteenth character is getting ridiculous. Seriously, I get a bunch of linen cloth, hit craft all and have time to go watch an episode of Big Bang Theory. The crafting system in game is really a testament to what existed in the MMO space when WoW was in development. Things are different now and it’s time for an update. I mean really, if you can sunder the whole world, the least you can do is find a homeless bum for me to hire who can make bandages for me. I mean when was the last time they were in a city? There are always people begging for golds. Why can’t we make them do it?

3. Hearthstones suck.

I’m sorry, but I got spoiled while playing TOR. Their system worked so that once you discovered a hearth location, you could hearty there any time, provided it wasn’t cooldown. The Hearthstone system could really use an overhaul and it would get rid of the need for portals, teleports, etc. c’mon Blizz, this would make everyone’s lives less annoying.

2. Moar RP Love! (But not the Deep Run Tram kind)

Seriously, I love to RP, even if I only do it casually. But this is one aspect of the game that always takes a back seat to mechanics and content. It’s sad, considering that WoW is an amazing RPG, except for the fact that the majority of the RP has to be played driven. The Transmog thing (which I haven’t tried yet) is a step in the right direction, but I suspect that it made the cut only because people are vain. Give my character the ability to select a last name, or a place to call home (aka housing), to name that one special weapon you have (I call her Vera, she is my most favorite gun) or some cool thing you’ve thought of but I haven’t yet. Your stories can be so wonderful, and they are made all the better when I can Roleplay my characters through them.

1. Class Legendary Quests & Weapons (or Armor)

I know this may sound far fetched, but I really want to see Class Legendary quest lines, for all Classes, that are amazing in their story telling and then at the end allow you to chose the type of weapon/armor piece that you want (sword, axe, dagger, etc) and a special effect (three for each class, allowing you to tailor it to your spec) and then to name the weapon/armor yourself. Invariably some d-bag will call it ‘yomama’ or something as equally unimaginative, but it would give people a chance to really pick the weapon that best suited their character. My orc warrior would take an 2H axe, my dwarf paladin a 2H mace, my blood elf Mage would take a a kick ass robe, while my Forsaken Rogue would get a fist weapon, and my Tauren Warrior would get the biggest baddest mofo shoulders you could dream of.

At the launch of an expansion is the worst possible time to ask for something to be added to that expansion. So I’m not asking that. What I am asking for is consideration for the expansion after Mists. Think about it. In the meantime,

Stay Hordecore,

Kor

Enhancement: The New Manbearpig

With the changes to certain game mechanics in patch 3.0.2, Enhancement Shaman have become what could be considered one of the truest hybrids in the game.  The changes have emphasised a synergy between melee damage and spell damage that is truly amazing.

Evolving Mechanics: Unifying Hybrid Damage

First off, the changes of some old stats into unified stats, namely spell power, crit, hit and haste, are groundbreakingly incredible.  The change to spell power means that now the one stat will affect both offensive spells and healing spells, which menas that gear with differing numbers affecting the two is a thing of the past.  This also means that no longer will gear be healer specific, since the spell power will also be viable for damage dealers.  While there may still be gear that will be better overall for specific healers, it basically means that more classes will be able to use a wider variety of gear.  While this may create the inevitable loot drama, ultimately it will mean a lot less gear will be wasted as well.

The changes to crit, hit and haste are even more important in my opinion.  Before, melee classes would focus on melee hit ratings while caster classes would focus on spell hit ratings (and crit and haste).  Now, there is a single stat for each that affects spells and melee attacks.  While this is good for pure casting and the pure melee classes, it is even better for classes that use both melee and spells, specifically, Paladins, Shaman and Druids come to mind.  So now, spells that were viable before the patch, are going to be even better.  For Enhance Shaman this applies specifically to Shocks, Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning.

