I should probably be the last person in the world of warcraft talking about PVP since I am far from experienced. Still the topic has always had my intrest since I entered my first BG and this resulted in me eagerly reading most of anything I can find on PVP even going so far as to occasionally troll the ArenaJunkies forums / sites.
Having not looked into PVP since february (coincidentally just about the time I got my new job) I decided to do my rounds and figure out what the current state of arena / PVP is.
Let me start by saying: There's massive changes incoming for the next season. Not only will the rating system be completely re-vamped to start rating from 0 for everyone but all the rewards from PVP have also been re-balanced in the cost department.
From what it looks like arena rating requirements will be significantly lower for most pieces and a lot of pieces will be relegated to the realm of honor purchase. To what extend the new rating values will be achievable with the new system remains to be seen, but only a few items are still left that seem completely off the rating charts.
The arena system has always been in a constant state of flux as blizzard tries to fight the various groups of people that abuse the system or just addressing overall balance issues. If nothing else dealing with their obscure matching system that more often than not resulted in your first 100 matches at a rating of 1500 being against better geared people that'd stomp you into the ground in no time.
Cloth wearers have had it especially hard this season as the very crit-happy wotlk expansion clearly displayed in the average survival times of cloth wearing classes being around the 5 - 15 second mark. The few arena experiences I had as a cloth wearer were dysmal at best and at times I wished I would've brought my prot pally instead just so I could actually last longer than 15secs.
The incoming flurry of arena changes for season 6 were to be expected but most likely fueled by one simple fact:
Overall arena representation / participation is down by a whopping 65% across the board.
65% ... that's almost 3 quarters of the arena population throwing the proverbial towel into the ring.
You know that feeling you had that 2 out of 3 or your former PVP partners stopped playing arena alltogether? Well, turns out that you were spot on on that one.
Sure, people levelling would account for lower arena representation but after 5 odd months of WotLK most people have been level 80 and working on gear / rep / other for a while now.
Arena play motivation is at an all time low. With no incentives for casuals to play the arena and the outlook of spending a good amount of time getting your skull crushed in just for some measly arena rating which in the current setup rarely is enough to get some decent gear caused most of the casuals to literally give up on arena alltogether.
Starting the arena rating from 0 seems the natural way to go and in the long term will hopefully allow people to fight people on their level rather than overgeared people with artificially low ratings; But then the arena matching system might throw a spanner in the works on that one.
In the end, whatever change they decide on the goal should be not to make PVP a horribly frustrating experience for the casual players, not because PVP should be easy for casuals but simply to maintain at least the impression that arenas are more than just a strap-on E-sport.
We are willing to accept the fact that we can't reach high-end pvp gear for some occasional pvp-ing but I think most casuals would agree on this: we would like to compete vs other people on our level, and we would like to be able to get something out of it even if it takes a while.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
'Old World' Valuables
With my job encroaching upon my valuable playtime I have resorted to the one thing a wow player can do in times where time is short: playing the AH.
The ah however doesn't really make for any exciting tales but I did notice a trend that I figured you might like to know about.
With the masses of unwashed deathknights having taken care of most of their outland levelling and even the achievement mongers having cleaned out the last parts of outland things have gotten quiet in ye ole outland.
So quiet in fact that it has begun affecting prices for outland materials. Sure sure, the demand isn't what it used to be and neither are the prices but then again the supply isn't exactly glorious either.
Primal fire prices are holding steady at a the 10g a piece mark on my server which, considering the relative ease of farming these on a level 80 character just goes to show that what once was just plain 'old' now has antique value.
Many azerothian trading materials seem to have been enjoying decent prices as well, a stack of thorium ore goes for more than a stack of saronite bars will go on my server and a lot of other trade materials are suffering from a lack of farmers and a continual demand from the profession levellers.
In other words it's good times on the ah. I am +2 epic flyers in what has been at most a pair of month of very little effort doing this and that very little of which being farming.
So if you're looking to make some quick gold and you haven't gotten around to cleaning all those alt's banks out yet, now might just be the time to find a few hundred gold hidden away in some old bank slot.
The ah however doesn't really make for any exciting tales but I did notice a trend that I figured you might like to know about.
With the masses of unwashed deathknights having taken care of most of their outland levelling and even the achievement mongers having cleaned out the last parts of outland things have gotten quiet in ye ole outland.
So quiet in fact that it has begun affecting prices for outland materials. Sure sure, the demand isn't what it used to be and neither are the prices but then again the supply isn't exactly glorious either.
Primal fire prices are holding steady at a the 10g a piece mark on my server which, considering the relative ease of farming these on a level 80 character just goes to show that what once was just plain 'old' now has antique value.
Many azerothian trading materials seem to have been enjoying decent prices as well, a stack of thorium ore goes for more than a stack of saronite bars will go on my server and a lot of other trade materials are suffering from a lack of farmers and a continual demand from the profession levellers.
In other words it's good times on the ah. I am +2 epic flyers in what has been at most a pair of month of very little effort doing this and that very little of which being farming.
So if you're looking to make some quick gold and you haven't gotten around to cleaning all those alt's banks out yet, now might just be the time to find a few hundred gold hidden away in some old bank slot.
