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Gitr Knows WoW

Unlike your other World of Warcraft blogs. Quality over quantity, and a terrific community.

Power-Leveling

Remembering My Epics

May 4, 2008 By Gitr Leave a Comment

I was thinking about the gear I used with Paladr – particularly the number of epics he had pre-50. The difference with Protectr leveling without a single epic has been unnoticeable, though. So, why do we bother?

On Silvermoon, the same epics I had on Velen cost a minimum of 250g, and upward of 650g. Insanity! I’m not paying that much for 5 levels of use. Oh, sure, sometimes you come across an epic or even a rare piece that lasts 10 levels due to its extra-special stats that make it worth passing up tons of other pieces of higher levels.

So, let’s set the stage:

You have level 70s who are doing dailies for easy gold, but you are busy leveling your lowbie, so your balance usually hangs around 40-100g. How much is too much to spend on an epic?

Filed Under: Gear, Lead Story, WoW Tagged With: epics, Gear, paladin, Power-Leveling

Leveling With a Buddy

April 7, 2008 By PhiLogical 10 Comments

I have been lucky as of late. You see I have had the opportunity to level with a buddy.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j2xEwEHbrE[/youtube]

So as I was saying; since about level 30 Protectr and I have been questing together. I usually like to play it solo and every once in a while, and only when necessary, I group up. Well I had no idea what I was missing. Grinding these last 17 levels or so have been some of the most fun that I have had in WoW to date.

There are many advantages to working in a pair; the obvious being that you can kill mobs much faster and complete quests at a very high rate. There are other advantages as well. For me it has provided the opportunity to get better at not pulling aggro from the tank. Protectr is a dang awesome tank, but I still have to be careful to not come in too soon.

Protectr is a Protection spec Draenei Paladin and Phrixus is a Demon spec Human Warlock (AKA awesome). We are a great team, though I had to learn not to go all out with my spells. I SS him and provide a healthstone and depending on the area I bring out which ever demon will be the best suited. He Buffs and heals me when needed. Protectr will go in a grab aggro on up to 5 mobs and I wait a bit, send in my Demon and start DOTing away. The only hiccup occurs when he says to run and I let my (over)confidence get the best of me. I generally don’t die, but that’s only because he runs back and saves my butt.

While I think that any combination of classes will make the game more enjoyable; for the best effect one should find a class that is symbiotic to your own (e.g., DPS finds a healer, healer finds DPS, and Rogues reroll). So for my money nothing can beat a Pally-Warlock duo… well except a Warlock-Warlock duo, but that would be like having two Supermans and that just wouldn’t be fair.

Filed Under: Lead Story, WoW Tagged With: buddy, paladin, Power-Leveling, warlock

Starting Over at 60 (or 58)

February 25, 2008 By Archsooner 5 Comments

Does anyone else have the feeling that anything other then questing is a waste of time between the levels 50 to 60?

Prior to BC coming out, BlackrockDepths was one of my favorite instances. The drops were awesome and the battles challenging. I didn’t raid much prior to BC, actually only a few trips into UBRS, but I did get some decent gear. My point in all of this is: “why doesn’t Blizzard do something to make these instances worth going to again?” What’s the point of defeating Emperor Dagran Thaurissan when the first green you get in Outlands will replace it? The same goes for any of the bosses in UBRS which you need a ten-man raid to even do. I know on my server it is impossible to find a raid going to any of the old raid instances (I did go to AQ 20 with 14 70s one time but that was a looong time ago and everyone I went with was either bored or had never been like me and wanted to see it).

In my opinion, Blizzard spent a lot of money back in the day to make these level 60 raid dungeons such great places to go so why not upgrade the loot so that an epic from Ragnaros does more then the first blue you get in Hellfire Ramparts? I just know from my own experience that it took a lot of joy out of running BRD 10 times to get the Foreman’s Head Protector from Fineous when the very first green in Outlands that dropped for me had better stats. BRD may be a bad example since the XP is decent although I know I can level faster just completeing the quest solo but what about the raids???

