How the Times Have Changed

Before I had my army of alts, a long long time ago it seems, I used to have a collection of people on my friends list to help me out with what I needed.  Someone that could make bullets and arrows for me.  Someone that could make enchants for me.  Someone that could pick locks for me.  Someone who could make gems for me.  You know the deal.

It was usually cheaper to get the raw materials for someone to make it for me and tip them a few gold than to buy them already made at the auction house.  In some cases I had the materials anyway, so it was most definitely more cost effect just to throw someone a tip to craft what I needed made.

Back in wrath the person who I had making my gems for me was a member of the number one alliance guild on the server, number two over all.  We became friends over the course of that time even if I only contacted him to cut some gems for me at the start.

Years past and we ran into each other from time to time.  His guild would do 25 runs on the weekend and I would bring an alt into them to get some play time in and maybe some gear.  He was a really good player, as you might expect from someone who was a main raider in the best guild on the server alliance side.

His guild broke up sometime in mists I believe and he never really found a place to fit in right away.  He stopped raiding to tend to some real life situations and joined our guild because he knew a few people in it.  He might not be able to raid but as a quality player that was occasionally available so he would definitely be a good addition.

He never raided with us in mists and only started to show some interest in raiding again in the past couple of months.  He was well behind in gear when he decided to join us so we dragged him along with us on our normal alt run of BRF that we would do once a week.  We figured it would get him back into the habit of raiding and get him a start on gear.

He has been working his butt off since then trying to gear up.  Running with us when we could bring him, running in pugs, running LFR, upgrading his crafted gear, buying BoEs.  Basically doing all the things you would expect someone that was a seasoned raider to do to catch up and join the team once again.

We even had him come along on a mythic dungeon run the other night and he did somewhat well.  Not great mind you, his item level is now higher than mine, but he did acceptable.  He was pulling in the 30s, which is not exactly horrible even if his gear said he could do more.  He was still rusty, still returning to the idea of raiding in general and we are a casual guild, we do not ask for perfection, just that you try your best and it sure seemed like he was trying.

He was once a great player and there was no reason for me to believe that he could not return to that status.  So when we were assembling for a new heroic run of HFC I decided to give him a chance.  I sent him an invite.  He earned it.  He has worked hard to gear up, he did okay in the mythic dungeon I ran with him by doing decent numbers and not standing in crap.  So I figured it won't hurt to give him a try out in the big show now.

We wiped a few times on the first boss, mostly because half the people there that night had not done it before.  As usually when wiping on something I looked for where we can improve and saw that his numbers were dreadful.  I am not just talking bad, I am talking really bad.  His best attempt out of the three we put in was 16K.  The first pull or two I was willing to let it slide as I knew he has never seen the fight before, even in normal, not to mention we was quite a bit out of practice.  Sometimes it takes a few pulls to get a hang of what is going on and for a casual guild that is fine.  It is not like we are blowing through heroic already because we are not.  Everyone is still in that learning phase.

I decided that we were not going to be able to do heroic tonight.  Not just because of his numbers, but over all we did not seem to have the right team for it.  We were down a healer so it was stretching what we had thin to begin with even more so with one of the three healers for 18 people being under geared to begin with.  That, combined with some new people along with his under performing and another two people that you could call the "top DPS" types that seemed to really miss the concept of single target the terrors down fast I thought we would just move to normal and kill some stuff nice and easy and maybe get some people experience tonight.  I'd yell at them later for trying to pad their numbers instead of focusing the primary target.  It looked like most people there needed some practice on the fight anyway.

This saved him.  If I had decided to continue along on heroic that night he would have been asked to sit. It was clear that if we were going to do this some changes would be needed and someone doing 16K and screwing up running back boxes was surely on the chopping block to be the first gone with whatever changes were to come.

I really hate asking people to sit even more so after I asked them to come for a test out.  We are not an aggressive progressions only type guild guild, so I give a little more leeway usually.  On normal his 16K would not hurt us.  As long as he could handle the mechanics it would be fine to carry him and maybe the experience will help him out next time.  It is also a better place for him to learn the mechanics.

Remember, as I said, this guy now out geared me.  So I expected something from him.  At least what he was doing in that mythic dungeon which was in the 30s.

We moved to normal and made it up to gorefiend before I was once again put in that position.  His numbers on gorefiend were better, but can't really say how much of that was due to the 100% increased damage in phase 2 or the fact that he was just better off as a melee with a boss that never moves anywhere.  As a piss poor melee myself I know I can do awesome when the boss does not move, I just suck every other time.

We wiped a few times, all to stupid stuff that is completely avoidable.  I was the middle of the chain, the mage I was attached to came to me, the other person did not.  Even after yelling his name on voice chat to come to me.  Guess who that other person was?  You got it, him.

He dropped doom right on melee 2 times.  He did not run to the person he was chained to three times.  He did not switch off the boss when I said multiple times adds were top priority.  If there was a mechanic in this fight, he was messing it up.  About the only thing good I can say was that at least he was consistent, but when that consistent is consistently bad, that is a problem.

The first time of the night he was actually doing respectable damage and he somehow forget that mechanics matter more.  I would rather have his 16K doing all the right things than his 40K doing all the wrong things any day.  It was a sad turn of events but I was forced to whisper him the inevitable.  I said, your numbers are most definitely looking better on this fight but you are just not getting the mechanics.  I will give you one more attempt but if you mess up mechanics again I am going to have to ask you to sit.  I even explained again, in whisper directly to him, what he was messing up with and what he needs to do so he handles those mechanics correctly.

We pulled once more and he dropped doom in melee again and did not run to someone he was chained to again.  I asked him politely to leave.  We are not world beaters, we can not carry people, even more so on bosses we just started fighting to begin with.  It is not like we are over powered for it or know it like the back of our hands at this point, it is only the second week we are doing this boss.  And even if any of that was the case, these are mechanics where one person can screw the entire team and I could not have that happen.

After the wipe he walked out of the entrance and saved me the trouble of having to boot him by dropping himself.  He traveled back to loin's landing and logged out, dropped off voice chat and I have not seen him since.  I swear for a moment I felt my heart sink, the same feeling I think I would have if someone else asked me to leave.  I felt bad for him.

This is a person that seven or so years ago I looked up to.  He was a great player and someone I wanted to be like and here I was making him feel like crap by asking him to leave because somehow he just was not the player he used to be.

I guess it happens to all of us.  We lose a step, we take a break and come back and can not find our grove.  But for me, having to tell someone that they can not raid for us when they used to be someone I looked up to as the ideal of what a raider should be really hurt me inside.

