Archive for October, 2008
My guild were trying to decide what instances to run last night, and decided we would go and give the new post patch 3 karazhan a go.
I’ve raided karazhan on a couple of characters on the horde side pre patch so was a bit nervous as to how a 5-6 man team would do in there now. I’d also heard about various people 5 manning the new, easier Kara but didn’t know what their level of gear was.
The guild I am in is a very small friendly guild, and whilst none of the others had ever raided Kara before I knew from various 5 man normal and heroic instance runs that they would be more than capable.
So we decided to go in there and just see how we got on.
I really shouldn’t have worried. We had a blast.
WE 5 manned all the trash up to the Huntsman, then a 6th guildie said he would come along, so we skipped the boss and killed some trash towards moroes.
The 6th player came in and we had to reclear to the huntsman as the trash had respawned.
The hunstman was 1 shotted. Very easy fight.
We then decided to have a go at Tenris Mirkblood. We read up on the strategy and cleared the entire ring of rooms. (we even killed the chef area at the back of moroes room just in case). We opened the door and pulled the boss.
It’s an easy fight. Just a kite fest. Dps backs up round the circle with the tank bringing tenris back with him. When the red beam hits a player and Mirblood changes form dps stops. So long as you avoid those red spirits (which you will if your dps lead the way) it’s a piece of cake. Slightly annoying that he does the soul linking (red beam) so much but we downed him first go.
We looted, gathered our badges and moved on to take out moroes.
I always found moroes to be an interesting fight. In previous runs success depended on crowd controlling a couple of the group of four adds. I thought we would struggle, but we didn’t. Moroes one shotted. Two more easy badges.
Now time was running out the raid would have to stop at 11pm and we had to choose between Maiden and Opera, and as it was the first time for my guildies I thought the opera event would be the most fun, so we cleared the way there.
Just before we got to the event a message came up about 15:00 minute server reset, so we piled in.
It was the Big Bad Wolf. I explained the fight and showed the path for little red riding hood to run.
It was the usual great fun… with people giggling as others were changed in to little red riding hood and laughing as they died. our priest was first. I battle rezzed him. I think we ended up with 4 out of 6 of us dead, but myself and the tank were able to finish him off.
To cap it all, a rather nice set of leather trousers dropped of the boss. I’d got a healing idol earlier (but I’m balance, I’m not going to spend huge amounts of time healing) but the trousers were a real upgrade, and will be even better when it gets some spellthread on it. Of course all this gear will get replaced really quickly in a couple of weeks with Wrath of the lich king coming out , but It’s still nice to get a gear upgrade.
All in all a big success. I told the guild to carry on without me over the weekend, but they’ve agreed that all of us
should come back on monday and do some more bosses. They’ll go to Zulaman instead.
I wish I could play weekends!!!
Everyone agreed this was great fun. I know it’s easier, but you know what I don’t care.
Blizzard spent a great deal of time and effort building Kara. It’s a beautiful instance with plenty of atmosphere and attention to detail.
I would say it’s the same difficulty as a normal instance now, so If you’ve done heroics, or easily clear the level 70 outland instances you should do fine here.
October 31st, 2008
I dinged 70 last night, and decided to have a little dabble in Battlegrounds. So stepped in to my first Alterac valley.
I didn’t have high expectations - I had a grand total of 51 resilience, about 7k health and 6-7k of mana but I was pleasantly surprised.
A bit of background - I’ve battlegrounds extensively on a horde Warlock, hunter and shaman at 70. I’m not incredible at pvp, but get to know how to play the class well enough that I’m a handful. I do alright despite mediocre gear. In the past I found I went through the following stages.
Stage 1.
Nervous and useless. I actually used to get Buterflies the first time I pvped on my characters. It was worse with the warlock (the first) but I still got it on my shaman. In this one I would basically die quickly. I mash buttons, never quite sure of what I’m doing. I seem to get a mindfreeze that locks me out of doing anything useful until after I’m dead. This is probably the steepest part of the learning curve for me.
Stage 2.
No longer nervous, slightly better than useless. This is where I start to figure out what on earth I’m doing. I start working out approaches against different classes. My action bars have my main assault spells keybound and all extra abillities I require accessible.
