In a holding pattern, for the moment

It’s Thursday, and I haven’t touched my WoW toons since Sunday, when I agreed to hop on and help my girlfriend with her Tol Barad dailies. My last real activity happened late on Saturday, when I was involved in a furious Warsong Gulch match, which we lost but where I was able to scratch and claw my way to 11 killing blows on six deaths, with six flag returns.

I got an achievement for returning five flags in a single match, and earlier in the day I also became exalted with Baradin’s Wardens. The first (flag) achievement was the more gratifying of the two. The second (reputation) was about as anticlimactic as just about any achievement that I’ve ever gotten.

It happened at the wrong time. I was in the middle of doing my Tol Barad dailies, which is generally a horrible, teeth-grinding experience fraught with deadly respawns and accidentally killing stuff that someone else tagged, or being beaten by another player who is collecting the same item as you. So, there was a sense of relief, but it was muted, because I am so frustrated with my playing experience that I’m just about completely numb to the game at this point.

Here are some of my issues:

Easy leveling (early levels)

See my post from last Saturday for my feelings on this subject.

Easy leveling (80-85)

It took me 3.5 days to move my main toon from the old level cap to 85. It was a fun experience – probably the most fun that I’ve had in the game so far, other than different moments in PvP and the general camaraderie that we have in the guild. But it was too short. I did not rush – I just played and enjoyed it, and it still only took me half of a week.

Yes I’m more experienced and had nicer gear this time… but, to compare, it took me almost three months to get Anacrusa from level 70 to level 80. At this point, a month into the expansion, I have one toon (druid) that has been 85 for almost four weeks, one (paladin) that has very casually been 83 for almost two weeks, and a third (hunter) that is, almost as casually, one bar away from the cap.

It feels that, with the revamping of old zones, the “leveling through the expansion” part of the game got the short end of the stick this time. Perhaps that’s what most people wanted… but, in retrospect, it’s not what I wanted.

PvP

Tol Barad is a mess. It has been a mess since before launch, with a massive lack of competitive balance (it heavily favors the defending team, for those who don’t know). Blizzard introduced a hotfix last week that made it ten times more lucrative to win by attacking in order to try to balance this, which resulted in game-wide win-swapping between factions. Tol Barad became an absolute joke at this point. Blizzard “fixed” that this week by reducing the attack-win honor bonus by 80%, but by that time it was all over. The zone has all of the same problems that it has always had, and we’re a month into the game.

Otherwise, while my PvP experience has varied, I’m tired of battlegrounds. I was interested in arenas for a short while, but at this point I’m not all that interested in even playing the game, so I may never try them.

Dungeons

And raids, I guess. I don’t know – I haven’t raided yet, and I’ve only managed to complete three heroics out of the seven or eight that I’ve attempted.

After we killed the Lich King in my old guild, I was burned out on raiding, and I guess that I’ve never gotten my mojo back, so to speak. Currently, my guild has one full-time tank, but he has a life to live, so he’s not always available. The experience can vary widely when pugging tanks… and I don’t like committing hours of time to frustration.

On Friday, I ditched my unused resto spec and picked up a tanking one, reforged and re-gemmed all of my gear, and swapped around my glyphs with the idea that maybe I could relearn to tank. But… I don’t want to tank. I don’t particularly like tanking, and it’s also been a while for me since I last tanked anything of consequence. And with my current attitude, I feel uninspired to actually carry out the task of learning to tank in Cataclysm.

A final note on dungeons: Being melee in these new dungeons is rough. As a cat druid, I have to balance the following: staying out of bad while being close enough to interrupt (and it’s sometimes impossible to do both), doing competitive damage, and watching people’s health (yes, I have thrown many, many heals in dungeons). Bringing in a pug tank means that, in spite of communication beforehand, the boss often doesn’t get kited, or nobody else interrupts, or whatever.

I’m fine with “staying out of fire,” concentrating on having enough energy available to interrupt each time, or throwing heals, all at the expense of topping the meters. I actually like that. However, when staying out of bad = not interrupting = Non-Kited-Boss one-shots Non-Kiting-Tank (and so on) as often as it does right now, I begin to lose what little desire that I had to be there in the first place.

Admittedly, my tolerance is low…

Going back to my points above about easy leveling through the five new zones, I have to say that being “not-capped” for less than a week also doesn’t feel good. Woot! – a few days of leveling, and then back to the old… yes… dungeon grind.

Reputation grinds

I worked hard to open up all of my dailies. I am exalted with three of the factions now. However, I have to say that I hate them. Between all of the people who are leveling and doing the quests, and all of the people grinding rep, the dailies range from pain-in-the-ass to nightmarish.

The nearly instant respawns in some zones, as noted above, are punishing. When I’m not fighting for my life, I’m competing with others for those mobs or quest items that, oddly enough, have poor respawn rates. As Darkbrew noted recently, if you need to kill ten things in Tol Barad, you’ll kill 20 by the time you’re through. It’s generally not a fun experience.

Closing

I’m in a holding pattern, for the moment. I haven’t quit the game, but I don’t know if I will be playing much at any time soon. This is a long break for me, even if it has only been four days. My heart hasn’t been in it for a week or longer. I’m saddened by the way that I feel about it. I love the potential for good times and interesting lore, and I like that the game seems more challenging at this level. It seems like I should be happy with WoW, but I have a lot of problems with it right now.

Perhaps I’m changing, or perhaps it’s just dawning on me that the game doesn’t offer what I’m interested in anymore. I’m not sure. At any rate, we’ll see what happens. I’m spending more time playing guitar, blogging a bit about sports, and I’ve picked up Fable 2 and Half-Life 2 again after months of not playing them. I’m enjoying Fable 2 – Half-Life is a game that I can only concentrate on once in a while, but Fable 2 has a fun story and an interesting NPC community that I’m enjoying right now. I’m hoping to finish it this week, and begin playing Fable 3 shortly thereafter.

As far as WoW goes… well, I’ll let you know.

In the revamped Azeroth, WoW’s pacing problems are much worse

When The Shattering of Azeroth occurred in November, I decided to delete and reroll my mage, Theophilos. In addition to a growing desire to pick up my long-dormant toon, I felt that this would be a fun opportunity to take Blizzard’s new questing and story-telling experiences for a spin.

In a nutshell, my opinions and observations of the process have been mixed.

As I wrote on November 30th, I initially had fun. I particularly enjoyed my experience in Westfall, including the phased areas, the cutscenes, and the new serial quest feature, whereby you did not have to return to the quest-giver at certain points, but could complete them “on the road,” so to speak. All in all, it was interesting to see the changes that had occurred, and then to experience more changes as you played through the quests and learned how we got to this point (and why things are the way they are in Deadmines).

At the same time, I wrote: “Leveling is almost too fast.” etc.

I’d like to amend that statement.

Leveling goes WAY too fast.

With the release of patch 4.0.3a, Azeroth was significantly revamped. Quests and graphics were updated, the landscape changed to reflect the impact of Deathwing’s emergence from Deepholm, and so on. Gameplay was also changed significantly, as spells, talents, resource systems, and other game mechanics were updated and rebalanced. It was with all of these things in mind that I remade Theophilos.

I play him occasionally. I might play him more often, except that the leveling experience has lost its… well, the novelty has worn off and been replaced by strong feelings of disappointment.

