But several of those bosses are optional… mind you, for some reason, I tend to get either people who see it, go “yuck!” and drop or people who say “ooooh, can we do [insert optional boss here]?” There are some very, very nice items on those.
One of my guildies mentioned that “it’s one of the hardest instances in normal, but probably the easiest one in heroic” - the only place where I’ve had anything resembling serious problems in heroic is with the boss at the vault of lights (people tend to either not move from the purple floor or move too far, so the floor becomes black’n’blue real fast). Maybe those people don’t realize it really isn’t that hard.
I think the only place where people are more likely to find they have urgent stuff to do elsewhere is Stonecore. In both cases, I’m starting to suspect it’s a sort of self-selection: it may take a while to get a group going, but generally once we get set it’s good. We may end up discussing the detailing on the floor once or twice, but the people who are likely to yell at the healer “WTFRU DOING?!” after they ate their hp’s worth of magma puddles have already opted out, so it’s ok.
You’re most welcome, martu: I suck at the numbercrunching parts and find some EJ threads almost as confusing as taxation law, but group dynamics I can do.
I’ve never had problems with Throne of Tides, my bane is Grim Batol. But I’ve done very instancing in the last week while I’ve been powerleveling my herbalism/alchemy. I hit 525/515 last night so I’m in the home stretch.
As for warlocks, I had one who I leveled to about 58. She was fun, but suffered the same fate as the rogue I ignored after 78: I realized I just don’t enjoy DPS as much as healing.
Hi, Quasi; I’m a warlock! My only 85 is a Warlock.
Levelling as a warlock is kind of interesting. It was hard for me because I kind of loved my imp, and so always had him out. I also didn’t use the RDF until about level 64 or so, so I was solo-questing. Soloing with an imp is really, really dumb, incidentally. And very slow.
Overall, though. . .well, I don’t think 'locks are in particularly high demand. Most people seem to see us as Mages who can’t conjure food or give Arcane Brilliance, or as Shadow priests who can’t heal. And, since we’re purely a DPS class, we’re constantly competing against umpteen hunters/mages/rogues/DPS specs from other classes.
We’re clothies, so we squish easily (unless we use the Voidwalker or Felguard). And the pets we get require some finesse to learn. Dying happens kind of a lot when you’re soloing. Especially when you’re new to WoW, and especially when WoW is your first videogame or MMO ever.
There’s a lot that’s fun with them, too. I love seeing the big Destro numbers. I love my imp. I love the balance of DoT vs. direct damage. I like setting things on fire. When I PvP, I like hitting Howl of Terror (or, as I call it, the “go the fuck away” button). And I know that a lot of people love being able to DoT and watch (I never did; I found it really boring). But, as I understand it, most people just sort of view them as half-ass mages, so they’re not that common. So it goes.
Personally, I picked the class because it had the prettiest dress, anyway.
Picked up Cataclysmically Epic this week, which was a nice surprise. I’m not quite fully epic’d for either Prot or Fury yet, but it’s getting damned close and there’s a lot of overlap. I think I have maybe two slots still to upgrade for Prot. I’m also getting close enough to my Heroic Dungeon meta drake that I think I might want to schedule a few guild runs this weekend to clear out the ones I still need (9 left, and some of them are even easy).
Having *loads *of fun with my Worgen Druid, whom I’m leveling as Feral DPS. (Picked that spec so she could share Heirlooms with my Goblin Rogue). Three XP-boosting pieces of equipment (chest, shoulders, back) plus two gathering professions means she’s just blasting through the levels, too. I gave her a tanking offspec when she hit 30 and ran a couple of dungeons that way–it’s a bit weird to get used to, versus tanking on an 85 Warrior, but still a lot of fun. And the instaqueues are a definite bonus.
Still 9/12. I think our comp is really hurting us on Cho’gall, which is the first endboss we’ve been focusing on: it really blows to not have a Hunter. On the plus side, the nine fights we’ve got down I’d say are all fairly classified as “on farm.” Even Ascendant Council was a one-shot last night (with a PUG, no less, since a healer no-showed).
