Hyjal vs. Vashj'ir - Brief Thoughts

Okay, Quintalan isn't exactly undergeared going into his first Cata zone, so I was prepared for an easier time.

I wasn't prepared for the Elites stuck in the middle of those burning areas when you're searching for the staff parts.

Q was wading in, taking 2 of those non-elites at a time, when Holy Wrath pulled another piece of "trash" over.

"Man," I thought, "that one's hitting hard."

The other two trash disposed of, Q turned his attention to that new elemental and... 

"Elite.  Oops."

During the corpse run, I reminded myself that I should still take a page from Neve and Tom's playbook and go easy on the trash pulling.

***

When I got to the portion of the quest chain where you had to escort Fandral Staghelm through the Emerald Dream, I was amused.  "Well, well, well.  Both he and Magatha are on the outs.  Good."

***

While I know I'm only partway through the zone, one thing that strikes me from the drops so far is the abundance of tanking gear.  Most of the Plate drops in Vashj'ir were DPS and/or Healing related, so I got used to gearing up quickly.  Hyjal, however, is more tank friendly.

Great news for tanks, but not so great news for melee DPS.  I'm not big on reforging Cata green gear --I'd rather save my money when I know the next zone will have gear to replace it-- but let's just say I'm glad that Q started with better gear than Tomakan did.

***

Convoy to L85 Update
Tomakan:  L83 in Deepholm
Nevelanthana:  L83 in Deepholm
Quintalan:  L81 in Hyjal

WoW in Popular Culture

Courtesy of historiclols.com.

A Few Short Notes

Where's my Can of Raid?

I hate buggy questlines.

The end of the Fleshwerks questline in Icecrown was bugged for what seemed like ages before that finally got fixed, and it kept me from finishing the Icecrown quest achievement for a while.  The same thing happened in Howling Fjord with the end of the Ymiron's questline, and that was my stumbling block in that region too.

And now we have Defending the Rift, a special gift for you from Cata.

After trying for about about a dozen times to get the questline cutscene to work, I gave up and called it a night.

Some people claim that it's Horde only, but since I was doing the quest on Tomakan, I know that Defending the Rift has it in for Draenei, too.

/sigh


Why Is She LFD Being so Difficult?

I have a short, simple goal before I get to L83:  Finish the Northrend Dungeonmaster achieve on both toons.  It's not a hard thing to do; just get finished with all of the 5-mans (except ICC and ToC) on regular mode.

Then why does LFD hate me so much?

By my count, there are three Wrath instances that are impossible to solo:  Trial of the Champion, The Oculus, and Halls of Reflection.  ToC and Oculus are impossible to do because of the vehicle portion of the program; you need more than one person in there to survive the joust in ToC and the Eregos fight in Oculus.  Halls of Reflection has that nasty DPS race at the end, and no toon is able to put out that much DPS in that short a time before 'Big Boy Arthas' comes within range and nukes you.

To finish these, all you ought to be able to do is queue for only the instances you want, and then slowly eliminate them from the list as you complete them, right?

Then why did LFD send me into ToC over a half dozen times on each toon, giving me the same bosses to fight, without any variation?

I finally finished up enough stuff on Tom so that all I have left is a spare boss in Ahn'kahet that I must have missed, but Neve is still stuck in LFD hell, waiting on a non-fail run of The Oculus to miraculously appear.


Overheard around Azeroth

In The Oculus:  "What do you mean, Red is the tank?  Red is the DPS, Bronze is the tank!"


In Culling of Stratholme:  "What are you doing here, Ginger?  You're L82!"  [Ginger was Tomakan, in disguise as a red haired bearded guy.]

Tomakan:  "I want the achieve before I can't queue for this."

"There is no achieve here in normal!"  "Yeah!"

Tomakan:  "[Northrend Dungeonmaster]"

"..."


In Icecrown:  "So, how are things in Northrend today?"

Neve:  "Cold"

"Oh, but I'm sure we could cuddle somewhere for warmth."

Neve:  "No thanks."

"But I've got a nice roaring fire here going."


In Pit of Saron:  "Why did I die?"

Healer:  "Next time, kill adds before you pull Ick.  And don't stand in the green stuff.  Are you sure you've done this before?"