Is it only me, or would other people enjoy going back and doing these instances or if you’re like me… seeing them for the first time? Do you think Blizzard should upgrade the loot prior to outlands to make it more compatible with the loot you get there? Should a lvl 58 blue really be put to shame by a lvl 58 green just because one came from Outlands and the other from UBRS or Scholo? Just wanted to get everyone else’s opinions.

Filed Under: WoW Tagged With: blizzard, Burning Crusade, Fineous, Loot, Outlands, Power-Leveling, Ragnaros, raiding

Saying Goodbye to the Battlegrounds and Leveling a PvP ALT

November 20, 2007 By Growl 7 Comments

So – one of my ALT-er-ego’s is a Tauren Shaman. He started life as a 10-19 battlegrounds twink on Thorium Brotherhood (US) way, way back when that server first launched. Back then, his name was “Remember” and he was my first attempt at leveling – or PvPing with a shaman.

Well, a lot of time went by and for much of it, Remember was played little. I managed to get him up to “Grunt” rank in the old PvP ranking system before it was shelved (the equivalent of a Corporal for you Alliance folk) and he had decent gear for a level 19 battleground brat. I enjoyed PvPing with Remember – but was burnt out from getting my main into the officer ranks. As a result, Remember spent more time cooling his heels than tossing out heals.

Ultimately, Remember became one of my support alts – a well geared bank that could gather herbs and brew speed potions for my other characters. In time I finally decided that my other toons had more to benefit from Remember’s alchemy skill growing than I did by having (yet another) semi-twinked level 19 in my stable. So – with a resigned sigh, Remember headed back out to the barrens – hit level 20 in about an hour – and promptly got shelved for several months.

Now – over a year later – enter a new server – and a forced name change.

Remember is now Skychaser on Moon Guard. I rerolled over there a while back and hooked up with a guild full of alting battlegrounds geeks like myself. Having a good time with this new crew, I decided to bring my old potion maker over from Thorium Brotherhood in order to shill pots for my current toons and guildies alike. Eventually – out of a desire to learn more about the Shaman class and to try something new, I leveled Skychaser/Remember to 29 and camped battlegrounds again until I snagged my usual belt, boots and baubles from Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch. I enjoyed pvping with the shaman at 29 – but the road had been hard. Worse, in PvE, I always felt that soloing with the big white Tauren had proven tedious and awkward. Skychaser ended up dead a lot and I spent a lot of time reading forums and trying to understand why this once formidable class was so hard for me to wrap my head around.

Finding few answers other than the angst over on the official Shaman forums about how massively the class had been nerfed – I finally turned to instances and grouping. Now – by nature – I’m a solo player. I love instances and love raiding – but rarely have time or patience to endure the endless waiting for pug groups to form, or the disastrous outcomes that most pugs seem to enable. The new guild had good people in it though and I managed to hook Sky’ up to various low level runs through several instances. What I learned while doing this, was that while I felt like four-thumbed failure in solo-PvE and PvP, I felt like a small gawd in group play.

Running Skychaser through instances was a revelation in rediscovering the strength of hybrid classes in group play. He could tank, he could dps, he could heal and cleanse. Groups that were having problems with an instance immediately seem to find a greater deal of success with the shaman in tow. His totems provided low cost healing and mana – gave supportive buffs or purged negative spell effects. When things went pear-shaped his ability to rez or (better yet) self-rez after a wipe extended his value in groups from “spare war-stomp with h33ls” to “invaluable multi-function tool.”

Intrigued with the class – I broke out of the 20-29 bracket and discovered Windfury. While still suffering from a past nerf, quintessential Shaman melee trait was the fuel I needed to propel Skychaser through the long and still somewhat awkward climb through the 30’s. Sky’ was still having to work for his levels – but the additional melee prowess was noticeable and appreciated. Somewhere after level 35 though – and finally being able to advance his capped alchemy skill – Sky’ stalled and his progress lagged. Quests in the 30’s seemed to be harder to find – the task of leveling easier – but still arduous for the enhancement Shammy. I started to wonder if he was doomed to be a cast-off potion maker forever.

