Sometime between 75 and 80 I switched to a Fire-based Frostfire build, the idea being to help us in questing and 2-3 man quests. Frostfire is a fairly interesting spell, which on the surface seems pretty subpar. On the surface, the spell doesn't seem that great--yay, a spell for fire/frost mage to use when their main nuke is worthless. It's in the details where Frostfire starts to get useful and interesting.
The trick with Frostfire is that it benefits from ALL effects that affect Frost AND Fire. So, for example, Frostfire can benefit from both Ice Shards (+100% to base Crit Damage), AND Ignite (40% Crit Damage dot). It can benefit from Frost Slow, and Freezes; AND Fire Stuns. And it benefits from +Hit, +Crit, and +damage bonuses from BOTH categories. This makes the build extremely interesting.
For leveling, I went with a mostly fire build. My Level 80 build looked pretty much like a strait 0/53/18 Fire build, with Ice Shards; and taking all Freezes, Stuns, and slowing effects I could. It was pretty effectively...with this build, if I crit I pretty much could kill the mob with 1-2 spells, long before it reached me. And if I didn't crit, I still had a 10% chance of a freeze, and an ADDITIONAL 10% chance of a stun hitting. In some cases, the mob would die before even managing to move from it's origional position; and the effect carries over fairly well into 5-mans. Plus, you still end up with Combustion, Dragons Breath, and Blast Wave for crowd control which is good enough for questing most of the time.
So far the build has worked pretty well. Frostfire is HEAVILY dependant on crit rate, and that's the main issue I have with it right now. My crit rating has tanked at 80, down 18% almost, and that's mostly just a stat-drop; I haven't made that back anywhere else. Of course, I haven't really gotten much in the way of 80 gear yet so things will only go up from here.
With that in mind, Frostfire has still proven useful and viable. With a crit rate of 25%, I'm hitting on average 2300-2600 on a non-crit; 6.5k on a crit + 40%. In 5-mans I'm generally hitting 7-8k on crits. That's not bad, seeing how right now Fireball's biggest benefit right now would be 500 points more non-crit damage and 2k less crits.
Of course, my Frostfire build is still more for questing than anything else. And I haven't picked up the Glyphs that will help yet--namely Frostfire Glyph, and Molten Armor Glyph. Those 2 will help significantly.
There is another Frostfire build option that I'm considering, one that is more of a true hybrid elemental spec. That has some definite advantages right now--in 5 man it ensures a higher base crit rating, and allows for more crits in general; with the loss of instant-pyroblasts and other useful fire stats. I might be trying that build out soon, and if I do I'll post something about it here.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Level 80 Post Mortem
I have a confession to make. I had fully planned on blogging on my experiences to 80 in Northrend, but it simply didn't happen. There are a few reasons for this. One is simply laziness. The other, however, is the fast pace and relatively mechanical way in which I leveled to 80 which just made it less fun to write about.
I'm not saying I didn't have fun leveling. In fact it was a blast. But the process in which I did it (duoing with another mage), and the pace made it hard to keep track of everything without taking notes and that would have slowed me down significantly.
In the end, I made 80 in 11 days...1 day longer than Burning Crusade where it took 10 days to get to 70. However, 3 of those days I didn't even log in, so by game time we were significantly faster this time through. For those counting, we did Borean Tundra - Dragon Blight - Howling Fjord - Grizzily Hills, the Basin, and hit 70 in Zul Drak. We aren't actually done yet...we won't be 'done' until we've completed all of the zones...so we still have Storm Peaks and Icecrown to go but those we will do a bit later.
During the questing I only replaced one piece of gear--a epic trinket with a simple green trinket that has 44 INT and 55 Spell Power. There were a couple of other pieces I kept as well, including a back-piece which is clearly better than what I'm currently wearing but am not b/c I would loose too much crit. There might be a few more options in the final two zones, but I'm not sure about that yet.
Of course, I've now moved on to 5-mans and hopefully 10 mans will be an option soon. Naxx is certainly a starter zone, which IMO is a good thing. My guild has already run 2 runs (I was not one of the 'chosen' few that got to go--like all guilds this one has an 'in crowd' and I, being relatively new, am NOT in that category. Not a big deal, b/c 25- man is still where it is at, but it still shows some of the more obvious flaws in the guild structure that could come back to haunt them. It certainly hurt my first guild--caused it to crash and burn, so we'll see.
I'm not saying I didn't have fun leveling. In fact it was a blast. But the process in which I did it (duoing with another mage), and the pace made it hard to keep track of everything without taking notes and that would have slowed me down significantly.
