… for all my toons on Aleks. Each one gets 25 gold from Wolkie, who has started back farming leather, spiderweb silk, and that other blue thing I can’t remember. He’s also getting some high-priced drops, so everyone’s (10) got plenty of money till they can become a little more self-sufficient.
We also aren’t buying as much gear as we were.
I know: let 'em earn their own money, but that’s just the kinda guy we are.
And to be fair, some do make a little when they auction…
Q
Good.
Shrug, sending money or items from a character to another is an integral part of the game. Some of my chars make money, some spend money, some craft, some get mats for the crafters. It’s all good.
Yesterday before I hit the archeology circuit I thought I’d get my daily heroic done first, and got put into Deadmines. I haven’t done DM from start to end yet, or on heroic. In this case I was pulled into a group who was struggling with the Foe Reaper 5000. That’s two bad because it’s the boss right before him who has the bracers I want. Anyway, three quick wipes (less than two minutes each fight) and I drop group. I suspect it was a fail tank (not avoiding the AoE) but also, since we were fighting on the ramp, I was having a hell of a time keeping everyone in LOS for heals. I don’t think I want to do DM again until I can go with some guildies or a least a very good pug.
The boss basically has two abilities, a whirlwind (that is trivial for the tank, but lethal for everyone else)… and “Harvest”, this will insta-gib anyone inculding the tank so need to get away from him when he does this. The person controlling the prototype needs to keep the adds away from the rest of the group, they put out too much AOE to heal through.
Yikes, I shouldn’t post before I completely wake up. It was TOO bad, not “two” bad.
So i officially changed my off-spec to feral dps (instead of resto) since that’s what my guild seems to need me to do more of anyway.
Theres been a lot of QQ from the feral dps community, but i enjoy it. My guild didn’t have a chance to do BWD this week so 6/7 of us pulled together a pug on sunday afternoon. Since Magmaw is a one tank fight i got to try out my new dps spec (though with resto glyphs because i forgot to get some dust of disappearance…DOH!). I was able to pull about 17K and was #2 on damage done. I know that’s inflated because of increased damage when the head is spiked… but i was happy, and had fun :).
The pug went on to get omitron defense council and maloriak (sp?) which was great since our guild hasn’t even gotten Magmaw (in a full guild run). Though the run was promising since the tanks and healers were all from the guild. At the end of the day it was just one of those days that helped me remember that WoW is just a fun game, which i sometimes seem to forget. Oh… and Clawdio now truly living up to his name since his specs are feral/feral lol
Bear is for tank, cat iz 4 fite!!!
Remember that Outlands and Wrath have both been significantly nerfed (Outland I think multiple times); back before Wrath came out, I took a level 59 guy into Outlands wearing quest mostly-greens and it was very tough. I died repeatedly to those level 58-ish orcs you do your first quests against, and so on.
Going from Outlands to Northrend was significantly easier.
Finally got off my ass and maxed out my Archaeology this weekend! I also got the Canopic Jar as my first Tol’vir common item, but no recipe inside. I picked up a few more Rare items, and my first Epic–the Headdress of the First Shaman. I’m debating putting together a care package for Hasati, my 50-something Troll Hunter in the BDL, and leveling a mule to send over.
Got my Worgen Druid up to 50, too. I’ve got a class quest for a great helm (with antlers!) but, obnoxiously, I can’t even queue for the boss I need, since he’s in the upper section of BRD and I can only queue for the Detention Block. Bah.
I also have another high-40s Alliance toon on Area 52 now, because I transferred over my poor long-neglected Warlock. Now, why would I do that? To make 30,000 gold, of course! A Horde-side guild is having a scavenger hunt with a Spectral Tiger as the grand prize, and someone was offering a lot of gold for the items they were missing. (It seems that some of the items may not even be obtainable anymore since Cata, or at least have become much harder to come by.) When the offered price on Coarse Gorilla Hair went up to 20k, I started flipping through my alts, since I was sure I’d had some on an old toon. Sure enough, the Warlock had it. By the time I was transferred over, the price had gone up to 30k.