Maelstramifications: The New Enhance-Hotness

The changes that were made to the Enhancement tree have gone even further to make Enhancement even more of a hybrid spec.  While before, shocks were included in dps rotations, lighting spells rarely would be.  The casting times were so long that the loss in dps wasn’t worth the spells.  Now, with the Maelstrom Weapon talent, having an instant cast Chain Lightning or Lightning Bolt spell is completely viable, and the crit that spells now receive from the unified stat will make them do even more damage.  Lava Lash, another deep Enhancement talent is also has a spell damage component.  And with this new talent, many Shaman are now considering using Flametongue Weapon on their offhand weapon for the increased damage component to Lava Lash.  I haven’t looked into the theorycrafting behind it yet, but I plan to shortly.  There is likely going to be a certain point where spell power will increase the damage done to make it more viable than having Windfury Weapon on the offhand.  Must go theorycraftumbobulatification.  Don’t worry, that word could have gone on much longer.  In its current state its only partially-fikklized.

Shifting Paradigms: Hybrid Style

Hybrid can mean a lot of things in WoW.  It can mean a class that can fill two differing roles, which would include Warriors and Priests.  It can mean a class that can fill two or more of the three primary roles in the game (tanking, healing and dps), which would include Druids, Paladins, Shaman, Warriors and Priests.  In the concept that I’m looking at it from, I’m considering a hybrid a spec in a class that uses both melee and spells as their main sources of damage output.  This definition, which is admittedly, much more limited in scope, restricts the defination mainly to Shaman and Paladins.  A more accurate description would be a hybrid damage spec.  Ret Paladins, generally use hard hitting two handed weapons and their seals and judgement abilities. Enhance Shaman use hard hitting, dual wielded, one-hand weapons and their shocks and lightening spells. This concept isn’t a revolutionary change from the original ideas behind these two specs, since both have always used spells and melee damage to dish it out.  It’s more of an evolutionary change where the original concepts have been elaborated on and expanded, buffed by the new unified stats and broadened with new spells and abilities that allow for more variety and tons more fun.  I’ve been having so much fun playing the Shaman with the changes.  Even though he’s terribly geared at the moment, the changes have given so much more depth to his spec that its probably the most fun I’ve had with any class or spec in the game.  And as any regular reader knows, I can haz alts.

The Future is Bright: 70 to 80

Getting the Shaman to 80 is my first priority when Wrath hits.  While he may be harder to level than some of my other toons that have had plenty of time at 70 to amass the epics, the reset will bring upgrades and its not like I have any gear that will last until level 80 anyways.   As much fun as I’m having right now, I’m looking forward to getting to play the spec at level 80.  The 10 extra talent poitns and additional spells is going to make it even more interesting to play than it already is.  While I haven’t truly experienced many of the problems that were discussed to no end on the forums through BC and even before, I’m looking at the future for Enhancement Shaman and it looks bright.  Each day the excitement builds as Wrath is drawing ever closer and I can’t wait to get out there and get the new Manbearpig to Northrend.

 

– Fikkle

May the Horde be with you

For The Horde Is About To Get A Whole Lot More Hybridy

Recent Goings On

Yes, the blog has been a bit vacant as of late.  I have to admit work has been getting extremely busy for me and I know school is taking up almost all of Sy’s time, so we’ve been a bit lax in posting.  I’m hoping to be able to put out content more frequently over the next few weeks however.

In game I’ve managed to hit 70 with both my Warlock and Shaman (dual boxing them) which brings the total count of 70s up to 5 (Mage, Hunter, Druid, Warlock, Shaman).  I know that Fim from TNB has also been running a Shamlock combo and I’m not sure how he’s finding it, but I can say that from my experience, this duo was amazing.  With the lock spec’d Demo and the Shaman spec’d Enhance I had so many abilities to utterly devastate mobs that I could literally chain pull mobs without stopping. 

At level 65 I purchased two stacks of food and two stacks of water for each toon and I think I used a total of 10 food and 10 water between the two in the last five levels.  The locks ability to life tap and the Shaman’s heals kept me going indefinately.  And even spec’d enhance, it was enough.  When the heals pulled aggro it was a simple matter of using Spirit Wolves, or after 66 and 68 my Fire or Earth Elementals.  All the while the Lock had no problem taking down everything else.  And if I aggro’d too many?  Well lets just say that with Metamorphosis, I could literally kill up to 10 mobs at the same time, between Immolation Aura, Cleave and Hellfire, while keeping the Warlock alive with the Shaman. 

