Monday, December 10, 2012

Monday Random Thoughts

- The darkmoon fair is over and I managed to get myself the darkmoon eye, a rare glowfly and an uncommon crow.

- Getting the eye was a big one, got it on the last day.

- That fight was a hard one, hardest one I have faced yet.

- By the forth day I had designed a team to do it with no wipes.

- Mixed teams are harder to fight and that made for a fun one but that monkey was brutal as the last guy.

- And he always was the last guy.

- One day I made it to him with all three alive and nearly got destroyed.

- If it were not for a mechanical bringing up the rear for me that monkey would have wiped me single handed.

- My mech died and came back to get the killing blow.

- Speed, that is what it was all about.  Whoever goes first wins.

- That is what pet battles are all about from my experience.

- I saw some groups for the darkmoon rabbit but did not join them.

- It was fun doing it at 85 and I did it as much as I could but now that I am 90 I can't be bothered.

- It is too easy now and the added fact that there are 40 people usually and everyone can roll on the pet and with my luck with rolls I am not going to win anyway, why bother.

- I'll just buy it some day.

- That is one of the things with stuff being BoE, I can get it another way.

- Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

- Good thing is I can still get it even if my luck with rolls sucks.

- Bad thing is, who would ever want to do it if they can just buy it.

- I guess I will do it if I am there and I am bored.

- Too much to do in game now to be distracted hunting rabbits.

- I am not elmer fudd, I have other priorities.

- Like getting another character to 90.

- Which I did when my rogue hit 90 last night.

- I did not intend to get to 90 with it this weekend but once you start leveling it is hard to stop.

- It goes by so very quickly too.

- But not quick bad, quick good.  If that makes sense.

- Like leveling in the old work is quick now, quick bad.

- This is quick good.  You get to follow the storyline and it moves along telling its story in such a good way that you do not even notice you are leveling.

- It does take some time but being the story is so connected and enjoyable you do not even notice it and look at the clock and realize you have just been playing for three hours and it feels like you just logged in because it is like you are on the same quest still.

- It is almost linear questing but not like cataclysm linear.

- I think that might have to do with the fact that quests are more enjoyable than the ones in cataclysm.

- Cataclysm seemed all over the place with no rhyme or reason.

- And as much as people might say they hate it, I think mists leveling is better because there is no flying.

- Designing quests people can flight right over to their objectives is a lot harder to do well than making quests where people need to walk to it.

- It makes for a smoother quest flow and better designed areas and mob clusters.

- Without a doubt one of the best things about mists is the fact people can not fly when leveling.

- But if you die, you should be able to fly.

- After you hit 90 of course.

- Have you ever died somewhere you could not get back to your body?

- I have.

- Not sure why your spirit can not fly, after all it is a spirit and is not confined to the rules of the living.

- Float up little ghostie spirit.

- Of the 6 90s I have now I have to say the rogue had the hardest time leveling.

- His DPS was beyond horrible and I had to fight every fight like it was a PvP fights interrupting, recuperating, disarming, stun locking, kiting, debuffing, etc.

- I could never get any power time in and just blow things away because if I took a few hits I was dead.

- Sure, it was easy enough to do it, nothing wrong with playing a defensive game, but it really slowed leveling down to a crawl.

- I also hated the fact I had no decent multi target ability.

- Two mobs I could handle, sometimes, but more than two mobs and I might as well stop wasting time and let them kill me so I could get back to my body and try not to screw up the pull again next time.

- As much as I hate playing a rogue I think there is something I love about it.

- It is a challenge.

- At least for my limited skills at being one it is a challenge.

- Just wish he were not so squishy.

- My mage and my priest could let multiple mobs beat on them as they mowed them down, my rogue could not even let a single target beat on him while he fought them.

- If I did not use defensive abilities I would have died every single fight.

- It felt like I was leveling naked.

- There was only one quest I could not complete while leveling.

- When I hit 90 I crafted myself 3 450 PvP pieces and went back there and did it no problem however.

- That was all I needed, a little extra DPS.

- It is amazing how huge a boost 3 items being 450 instead of 3 items being 437 makes.

- I had the control part down but I could not put out enough damage and I would run out of life before the big baddie would each time.

- I averaged 13K, it was a nightmare.

- How the hell can you level like that?

- I did it, but it doesn't mean it was right.

- If I did not have to deal with spending 90% of every fight on keeping myself alive I could have done much better numbers.

- Too bad that is not how a rogue operates.

- They either control the fight, or they die.

- Which for me and my limited rogue abilities meant low DPS and long fights.