I’ve worked out which is my spammable spell (This is the one that does decent damage, doesn’t use excessive mana and has a short cast time). I’m starting to get to the point where I know what to do, but gear issues results in lots of deaths despite doing things right.
Stage 3.
Competent. At this point my casting and approaches to different classes are second nature and my gear is starting to improve so that I am harder to kill and I get some great fights.
With the druid I went straight to stage 2. No nerves and I was at least able to try to make a fight of it. However I made a ton of noob mistakes.
1. Starfire. Great opener from stealth, or from distance or when the opponent is focused on someone else, but this is not the spammable spell I was treating it as. It has a whopping huge cast time, which leaves me open for stuns, silences, counterspells and spell locks. Silly me.
2. Cyclone. This is a great spell - now I just must remember to use it. crowd controlling a target even for just 6 seconds can be vital. I didn’t cast this once, and should have been using it .
3. Entangling roots and natures grasp. I was having trouble with two warlocks yesterday mainly due to the pesky felhunters. One warlock was correctly spell locking me , the other wasn’t so good. I should at the very least have rooted the felhunter outside of spell lock range or whacked on natures grasp, so when he hit me he would be rooted in place.
4. Multiple forms and mobility. I love moonkin form - unfortunately a bit too much. I have a number of forms at my disposal and should use them effectively. For example, against casters such as the affliction locks I faced I should really stick in caster form. Keep heal over times up on myself whilst dealing damage. I made the mistake of figuring I could pop out and heal when needed, but forgot to factor in fear. Without any pvp trinket I ran around like a headless chicken and the dots were ticking away. If only I had rejuvination and lifebloom mitigating some of that damage. I should also have used cheetah form a bit more. Swap to cheetah, run off out of range, pop a big heal and some HoTs and run back in to battle.
I don’t mind making mistakes - it’s a way of learning, and I feel I’ve learnt a shed load in just 1 little battleground.
I’ll do a bit of pvp - but I’m not even bothering to farm honour for gear, as WotLK is just around the corner and the level to 80. I’ll save what honour I get.
However if I was to pvp more I’d definitely swap a load of points about - certainly getting moonkin frenzy.
October 28th, 2008
I posted just after patch 3.0 came out with the new reduced XP requirements for level 60-70.
Well, I now have practical experience of those levels, and have to admit that leveling is pretty damn quick now.
My druid has dinged 69, has only quested in Hellfire, Zangarmarsh, Terrokar and nagrand and will hit 70 tonight (My first alliance 70).
So I’ll have 3 full areas to do some quick quests and get some quick money together and will start the daily grin before WotLK arrives and I get to start levelling to 80.
October 27th, 2008
So I spent some time putting together my elemental shaman build for Patch 3.0
I’m primarily PVE focused, with a bit of BG’s for fun, so this build reflects that,
Elemental (51 points)
5 Convection
5 Concussion
1 Elemental Focus
5 elemental fury
2 Improved Fire Nova Totem
3 Eye of the Storm
2 Storm reach
1 Call of thunder
1 Unrelenting Storm
1 Elemental Precision
5 Lightning Mastery
1 Elemental Mastery
3 Elemental Shields
2 Elemental Oath
4 Lightning Overload
3 Astral Shift
1 Totem of Wrath
5 Storm, Earth and Fire
1 ThunderStorm
Enhancement (10 points)
5 Ancestral Knowledge
5 Thundering Strikes
In theory it should do okay for PVP as well as PVE although I might move a couple of points to improved ghost wolf for quick escapes.
I love the idea of thunderstorm (mainly for PVP I guess - I at least want to try pushing a few enemies off the bridges in AV and Eye of the Storm).
October 21st, 2008
My realm was up and down like a yo-yo yesterday, and in some of my downtime a couple of my guildie friends were trying to come up with a balance druid build for patch 3 and to take us up to the level 80 cap when Wotlk comes out.