It was truly something to behold.  Now, I’m not sure if I could take more than 10 at once, since that’s the largest number that I managed to aggro at once, but I wouldn’t doubt if more would go down as well.  And elites?  No prob.  Send in the Fel Guard, dot em up, heal the pet with the Shaman, refresh dots, soulshatter, heal some more.  If anyone is considering a pair to take, this one is win, IMO.

Winds of Change

Everything changes.  It’s a normal process of the World… (of Warcraf).  3.0.2 changed just aboot everything we knew aboot the game.  3.0.3 brought changes as well, albeit much smaller in scope and scale.  Nov 13 brings another whopper of a change.

I’ve decided that the reset that comes with the expansion is a great time for me to get around to changing things for myself as well.  When I first started playing, I was a Mage.  I switched to a Druid (Resto) main for a while, then back to the Mage for a few weeks before settling on the Hunter for the remainder of BC.  I’ve previously announced my intention to give the Shaman a whirl and see where it goes.  My primary spec for him is planned to be Enhancement, but I have no quams aboot trying oot the other two.  So much so that I’m considering leveling a few other Shaman to 80 so that I can have one specializing in each spec and not have to worry aboot massive amounts of gear + respec costs.  That would also allow me to use the planned 2-Spec thingy for a pvp v pve spec. 

Now, what I haven’t really announced yet, is that I’m planning on bringing the Druid off the shelf.  It seemed appropriate to do it this fall, since he too will be shedding his leaves and taking on a new role: Bearfacetanking.  That is right.  Our guild may be short on tanks for Wrath raids and tanking is something that I’ve wanted to try for a while, and with this reset, it’ll give me the opportunity to get oot there and do it.

Enhanced Fun

I’ve been doing pvp on the Shaman over the last two days (since ding’ing 70) and while I loathe having only 6k health, no resilience and still no pvp trinket, its not entirely a wash.  Enhance is so fun in so many ways and I do have some pretty awesome abilities.  AV has been better the last couple days.  The Horde in my battlegroup are finally realizing that playing smart is much better than ‘lets smash stuff and hope for the best’.  I’ve seen two successful strategies used a few times that are just doing what we used to in order to win. 

The first was defending the choke point.  Choke points are just that and if done properly (keeping people from bleeding past and capturing graveyards behind us), they utterly devastate an offense.  Especially in the first few minutes of the game when graveyards are being turned but haven’t yet converted.  Offense gets sent all the way back to the start of the map and have to make their way all the way back.  This buys you much needed time, protects the Relief Hut and your towers and sends the Alliance in disarray.  Invariably when this strategy is used, the coordinated zerg turns into a slow steady streams of ones or twos that are easily focused fired and sent back yet again.

The second strategy that worked is a two-pronged approach.  Offense zergs right to the Aid Station.  The key to this plan is under no circumstances capturing Stormpike graveyard at the bridge.  Getting behind their defense is critical.  The second prong to this is an enforced defense of our own for anyone that died on offense.  This allows the zerg to get through and the defense that does make it back needs to kill the Crusader Aura’d cockroaches before their reinforcements show up.  This buys time for more players to get to defense and for the offense to get the Aid Station and all of the towers capped.

The first strategy resulted in a prolonged battle that seesawed back and forth between Stonehearth graveyard and Stormpike graveyard, but netted a ton of honor kills.  We were also able to defend all of our towers and capture two of theirs.  The second strategy saw us defeat Van while having capped all of their towers and defending two of ours.  Both work and in the grand scheme it didn’t really matter to me, I had fun in both.  But its nice to see the Horde beginning to do a little better again after what seems like months of endless losses in AV.

As far as the honor and marks go, I’m not sure that I’m going to spend any before Wrath hits.  I’d love to pick up some new melee weapons, as mine are abysmal at this point, but I know I’ll find upgrades in Wrath, so why bother.  I’d probably be much better served saving up what I get for level 80 rewards, but we’ll see what happens.

Am-BEAR-guity

Luckily for me, Druids got a second talent reset in 3.0.3.  Since I had spec’d Boomkin after the initial reset, paid to respec to Resto, paid to respec back to Boomkin and then again back to Resto, this was a godsend.  (Um, well, ya, my name is Fikkle after all.  I can never make up my mind aboot anything).  So Anteaus got a free respec and is now ready to get oot there and Butt it up.  The only problem is, I have no idea what I’m doing.  I haven’t ever tanked with the Druid before.  I have read B^3 religiously over the last year and a bit, so I have an inkling, but I have no idea what the changes from the latest patch have meant for the Druid (or the Shaman for that matter).  So there is going to be a lot of learning going on between now and level 80.