Upon completing Westfall, I took him to Redridge. While it’s a fun area, I was unable to finish it. I quickly found myself killing mobs that were almost exclusively “green to me” (aka easy). After completing a mere 16 quests, I moved over to Duskwood. Here, quests/mobs were closer to my level, although nothing was more than a “yellow” difficulty, and within 45 minutes I had already soloed Mor’Ladim and Morbidus, both level 25 elites, at level 25. (Remember Stitches, who always seemed to need a group or a higher-level friend to help with? Yeah…) I stayed in Duskwood until I hit 27, because I was starving for the chance to get as much of the story as possible, while also keeping my herbalism up to speed. When I got the “Duskwood” achievement, I moved down to Northern Stranglethorn…

…where I was dismayed to see that the mobs there started at level 24.

And yet, 35 minutes later, I had dinged both 28 and 29!

When I hit 29, I was pissed. At level 29, players still only need 29,000 experience points to get to level 30. Each quest that I have in my log, which is green to me, awards 2,100 experience. A little napkin math shows that, even if there were no experience given for kills, areas to discover, or herbs to pick up, a level would still only be comprised of 14 or 15 very easy quests.

AS it was, I was a few bars into 27 when I got to Northern Stranglethorn. I completed 12 quests. Those 12 quests, along with the kills to complete them and the herbs that I picked up along the way, got me 34 bars of XP. I now grossly out-level Northern Stranglethorn, and I’m less than a quarter of the way finished with the zone.

* * * * *

The completion of Duskwood and my foray into Stranglethorn all happened on December 26th. I haven’t touched my mage since then – I probably will do so soon, but if so, I will approach it differently.

Sadly, I have given up on trying to play through the game. When I play my mage again, it will be more as a sight-seer. Like, “Hello, Cape of Stranglethorn, don’t mind me… I’m just passing through to kill some of your denizens, steal some of your herbs, and complete a handful of your quests. But I won’t be long, I promise.”

* * * * *

Ok, that was enough of a Wall Of Text intro. I’m 650 words into my post, and have very little substance to show for it.

Here are some of the thoughts that I have, hopefully communicated a bit more clearly.

1. More than ever now, the game is way too easy.

I’m not a hardcore player, but I’m also not new. With that said, my experience with ranged classes is fairly limited. However, I am blowing through mobs with a character that is not pimped out in the best gear. Playing my mage isn’t enough of a challenge.

This could be fixed by skipping areas in favor of harder ones, which I will probably start doing . But this leads me to my next problem…

2. The story is there, but players will level past it way too quickly.

At least, I did. Repeatedly. Without trying.

Theophilos does not use elixirs, equip heirloom gear, or park himself at inns in order to gain maximum rested XP. Nevertheless, I have gained an astounding amount of rested XP while parking him in fields, Nesingwary’s camp, etc.

Additionally, experience is gained with each herb picked and each node mined. Being rested doubles the amount of XP you get from these gatherings as well… so, combined with the low XP requirements per level, and the relatively large amounts of XP gained from questing, there isn’t a lot of room for setting up shop for a little while and working through an area, moving to the next successive area, and working through that area without quickly outgrowing it.

It looks like the only way that I will get to learn all of the stories is to take Anacrusa through and blow through them. But I don’t know if I care to do that anymore.

3. The disconnect between 1-60 and Outlands/Northrend.

Blizzard is aware of, and apparently concerned about, the “previous expansion problem.” Once a player gets to level 58, he/she goes through the Dark Portal, which is not only a portal to a different planet, but, as of 11/2008, is also a sort of time warp portal. As of a month ago, Northrend also became a place where you take a journey on a ship into the past.

In addition, there are also XP-related issues with the whole Northrend thing. Even with recent XP-requirement nerfs, the amount of XP needed to reach level 71 from 70 is about 60% higher than the requirement to reach 70 from 69.

This creates a situation where, for the first time since the game launched, the initial leveling experience is new and desirable, and the expansions are old news. Players leveling alts are forced to blow past the new Azeroth content (due to the aforementioned overabundance-of-XP issues), slug through Outland, and then hit a wall in Northrend. To be quite honest, I’m really tired of Northrend, and Mydnas is currently mired there, stuck at level 73 for weeks now.

The alternative option is to try to level through the story, like I did, which means that eventually they will be bogged down in areas where quests and mobs award almost no XP, which is also not fun. I’m certainly not going to do it on any of the toons that I’m leveling, and I’m not sure that I’m going to do it on Anacrusa. I wanted to… but I’m not in the mood now. We’ll see how I feel at some point down the road.

(I guess I could drop 10g and turn off Theophilos’ XP gains for a while; however, that wouldn’t fix what’s broken about it. Gameplay shouldn’t be about having to pay in-game currency in order to turn off the advancement mechanic, for crying out loud.)

Here’s something interesting. I was herbing on Mydnas yesterday, and I stopped in Andorhal in Western Plaguelands. There is an Alliance foothold there, and Thassarian and another undead guy are questgivers. When I checked in with him, out of curiosity, Thassarian made mention of his/our activities in Northrend.

Now, I didn’t take up his quest offer, because I was there to herb, not to quest. However, I thought to myself, what if the player was new? On his first run-through of the game, he might not have much of an idea of what happened in Northrend. For me, someone who defeated the Lich King and completed all of Thassarian’s quests on Anacrusa, it was a normal part of the conversation. However, Mydnas has not even completed Last Rites at Naxxanar, and Thassarian was referring to me like I was his old friend who soldiered with him in the battle against Arthas of Patricidaeron. If she were my only toon, and I was playing the game through for the first time, I wouldn’t know about Thassarian in Northrend… you get my point. There’s a hole in the story.

* * * * *

Conclusion: World of Warcraft 2 fails as a lore-based game.

At this point, I could say something trite, like “casuals have won” or some other QQ. However, I don’t blame any type of player for this. The bottom line for me is that Blizzard made a concerted effort to revamp the home-world of Azeroth with the release of The Shattering and Cataclysm. This massive undertaking dispensed with the old world and many of the old ways, and as a result we are now playing a game that is something of a World of Warcraft 2.

However, one of the holdovers from the old game is the old (super-nerfed) XP/leveling structure, which flies directly in the face of the brand new story updates. World of Warcraft is now effectively a game where you either have to play the game through for the story, and ignore the fact that so many of the mobs and quests/rewards are gray, or go back and destroy all of the content after you’ve hit the level cap if you want to experience the lore and/or earn the Loremaster achievement(s). Neither option has much appeal for me at all – I’ve completed enough quests by ignoring game mechanics and plowing through mobs like I’m the vengeful hand of God, and I don’t think I want to do that anymore.

I’m disappointed.

[Cataclysm] Feral PvP: first impressions, a modified spec, and glyphs

Shortly after I hit level 85, I made myself the complete set of eight leather PvP pieces and decided to jump into a battleground.

I drew Arathi Basin, which is one of my favorites (along with Eye of the Storm and the new Battle for Gilneas – I like cap-and-defend BGs, I guess). As “preparation” wound down, I browsed my team members and noticed the health levels with buffs: “Wow, I have 107K health… and that puts me right in the middle of the pack!”

The experience was an eye-opener. Many things were the same, including all of the battleground objectives. However, at that point, one thing was clear: enemies weren’t going down nearly as fast as they had during the week before launch.

I don’t remember whether we won or lost, but I do know that the individual encounters, as well as the game itself, lasted a while. At the end, I was prematurely tired of PvP for the night. I finished with two killing blows and two deaths. Two killing blows! Looking at the summary, I noted that there were no spectacular kill counts, so I didn’t feel that I had performed poorly. I left with a new respect for the fact that, while we’re certainly more powerful at level 85, we’re also way more healthy, which means that our abilities to quickly decimate enemies’ health bars have been muted.

