Oh yeah - any Questionable Content webcomic fans here? A new female character named Marigold was introduced recently, who happens to be a socially awkward WoW addict. Everybody’s favorite OCD/germophobe chick, Hannelore, stopped by for a visit a couple days ago, just in time to watch Marigold on a raid:
Wow…she went from Human to Undead in that last panel!
And those “double-question-mark” guys. I HATE those mother-stickers!:mad:
Quasi (who is currently undergoing “cold turkey WoW withdrawals”.:()
One of these days maybe I can afford a lappie with enough room to play WoW. How much would such a thing cost me, at its cheapest?
Thanks
Q
OK, let me post my look at the classes, along with some general questions about playing.
DK: Well, it’s a do-it-all class except healing and buffing.
Druid: The actual do-it-all class. Ridiculously complicated to the point where I doubt anyone plays to its absolute maximum potential.
Hunter: I’ve played this a lot, but with CC gone the way of the dodo, it sounds as though a lot of Hunter utility has vanished.
Mage: OK, the talent-picking sounds ridiculously complicated, but your actual combat options seem to be pretty few.
Paladin: Both the most and least straightforward class. Trying to keep up with the sphere pace of things would be nasty in the endgame, but I’ve found it was pretty easy to make good choices as it stands.
Priest: This can be complicated, but it sounds as though it’s relatively straightforward in most good groups. Would be much harder in PuG.
Rogue: I don’t have a grip on it. It played very smoothly, but they seem quite limited. Top Rogue builds look like a dull exercise in macro-making.
Shaman: My favorite class, but I don’t get how they’re played in the endgame. Is it constantly watching and swapping totems?
Warlock: Warlocks have a lot of options and most of them are pretty self-explanatory. After playing Hunter I’m a bit Pet’ed out.
Warrior: Another I don’t have a handle on. It seems like they’re limited to tanking and maybe DPS in the endgame.
I got a decent laptop I play Wow on for about $450. Nice wide bright screen, dual core, video card. It’s not high performance but it sure beats my 4-yr old desktop.
Okay, so I’m leveling Enchanting and I honestly want to know (and I guess this question can apply to pretty much any “manufacturing” tradeskill):
WTF is up with these skills that are already yellow as soon as you can learn them (in this case Enchanted Thorium and Enchanted Leather at 250 Enchanting skill), and you can only make maybe 5 of them before they turn green?
So perhaps I can set the record straight on Shaman.
Elemental Shaman do have one thing going against them in terms of complexity - they have nothing reactive to worry about. But they’re certainly more complex than they used to be, and perhaps more interesting than Frost Mages (who I have a huge distaste for, but I suppose have gotten better).
There are four spells one uses in a max-DPS situation, and the priority is thus:
Flame Shock if the DoT is gone (18 seconds, is being lengthened).
Lava Burst (8 sec cooldown, 1.5s base cast time)
(Flame Shock if Lava Burst will be ready next GCD and Flame Shock will be off the target at that time - this one is a bitch to get done optimally)
Chain Lightning (4.5 sec cooldown, 1.5s base cast time)
Lightning Bolt (2s cast time, no cooldown)
If mana is an issue, you can skip Chain Lightning; it’s not that much more DPS than Lightning Bolt and horridly inefficient in comparison. However, you’ll probably get more damage overall by using Thunderstorm to restore 10% (glyphed) of your mana during a GCD in which CL and Lava Burst are both on CD; I find it basically impossible to run out of mana if I remember to use Thunderstorm.
–
Resto Shaman are certainly based on Chain Heal, and you certainly can’t go all too wrong with using it as your only spell in a 25 man raid. However, doing so really ignores a lot of your tools. Chain Heal is the easy way out; using Riptide and Lesser Healing Wave as well might not increase your effective healing, but may result in better overall raid healing output and less likelihood of deaths - especially when combined with good healing assignments. The last one is obviously difficult, as often raid leaders will be like “And the resto shaman and holy priest have raid healing” and the two will not bother trying to do it most efficiently. If each healer knows what the other will be trying to do, they’ll overall be more successful.