Because I was at work, a friend did the actual hand-over of the item, and the buyer tried to cheat him by only offering ten and lying that we’d agreed on that amount. My friend didn’t know what to do, so he panicked and took the money–but he was also smart enough to screenshot the forum thread, so it was clear that the offer had been 30k and then only changed to 10k after the buyer had the item in-hand. I was able to reach out to the buyer’s Guild Leader when I got home from work, and he leaned on the slimeball when he signed back on, with the result that I got the extra 20k I was owed. 
Now if I could just get the damned Vial of the Sands recipe…
Stabby. And I’ve ranted in raid more than once about this now. HOWEVER! We finally browbeat the Mage into going Frost, and–surprise fucking surprise–our Cho’gall attempts were much better than last time. I think we should get him down this week. One of our people did some WoL digging and discovered that almost all Cho’gall kills involve two tanks, two healers, and six DPS, while we’ve been three-healing it, so we’re going to try switching our comp up that way instead of having me doing tank work in Fury.
OH OH AND the whiny creeper Resto Druid gquit after I laid the verbal smackdown on him during one of my rants on Friday. Good fucking riddance–I couldn’t stand the guy. Every time I started to tolerate him, he’d open his mouth and say something completely obnoxious again.
We also get to start working on Heroic attempts for everything we like, since our GM picked up a Nef kill this weekend and a Hunter just joined who has Cho’gall down.
AOE taunts do not create aggro (so they shouldn’t be used at the beginning of a pull), and they’re all on long timers. They’re “oh shit” moves that are reserved for emergencies. Most–or all–of them aren’t really taunts, either–they’re fixates. A fixate only forces a mob to attach someone for a fixed amount of time, after which their target changes to the top of their threat list again; a taunt forces the target to attack the taunter and bumps the taunters threat to be equal to that of the person who’s currently highest on the list.
For tanks’ AOE threat abilities, there will usually be some kind of animation. Warriors have Thunder Clap, which will break the ground and put out sort of a crackling animation on the mobs it hits, and Shockwave, which kicks up dust in a cone in front of the tank. (Cleave hits two or three targets depending on how they have it glyphed, and it will look like a green slash around the targets it hits.) Paladins have Consecrate, with is a glowing ground AOE, and a shield toss that hits multiple targets and looks like a glowing beam between them. Death Knights have Death and Decay, which is a red ground AOE, and Blood Boil, with will cause blood to spurt from the things it hits. Druids I don’t know well enough to identify AOE threat moves. Some of these abilities also apply debuffs or DOTs to the mobs they hit, so if you miss the animation, you can check the mobs for them.
In general, though, the best rule of thumb is just to wait until everything is actually in melee range of the tank, then give it a GCD or so for the tank to get an ability out to establish initial aggro. (Or watch for any animation that hits multiple mobs and appears to originate on the tank.) You can also target a mob that the tank isn’t targeting and look at its threat table. Too many DPS unload as soon as the tank aggros the first mob in a pack, not thinking about the fact that the tank can’t generate aggro on mobs they can’t hit yet, when they start spread out. Then you have situations like Blood and Thunder for Warriors, where I need one GCD to get Rend on my initial target, and then I need another to hit Thunder Clap and spread it to everything else.
Vashj’ir is also a bitch on a Frost Mage in general, since kiting through water is almost impossible. I’d have suggested you go straight to Hyjal and skip Vashj’ir until you were higher level.
Well, it’s complicated. I’d say that Cata starter zones were harder than TBC or Wrath ones, but not hard.
1.) TBC was tuned for 58 and Wrath for 68. This meant that 60s and 70s going into them at launch were already two levels higher than the zones were intended for.
2.) Cata represented a big shift in the player gear paradigm with regard to HP. If you were wearing armor released in Wrath, your HP might be lower than was intended.
