The Shattered (Patch 4.0.3a)

11/24/2010

The Shattering hit servers today, to a lot of mixed emotions. New content, yay! Portals in Shattrath and Dalaran gone, boo! I had known they were going to be gone, but theory and practice are two different things.

The portals being gone are something that makes being an altoholic really, REALLY hard. Getting one toon to traipse around the continents for a holiday event can be time-consuming, but imagine trying to do 30 of them. With the portals in Dalaran, if I needed to travel to or around different capitol cities, I'd go to one directly from Dalaran, then hearth back and log out. Do the next toon, repeat. It was a time-saving technique that I had gotten used too, since by the time I was done with the 10th toon, the 1st toon would have their hearth back up.

If you have daily quests that will be used by max level toons, who generally have their hearths set somewhere in Northrend, why oh why would you have those dailies take place in Orgrimmar? The cooking tokens from the Orgrimmar cooking dailies will be used to buy level 450 and UP cooking recipes, which lowbie toons won't be making use of for a long time. So, it's expected for 70-80 toons to come back to Orgrimmar to do those dailies, every day, then get back to where they want to be, which is in Northrend or Deepholme or whatever.

Aaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!

Whew, enough venting. I also wanted to recap where I am with some toons. Bloodshrike missed out on Loremaster by only 13 quests in Zul'Drak, and all of Grizzly Hills. I should have kept more in the loop, but I was kinda excited by being able to gear up my newer 80's with the elemental invasion bosses. He also missed out on getting his Shen'dralar rep to exalted, along with Zandalar. I had plenty of librams and Pristine black diamonds, I just had slacked off on getting the BOP Blood of Heroes/Skin of Shadow/Frayed Stitching. I should have just let one day of dailies with my other 80's pass, and concentrated on that rep grind. I turned in about 22 librams in Dire Maul about an hour before the servers were supposed to go down, then headed to Zul'Gurub to try to max out my Zanzibar rep. Got there with about 15 minutes to spare, but the instance portal wouldn't let me in, even though I was in a raid group with another 80. "Instance could not be found" my ass! The instance is right in front of me!

Ah well, C'est la vie. I'm not going to let it worry me, instead, it'll be nice to get those librams out of my guild bank(s).
I figure I might as well do a recap on my servers, since this is a fresh start to the world.

Demon Soul
Bloodshrike - lvl 80 Troll Hunter
Bullkathos - lvl 80 Tauren Warrior
Thrillkiller- lvl 80 Orc Rogue
Bonescourge - lvl 61 Undead Warlock
Banesidhe - lvl 80 Undead Mage
Kukoshakaku - lvl 58 Tauren Shaman
Clockworknyt- lvl 72 Blood Elf Paladin
Morticide - lvl 45 Tauren Druid
Burizadokyan- lvl 48 Blood Elf Priest
Pallormortis- lvl 80 Orc Death Knight

Daggerspine
Clockwrkmage- lvl 63 Gnome Mage
Preyonyou - lvl 41 Draenai Priest
Tsuris - lvl 56 Draenai Shaman
Aosdanasaoi - lvl 54 Night Elf Rogue
Hangfire - lvl 48 Night Elf Druid
Panzergishi - lvl 55 Dwarf Warrior
Kishigishi - lvl 53 Human Paladin
Ryoushigishi- lvl 55 Dwarf Hunter
Gwiddonyn - lvl 53 Gnome Warlock
Doomslinger - lvl 42 Night Elf Hunter

Darrowmere
Bloodshrike - lvl 53 Blood Elf Hunter
Clockwrkmage- lvl 39 Blood Elf Mage
Psilentkill - lvl 41 Blood Elf Rogue
Didactylos - lvl 32 Blood Elf Warlock
Gavelofpain - lvl 34 Orc Shaman
Wartraveler - lvl 35 Undead Warrior
Misericorde - lvl 35 Blood Elf Paladin
Ghostflame - lvl 30 Blood Elf Priest
Gimmershred - lvl 34 Tauren Druid
Annihilus - lvl 31 Undead Rogue

Wintergrasp Alone

11/19/2010

Though it's not mentioned in the patch notes here, Wintergrasp now has a new mechanic. Apparently, on some severely unbalanced servers *cough* Demon Soul *cough*, even a 20 stack of tenacity on Alliance players 24/7 is not enough to guarantee them a fair shot at getting VOA on a consistent basis. When they did manage to get it, it was usually very, very early in the morning.