Monday, March 9, 2009
3.1 patch notes part 2
Warlock changes... and there's a lot of warlock changes in 3.1 to come so lets take a quick look at what I would consider one of the more aggressive changes to the warlock class. A lot of stuff has been removed or seen their talent point cost reduced which should give warlocks a little more room to breathe in terms of point distribution.
Let's dispense with the pleasantries and dive right into the sarcasm (for a full list of changes simply scroll past my endless dribble till you see the word 'warlocks' come by).
Blizzard decided to radically solve out soul shard problem by not allowing us to have more than 32 which is likewise compensated by drain soul now creating shards when fighting non-gray mobs. Considering I reguarly go out to solo instances of the low level variant and I remember burning through shards in pvp like nuts I have a few doubts about this change but this change is undoubtedly easier than making the suckers stack (*caugh*).
Curse of recklessness and siphon life go to the trash bin, one dissapearing alltogether and siphon life being rolled into corruption. The change to siphon life will change how warlock rotations look and should definitely simplify things... that is if 40% of corruption damage is about what siphon life returned in the first place at any rate and our damage doesn't go down the drain over losing siphon life (not likely). Curse of recklessness... well I won't miss it now considering they already removed the ability to control our fear with it.
With the masses of demons in northrend all those lovely changes to enslave demon will undoubtedly pass most warlocks by unnoticed, I'd wager good money that enslaving a demon will never make it past the level of novelty spell in the next 2-600 expansions.
The extra damage for curse of elements is taken out of malediction leaving affliction warlocks not really feeling the difference but now having to decide if malediction is still worth the effort.
Pandemic will make affliction warlocks a bit crit happier and went on a diet now saving us 2 points. Beyond that affliction now seems to benefit shadow more and we will probably see immolate drop out of our rotation due to not getting any benefits from talents anymore.
Demonology also got slimmed down a bit losing demonic empathy and 2 points from mana feed which can be re-invested into a new talent called nemesis reducing cooldowns on some interesting demo talents. Decimation may put soulfire back on the map as useable by reducing it's cast time and removing the reagent cost. Failing that it'll completely invalidate nemesis and soulfire will remain the absolute poorest choice for a warlock to do some damage.
I'll leave destruction to the destruction enthusiasts to comment on but it looks like the tree got tightened a little by bumping bonusses on the less used talents and shaping it to be what I would call a more pvp oriented tree. Lets hope the bump in survivability via molten skin will mean we won't have to scrape our precious warlock off the floor after each arena match... then again he better not use any soul shards anymore or start draining a little soul now and then.
Overall some interesting changes but the cleanup to affliction's rotation will definitely be felt (and if not implemented too poorly) welcomed by what few warlocks haven't switched to dk's yet.
Warlocks
• Curse of the Elements (Rank 5) : Increased to 13% spell damage, up from 10%.
• Curse of Recklessness has been removed.
• Curse of Weakness: Now also reduces the armor of the target by 5%.
• Drain Soul: Each time Drain Soul deals damage to a target which can grant experience, it now has a chance to generate a Soul Shard.
• Enslave Demon: Spell haste penalty reduced by 10%, Melee haste penalty reduced by 10%.
• Warlocks now innately have an increased 10% spell hit chance on the Enslave Demon spell.
• Fire Shield (Imp): You can now cast this ability on raid members, rather than party members.
• Soul Shard: This item now has a maximum count of 32 in inventory.
• Ritual of Summoning: The summoning of the initial portal is now instant cast, down from 5 seconds.
• Talents
- Affliction
• Eradication re-designed: When you deal damage with Corruption, you have a 2/4/6% chance to gain the Eradication effect. The Eradication effect increases the critical strike chance of your Shadow Bolt spell by 30%. Each critical strike reduces the critical strike bonus by 10%. Lasts 30 sec.
• Haunt : Now only increases your shadow damage-over-time on the target. (No longer includes non-Shadow damage over time spells.)
• Malediction - No longer increases the effect of Curse of the Elements.
• Pandemic: This talent has been reduced to a 1-point talent, now grants your Corruption and Unstable Affliction the capability to critically hit.
• Shadow Embrace: Now only increases the damage done by your shadow damage periodic spells.
• Siphon Life: The Siphon Life spell has been removed. Siphon Life now causes your Corruption spell to instantly heal you for 40% of the damage done.
• Suppression: Now increases spell hit for all of your spells.
- Demonology
• Demonic Empathy has been removed.
• Demonic Empowerment: This talent spell now has a unique spell effect and sound.
• Demonic Sacrifice: This talent has been removed.
• Fel Synergy has been moved to tier-1. No longer increases Intellect, Stamina and damage of your summoned demon.
• Improved Enslave Demon talent removed.
• Mana Feed: This talent is now a 1-point talent, down from 3-points. Now is the 21-point talent in Demonology. Now grants 100% mana return to your pet, up from 33/66/100%
• Master Conjuror: Increased from 15/30% up to 150/300%.
• New Talent: Decimation: When you Shadowbolt or Incinerate a target that is at or below 35% health, your next Soulfire cast time is reduced by 30/60% and costs no shard. Lasts 10 sec.
• New Talent: Nemesis: Reduces the cooldown of your Demonic Empowerment, Metamorphosis, Soulstone and Fel Domination spells by 10/20/30%.
