A Gnome in ICC

My little Gnome Mage made his first adventure into ICC last night.  Mind you it is not well geared, heck, I am still using BoA trinkets if that gives you any indication of where he is at.  It was still fun.  I had some nice DPS on a few fights, some horrible DPS on others.  I guess it is about learning. 

Not like he is ever going to be in ICC again.  This was most likely the last alt run there that we will ever do.  Next time I see ICC on an alt it will most likely be in a flashback raid. 

One thing I can say for sure is that kiting as a Mage is so easy.  Once I got into the rhythm of things with my Hunter kiting became easy.  It took some practice and learning and really sucks now without mana but I become pretty good at it over time.  With my Mage there was no learning curve needed.  Mage kiting was just run and shoot while running.  If something gets close, blink.  Holy crap.  Why do they always ask Hunters to kite when it is really a Mage's job.

Hunter kiting takes skill, Mage kiting takes anyone with an IQ of at least their shoe size to be at the keyboard.  I probably could have kiting that blood beast all over the world and back again and it would have never even came close to touching me.  Never would have needed to worry about jump shots, turns to disengage like I need to do on my Hunter, or running out of mana.

Next time I need something kited and there is a Mage in the group I am going to say let the Mage kite.  Seriously, why even ask a hunter to do it when it is so much easier for a Mage to.

We only did 5 bosses but we had no wipes except one of trash.  Always seems to work that way right?  We had a first time healer, first time in ICC, not first time healing.  A few alts and people in off specs.  We had two mains however in DPS, so that took a lot of the pressure off me of course.  I liked running ICC as a different character just for fun.  Wish I had done that more often.  I have to remember next time around to just have fun a little more often.

Maybe we can come back after we first get to 85 and get some alts into ICC for an easy run, so to speak.  I have set up the first raid the last week of December.  That gives people 3 weeks to get to 85 and get themselves some gear.  It should be ample. The Mage however will not be one of them.  On the grand scheme of things my Mage will most likely be the 6th character I get to 85.  So he goes into retirement for now it seems.  At least he went out on a good note.

Ding! Another 80

Last week after considering the over powered nature of Mages right now I decided to give my Mage a shot.  Might as well take advantage of the broken system before the fix it right?  My Mage hit 63 then and was consistently pulling over 2K DPS on single target boss fights.

Over the course of the week I played my Mage a little each day and got some levels up.  Leveling was easy because everyone died in an average of 2 shots.  Sometimes one shot and sometimes 3.  Questing was the way to go leveling being the experience to time ratio was through the roof being I killed everything so damn fast.

Having a gathering skill did not hurt at all either.  Was up to 2725 per herb I picked.  Which basically means picking 10 herbs was roughly equivalent to one quest.  When the time came for me to get to the nessingwary quests in the basin I was flying through the quests being the supreme killing power of the Mage and I was picking herbs left and right.  I could have honestly leveled from 76-80 just flying around the basin picking herbs if I wanted to.  There are so many there and they offer so much experience it is crazy.

Could you imagine leveling through gathering.  If you pick the spots right and the time to do it right you can level quickly and make a fortune doing so. It is almost unfair.  The combo of questing and gathering however is the way to go.  Doing two things to get experience at the same time is always the best investment for time.

I maxed out herbalism and alchemy late Friday and was quite upset to see I can not learn any epic transmutes.  I can get the cardinal ruby quest but can not train any epic designs to make epics.  I put in a ticket and they replied saying they know about the problem. 

What type of service is that?  Sure, you know about it.  I know you know about it.  Tell me what you are doing about it or better yet, just add the designs to my alchemy book so I can do them.  Would take 2 minutes for any reasonably competent person.  Guess that is why these people work customer server in a video game.  They are not competent enough to get a real job.

Either way, I continued on and grooved my way to 80 in no time at all and get this for a fun and interesting fact.  I hit 80 turning in the same exact quest I hit 80 on my Shaman with.  What are the odds of that?