You’ll want to use your hearth to get back from Moonglade, since it’s in northern Kalimdor. Usually, if I need to train, what I do is wait until I’m ready to hearth back anyway. Then, instead of hearthing, I port to Moonglade, train up, *then *hearth.
Yup, you can change either. I actually just popped my Worgen into a barbershop, and I thiiiiiink you might be able to see how the changes affect both forms. I seem to recall checking out different ear/earring combinations, anyway. Worst-case scenario, you could go into the character creation screen, start making a new character, and pick out the hair combination you like best. Then you could cancel out of the character creation, take Clawdie into a barbershop, and give her the right hair.
Yup, the character list will always show Worgen in their Worgen form. You’ll also be forced into Worgen form in-game anytime you enter combat. (Assuming that you’re not shapeshifted into a Druid form already, of course.)
Any pets or mounts you buy from the Blizzard store will be granted to all of your characters, on all servers and both factions. (It’s to the point now where I get something like 10 mails on any new character. Eesh.)
Various milestones for numbers of pets will give you achievements, and two of them (50 and 75, IIRC) will give you a bonus pet as a reward (a skunk and a fawn, respectively).
IIRC, those show up in a couple of cities during Love Is in the Air. I know I saw them in UC last year. AFAIK they’re only there for the holiday, though.
Combo points are used by all Rogues, and by Feral DPS (Cat) Druids. If you look at your abilities, some of them have a note that they award one or more combo points. Other abilities will have different effects depending on how many combo points you have on your target (these will appear as a list), and are known as “finishing moves.” The more combo points your target has, the better the effect of your finishing move: it will do more damage, or the buff or debuff it gives will last longer.
As you attack, each combo point will fill in a red dot or light on the side of the portrait of your target. The number of lights = the number of combo points you have. Using a finishing move consumes all existing combo points on the target, resetting it to zero. You cannot use a finishing move on a target that has zero combo points (either because you haven’t hit it yet, or because you just used up the existing points with a finishing move). That’s what your error message is: you’re trying to use a finishing move on a target with no combo points.
Each target has its own combo point total, so if you swap targets, you’ll have to start over again. However, the points stay on a target until it’s dead, so if you come back to the first target, your points will still be there to use.
Bwahahaha.
Like someone else said, it means you’re still in combat. Look up at your portrait, and you’ll see that the little crossed-swords icon is still active (where your level would be). Sometimes you’re really in combat with something, so the first thing I always do is look around. There may be a caster attacking you from range, or there could be a critter that you accidentally attracted. Rarely, something will be attacking you that’s bugged, where it’s located under the ground where you can’t see it or hit it. So the next step I take is usually to run away a bit. If none of that works, sometimes attacking and killing something else will break me out of combat after that thing dies. If you’re *still *stuck, though, the only option is to log out and back in. But that almost never happens.
There is no DR on Block (i.e., Mastery). As a Prot Warrior, your stat priority should be:
Stam > Mastery > Parry > Dodge
That’s assuming that you have Hold the Line; otherwise Parry and Dodge are equal. As a general rule of thumb, I’d advise reforging as much Dodge as possible to Mastery and leaving Parry alone; however, it may be worth your while to switch that up if you end up with a lot of Parry-heavy gear to the point where your Parry chance is more than twice your Dodge. (I actually had that happen to me and needed to tweak my reforging around some.)
Also, Stamina isn’t quite as far-and-away better as it was in Wrath. It’s probably worth your while to gem for good socket bonuses rather than gemming all Solids.
It’s called a “chain proc” because of the theory of how it happens. The most commonly accepted idea is that *each *item you create has an X% chance to spawn an extra one, including the extra ones. Let’s say you’re making a potion and there’s a 15% chance of each potion spawning an extra. That would mean that from the mats for one potion, your chances of making…
First potion: 100%
2nd potion: 100% x 15% = 15%
3rd potion: 100% x 15% x 15% = 2.25%
4th potion: 100% x 15% x 15% x 15% = 0.3375%
5th potion: 100% x 15% x 15% x 15% x 15% = 0.050625%
So you’ll get at least one extra potion about 17.6% of the time.