After much too-ing and froing this is what we settled on…
Balance (57 points)
5/5 Starlight Wrath
3/3 Moonglow
2/2 Nature’s Majesty
2/2 Improved Moonfire
3/3 Brambles
3/3 Nature’s Grace
1/1 Nature’s Splendor
2/2 Nature’s Reach
5/5 Vengeance
3/3 Lunar Guidance
1/1 Insect Swarm
3/3 Dreamstate
5/5 Moonfury
2/2 Balance of Power
1/1 Moonkin Form
3/3 Improved Moonkin Form
5/5 Wrath of Cenarius
1/1 Typhoon
1/1 Force of Nature
5/5 Earth and Moon
1/1 Starfall
Feral Combat (0 points)
Restoration (14 points)
2/2 Improved Mark of the Wild
3/3 Nature’s Focus
5/5 Furor
3/3 Intensity
1/1 Omen of Clarity
So that would be our 80 build…. for a 70 build we would take out 5 points from Wrath of Cenarius and probably 5 points from the resto tree.
Some caveats about this build - it’s very much a build for PVE, and also works from the principle that a lot of time will be spent in instances with guildies.
I think it is very viable solo.
October 17th, 2008
After much anticipation (and much downloading of huge files) I logged in to my freshly patched Warcraft.
The log in screen has changed completely, to reflect wrath of the lich king theming,
and has a wonderful skeletal dragon fly in roar then fly off again.
The first thing I wanted to do was confirm that the XP required to level from 60-70 has been nerfed.
So i hope on my druid, who had between half and three quarters of a bar of XP pre patch.
Hurrah!!! He was now sitting with a full XP bar, and only requiring 1 xp to level to 63.
So I handed in a quest I had completed pre patch and dinged 63. The amount of xp required to level to 64 was
way down than pre patch levels.
I then decided to respec the druid (as talents have all been reset). Thankfully I decided to try a sample build using
an online talent build. I was about 3/4 of the way through the tree when I realised I would have run out of points.
The balance tree is just jam packed with wonderful talents, a lot of which I’m not sure what I need.
I was overwhelmed. I decided to rethink, and decided I would travel down the tree to get the end talent then flesh out
some abilities as I level.
I’m pretty sure my future will involve a lot of respeccing in the near future, but for the time being I just wanted to
get something workable.
I went off to the trainer and spent about 30-40 gold training up abilities. It’s well worth it though.
I decided to quest for a bit and try out the build. All I can say is WoW. The mana efficiency of my druid
seemed a lot better. I was seeing bigger number crits from star fire. If I got a crit on my opening starfire I was
pretty much 3 shotting mobs my level. There was a variation in kill speed though. Some would get 3 shotted, if i
didn’t get crits I would be firing off a fair few wraths. Survivability didn’t seem to have been affected.
A couple of guildies decided that we would try to do hellfire ramparts to get used to our new abilities.
We were four manning it. I was in there with a 61 hunter, 62 holy priest, 62 warrior tank, so we certainly didn’t
outlevel the instance.
We absolutely ripped the place apart. Entangling roots can now be cast indoors. Net result is that a druid can now
perform crowd control really well, especially if you have a beast in the group as you can hibernate one, root another.
This talent alone is a huge, huge boost.
Another thing I noticed was that nature’s grasp is avaiable to all druids (I think - i’m sure I didn’t spec it).
This is a great emergency button. You’ve pulled aggro, pop natures grasp, get hit and step back now that the mob is
rooted.
With some buffs on I saw starfire crits of 3.4k which wasn’t too bad at all.
Now - it’s not just the druid that has been severely buffed.
The 61 hunter pet was pretty much able to offtank. Bearing in mind it wasn’t specced to be a tank, the ravager was able
to hold aggro on a mob (and if it was a caster may actually have killed it).
Tanks I’m pretty sure are doing sizeable damage themselves.
The most telling evidence of everyones new found power was when we took down the last boss. We’ve had to pull in a 70
paladin in the past to tank it. Even then it took a while. Well as of last night we ripped the boss to shreds.
Part of me feels good about this ability, but another part was wondering if it all was a bit too easy.
So a positive patch from my viewpoint.
One negative - I now need to figure out specs for my 70 lock, hunter and shaman, and specs for my multibox teams.