On the other hand, I survived a couple of encounters that I never would have lived through at level 80. One notable encounter was after a failed attempt at capturing the Gold Mine. There were two Horde at the flag, but when three of us made our way down to take them, they were joined by three others. My teammates died, and I, bleeding, ravaged, and loaded with DoTs, all cooldowns blown, ran for it (yes, running for it is completely acceptable in situations where you are otherwise definitely going to die!). I dashed up the hill, and when Dash expired about halfway up the hill, I popped out of cat form and threw myself a Rejuve and three Lifeblooms. The entire time, I had two mages blasting me with Frostbolts (etc.) and blinking to stay up with me, which hampered my escape speed. And there was an enemy warrior coming after them, trying to catch up with me. The heat (and cold) was on.

I thought that I was dead. I had accepted it, put my affairs in order, made peace with Elune, thought fondly of my loved ones, and closed my eyes with a smile and a tranquil heart…

…except I didn’t actually close my eyes: I kept running, Lifebloom kept ticking, and I refreshed it when it bloomed. I switched forms whenever I got hit by a slowing debuff, which meant that I was switching forms almost on the GCD. I ran, and ran… straight toward the Stable graveyard, from which a fresh set of newly rezzed teammates was charging in my direction.

The mages died, eventually. And I lived.

I never would have survived that assault at level 80 – my 36K health and the insane damage-dealing abilities of the mages would have killed me way before I crossed the half-way-up-the-hill point.

Damage/Survivability spec (going off the beaten path a bit)

I’ve been playing around with my spec. I’m at the maximum cost for re-specs now, which is, I think, 66g, and I’ve been there for a while because I’ve re-specced at least a dozen times since I hit level 85.

Currently, on the new armory, I am listed as having my off-spec as feral and my main spec as balance. With heroics on the horizon for our guild, I am playing with the idea of having a balance or resto spec, and my feral/raiding UI on that spec was a bit of a mess anyway, so I decided to scrap it and play around with that one for a while. I had leveled in my PvP/leveling spec, which ended up being one and the same, and was pretty comfortable with the way I had my UI set up for that. So my second spec is actually my main spec.

Anyway, I’ve thought a lot about my options with feral builds, and the idea that I’m currently running with is that I will use this spec for everything that I do as feral for a while – PvP, heroics, and quests.

Here it is:

Anacrusa's damage/survivability spec, 12/22/2010

At level 85, I have five more talent points than I had in any of my previous spec-related posts, so I have a little more to play with.

This spec differs from other excellent spec recommendations from Alaron (The Fluid Druid) and Kalon (Think Tank). It is not truly optimized for generating maximum DPS, and is also not a textbook hybrid spec for bearcats.

This spec does include almost all of the stats that will increase damage, though. The only talents that I left out that are generally accepted as “required” for a pure DPS spec are 3/3 Fury Swipes and 2/2 Blood in the Water.

My thoughts behind this spec are as follows:

• The guides linked above list 0/32/6 builds, leaving three points free. I put those three points into Perseverance. The less spell damage taken, the better, no matter the environment. This goes for heroics, too. With mana conservation more imperative now, reducing spell damage can do a little bit to contribute to the healer’s Mana Savings Fund. And for PvP, I felt that this was a good choice.
• The two points from Blood in the Water went into 2/3 Thick Hide, for the same reasons as my Perseverance choice (except that it’s physical damage this time). Blood in the Water isn’t a huge contributor at this point, because Ferocious Bite isn’t. If I want to reapply a Rip at the end of a boss fight, I’ll choose to do so. Ferocious Bite isn’t doing that much average damage since I’m not getting critical hits very often (and because I have it glyphed in dungeons to save energy). I did use BitW in a few early dungeons, and it’s neat, but I don’t really miss it.
• The three points from Fury Swipes went into 2/2 Infected Wounds and a second point of Furor. Fury Swipes has a negligible impact in PvP, and only marginally more of an impact in dungeons. Infected Wounds is necessary for PvP, and also comes in handy during the odd messy pull when I’m interrupting and locking down an add that I have aggro on. 2/3 Furor is nice when I need to pop out of cat form to throw a heal – switching back and having two thirds of my energy pool available is nice for getting right back to business.

I’ve used this spec in dungeons and PvP, and it seems to be working out fairly well. I’m not at the top of the damage meter, but that has nothing to do with the fact that I have no points in Fury Swipes and Blood in the Water. Our warlock routinely does quite a bit more damage than the rest of us, and I’m fine with that. My utility and survivability comes in handy, and makes encounters more fun for me.

Glyphs

Since I have only one feral spec, I handle my glyph situation like this: I’m always glyphed for PvP/quests, since that’s what I spend the majority of my time doing, and I keep a supply of Dust of Disappearance handy for dungeon runs.

Prime Glyphs

• Mangle – swapped out for Shred in dungeons.
• Berserk – swapped out for Tiger’s Fury in dungeons. There is an excellent argument for keeping Berserk in dungeons, but it depends on playstyle and preferences.
• Rip – great for both PvP and dungeons.

Major Glyphs

• Entangling Roots – highly recommended for both PvE and PvP. In a recent dungeon where a mark accidentally was erased just before a pull, I was able to sleep one dragonkin and instantly root another, and being able to use consecutive CCs as a druid felt pretty good.
• Barkskin – swapped out for Ferocious Bite in dungeons, although I’m not sure how I feel about that…
• Feral Charge – a keeper for PvP and PvE

Minor Glyphs

• Dash
• Wild
• Aquatic Form (PvP/dailies), Unburdened Rebirth (dungeons)

* * * * *

So, that’s my basic setup for spec and glyphs at the moment. I’m sure that it will change at some point. Perhaps I will decide to try Blood in the Water as I build up my gear set. Or maybe I’ll decide to stop PvP-ing for a while and throw Fury Swipes back into the mix. Who knows? For now, two weeks in, this is what I’ve settled on.

Since that first BG, I’ve participated in a couple dozen others, as well as several Tol Barad battles. I’ve found that, like before the launch, if I get into a one-on-one situation with anyone except a paladin (… … …), I feel that I have a good chance to come out on top. Usually, these encounters get sabotaged by either friends or foes riding in and demolishing me or my opponent before I have the chance to see the outcome. However, when it’smano a mano, I always consider myself to have the upper hand.

Except with paladins.

(…)

I don’t always crit, but when I do, I crit Dos Equis.

 

This gear is actually better than my old, killer-looking gear. It may not look like it... but after the Cataclysm, armorcrafters apparently found that they could use a lighter, stronger leather called "Savage Leather" to make Druids more rugged and agile.

I reached 85 on Friday night at 7pm, after 3.5 days of play. I did not log out in inns, and the vast majority of my experience came from quests, although I did run three or four dungeons with the guild. At this point, I’ve seen the normal versions of Blackrock Caverns, Throne of the Tides, The Stonecore, Lost City of the Tol’vir, and Halls of Origination.

I was the second person in my guild to reach level 85. Mighti reached the cap with his lock several hours before me. Secure joined us Sunday night during our maiden voyage through Lost City, and Ethiria hit the cap last night, so we’re starting to put together a group of people that can hopefully begin running heroics at some point in the near future.

Questing

I stated above that I got the vast majority of my experience from quests. Not just accepting and turning in, but actually reading them and following the stories. The lore of the expansion is unveiling before our eyes, and it’s very interesting. I had a lot of fun leveling.

