The next higher level animals are up north, in the Arathi Highlands. Go east along the road until you see the road that goes north. Follow that, up the hills, and go over the bridge. Lots of higher-level skinnables there. Once you exhaust those, you want to go to the Hinterlands. Go to the east border of Arathi Highlands and cross into Hillsbrad Foothills. You want to follow the road west until you come to the crumbling fort. Go around behind it until you see a broad meadow running north with two gryphons wandering around. Follow that road north until you cross into the Hinterlands.
If you have the Refuge Pointe (Arathi) flight point already, you can just fly there from Menethil Harbor. The flight point to Hinterlands is Aerie Peak, if you have that. If you don’t have them, don’t forget to get them when you go there the hard way.
If there is one thing I believe Blizzard has been sorely misguided on, it’s the asshole novelty toys and pets that force loud and annoying emotes on innocents around them. As I’m working on setting up auctions, I’m treated to a constant stream of:
“I guess it doesn’t bend that way!”
“I think I broke it!”
“I think I broke it!”
“I think I broke it!”
“I think I broke it!”
“I guess it doesn’t bend that way!”
“I think I broke it!”
“I think I broke it!”
“I guess it doesn’t bend that way!”
“I guess it doesn’t bend that way!”
“I think I broke it!”
“I think I broke it!”
“I think I broke it!”
“I think I broke it!”
“I think I broke it!”
“I think I broke it!”
Mind, I’m sitting in the Auction House in Ironforge, and the jerkass with the Lil XT is standing on the other side of the bridge, midway between AH and bank, and although I have the WoW sound at a very mild level, the little son of a bitch is just as loud as if he were standing on my desk. As I run by her, she’s freaking dancing. She knows damn well she’s pissing people off and is enjoying it.
What kills me is I see people defend Lil XT, the train set, the piccolo, etc. all the time. “You’re on an MMO, that stands for Multiplayer! It’s a social game!” It is, but constantly shoving that crap in people’s faces over and over is about as antisocial as you can get.
And of course as I write this, the jerkass finally stopped. Blessed silence.
How in the hell do I gear up my protection paladin for quality tanking?
Seriously. I’ve levelled up mostly by open field questing. Now I’m doing instances. I get my ass kicked a lot and am told I don’t have enough gear. All my gear’s level 187. The instances I can do don’t drop better gear, and the instances that do drop better gear I get my head handed to me.
I’m no expert, but hit to cap for special attacks (I believe that’s 8%) and expertise to cap for dodge (I believe you need 26 expertise - what it says on your character sheet, not rating). Then Strength after that. You don’t need to cap hit/expertise early on, but it’s something to aim for when you hit 80. Basically, just pick up any Strength gear that you can find, and usually it will come with other stats such as crit rating as well.
That thread is a good place to start for getting pieces that will get you defense capped and ready to do heroics. If you’re just starting out, your gear will probably not be able to keep threat off many of the over-geared DPS you would be running with, but if you explain that you’re just starting out, then hopefully they will respect that. Just make sure you hit the 535 defense cap for heroics (540 is for raids) so that you don’t get crit and make your healer die from apoplexy.
ETA: The thread is rather old (from the beginning of WotLK), but most of its suggestions should still be valid.
The only thing I like about Li’l XT is that he breaks trains. If somebody sets out a train set, just put out XT and he’ll run over and destroy it. Since I hate train sets more than I hate Li’l XT, it makes me happy to see one get destroyed.
No second day for our ICC10 group this week, had to pug out 4 spots, we did clear the first six bosses so that’s something. Picked up a second Ramaladni’s axe for my fury spec and I have a few questions about gemming now. I’ve gemmed Armor Pen until I reach the soft cap with my trinket proc, so do I keep stacking armor pen or go back to strength? I’m way over the expertise cap and I’m hit capped so I’m not gemming for them at all. This is my offspec so I don’t use it all that often and I seem to have forgotten which direction I’m supposed to go now.
Thanks to Shot From Guns and Daedelus I’ve redone all my skills to mouseover macros and worked a bit on my healing keybinds, which is slightly annoying when having to rework 4 characters worth of skills and keybinds. Which made me realize that you should NEVER EVER go into an instance to test out keybinds until you’ve made sure that everything is as it should be. I spent the first half of H Drak’Theron trying to remap my zoom out function to my mouse wheel as I stared into the back of my shaman’s head. Apparently I had keybound the 7 key to my mouse wheel at some point and completly forgot about it.
Once I get my fingers used to hitting the new keys I think my healing will improve.
You can avoid needing a Lil’ XT by buying a Wind-Up Train Wrecker from the toy store in Dalaran. All the train-smashing goodness without the annoyance - but too long of a cooldown.
Thanks, jayjay, you rock, as always and I have both those fp’s.
Also, Bosstone mentioned the AH in IF. Do different AH’s have different stuff - meaning if I can’t find something I need in SW’s AH, could I find it in IF’s?
Nope, all the Alliance AH’s are linked (Darnassus, Exodar, Stormwind, Ironforge) together, and all the Horde ones (Silvermoon, Undercity, Orgrimmar, and Thunder Bluff) are likewise. So every item from any Alliance AH, can be seen from any of those four locations.
There is also the separate Neutral AH’s that cost more to sell, but both factions can use them. However, they are not used very much, except by people questing/farming in the zones where they are located, and the people trying to move goods back and forth between factions (via friends, alternate accounts, etc.).
Thanks, Viscera! That saves me a trip to IF, a place I truly hate to go to because of the darkness and my propensity for getting lost, tumbling underneath the tram tracks and not being able to find my way back to the flight master.
I TRULY hope there’ll never be another need for me to go there - quest-wise!
I had a lockpick Rogue who wanted to meet me there to undo a lockbox a couple of nights ago.
Never found the guy. Couldn’t seem to make the correct turns off the tram to get into the center of the city.
Embarrassed?
You bet I was. Luckily he was a good sport about it.
I believe you’re supposed to go back to gemming Strength, though you will want to replace that ArP proc trinket with DBW and then start gemming straight ArP to cap. However, as it’s your off-spec, you probably won’t see a DBW go your way, so gemming Strength at the point you’re at should be fine.
Yes, testing your keybinds prior to going into an instance is probably a good idea, lol. But, I’m glad that I helped, and if you have any other questions, please feel free to ask.
Well that was a nice change in my luck. Ran Heroic Forge of Souls tonight … and I won all three loot rolls on the final boss!
I won the Frozen Orb, won the DE on the Mord’rethar Robes, and won my greed roll on the Black Spire Sabatons, which I wanted for the tank set I’m putting together
Just got Drak’Thoran for 1st time. I was running my DPS spec, someone posted Recount near the end, and I was responsible for 50% of all damage. Are warrior DPS that easy, or were the other DPS a bit poor?
Also picked up that 2 hand sword from there. It is waaaaay better than my current polearm, if I switch to it, should I respend the 5 talent points taht I currently have in polearm specialisation?
Without seeing the actual numbers and classes involved it’s hard to say for certain, but it’s probably a combination of the two, warriors have direct damage instant attacks and cleaves which makes it fairly easy to do good damage on five man trash(but I still see people fail horribly).
In principle you should, but if you want to save the gold you might consider just gimping yourself a bit for now and do the Amphitheater of Anguish quest chain which offers a very good 2h axe as a reward as soon as you hit level 75 .
Bring several friends along. I 2-manned most of that chain on my level 80 paladin, partnered with another lvl 80 paladin, but we still had to get some help for the last fight (neither of us were geared from heroics at the time).