You’re seeing a very skewed representation. I don’t think they ever dropped the spawn rate after TBC. The eggs are very, very farmable now; they’re how I went most of the way to Exalted with Netherwing when I finally got around to doing the faction in Wrath. Hunting for eggs (especially in the mine) at 80 or 85, against a handful of other players, is nothing like hunting them at 70 (where you’re aggroing more mobs and taking longer to kill them) when you were up against dozens of other players.
Which isn’t to say I don’t appreciate the spawn rate: just that’s it’s currently obscenely easier than it was originally designed to be.
I think someone gave a slash command, and there *is *a UI control for it. I just can’t remember where it is offhand. Did you check the guild controls?
I used to love my Warlock alt–I just haven’t had time to play her for… ugh, probably a year or more. For me, it’s hard to keep up with the alts I’ve left behind on other servers.
Warlocks are also very viable for endgame raiding. They bring some very useful buffs, a battle rez (Soulstone), a small self-heal for everyone in the raid (Healthstones), solid DPS, and a movement mechanic (teleport) that can make certain fight mechanics downright trivial (e.g., the Valks on Lich King, especially on Heroic).
Oh, I know that. But like I said, I like it more this way. It doesn’t have the same feeling of futility that similar achievements do. I think the game needs to find a balance between too easy and ‘you may see one of these in 2 weeks of trying (unless you camp 24/7)’.
A cute little thing with the skunk…if you have the skunk, and you see another player with the Bombay cat (possibly the other black cat…is there another black cat?), you can summon the skunk and it’ll chase the cat around with (I think) little Love Is In The Air hearts floating around over them, like the Pepe LePew cartoons. It works in reverse, too (if you have the cat and you see the skunk summoned, you can summon the cat and the skunk will chase it around).
That’s just the thing: items like the Netherwing eggs or the Hodir ice chips aren’t intended to be a primary means of leveling. Netherwing was intended to be a long, slow grind, with the eggs as rare bonuses to boost you forward. That we’re able to farm the shit out of them now is simply fortunate for us.
It works with the Black Tabby (that’s how we found out about it).
Anyhoo … one nice thing about Northrend being a mostly-abandoned wasteland these days:
My level 79 nelf hunter hopped the taxi in Dalaran to fly to Sholazar to do the Ghostfish fishing daily, and no sooner had he departed Krasus’ Landing when NPCScan went off to let me know that Putridus the Ancient had just spawned over there in Icecrown. This is what usually happens; the rare spawns only appear while I’m stuck on a taxi.
However, I considered the shortage of players in the area, and as soon as I landed in Sholazar I hopped on my 150% speed Ebon Gryphon (I’m still a bit short of being able to purchase fast flying - you don’t make gold very fast as a skinner/leatherworker leveling in the previous expansions) and made a beeline back toward Icecrown. Lo and behold, there he was. He’d made it all the way to the end of his big U-shaped path (at Corp’rethar) and had turned around and headed back the way he came. It took forever but I managed to catch up to him. Of course, this was the area where all those Scourge Converters and Converted Heroes roam around, so I had to find a place where I could set down and hopefully not aggro any other mobs.
I sent my cat after him and opened fire once my cat had engaged, and managed to get him down below 20% (“<Kill Shot>” floated across my screen), when I got jumped by a squad of Converted Heroes and down I went.
