Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Bringing the Lightning, bringing the Pain

8/4/09

Patch 3.2 hit today, while I'm at work....cough cough. Hmmm, maybe I should go home? :)

Well, since I can't talk about the new patch yet, I'll talk about powerleveling engineering. Being a gnome rox for engineering, recipes give skillups longer, and your crafting max limit is +15 of the normal cap, allowing you a taste of the level above you.

I made 9 Arcanite Dragonlings while skilling up, as Clockwrkmage was the first toon on Daggerspine to hit 50, and able to advance engineering past 300. I never make an item without getting a skillpoint for it, if I can help it, and this recipe got me from 330ish to about 340 (I think).

Remember that warrior that attacked me in Felwood? I think he had around 2500 health, way over my 1900 health. Well, I'd do a heck of a lot better in a fight against him now, being able to have my Stamina Trinket, 4K bubble shield, and my new stamina/crit/SP goggles. From 1900 HP to 3k HP, in three easy steps!!!! (and a few hundred hard steps, and a few K gold, but who's counting?)

I could have made this for my goggles, but I don't care about the spirit that much, and I had already made my goggles of choice for right now.

Oooh, I wants! Rocket Boots Xtreme Lite. And, requiring 420 engineering to make, but only 390 to use......Noise Machine. 375 engineering + 15 racial max skill cap = 390 engineering. Gnomes get the coolest toys.

Well, since I don't have my two favorite burst damage items (Gnomish Lightning Generator and Hand-Pyro Mounted Pyro Rockets, I shall have to make do with an old favorite of mine. Gnomish Death Ray. One of the main reasons I took up engineering, and my favorite trinket for any newly minted level 35ish alt. Cloth wearers don't get to use the Harm Prevention belt, but they can use the Nigh-Invulnerability Belt.

However, if you open up the comments on the Death Ray, the consensus is that you actually DO want to take damage while charging it. I usually would use the Harm Prevention Belt to absorb the damage, but I noticed I wasn't getting more than 900 damage or so when doing so, so I had stopped using the Death Ray. I think my new strategy will be to use the Death Ray, THEN pop the Nigh-Invulnerability belt to deal with the incoming damage from the mob/player I'm fighting.

Monday, August 3, 2009

"They Love me in That Tunnel" - Or, the quest for Twink Enchants

8/3/09

Clockwrkmage was on a mission this weekend. The mission was to commit xenocide on a whole bunch of furbolgs in Felwood, all in the name of cleansing the land and allowing another tribe to lay claim to valuable mineral rights, yadda yadda. I didn't care, all I knew was that at level 50, I'm allowed to bump my 2 professions (enchanting & engineering) up to 375, and I figured on making use of the 15 agility 1h and 25 agility 2h weapon enchants (From Timbermaw Hold)as a profitable way of leveling enchanting.

Twinks pay big for those to be put on their weapons, and they're actually really good enchants for any class that uses agility (rogues, hunters, feral druids). Instead of putting enchants that proc (and often don't), why not use an enchant that boosts dps, crit, and I believe dodge rating, all at once, all of the time?

My former twink Doomslinger is using it on her Twisted Chanter's Staff, and I haven't had the urge to upgrade her weapon because of it.

But, I digress. Using the level 48-51 southern furbolg's to level was good, because I got rep and good xp at the same time. I only intended to go to Honored, since that would allow me to turn in feathers and quests as I built them up, not waiting until Revered like the guides tell you to do. Bullkathos is doing that on Demon Soul, and it's a long, agonizing process, knowing you could turn in 100+ feathers at 300 rep per 5 feathers, giving you an instant 6000+ rep, but holding off until Revered, because that's when mobs stop giving rep for killing them.

Killing the those mobs was fun, but also dangerous. Since Felwood is so close to Orgrimmar, and Deadwood Village has a Horde quest to kill Overlord Ror, it's natural to assume that I'd be seeing Hordes pop up occasionally. Two encounters stick out in my mind. The first, being attacked by a level 51 warrior while I was level 48 still. He charged in and attacked me while I was finishing off 1 mob, so round 1 went to him.

Round 2 went to me, with my Gnomish Shrink Ray cutting him down to gnome size, and my Mechanical Dragonling getting in his face and landing some good hits. He made the mistake of focusing on the dragonling, which made me think he hadn't ganked many hunters.....Ignore the pet, go for the master, the pet disappears when your enemy dies!

Round 3 went to me again, though he ignored the negligible damage from my Gnomish Battle Chicken and went for me, a Frostbolt followed by Firebolt followed by Fire Blast took off a chunk of his life, then Frost Nova to hold him in place for Arcane Torrent, and a Fire Blast and a few Arcane Explosions took him down. Didn't even have to use my Gnomish Cloaking Device to buy myself some breathing room.

Final round 4 went to him, as I had tired of spamming /target player name to try to find him when he rezzed, and wanted to get back to grinding. Even popping my Mithril Mechanical Dragonling didn't help this time, as he got too close and just kept hitting me too fast.

After that, he rode off, probably figuring this was a waste of his valuable ganking time, since it wasn't an easy kill for him.

The flip side of that was meeting a level 48 Tauren Hunter, who ran along the hills behind all the Deadwood, obviously coming just to kill Overlord Ror. I had actually just overpulled or something, as I remember having to drop a target dummy, drop a Fel Iron Bomb for its daze effect, Frost Nova, and I think I even Blinked to be able to bandage a little. I ended up having to wand the final mob to death, as I was totally out of mana. Ahh, I remember, I had pulled a mob over, killed it, and immediately was attacked by a mob that spawned right there. We had a running firefight, and ended up by ANOTHER mob spawn.....Whew! Anyway, the hunter applauded my being able to pull that off, so I /bowed and /thanked her. I then /pointed to Overlord Ror, who had just spawned, and /pointed to her, then back at Ror. She got the hint that I would help her, so she sent her pet in, and I rained some firebolts and arcane torrents into him to help out. After that, she did the same /point thing, so I said /no, and went back to killing deadwood.

It's always nice to be able to connect with someone, even if you don't speak the same language, and be able to realize there are nice people everywhere, even on PvP servers.