Is this my future?  Is this the future all raiders face when we start losing a step?  Some day someone will ask us to sit because we just aren't good enough any more, not even for a casual guild.  It sucks just thinking about it and it really sucks I had to ask him to sit.  I feel really bad about it.  I am just not cut out to be a raid leader any longer.   Not when asking someone to sit starts to affect me.  Once he was at the top of his game and now I am asking him to sit, how the times have changed.

Is the 6.2 Time Sink Too Much?

Looking at T2 I started to think to myself where is the content for the casual player (using casual as a term of time played for this post).  The type of player that logs in a little here and there.  Maybe one or two days during the week or maybe they are just a weekend warrior.

While talking to people in guild I keep hearing myself say things like, "You are lucky to have more time to play."  There is someone in guild that has 4 alts, ones that never raided, in complete 695 gear already.  There are a few people that have all the patterns on all their characters.  There are some people that have gathered 100s of felblight.  There are people in guild that have been able to kill all the big four rares on multiple characters each day and have a huge collection of the medallion of the legion reputation item and all the mounts already.  All these people have one thing in common.  A huge amount of free time to play.

It is not like I don't play a lot, I do.  In the grand scheme of things I play a hell of a lot.  Even on the weeks I say I am not playing much I still probably log between 6 - 8 hours for the week.  On the average week when I am playing regular I might put in 20 hours a week, which is basically like a part time job.  In terms of game play that is way past casual time wise.

So it is not like I do not play a lot of hours because I do.  But this is the first time, ever since I started playing the game, that I don't think I can keep up.  Not in the way I want to all because I do not have enough time to play.  It seems like T2 was designed with the unemployed in mind.   I would have never thought that putting in 6 - 20 hours a week in a game was extremely casual game play, but it sure seems it is now.

If I do not have enough time to do all of the things listed above, or let me rephrase that, any of those things that the people in guild with lots of free time have done, where exactly does that leave the more casual player?

It has me wondering what the other 90%, if not more, of the player base that does not play as often as I do thinks.

How do they have the time to do the unseen influences each day.  Hunting 10 rares for drops can take some serious time and most players do not know there are things you can loot on the ground that will give you the items you need, so they do it through killing rares only.  In a world where most rares will die in roughly 10 seconds of spawning unless you are standing at its spawn point you could easily miss it.  Collecting those 10 fragments is not casual game play, it is time consuming game play, a time sink if you will, sometimes created with the main purpose of taking a long time to complete.

Even the apexis crystal zones can take some time if you are not well geared to begin with, which a more casual player might not be, or if you are on a character you are not very skilled at.  Doing those could easily take a half hour or less for someone that knows what they are doing and had some gear but otherwise it could turn into a long time sink quest taking upwards of an hour.  What does the casual player do when their free time to play for the night in only an hour.  Once they do their garrison chores and head to T2 they have already eaten into their play time for the day some.

Now if they get distracted by people calling out rares and waste their time trying to get to something that is most likely dead shortly after the person called it out that starts to eat away at their time even more.  Maybe, just maybe, they might be able to complete the apexis zone and grab a few fragments in their hour of play time.  They did not get to do everything, or even half of the dailies.  They did not get to spend time gathering so they could get felblight, they did not get to do some fishing for the same reason, they did not get to spend time rare hunting, they did not get to wait for groups for the four big rares.

All that can get added to the fact now they might not have time to do LFR, they might not have time to find a pug for normal or heroic, they might not have time to do a challenge mode or a mythic dungeon even if they might have wanted to.  It puts them in the position of needing to choose what they will do with their time today and when looking at T2 and the time sink it is, doing anything other than T2 is usually a good option.

In the end it seems like T2 offered absolutely no casual content, at least in my opinion.  It was created for people that have a lot of free time.  A lot more than even I do because all I have time to do is keep up on my main and even at that I am already hating it.  I do not have time to bring my alts in, I do not have time to do some pugs to get some practice, gear or maybe kill some bosses the guild is not up to yet.  I rarely have time to do a mythic dungeon, unless I do like I did the other day and say, screw the dailies today, I am going to do a dungeon instead.

If I can not find the time to do stuff because of T2 I really wonder what the more casual players are feeling like.  Do they feel like they can't get anything done?  Time sinks are fine, grinds are fine, but I wonder were is the content for the casual player, something they can do in short time on T2.  I personally do not see it.  Seems like blizzard us pushing the casual player further and further away and I am not sure this is the right design.  Some bite sized content needs to be there, something that people who play for a limited amount of time can feel like they are actually getting things done and I don't see enough of that on T2 personally.  I think the time sink design was over used to try to make the content last longer than it.

Is 6.2 Alt Friendly in Terms of Gearing Them?

Being 6.2 is the last raid tier of the expansion that means catch up time.  It has been a design pattern of blizzards to add some sort of way to catch up to the last raid even if you just hit max level that day.  In wrath there were three new dungeons, same with cataclysm.  Mists introduced the timeless island as a way to play catch up and warlords took the timeless island idea a little further in tanaan, which I refer to as T2 because that is what it is, the second, updated, version of timeless island.

It is easy to say many loved the wrath and cataclysm catch up system and I would be lying if I said I did not think it was the best way to do it.  You had three new dungeons to show some new story, something we don't seem to get with the new catch up design.  Those three new dungeons also dropped relevant gear to help get yourself ready for the last raid of the expansion.  But there was also another piece of the puzzle that mists and warlords is missing, a glaring omission if you ask me, and that was valor gear.

Blizzard has decided to move away from the system of earning your gear by working for it and moved more toward a completely luck based random number generator system of gearing which is an article all of its own, so I can not really compare the excellent design of wrath and cataclysms catch up system with the mists and warlords system because warlords would lose, but I can compare it to the mists catch up system.

First I will say that mists catch up system was very alt friendly.  Amazingly alt friendly.  I believe for us to discuss if warlords system is alt friendly we need to spend a moment exploring where this catch up system came from and that is the timeless island.  Being this is a direct descendant of timeless island we could be led to believe it would take the good from the T1 version and use it and adapt the bad from the T1 version and make it better.

T1 allowed alts, even fresh off the boat 90s, to land and start collecting gear, with some luck, from treasures all around the area.  The first area you stepped into had mostly non-aggressive mobs that would not attack you with a few, well spaced out, elite mobs that were of minor threat but could be a challenge for a fresh 90.  They were completely avoidable however, if you did not wish to engage in battle.

In short, you eased your way on to the timeless island.   You were introduced to it in a way where you were capable of starting to catch up as you first got there.  As you explored further you would meet increasingly harder mobs, denser packs, and even some challenges, all the way up to the other side of the broken bridge where the hardest challenges were.  In effect this allowed the timeless island to have content for anyone of all gear and skill levels.  In terms of design, it was perfect and I have sang the praises of this design at least a dozen times in this very blog because T1 was designed well to have something for everyone.  From the raid geared player all the way down to the fresh 90 that did not really know how to play their class well, the timeless island offered something for everyone.