Did my corpse run as fast as I could, rezzed, tried to cast Revive Pet and was informed that my pet wasn’t dead, so I took the opportunity to summon my turtle in place of my cat (he’d survive better and I’d spend less time healing him and more time shooting). Jumped on my gryphon without stopping to heal myself, flew as fast as I could (cursing my 150% speed all the way), and finally caught up with Putridus again. Unfortunately, he was in the middle of The Bombardment by this time and there was no way in hell I was going to try to land down there — my paladin tried that once and lasted about 15 seconds. So I kept flying past him until I had a good lead on him. Then I found a place on a rock to stop and quickly eat my buff food, then flew further on. I spotted a relatively safe and empty space right smack next to the Mord’rethar gate, which is almost back to Putridus’ spawn point (I assume he would despawn if I let him get all the way back). As soon as he came in range I sent my turtle in, and this time the two of us were able to get him down. I did have one roving zombie jump me during the fight, but a quick Freezing Trap took care of him. Fun!
Anyhow, hunter dude hit level 80 a little while later while doing the starting Oracle quests in Sholazar, so I zipped him back to SW and turned off his XP because I want to finish the things I want to finish in Northrend before heading off to do Cata stuff on this toon.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. After asking the question, I looked at my gear while actually being awake and realized the block I have is almost “plain”… the gear itself is all dodge and parry, even the shield.
We did TB (that was easy!) and finally got Meemaw (yeah, I know that’s not the slug’s official name) last night. And we got…
healer plate.
With the only platey being a warrior, and the healers being cloth or leather.
And a mace.
Which people promptly proposed us two hunters should duel for
Re pets, someone had a turkey out, someone else made a fire to cook something - and the turkey commited self-roasticide! :eek:
And re. warlocks and since we were talking CC, a warlock is one of those classes which have CC but most people don’t remember about it: they have both a banish (works on elementals as well as demons) and their fear, which can be glyphed so the mob stays in place instead of running around. The banish affects mobs which are immune to other CCs, which is nice (can’t polymorph either demons or elementals).
Got a decent PUG yesterday. I was the 5th man filling out a 4 man guild run. Got heroic deadmines. We had some trouble on Foe reaper and the Admiral at the end, but I got the mace upgrade from foe reaper, so it’s all good. It’s nice to have a wipe where people actually talk about what went wrong and what to try rather than just bitching at someone.
I forgot I used to frequent these forums… sigh. What’s going on with Cho’gall? A hunter isn’t necessary for the fight that I know of, but good ranged DPS makes add handling a lot easier (and hunters happen to be solid ranged DPS). Feel free to bounce thoughts off me; I will do what I can to help.
Got my Blacksmithing up to 200 sigh - so far to go. The trainer in SW started going on about armor vs weapons and named 2 different trainers to go see. I opted for armor and went off to Ironforge to speak to the indicated guy. However he seems to just offer the same recipes as the trainer in SW. Am i missing something?
No, they took out specializations quite a while ago, but in Vanilla (and perhaps TBC?) there were specific recipes you could only get as an Armorsmith/Weaponsmith. Now, you can have every recipe, regardless of specialization (I believe).
Yep no specialisations required now though I’m not sure if the recipes are in game any more, wowhead does not give a source for the Bulwark of Kings for example. I wish I could get a refund for all those Mithril bars I bought of the AH a year or so ago to get Armorsmith.
I did Vortex Pinnacle for the first time last night (on normal) and I have a question regarding Atairius, here are two of his abilities cribbed from SFG’s guide post:
Upwind of Altarius - Standing upwind increases attacking and casting speeds by 75%, movement by 30%
Downwind of Altarius - Standing downwind decreases attack and cast speeds by 75%, movement by 30%
I was grouped with a druid who had run it before and suggested that the Tank stay downwind so that the dps can easily be upwind. We tried it and we killed him but I lost threat pretty quickly and had a messy fight of taunting and casting Hands so I can’t think this is a good idea on heroic, what is the normal practice here? Most guides suggest everyone upwind for the buff which I’d rather obviously.