"Of course I have!"

Healer (in whisper to me):  "Yeah, right."


Also in Pit of Saron:  "What do we do now?"

"Run up the tunnel and don't stop until you reach..." [tank takes off] "...a halfway mark."

[tank runs up to the safe location]

Healer: "Stop!"

Tomakan:  "Stop here!" /jumps

[tank keeps running]

Healer:  "Oh Lord"


EtA: Added the rest of Mr. Smooth's attempts to pick up Neve.

Warring Priorities

It must be nice, being a master of the Auction House.

Not to mention the player who has an entire stable of toons sitting at L85.

And still have a life.  (Or a job.  Or both.)

For most of us mere mortals, we have to content ourselves with prioritizing our WoW time.  And truth be told, playing the role of Farmer Bob is one of those tasks that I typically put at the bottom of my to-do list.  My thought process is simple:  what's more fun, leveling in Vashj'ir, or mining Cobalt?*  Fighting in Alterac Valley, or farming Frostweave?

It used to be the case that I'd combine my farming with waiting for the LFD or BG queue, but since the combination of Battlegroups caused a reduction in queue times, I discovered that I didn't have that much luck getting a lot of farming done.  And right now, I'd rather be out questing rather than farming.

Of course, a Tailor still has to have her Frostweave to finish leveling.  To help his fellow Hordie out, I've been pulling Quintalan off of whatever bench he's been spending his days on and sending him into Icecrown to beat up on Converted Heroes for their Frostweave.  Once he gets a pile, he forwards them on to Neve so she can practice her skills.  If you guessed that I don't exactly sound enthusiastic, you're right.

It's one thing if I've seen all of the Cata zones, and poked my nose into each nook and cranny on both factions.  I'd be gearing up for PvP, trying my hand at heroics, and working on what I consider side stuff.  But since Neve needs the gear she can get from Tailoring (and the boosts from Enchanting), I'm Farmer Quintalan instead.

Tomakan needs the cash, and while the questing is giving a good supply of gold, I don't want him to get to L83 without having visited all of the Northrend instances.  So the past couple of days, he's been Miner Tom.

Not exactly the stuff that heroes are made of.  Unless, of course, your idea of a hero is more along the lines of Cincinnatus.

I remember reading a post by Linedan from Achtung Panzercow on his attempts to play EVE Online, and my reaction was that if a game feels too much like work, it's no longer a game.**  There are days when the WoW grind is too much like work, and not enough like play.  That's when I remind myself that to take the measure of a game, you have to assess the good with the bad.  Does the fun outweigh the grind?

For me, it does.  This grind will eventually go away, and I can move on to other things.  There may come a day when the grind no longer makes the game worth it, but it isn't there yet.



*Cobalt was selling for higher prices than Saronite or Thorium on Ysera last week.
**Unless your work is a game, then all bets are off.

Interactive Drug Trips of Vashj'ir Past

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed being a Naga.  That whirlwind attack is plenty nice too; every time I heard that whistling noise I thought of Ginsu knives.

 

They even split Kvaldir!  Now Available at L78!

As an aside, I still think a group of renegade Naga could be a good fit for the Horde or at least a Neutral installation, but I'm not exactly all the way through Vashj'ir yet.  So who knows?

I had mixed feelings playing the Battlemaiden's questline, however.  In that old conundrum you'd find in The Frozen Throne, who do you root for:  the group aligned with the Lich King (Kvaldir), or the group aligned with the Old Gods (Naga + surprise guests)?  Either way, the mortal races lose.

In general, both the Horde and Alliance quest lines are alike.  There are a few minor differences, namely with the minor sideshow stuff from Goblins/Gnomes, but that's about it.  The tone of the characters, however, is completely different.  The Horde characters are out for blood, while the Alliance characters have their words tempered a bit.  In the 'defend the ship' event, the Horde Captain yells "Make 'em bleed!"  The Alliance Captain doesn't say anything quite so memorable:  "For Stormwind!"  On the flip side, having the Draenei Earthen Ring member talk about having to run and hide her interest in Shamanism rings far truer than a Tauren, and the Dwarven Earthen Ring member saying "Ugh, an Orc... This will take some getting used to" made me laugh.