There was also the fact that all the gear tokens that dropped were BoA which meant if you had a main, or a few higher geared characters, you could easily collect a bunch of pieces and send them all to your alt.  This would mean when your alt hit the island it did not even need to go through the gearing process, it already had all the catch up gear.  The alts ended up being there for burdens of eternity only, the pieces that could be used to upgrade that 496 gear to 535.

This brings us to the one part of the timeless island catch up system I did not like.  The burdens of eternity had two huge problems with them.  One being they were soulbound, unlike the main pieces and the second was that they were a complete gamble.  You did not know what stats you would get.  Everyone that ever used a burden of eternity on a piece of gear and it ended up only having one secondary stat on it and that secondary stat just happened to be your worst secondary stat can tell you that sucked, huge.  Even more so being the burdens were not exactly chump change, they were expensive for an alt at 50K coins.

So we mentioned the good, and the bad, from the timeless island.  It was well scaled for everyone, easy to get catch up gear initially (496) but a little on the stressful side when it came to getting the better gear (535) later on.

Now to how warlords improved on this model.  I do hope you noticed the tone of my writing on the word improved.

First things first.  Lets start with what warlords got right on T2.

The new burdens of eternity are the empowered apexis fragments.  These fragments, unlike their predecessor, are indeed BoA and can be purchased with your main and sent to an alt.  Also unlike the burden that came before it these items could be used on a piece of gear once it has already been made.  No more wasting an upgrade on a piece of gear that is useless.  If you do not want a piece of gear with only one stat on it and that stat is your worst, don't use the fragment on it, simple as that.

So warlords did learn from mists.  The two worst things about T1s catch up system were addressed and made better.  Ladies and gentlemen, this is what progress looks like.  Unfortunately, this is also where progress ended.

While this addressed the one thing in T1 that I found lacking, the upper end of gearing up alts, it is the lower end of gearing up alts that I feel has suffered a fair deal with T2.

Unlike T1 where you just went there and started to get the base gear, this time around the base gear became multiple gated by the random number generator.  First you had to be lucky enough to get the gear token drops, then you needed to get lucky enough that they are for the slots you needed, and then you needed to get lucky enough that they had stats on them that were decent for you.  All that and the bonus that if you get lucky a forth time on one piece it might even end up as a 675 instead of a 650.  That is a lot of luck required to gear someone if you ask me.

This, while not a step forward, is not really a killer.  A piece of 650 gear even with the wrong stats on it is still better than a piece of 590 gear you had while questing even if the 590 had perfect stats and the 650 did not.  So while this situation is not perfect it is also not completely horrible.

The prices on buying gear pieces are also much better this time around.  20K for an empowered apexis fragment is a hell of a lot more reasonable than 50K coins for a burden.  And slot pieces for 5K and a weapon piece for 10K are not really all that bad either.

So why do I think that 6.2 is not alt friendly for gearing up those fresh 100s or those alts that never left their garrison?  The entry quest line and the areas on T2 are what kill it for me.

Remember how I said that T1 eased the player in?  There was that safe zone you landed in with few hostile mobs, easy to kill mobs, and then some slightly harder elites that you could easily pull one at a time without the risk of getting overwhelmed or avoid completely if you so wished to?  Well, T2 seems to have forgotten the idea of gradual progression in a zone like T1 had.

To even get to T2 you need to do a quest line that could be very hard for those that are under geared or under skilled.  I've had a lot of people tell me they have had problems with it.  I've heard stories of people that died multiple times while doing it.  And this is just the lead in to even get to the area that is the catch up zone.  I think people needed a catch up zone to do the quest that leads them to the catch up zone.

Mind you I have done it on six characters thus far and had no problems.  Two hunters, a priest, a druid, a rogue and a paladin.  But I also have a lot of experience at the game and I know what my characters are capable of and usually, but not always, I am pretty damn good with not pulling mobs I did not intend to.. 

While I pulled like a mad man with my hunters and tanks I took it one mob at a time with my rogue and my priest.  I never died, but I can absolutely 100% understand how people could and would never make fun of someone that did.  It is completely reasonable to get overwhelmed there if you are not careful.

This is a huge difference from T1 where people were eased into it.  It is completely different from T1 where you could walk into it with a fresh max level character that has no gear and you have little skill with and still slowly make your way through.  Nope, not even close.  Your freshly dinged character is going to get slaughtered here if you are not very careful, and dare I say it, if you are not very skilled at playing it.  I do not see someone at a 580 item level having an easy time here, even more so if they are new to the class or do not know it well.

So you need to be geared to get to a zone that is intended to gear you up.  That is strike one against T2 on why I think it is not very good for gearing alts.  Strike two is once you actually get there.

Once you actually get there you need to go through another little story line process that is not as hard as the one you just did at the iron docks, but still could cause some problems of its own.  At least if the pile of bodies I see near that one machine we need to blow up each time I go there tells me anything.  While on my hunter being trailed by 12 mobs up to it, it was a matter of turning with an MD and barrage, if an under geared alt or a fresh 100 makes that train of mobs they end up being one of the many skeletons I see laying there on the ground each time I pass through.  Once again showing the mists way of just landing and going it much more alt friendly than the warlords version.

Mistake number three that makes it a bit harder for alts, although not impossible by any means, is the zone itself.  It is not that it is larger than T1 that makes it worse, if anything that should have made it better.  It is that the areas all feel the same, from the close ones to the far ones.  There is no deviation in difficulty.

Back to T1 where there were multiple areas with different difficulties.  Some areas seemed better designed for ranged while others for melee.  Some zones were super easy, some where slightly harder.  Some you could never over pull in and others you could easily over pull by accident.  There was most definitely a feel that the further you went into the zone the harder it got.  T2 has no feeling like that, none of the sort.

Every single area feels the same.  The orcs in fel forge which is close to our base are the same difficulty as the arakkoa area and the iron front area which are both pretty far away.  There is no ease you in feeling like there was in T1.  There is no "this place is for weaker characters" that people could go to complete their quests. 

How many people farmed their epoch stones in the easy area killing turtles and cranes because that is all they could do as they were easier?  No option like that here, sorry.  Everything on T2 is scaled the same.  Even the elite areas are the same as the normal area.  Sure the stuff takes longer to die as they are elite, but the demons of the throne are no harder than the orcs of fel forge in terms of difficulty.  They are just elite so they live longer and their abilities hit harder, but they are still the same.  There is no scaled difficulty here, it is one difficulty.  This is not very alt friendly.  Where is their ease in area?