Then 2.3 hit.

With higher experience for kills and quests as well as easier leveling, post 2.3 Azeroth is likely to become the saving grace of stalled alts everywhere. In an afternoon of questing in STV, Skychaser saw level 36 come and go in a blink. Later in the same week, questing in Desolace and a run through Scarlet Monestary’s Library and Armory wings brought 37 and 38 in rapid succession. A few odd clean up quests and a daily battleground quest or two and suddenly 39 was attained. Shocked with how fast the last 4 levels had come I took time at 39 to dive back into Arathi Basin. Again – Skychaser proved a revelation in the battlegrounds. A well geared 39 – the vigor and force of his windfury crits – the speed of his improved ghost wolf – and the versatility of his heals, totems, and purge ability put Sky at the top of charts in game after game. In one long evening of back to back play – he collected over 50 tokens and became the focus fire target of every alliance group that he crossed paths with.

Last night, with my 30-39 battlegrounds aspirations complete, I left Arathi Basin and headed off to Duskwallow Marsh. Starting two bars into 39 – I muddled my way around from quest giver to quest giver in the refreshed zone. I took my time to discover these new adventures and to farm herbs. Before I realized it, I had cleared out the first half of my quests in the zone and rather unexpectedy watched Skychaser disappear in a flourish of golden light as he dinged 40.

Holy cats that was fast.

A quick trip back to Thunderbluff allowed Sky’ to train. Packing stormstrike now – and an amazing chain-heal ability, the one time potions alt is now quickly becoming a favored main. I still have a lot of work to do with this toon, after all, there is a mount to buy, rep to gain and 30 more levels to discover. But I’m excited about leveling him, confident I can get him to outlands, and eager to see the world through his eyes while in the game.

I can safely that the leveling changes of 2.3 are going to provide a new lease on life for stalled alts. For all the raiding guilds trying to replace lost healers and tanks by slowly leveling alts on the side – they now have hope of actually bringing some of these toons into play in reasonable time. It’s going to be easier to move from bracket to bracket in the PvP arena – perhaps creating a bit more life in some of the less played battlegrounds. All in all – I have to rate the leveling change in 2.3 as my mvp – (most valuable patch.) Time for many gamers is sparse and the ability to fill what hours we *do* have with achievable and entertaining goals is by far the best bang for the buck I can hope for.

Filed Under: WoW Tagged With: 2.3, Arathi Basin, Battlegrounds, Instances, Power-Leveling, PvP, shaman, Twinks

2.3 – The Patch We’ve All Been Anticipating

November 12, 2007 By Gitr 14 Comments

Patch 2.3It’s coming tomorrow morning, and I personally can’t wait until 10pm to get to play. Right… gaming life sucks when you go straight from work to a 3 hour night class, but what am I going to do? Last week, I caught the Background Downloader grabbing the patch for me and I’ve since been mulling about what I’m most looking forward to.

Being an alt-aholic like Growl and Kinless, not to mention 60-less PhiLogical, I’m very much mainly interested in the improved leveling for sub-60s. Then there is the newly added guild bank, which has my mules and the guild banker happy about. Oh, and the nixing the gossip pane on the flight masters and bankers. Doh! What am I most looking forward to? I’ve got a brand new druid (level 5 after 1 hour) because I couldn’t resist the alt-itch again and a 44 paladin going for 60 by Christmas. Depending on how much the patch improves leveling, I may succumb to starting an all new frost mage again.

According to the PTR patch notes that Blizzard has up right now, there is a lot to look forward to. Oh yeah! I almost forgot the hunter dead zone is going away, too. Tuesday night is going to be a fun night! The list is seriously too long to put up here without looking like news regurgitating, so go check out the list and chime in on what you want most.

Filed Under: Lead Story, WoW Tagged With: gossip pane, guild bank, Patch 2.3, Power-Leveling

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