–
These are generally “easy” recipes; many recipes are grey when you learn them! Especially once you get to the higher levels there very clearly is an amount of raw material Blizzard wants you to spend to get the next set of points, but sometimes they want a recipe with relatively low material requirements to be restricted to people with enough skill - which means that using that recipe results in a lower chance of skill-ups.
I hope that makes sense.
Grats to all that need it since my last post.
Tanking is confusing - ran Stratholme on Sunday night and I kept losing my character in the general scrum. It worked out Ok though, I only died once and that was on a boss who hit me twice and killed me immediately, all this without a dedicated healer so we did quite well. Dinged 59 too!
In an effort to see more low level content (all the instances at appropriate levels and some zones like The Barrens that I have never quested in) before the Cataclysm I have rolled myself an undead priest. Priests are hard, taking on one (similar level) mob fine but two is much harder, there is a quest where I have to kill a Scarlett Captain in a tower and he has a friar with him who heals. Damn tricky, I had to give up after 3 failed attempts and go fishing instead, plan now is to wait until a I ding 12 and get a couple of spell upgrades which will help. It’s a great challenge as my paladin and warlock were so easy at this level in comparison. I’m going to level Discipline after taking (the mandatory for levelling) 3 points in Spirit Tap, any suggestions on glyphs at 15 currently Glyph of PW:S looks the best to me?
Martu: Glyph choice kind of depends on how much instance vs. soloing you’re planning on. PW:S for first glyph is a must; I glyphed renew on my disc priest but am thinking of swapping to flash heal as I tend to use it more. (I think renew is more useful at (a) lower levels and (b) soloing; flash heal becomes more important as you level up and run more instances and need healing NOW NOW NOW. For minors, levitate is fun and comes in handy sometimes. I also have the stamina buff glyphed, which cuts the mana spendage when you rebuff the group during an instance run.
Thanks this is very useful, I intend to do a lot of instances as I level this character so will consider flash heal after PW:S.
Additional advice for a disc priest: always get the best wand you can possibly find (off the AH or wherever); you’re going to be using it a LOT when you’re soloing. If you want to save up for mounts and whatever and just use quest rewards for the rest of your gear, fine, but you really need that extra dps.
On my priest’s Disc spec, I went with that, basically: PW:Shield, Flash Heal, then Penance - which is at the end of the Disc tree so you won’t get there for a while. Then minor glyphs of Shackle Undead (mostly for soloing), Shadowfiend (mana is my friend), and Levitate. I dropped Fortitude because I don’t find myself rebuffing except for after wipes, when everyone is drinking up anyway, or at an hourly interval, when others are rebuffing too.
As you get more into raids, if you’re the tank healer, you may find that Flash Heal isn’t used as much, but it’s still helpful. And you can use PW:Shield to activate the Borrowed Time talent, which will speed up your next heal by 25%!
For Holy (group/raid healing), I major-glyphed with Renew, Flash Heal, and Circle of Healing, though I’m tempted to replace one with Guardian Spirit - I find myself not using that talent much as I second-guess myself on whether it’s important at that moment and fretting about the recycle time. Renew is nice because when I’m raid/group healing, anyone who’s hurt gets a Renew, so that gives them more healing up front.
Mimiron is down! We had a ridiculous number attempts last night that all ended with at least one person doing something stupid (I think the kill was #8)–somebody stood in a rocket, or didn’t run out of the way for Laser Barrage, or ran through a mine, or didn’t run out for the what’s-it-called-AOE-shock-thing. Finally, it was getting late, and our GM/RL just said, “This is it, guys–last attempt. You need to bring your A game.” And you know what? We did. And it was like the previous attempts never happened–everything went like fucking clockwork.
Mimiron drops a head tier token, and of course we all already have our 8.5 helms from badges, so I was able to pick up my 8.0 helm for my DPS set.
We’re extending our raid lockout: Vezax is officially on notice.
Haha, I tend to keep up with QC in chunks, so I hadn’t seen these yet. Thanks!
Warriors make good endgame tanks **or **DPS.
The Rage mechanic makes everything a little bit weird, and it also make us very gear-dependent. Endgame DPS Warriors will experience sort of a “hump,” because they have to do damage in order to do damage. So once they get to the point that they’re doing enough damage that they get enough Rage to use their abilities all the time, and never have to pause because of Rage starvation, there’s an appreciable jump in DPS.