At this point, I’ve completed Hyjal, Deepholm, Uldum, and Twilight Highlands. I’m halfway through Vashj’ir, because I honestly haven’t completed anything there since my last post. I went back and finished Hyjal after all, and it picked up toward the end. At this point, I’m hard-pressed to pick a favorite. The popular sentiment seems to be that Uldum rules (capped off by the total fun that is Gnomebliteration), but, while I really enjoyed it, I also liked Twilight Highlands – some of the quests toward the end are pretty epic/challenging/brutal, and have some great rewards.

As I leveled, I decided to head into higher-level areas, rather than finishing out zones before moving on (as I had originally planned). I did this for three reasons.

1. The challenge. Each level in Cataclysm brings a major upgrade to primary stats, particularly to Stamina. The lower level areas became less difficult to conquer. Once I went back and finished Hyjal, hitting 82 in the process, I skipped the remainder of Vashj’ir in favor of Deepholm, which brought tougher survival challenges to my questing experience.
2. The quest reward gear. Within 36 hours of my Tuesday morning start, people in my guild were anxious to check out some of the new dungeons. Including repeats, we’ve probably run a dozen dungeons together so far. At level 82, I had gotten a few nice pieces but hadn’t replaced much of my gear; however, the burden on the healer is greater when you don’t have that extra Stamina. So I made it a point to try to keep my gear in line with my level. There are some nice quest reward pieces available, so I was able to supplement early dungeon drops with the quest gear to build myself an adequate set as I leveled.
3. The reputation. There are six new factions in Cataclysm, and I was determined to get started on each of them. Each faction has something to offer feral druids, so I have made it a point to complete as many quests as possible in order to build rep and/or open up dailies. At this point, I am revered with Guardians of Hyjal and Therazane, and honored with the rest of them except for Baradin’s Wardens. Therazane and Wildhammer have nice sets of dailies, while the others are basically tabard-fodder. At this point, I’m in a good place (other than with Baradin’s, which could take awhile since it looks like the Alliance is never going to win Tol Barad on my server).

Dungeons

I don’t have a lot to talk about regarding dungeons, other than the fact that they are definitely more difficult than the Wrath dungeons. Personally, I’ve enjoyed getting to use Hibernate and glyphed Entangling Roots, and Skull Bash quite honestly is one of my most favorite things to use when clearing “trash.” If I can jump on a loose caster, interrupt him, and then lock him up a few seconds later with a 5CP Maim, Skull Bash is up again shortly after the Maim falls off. If I get it right (aka do it so that I don’t take too much damage myself), I can be of assistance to my healer, who doesn’t have to be constantly healing himself, the tank or a caster who may otherwise have aggro.

As far as DPS goes, cat druids seem to be fine, particularly on single targets. My AP is higher, naturally, but my Crit chance is about half of what it was on December 6th (although when I do crit, I crit for huge chunks of damage – hence the ridiculous title to this post). I’m also struggling to get my Hit Rating and Expertise in order. Currently, I’ve managed to get my Hit Chance over 6%, which means that I won’t miss in normal dungeons. However, my Expertise is still only 13, meaning that I have about a 3% chance to be dodged. I’m trying to remedy this, mainly through reforging, without gutting the rest of my stats. It sucks when I attempt to Maim a target and the Maim gets dodged – unlike other feral finishing moves, the Maim has a cooldown, whether you connect or not. So, stat-wise, I’ve been trying to balance that stuff out, and I’ve managed to get to a place where I feel pretty good about my stat makeup, except for the Expertise issue.

So damage is fine. Sometimes I top the meters (particularly on boss fights), and usually I don’t (trash). Really, other than our healer, the party’s damage dealers have been pretty close in each dungeon. Sometimes, I check the meter, but after a couple of dungeons I became comfortable with the fact that I was doing adequate damage, and I’ve been concentrating on helping out the group. I’m more concerned about focusing the correct mob, keeping my target CC-ed or interrupted, and throwing heals when necessary. We all know that damage meter nit-picking can be a bit overrated, and that’s especially the case now. Blizzard has cats in a good place where it counts, so as long as I do my job, the damage will come. The mechanics of an encounter, and the feral’s job dealing with them, is what interests me.

Gear and Enchants

Some bloggers, regardless of class, have noted that it’s unnecessary to enchant your gear as you level. While it’s true, I’ve ignored that to some extent. I did enchant my gear along the way, because some of it was related to my Leatherworking, my girlfriend is trying to level her Enchanting, and I just enjoy enhancing my gear. I don’t have all of my gear enchanted yet, but over half of it is. I’ve bought a half-dozen Lesser Inscriptions from Therazane already, and early on I visited the Shadow Vault a couple of times for Arcanums. Sure, it’s gold out-of-pocket, but I easily grossed 5K gold just from questing and selling trash along the way to 85, and for some of that to go into enchants was, to me, quite a worthy cause. It’s all pocket change, really.

I let go of my 4pT10 set bonus when I reached 82. The stat upgrades on new gear, particularly for Stamina and Hit Rating, were just to great. I was in approximately 75% greens, 25% blues by 83, except for my 264 relic, and I replaced that in Uldum. I’m currently at 92% blues, 8% greens, as I have yet to get a rare relic.

Leatherworking

Skinning went very well. It took me a matter of a few hours to max that out. However, crafting professions take a bit more work, and Leatherworking was no exception. As of Sunday, I was able to max out, acquire recipes for all eight pieces of crafted PvP gear (and make them), and will soon have my epic leg enchants. And of course, there’s that sweet, sweet bracer enchant (+130 Agility)!

As with Wrath, the leveling process takes a boatload of leather. I spent several hours farming a few different areas in order to get enough leather and volatiles to get to 525. The fact that the recipes in Twilight Highlands cost ten Heavy Savage Leather apiece is rough, but I’m happy to be done with the initial work, and I have a nice starter set of PvP gear to boot.

Closing

I have more to write about, and I know that I’ve been neglecting this blog over the past couple of weeks. However, I’ve been playing Cataclysm. We’ve been waiting for this release for a very long time, and we’ve been talking about it for what seems like forever. Now that it’s here, I’m playing the crap out of it. So the posts will likely start to pick up a little bit, both about WoW and other things, over the next couple of weeks. For one thing, I know that I will have some comments to make about PvP, as well as the specs that I’m using at level 85.

In the meantime, I’m working on reputations, running the occasional dungeon or two, complementing putting together a resto off-set, and working on my paladin-alchemist (full rested XP, level 81+ with minimal questing done – woot!). Once the pally is familiar with all zones and comfortably herbing, I’ll be able to get started on my hunter, Mushan. Happily, I might add!

I hope that everyone else is having fun!

[Cataclysm] Some thoughts from my first day

View of Stormwind from the air, looking north

Some quick thoughts from my first day, for those of you who are taking a “coffee & bagel break” at the moment…

Hyjal

One of the things that I’ve never had the discipline to do is knock out the Battle for Mount Hyjal in Caverns of Time.

I still want to.

Hyjal is in a state of mostly-destroyed-ness right now. The majority of environment is burned, scorched, barren, and/or soaked by lava. It pisses me off.

I started my questing there yesterday morning, and after about an hour, I put the quests there on hold in favor of Vashj’ir. In all honesty, I was feeling a little bit of the same-ness that I had read about: Hyjal feels like normal WoW, to a great degree. It’s a level 80 starting area, and it feels like it.