- Destruction
• Aftermath re-designed: Increases the periodic damage done by your Immolate by 3/6%, and your Conflagrate has a 50/100% chance to daze the target for 5 sec.
• Backlash has been moved up to tier-5, up from tier-7. Now requires Intensity (pre-req).
• Cataclysm: Now reduces the mana cost of Destruction spells by 4/7/10%. No longer increases the chance to hit.
• Conflagrate: Spell now works similar to Swiftmend, consuming an Immolate or Shadowflame effect on the target and dealing damage based on the strength of that effect. Reduced to a single rank.
• Improved Immolate: Now increases the damage done by your Immolate by 10/20/30%, rather than just the direct damage.
• Improved Shadow Bolt: Now increases the damage done by your Shadow Bolt spell by 1/2/3/4/5%, and causes your target to be vulnerable to spell damage, increasing spell critical strike chance against that target by 1/2/3/4/5%. Effect lasts 30 sec.
• Improved Soul Leech: Now has a 50/100% chance to proc Replenishment.
• Molten Core: This talent has been moved to Demonology (Tier 8).
• New Talent: Molten Skin: Reduces all damage taken by 2/4/6%.
• Pyroclasm re-designed: Now increases your Shadow and Fire spell power by 2/4/6% when you critically hit with Searing Pain or Conflagrate. Lasts 10 sec. Also moved down to tier 7, down from tier-5.
Let's dispense with the pleasantries and dive right into the sarcasm (for a full list of changes simply scroll past my endless dribble till you see the word 'warlocks' come by).
Blizzard decided to radically solve out soul shard problem by not allowing us to have more than 32 which is likewise compensated by drain soul now creating shards when fighting non-gray mobs. Considering I reguarly go out to solo instances of the low level variant and I remember burning through shards in pvp like nuts I have a few doubts about this change but this change is undoubtedly easier than making the suckers stack (*caugh*).
Curse of recklessness and siphon life go to the trash bin, one dissapearing alltogether and siphon life being rolled into corruption. The change to siphon life will change how warlock rotations look and should definitely simplify things... that is if 40% of corruption damage is about what siphon life returned in the first place at any rate and our damage doesn't go down the drain over losing siphon life (not likely). Curse of recklessness... well I won't miss it now considering they already removed the ability to control our fear with it.
With the masses of demons in northrend all those lovely changes to enslave demon will undoubtedly pass most warlocks by unnoticed, I'd wager good money that enslaving a demon will never make it past the level of novelty spell in the next 2-600 expansions.
The extra damage for curse of elements is taken out of malediction leaving affliction warlocks not really feeling the difference but now having to decide if malediction is still worth the effort.
Pandemic will make affliction warlocks a bit crit happier and went on a diet now saving us 2 points. Beyond that affliction now seems to benefit shadow more and we will probably see immolate drop out of our rotation due to not getting any benefits from talents anymore.
Demonology also got slimmed down a bit losing demonic empathy and 2 points from mana feed which can be re-invested into a new talent called nemesis reducing cooldowns on some interesting demo talents. Decimation may put soulfire back on the map as useable by reducing it's cast time and removing the reagent cost. Failing that it'll completely invalidate nemesis and soulfire will remain the absolute poorest choice for a warlock to do some damage.
I'll leave destruction to the destruction enthusiasts to comment on but it looks like the tree got tightened a little by bumping bonusses on the less used talents and shaping it to be what I would call a more pvp oriented tree. Lets hope the bump in survivability via molten skin will mean we won't have to scrape our precious warlock off the floor after each arena match... then again he better not use any soul shards anymore or start draining a little soul now and then.
Overall some interesting changes but the cleanup to affliction's rotation will definitely be felt (and if not implemented too poorly) welcomed by what few warlocks haven't switched to dk's yet.
Warlocks
• Curse of the Elements (Rank 5) : Increased to 13% spell damage, up from 10%.
• Curse of Recklessness has been removed.
• Curse of Weakness: Now also reduces the armor of the target by 5%.
• Drain Soul: Each time Drain Soul deals damage to a target which can grant experience, it now has a chance to generate a Soul Shard.
• Enslave Demon: Spell haste penalty reduced by 10%, Melee haste penalty reduced by 10%.
• Warlocks now innately have an increased 10% spell hit chance on the Enslave Demon spell.
• Fire Shield (Imp): You can now cast this ability on raid members, rather than party members.
• Soul Shard: This item now has a maximum count of 32 in inventory.
• Ritual of Summoning: The summoning of the initial portal is now instant cast, down from 5 seconds.
• Talents
- Affliction
• Eradication re-designed: When you deal damage with Corruption, you have a 2/4/6% chance to gain the Eradication effect. The Eradication effect increases the critical strike chance of your Shadow Bolt spell by 30%. Each critical strike reduces the critical strike bonus by 10%. Lasts 30 sec.
• Haunt : Now only increases your shadow damage-over-time on the target. (No longer includes non-Shadow damage over time spells.)
• Malediction - No longer increases the effect of Curse of the Elements.
• Pandemic: This talent has been reduced to a 1-point talent, now grants your Corruption and Unstable Affliction the capability to critically hit.
• Shadow Embrace: Now only increases the damage done by your shadow damage periodic spells.