I’m hoping to get the chance to get oot there and start tanking some level 70 content before Wrath hits in 8 days, but that isn’t really enough time to truly learn stuff.  I also have some pvp goals I wanted to accomplish for the Druid as well, but I’m not sure if I’ll get a chance to do that.  Either way, I pulled all of his feral gear out of his bank (I think I actually had enough for two full sets) and figured out which were the best.  At this point, I’m still a little unsure as to what stats I should be focusing on.  I was looking at the tooltips for stuff and I got pretty confused last night.  When I mouse over Agility (in Bear form) it makes no mention of how it modifies your dodge rating.  Yet I noted a change in my dodge rating when I put an agility enchant on my cloak.  So it looks like it does affect it, but I’m still unclear as to how.

Because I never really focused all that much on the Druid after he hit 70, I never did some of the ‘required’ grinds for great gear that many other Ferals can say they did.  To that end, my reputation with the Cenarion Expedition is only Honored.  So no Earthwarden for me.  I doubt eight days is going to be enough to get up to exalted.  I’ve looked at the S2 Two-Handed Mace as an alternative, but like I said, I don’t really know what is best for a feral tank now, or a kitty (for leveling) for that matter.  What I did find, however, was that in rawrkitty, I had 2k AP and was able to do some pretty sweet damage in the BGs.  I’m not sure if this is a lot for someone in all greens, but it seemed to be working.  Kitty spent a lot of time in AV at the choke point pouncing on mounted allies who were trying to ride through and giving the rest of the Hordies a chance to destroy them.  Its amazing that someone can die so fast while stunned. 

Hybridy-Happenings

We’re planning on doing two more Kara-clears as a guild, attendance permitting, the first this week and the second on Tues/Wed before Wrath.  If theres enough tanks present, I’ll likely bring the Shaman in the hopes of getting one or two drops that will make leveling in Wrath a tad easier.  If we’re short a tank, I may bring the Bear for facetanking in order to make the run happen.  I’m worried his stats are a bit low, and I doubt he’d be able to survive the new Scourge boss as MT, but we’ll see what happens.

The expansion is almost here and within a few months people will have all kinds of new content at the new endgame to go over and while Sy will most likely continue to have MQoSRSurvival and SneakyMcStabsalot, I thinks he’s also planning to get a bit more holyier-than-thou with his up’n'coming priest.  But from the fickle-perspective, things are aboot to get a whole lot more hybridy.

 

– Fikkle

May the Horde be with you.

Random Ramblings and Leveling in Outlands after 3.0.2

The last patch has changed so much about the game.  Everyone knows, of course.  In fact, things have changed so much, I’m pretty sure people who haven’t played the game have come back.  I mean, there were server queues last night.  That’s the first time I’ve seen queues in over a year, and the first time I’ve ever seen them on Cenarion Circle.  Now the queues may have just been something put in place by Blizz to make the servers more stable, but either way, its definitely a symptom of the new world (of warcraft) that we now know.

Since the patch hit, I’ve been working on many things.  I’ve done some achievements, a few dailies, leveled a pet from 65 to 70, leveled some trip-xp lowbies up to 60 and partook, partaked, partoken, in the Hollow’s End events.  But this past week, I’ve been leveling in Outlands.  Why?  Well cause I’ve only got 3 70s, and I’m a bit of a massochist.  No, the real reason is that I want to change my main for Wrath.  An expansion is the perfect time to do this.  Unlike during BC, when I decided to switch from my Mage to my Hunter, this time, I will have a fresh focus right from the start.  The problem with the last switch was that I had done some stuff on my Mage, then I started doing some stuff on my Hunter.  The lack of a coherent focus on one of those toons for a prolonged period of time means they both ended up doing the same stuff, are in fairly comparable gear, and yet neither of them has really made it all that far in the end game.  Fikkle still hasn’t finished his Spellfire set.  Grim hasn’t managed to level his leatherworking past 365.  I’ve done ZA and Mags exactly one time, and yet both have pretty much farmed Kara for badges, while wearing S2 Arena gear (bought mostly with honor).