I don’t know. I just wasn’t feeling it like I had hoped I would. So I left for a while (though I did go back in the evening to do some more quests).

Vashjir

This, on the other hand, was mostly big fun. Other than the whole “lack of enough Stormwind Helms” problem, exacerbated by the fact that scads of people were looking for them at the same time – you know what I’m talking about, my fellow Vashj’ir first-day players – the area is excellent. The underwater play has been designed very well, and while it doesn’t feel exactly like land play, it does feel natural.

And the area is beautiful. Additionally, it’s huge, or at least it feels huge, since so much of it takes place underwater. Last night, a group of us went to find Throne of the Tides, and it was at that point that I realized how large of a zone it is.

Dungeons

A few of us in the guild were interested in checking out the new dungeons. We headed over to Blackrock Caverns, which was fun. We then did the previously mentioned Throne of the Tides, which has a bit of a crazy ending.

I’m not going to say too much about them, except for a couple of things about dungeons in general.

First of all, I was glad to have the opportunity to check them out with friends. We jumped on vent and had a nice time working our way through the instances. When we finished, I was talking with my girlfriend, and we agreed that using the dungeon finder to do them was not something that we would have enjoyed nearly as much.

Secondly, I can see the CC coming. We’re peaking around the corner at it. These were normal versions of the dungeons, and there were several times where our tank pulled an entire group, Wrath-style, and we survived fairly comfortably. However, we had some opportunities to sheep and root. I particularly enjoyed the final boss in BRC, Ascendant Lord Obsidious, who has two shadow adds that apply a severe healing debuff to their targets, making them generally un-tankable. Our healer was a druid, so we decided that we would do a root-pull, and the tank would pull the boss back, and our warrior and mage would go to town on the boss. It worked beautifully.

As I said on vent last night: I know this may sound lame, but one of my favorite parts of the instance was being able to keep my guy rooted and out of harm’s way. It’s nice to be able to do something different to help the group, rather than bashing and ripping all the time.

Oh, and holy BoE drops! We had four or five of the same “rare” Agility dagger drop in BRC last night, and we only ran it once.

Skinner’s Paradise

On Monday night, Big Bear Butt posted a bit on his quest to put together the perfect mix tape to listen to when he began to play the expansion.

Now, I had some epic, WoW-sounding songs in mind for my own soundtrack. However, when I went to Vashj’ir yesterday morning, I got an entirely different tune stuck in my head.

See, with the starting areas being overcrowded, there were a lot of animals being killed. For a skinner like me, the vast number of dead skitterers in Vashj’ir (and dead Twilight Hatchlings, etc. in Hyjal) made me remark that it was a “skinner’s paradise.”

Some time later, I realized that there was a chorus running through my head: “Pimper’s Paradise” by Bob Marley and the Wailers, from the final album they released while he was alive, Uprising (1980). In this case, though, it was actually “Skinner’s Paradise,” over and over, over and over…

So I got out my Bob Marley CDs and started loading them onto my computer. I haven’t actively listened to him in about a year, since I replaced my iMac, because I had gotten a bit burned out on him, and so I was content to let that music sit for a while… but no more!

At any rate, it took me about four hours to get to max-level skinning. And all that leather was enough to get me approximately ten skill-up points for Leatherworking. Of course.

Leveling and XP

I wrote previously about my plans to take my time leveling through the expansion, without actively trying to acquire rested XP on Anacrusa by logging out in an inn. I was looking forward to enjoying myself… and I have, don’t get me wrong.

However, I was disappointed to see that level 81 required only about 100,000 more XP (1.6 million) than it used to take to get to level 80 from 79 (over 1.5 million), before Wrath leveling was nerfed by 20%. This went against what I had heard, which was that XP requirements would be much higher in Cataclysm. In all, it took me about four hours to get to 81, and I wasn’t gunning for it. In fact, I probably I spent an hour of that time skinning.

It was nice, then, to see that level 82 requires 2.12 million points (although I’m almost there anyway…), and one of my friends informed me last night that level 83 requires just over four million, which is a steep ramp-up. So it’s nice to see that I’m going to be leveling for a little bit, anyway.

We’ve been at end-game for a long, long time now. I’d like to have the chance to enjoy this process for more than a few days, for goodness’ sake.

[Cataclysm] The Shattering: thoughts from my first week

 

Theophilos, lvl 18. Yeah, he's frost!

With The Shattering (patch 4.0.3a) occurring (arriving) last week in WoW, there have been thousands of people coming back to WoW after weeks, months, or even years of inactivity. Azeroth is abuzz with people dusting off old friends, or creating new ones, or both, in order to explore the massive changes that have happened.

I’ve been involved straight through the pre-Cataclysm events, obviously, so there hasn’t been much of a “coming back” experience for me. However, as anticipation has grown, I’ve been getting the itch to get down to the business of re-rolling my baby hunter, Ghilly (currently 24, from pre-Shattering play), in order to explore the revamped areas.

That’s something that, a week in, I have not yet begun.

First things first – Inscription

For the couple of weeks preceding the latest patch, I had been working on my baby resto/balance druid, Mydnas. She had been sitting at level 67 since the summer, with JC and mining professions stalled in the 100s. Because I’ve become interested in Inscription, both the idea of it and as a way to make some gold, I started pulling together some spare herbs from alts, buying some herb-dumps off the AH here and there, and dropped Mining for Inscription in October. I got her close to level 200 early this month, and let her sit there for a few days while I collected more herbs.

The week before The Shattering happened, I reached level 450. All in all, it wasn’t so bad. As my Inscription prowess crept up, I dropped JC and picked up Herbalism, which was extremely easy to level up. Along the way, I picked up much of what I needed to finish leveling Inscription. To prevent this from being an unnecessarily long story: both professions are now maxed.

Being a druid is awesome for herbalism, by the way. With rested XP at level 69, I was getting over 3000 XP from each Northrend herb picked. I went into Sholazar Basin at that level and picked tons of herbs, easily escaping the clutches of the 75 and 76 crocs, cobras, dreadsabres and rhinos by herbing in flight form. With the wealth of herbs in that zone, it took me very little time to max out.

Anyway, as I leveled Inscription, I tried to stick closely to two simple principles: make only one of each different glyph, and use as many 3-skill-up recipes as possible in order to stretch my mats out as much as possible. Through the process, I accumulated a nice stash of various glyphs, and I decided to put those glyphs to work for me.

I sold them on the AH, starting as soon as I logged in on the day of patch 4.0.3a. I initially listed about 125 different glyphs, just hoping that a quarter of them would sell. Between Tuesday and Friday, though, I ended up listing around 200 (reposting as they sold), and made about 7k. At the end of the “new and returning players buying glyphs” free-for-all, I was dumping certain glyphs that had been sort of necessary for gaining Inscription skill-ups, but are not good leveling glyphs, very cheaply. Additionally, as AH pros were in full swing, I very quickly found myself involved in a price war pissing contest, so it’s fine that I had to dump some glyphs – AH PvP gets old for me pretty fast. I accomplished my mission: my glyph stash is gone, and I was easily able to purchase my fast flying and still have plenty of gold left over.

A bit of my play-time over the first few days of the patch was spent monitoring the AH and so on, but I felt like it was time well spent, considering that I do not normally play the AH game.