In the end, I made 80 in 11 days...1 day longer than Burning Crusade where it took 10 days to get to 70. However, 3 of those days I didn't even log in, so by game time we were significantly faster this time through. For those counting, we did Borean Tundra - Dragon Blight - Howling Fjord - Grizzily Hills, the Basin, and hit 70 in Zul Drak. We aren't actually done yet...we won't be 'done' until we've completed all of the zones...so we still have Storm Peaks and Icecrown to go but those we will do a bit later.
During the questing I only replaced one piece of gear--a epic trinket with a simple green trinket that has 44 INT and 55 Spell Power. There were a couple of other pieces I kept as well, including a back-piece which is clearly better than what I'm currently wearing but am not b/c I would loose too much crit. There might be a few more options in the final two zones, but I'm not sure about that yet.
Of course, I've now moved on to 5-mans and hopefully 10 mans will be an option soon. Naxx is certainly a starter zone, which IMO is a good thing. My guild has already run 2 runs (I was not one of the 'chosen' few that got to go--like all guilds this one has an 'in crowd' and I, being relatively new, am NOT in that category. Not a big deal, b/c 25- man is still where it is at, but it still shows some of the more obvious flaws in the guild structure that could come back to haunt them. It certainly hurt my first guild--caused it to crash and burn, so we'll see.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Wrath Day 1
Well color me surprised. I really expected for the servers to be a horrible mess last night, but instead they were rock solid stable. There were very few lag issues even though the server was packed full for much of the night. Considering how unstable the servers have been lately, this was a big improvement and because of that I'm probably going to take off early today to get a little bit of extra leveling in again.
Yesterday was a different experience for me than BC. Though I wasn't in the BC beta, I knew people that were and I had seen enough of the area to know what to do and where to go for the start. With Wrath, I had no clue at all. The first thing I did, of course, was to port to Stormwind and take the first boat to Northrend. I was wanting to go to Howling Fjord, but ended up in the Tundra.
The first thing I noticed was that the zone looked...fantastic, yet more normal seeming than most anything in Outlands. There was also less re-use of old building designs...the main castle there was different than the 300 different WOW castles I've visited. The Inn was different.
The second thing I noticed was just how dense everything was, and the large number of people wandering the area just enhanced that effect. The starting town isn't really all that big, but it still took a while to find the crafting trainers and starting quests. I was waiting for my partner to log in, but at the same time I did want to look around and see what I could see, so I started doing some of the initial quests right outside of town, talking to everyone and trying to get used to everything was.
The next thing I noticed was the quests. At least in the Tundra, there seemed to be a lot of quests involving 'kill this specific single mob who only spawns at one place and everyone needs'. These types of quests were rather rare in BC, but there were at least 7 or 8 we ran across last night; and 4 right at the very beginning. These quests were just an excersize in frustration--15-20 guys all waing for one guy to spawn, AOEs flying everywhere, and it was just a big pain in the ass.
After doing some solo quests, I figured that I should avoid getting too far ahead so I just started traveling around; collecting discovery xps and playing tourist. The Tundra is a large zone, with large vistas and very spectacular views. It is also very dense, and haphazard--the zone just seems to be a random mishmash of random terrain types; which robs the zone of some of it's flavor. The Tundra itself is beautiful when viewed at a distance; you can see a LONG way in the zone and therefore seems more worldly and real--or at least it would if it wasn't so random. Still, it's pretty and there is a TON of stuff to do in the zone.
While exploring I then got a chance to go to Utgarde Keep. I got summoned there, and the second I got there you could see the striking difference between the Fjord and the Tundra. While the Tundra is pretty--the Fjord is spectacular. And Utgarde Keep is stunning in it's size and color. The first 5-man there is pretty short (the first time we did it we took about 40 minutes, the second time 20). For a zone so short it seems relatively big though.
The first boss is a necromancer-like elf. He's pretty easy to kill; the only trick to him is that he spawns 4 undead adds that you have to kill which will keep being resummoned until he's dead. The second encounter is a pair of bosses, a warrior and a mage. This is a bit more serious of a fight--the mage hits relatively hard, but can be locked down pretty easily. The last boss is easy. He's only major ability is a massive short-range attack that the tank has to avoid; and in his second phase an annoying whirling blade that the tank needs to avoid.
We did the zone twice, had 1 or two deaths, no wipes; and the instance went very smooth. As a mage I got to spell steal some nifty stuff--including a fire AOE, and a damage shield; and the trash last far longer than anything in BC now allowing me to actually get some spells in.