The change from these two, as my Main and primary alt to my Shaman / Warlock isn’t going to be an easy one.  I’ve learned to play my Mage extremely proficiently, seeing as how he is the toon that has the most /played time.  If I remember correctly it took me about 8 months to go from 1-70 on him, while I did the same thing on Grim in 5 months.  My Sham/Lock combo will have achieved the same thing in under 3 months.  But the Hunter has been something I’ve read extensively on, learned the theorycrafting behind, and poured much of my recent time into.  But all the same, I want to learn more about this game, and I’ve had a lot of fun with the Shaman and the Warlock. 

I’ve dual-boxed with the Warlock from level 1 to 66 (where they are currently at), and the Shaman has been basically a follow character.  I did level one Shaman from 1-30 first, but since then, I’ve taken both characters into BGs, learned the nuances to each class and have come to really enjoy both of them.  My plan for level 80 and Wrath is to Raid with the Shaman and PvP with the Warlock.  Will that be the ‘best’ option for my time?  Maybe, maybe not, but that’s the plan. 

In the meantime, I’ve had some experiences getting 6 levels in the last week, while also finding the time for arenas, kara, headless horseman runs, lowbie leveling, hallow’s end stuff, achievements and the scourge invasion.  So what is the new leveling like?

Well its pretty easy, if I do say so myself.  First of all, having a healy class as a follow character for a warlock means only having to sit down and drink about once every half an hour if I really push the grinding.  Even then, its usually only the shaman who needs more mana to provide heals.  Granted, he’s specced enhancement and is still healing just fine, but its very rarely I run into a problem.  Due to the Warlock’s Dreadsteed quest and the Hallow’s End Candy buckets, my toons were basically at level 61 when I started questing.  I did HFP until they ding’d 62 and only did some of the quests in Thrallmar and some in Spinebreaker.  Skipped Falcon Watch altogether.  In Zangarmarsh, they ding’d 63, doing a few quests in Swamprat Post and then a few more out of Zabra’jin and they moved on to Terokkar.  Originally, I was going to have them join up with my Pally who’s been at 63 for a few weeks, but I decided to just push on the two of them.  They did some quests in Terokkar out of the Horde camp, a few in the Bone Wastes and after hitting 64, moved on to Nagrand. 

Now despite everyone’s loathing of the Nesingwary quests and Nagrand in general, it is my favorite all-around zone in the game and I usually do just about every quest I can here before moving on.  This time, I decided to stay until level 66.  I did all of the quests out of Garadar, Nesingwary Safari and the Throne of Elements up until the Latressor of the Blade chain.  Did two of those and both characters had hit 66.  I figured it’d be best to move on to Blade’s Edge as they were having no problems completing quests and the higher level quests would grant better xp.

So the reduced xp is real.  It is enough to make a difference over the long run, although you don’t really notice it until you’ve ding’d past a zone’s recommended level and you know you haven’t done as many quests as you used to need to do.  I’m not sure whether the dual-boxing has influenced the speed of completion, but I suspect it has.  If you were solo’ing, I still think it would go fairly quickly.

I think the 60-70 leveling changes are a positive all around.  Prior to 3.0.2, hitting 60 was like hitting a brick wall in terms of speed, and I often found myself dreading the grind after 60.  The changes bring the feel more in line with the changes way back in patch 2.3, and now, the transition from 20-60 xp to 60-70 xp feels much more natural, especially on the fourth and fifth time through the same content.

So hopefully, by the weekend, I’ll have two more 70′s kickin it end game style.  If so, I may be bringing my shaman to our Kara destruction run and get him a few epics to go with the 2 he picked up from the Scourge last night, and the other two he bought from the vendor today!  Woot!  Thanks again to Pie!  You rock man.  No seriously.  All that stuff Sylus said about you ain’t true.  ((This I typed before I read the comments from the last post, rofl)).

 Oh by the way, I kan haz 3 wulfz!

 

– Fikkle

May the Horde be with you.