Finally, between the second and the last of the Battlemaiden sequences culminating in "Visions of Vashj'ir Past", both toons got themselves geared up enough to qualify for the first of the Cataclysm regular instances.  So by the time you're through with the Shimmering Expanse you're instance ready, with almost all of your gear replaced by new Cata greens.  It's not always optimal --Tom was wearing some tanking shoulders for a good while-- but it's far better than what you're equipped with coming out of Wrath as a fresh L80.

I'm planning on taking Quintalan in the opposite direction to Hyjal and see how the regearing process goes over there.  Naturally, he's going to have a lot of advantages that Tom and Neve didn't have, but that's the breaks.


Convoy to L85 Update
Tomakan:  L82 in Vashj'ir
Nevelanthana:  L82 in Vash'jir
Quintalan:  L80 and being used for farming Frostweave in Icecrown

EtA:  For the Paladins, so far I've only seen one Relic drop in Vashj'ir, and it's a Holy Spec Relic given you by the woman who sends you out hunting for her lost items.  That means for you Prot and Ret Spec Pallys whatever Relic you've got on when you start up Cata will probably still be with you throughout Vashj'ir.  In Tomakan's case, it was an old Relic he picked up in one of the Tempest Keep instances and promptly forgot about.  I don't believe Tom encountered a Relic at all while running the Wrath 5-mans, and the point of the exercise was not to go out buying stuff but instead just keep on truckin'.

EtA:  A Ret (kinda Prot) Relic finally dropped in Vashj'ir, right before the end of zone.  For Prot Pallys, you might want to pass on the Prot gear that is an alternate, but that's your choice.

Confession time...

Alright, so I have a confession to make here… having one piece of armor that doesn’t match the rest of my gear really bugs me. For instance, my current set of armor is the blue crystal look of tier 11 along with the flat gunmetal grey color of justice point gear. And then there are my legs they’re iLevel 346, but they’re…. Bright red. Ug.


My wife will gleefully (seriously, giggling and finger pointing) point out the fact that she’s overheard a few of us very manly gamers discussing what color the guild tabard should be in order to match our gear.

And this obsession extends past just gear coordination. When I made my Orc Deathknight, I chose the darkest skin available because it looked the best with armor. And when I chose to race change my warrior to a Worgen, he’s got black fur because it looks the best with the different armors. And this even extends to race choices.

My warrior was created during vanilla. It was originally created to be a level 29 twink – and what a power house he was (There’s nothing quite as satisfying as the “blegh-ack” cry of a one shot gnome).

Well when I decided to start playing my warrior more seriously, I race changed to undead, because they have the best shield slam animation. And I got tired of not being able to see directly in front of myself and not to mention the giant furry egg on his back.

And then I found the guild I’m in now and ended up race changing to a human. But I got bored with that, because at the time my main character was also a human. So I changed to a dwarf – which ended up annoying me in the long run because I literally had to jump to hit some targets and stairs were the death of me a few times because I wasn’t in line of sight of the healers at the bottom of the steps.

With the introduction of Worgen to the Alliance, I was very much looking forward to race changing to one because they looked cool in the videos I had watched and they were new. Not to mention a new chiropractically challenged race would make me feel more like I was playing Horde.

I have now been a Worgen since release and I gotta admit – they’re not all that grand. I like the fact that they added sounds to changing stances as a warrior, as well as adding sounds shouts. It gets a bit tiresome to listen to this for every shout and every stance dance.

And I’m not a fan of the way helmets look on them either. It’s like they’ve got the same problem as trolls do. It’s as if they took a helmet that would fit a smaller race just fine, and cut holes in it to modify it to fit. I’m just not a fan…

And then there’s the boots – I’m the tank here. I’m the wall of iron, steel, wood, muscle, and bone with the sole purpose of stopping the bad guy from beating up everybody else. – So we’ve got the bright red legs with backwards knees and the blue / grey boots with awesome clunky looking reinforcements over the knee and bare toes. It just doesn’t sit right… If I were the boss mob I’d just stomp on the tank’s foot and call it a day.

I run around with the helmet turned off – we discussed this already, and I also turn capes off. The way the shield rests on a Worgen’s back looks right, but it’s almost as if they copied the cape animation from a Dra’nei because it doesn’t look like it flows quite right, and it ends up clipping most of my shield off.