After that, my friend was ready and in game, so we started questing for real. We caught up with the quests that I had done, and the one's near the mine which I hadn't done but he had started while I was in the Keep. Then we started hitting other parts of the zone. To be fair, we were kinda all over the place when it came to leveling--jumping from quest area to area; not always finishing everything before moving on. This was partially due to a bit of 'wow, look what is over here!' mentality, but also due to the fact that certain quest areas were so overwhelmed that there was no point messing with them.
I managed to hit 71, barely, by the end of the night. Tom didn't get so far--he made it to a little over half way to 71...those two Utgarde Runs must have really packed in some additional XP. So far I've liked the DEHTA quests, but otherwise there hasn't been any quest lines that have really stood out as interesting to me. Most of the quests have so far seen fairly simple, and to date no quest rewards have even APPROACHED being interesting to me. The Utgarde rewards were only slightly better--but still weren't worth it.
Today, I'm hoping we can finish out the Tundra and move on to the next zone. If possible I'd like to get 73 today--or at least get close to 73. I'm definitely going to need to start farming for crafting materials too--Enchanting is going slowly (I only got 379 last night), and tailoring is going just as slowly (380). There just hasn't been a lot of drops relating to materials yet, so we'll have to see where it goes today.
Yesterday was a different experience for me than BC. Though I wasn't in the BC beta, I knew people that were and I had seen enough of the area to know what to do and where to go for the start. With Wrath, I had no clue at all. The first thing I did, of course, was to port to Stormwind and take the first boat to Northrend. I was wanting to go to Howling Fjord, but ended up in the Tundra.
The first thing I noticed was that the zone looked...fantastic, yet more normal seeming than most anything in Outlands. There was also less re-use of old building designs...the main castle there was different than the 300 different WOW castles I've visited. The Inn was different.
The second thing I noticed was just how dense everything was, and the large number of people wandering the area just enhanced that effect. The starting town isn't really all that big, but it still took a while to find the crafting trainers and starting quests. I was waiting for my partner to log in, but at the same time I did want to look around and see what I could see, so I started doing some of the initial quests right outside of town, talking to everyone and trying to get used to everything was.
The next thing I noticed was the quests. At least in the Tundra, there seemed to be a lot of quests involving 'kill this specific single mob who only spawns at one place and everyone needs'. These types of quests were rather rare in BC, but there were at least 7 or 8 we ran across last night; and 4 right at the very beginning. These quests were just an excersize in frustration--15-20 guys all waing for one guy to spawn, AOEs flying everywhere, and it was just a big pain in the ass.
After doing some solo quests, I figured that I should avoid getting too far ahead so I just started traveling around; collecting discovery xps and playing tourist. The Tundra is a large zone, with large vistas and very spectacular views. It is also very dense, and haphazard--the zone just seems to be a random mishmash of random terrain types; which robs the zone of some of it's flavor. The Tundra itself is beautiful when viewed at a distance; you can see a LONG way in the zone and therefore seems more worldly and real--or at least it would if it wasn't so random. Still, it's pretty and there is a TON of stuff to do in the zone.
While exploring I then got a chance to go to Utgarde Keep. I got summoned there, and the second I got there you could see the striking difference between the Fjord and the Tundra. While the Tundra is pretty--the Fjord is spectacular. And Utgarde Keep is stunning in it's size and color. The first 5-man there is pretty short (the first time we did it we took about 40 minutes, the second time 20). For a zone so short it seems relatively big though.
The first boss is a necromancer-like elf. He's pretty easy to kill; the only trick to him is that he spawns 4 undead adds that you have to kill which will keep being resummoned until he's dead. The second encounter is a pair of bosses, a warrior and a mage. This is a bit more serious of a fight--the mage hits relatively hard, but can be locked down pretty easily. The last boss is easy. He's only major ability is a massive short-range attack that the tank has to avoid; and in his second phase an annoying whirling blade that the tank needs to avoid.
We did the zone twice, had 1 or two deaths, no wipes; and the instance went very smooth. As a mage I got to spell steal some nifty stuff--including a fire AOE, and a damage shield; and the trash last far longer than anything in BC now allowing me to actually get some spells in.
After that, my friend was ready and in game, so we started questing for real. We caught up with the quests that I had done, and the one's near the mine which I hadn't done but he had started while I was in the Keep. Then we started hitting other parts of the zone. To be fair, we were kinda all over the place when it came to leveling--jumping from quest area to area; not always finishing everything before moving on. This was partially due to a bit of 'wow, look what is over here!' mentality, but also due to the fact that certain quest areas were so overwhelmed that there was no point messing with them.