Aspect of the Dragonhawk: A Twofer

I just found this over at BRK.  If you haven’t already seen it there, the link to the blue post is here.  Apparently Blizz doesn’t like the idea of making hunters do a ‘stance-dance’ from Aspect of the Hawk to Aspect of the Monkey when an enemy gets into melee range, so they are giving Hunters a new ability at level 75, with a second rank at level 80.  Its being called Aspect of the Dragonhawk and it is both AotH and AotM combined into one!  Think about that for a minute.  To quote Ghostcrawler:

Instead of getting new ranks of Hawk at level 75 and 80, you now get the new Aspect of the Dragonhawk. This powerful aspect combines all of the effects of Hawk and Monkey. Any talent or glyph that affects either Hawk or Monkey also affects Dragonhawk the same way. The idea is that you retire Hawk and Monkey at level 75 and go to essentially two Aspects: Dragonhawk for combat and Viper for mana regen.

I don’t even know what to say.  This is all win.  With this, I’ll likely do away with my macro that allows me to pick which aspect I use based on whether I hit shift, ctrl or alt.  Having only two aspects that you’ll really ever need in combat is just, well, win!

Personally, I’ve never bothered switching to Monkey when an enemy got into melee range because it wasted the GCD and there were other ways for me to get away.  With the change to take aspects off of the GCD (also announced in the same blue post) it would have at least made it more viable, but now, even that won’t be required.

This my friends, is awesome!  I’m totally diggin the whole ‘two in one’ idea.  Now, if only we can get Blizz to let us dual wield ranged weapons and give us two pets per hunter… Gotta love the twofers!

 

– Fikkle

May the Horde be with you.

And Fikkle Lives Up To His Name…

So posting has been a bit slow over the last couple days as I’ve been in game speccing all of my alts, which sucks having to build that many talent specs from the ground up.  So far, the only ones I haven’t screwed up are my Hunter spec and my lowbie (level 16s) specs.  I haven’t done Fikkle’s yet as he’s barely even been logged in.  I didn’t do hardly any research on Mages on the PTR, so I had no clue about the changes to their talents and abilities and spells and such.  So I took the time to go and read up on them at Critical QQ.

By the way, if you want to get some Magey goodness, and laugh your butt off in the process, that’s the place to go.  A quick little sample, if you will:

“We PvP’ers have a word for casting 3 second long spells, and that word is ‘suicide’.” – Euripides

Pretty much anything he posts makes me laugh a great deal.  As a bit of a confession, I’ve been back on the mage in the past few weeks.  I decided it was time to get Fikkle decked out in some armor that actually looked good, and it just so happens that I absolutely love the way the Merciless set looks on him.  He’s a BElf, he needs his damn accessories.

Anyways, I pvp’d the crap out of him last week, picking him up the S2 Chest and Helm.  He still needs the shoulders and legs, but I’m likely only gonna bother with the shoulders before Wrath hits since you can’t
‘see’ the pants.  I’m not sure whether I’m going to be interested in leveling him to 80 anytime soon after the patch hits, so he may stay at 70 for quite a while.  Even if I do, he’ll likely not be more than a teleporter, disenchanter and a vending machine.  Such is his role in life.  Anyways, I’ll get a screenshot up in the next week or two after he gets his new shoulders.  Not that any of you haven’t seen the Merciless set on a BElf Mage or anything, but just for fun.

As far as leveling in WOTLKEE, I wrote a few days back about how we’re planning to do the 5HPoA.  Pie will be the Hunter-Tank, Nim will be the MM, Aba is considering being the Survivalist and Vrug and myself will likely be the BM dps’ers.  Since I’d like to keep my hunter with that group, I’m going to need another toon to get to 80 when we’re not all on together, and seeing as I’m taking two weeks off after the expansion hits, I’ll have plenty of time to level.  To that end, I’ve thought a lot about what my choices are.  I could go with Fikkle, and thus, my first 60 and 70 toon would also be my first 80 toon, but to be honest, I’m not really all that interested in playing the Mage class anymore, despite the fact that I still read up on it on occasion.  As for the Druid, well I’m sorry to all the shifty flora and fauna out there, but I’m not really feelin the Druid anymore.  Will I ever level him to 80? Probably.  Will it happen anytime soon?  Nope.  So those are my 3 70′s (counting the hunter, obviously), so what’s left?