By the time I hit 80 I was doing 4000 DPS single target while in my questing gear.  Seems like they still have not fixed the Mage yet.  I am glad I took advantage of the system while I could.  Can't complain with easy leveling.  It is just stupid crazy that a Mage can do that much that easily with no gear.   I am sure they will fix this really soon. 

What next?  Pally?  Warlock?  Warrior? or Rogue?  Might go Warlock, level 37 now and stupid over powered just like the Mage is, at least until they fix it.

Mage Leveling

I played with my Mage a little bit more again this weekend and managed to get it to level 36.  So just spare time between other characters and it is moving along like wild fire.  So far I have played the Mage for 1 day and 7 hours.  Not the fastest time ever I am sure but level 36 in one day and a quarter is outrageous.  At this rate I could hit 80 in around 3 days played if I do not suffer real down time.

The thing is I am leveling professions too which takes some extra time.  I am sure if I did not make the effort to level my professions I would be under 1 day played.  I can't even start to tell you the number of time I stopped to fight mobs to get to an herb when I really could have just kept going.

With that in mind I am amazed at the speed of leveling on the Mage.  If it were not for having to stop and drink after every few fights I would be level 50 no doubt within the time I played so far.  I would say at least 1/4 of the time I play is spent drinking and eating.  Maybe even as much as 1/3 of the time.

I think what helps their speed is the ability to teleport to wherever they need to go to.  I set my hearth to where I am questing and have my teleports to jump around.  That saves a ton of time moving around.  Like after finishing a few quests recently some sent me back to Stormwind and some sent me to Ironforge.  I ported to one, ported to the other and then used my hearth to go back to the area I was questing in.  That saves a ton of time.

I would love to set up a speed leveling Mage one time to see how fast I can get it done.  Based on what I have seen so far I could most likely get to level 80 in less then 2 days played if all I did was work on leveling and totally ignored professions and those stupid Mage quests that always love to send me back to an area I finished 3 or 4 levels earlier.  Did someone actually want to plan these out to be so useless?  Don't you think giving you a quest at level 30 should send you to an area where there are level 30 quests and not back to redridge where you last visited when you were maybe as high as 25?  Sure, it is easy going back at 30 but it is a complete and total waste of time.

Being I never played a Mage before I do the Mage quests because I am not sure if at some point I am going to need to do them for a skill and do not want to have to go back and hunt down low level quests to get it.  At least a level 30 in a 25 area can still get some kill experience.  Better then nothing I guess.  I most likely will not do them next time I do a Mage if I ever do one again.  It doesn't seem, at least up to this point, that they are actually needed for anything.

Either way, I am having a huge amount of fun leveling a Mage.  They are so easy to work with, awesome crowd control even at low levels and a wide selection of skills to work with.  Sure I am usually just hitting one over and over again for my frostbolt but when the time comes where I need other things they are there.  Thing is that about 98% of the time I do not need anything but that.  I have started freezing when they get close and then strafing to get some distance and shooting again.  Not because it is needed but because it is good practice for when it will be needed to do it against things that are not about to kill you anyway.

I tend to use those fights to try different things and see how they work.  Perfect learning experience time.  I even kited this one elemental half way across a zone because I wanted to see how long I could get him to follow me.  Kiting as a Mage is stupid easy.  Makes my Hunter jealous, all sorts of jealous. 

With my Hunter kiting is a skill and only a good hunter can do it decently and only a super hunter can do it good.  You can give someone that has never used a mage in their life and tell them when he starts getting close press this then this and keep running your little ass off and tada, they are now kiting.  They do not even need to turn around to do it either if it is a pure kite that is.  If you are trying to kill and kite there is a little more to it of course, but it is not really all that difficult as long as you know the secret that many hunters know.  Strafe running is as fast as straight running and keeps your target in instant range.  Don't tell everyone that, they might get better at kiting if they knew that and they will take my job away.