• Siphon Life: The Siphon Life spell has been removed. Siphon Life now causes your Corruption spell to instantly heal you for 40% of the damage done.
• Suppression: Now increases spell hit for all of your spells.
- Demonology
• Demonic Empathy has been removed.
• Demonic Empowerment: This talent spell now has a unique spell effect and sound.
• Demonic Sacrifice: This talent has been removed.
• Fel Synergy has been moved to tier-1. No longer increases Intellect, Stamina and damage of your summoned demon.
• Improved Enslave Demon talent removed.
• Mana Feed: This talent is now a 1-point talent, down from 3-points. Now is the 21-point talent in Demonology. Now grants 100% mana return to your pet, up from 33/66/100%
• Master Conjuror: Increased from 15/30% up to 150/300%.
• New Talent: Decimation: When you Shadowbolt or Incinerate a target that is at or below 35% health, your next Soulfire cast time is reduced by 30/60% and costs no shard. Lasts 10 sec.
• New Talent: Nemesis: Reduces the cooldown of your Demonic Empowerment, Metamorphosis, Soulstone and Fel Domination spells by 10/20/30%.
- Destruction
• Aftermath re-designed: Increases the periodic damage done by your Immolate by 3/6%, and your Conflagrate has a 50/100% chance to daze the target for 5 sec.
• Backlash has been moved up to tier-5, up from tier-7. Now requires Intensity (pre-req).
• Cataclysm: Now reduces the mana cost of Destruction spells by 4/7/10%. No longer increases the chance to hit.
• Conflagrate: Spell now works similar to Swiftmend, consuming an Immolate or Shadowflame effect on the target and dealing damage based on the strength of that effect. Reduced to a single rank.
• Improved Immolate: Now increases the damage done by your Immolate by 10/20/30%, rather than just the direct damage.
• Improved Shadow Bolt: Now increases the damage done by your Shadow Bolt spell by 1/2/3/4/5%, and causes your target to be vulnerable to spell damage, increasing spell critical strike chance against that target by 1/2/3/4/5%. Effect lasts 30 sec.
• Improved Soul Leech: Now has a 50/100% chance to proc Replenishment.
• Molten Core: This talent has been moved to Demonology (Tier 8).
• New Talent: Molten Skin: Reduces all damage taken by 2/4/6%.
• Pyroclasm re-designed: Now increases your Shadow and Fire spell power by 2/4/6% when you critically hit with Searing Pain or Conflagrate. Lasts 10 sec. Also moved down to tier 7, down from tier-5.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
3.1 patch notes part 1
There's been much said about the infamous 3.1 ulduar patch but it seemed to take forever for anything substantial to roll in.
I bided my time a little trying to hold off on saying anything about it without substantial information in hand and outwaited myself a little since there's now more to report than will fit in a single post.
Or at least that's what I decided.
I will get into my typical routine of highlighting the warlock changes in the next post (and there's a lot of them) and maybe grab some other interesting notes as well.
Today however I devote to the curious, the strange and the vaguely documented additions. If you want some more details on the patch you can check out mmo-champion of course or take a look at what wowinsider had to say here
Let's start with a few general ones. A notable entry here is a 'gear manager' addition to the game that will allow you to save and apply armor sets meaning you'll be able to swap out your gear for another set in an instant. Spectacular? By no means, but a hopeful candidate to replace addons like outfitter and the like meaning the end of the update season for yet another addon.
There's also a new set of high-res textures coming in. This really doesn't do much considering we're already playing on an outdated graphics engine but it's nice to have another option to turn on to decrease overall game performance ;) which is nicely coupled with a video mode ultra to show that even wow still has enough oompf in it to bring a decent fx card to it's knees.
Apparantly we're also getting some new quest tracking options. Who knows what that means, but we'll have to remember to turn that one on before we go through our alternative of updating the questhelper addon and see what this shiny new gem will do for us.
The final noteworthy entry from the general section is the fact that you will no longer be dismounted while swimming... I have a feeling it's going to look curious but if the speed increase from mounts persists then most of us will enjoy the change while druids will lament their now profoundly less impressive water form.
The glyph section and profession sections are always interesting but I think I'll check if we can't make some money out of it in a later post, what I do however want to give you is the stats for the elusive titansteel spellblade to be added to the game. Take them with a grain of salt, it didn't make it into any official databases yet it seems:
Titansteel Spellblade [440] MH Dagger, (99-316) 82.9 dps, Speed 2.5, +40 Spirit, +33 Stamina, +408 Spell Power, +37 Critical Strike Rating, +27 Haste Rating, Level 80 (Epic, BoE)(Unique-Equipped)
Materials: 6 Saronite Bars, 6 Titansteel Bars, 2 Frozen Orbs
Last but not least from the noteworthy section is: dual specs
They have been announced, I made my analysis on who would win/lose on that feature a while back and the exact functionality is still a bit sketchy beyond the fact that: you will be able to dual spec at level 80 for a price.
And there we have it, a quick glance at the patch notes from a neutral perspective. There's a lot of class changes in there though so I suggest you put on your QQ resistant outfits and wander over into the patch notes section and see what fresh hell/blessing awaits your class.
I bided my time a little trying to hold off on saying anything about it without substantial information in hand and outwaited myself a little since there's now more to report than will fit in a single post.
Or at least that's what I decided.