So the bottom line is that yes, 6.2 is actually alt friendly for gearing.  Even if the base pieces are not as good as they were in T1 being they were BoA there but having the higher gear as BoA unlike T1, which is awesome, actually makes it a toss up, almost even.  So yes, gearing an alt can be much easier.  The one problem I see is that getting into it with an alt is much much harder than it was on T1 where you could just walk in and get a started gearing up.  This design seems to require you to have some gear to begin with so you can get more.  It is almost as if it were designed with the player being 670 to begin with.  Which when you are getting 650 gear really does not seemed balanced at all.

Over all I would say the gearing up portion for alts is awesome this time around in a way.  Even more so being the prices on the upgrades are reasonable in terms of the apexis they require unlike the original apexis gear which was insanely over priced.  But the scaling is a complete failure.  Where is the easy access for the fresh 100 in 580 gear?  There is none.

So if your alt already has some gear to begin with gearing up in 6.2 is a winner.  But if they don't have gear or if you are not very good at playing that class or the alt is a fresh 100, gearing up in 6.2 sucks.  It was poorly designed for the people that needed it the most.  As that is the angle I should be looking at it from, then I have to say, even if I think I like the gearing system of 6.2, the over all system for gearing alts in T2 is very poor as it failed the people that needed it most.

Next up, the time sink of 6.2, who has the time?

Guide to Upgrading Your Baleful Gear

I would have honestly thought that a post like this would not need to be written but after talking to a few people in guild it seems I was mistaken.  It seems that people that read the fan sites know all about the new Baleful gear (650) and its big brother the Empowered Baleful gear (695) but those that do not keep on top of the news are a little confused about it.

This guide will not be giving specific advice on a per class basis.  It will be giving a round about idea to help people out while trying to make decisions on which piece to empower up to a 695 item level first and give some basics on how the baleful gear works.  For raiders this guide will be mostly useless, just upgrade that one or two pieces you might need and be done with it.  For everyone else, I hope I can give you some advice to help you get the most out of your baleful gear.

The Basics:

Killing mobs in Tanaan can get you baleful gear tokens as drops.  Killing rares has an increased chance of dropping baleful gear tokens.  All tokens that drop from mobs are soulbound and can not be traded to your alts.

Any baleful gear tokens you get from shipyard missions can be traded to any of your characters as those gear pieces are bind on account and not soulbound.  You might also notice that baleful gear tokens that you get from shipyard missions are for a specific type of armor as in cloth, leather, mail or plate whereas the soulbound drops are just baleful with no designation of armor type.

If you get it as a drop, you can use it, it is always meant specifically for you.  If you get it from a shipyard mission you can send it to any of your characters but only one that uses the armor type specified on it can use it.

The Empowered Apexis Fragment is the item used to upgrade any baleful item from 650 (or 675) to 695.  This item is bind on account meaning that you can grind out the apexis crystals on a character it is easier to do so with and then buy it and send it to the character that needs it.

You can also buy baleful gear tokens, the soulbound versions, for 5000 apexis crystals each and the weapon token for 10000 crystals.  The empowering item costs you 20000 crystals.

Unlike with the token pieces on the timeless island where you needed to use the upgrade on a piece before you knew what the stats were, one of the beautiful things that this system has that improved on the old one is that you can use the upgrade item on a piece that you already know the stats of. 

It is worth noting that there are rumors you can get the empowered apexis fragment as a drop from rare mobs when you kill them but I have killed literally hundreds of rare mobs in the past two weeks over all my characters and I have never seen one drop, so if they do in fact drop from them, do not count on getting them as they seem to be an extremely rare drop.

Choosing Items to Upgrade:

If you are a raider this process should be a lot easier.  Depending on the level of raiding you do and the luck you had with gear you will only have a few slots, at most, that could use a baleful upgrade.  This guide holds true for both someone with no raid gear or mostly raid gear and just needs a few slots.

There are two things you are looking for when choosing which items to upgrade.  The first are the stats on the item.  Clicking on a baleful gear token gives you an item with random stats.  You want to find stats that are most useful for you if you are going to spend 20K apeixs crystals to upgrade it.  So make sure the piece has the right stats for you before upgrading it.

What stats you get will be entirely luck based sadly and you could always buy new gear tokens for 5000 each to try and roll one that has the best stats for you, but the stats do matter.  Click on every single soulbound baleful item you get and save the ones that have the best stats for you for upgrade later even if they are not useful right now.  Know that they will be 695 at some point.  Hold on to those ones with the perfect stats until you can upgrade them.

If you do not know what the best stats for you are I suggest visiting icy veins and checking out your specs stat priority.  The top two secondary stats will be the two you are looking for on your gear.  Remember, bonus armor and spirit will never roll on a body piece, only neck, back, rings and trinkets.

The second thing you need to look for when choosing which item to upgrade is the weight of the item.  A 695 chest has a lot more stats on it than a 695 neck would.  A 695 weapon, even not perfectly itemized, will do more for you as a damage dealer than a 695 ring would.

So look for the "big" pieces to upgrade first.  This means Weapon, Chest, Legs, Shoulders, Head and Hands.  Those are the big ones, the first three there being the most important.

Spending your Apexis Wisely:

How you spend your apexis wisely will depend on you as a player. 

If you are the type that can spend a lot of time grinding apexis crystals at the rate of tens of thousands per day you will handle it differently than the daily player that might get 30K-40K a week or the occasional player that would be lucky to get 20K a week.

I would suggest, strongly suggest even, that you do not waste your apexis crystals on buying the base baleful pieces unless you are the type that is grinding a bunch each day.  You would be better off buying a 20K upgrade and upgrading a poor piece (meaning not the best stats) than spending the 20K trying to get good stats and leaving it up to the random number generator gods to give you one with good stats.  So do not do this unless you are a heavy grinder or you are the amazingly lucky type, which if that is the case I hate you.

You should upgrade the biggest pieces, as I laid out, with the perfect stats first.  Even more so if you are only a part time player without a lot of time to grind for crystals.  If that is the case you will never be flooded with crystals so having the best pieces would mean more to you because you most likely will never be flush with crystals and able to waste them.

If you are a weekly player that could upgrade one or two pieces a week I suggest upgrading the biggest single piece with as close to the best stats you have.  So if you save up enough for 2 upgrades, use one on something that is not perfect but good right now and save the extra for if a perfect piece comes along.

And the big point of advice I could give is this.  Do not get distracted with the 150K mount.  Even if you want it, do not think you will save up for that first. 

Upgrading your gear will make it easier to kill things which in turn makes it easier to collect apexis.  You could probably collect the 150K apexis crystals in the same amount of time if you spent some on a weapon, chest and legs along the way as you would if you just went straight for it.  Do not discount the ability to kill things faster when it comes to apexis collection.  We will be playing around in Tanaan for a year most likely, upgrade your gear first, get the mount later.