Imagine my surprise when I decided to queue for an upcoming WG, I zoned in, and I was the ONLY person in the raid group for 20 minutes. I had a few fights with the apparently only Ally in the zone, a druid named Xime, and while his moonfire spamming killed me a couple times (me in my PvE gear at 29k health, him with 3 stacks of tenacity and 39k health), I did manage to get a few kills on him as well.

I had decided to stop trying to take the Broken Temple workshop and instead go for Sunken Temple, when it showed he was finally trying to attack Flamewatch Tower. Goodie for me! I had just gotten to lieutenant by doing a little npc kill farming, so I quickly rode back to Broken Temple, hopped in a siege engine, and putt-putted my way up to the south-west wall of the keep. Just then, another Horde joined the raid, and a matching Ally paladin named Jcr came over the wall and demolished my tank.

I tried taking a demolisher straight up from the Westspark workshop to the front gates, but with only about 2 minutes left when I got there, we didn't get the front wall taken down after dealing with the druid's patrolling siege engine.

It would have been epic, though!

So, Wintergrasp is now strictly enforced with balancing teams, as well as tenacity.
Ahh, I searched a little more, and found the source post.

How do I love thee 4.0.1? Let me count the ways...

10/20/2010

Despite the Cog of Doom bug, and the inevitable addon disruption, I really, really like the new patch.

For a player who doesn't raid, and only does heroics, it allows you to get high level gear in a relatively short amount of time. 95 Frost Badges for a piece of gear? That took me over a month and a half to earn at 2 badges per day. When Brewfest rolled around, my toons doubled their earning power to 4 Frosties per day. Wahoo!!

I haven't even run any heroics yet, the only instance I've set foot in since the patch is the daily to kill the Headless Horseman, but according to MMO-Champion, the average amount of Justice Points you'd get per heroic is either 23, or 39, if you're adding together the Heroic dungeon and Heroic boss. Not sure.

You get 24 Justice Points for killing HH each day, and say if you got 23 JP for each random dungeon.....1100/23 = 47.8 heroics to earn enough JP to buy my ilvl 264 chest piece, which, you guessed it, took me over 47 days to earn previously.

I'm probably a bit OCD in that, if I can only do something once per day, I MUST do something once a day. Remember the Arcanite transmutes, where you could only transmute every 48 hours? Yeah, I had about 90 of them saved up before they changed it.

So, for a casual player like me, the changes with the patch allow me to run heroics til my eyes bleed if I really want a piece of gear, then just let my toon do nothing, and be free to go play my other toons without worrying about "missing out" on opportunities to get better stuff on my main.

I have to say though, it's gonna make me lazy. With the previous Triumph and Frost badge division, I would run heroics for Triumphs to get me to the 232-245 level of gear, while waiting for enough Frosties to slowly, agonizingly slowly, replace piece by piece of gear.

Now? My mage Banesidhe is in Frostsavage Battlegear, with the BOA chest and shoulders. I'll replace my level 187 pieces with level 251-264 pieces, or if some level 200 pieces drop, I'll go for them in the meantime. With heroics being tuned for Wrath talent trees, we are way OP for heroics nowadays, so I doubt my lower dps will really even raise an eyebrow, or get me kicked.

I'm a patient person, and I just don't see the point of spending 591 JP for XXX, or 935 JP for YYY, when I could run a few more heroics and get ZZZ for 1100 JP.