New hunter… no, forget the hunter…

Initially, my plan for exploring Azeroth was to delete and re-roll Ghilly. Looking at the classes from a lore-ish perspective, it seems natural (to me) to think of a hunter as the ideal exploration class. I know that this probably doesn’t jive with a lot of people… but to me, a character who

• takes his own time
• explores the lay of the land
• provides for his own subsistence through fishing, trapping, tracking and shooting his prey
• can create his own clothing for protection from the elements
• is generally at ease in the solitude of the wilderness, as well as in any tavern

makes sense as a perfect exploring toon. Other than playing my main, the hunter promises the most immersive experience for me.

However, as I encountered various new areas on my established toons, I began to consider a new option. Anacrusa, who wasn’t a Loremaster before, has had all of her quest-counts reset in Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms. I would have to say that at this point, lore, as well as PvP, has surpassed raiding on my list of in-game priorities. With new quests and story-lines to devour, as well as a desire to get the Loremaster title at some point, I considered a radical (for me) change in strategy: knock out pre-80 Loremaster quest achievements until I have no more to do, and then go to Mt. Hyjal and start leveling.

Oh, man! The idea was so tempting! I mean, think about it. The old game is new again. Some quests are the same, but most of them reflect large changes and a significant amount of time passed. Ana is my one and only true love among my toons, and I am highly interested in experiencing the entire world with her as my vehicle.

-

I toyed with the idea for several days, even mentioning it to my friend Somb, who thought it was a cool idea, although he was not going to adopt it himself. In the end, I decided not to do it. I’m going to go to Hyjal when Cataclysm drops, because, among other reasons, the druid lore there is important and exciting to me.

There have been other ideas running concurrently in my mind, but one has been stronger than others. I had mentioned in a previous post or two that I was thinking of making a new Night Elf mage named Droig. With 4.0.3a, this class/race combo went into effect, so I created him, set up his UI, and gave him a quick spin.

I hated it.

Not the mage part. No, the thing that sucked was the Night Elf Male casting animation. My goodness. I guess it’s cool, but… no, it’s not cool. The guy stands there and pushes fire spells out like he has a wall at his back, with no consideration for the concept of kickback that other races have. Night Elf females, Dwarves, Humans, and just about every other race that I’ve seen has one foot behind the other , bracing themselves when they cast. It looks cool, and it makes sense. This put me off. I never had a male Night Elf priest/druid/caster before this, so I didn’t know what I was getting into.

So I deleted him.

Since Night Elf females look like they’re hurling a basketball, baseball-pitcher-style, when they cast, I had to decide which race to pick. Since I’ll be exploring Dun Morogh on my new Dwarf hunter eventually, I don’t want to do the Draenei starting area again, and I don’t want to be a Gnome mage, I brought my long-dormant 43 mage, Theophilos, out of Stormwind for a look. After killing a few wolves and Defias in Elwynn Forest and watching him do so from different angles, I was satisfied that I liked the way he looked.

So I deleted him, too.

I transferred all of his worldly possessions to other alts, took a screenshot of him, and deleted him. Then I remade him, with the exact same looks, and started playing him on Saturday night. I’m really glad that I did.

As King Wrynn is the leader of the Alliance, and the story around Westfall was supposed to be pretty good, making a Human mage was a solid choice. Being a hunter might still be a better option for exploring, but I’ve been fascinated with mages for a while, and this is as good a time as any to start one.

The leveling process, post 4.0.3a, has generally been a very positive experience. The new story lines are a lot of fun to work through. The Westfall story does a lot to both satisfy my lore craving and to whet it further, and the phasing is definitely cool – I’m so glad they decided to use it in low-level zones. The notifications that you get as you level (“New Talent/Ability!” etc.) are definitely helpful. I’m having more fun than I had ever had when previously trying to play a mage.

There are some drawbacks, and I’ll mention two of them here:

1. Leveling is almost too fast. I’m leveling herbalism, because it feeds mats to my alchemist and scribe. This worked well for the most part, although I found that I out-leveled Elwynn before I was skilled enough to pick several of the herbs in Westfall. And I significantly outleveled Westfall by the time I finished with the majority of the story there.
2. There are a couple of quests that don’t make sense at times. For instance, why does Agent Kearnen, a stealthy, SI:7 undercover operative/sharpshooter dressed in black, send me, a big muscle-bound magic-wielder in a dress, into a tower after picking off a six-pack of guard-thugs with her big-ass rifle, and then have me drink a shrouding solution and climb to the top in order to witness a secret meeting? Why doesn’t she do it herself? I guess, now that I think about it, it’s to protect me from the other thugs that respawn… but why doesn’t she have me do the protecting, and go up herself? I don’t know – that was one of the quests that, while pretty cool, didn’t flow well for me. That’s World of Warcraft for you, and that’s one of the things that hasn’t been eliminated from the game.

Overall, though, I’m really enjoying casually leveling my mage.

High-end leveling prep

To be honest, there isn’t a whole lot that I’m doing to prepare for leveling. My druid is ready to go. My hunter needs a respec (I’m leveling as Marks, but he currently has a dungeon build – anyway, we’ll see how that goes!), and I just need to finish leveling my gorilla, Korak, to 80. The paladin is as ready as she’ll ever be. I’m working on getting Mydnas (71) to 75 so she can begin training Inscription again next week.

The only new thing that I’m doing diligently is the daily cooking quests in Stormwind. I’m trying to do them every day on my three 80s, figuring that the more Chef Awards I have, the more recipes and meats I’ll be able to buy. Cooking will, hopefully, not be much of a problem to level when Cataclysm arrives.

Closing

Anyway, it’s been a week since I posted, and I just wanted talk a little bit about what I did throughout the week, and to express a few thoughts about my impressions of the remade world of Azeroth. Overall, I’m liking it a lot. There have been many exciting changes, and it looks like I’m in store for plenty of non-grindy fun when I come back and dig deeper into the lore on my main.

Working on my guild website

(a “what I’m doing today” blurb post)

Since patch 4.0.3a is being implemented today, I’m spending some time putting together our guild website. Specifically, I’m working on getting together some links to class and profession guides.

I set up the site a couple of months ago, but I haven’t done anything with it or introduced it to the guild, since, generally, people haven’t been playing very much during the post-Lich King kill, pre-Cataclysm lull. However, I expect that a lot of people will be coming back over the next month or so, and I want to be able to provide them with a ready source of information that can help them as they level and explore.

It’s a labor of love – I want to do it, but I’m not sure if people will spend as much time using it as I am in putting it together. Nonetheless, it has to be done, and I will feel better for doing it.

My rested XP plans for Cataclysm

For the past several days, I’ve been wondering about the issue of rested XP in Cataclysm, particularly for my level 80 toons. Would they start with a lot of “rest?” Or would they start with purple XP bars, right off the bat?

Today, Blizzard answered that set of questions with the following (from MMO-Champion):

Rested experience will reset at launch. You will start at 0 rested.

I know that this is going to disappoint a lot of people. On one hand, there will many who race to level 85 right out of the launch gate, and if I were more end-game oriented, I would feel disappointed too. There is, of course, something inside of me that really wants to start getting some sweet gear for my druid, ASAP!

On the other hand, this is going to be a mostly new world. When I begin playing my level 80 toons, I’ll be questing in completely new areas. When I start my new hunter, new mage, etc., the leveling areas will be strikingly revamped. I’d like to experience it all.

Therefore, I’m going to say it here first: I will not be logging out at inns in Cataclysm.

Ok, perhaps I should refine or elaborate on that statement. To do that, I’ll offer my thoughts on the subject for some of my toons.