I will get into my typical routine of highlighting the warlock changes in the next post (and there's a lot of them) and maybe grab some other interesting notes as well.
Today however I devote to the curious, the strange and the vaguely documented additions. If you want some more details on the patch you can check out mmo-champion of course or take a look at what wowinsider had to say here
Let's start with a few general ones. A notable entry here is a 'gear manager' addition to the game that will allow you to save and apply armor sets meaning you'll be able to swap out your gear for another set in an instant. Spectacular? By no means, but a hopeful candidate to replace addons like outfitter and the like meaning the end of the update season for yet another addon.
There's also a new set of high-res textures coming in. This really doesn't do much considering we're already playing on an outdated graphics engine but it's nice to have another option to turn on to decrease overall game performance ;) which is nicely coupled with a video mode ultra to show that even wow still has enough oompf in it to bring a decent fx card to it's knees.
Apparantly we're also getting some new quest tracking options. Who knows what that means, but we'll have to remember to turn that one on before we go through our alternative of updating the questhelper addon and see what this shiny new gem will do for us.
The final noteworthy entry from the general section is the fact that you will no longer be dismounted while swimming... I have a feeling it's going to look curious but if the speed increase from mounts persists then most of us will enjoy the change while druids will lament their now profoundly less impressive water form.
The glyph section and profession sections are always interesting but I think I'll check if we can't make some money out of it in a later post, what I do however want to give you is the stats for the elusive titansteel spellblade to be added to the game. Take them with a grain of salt, it didn't make it into any official databases yet it seems:
Titansteel Spellblade [440] MH Dagger, (99-316) 82.9 dps, Speed 2.5, +40 Spirit, +33 Stamina, +408 Spell Power, +37 Critical Strike Rating, +27 Haste Rating, Level 80 (Epic, BoE)(Unique-Equipped)
Materials: 6 Saronite Bars, 6 Titansteel Bars, 2 Frozen Orbs
Last but not least from the noteworthy section is: dual specs
They have been announced, I made my analysis on who would win/lose on that feature a while back and the exact functionality is still a bit sketchy beyond the fact that: you will be able to dual spec at level 80 for a price.
And there we have it, a quick glance at the patch notes from a neutral perspective. There's a lot of class changes in there though so I suggest you put on your QQ resistant outfits and wander over into the patch notes section and see what fresh hell/blessing awaits your class.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
540 Defense or maybe not
My pally hit 80 last night somewhere in sholazar basin in fact it was an oracle daily that did the trick. Of course I immediately aborted questing and ran back to the nearest bank to don my titansteel gear that I had crafted not too long ago. Between the boots, the helm, the shield and the two icebane epics (girdle, chest) I had hoped I would have enough slots / raw defense rating available to hit the elusive 540 defense cap.
After socketing in all the defense gems I could find, slapping on the right enchants and sidegrading some of my rings, basically doing everything elfingly possible on a low budget I was severely dissapointed to see that despite focussing 100% on defense/defense rating I only hit about 520 defense.
I figure I will reach the no-crit defense value of 540 with a little work (better gems, better enchants and some trinket/ring/neck adjustments) but in the meantime it seems that working with defense as a stat is very restrictive to what else you can possibly do in terms of gemming enchanting.
So there I am at 520 defense and I can't help but thinking that defense rating is somewhat hard to come by through pure questing/crafting. Sure, the items that do have defense rating on them usually have quite a bit, but it also takes a massive amount of defense rating to become uncrittable.
I suppose it's the mechanic that bothers me. You NEED to be uncrittable; not being uncrittable is hardly an option if you're being slapped around by some raid-boss unless you can soak up a lot of damage and have a healer or two that never heard of the words 'out of mana'.
Compare this to say a warlock where you stack spellpower till there's no tomorrow. There's no real set minimum there... you can go into an instance with a warlock that has 0 spellpower and it's not going to wipe the raid if the rest of the group can compensate for it.
You can't really compensate for a tank who is being crit regularly unless your healer is better than the content you're doing (as if it wasn't hard enough to find a healer in the first place).
That being said, my warlock in his paltry crafted gear does sufficient damage (by most scales) and still has plenty of room to gem/enchant outside of the box.
It's somewhat dissapointing, I had hoped to be able to stack some strength in there for some block value and general oompf but instead I will have to consider defense a top priority to the detriment of literally everything else.
Be that as it may, my paladin is officially done and will soon find his place in my scheme of solo-ing/duo-ing instances giving the old war veteran warlock a nice run for his money despite his obviously less than perfect un-critability.
Looking on the bright side my character sheet now says 'very good' in the frost resistance column with the frost resistance aura up and a quick test with one of the few frost mages left on my server resulted in the frost mage immediately re-speccing to arcane out of sheer frostration (pun intended).
The conclusion would be this: If you don't have a good chance at defense gear via raids/5mans (not everyone can play hours at a time) you're going to have moderate difficulty in hitting that elusive defense value of 540 and you will actually have to work for it a little (i.e. do more than just rely on Blacksmithing to bail you out like I did).
All fixable if you instance a lot, but in the meantime I will divert my attention to my next levelling victim: The druid (and yes I'll be posting something a little less personal and a bit more useful in the near future :P)
After socketing in all the defense gems I could find, slapping on the right enchants and sidegrading some of my rings, basically doing everything elfingly possible on a low budget I was severely dissapointed to see that despite focussing 100% on defense/defense rating I only hit about 520 defense.