And probably the biggest annoying I have is weapons. It seems that the awesome looking epic pvp axe I have doesn’t scale any larger when I’m in Worgen form, than then I’m in human form. Which makes the weapon (to me at least) seem kinda wimpy. Not that you could see it anyhow from how many flips I end up doing when wielding a two handed weapon (It was cool at first, but I’m not playing Metroid or Sonic – do I really need to spend that much time curled up in a ball?) And when blade storming, my claws end up sticking out further than the blade. And it probably good they do, because of the way Worgen hold their weapon when blade storming - not that getting repeatedly smacked the by flat edge of an axe wouldn’t hurt after a while, but it just looks pitiful.

So, I’m pretty sold on yet one more race change…

Under the Sea Plaguelands

If you want to know my opinion of sending the two guinea pigs straight into their first Cata zone --Vashj'ir-- I think the title pretty much sums it up.

For those of you who were around on WoW prior to Cata*, can you remember what it was like taking your first toon at ~L55 and making a mad dash for Light's Hope Chapel?  The Eastern Plaguelands was the scary zone in the Old World (sorry, Silithus and Blasted Lands), where it seemed the waves of Scourge were unending and you had to go at a crawl to reach the one safe place in the entire zone.  Oh, and it sucked if you happened to be on the road at the same time as the Scarlet Courier; you'd have been better off just running into Plaguewood naked instead.

Of course, all things being equal, some toons were more equal than others at dealing with the challenges of the old Eastern Plaguelands.  Paladins were custom made for the zone, while Cloth wearing toons suffered the most.

In a very real sense, that's what I felt when Neve and Tom swam out into Vashj'ir for the first time.

Neve, as a Frost Mage, has the built in advantage of a minion. 

Boy, did she need it.

My experience leveling with her in the Old World (pre-v4.0.1) came in handy.  The mantra "nice and slow" was vital to her survival.  She could handle one 30-40k HP enemy at a time, but two made her sweat.  She had very little recourse for healing during a battle, so she had to rely heavily on damage mitigation using her shields.  Because the Naga were a) all over the place and b) prone to aggroing on her, she was forced to stand and fight a lot.  The shields she had were often exhausted before their cooldown was over, so these fights became a DPS race.  Afterward, the Conjured Mana Strudel was steady part of her diet.

Still, she didn't die at all until the "defend the ship" event.

A Cloth wearer like a mage is often a sitting duck in a melee style event, and Neve was no exception.  She survived multiple attacks by one Naga, but two at once were almost too much.  And three...

After that experience, things became a little easier.  She finally started to get a few Cata greens, and her health (and firepower) jumped 3k.  In fact, the only time she died after that was when the rare Lady Ya-Ya (yeah, I know, a nod to Lady Gaga) spawned right behind her.

Tomakan, by comparison, has built in healing, and is surrounded by nice, hefty (if puny by Cata standards) Plate.  And when Art of War procs, Exorcism will deal 10k damage at a pop.  He found the going quite a bit easier than Neve did, and he didn't die once.  Okay, I don't think the elite giant catching you from behind should count, but that's just me.  I did follow the same rules that I laid down with Neve:  one enemy at a time, switch out damage (Ret Aura) for protection (Protection Aura), and go slow.  I'll admit I was a bit concerned that Tom would have it harder than Neve because she could get more damage in from distance than he could, but he made up for it in better armor protection and higher spiky damage.

Now, I think both toons are getting their Cata legs under them, and while they aren't going to be knocking on the door of any instances soon, I'm more confident in their ability to survive in the Cata zones.

So the question I posed, "can you survive in the Cata zones going straight from Northrend after dinging L80?", is so far a yes.  Now, the "will you die a lot?" question is still out there, but we'll see.  A corollary to all this, "how long will it take you to be instance ready?", now that's a head scratcher.  I suspect it'll be after all of Vashj'ir is complete, but I don't know for certain.  Even with the Cata greens I have, I don't have a high enough iLevel to get into normal Trial of the Champion on either toon, so that gives you a feel on how far I have to go.



*Okay, that's just about everyone, but you never know.