- And still my rogue managed to make 90 in quick time.

- I had two of the 450 BoA daggers from the wastes.

- Did I mention I also got the relic hunter title this weekend?

- I can only imagine how horrible it would have been for me if I did not have them.

- So all I have left is the plate wearers, the warlock, and a monk, whenever I get around to it.

- Which will be the next 90?

- I plan to take a month or so off from leveling so I can spend that free time working on reputation for my other characters.

- Even if I do not play them much there is no reason they should not have at least valor gear if and when the time comes that I might need them to fill in for a second raid or something.

- I now have the big three, a tank a healer and a hunter and three backups another healer an a ranged damage dealer and a melee damage dealer.

- The big three are the only ones I worry about right now, gear wise.

- The tank is the only one raiding however, so it does not really need the valor gear, but I like questing with it.

- How strange is that, the one that does not need the gear is the one I do not mind getting reputations with.

- Yet my priest, who is over 470 without any reputations what so ever, has valor burning a hole in her pocket and can use some of those valor pieces.

- Doesn't it always work that way?

- The one that does not have the reputations can use reputation gear and the one that has the reputations doesn't need the reputation gear.

- Makes me wonder about the logic of gating it.

- People that actually raid and are actually serious about gearing up will max out reputations ASAP and be getting raid gear quickly.

- In the end, they are the ones that won't need it.

- The ones that are part timers or play less, or like me on my priest, do not like to do dailies, are the ones that can use the gear but will not have the reputations.

- Gating the gear makes less sense when you think that the only people that would need the gear are the ones that are part timers, not raiders and/or not dedicated players.

- So the people that don't need it, the raiders and dedicated players, can get it but the people that do need it, the part timers, alts and lesser advanced players can't get it?

- I understand the theory behind it and I do not mind, I will keep moving forward with my priest upgrading the gear I do get instead of getting valor gear, but I wonder why keep the gear from the people that need it.

- I know I will need all the gear I can get on my rogue if I ever want to make questing more bearable.

- Even if you do not plan to raid on a character, as I do not plan to raid on my rogue, I still want him geared up as best he can be from any resource outside of raiding.

- Perhaps that is just the completest in me.

- Even if I do not use a character I still want it geared as best I can get it geared.

- Even if I do not intend to use it, ever, as in it is just there for the professions and to say I have that class maxed.

- I max out all my professions, I max out all my classes, I max out all my gear.  Simple enough.

- That is why I dread pet battles, because I know I will have to max out every pet.

- That is just who I am.

- If you are not going to give it your best, even if your best isn't great, then why even try?

- Speaking of giving it all, I got the achievement for 10,000 daily quests.

- That is a lot of questing.

- Even with shared achievements and a few characters doing dailies the majority of them came from one character.

- To the tune of near 7K and at this rate I think that one character would have had 10K by the end of this expansion even if it were not a shared achievement.

- I am debating on changing some professions around on my characters.

- But I seem to be leaving the gathering professions behind.

- I can't go around with no gathering professions on any of my characters.

- I should make a collection of druids and hunters.

- When it comes to gathering those two classes are leaps and bounds better than all others, in my opinion.

- I have so many hunters with so many mixed and matched professions but oddly enough I have no tailor, engineer, blacksmith or mining hunters.  I have all others.

- I often think professions should be redesigned so gathering professions were not such a raiding loss.

- Make it so people can train two crafting professions and one gathering profession.

- That way all things are equal and they can stop trying to pretend like they are giving gathering professions raid worthy bonuses like crafting professions.

- Lets face it, none of the gathering perks are really great.

- So just remove the perks completely and make everyone capable of only having one gathering profession and then two main professions of their choice.

- Some would go together.

- Herbalism with inscription and alchemy would work nicely.

- Mining with jewel crafting and blacksmith would also be a natural match.

- Skinning really does not fit with anything but leather working but some skins are used in engineering and tailoring so that could work too.

- What gathering profession would my enchanter / tailor characters get then?

- I have that combo on every priest I have ever made.

- Not kidding, I have never even tried a different combo with a priest.

- They just seem a natural fit.

- They need another profession to use leather so that has two main professions that count on it.

- They also need another gathering profession that could support tailoring / enchanting.

- Make it like skinning, but of course not skinning.

- They would gather elements from elementals and salvage cloth from humanoids.

- So they could lose the extra cloth finding ability and tailors would have to salvage for their extra cloth instead.

- Have elements used for enchanting and the cloth used for tailoring be what they gather.