I figure I will reach the no-crit defense value of 540 with a little work (better gems, better enchants and some trinket/ring/neck adjustments) but in the meantime it seems that working with defense as a stat is very restrictive to what else you can possibly do in terms of gemming enchanting.
So there I am at 520 defense and I can't help but thinking that defense rating is somewhat hard to come by through pure questing/crafting. Sure, the items that do have defense rating on them usually have quite a bit, but it also takes a massive amount of defense rating to become uncrittable.
I suppose it's the mechanic that bothers me. You NEED to be uncrittable; not being uncrittable is hardly an option if you're being slapped around by some raid-boss unless you can soak up a lot of damage and have a healer or two that never heard of the words 'out of mana'.
Compare this to say a warlock where you stack spellpower till there's no tomorrow. There's no real set minimum there... you can go into an instance with a warlock that has 0 spellpower and it's not going to wipe the raid if the rest of the group can compensate for it.
You can't really compensate for a tank who is being crit regularly unless your healer is better than the content you're doing (as if it wasn't hard enough to find a healer in the first place).
That being said, my warlock in his paltry crafted gear does sufficient damage (by most scales) and still has plenty of room to gem/enchant outside of the box.
It's somewhat dissapointing, I had hoped to be able to stack some strength in there for some block value and general oompf but instead I will have to consider defense a top priority to the detriment of literally everything else.
Be that as it may, my paladin is officially done and will soon find his place in my scheme of solo-ing/duo-ing instances giving the old war veteran warlock a nice run for his money despite his obviously less than perfect un-critability.
Looking on the bright side my character sheet now says 'very good' in the frost resistance column with the frost resistance aura up and a quick test with one of the few frost mages left on my server resulted in the frost mage immediately re-speccing to arcane out of sheer frostration (pun intended).
The conclusion would be this: If you don't have a good chance at defense gear via raids/5mans (not everyone can play hours at a time) you're going to have moderate difficulty in hitting that elusive defense value of 540 and you will actually have to work for it a little (i.e. do more than just rely on Blacksmithing to bail you out like I did).
All fixable if you instance a lot, but in the meantime I will divert my attention to my next levelling victim: The druid (and yes I'll be posting something a little less personal and a bit more useful in the near future :P)
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Whose next?
With my paladin sitting at a mere 1.5 bubbles away from 80 and Ulduar prepping it's arrival to tear the bored masses away from mammoth banking I can't help but feel a little worried that nothing will quite top the levelling experience I had on my paladin.
I've always been the levelling type. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy the occasional instance (especially solo/duoing them) but without the XP bar as a constant motivator and the knowledge that all gear eventually becomes obsolete I tend to forget my maxed-out characters in favor of a new levelling challenge. Well in all honesty I am just not enough of a gear hound to run instances ad nauseum.
But the paladin was an amazing experience. Having played him as protection for 99% of his levelling process and the brief but interesting venture into the world of the schokadin BG action I have to say it's going to be difficult to top the experience.
Paladins have massive amounts of defensive options, a solid way to do aoe and since the advent of wrath even protection paladins seem to hit like a truck.
So the question is: what's next?
I am still under the solemn impression that eventually all my characters will be reaching 80 at some point in time but what I have no grip on is what character to play right now...
My druid is sitting at level 73 quite happily munching away at some dailies, my hunter is not far behind at level 70 spending his time spanking his monkey (nono he really has a monkey as pet) and trailing a ways off we find the deathknight whom I had a fleeting love-affair with about a month ago.
It turns out I rather like the defense plate affords me so I am inclined to play my deathknight/warrior for this reason and see if I can come up with at least a moderate AOE spec for them... but I see so many deathknights that I am almost sick of the class without having played it and my warrior is so low-level that it'll be a while before he can throw his weight around.
If I look at 'needs' then I really should play my shaman or my priest for either inscription or jewelcrafting since it would be awfully convenient (not to mention profitable) to have those professions up to par.
If I am looking at the next 'best' thing I would have to go with the mage for some serious AOE potential... but going from a plate class to a cloth class is going to require some mild adjustment in strategy.
I could go on forever, each class has some advantages and disadvantages but it seems like the paladin so far is a very well rounded class that's going to be hard to top.
I need me some inspiration! So tell me friend, how do you pick your next alt?
I've always been the levelling type. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy the occasional instance (especially solo/duoing them) but without the XP bar as a constant motivator and the knowledge that all gear eventually becomes obsolete I tend to forget my maxed-out characters in favor of a new levelling challenge. Well in all honesty I am just not enough of a gear hound to run instances ad nauseum.
But the paladin was an amazing experience. Having played him as protection for 99% of his levelling process and the brief but interesting venture into the world of the schokadin BG action I have to say it's going to be difficult to top the experience.
Paladins have massive amounts of defensive options, a solid way to do aoe and since the advent of wrath even protection paladins seem to hit like a truck.
So the question is: what's next?
I am still under the solemn impression that eventually all my characters will be reaching 80 at some point in time but what I have no grip on is what character to play right now...