Hope this helped some people.  Sadly there are a few people that made some mistakes in guild that caused me to write this.  The person that spent 40K upgrading two pieces that had crap stats on it for them because item level wise they were big upgrades, which is the wrong way to do it.  Then there was the person that vendored off the cloth baleful gear he got from a mission because it was useless on the druid that got it with as he did not realize it was BoA unlike the ones you get from drops.  All honest mistakes and all mistakes I hope that this post will help others from making.

Happy hunting.

Monday Random Thoughts

- My druid now officially has a higher item level than my hunter.

- But that has more to do with the fact I could never get my heroic tier pieces on my hunter.

- So I am stuck with 4 670 tier pieces which is really dragging down my item level.

- While item level matters a lot as the stats on gear increase potential, people read too much into it.

- I can't get into a pug for any HFC stuff because I do not have the 690 item level minimum everyone is looking for.

- Wish they would realize that me at 683 with the 4 piece even at a 670 item level will do better than an equally skilled player over 690 without it.

- Tier is that important and it sucks that I could either A) do better with a lower item level and not get groups or B) do worse with a higher item level and get into groups.

- Sometimes I hate item level.

- But at least my tank / healer is over 690.

- But there you go with how easy it is to make misconceptions.

- I am a much better damage dealer on my 683 hunter than I am a tank on my 695 druid.

- My druid does not need to be 690+ to get into groups.

- I had someone begging me to heal heroic HFC for them on my disc priest because they needed a disc priest.

- My disc priest is a 666 item level.   Evil, yes, over the 690 they are looking for, no.

- And they knew that, and they still begged me to come heal for them.

- So healers or tanks do not need a high item level to get into stuff because they are in high demand, but damage dealers do and people mistakenly think the higher the item level the more DPS they do, and that is just flat out false.

- Had someone in guild act surprised when I was talking about my item level.

- I had done a heroic BRF run to try and get their tier pieces.

- Hey, 685 is still better than 670, and I should at least keep trying to get better gear even if it is in an older raid right?

- I won nothing, but did get the achievement on iron maidens for killing all within 10 seconds.

- BTW, we did not kill them all within 10 seconds.

- Within 1 minute, sure, but not 10 seconds.

- I think that achievement is bugged right now.

- But back to the rant, no gear for me of course.

- When I said my item level he said, I did not realize you were that low.

- Thing is, I do well for the item level I have because I choose the "best" pieces for me, not the gear with the highest item level.

-So yes gear matters, but it is not always everything.

- Not when tier bonuses are that huge.

- But I would like to, you know, win some gear once in a blue moon.

- Would make me feel as if I am not spitting into the wind raiding all the time.

- I swear I have lost my desire to raid in part because it does not seem worth it.

- All that work with no reward really is not fun.

- While I do not raid specifically for gear, I farm bosses for that reason, so getting gear matters.

- Otherwise I would kill the boss once and never go back.

- The need to go back to wrath style where you can buy tier gear with valor.

- Make valor drop from raid boss kills and raid boss kills only.

- So that way I can get what won't drop for me and the whiny bitches who complain about welfare gear even if they do not understand what welfare means can't complain.

- I'd be killing raid bosses and having bad luck with gear, but I can then buy the raid gear I have no luck getting with valor.

- Makes both camps happy.

- And helps even out the bad luck factor.

- I would take that over the bonus roll option any day of the week.

- A bonus roll that has yet to award me with one piece of gear I wanted all expansion is kind of useless.

- If there is one thing I have very good luck at, it is having bad luck.

- I own bad luck with gear drops.

- Enough gear griping, now to some questions I have about T2.

- Is it just me or does it seem like there are some missing objective zones there?

- Why isn't the marsh an objective zone?

- It is a big area, there is a lot to kill there, might as well have it be an objective.

- How about the sabermaw zone?

- Sure most people could not do it solo, but it would work as a nice elite objective zone with double rewards like the throne is.

- And there is that area just to the left of the raid instance.

- There has to be what seems like 12 billion orcs there, why is that not an objective zone?

- Ever notice that the bleeding hallow objective mobs drop no apexis crystals.

- I have 6 characters on T2 now and I think I would rather put a needle into my eye than bring another there.

- Really, T2 is about as much fun as walking barefoot over broken glass.

- At least it has been for me so far.

- I managed to get the 150K apexis crystal mount this weekend.

- Seems I was one of, if not the, first to get it on my server.

- After I got it I rode around on it some and got comments like, "It's dreadtalon" and asking if I got that as a drop from him.

- One person even mentioned it in general.

- Of course this all leads me to believe not many had seen it.

- By sunday it seems like a lot more people started getting it.

- I saw a few more people running around on it.

- Why is it that something looks so cool, until you see a bunch of people on it and then it loses its luster?

- I am not running around on it any more.

- No fun being more people have it now but at least I had a couple of days of fun with it when no one else had it.

- For two full days I never saw a single person on it.

- I bought a healer over to T2 and took the advice of a guild mate and used Illiona as a follower and just healed her and let her do the fighting for me.

- Must say it worked wonders.

- For a short time at least.

- They need to give followers a pet like control system, seriously.

- Illiona was fighting a mob, I saw a pat coming, wanted her to move back as not to aggro them and couldn't.

- So now here I am with 4 elite mobs in the throne, me on a healer, and a fight that is bound to take forever.

- I managed it, she is easy enough to heal and she holds aggro better than most tanks in a 5 man can, but it took forever to kill them.

- That is #1 on why bodyguards need pet like controls.

- #2 is because they are stupid on their own.

- I was fighting a golem in the throne, was there because of the setting the signal quest of course, and the rare dog spawned.

- I was going to clear the area a little but someone went all hog wild in there and attacked, so I turned to throw a shot in and then went back to killing the golem.

- Illiona, in all her majestic glory and self sacrificing nature decided that because I turned and hit the dog with a holy fire that she needed to tank that too, even if she didn't.

- I was yelling at my screen, no Illiona no, don't do it.

- She ran all the way from the golem through a pack of imps, three roaming dogs, and to the rare.

- Then others running to it pulling trains of mobs came.

- She, as a tank, and a better one that most 5 man tanks remember, managed to get aggro on everything she pulled, the rare I put one shot in on, and every single add that everyone trailed there.

- I used everything I could spamming shields, heals, pain suppression, but poor poor Illiona bit off way more than she could chew and died a valiant death trying to defend me.

- Or should I say, trying to defend me when I was never in danger to begin with.

- She caused the danger by running to the rare, one I did not ask her to run to.

- If she had just stayed on the golem she would not have died, I would have my rare loot, and I would have had my body guard with me for the remaining three things I needed to get to complete the quest.