Well I have some other toons in their 60′s that I’ve been really enjoying lately, and with the recent changes to leveling from 60-70 I should be able to get them to 70 before Wrath hits.  First, there is my lock, who leveled Demo and now has the demon form (because I’m fickle and it looks cool… huh, c wut I did thar?).  As far as level 80 aspiriations for the lock, I don’t care to do any raiding, but I do want to do pvp with the lock.  Since my lock is fairly new, I don’t have honor or marks saved up and I’ll need to get to 80 quick to keep up with the Joneseses, or something like that.

Second, there is (one) of my Shammies.  Currently, I’m planning to level my Enh Shammy first.  Likely though, with the talent reset, I’m going to spec him resto, make him my lock’s follow toon and dual-box them to 70. When he hits 70, however, he’ll be going Enhance again.  While I haven’t had a ton of experience playing the shaman, and to be fairly honest, I could use a lot, this would be a good way to get it.  My Shammies were both leveled to 60 without doing much.  (One was a follow toon for the lock, the other was granted levels from 30-60).  So I need to learn how to play the enhance shammy.  Luckily for me, the changes that came along with patch 3.0.2 have made the class somewhat different, and so I won’t have to unlearn anything really to learn the new stuff.  That being said, when he hits 70, I’ll likely walk myself into the nearest BG and spend as many hours as I can (stand) getting my helm handed to me to find out how to play one.

I also have a pally and a priest around level 60, but neither are all that enticing to me to want to play them.  So the toss up for me is not going to be which toon to get to 80, but in what order will I get all of my toons to 80.  I’m currently leaning heavily toward my shammy, but depending on how fun the lock is to play between 70 and 80 with the new demonform, I may change my mind.  Well, wish me luck getting numbers 4 and 5 to 70.  Oh, and if you have an opinion about which I should choose (lock or shammy) and why, please feel free to convince me to play one!  There could be a reward…

 

– Fikkle

May the Horde be with you!

FIVE HUNTER GROUP OF AWESOME EXTREME MQoSRDPS, UTILITY, AND ALL AROUND DEVASTATION

So a few weeks back, PIE mentioned that he came up with a great idea for the ultimate power team.  Pie has pretty much been sucked into the black void that is our usual group of friends, now fairly firmly ensconced on Cenarion Circle, and so, we are planning to level in WOTLKEE as a group.  A FIVE HUNTER GROUP OF AWESOME EXTREME MQoSRDPS, UTILITY, AND ALL AROUND DEVASTATION.

We’ve talked a bit about it further.  So I’m just gonna give a bit of a rundown here. 

PIE (Gorilla/Bear/Rhino) He’s gonna be our tank with the Tier 5 bonus!
GRIM (Wolf) AP buff and dps
ABA (Wasp) Armor debuff and dps
NIM (Moth) Dps. Nim’s also planning to go MM for TSA
VRU (Ravager) Stun and dps.

So none of that is set in stone or anything, but I’m pretty sure that 3 Ferocious Inspirations, a True Shot Aura, Armor debuffs, AP buffs and a built-for-any-situation tenacity pet is going to bring the pain Hunter style!  I don’t think we’ll be able to do 5 mans without a true healer, but for general questing in Northrend, nothing is going to stand a chance!  The choice of pets isn’t set in stone or anything, but we’ve been keeping up with the BRK podcast trying to find out which pets have some of the better abilities and how we might make the group synergy that much better.  If you have any suggestions, let us know!

We may do some re-jigging as well if a couple others in our group, Khaza and Spiffie, both ding 70 on their hunters before WOTLKEE hits, but for the moment, the 5 Hunter Group of Awesome Bonanza-Ganza is something that’s got me extremely excited for the expansion. 

As a hunter enthusiast, this idea sounds like so much fun, I can’t wait to get out there and get to huntering!

 One last thing.  Vrugore, one of my RL friends, is the first character that he’s gotten to 70.  He’s my friend that I recruited through the recruit a friend promotion, and he ding’d 70 for the first time a few days ago.  So a great big grats to Vru from tha INTERTUBZ!  Also, Spiffie, an RL friend of Sylus has recently hit 60 on his hunter, and has ventured into Outlands for the first time.  So a Grats to him, and keep on leveling, you’re getting close!

– Fikkle

May the Horde be with you!