I’ve always had it where everyone stays upwind. It is possible to be upwind and not have everyone stack in the same direction. The drake will randomly select a target to breathe on, and it is possible to spread out a bit so that not everyone takes damage from every breath. If your group fails to do that, it can make it rough on the healer (depends on their gear, obviously). If you’re tanking, you can find the line between upwind/downwind and try to have the group orthogonal to your position so that you’re at least not eating every breath and the regular damage he does. Otherwise, yeah, you won’t hold threat against well-geared DPS with that haste buff.
There’s one exception to the “stay upwind”; hunters have a bitch of a time trying to stay at range in that fight, so in general it works better if we forget about the wind, grab a corner at the stairs and move very little (just enough to avoid any tornados which insist in probing that spot). Otherwise all we manage to do is end up being meleetards, which won’t do.
Very well done. Pretty much textbook, including the “don’t do this” parts (like “misjudge your amount of fighting room”) and “absolutely do this” (“have a tanking pet and use it”). And downing Putridus at 79 is a feather in the cap, since he’s an 80 elite so you have even that slight disadvantage. And freeze trapping the add… you’d be surprised how many hunters will panic and lose at that point, rather than remembering their CCs. (That’s the shame of WotLK for hunters: CC lost importance the way the encounters were set up, and hunters either lost currency in the skill or never bothered to learn it.)
Again, congratulations.
Well, that’s one way to do it. I let my 80s keep leveling in Northrend. It isn’t really a crime to do Cataclysm as an overlevel. In some ways, it makes it easier. (Certainly, unless your 80 was ICC geared, the first encounters in either Hyjal or Vash’jir are HARD, because those Cataclysm 80 mobs have much more health and hit a bit harder then their Northrend equivalents. It makes you really want the green quest rewards, just to increase your survivability.)
That and if you’re an uncapped level 80, exp gain in Northrend (from dungeons, mobs, quests, etc) is reduced by something like 90% anyways, so it’s unlikely you’ll even hit 81 finishing off Northrend unless you’re farming all the tournament dailies for several months.
I finally got around to taking my non-raid-geared 80s into Hyjal and Vash last week. Lots of challenging fights, dying, and fleeing. After about 4-5 quest upgrades it became faceroll again.
I also rolled a human hunter to finally check out the changes Alliance side. Level 14 now in Westfall. The David Caruso parody is a bit overdone, but still amusing. I had to turn off all global chat and yells within 5 minutes of entering the world, though – something I’m proud to say I’ve never had to do Horde side. Seriously, screw the Alliance!
No, not the guild roster UI. The guild controls you can only access as GM. There’s some weird spot that has the thing for it. I’ll try to remember to take a look when I get home.
That one always makes me feel guilty.
Holy shit, welcome back, stranger!
Our original Cho’gall strat was two tanks, three healers, five DPS, with the tanks swapping every Fury. All adds were dropped in the spawning location to the left of the throne as you face it. Cho’gall was moved between the middle of the room and close to the spawning location in order to keep DPS time up and make it easier to break people out of Worship. We were getting to ph2, but with a fifth add, and people’s corruption stacks were too high because of the oozes.
We then swapped to a one-tank strategy, which went through a few iterations. What we’ve done most recently is to have the tank deal with Cho’gall and the adds, while I take every stack of Fury. (Previous version had me and the DK alternating Fury, but communication was terrible and a lot got missed.)
Our main problem seems to be DPS. Either it’s taking us too long to get Cho’gall to ph2, or the adds are hitting people too much and they’re getting too much Corruption.
We’re doing all of this with… let’s see.
Tanks: Prot Warrior x 2 (I go Fury for 1 tank strat)
Healers: Paladin, Druid, Shaman
DPS: DK, Rogue (Fukrah!), Mage, Boomkin, Warlock
If you can finagle it, get everybody upwind. Personally, I tend to go the lazy route, which means DPS in the middle of the room while I drag him around the outside, with me downwind and them upwind. (Like for spark stacking on Malygos, if you were around for that.) But I can just Vigilance the highest DPS and taunt back off them every time they pull, so that might not be as viable for someone who isn’t a Prot Warr or didn’t take that talent.