Poof! Whaddaya need?

4/15/09

It's the day after patch 3.1, and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth (qq'ing for those of the younger generation) by twinks as their beloved leg armors and other twinkish stuff were removed by the evilness of Blizzard. :p

For me, it don't really matta. Doomslinger hasn't fired a shot in anger in a looooong time. It's probably time for her to go kill something, and get the last bit of XP needed to tip her over to 20.

But what I really, really don't like about the patch is that Arikara's summoning puff of smoke and sound effect no longer exist. It was very cool having one of the rarest pets that an Ally hunter can get, and now there's now difference between her and a Rogue Vale Screecher from Feralas.

Ehh....just another thing in my list of general apathy about the game currently. I've severely curtailed my selling on the AH, and haven't even been looking for mats much anymore either. I'm not logging in every hour to gallop around Stormwind looking for Lil Timmy, but I do log in every few hours to try to kill the Dalaran Spellscribe.

I want to play all my characters, which leads to me playing none of my characters, because I'm always thinking "Oh, Ryo needs to do this" or "I forgot to get this item for Kuko off the AH." I haven't even finished leveling Bloodshrike to 450 in engineering, and he's already level 61. I usually powerlevel my toons to the max they can get whenever they hit the appropriate milestone. I know it's a game, but....I hate wasting my mats on making stuff, and then having to sell it for pennies on the dollar. Or, making stuff for other people, and paying them for every skillup.

On the other hand, I have had a lot of fun leveling my DK. Since he's a dual gatherer, and I haven't really played in the Outlands yet (except for going there to talk to the mining trainer), Pallor had a blast in Un'goro, Sithilus, Burning Steppes, and all the zones earlier than that which helped me to level up my skinning and mining skills. Since I'm only limited by my skill level in skinning, I'm free to move to the next zone as soon as mob skill level x 5 = or <>160, that only takes 5 kills. But...... Pallor will have to drop skinning. I gotta drop one profession so I can take up engineering when I hit Outlands, and now, he's my highest miner. With the level 300 mining skills of being able to break apart Primal Earth and Fire, that lets me consolidate the hundred's of Mote of Fire and Earth I've saved up for when you need to make Elemental Blasting Powder from level 300-310. It takes a lot, and I hate being unprepared, and having to get ripped on the AH because of it.

Besides, I think Thrillkiller would benefit from dropping mining to take up skinning. Critical strike chance benefits rogue's and hunters (who are my usual skinners) way more than it would help out a Death Knight at 60.

Demonsoul has 67k gold, Daggerspine has 59k, Darrowmere has 31k, Lightbringer has about 8k, and I've made about 6.5k gold for Steve on Bladefist. I'm not bragging, it's just a thing so I can track how much I made over the last few months or so, and how much more I'm making than when I started out.

Patch 3.02 - Ehh, who needs it

10/16/08

The patch 3.02 hit 2 days ago, and for some reason, I’ve been kinda blahh about it. I’m getting out of selling stuff, and looking for bargains takes up too much time, so I’m not going to do it anymore. The newest patch brought a whole mess of problems with my addons, so I’m going to drop most of them. I liked the original version of Auctioneer, but I think it takes up too much of my ram to run the newest version, and I hate how it displays the auctions.

Fizwidget’s Hunter’s Helper was a great addon to have, listing all the available beasts in the zone that you could learn skills from, but with the patch, it’s not needed (Since now all pets learn their skills automatically as they level). They incorporated a threat meter with the patch, so Omen could probably go bye-bye. About the only ones I think I’ll keep are CT mods, so I can use a lot more than the 10 command boxes in the first bar, and Ackis Recipe list, so I know what recipes I’m missing. Also Gatherer, since it tells me on my minimap where nodes of herb/ore are.

