I know the one you mean. I think it was called “GG (or Good Game) Comics.” I’ll poke around and see if I can find it, but that might get you started.
Here you go: it’s kind of small, but it’s the best I could find:
http://www.blogcdn.com/wow.joystiq.com/media/2008/06/gear_comic_ndm.jpg
Thanks! I wonder how I came across it. It’s interesting to see how my memory fails, haha.
Okay, can somebody explain to me how to get started with the Barrens stuff? I can’t find a single questgiver in SW or Orgrimmar or anywhere telling me to go there, I go the Barrens and can’t find anybody giving relevant quests, I don’t see any of these alerts I’ve heard about, nor do I see any markers on my map which I’ve also heard about. Nothing at all. I noticed a couple new icons on my map labeled “Kor’kron Commander”, both of whom turned out to be hostile (even to my tauren) level 92 elite orcs.
Do I have to do the scenario Lorewalker Cho sends me to first?
You have to do two scenarios for Cho (one Horde perspective the other Alliance perspective), when they are completed the Barrens stuff opens up for you.
“Opens up to you” means “get the followup quest from Cho, fly to Durotar, pilot robot kitty, and fly to Razor Hill, all without aggroing assorted Kor’kron NPC jerks”. If you’re Alliance.
But yeah. You have to complete both “Blood in the Snow” (Alliance POV; fight trolls on Shimmer Ridge) and “Dark Heart of Pandaria” (Horde POV; fight elementals and the remnants of the Old God Y’Sharrj) in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms.
Thanks 
After you’ve jumped through those hoops, you can get the weekly barrens quests from an NPC on the terrace of the Alliance “city” in Pandaria, and get teleported to Ratchet. From there you just fly up to the tower to get the weekly grind-fest. I did the quest for about three weeks on my tankadin, and it wasn’t too bad because I can pull bunches of mobs at a time. Don’t think I’m going to mess with it on my mage or my druid.
Speaking of the mage, I’m back to doing raid finder on him, just for the newest raids. Killed Animus today, so I think the last stage is next. Got a robe drop from the second boss in the third stage…nice, but if I use it, I lose my 4-piece bonus from the previous tier, and I don’t think it’s worth it at this point.
Either raid finder groups are much better than the last tier, or the raids themselves are easier…maybe both. I think I’ve only seen two wipes so far, most bosses are one shot kills. Could be that the raids have been out long enough that most of the players are overgeared for the content, I guess…
Of course, the question is whether my iLvl 460 tauren paladin can survive the scenarios. I’m not too worried about my Alliance toons - they’re all over 480.
On another note, my nelf priest soloed normal Grim Batol last night, just cuz I wanted to see the place (I didn’t do any dungeons during Cata). She just happened to be in the area, and I looked and said, “Oh, there’s the Grim Batol entrance.” I’ve previously tried soloing the dungeon in Deepholm (can’t recall the name) on my 90 rogue, but couldn’t get through the room before the second boss.
You can queue for heroic scenarios at ilvl480, so you should be fine for the regular scenarios at 460. They aren’t that tough. Think I did them on my tankadin in a mish-mash of pvp and pve gear.
And almost always, they have survival or environmental healing mechanisms. For Blood in the Snow, there are healing chests or something like that (a la Warsong Gulch) near each mob area that heals the entire group pretty big. And Dark Heart of Pandaria has healing globes in the corners of the fight area. Since the fight itself has a potential kite mechanism, it’s not hard to hit the healing orbs in the processes. My seriously underleveled mage died on that latter one just by paying too much attention on DPSing adds and getting all their hate; it would have been easy otherwise.
Anybody know yet what the required ilevel will be to get into the new “Let’s Kill Garrosh!” raid on LFR? I need to know whether I need to get some more gear before the patch hits (my monk is currently ilevel 501). There’s no way I’m gonna miss out on killing Zippy the Pinhead!
Couple of things I discovered while grinding for oil, lumber, stone and meat in Durotaur.
First, it turns out those gear tokens that the mobs occasionally drop are not Soulbound, much to my surprise. I was able to pass a couple of them off to the friend I was grinding with, since he needed the gear and I didn’t.
Secondly, the gear that you get from combining the Mojo and a gear token is actually specific to whatever spec you’re currently in. I’d pretty much geared up my Frost Death Knight with all the gear he needed, and wasn’t sure what to do with the latest Mojo that I’d earned (while grinding with my friend, as noted above). Then just because I wondered if that was how it worked, I switched to my Blood spec (the Tanking spec for Death Knights) and combined the Mojo and a chest armor token. Sure enough, the chest armor that it created was tanking armor
Also, got a little annoyed yesterday. I’d helped escort an Alliance caravan to its destination, but apparently I was j-u-s-t far enough away from the caravan (I’d stopped to loot the outrider we’d just killed) when the escort finished that I didn’t get the crate of surplus goods. Grrrr…
This is something I’ve only started noticing in MoP: proximity requirements for objective completion. I’ve run into what you described while escorting those grummle caravans up the Burlap Trail. I’ll be almost to the end, and inadvertently aggro one of the full-strength (i.e., not the weaker “henchmen”) hozen and get tied up in combat. The grummles keep going and end up at their goal, but since I’m stuck in combat too far away, I don’t get credit and have to start all over again.