3.) Because of the incredible accessability of gear in Wrath, we’ve all spent months or even years in gear that is multiple tiers above entry-level level 80 gear. Most of us have gotten very used to facerolling anything that isn’t progression, endgame content, especially anything that had to be tuned for fresh 80s in nothing but quest gear and some dungeon pieces.
4.) I’ve played through the Cata starter zones twice: once in an incredibly geared Prot Warrior and once in an incredibly *poorly *geared DK. Questing on Hanadzukuri rather than Sleutel required more effort and attention, since I had to be careful not to overpull, but it was still doable–and that was with equipment that was so outdated, that IIRC I still had one piece of DK starter-zone gear. When I made a little AH trip and replaced all of the outdated pieces with cheap BOE Cata greens, it got even easier.
Unless they’ve made a drastic change that I missed the patch notes for, that’s absolutely incorrect for PUGs created through the random dungeon finder, which is what I’m talking about. If you have at least one member of the party that didn’t queue together, the loot is on Group Loot and cannot be changed. This is to prevent a group from queueing together and stealing all of the loot from the PUG.
Personally, I see nothing wrong with distributing your money among your alts. It’s still *you *earning the money, regardless of which toon you’re using to do it. Some will just naturally be better moneymakers than others, depending on their level, professions, and sometimes class or race.
Fighting on the ramp is the correct way to do this fight, IME. One player should be down below in the suit, stun-locking and killing adds for the entire fight; the tank should have Foe Reaper about midway up the ramp (that is, midway up the height of the ramp, from the floor to where it turns into a balcony); and the ranged should stand as close as they can to the top of the ramp. That keeps Reaper away from the suit during his whirlwinds, creates a chokepoint where the adds have to go in order to hit anybody, and gives the party plenty of room to run away from Overload.
Nobody should be getting hit by AOE other than maybe the melee during transitions. When Reaper does Overdrive, everybody should run all the way to the back of the ramp/balcony (by the door). When he does Harvest, the tank should back up out of range as soon as he starts casting (or they’ll get hit when Reaper moves to attack the player he’s fixated on), the person getting targeted should move out of the group, and then move again as soon as the targeting circle is on the floor, and everyone else should stay out of the targeting circle and out of the path between Reaper and the circle.
<3 Alamo forever.
Northrend also got your ass into new greens immediately, and Outland was only a little slower about it. You get a new weapon after one or two really easy quests, which makes an enormous difference. Vashj’ir makes you go through an entire intense quest chain before ever giving you a single piece of gear.
I’ve never bothered to get the hang of kiting as a general solo strategy. Especially now, Frost is powerful enough that you can burn a mob down before it ever gets to you, and if it does get to you Ice Barrier holds out easily until the job is done. But more abstractly, yeah, there was no room to run. Enemies everywhere in Kelp’thar, so you’re screwed if you try to move at all.
In after the edit window: Also, I wanted to save Hyjal for my Druid.
I probably should have also taken into account the fact that Cata is the first expansion I’ve played at launch, so my first two toons through Vashj’ir (paladin) and Hyjal (mage) were also having to deal with the near-instant respawns, which made things even more challenging (especially for my mage - my paladin handled it a bit better). I started playing the game a couple weeks after Wrath’s launch, so Outland was pretty barren by the time I got there, and then I think Ulduar had already been introduced by the time my first toon got to Northrend, so the spawn rates in the starting zones were down to “normal” rates by the time I hit them.
Still, I hit level 80 only about six months into Wrath, and your basic, non-elite level 80 Wrath mob had 12,600 HP then, and still has the same now. In any case, weren’t the “nerfs” to previous expansions more in the form of faster XP gains rather than making the mobs weaker? I remember Outland still being fairly challenging for the first two or three toons I took through there, and I’ve attributed the easier time I’ve had on more recent toons to the simple fact that I’m more experienced as a player than I was then - having done the same zones/quests on five other toons makes it much easier on the sixth.