Then again I do think i’ll enjoy their respective new found abilties too.
October 16th, 2008
It’s patch 3 today and I am like a cat on a hot tin roof.
I’ve had it confirmed from the US realms that the 60-70 level XP requirement has been nerfed significantly (which is the main thing I’ve been looking forward to)
Going from :
60 - 494000
61 - 574700
62 - 614400
63 - 650300
64 - 682300
65 - 701200
66 - 734100
67 - 753700
68 - 768900
69 - 779700
to :
60 - 290000
61 - 317000
62 - 349000
63 - 386000
64 - 428000
65 - 475000
66 - 527000
67 - 585000
68 - 648000
69 - 717000
This will be absolutely fantastic. I’ll get my druid to 70, and level up my level 61 horde and alliance teams that bit quicker as well.
I’m not sure what else is in the patch - and I’m quite nervous about the tree changes. I haven’t a clue what talents to choose,and considering I’ve got fairly high levels of most classes i’ve got a lot of work ahead of me.
October 15th, 2008
Selecting your combination of classes is probably one of the most important decisions you can make when it comes to multiboxing. Get the selection wrong and you are in for a frustrating time, and lots of deaths as you try to make your team work together.
When starting out, avoid multiple melee characters (my recommendation, if you feel like multiple melee go for it).
Melee is difficult to handle as a multiboxer in warcraft, you have range issues with some character being in range of the target mob, whilst other are outside of melee distance.
Melee also breaks follow which until you get used to spamming your follow macro will result in leaving characters behind and having to go back (which can still happen with casters if you channel spells or sit to eat/drink)
Mobs are also prone to slight adjustments, moving around at times, which can leave your perfectly positioned team outside melee range. There are ways to address this - leave your group in a set position and lead the prey back to them with your
brain character but for your first team I would definitely suggest only having casters or at most one melee character and having that as lead character.
When starting out I would also suggest trying to limit the number of different classes you have. It can be quite difficult mapping abilities that a hunter has and combining them with a warlock then adding a mage and having an effective group at the end of it. It can be done, and is very rewarding when you do, but for a starting group I wouldn’t recommend it.
You also need to decide what sort of group you want - is it primarily pvp, in which case you want to output shed loads of damage and may be unconcerned with not having a healer so long as your team gets plenty of kills, or is it for pve, instances and the like, in which case you’ll want more damage mitigation and healing support, in the shape of a dedicated healer, or a class that can heal itself.
There is one class that can do both and that’s the shaman.
Mail wearing, self healing, ressing, damage dealing, shield wearing monsters of dps whether in pvp or pve (Elemental spec of course).
For pvp there are also multiple warlock groups (perhaps combined with a shadow priest) multiple mages, multiple hunters. Bascially any class known for it’s massive damage output will work well here).
At the end of the day - pick a class you enjoy (if you have prior experience) and a team that you like. Don’t be afraid to start teams, and to abandon them if they aren’t working for you.
I’m levelling a balance druid team - I reckon they’ll be great for pvp and stealth instance runs, and I loved the druid class having levelled one to 62.
October 14th, 2008
I thought as I tend to talk about my multiboxing a fair deal on the blog that I should make a post to give an overview of what multiboxing is and how it works. So here goes.
Multiboxing is controlling multiple characters in a game at the same time (In this case world of warcraft). This is achieved by having multiple accounts (WARNING: All of which must belong to you and be in your name or your accounts will be banned).
You run multiple instances of wow at the same time and use either a hardware or software solution to pass key presses from one wow instance to the others. These different instances of wow can be running on 1 single computer or can be running on multiple different computers.
So what does this mean and what does it let you do?
Lets say you were boxing 5 characters, all warlocks. You have shadow bolt on your casting bar and it is bound to the key 1. Assuming all warlocks have the same target selected, you would press 1 in your main instance of wow, and your software/hardware would broadcast that key press to the other instances so the other 4 warlocks would start casting shadowbolt. Resulting (usually) in one dead mob. Personally, I am using a software solution called Keyclone.