Anacrusa, lvl 80 druid

Primary toon. 450 Leatherworker/Skinner.

Plan: will not be actively “rested.”

This is the character that I play best; I’m most comfortable with her in PvP, raiding, and questing; she has the most achievements; I’m most attached to her (out of all of my toons), etc. I want to savor my leveling experience with her, for certain. Besides, she’s a feral cat druid. She loves nature. She’ll sleep in trees, under overhanging rocks, and take naps in the sun.

Mushan, lvl 80 hunter

Primary alt, as far as “enjoyment” goes. Supplementary 450 Skinner.

Plan: may occasionally check into an inn when not logged in. On business trips and such. You know what I’m talking about.

This is the character that I leveled from 1-80 in 48 days. I will probably level him rather more quickly than Anacrusa (as far as /played goes), because he is a toon that I will be interested in playing at end-game without regard to achievements, exploration, reputation, etc.

That’s not to say that I won’t have fun with him, because I certainly will – I’m pretty excited about the leveling process for this toon, too! However, Anacrusa will get the most time and attention, so I don’t mind rocking some rested XP on this one.

Abenadari, lvl 80 paladin

Secondary alt. 450 Alchemist/Herbalist.

Plan: will definitely be parked at an inn. Of that, I’m 100% certain.

I don’t enjoy playing her as much, but since she is my max-level Alchemist, I need to level her at some point. Therefore, I’m aiming to level her the entire five levels with rested XP.

Mydnas, lvl 67 druid

Secondary alt. 450 Scribe.

Plan: will most likely be logged out at an inn.

I hope to get her to level 75 around the time Cataclysm launches, since I definitely want to level her Inscription skills – that Darkmoon Card: Hurricane is super desirable, and I want two of them! As such, I’ll probably let her gain rested XP, although my plans to level her past 75 are in the distant future, due to druid-redundancy issues…

New toons

Ghilly*, Dwarf hunter; Droig, Night Elf mage; possibly an as-yet-unnamed warrior

Plan: will not be logged out at inns.

One or more of these toons will be leveled to at least 60, and will be the toons on which I really get to see the changes to the Old World leveling experience. The XP requirements are already pretty easy, and so I’m not really interested in racing through levels on these toons.

*I leveled Ghilly (the current one) past level 20 this summer with no heirlooms, no gold-gifts or bag-gifts, and no sleeping in inns, and I enjoyed it very much. I’m going to be deleting him, probably this week, and recreating him in order to level him in the revamped zones. It should be fun.

* * * * *

I think that there are multiple reasons to be glad that we’ll be starting out at level 80 with no bonus XP:

1. Exploring the revamped world: As I mentioned before, my favorite toons are the ones that I am more inclined to go a bit more in-depth with. Racing through the new content seems counter-productive, especially when we’ve all been waiting for this expansion for so long.
2. Profession-leveling will be a bit more natural: To my way of thinking, at least, it makes more sense that having to complete more quests and kill more mobs in order to level means more mats for leveling certain professions. I, for one, am going to need a ton of leather on my druid. Gathering mats while questing and checking out the world can be less tedious than farming for them later, and there will be plenty of opportunity/necessity to farm mats later on. Heck, I’ve been farming Borean Leather for almost two years, but I found it a lot more relaxing and organic to accumulate it as a by-product of leveling my hunter recently… I could be wrong about this, as others’ experiences may vary, but I’m going to be stubborn about it on a personal level.
3. More quest rewards: With Cataclysm comes higher barriers to entry for heroics and raiding. I’m a somewhat cautious personality, so… since I’m not going to be using any leveling guide for either Anacrusa or my new toons, I’m going to be paying close attention to quest rewards. It would be nice to not attempt to start running heroics or raiding with a Death Knight’s Anguish-type of piece equipped, like I did in Wrath… I’m not saying that I won’t be running dungeons, of course. And this is a much smaller benefit of not having “rest” than the first two ideas on this list, but there could be one or two pieces that I find that I’m glad I worked for in the end.

That’s about it for my thoughts on rested XP. Hopefully this strategy won’t come back and bite me at some point during the leveling process. It feels right to me, though.

Checking up on my old list of pre-Cataclysm goals

My original idea for this post was that it be a revisiting of a post I wrote at the end of January called Things I’d like to accomplish before the Cataclysm. It’s been in the back of my mind for awhile – especially lately, as I’ve seen some of my friends write about their checklist progress.

So today, I went back and looked at that post, and I realized a few things…

1. My list of goals for Anacrusa, my main, was perhaps too short. At any rate, I finished some of those goals, and there were others that I did not complete. And there were many, many things that I achieved without initially setting goals for them.
2. My goals within the game itself changed, along with my playing habits. For instance, while I was really into my baby resto druid for a while, she spent the major portion of this year on the back burner. On the other hand, I decided to start a hunter, on August 22, for the purpose of leveling quickly to 80 and gearing him very adequately for Cataclysm, and I succeeded on both counts. 48 days later (and three days before the patch), I lost my XP bar, and I had a great time leveling and gearing him.
3. My goals evolved within my mind, and I never made a blog post to update my list. There were a couple of posts that talked about my progress with some of those goals (and several posts leading up to, and including, our Lich King kill in April), but I never wrote a revised and expanded list. It was there, though, in my mind.

I have to say that I am not surprised that all of this happened. With the implosion of the guild that I raided with, the evaporation of some relationships, and my ensuing break from the game, there were circumstances (and there was time) that allowed/forced me to consider what was important to me in the game.

When I came back, I played differently. I focused on different things, new and old.

PvP, which was undoubtedly my top focus after I returned in June, opened my eyes to both a separate world of competition and a different side of my druid. Leveling the hunter, with fresh eyes and a lot more experience, was both different and familiar – I was able to master another class, relative to how I had floundered through Azeroth with my first hunter years ago.

Whereas much of my time through the end of April was spend working toward ending the Scourge threat by removing the head from its vast body, much of my time over the past five months has been spent looking at other aspects of the game. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

• I’ve worked toward gaining as many exalted reputations as possible, and gotten a pile of achievements in the process.
• I’ve collected Leatherworking recipes like some people collect pets – except that, in this case, it’s a task which rewards no achievement, but it has been a source of enjoyment for me this year.
• I completed the Loremaster of Northrend achievement, which gave me the opportunity to complete some quests/chains that I hadn’t experienced before, and to really gain an appreciation for the lore and story lines that form the backbone of the expansion.
• And I’ve become fascinated by some of the old instances, gear, and other things that I had missed, through soloing BC heroic dungeons and working on Loremaster of Outland (a task that I have not completed yet).

* * * * *

I have a new list of goals floating around in my head. With Cataclysm, there will be a lot to do – a radically changed game-world to explore and learn about, three level 80s and their professions to level (and my level 67 druid that I need to get to 75 for profession purposes), gear to acquire, skills to hone, challenges to overcome, and so on. I’m not going to put that list in writing for this post, though – I think that I will need to see how I feel about the game before I set any definite goals.

“Level Anacrusa” is sort of plenty to think about at this point, in all honestly!

That’s not to say that I don’t have a million thoughts in my mind, as far as goals go. But I don’t think that I’m ready to put them into cohesive order. Not yet, at least.

[Cataclysm] My kitty leveling spec and glyphs

In just a few weeks, it will be time to resume an activity that I haven’t done for almost two years: level as a feral druid.