Oh, hey, does anybody know if Stormwind has a newspaper, and if so, has it ever been named? My female human rogue on Wyrmrest Accord (an RP server) is named Thelois Tulaine, and so far nobody seems to have “gotten” her name (TheLOIS TuLAiNE), so I thought I’d make her a reporter, but it would help if I could correctly name Stormwind’s newspaper, if one exists.
Judging by Warcraft 3 and the Varian Wrynn comics, the prototypical shaman is enhancement so it’s not too surprising that it would have enhancement stats. And having just been reminded of how lightning shield worked in WC3, we should totally get that in WoW.
Oh, I had a tank in Lost City of Tol’vir the other day who wasn’t very good (in his defense it was his first heroic) but his name made me laugh: Dwight <The Office>
So, um, I have only a basic knowledge of the equipment tiers, especially since I came into the game when T9 and T10 were all the rage. Is the Justice stuff sold right now in the two capitals T10.5? The Valor quartermaster stuff is T11, right? But that doesn’t sound right, because isn’t the gear dropped in raids Twhatever? People talk about the Kara drops being T5. Or was that dropped when Wrath started using points to buy gear?
Tier gear is a specific set of equipment that’s designed to work together. This can be through aesthetics alone, but more frequently is noted through the presence of set bonuses that activate when you’re wearing a certain number of pieces from that set.
The stuff you can currently buy with Justice Points is just…gear. Most likely referred to as blue 346 gear, or pre-raid gear, or whatever. I don’t know what label folks have slapped on it. For all I know they could be calling it 10.5, since it’s a precursor to the T11 stuff you get in raids, but it’s not actual tier gear.
Your decimals may vary (they’re all T10, but is it T10.5 T10.25 or T10.66 T10.33?)
T11.5: Item Sets - World of Warcraft (H-BWD, H-BoT)
T11: Firelord's Vestments - Item Set - World of Warcraft (BWD, BoT, points)
T10.5: http://www.wowhead.com/itemset=-247 (H-ICC 25)
T10.25: http://www.wowhead.com/itemset=-228 (ICC 25, H-ICC 10, badges)
T10: Bloodmage's Regalia - Item Set - World of Warcraft (ICC 10, badges)
T9.5: http://www.wowhead.com/itemset=-174 (H-ToC 25)
T9.25: Item Sets - World of Warcraft (ToC 25, H-ToC 10, badges)
T9: Khadgar's Regalia - Item Set - World of Warcraft (ToC 10, badges)
T8.5: http://www.wowhead.com/itemset=-85 (Ulduar 25)
T8: Kirin Tor Garb - Item Set - World of Warcraft (Ulduar 10)
T7.5: Item Sets - World of Warcraft (New Naxx 25)
T7: Frostfire Garb - Item Set - World of Warcraft (New Naxx 10)
T6: Tempest Regalia - Item Set - World of Warcraft (CoT:Hyjal, Black Temple, Sunwell)
T5: Tirisfal Regalia - Item Set - World of Warcraft (SSC, Tempest Keep)
T4: Aldor Regalia - Item Set - World of Warcraft (Kara, Gruul, Mag)
T3: Frostfire Regalia - Item Set - World of Warcraft (Classic Naxx)
T2: Netherwind Regalia - Item Set - World of Warcraft (BWL, Classic Ony)
T1: Arcanist Regalia - Item Set - World of Warcraft (Molten Core)
For SFG:
Well, at least they’re not sending thank you notes for mats to each other!
Yet! 
Q
I didn’t start playing until BC, so i’m foggy on the details but have always wondered… where did AQ & ZG fit into this? I mean if you were following the normal order of progression, when did you do AQ & ZG?
It seems like the stories of raiding then aren’t that great, but i still wish i had been around for it 
I can’t imagine what was involved in coordinating a raid of 40 people…!