- There we go, now I have a gathering profession for all my priests.

- Call it salvaging?

- Nah, sounds lame, but it would be a nice little gathering addition.

- Engineering seems to be the only profession left out now.

- It uses mining the most but really needs everything from every profession.

- It is like the catch all, at least at the lower levels.

- Higher levels it seems like a mining only thing.

- Meaning mining has three professions that feed off it.

- When skinning only has one.

- I call profession bias.

- Mining is OP, I am going to call for it to be nerfed.

- Have a great day.

16 comments:

  1. Gz on yet another 90. What spec did you level your rogue with? I have to say when I was on my rogue last week I was having a blast leveling past 85 on combat spec - blade flurry and multi target FTW. I found myself gathering up 3-4 targets blowing an avoidance cooldown, hitting recuperate and keeping blade flurry on. Felt like some sort of swashbuckling swordfighter(only, y'know..with daggers)hurrahing my way across the landscape.

    I did have to use a pot or two when it got hairy but for the most it was grand.

    And embrace the hunter engineer, my hunter has been one since the glory days of ammo (which i'm slighty nostalgic for) its great fun.

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    1. Did combat but I am thinking I would have been better as assassination.

      I tired that approach, blowing everything, and still would die quickly. Recoup just did not seem to outpace damage coming from 4 places even with evasion going. I noticed the only time I was able to do multi packs was if I played the dancing game, as in keep moving which actually avoids a crap ton of melee attacks believe it or not. If I stood still for even 3 seconds I was dead.

      I am just not very good at my rogue or melee in general. I tank when in melee. I do just fine on my bear, paladin, warrior or death knight. Face to face battle is what it is about for me. But those classes can take a beating.

      I have one hunter on a PvP server, probably will be one of the last ones I level of course, but I could surely ditch skinning on him for engineering. I still think of engineering as a PvP toy profession more than anything else.

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  2. Hmmm,

    Saw 3 lvl 85's flying in Valley of Four Winds and a lvl 81 flying there too! How in the hell does a lvl 81 come to Mists? And then saw a lvl 85 running so fast it zoom by me and I could not catch up with him while flying at 310%. How? Cheating, that is how. I have given up.

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    1. Right click on them and report them for cheating, they are bots. At least that way it puts them on the list of people they can watch and maybe one day they will figure out how to stop them.

      Mind you, I am a skeptic, I believe they allow them to bot and do not care, but if they are to be believed that they need to know who is doing it so they can monitor it and figure out how to stop it, reporting them is the best way to handle it.

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    2. The sub-90 flying toons are bots, report them when you see them.

      I believe it's possible for sub-85 toons to get to Pandaria through mage portals (to Vale) and possibly warlock summons. Once there, someone with a multi-person mount can fly them around.

      As for the fast running toon, there are a few named mobs that drop items with limited charges that give a huge short-term speed boost, could have been one of those rather than a bot.

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    3. Anon is correct. I had all my low levels lock summoned to the vale early on for portal usage. Nice place to make home if you ask me. So people can get there, even a level 1 if they wanted to. The flying is a bot however.

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  3. Gratz on another 90, I am more impressed that you levelled a Rogue than either of my Plate Wearing 90's.

    I still can't believe you are a worse Rogue than me. It is impossible to be that bad.

    I always find I need to eat or bandage after every fight, I am damned if I am going to stealth around all day to pick off lone mobs.

    I am mightily impressed at your army of maxed out characters, or is that totally jealous?

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    1. I can reach levels of bad on my rogue that are unheard of. lol

      Oddly enough, I can take out any of the rares on my rogue with no problem what so ever but I have issues with quest mobs. Does that make any sense?

      I do not mind the stealth around and picking off one at a time. Do the sap and hit and run method to break up packs of two or three and it makes life easier. At least doing them one at a time I do not need to keep eating.

      You will get there I am sure. Now for me the hard part, the plate people and the lock. I shutter to think what it will be like. But at least with the tank type classes I can pull lots and it is even advised for me to do so, which might actually make leveling faster.