My druid is sitting at level 73 quite happily munching away at some dailies, my hunter is not far behind at level 70 spending his time spanking his monkey (nono he really has a monkey as pet) and trailing a ways off we find the deathknight whom I had a fleeting love-affair with about a month ago.
It turns out I rather like the defense plate affords me so I am inclined to play my deathknight/warrior for this reason and see if I can come up with at least a moderate AOE spec for them... but I see so many deathknights that I am almost sick of the class without having played it and my warrior is so low-level that it'll be a while before he can throw his weight around.
If I look at 'needs' then I really should play my shaman or my priest for either inscription or jewelcrafting since it would be awfully convenient (not to mention profitable) to have those professions up to par.
If I am looking at the next 'best' thing I would have to go with the mage for some serious AOE potential... but going from a plate class to a cloth class is going to require some mild adjustment in strategy.
I could go on forever, each class has some advantages and disadvantages but it seems like the paladin so far is a very well rounded class that's going to be hard to top.
I need me some inspiration! So tell me friend, how do you pick your next alt?
Friday, February 13, 2009
Why Bigger bags won't solve your problem
As a warlock in the wonderful World of Warcraft you learn to do a few things very well. You learn to deal with the fact that in WotLK you couldn't pvp if your life depended on it, you learn that being nerfed isn't the end of the world and thanks to soul shards you learn the most important thing of all: Inventory Management
I read a blogpost by Larisa (over at pink pigtail inn) detailing her woes with inventory management and decided it would be interesting to see if we can make inventory management a little easier for those who are continually fighting the bag space monster.
Let me start by saying: Bigger bags won't solve your issue. If you have a full bank now, you will most certainly have a full bank even if you stuff it full of 22 slot bags. Why? Because you're a disorganized packrat, that's why!
That's not to say it's bad being a packrat... I myself am a horrible packrat with a bad knack for collecting darkmoon cards, old world materials and even a fair set of white items. I swear that stuff will come in handy one day... yes it will... *nods forcefully*
The trick is to come up with a system that works for you, that takes away your need to analyze the situation and to keep you from thinking: 'what in the blazes am I going to do with this item?'
And for that you will need: Alts
If you don't have any alts consider rolling up a few death knights. Being as they start at level 55 they make both excellent bankers as well as profession slaves (something to power level professions on).
Of course any type of alt will do but if you're not into alts DK's only need to be levelled out of the starting zone and will make great choices.
Next it's time to run all your alts to the nearest bank and buy up all your bank slots and fill them with netherweave bags which go at a mere 8g a pop. If you can afford bigger bags then more power to you but realistically 16 slot bags should be ample space to store all your crud in. If you can't afford the bank slots yet just buy them as you go along.
If you have significant packrat ambitions then you might want to consider starting a guild on one of your alts and buying some bank tabs. Note that this method is expensive but may be a good long term solution to your storage problems.
So now that you have your alts, and they are all slotted up it's time to do the simple trick of assignment. Here's an example:
My paladin (incidentally my blacksmith) is responsible for all my ores/bars
My Druid (my alchemist) is responsible for all my Herbs/potions
My hunter (the leatherworker) is responsible for all my leathers/hides
My priest (friend of jewelcrafting) is responsible for all gems
etc.
etc.
The trick is to pick a responsible alt for each of the professions available. If you have dual gathering professions you can consider to store raw materials on that character and then send them off to the alts with crafting professions when needed. Last but not least pick an alt responsible for general crapola. Every now and then you come across an item that's interesting but not part of a specific crafting profession, that's where the 'crapola' alt comes in (hearts of darkness come to mind).
Got your assignments? Yes? Write them down... not in any orderly fashion, don't worry about that. Scribble them on your desk for all I care, the fact that you're scribbling them down in the first place will help you remember.
Now, we have alts, we have bankspace, we have bags, and we have a assigments.
The next time you go questing and your bags are full you simply follow these steps for each item you find:
1. Can I use it now? Use it!
2. Can I send it to an assigned alt and use it later? Send it!
3. Can't use it now? Can't use it later? Sell it!
Stop thinking about what to do with those things, use, send, sell the second you hit town. Let your alts worry about sorting out what comes in.
The last and final stage of Inventory management is dealing with all that junk you've been sending all over the place. I do my inventory management on fridays (no idea why) but you can do it on an incidental basis if you like. Just do it before your mailbox timer runs out otherwise it'll go straight back to the character who sent it in the first place.
I have a simple 2 stack policy on items. I will keep no more than 2 stacks or two items of the same kind. Two stacks are enough to supply an immediate (crafting) need. Anything else gets sold by the alt responsible for the product (that way you know what happened to that ore you sold).
The only exceptions to this rule is if you're stockpiling stuff for powerlevelling something or anticipate that you can sell it for a nice profit somewhere further down the line.
Not sure what to do with what you found? Send it to the crapola alt, that should be the only alt with any real bank-space issues and yes, you will have to sort through the crapola and decide what to do with it sooner or later.
That's all there is to it, the length of this blogpost belies its simplicity but it's a simple system with very few drawbacks.