Engineering got hit by the nerf stick

3/28/08

That Green Dragonscale Breastplate recipe is hard to time. On Darrowmere, Wartraveler got it yesterday at 6 pm, and again at 9 pm. Either someone else (Alliance probably) is buying it, or the recipe only sticks around for 10 minutes at a time or something. However, I do have 3 to sell now, so I’ll be able to rebuild Clockwrkmage’s fortunes. I dropped 40 large by buying 4 Fel Iron Toolboxes at 10g each on the AH, since they were reasonably priced, and a further 25g by buying a Bag of Many Skins (24 slot LW) for Gavelofpain, since he’ll be my LW. I’ve been making a good profit by buying Elixir of Giant Growth on the AH for 1g, and selling it on the Neutral AH for 8-10g.

That darned patch……they changed the ability to summon 2 attack pet trinkets at the same time. I’m hoping that’s the only change, because it would suck to limit you to one trinket at a time. You should at least be able to use one attack pet, and still be able to use the Goblin Death Ray or any other engineering trinket that you like.
I wonder if it’s because of me? I designed that macro that would cast both the chicken and the dragonling at the same time, and equip the Death Ray. As long as you used it before you got into combat, you’d have both pets out, and the Death Ray was only 30 seconds away from activation. Fight the enemy for a little bit, then bubble up with the Gnomish Harm Prevention Belt, and blast them out of their steel plated boots. Perhaps it was decided that engineering gave too much of an advantage over other players? I believe it does, and that’s why most of my toons are engineers. You have the choice to have all farming professions, which will get you lots of gold, or taking up crafting professions, which will sometimes get you decent amounts of gold, or taking up Engineering, which will rarely get gold, but gives you a lot more damage potential to monsters and enemies.

…..Rarely get gold…..well, unless you’re me. I’ve regulated the Demon Soul economy to the point where people expect to pay about 15 gold for a Sniper scope, whereas Daggerspine and Darrowmere both have people who consistently post Sniper scopes at 8 gold.

I’ve also dinged 2000 gold on my level 41 Tauren Warrior Bullkathos, on Demon Soul. After the patch, I figured the price of Arcanite rods would drop drastically, but I was still able to sell 2 of them for about 60 gold each. I’ve given up on trying to sell Steel Weapon Chains in the AH, since it costs too much, and people rarely buy them. But, it’s a good recipe to have, since I can use it for Bullkathos as well as Thrillkiller, to shorten the duration they’ll be disarmed. Even if it’s on the off-hand weapon on Thrillkiller, the effect still works. And since the off-hand weapon rarely hits, you might as well put something useful to the character on it.

WTF?? Aww, heck no.

3/27/08

WTF???? Blizzard said to delete the WTF folder in the Warcraft directory, since it might cause complications while traveling to the new areas like Quel’Danas. Well, it turns out that the Auctioneer scan data and the CT Map notes are stored in that folder. While I didn’t mind losing my scan data, since it was about 80% full, and would lag while entering the Auction House, I DID mind losing my map mods. That had all my Ore, Herb, and location notes I’ve entered over the past year. It’s extremely useful to keep track of which toons have picked up which quests, and I didn’t want to lose it. So, I went to the Recycle Bin, picked out those 2 files, and put them in the new WTF folder.

Aosdanasaoi is coming along quite nicely right now. I flew her back to Darkshire after doing the Legend of Stalvan quest chain around Stormwind. I dinged Revered while doing it, so it was useful, then flew to Darkshire when I got the quest to talk to the innkeeper there. I had about 6 completed quests to turn in, and that bumped me up to level 32. I now have to kill Mor’Ladim and Stalvan, but they shouldn’t be a problem. Mor’Ladim attacked me while I was in the cemetery, killing the skeletons, and while I wasn’t prepared for a fight with him, I still managed to kill him, and I was only level 30. He’s a level 33-34 Elite, but Engineering helped me kill him, of course. I think I used the Gnomish Shrink Ray, then used a bomb to help speed up the killing.