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  4. Grats on another 90, but I am surprised as that you had so much trouble leveling as rogue. At first I thought you had bad gear/weps , but when I read that you were using 450 BOAs then I was surprised. Rogues are one of the easier classes to level because of ability to reset combat whenever needed and stealth for passing through the bunch of mobs to the correct ones for the quests . I leveled as assassination because of the glyph of deadly momentum , which resets the snd and recup duration to their original duration on kills and keep it rolling. Opening rotation was -> stealth->cheap shot (4sec stun) , get snd and recup up , finish off the mob, then for other mobs that needed to be kill were easily downed in the stun duration as snd was already running. Combat has the allure of cleave and killing spree , but as you rise in levels and stats decay it starts getting worse and worse , and assasination shines even with low gear levels.
    -Straws Outland EU

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    1. For some things rogues rock. Like the one where you need to go through that area to rescue one of the stormstouts in amber, all my characters had to fight their way through. My rogue walked right around and touched the amber and jumped through and vanished and never needed to fight even one mob. Some things it is better at. AoE grinding quest mobs is where it fails horribly. At least at my skill level with it.

      I should have went assassination as that is what I had always leveled with before. I did 1-60 as combat and 61-85 as assassination and 86-90 as combat. Probably because I was in combat because of the weapons in cata and never thought to change back to assassination.

      I always did fine one on one, my issue with with multiple mobs. I even took out rares while leveling no problem what so ever. Did not die once to a rare. But if I got 3 quest mobs on me it was instant death if vanish was on cooldown.

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  5. Mining gives the same Stamina bonus as Enchanting. And enchanting doesn't have any other option for a tank but stamina on rings. So they're completely on par. Tailoring gives me nothing. Nor does Inscription. Alchemy and Engineering are debatable. So to each role, his own, I'm pretty fine with it. Wouldn't mind a third profession though.

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    1. All crafting professions give the same bonus (in different ways) and it has options for any class/spec (unless they screwed it up this time).

      Gathering is very limited.
      Mining - Stamina - useful for some tanks, waste for everyone else
      Herbalism - Haste buff on CD - has it's uses (I use it) but it's not the same as a bonus primary stat
      Skinning - Crit - nice but not as valuable as a primary stat.

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    2. Alchemy was broken all through cataclysm and gave no bonus, but it works again in mists. You get an extra 320 (more for stamina) of the stat you use the flask for which puts it in like with all others. Sucks it was broken an entire expansion and they never did anything about it.

      While mining is useful for tanks it is useless for everyone else and basically that means it is useless like all other gathering professions.

      As Jaeger said basically, being they do not give a primary stat boost they are basically useless.

      I do agree that tailoring needs something for tanks as well. Perhaps a dodge boost thing would be nice.

      Right now leatherworking is the best profession in the game as the bracer enchant gives you 330 additional of a primary stat and all other professions give a 320 boost.

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    3. I'm pretty sure the Alchemy one worked in Cata, it just didn't show in the tooltip, so everyone thought it was broken.

      But anyway, I really like the idea of two crafting and one gathering. Each of the crafting should give the same bonus though; not 10 extra for one like you mentioned with LW. BS is too good as well because as the new epic gems come out you get additional bonus and that shouldn't be the case.

      I have herb/alch so I'd add inscription, I guess. Not too enthusiastic about that...

      TBH, I'd just remove the profession bonuses. Do people really need to be incentivized to level professions?

      Get rid of racials while we're at it. Most people picked pandas because they think they're cute/cool; not because they have the best Alliance racial. Although I swear, it's just Blizz ripping people off for race changes for that tiny extra buff.

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    4. @Jaeger
      Not all crafting proffessions gve the same bonus. JC gives a slightly bigger stam bonus. BS gives a bigger bonus still once epic gems come in. LW gives by far the biggest stam bonus, since, apparently, it's covering for the mastery or dodge you'd have on your wrists. So no, from a min-maxing point I'd have to pick up JC/LW now, BS/LW later.

      @Grumpy
      While Alchemy does provide the 480 stam bonus, the bonus is not there all the time. First, I'm not gonna use flask outside of a raid. I use that +500 void thing atm. And if I decide to use another type of flask for a specific boss to reach something like a breakpoint or whatever, I get bonus in that stat. That's why I said Alchemy is debatable

      Tailoring is useless for tanks therefore it is useless. Remove it! Seriosuly, as long as some classes DO have use of mining, you can't state it's useless. Tanks are part of the game.

      Bottom line, the problem is not that gathering is useless to some. The problem is slightly bigger, not all professions are aligned to give same bonuses across the board for all specs / classes. But is that really a bad thing? Sure, I'd love choices, I'd love to not have those two clear winners of professions and feel I'm not doing my best by not having them.

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    5. I do not min/max so I do not worry about professions too much but to someone that does professions are huge and they change all the time depending on what is best.

      As for tailoring, it can be fixed easily. Mining can not. Unless they want to change mining to give you a stat boost depending on the spec you are in, which would be perfect in my opinion.

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