- That is #2 why they need pet like controls.

- Just because I hit something else does not mean she should have attacked it.

- She should have stayed on task, like she was supposed to.

- So here I am on a healer, now alone in the throne, needing to complete my quest.

- This is going to be... fun.

- I managed it, with a little strategy and patience.

- I waited for people to run by and aggro mobs so I could run in and click two of them.

- One more left and I knew exactly which one I would go for.

- There is one that is just over that closed in area where if you try to get in you will get teleported out.

- I ran up and pulled the three mobs there, popped power word shield on myself so my cast would not be interrupted, clicked on the signal and then jumped off the side of the mountain and instantly was teleported to the ground.

- Woot woot, nice planning if I do say so myself.

- Did the signal quest basically without a follower.

- The two I got while she was still with me could just be walked up to anyway, so I did not need her with me.

- Need a group of three my ass, just need a bit of planning.

- And the right tools, which in this case was PWS.

- So what to do now with no follower?

- Stalk rares with patterns.

- I did that until I could get Illiona back and then made another mistake which is # 3 on why followers need pet like controls.

- I joined a whale shark group and she got herself one shot.

- Son of a bitch.

- Well, at least I got the pattern and I called it a day on my healer.

- So # 3 why followers need pet like controls, so I could put her on passive or at least take off her taunt.

- I did all the entry stuff on my rogue too, even managed to do the throne daily solo which I must admit I was personally impressed with.

- Did not get many gear tokens for my rogue so it is still crap geared, but I had a lot of fun with it.

- No felblight from skinning so despite everyone saying they get lots from it, I did not.

- I did however managed to get my 10K dingy coins to get my barrel of bandanas toy.

- There are so many mobs to pick pocket there I was loving it just going around and pick pocketing.

- I must have filled my bags completely twice from just doing that.

- Was rather upset when I got the toy however, partly my own fault.

- I thought it said barrel of bananas and it would be a fun goofy monkey type toy.

- But it was bandanas not bananas.

- Who has ever heard of a barrel of bandanas, it is a barrel of bananas, or at least it is supposed to be.

- Clicking on the barrel gives the person a rogue like bandana, all different colors.

- Boring.

- And I pick pocketed 10K coins for this.

- Oh well, one more toy for the toy box at least, and I had fun doing it.

- Fun is the most important thing and I did enjoy it.

- I would run up to people fighting mobs and pick pocket the mobs they were fighting, it was mildly humorous.

- To me at least.

- Oh BTW, I got the pathfinder done.

- Was second in the guild to get it, a filthy human with their reputation buff got it first.

- Either way, goes to show you that it will not take long for anyone really as long as they do the dailies each day.

- I wonder about people sometimes.

- Was in a cave on my druid going up the path pulling mobs.

- A group of three passes me, looked like a mage, a paladin and a hunter.

- When done with my mobs I leap frog them, it is how it works, they are killing those mobs, I go ahead of them and pull a few.

- They then go to leap frog me and one of them says in say, jerk, as they pass me.

- How exactly am I a jerk?

- If you are going to state "claim" to the mobs up this narrow path than I was here first and that makes you the jerk, not me.

- That is how I looked at it in my mind at least.

- When I am done I go to leap frog them again, like I said, this is how it has been done forever in game.

- The hunter sees I am passing them and then runs forward and hits barrage to tag them before me.

- But thanks to me knowing what was coming and some quick faerie fire, tab, faerie fire, tab, faerie fire, action I was able to tag three of them before he did that.

- So once again he says in say, jerk.

- Excuse me?

- Your group was there fighting, I moved passed you and grabbed a few mobs, you are the one that was trying to take them from me, I was not taking them from you, you were busy fighting your own mobs already.

- I did not say it, but I must admit I was getting slightly upset that this guy kept calling me a jerk when in fact he was the one acting like a jerk.

- I wonder if he even realizes that.

- Does fit the model however, whoever talks the most in group content is usually the worst player or person there.  This guy is fitting that description.

- They leap frog past me once more and run and pull the entire next part of the area and then make laughing emotes, at me.

- Really, who is the jerk here?

- I am just quietly going about my day killing mob for a quest never saying a word to anyone.

- When I am done with my mobs I go past them, to see if there is anything else down the end of the road, as I pass them he says jerk once more.

- Final laugh was for me however.

- They made such an effort to pull the rest of the mobs and bring them back near me so they could taunt me that they had pulled the rest of them that they did not see the rare spawn at the end.

- I walked up on it, alone, and proceeded to beat it all by my lonesome.

- They yell as they finish their mobs and start running down, jerk, once more.

- Yeah, this jerk is killing the rare while you are walking away.

- Poetic justice.

- I do wonder about people like that however.

- It is like if I see someone fighting over a node or a click objective for the zone, I do not go by and take it or click it.

- They are fighting for it, it belongs to them.

- In my opinion at least.

- The worst was a paladin I ran into on my rogue while skinning.

- I was killing raptors for skins and this paladin was following me around.

- Standing on top of me so he could skin my kills.

- I politely said, I am a skinner, I am killing these for the skins.

- I understand following someone around that you know is not a skinner and skinning their kills, I do it all the time, but you do not do that to a skinner.

- Did he stop?  Of course not.

- I had pulled a pack and he jumped on it instantly trying to steal the skins, even got one, but as a worgen I am a faster skinner.

- I started pulling one at a time so he could not do that.

- I hate people like that, go kill your own mobs for skins, go skin mobs that a non skinner left behind, but you do not steal skins from another skinner.

- It is just wrong.

- Even more so when you are members of the same faction.

- I can see stealing from the enemy if you are on a PvP server, but that is about it.

- And it is more about killing the enemy than stealing their skin.

- Speaking of PvP, beware of bait traps.

- Groups put up on 98% horde population servers for an alliance group looking for vengeance, terrorfist, dreadtalon or doomroller.

- You zone in to a slaughter.

- Those mobs where never there, the groups for them were never real.

- It is just a horde person on that server making a bait group for free kills on an alliance alt.

- It seems to be happening more and more.

- So if you are alliance and see a group started by someone on mal ganis, for example, do not join it.

- That is a 98% horde server, any alliance group for a rare mob is a bait group looking for kills, nothing more.

- Even if you are looking to PvP for fun, this is not an option, you will be outnumbered 100 to 1 the second you zone in.

- It is a slaughter, not a fight.

- I mentioned my druid passed my hunter in gear, it has also passed it in naval missions.

- I am really thinking I might as well just switch my main to my druid.

- Maybe it could trick the game into starting to give stuff to my hunter.

- Speaking of switching, I think I am going to name change one of my warriors to George.

-Why so you ask?