Similarly, there’s that GL daily at Mistfall Village where you have to free some mind-controlled GL Guards by killing the mogu controlling them. I was just doing that one on my spriest, and almost had a mogu down when he hit me with his knockback. As I landed many yards away, my DoT’s finished him off. But because I was apparently too far away when he died, the game didn’t register that I’d “freed” the guard, and I ended up having to kill the guard too because he wouldn’t go friendly. I end up feeling bad for killing the pandaren, and I get no quest credit.
I’ve also had trouble (and I seriously think this is a bug, and have reported it as such) doing the similar quest at Whitepetal Lake on my hunter. I’ll be attacking at range like normal, and another player attacks and helps kill my target, or even just happens to run past my target as it dies, and it doesn’t register that I’ve freed the captive. Basically, the other player being in closer proximity to my target screws something up.
My Paladin has been sitting at lvl 600 blacksmithing for a while. My bags are stuffed with ghost iron, but I don’t know anything worthwhile to make. I’ve got a full set of lvl 458 Crafted Dreadful Gladiator’s whatever. But no plans that can make anything better.
Is the best bet to head out to the Dread Wastes and grind rep for the Klaaxi and make friends with the Ambersmith guy? The progression until now has been pretty clear–mine, learn plans from trainers and the occasional drop or AH purchase, make new gear if it’s better than your current gear, crank out more gear to level up, repeat.
But now that I’m at max level I’m not sure what I should be doing. I hit level 90 and upgraded to my current level 90 required gear, but I haven’t been able to get anything better ever.
I’m also finding that now that I’m level 90 the level 90 mobs in Pandaria are a much bigger pain in the ass than mobs equivalent to my level were back when I was lower level. I’d drop things pretty quickly, now I have to pound and pound and pound on them. I’m hardly ever in any particular danger although I find I have to pay much more attention to healing. I used to just chop through everything and barely glace at my health bar. Is it the case that Pandaria mobs are just much tougher relative to their level?
Well, it doesn’t help that most of the mogu you run into have 590k hit points, and the basic level 90 mobs have 393k
There’s an elite quest mob you can kill in Isle of Thunder that drops a key to the Thunder Forge. You go in there, and click on a book to learn more recipes, including one for lightning steel. It’s a 24 hour cool down, but when you make it you learn a new recipe…mostly crappy pvp stuff, but once in a while you’ll get plans for decent pve gear. The bad news is the mats are expensive…spirits and living steel.
BWAH-HA-HA-HA!
I finally got to defend Stormwind against an incursion by the Horde. Well, one Horde player. Now, I’m usually “live-and-let-live” when it comes to these holiday events that require entering the opposite faction’s capital cities. Let them get their achievement, and maybe they’ll let me get mine. But I made an exception in this case.
My rogue, Theloise, had taken a portal to Stormwind right after completing some PvP dailies, so she was flagged. She took care of a couple errands, then sat, hovering on her flying mount, while I tried to decide what I wanted to do next. She had maybe 30 seconds left before her PvP flag expired, when out of nowhere she got Moonfired (or maybe Starfired?). Three times. I totally was not expecting that while safely inside Stormwind. I couldn’t see where this druid was, so I quickly landed and Vanished, staying invisible until the minimal damage I’d taken healed up.
Then I went hunting. Attack me without provocation inside my own capital? Now you pay! Alas, I could not locate this laser chicken. Then I saw it: “The Canals are under attack!” Guessing that this druid would be somewhere near the SW bonfire, I looked in the canal near the SW fishing trainer, and there he/she was, fighting a couple guards, and doing well. One guard died, and the second was almost dead, while the druid was still at nearly full health.
I Shadowstepped behind the druid! Ambush! Hemorrhage! Slice & Dice! Rupture! Hemorrhage! Eviscerate! One dead druid!
It was satisfying.
That’s why I leave the corpses where they lie if I can’t loot them within shouting distance of the caravan wagon. They won’t despawn right away; you can get them after “winning”. Just backtrack.
What I’d like to know, is why are all of these fast-moving hard-hitting Kor’kron Outrider types–the epitome of Horde light cavalry–carrying large stacks of raw lumber? That’s all I ever seem to loot off of them. (Of course, light cavalry carrying large stone blocks or barrels of oil would be equally silly.)
And, having tried caravan escorts on my frost-spec DK… bites. Having chosen Asphixiate rather than Chillblains as my tier 3 talent didn’t help. I fixed that, so next time I Howling Blast those fast-moving riders I’ll slow them and be able to keep up to melee-pwn them. Otherwise, it’s “try to cut their corners and whack them in passing.” Very frustrating.
(Yeah, I could “chains of ice” the mount. Frankly, I’d prefer to focus down the rider, since it’s the one doing the damage to the caravan. Hitting them both with a single cone AoE and getting the slowing effect on the mount while damaging the real target is the best answer. And I’m also a terribad DK, since target switching between two targets in a single fast-moving stack is almost completely beyond my ability.)
Do you actually need to attack both the rider and the mount? There are worg-mounted orcs in Krasarang Wilds (in the 5.1 stuff); the ones closer to the Alliance base stay mounted while they attack, but the mount goes down when the orc goes down, while the ones in the Horde base dismount to attack, but if you kill the orc the worg despawns.