I managed to hit 71, barely, by the end of the night. Tom didn't get so far--he made it to a little over half way to 71...those two Utgarde Runs must have really packed in some additional XP. So far I've liked the DEHTA quests, but otherwise there hasn't been any quest lines that have really stood out as interesting to me. Most of the quests have so far seen fairly simple, and to date no quest rewards have even APPROACHED being interesting to me. The Utgarde rewards were only slightly better--but still weren't worth it.
Today, I'm hoping we can finish out the Tundra and move on to the next zone. If possible I'd like to get 73 today--or at least get close to 73. I'm definitely going to need to start farming for crafting materials too--Enchanting is going slowly (I only got 379 last night), and tailoring is going just as slowly (380). There just hasn't been a lot of drops relating to materials yet, so we'll have to see where it goes today.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Wrath
I have a confession to make. I forgot to pre-order the expansion! But fear not, I went ahead yesterday and ordered it from Amazon...and it's already on the truck destined to be delivered at home some time today!
So, while I haven't posted here in a few weeks, I think most of my upcoming posts are going to be about my experiences leveling from 70 to 80. Me and a friend (another mage) leveled from 60 to 70 together, and the plan is to do the same thing on the way to 80. It worked pretty well last time (with a bunch of late nights) and I would like to hit 80 sooner rather than later so I'm ready for level 80 10 and 25 mans around the time the rest of the new guild has started with it. With jobs and such, the last time when we worked on BC, we leveled very fast...we hit level 70 near the top 10% of our guild...and most of those ahead of us spent a LOT more time leveling than we did.
Unlike with Burning Crusade, I feel that my mage is well above the gear curve for Wrath. At level 60 I was wearing large amounts of Molton Core raid gear, nothing more (and I didn't have any of the rarer pieces). Most of that stuff got replaced quickly...if I remember correctly I replaced at least 4 epics with outland greens. Now at 70 I'm in MH/BT/Sunwell gear, and I'm not expecting to replace much of it. As an Enchanter/Tailor, I'm also considering dropping tailoring for Gemcrafting or Inscription--but I'm not going to make any major changes until 80 so for now it's going to be Enchanting/Tailoring to 80.
If I remember correctly, I hit L70 in 11 days. This time we may not be able to do quite as well (too much other RL stuff going on right now) but if possible I'd like like to hit 80 in no more than 2 weeks (14 days). Up to now, I really haven't done a lot of dungeons, etc, with the guild...it's honestly been hard to get into that stuff, so I'm hoping that doesn't remain an issue.
Anyway, I'm probably going to blog about my experiences leveling from 70 to 80, up to and entering Naxx if possible. Sure there are a lot of people doing it too, but it should be fun.
So, while I haven't posted here in a few weeks, I think most of my upcoming posts are going to be about my experiences leveling from 70 to 80. Me and a friend (another mage) leveled from 60 to 70 together, and the plan is to do the same thing on the way to 80. It worked pretty well last time (with a bunch of late nights) and I would like to hit 80 sooner rather than later so I'm ready for level 80 10 and 25 mans around the time the rest of the new guild has started with it. With jobs and such, the last time when we worked on BC, we leveled very fast...we hit level 70 near the top 10% of our guild...and most of those ahead of us spent a LOT more time leveling than we did.
Unlike with Burning Crusade, I feel that my mage is well above the gear curve for Wrath. At level 60 I was wearing large amounts of Molton Core raid gear, nothing more (and I didn't have any of the rarer pieces). Most of that stuff got replaced quickly...if I remember correctly I replaced at least 4 epics with outland greens. Now at 70 I'm in MH/BT/Sunwell gear, and I'm not expecting to replace much of it. As an Enchanter/Tailor, I'm also considering dropping tailoring for Gemcrafting or Inscription--but I'm not going to make any major changes until 80 so for now it's going to be Enchanting/Tailoring to 80.
If I remember correctly, I hit L70 in 11 days. This time we may not be able to do quite as well (too much other RL stuff going on right now) but if possible I'd like like to hit 80 in no more than 2 weeks (14 days). Up to now, I really haven't done a lot of dungeons, etc, with the guild...it's honestly been hard to get into that stuff, so I'm hoping that doesn't remain an issue.
Anyway, I'm probably going to blog about my experiences leveling from 70 to 80, up to and entering Naxx if possible. Sure there are a lot of people doing it too, but it should be fun.
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