So let's recap:
1. Make alts
2. Buy (Netherweave) bags and all bankslots on each alt
3. Assign materials to the alts (i.e. all ores/bars to the paladin)
4. Use, Send, Sell after you're done questing
5. On regular intervals (a week, two weeks) clean your alts mailbox keeping 2 stacks of each mat in total or two items of the same type (make exceptions if needed)
What you gain is an overview of where your stuff is and a general indication of how much of it you have but more importantly you can clean your bags out after you're done questing without having to do any inventory management at that time because you can simply send off whatever you have to the correct alts.
Incidentally you also build up enough stock to supply your crafting needs rather than having to buy it from the AH. Especially on low-pop servers a lot of items are simply not available on the AH when you need them... there's nothing more frustrating than being 1 mat short of what you want.
There's other ways to manage inventory... possibly better. But this way works for me so feel free to use it and modify it to suit your own needs.
I read a blogpost by Larisa (over at pink pigtail inn) detailing her woes with inventory management and decided it would be interesting to see if we can make inventory management a little easier for those who are continually fighting the bag space monster.
Let me start by saying: Bigger bags won't solve your issue. If you have a full bank now, you will most certainly have a full bank even if you stuff it full of 22 slot bags. Why? Because you're a disorganized packrat, that's why!
That's not to say it's bad being a packrat... I myself am a horrible packrat with a bad knack for collecting darkmoon cards, old world materials and even a fair set of white items. I swear that stuff will come in handy one day... yes it will... *nods forcefully*
The trick is to come up with a system that works for you, that takes away your need to analyze the situation and to keep you from thinking: 'what in the blazes am I going to do with this item?'
And for that you will need: Alts
If you don't have any alts consider rolling up a few death knights. Being as they start at level 55 they make both excellent bankers as well as profession slaves (something to power level professions on).
Of course any type of alt will do but if you're not into alts DK's only need to be levelled out of the starting zone and will make great choices.
Next it's time to run all your alts to the nearest bank and buy up all your bank slots and fill them with netherweave bags which go at a mere 8g a pop. If you can afford bigger bags then more power to you but realistically 16 slot bags should be ample space to store all your crud in. If you can't afford the bank slots yet just buy them as you go along.
If you have significant packrat ambitions then you might want to consider starting a guild on one of your alts and buying some bank tabs. Note that this method is expensive but may be a good long term solution to your storage problems.
So now that you have your alts, and they are all slotted up it's time to do the simple trick of assignment. Here's an example:
My paladin (incidentally my blacksmith) is responsible for all my ores/bars
My Druid (my alchemist) is responsible for all my Herbs/potions
My hunter (the leatherworker) is responsible for all my leathers/hides
My priest (friend of jewelcrafting) is responsible for all gems
etc.
etc.
The trick is to pick a responsible alt for each of the professions available. If you have dual gathering professions you can consider to store raw materials on that character and then send them off to the alts with crafting professions when needed. Last but not least pick an alt responsible for general crapola. Every now and then you come across an item that's interesting but not part of a specific crafting profession, that's where the 'crapola' alt comes in (hearts of darkness come to mind).
Got your assignments? Yes? Write them down... not in any orderly fashion, don't worry about that. Scribble them on your desk for all I care, the fact that you're scribbling them down in the first place will help you remember.
Now, we have alts, we have bankspace, we have bags, and we have a assigments.
The next time you go questing and your bags are full you simply follow these steps for each item you find:
1. Can I use it now? Use it!
2. Can I send it to an assigned alt and use it later? Send it!
3. Can't use it now? Can't use it later? Sell it!
Stop thinking about what to do with those things, use, send, sell the second you hit town. Let your alts worry about sorting out what comes in.
The last and final stage of Inventory management is dealing with all that junk you've been sending all over the place. I do my inventory management on fridays (no idea why) but you can do it on an incidental basis if you like. Just do it before your mailbox timer runs out otherwise it'll go straight back to the character who sent it in the first place.
I have a simple 2 stack policy on items. I will keep no more than 2 stacks or two items of the same kind. Two stacks are enough to supply an immediate (crafting) need. Anything else gets sold by the alt responsible for the product (that way you know what happened to that ore you sold).
The only exceptions to this rule is if you're stockpiling stuff for powerlevelling something or anticipate that you can sell it for a nice profit somewhere further down the line.
Not sure what to do with what you found? Send it to the crapola alt, that should be the only alt with any real bank-space issues and yes, you will have to sort through the crapola and decide what to do with it sooner or later.
That's all there is to it, the length of this blogpost belies its simplicity but it's a simple system with very few drawbacks.
So let's recap:
1. Make alts
2. Buy (Netherweave) bags and all bankslots on each alt
3. Assign materials to the alts (i.e. all ores/bars to the paladin)
4. Use, Send, Sell after you're done questing
5. On regular intervals (a week, two weeks) clean your alts mailbox keeping 2 stacks of each mat in total or two items of the same type (make exceptions if needed)
What you gain is an overview of where your stuff is and a general indication of how much of it you have but more importantly you can clean your bags out after you're done questing without having to do any inventory management at that time because you can simply send off whatever you have to the correct alts.
Incidentally you also build up enough stock to supply your crafting needs rather than having to buy it from the AH. Especially on low-pop servers a lot of items are simply not available on the AH when you need them... there's nothing more frustrating than being 1 mat short of what you want.
There's other ways to manage inventory... possibly better. But this way works for me so feel free to use it and modify it to suit your own needs.
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