High Pop vs. Low Pop

11/29/07
I’ve learned the difference between a high pop server and a low-mid pop server now. I’ve been trying to get my friend to start playing WOW, so I let him play on my account, on the Doomhammer (vanilla) PvE server. That’s a high pop server, and it shows. I wanted to get him some quick gold, so I made a character there, and went skinning and mining for stuff to put on the AH. While I was there, I decided to check the prices of bags. The 24 slot Leatherworking bags were like 12 gold there, whereas on Demon Soul and Daggerspine, they’re like 80-100 gold! Engineering bags were about 4-6 gold, and 20 slot enchanting bags were 8 gold. Maybe it’s low priced because there’s no risk of getting ganked on a normal server, so you can go farm anywhere you want, and just be wary of NPC’s.
I did find out what fits in Engineering bags. All Essences of XXX, Elemental XXX, Motes of XXX(and I would imagine Primals too), Core of Earth, Heart of Fire…..very useful for any profession to get an engineering bag, just for the extra storage. I think Alchemy is the profession that makes Primal Mights out of the Primals, so they’d probably find it useful at the 300-375 level. And since it only takes 10 Fel Iron Bars (20 Ore) to make the bag, you can probably bid on Ore or bars to get the mats cheaply, then have an engineer make it for you. Hmm, I wish there was an Alchemy bag that would hold the potions that you make, as well as Oily Blackmouth and Firefin snappers (or at least the oil), and a 24-30 slot Cloth bag would be excellent.
I also found there’s been some changes to areas since the patch. In Dustwallow Marsh, I was accustomed to walking north from Menethil Harbor to Ratchett, fishing along the way, and not having to deal with monsters until I swam around the islands that had murlocs. Now, there’s Defias Privateers on the shoreline, making that impossible. I need to check out the coastline in Tanaris around Steamwheedle port, to see if they’ve screwed with the easy fishing around there. Also, in Hillsbrad at Southshore, there’s random attacks by Syndicate Assassins. Quite annoying for a low level character to try and boost fishing at the 3 fishing spots at the dock, and being attacked by a lvl 30? enemy.

Casualties of War

11/14/07
New patch!!! You can now pick tracking on the minimap, and Pickup quests (like the beached creature remains in Darkshore) now have an icon above them, as well as an icon on the minimap. Very cool.
I was playing my level 20 Draenai Priest in Darkshore, trying to finish up the non-group quests to get Darnassus rep, before going to Westfall to get the Deadmines (VC) quests. I picked up the last 3 beached creature remains, south of Murkdeep’s location, breezed thru “The Master’s Glaive” (a quest which I hadn’t ever tried before), then I went over and got “The Sleeper Awakens” quest by Onu. I’ve done this about 5 times now, hugging the eastern hills after the furlbogs, and not having to deal with being ambushed on the road by the furlbogs. Well, with the new patch, I was shown a quest that I hadn’t ever discovered before. Ranger Aynasha is tucked up in the eastern hills, right before you get to Ashenvale, and you have to do a protection quest called “One Shot One Kill” (don’t do it, it’s bugged).
Since I already had Terlonis with me, I figured he could earn his keep, and help me with the quest. We quickly took down the first wave, but I waited for about 3 minutes, and there was nothing else, so I decided to take off with Terlonis . Maybe the game won’t let you complete that quest while dragging an NPC character with you? Thottbot said there was 3 waves, but the clock was ticking, and I didn’t want to risk failing The Sleeper Awakens. So, I continued down into Ashenvale. I avoided the road so I wouldn’t get spotted, and get Terlonis ganked by killjoy Horde players. So, I veered east by Bathran’s Haunt, and got him killed by Forsaken Thugs and Herbalists. A much more noble death, imho. /headdesk
There was a Herbalist right by the hills I was going to be traveling on, so I fired on him. Well, that attracted 2 Forsaken Thugs, and they got Terlonis before I could get them to focus on me. Ah well, it was time to log out. I’ll continue on to Astranaar tomorrow.