- The new "of the jungle" title that we are going to get.

- Come on, who does not want to be "George of the jungle".

- I know I will be.

- Got the compass which is nice, it returns you to your shipyard, but the 4 hour cooldown is a lot.

- It is not so much the cooldown that bugs me however, it is the fact it is another item to clutter my bags.

- I understand why they do not want to make everything account wide as toys, but they should have two toy tabs.

- One for account wide toys and one for personal toys.

- So things like the skull of the mad king, the compass, master treasure hunter, etc, stuff you want to hold on you will not take up bag space but also not become account wide.

- I was looking through my bags and there easily has to be 20 things, if not more, like that just cluttering up bag space.

- Every time blizzard does something to free up bag space they just make it worse by giving us more things to clutter up bag space.

- So a personal toy tab would work along side the account wide toy tab.

- Sounds like a solid idea to me at least.

- I am not liking the flow of T2.

- They tried to emulate what made T1 work so well and I think they failed in most cases.

- One being the progressions of difficulty of the mobs.

- One thing I loved about T1 was that the mobs scaled well based on how far you went in.

- From super simple, no over pulls ever cranes, turtles, etc at the beginning, to a tiny bit harder tigers, frog and others later on, and the further you go in the harder the mobs got.

- T2 does not have that feel.

- Everything seems blanket difficulty with a couple of harder areas, the sabermaw and throne areas.

- There are no "easy" areas like there were on T1 where you had the mostly non aggressive animals you could pull one at a time meaning even the worst geared and worst skilled could participate.

- Also walking into T1 most alts were better geared than walking into T2.

- T1 was designed for people to be walking in with lesser gear and then gave out the 496 gear like candy so you could move further.

- T2 is designed for people already in 650 gear and then you need to fight to get more 650 gear.

- Not exactly as well scaled or designed as the T1 if you ask me.

- So it does not seem as balanced.

- Mind you I have not had much trouble.

- Even with my low geared hunter, low geared priest, low geared paladin and low geared rogue I had very little issue outside of the throne, but that is because I know where things are.

- I know how to move, I know how to pull, I know what I can handle.

- Basically, if you go in there just looking to "play" and not thinking about it, T2 is not as user friendly as T1 was.

- Speaking of knowing how to pull, some people are just freaking stupid.

- Sorry, there is no kinder way to say that.

- There is the one orc rare in the camp off the left of the raid entrance, name escapes me at the moment.

- The camp there is always packed.

- Most people either go in there to kill him with their raid group while waiting to go into the raid, which means it is no problem pulling the whole zone really.

- Others try to pull smart or clear the path some before pulling.

- And then there is this mage moron that pulled him from the top of the bridge in a bad position and somehow, I have no clue how, pulled the entire camp, both sides.

- I just happened to be running past on my druid when I saw this army of name plates coming across the bridge.

- I don't think I could even count how many there were.

- I see this mage blink past me, running for dear life.

- I do what a tank does.

- I turn, lock myself in, hit every single cooldown I have, and start to thrash yelling, bring the pain baby.

- In a matter of seconds I have every single mob on me and I drop an artillery strike.

- I follow it by another artillery strike to thin the pack as I hit my second set of cooldowns.

- It mades no difference I did not have the tag for these mobs, I am a tank, my job is to save people and that is exactly what I planned to do.

- When all is said and done the entire bridge is sparkling for me, and as I said, I did not even have most of them tagged.

- Did the mage say thank you?

- Of course not.

- So why do I call him stupid?

- Because earlier in the day I was there on my rogue, I saw that mob up, I moved in and killed two mobs and then pulled him with a throw.

- Notice what I said there, pulled him.

- Not pulled him and a few guards, not pulled him and a bunch of adds, not pulled him and the entire camp, I pulled him and him only.

- If you do not know how to pull, DON'T.

- It really is that simple.

- It is not like it would be hard to have pulled him solo.

- Or maybe him with the two adds that would come with him that my rogue took the time to kill first.

- But there is no reason to pull the whole zone to pull him.

- Only someone really stupid would do that.

- It is amazing how these people even made it to 100.

- How can you make it to 100 and still not know how to pull mobs, how to plan for patting mobs, how to line of sight a mob.

- Shouldn't these things be learned while leveling?

- I learned them when I leveled.

- And no, I was a hunter, not a tank, so don't say that pulling is something only a tank should know.

- Every player of every class should know how to pull correctly.

- Maybe I am just getting even grumpier in my old age.

- Maybe I am asking too much of people, maybe they don't need to know these things.

- But it sure helps.

- Was tanking a mythic dungeon in my druid when I said, I am going to pull these pats back here next.

- The healer said, it will pull the side mobs, I have healed this a few times, you can not just pull them.

- I said, yes I can.

- They said, no, you can't, they are connected.

- I said, trust me.

- Your funeral, they said.

- I poked my bear head out a little and waited for the right moment and at the right distance.

- I hit faerie fire on the melee mob and backpedaled.

- Just the two mobs pulled, we killed them and the healer said they did not think that was possible.

- I said, because every tank you ever had did not know how to pull.

- It is a simple directional pull where only the melee is in range so the caster needs to move up and it is never in range to cast from where it is.

- When it starts casting instantly is how it triggers the other mobs, being it never started casting it never triggered the other mobs.

- See, simple.

- So maybe I am asking too much that people know how to pull, but I know one thing for sure, I love knowing how to pull.

- It makes the game so much easier.

- And surprises healers.

- One thing is for sure, the next time I do something and I say trust me, I have 100% trust from that healer.

- Wow this is a long random thoughts section today, and I am not even half way done with my thoughts.

- Random or otherwise.

- Either way, have a great day.

The Ultimate Unseen Influence Tip

I must admit I am a little afraid to write about this because I know it will get out there and blizzard might fix this.  But I have been doing this since the patch came out and after talking to a few people in guild about it and they were all loving it because it made their lives so much easier, I figured I might as well share the tip.

If you are not sure what I am talking about it is about the quest unseen influence which is probably the most time sinking quest in the game right now.  Even more so if you are on a very populated server.

Small tip to start with, this is not the tip however.  Do not loot all the treasures in T2 when you first get there.  Loot them a little at a time because they give you the fel corrupted apexis fragments from them and they are in short supply otherwise.

When you are done with all the treasures and if you can not find any of the bonus chests around T2, the only way to get fel corrupted apexis fragments is from killing rare mobs.  With rares having long spawn timers and dying literally withing seconds of spawning if you are on a heavily populated server getting these 10 fragments could be near impossible unless you have hours to spend.  Even on low population servers it can be a problem if you have rare hunters who just like killing the rares.  One well geared rare hunter can easily kill rares in a matter of seconds before you can even get a hit in.  Effectively this makes getting this quest finished near nightmare levels in frustration.