Multiboxing also requires a fair amount of in game macros. Imagine in the above scenario if the warlocks pressed their tab key (to target another mob) in a fairly busy area. It is highly likely that some (if not all) of your warlocks would have different monsters targeted. You then press your button to cast shadowbolt and have multiple monsters fighting you. This is why you need to choose a lead character. The lead character or brain selects the target to be killed, then macros on the slaves select the lead characters target as their target and cast on that. It sounds horribly complicated, but once you get the macro done for one of your abilities you can produce macros for your other abilities really quickly.
A simple macro for example might be:
/target toona
/assist
/cast shadowbolt
So lets say my brain character is called toona. The above macro targets that character, then does an assist (Which effectively tells your slave to target what toona is targeting) and then casts a shadowbolt at that target.
The above macro is very simple, and unfortunately if your main character was to die would leave you unable to cast spells on your slave. So it’s better to have a macro which deals with that (this is known as failover)
/target [target=toona,help,nodead]; [target=toonb,help,nodead]; [target=toonc,help,nodead]; [target=toond,help,nodead]; [target=toone,help,nodead]
/assist
/cast shadowbolt
In this case it will select toona if it’s alive, toonb if toona is dead, toonc if toona and toon b are dead and so on.
If your lead character were to die (and it does happen) you could switch to another window and control that toon and it would act as the brain.
One other macro that is vital is the follow macro.
/target [target=toona,help,nodead]; [target=toonb,help,nodead]; [target=toonc,help,nodead]; [target=toond,help,nodead]; [target=toone,help,nodead]
/follow
Basically when you want to run around in a group you can’t just pass movement keys (this would result in the characters heading off in slightly (or completely) different directions, depending on where they are facing. Thankfully blizzard has the follow macro, which you would have on all your slave characters. This would set the brain as the target and follow that, so wherever the brain runs the slaves will follow. This is probably one of your most used macros
Now multiboxing is great but there are a couple of negatives.
1. You will get hate from some people for multiboxing. (Especially if you pvp). This can stem from jealousy or from the fact that they can’t grasp that they were killed by 5 characters , not one person, or just from general ignorance. So expect to get a certain amount of ‘WTF?’, ‘LOL’, ‘Loser’ and ‘ REPORTED’ comments.
The best policy is to ignore them. Despite what these people will tell you Multiboxing is an accepted way of playing by Blizzard and does not violate any of their terms of service. The amount of abuse you get varies on a server by server basis – I’ve had very few negative comments, most people are indifferent. I’ve had more positive comments than negative.
2. It can actually take longer to level (Prior to blizzards refer a friend it took longer to level 5 characters than it did one…. If you do do this, make sure to use blizzards refer a friend scheme to setup your accounts).
Now obviously, this is a very brief overview – for more information check out the site dual-boxing.com. It taught me everything I needed to know. Please take the time to read the forum policies, and to read all the stickies and guides before posting. They give much better clearer instructions than I ever could.
In my next post I’ll cover class selection….. believe me it’s very important that you choose your characters well.
October 14th, 2008
My priest, hunter and warlock team is officially deceased.
I got the team to 21 in about 8 hours but I really, really wasn’t enjoying them. The idea of the priest being the resser, seemed a good idea, but generally it was the priest that was getting aggro and dying. (It didn’t help that the hunter and warlock were given quests at level 10 that gained them a level or so more than the priest).
I think the real reason for their demise was my love of the druid class. All the while I was playing my mixed multibox group I just kept thinking to myself how much better it would be if they were all druids.
So I took the decision to kill my multiclass team and roll my balance druid group.
So 3 female druids were born (with a fourth being gifted Refer a friend levels). They are all level 12 now, have completed their bear quest and so far living up to expectations.
I am going to bring my level 62 druid along and just boost them through quests (with the odd instance boost mixed in).
I’ve only got 4 weeks of my RAF bonus to go and I want the team to 60 as soon as possible.
Of course if Patch 3 arrives and nerfs the XP requirement to 70, that may throw a spanner in the works. I’ll seriously consider levelling my druid and my 2 mage and a pally team instead…..
Just too many options.
October 13th, 2008
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