I reached level 80 on Anacrusa on the last day of February, 2009. Since then, I have learned exponentially more about my class than I knew at that point. I had never participated in raids or PvP, and had only done a handfull of dungeons (Deadmines, Sunken Temple, Scarlet Monastery, and Zul’Farrak) at that point. As a leveling feral in Wrath, I felt that I could plow through mobs using my trusty Mangle and Ferocious Bite abilities, in spite of my cluelessness and the fact that I had mostly garbage gear. And no glyphs. At all.

On the other side of Wrath, I am a different “animal” in so many ways:

• I’ve run countless dungeons.
• I’ve completed three of the four tiers of raid content (and gotten up to Yogg in Ulduar).
• My raiding Gearscore is whatever-the-heck-who-cares.
• I’ve PvPeed way more that I ever would have imagined on the day that I turned 80.
• My PvP Gearscore is almost whatever-the-heck-who-cares, too!
• I’m max-level in both primary, and both secondary, professions.
• I have a boatload of achievements.
• I’ve started a blog, and it even has some feral info/discussion on it!

And so on, etc. Like I said, I wasn’t very good at all back then…

In summary, I have a great deal more experience, and am much more knowledgeable about the game itself, my class/spec, raiding, PvP, etc.

Armed with this knowledge, I am heading into Cataclysm with a pretty good idea of what my spec and glyphs are going to look like as I begin leveling.

probable level 80 kitty leveling spec

Level 80 kitty leveling spec

This spec is actually very similar to my 4.0.1 PvP spec, which I wrote about last week. There are only two differences:

• I put two points into Feral Aggression, both for the Faerie Fire insta-3-stack and the bonus 10% Ferocious Bite damage.
• I paid for that by pulling one point out of both Thick Hide and Endless Carnage.

From what I’ve read about the expansion, quest mobs start to hit very hard after a level or two. I’m not in the beta, so I don’t have first-hand experience; however, I’ve read everything from “Cataclysm is just plain harder” to “the first couple of levels are pretty easy, but it gets pretty serious around level 83.”

It’s tempting to take the additional point in Thick Hide for the extra 3% armor (extra 11% armor in bear form). I’m thinking that the first point that I take, at level 81, will be the third Thick Hide point, although, if I find myself floundering before that, I may respec. I don’t think that it will be much of a game-changer, though. Using my wits and my supplemental class abilities should be enough to help me survive, particularly at the early levels of the expansion, considering the offensive power that my current raid gear has.

After filling Thick Hide, I will probably take the two points in Endless Carnage at levels 82 and 83, as it’s highly possible that mobs will live longer at that point. I’m not sure how much gear I will have replaced by then, but if I haven’t replaced any, the stat-scaling effect will reduce the value of several key stats (Haste, Crit, Hit, and Mastery in particular). With that in mind, bleeds will probably be more important, and I expect that I will play in a more PvP-like manner as I progress through the levels. Stuns, roots, slows, heals, incapacitates, shape-shifting, etc. will be more critical in that case (which is something that I am actually looking forward to).

Beyond that, I’m not sure which talent I will take at level 84.

As I’ve said before, there isn’t as much wiggle-room in the talent trees as there was pre-4.0.1. Basically, I’m taking talents that improve my offensive capabilities, subtracting talents that are more appropriate for raid situations, and adding in survivability talents.

Leveling glyphs

The glyph picture looks different than it did for 4.0.1 PvP. To my mind, it’s a bit murkier.

Prime Glyphs

• Mangle (extra 10% Mangle damage)
• Tiger’s Fury (reduces cooldown by 3 seconds)
• Rip (15% extra periodic damage)

For leveling, the first two make good sense to me. The Glyph of Rip is the one that I spent some time thinking about. I weighed it against Glyph of Berserk (extra 5 second duration), Glyph of Savage Roar (extra 5% auto-attack damage when Savage Roar is up), and, believe it or not, Glyph of Lifebloom (extra 10% Critical Effect on Lifebloom’s periodic heals), which is something that tantalizes me – I think that self-heals could very well be more important in the later leveling stages. However, I decided to go with Rip, because, especially as encounters last longer, the damage buff could be significant.

Major Glyphs

• Thorns (reduces cooldown by 20 seconds)
• Entangling Roots (essentially makes Entangling Roots an instant cast)
• Rake (prevents enemies from fleeing while Rake is applied)

The Glyph of Thorns and Glyph of Entangling Roots seem like perfect leveling glyphs. Thorns lasts 20 seconds and does a lot of damage whenever you are hit, and the glyph reduces the cooldown to 25 seconds. Instant Entangling Roots is great for emergency situations, when you need to stop something for a bit so that you can throw a heal or take care of another mob.

I once again wrestled with my third option. Glyph of Feral Charge (reduces cooldown by 2 seconds) is nice, but two seconds isn’t that much time. Glyph of Faerie Fire (extends the range of FFF by 10 yards) is also nice. Finally, Glyph of Barkskin (reduces chance to be critically hit with melee strikes by 25%) is also tempting – if I change my mind about Rake, particularly at higher levels, I may take this one instead.

I’m not sure how many of the mobs that we face will try to flee. If there are a bunch that do, then this will be a good one to have, particularly because it will prevent mobs from fleeing into other mobs. From what I’ve read, multi-mob pulls at higher levels can be brutal, so that’s why I decided to go with Rake.

Minor Glyphs

• Dash (reduces cooldown by 20%)
• Aquatic Form (increases swim speed in Aquatic Form by 50%)
• Mark of the Wild (reduces mana cost of MotW by 50%)

There’s nothing new here. These seem to be the best minor glyphs for solo leveling as a kitty.

Miscellaneous

Right now, my DPS gear set includes the Whispering Fanged Skull and Herkuml War Token trinkets. However, I may switch out the HWT for the Medallion of the Alliance for stun removal, if it works in Cataclysm. I’ll probably test this out early – I’m planning on reforging my DPS gear soon, and when I start leveling I will equip the MotA and see if it works against the higher-level mobs. If it does, I’ll keep it; if it doesn’t, I’ll ditch it for either the HWT or something with Stamina on it. Being stunned for even a few seconds in cat form can be lethal, so I’m definitely going to give it a try.

Closing

Cataclysm is looking like it has the potential to be a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to the solo leveling process, and the challenges that it poses. Hopefully, my spec and glyph choices, along with my knowledge and abilities, will enable me to take on these challenges in fun and interesting ways.

ADDENDUMS

This is a rewrite of an earlier post that I completed and published less than 24 hours ago. Unfortunately, the original has been corrupted beyond repair for some technical reason that is beyond me, and so I have completely re-typed and re-formatted it as a new post. Hopefully, this one will stick.

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Since I’m trashing the original post, one comment from Saniel will evaporate into the ether… Except that I am going to copy it into my new post. Bwahahahaha!

His comment: “Looks pretty solid. Any idea where you’re headed first?”

My response was: “Not sure. Frostheim, in his 80-85 Hunter leveling guide posted on Thursday on WoW Insider, says that Vashj’ir is a much better area than Hyjal, but Hyjal has a lot of lore-based stuff. I’m a lore fan… having not seen them myself, I don’t quite know yet where I will go.”

Sorry about that, San.

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Talent tree update? According to a blue post about patch 4.0.3a on Thursday, “Due to several talent revisions for select classes, druids, paladins, priests, and shaman will have their talent trees reset.”

I’ve seen some changes come down the wire, but if there has been anything significant in the feral tree, I’ve missed it. If I do find out about a change that affects my leveling spec, I will pass it along in a future post (or update this one, if WordPress accommodates me…).