My big tip, but not the ultimate tip, is based on the fact that some days we might see a bunch of rares and other days we do not see any.  Haven't you ever though that you wish you saw half the rares you saw yesterday because yesterday you killed so many?  Well, I have the solution for that for you.  My tip is the perfect way to make sure every rare always drops a fel corrupted fragment for you forever now so you can stock up on them for those bad days when you do not have time or can not find any rares.

For this tip to work you need to turn auto loot off if you have it enabled.  If you never enabled it, do not worry, auto loot is not the default of the game.

Now every time you kill something, rare included, you have to manually loot, but you will also never loot a fel corrupted apexis fragment off the body of the mob again.  Leave it on the body.  As long as you have the quest in your quest book and do not loot the fel corrupted apexis fragment you can keep getting them.

But how do I get them if I am not looting them Grumpy?

Glad you asked.  As soon as the body despawns the fragment gets mailed to you from our friendly neighborhood postmaster.  Sure, in time this will clutter your mail box, but that is the price for the ease of having some extras laying around.

Each day run around and do all your dailies and kill whatever rares you come across, 25 today, 4 the next day, doesn't make a difference.  Just don't loot the fragments.

When you are done for the day go to the mailbox, pull 10 out, turn in the quest.  Everything left over is a head start for tomorrow.  So that day you only have time to get 4 you can still complete it because the day before you got 25 and only used 10.

I am currently sitting on 94 of them, which means I don't have to worry for quite some time.  That is a nice situation to be in.  If I am ever losing too much mail box space, I just ditch a few.

And now for the... (drum roll please)... ultimate unseen influence tip.

On reset day, or any day really, when you see people doing the rumble in the jungle quest offer to help them.  Heck, just hang out there and put in a few hits, help them kill them, be a nice guy or gal.  They drop anywhere between 1 and 3 fel corrupted fragments from my experience.

So say you go there on reset day, kill them for a while with everyone doing the quest, you can easily collect all the fel corrupted apexis fragments you need for the entire week in one simple and easy sitting.  Just remember, do not loot them, let them get mailed to you.  How awesome is that?

Be warned, I am sure blizzard is going to fix this sooner or later, it is just too awesome to be allowed to stay in game.  They do not like us being able to stock up on things like this because they lose their time sink and after all, that is all unseen influence is, a time sink.

Happy hunting.

So Which Bonus Objectives Do You Do?

After your take the main quest to do the apexis daily in one labeled area of your choice given two options you are given another quest to complete two bonus objectives, of your own choice anywhere.  By now most people that have been playing around in T2 have done this process once or twice.  I know I have found my favorite areas to do my two bonus objectives, of course based on time taken to do them and I am sure others have.

Before I share my opinion on which two bonus objectives are the best I do wish to make a few comments on this whole process. 

I really dislike the fact I need to do the one objective and come back to turn it in before I can get the quest for the other two.  I would rather them change the other quest from saying two to saying three and letting me pick it up at the same time I pick up the one directed objective.  In the end I would still end up doing three, the initial one and the two additional ones, so changing it to three would not add more work but what it would do it make it so I do not need to return to base to pick up the follow up quest.  I think that would be an excellent quality of life change in my opinion.

Now on to which bonus objectives I think are the best one.  Remember, your mileage might vary based on the actions of people on your server or how busy your server is.  My spots work because it seems not many people on my server are doing these areas for some odd reason.

Iron Front:

The iron front is one hell of a quick bonus objective area.  With bandages you can pick up, banners you can click and an elite mob that offers up an astounding 10% completion along with fast spawning normal mobs, most of which are in battle with the NPCs there and already injured that still give you credit even if you only put one auto attack on them make this area a super fast zone to do the bonus objective.

I start by grabbing a few boxes for my bandages when I land at the flight path.  I then make a b-line to one of the elites, pulling all mobs that might aggro on me as I go.  I dismount, hit misdirect, spin and turn and hit barrage.  All the mobs trailing me, a few others, and the elite go to my pet.  I burn them down some and then use the bandages on the injured people there, and there are always a few, and click the banner, sometimes there are two,while my pet does what my pet does and then I turn to finish the elite.  Usually this puts me anywhere between 20-35% complete.

I repeat this process a couple of times and I am done on my hunter.  But this is not one of my favorite places because my hunter can blow through it, it is one of my favorite places because my alts, even extremely under geared alts can blow through it and basically that means it is a great area for anyone.

You land at a flight path that is right at the start of the area.  There are boxes for bandages right there and injured people all over at 4% completion each.  The banners are also 4% completion each.  The mobs in the area are in battle with the alliance and horde forces and are sometimes at very low life.  Even if they are at 10 health as long as you tag them you will get full completion credit for killing them.  All that and the ultimate kicker that if you see some hunter like me killing one of those elites I mentioned, throw a shot in.  Yes, you get a full 10% completion when I kill it.  You do not even need to kill it yourself.

All that awesome easiness and the fact there are a few rares that can appear there, two that need to be summoned and most people do not know how to do so, and you can get some of those fel corrupted apexis fragments you are looking for as well while doing the objective.

The iron front gets a 9 and a half star out of 10 for ease of completion from both my geared and ungeared characters.  It only loses a half point because it is one of the furthest away, but at least it has a flight point right there.

Bleeding Hallow:

The bleeding hallow area can be a little rough on an under geared character walking into it to get to the ultimate area I am going to suggest for this but when you get there it is great. 

On a geared character it is pretty much a non issue, just pull everything and mow it down, and this is one of the best places for that because even on a full server there are usually a full set of mobs up somewhere in there.  It seems to have the best respawn rate of all the bonus objective areas, at least in one place.

If you can make it all the way to the top you will see a large area with 7 or 8 of those blood orbs, each with one person guarding it.  The guards have very low life so even a lower geared player can kill them fast and then clicking the orbs gives 3 or 4% per click.  So kill guard, click orb, rinse and repeat and never ever worry about running out of spawns or orbs because in this spot, the highest spot in bleeding hallow, these babies respawn faster than you can kill and click.

If you do this one with a friend, have one kill and one click, as you share credit on clicks if you are in a group, this objective can take three minutes or less.  Even alone it does not take much longer, depending on your gear of course.  My hunter can one or two shot the orb guards whereas my rogue might take 4 or 5 globals to kill it.  Either way, it dies fast and completing the quest is really easy here.

The bleeding hallow gets an 8 out of 10 for an under geared character because you might get slowed down getting to the top but once you do it is great and a 10 out of 10 from a well geared character because even the mobs leading up to there are easy to kill for them.

What are your favorite bonus objective areas or spaces you have found that help make them faster and easier?