As far as tanking goes, we’re a bit broken right now (hello, lowest tank DPS), but not hugely so, and we still bring some unique utility. Thunder Clap and Shockwave give us good snap AOE threat (but Pallies still beat us on sustained AOE threat); Sunder Armor still makes a big difference for your raid’s physical DPS; we have two on-demand stuns (and a passive one if you talent for it), an interrupt, and a couple of talented silences; we can break Fear and some other mechanics once every 30 seconds (great for bosses like Auriaya); and we have a ton of ohshit buttons. I could go on, but I’m going to restrain myself, 'cause I’m pretty sure you don’t care quite that much. 
Yeah, that takes some getting used to. What throws me off now is when something changes what my character looks like–e.g., anything in CoT (because I’m transformed into a Human) or when I get a new helm.
What should help is good positioning discipline from your DPS. (1) You should always be going in first and pulling, so you have a chance to establish threat and get all the mobs grouped on you properly, and (2) the DPS should always be standing behind the mobs. Part of what makes it a bitch is that a while back, Blizz changed mob AI so that they try harder to get behind you… it can lead to a certain amount of dancing around on the part of the tank, trying to get all of those fuckers in front of you instead of behind (so that you can hit all of them while avoiding incoming attacks).
Grats on 59! Gonna get your flying skill right at 60?
I finally have epic flying. I did a last-minute pile of dailies for money, and my Cardinal Ruby finally sold, so I even had a little left over. I also went on a heroic Violet Hold run and got a nice cloak. I only need five more pieces for the Superior achievement. My two-handed weapons skill is at 400, so now I am skilling up Bows as my fourth skill. I’m at 380 at the moment. I am slowly amassing emblems and shards.
My friend and I are looking forward to Brewfest. Drunken Dalaran dancing, here we come!
Gratz on Mimi. He’s still my favorite fight, though I’ve found I really hate tanking the head during phase four, I get a bit caught up trying to maximize my threat and dps that I forget to stay close to the base and lose a huge amount of time running around him during spinning up.
Vezax is a blast as well, though the trash leading up to him is annoying as all hell. Hammer into your deeps that they cannot heal the boss. Every wipe that wasn’t due to utter stupidity I’ve seen had him lower than the amount he healed for, often by double or triple.
Is epic flying available at level 60 now? I might actually be able to afford it for my priest alt once he gets there, if so. (He’s now down to weekly play so that he doesn’t outlevel the Cairne alt instance gang, and I’ve been squirreling away a fair deal of cash from running the daily tourney quests on my 80).
I’ve been playing on my laptop; I bought it two years ago for roughly $1,200. I don’t play with maxed-out graphics settings, but still at reasonably high quality, and I have zero lag issues due to my computer. I’m sure that today you could find an equivalent laptop for quite a bit cheaper.
Nope, still 70. Reasonable, I figure, especially now that it’s possible to start flying in Northrend at 68.
Oh, god, the Superior achievement. I have everything except wrist armor on my 80, and there seems to be precisely zero purchaseable plate dps wrist armor anyway (there’s one badge-purchaseable set using whatever the next mark up from marks of heroism is, and that’s it). I’m tempted to buy the leather wrists from Wyrmrest just to get the damned achievement already.
Grats!
I love the “we’ll call it after this try” effect - we had the same thing on our first Faction Champions kill last week. Went from barely getting one of the NPCs down to getting all 6 with only one death on our side. All you have to do is threaten to quit 
Good luck with Vezax - I agree with Redwing that he’s a lot of fun but his trash certainly isn’t!. My guild has made the same decision to extend the Ulduar lockout while continuing to clear ToC regular. This way we get our shots in at Yogg while gearing folks up with emblems and lvl232 gear. Speaking of which (:)) the Twin Val’kyr and Anub’arak died to our hands last night - so ToC regular is clear! And I got a bad-ass new sword for my troubles. Good times, good times.
Just a note but ToC regular is significantly easier (IMO) than the Mimiron, Vezax, and Yogg. So if you’re putting that off until you clear Ulduar you might consider taking a few runs at it - the first two bosses in particular are really quite simple.