Now that I have my main over on ER, I've had a more relaxed experience. Earthen Ring is much more active than Malygos. On average, I would guess that there is usually about twice the number of active players on ER and there is a lot more activity at all levels of the game.
This has been helpful, as pickup groups and pugs have been pretty easy to get into (at least they were last week). But is also results in some very wierd and unstable auction-house pricing, and more competition than I'm used to.
Since I haven't been pushing myself to level anything in particular, this also means that I ran out of stuff to do last week. On my mage I ended up doing: VOA-10, VOA-25, TOC-25, Uldaur-10, ICC-25, TOGC-25. Essentially I only missed Ony (not really a loss there), and ICC-10.
I also started looking into guilds, making contacts with people that I could. I didn't seem to make much progress until this week though, when tuesday I was flooded with people returning my messages. I got into a TOGC-25 group as a 'trial run' which didn't go well. Their requirements were for a mage that can hold 8.5k DPS (I can only hold 6.5k under normal conditions with my gear). In the end, I ended up being lower than normal (holding about 5.5k), dying twice during the twins (the way they did it was just to clump together and ignore the balls; my health was just too low for that I guess). And I was pretty much ignored after that. As a raid they seemed like good enough folks; but obviously I'm not at the gear level they need. I thanked them for the invite and decided not to even bother apping.
So right now I still have two other prospects. I got a trial run with another guild in ICC-25 last night which I preformed much better in even on the bosses I had not seen before yesterday. My average for the night was around 7.5k DPS, and I had 2 deaths (one on Marrowgar, due to his whirlwind), and one on Lady Deathwhisper at the very end due to a frostbolt literally right as she died. I was much more comfortable with that performance even if I did end up around 11th place in the DPS chart. And the group seemed pretty nice and friendly. And I got 24 Frost Badges in the process.
After that I replaced 3 pieces: I got the next level of the Ashen Verdict Ring; I went ahead and purchased T9.5 legs with a trophy I got from that TOGC run Monday; and I went ahead and purchased T10 chest for 95 Frost Badges. This upped my SP by about 50, my haste by about 30, and my crit by about 20. Overall, I nice upgrade and one that I hope reflects on my DPS the next time I get to run something.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
For the Horde!
Well, it's been a few weeks. I got my horde mage to 71...and then generally hit the brick wall that is WOTLK grinding. It's certainly not pretty...or worth it. So I decided to go ahead and move my main mage over. I had to do a name change, but now I know a way to switch things back relatively quickly so that's the plan for this point for me.
I'm still not entirely sure about the guild. But the large number of people certainly seems to suggest that there will be more opportunities to get into pickup groups. I've also started looking into joining one of the 25 man groups in the guild...we'll see how that goes too.
Since I've been out of it a while, I'm started to do a bit more research into gear for Arcane. I find myself in an awkward position--I'm heavily specced for Crit when I think I should be haste. My base crit rating is over 50% with my main spells, which is way too high. My haste rating is still OK (around 600), but my goal is to get haste to around 900. My SP is also too low, I'd like to get it over 3K if I can.
Of course, I really don't have much ICC gear. I have 51 frost badges, and hopefully now a better chance of getting them. There are several off-set pieces that look well worth purchasing, but I'm leaning against doing that and instead saving badges until I can buy 2 T10 pieces. However, if I can get into a consistant 10 man group I can certainly make some serious headway there and the badges become less of an issue. To be honest, I'd love to get the belt, or the back piece.
I'm still not entirely sure about the guild. But the large number of people certainly seems to suggest that there will be more opportunities to get into pickup groups. I've also started looking into joining one of the 25 man groups in the guild...we'll see how that goes too.
Since I've been out of it a while, I'm started to do a bit more research into gear for Arcane. I find myself in an awkward position--I'm heavily specced for Crit when I think I should be haste. My base crit rating is over 50% with my main spells, which is way too high. My haste rating is still OK (around 600), but my goal is to get haste to around 900. My SP is also too low, I'd like to get it over 3K if I can.
Of course, I really don't have much ICC gear. I have 51 frost badges, and hopefully now a better chance of getting them. There are several off-set pieces that look well worth purchasing, but I'm leaning against doing that and instead saving badges until I can buy 2 T10 pieces. However, if I can get into a consistant 10 man group I can certainly make some serious headway there and the badges become less of an issue. To be honest, I'd love to get the belt, or the back piece.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Mage Part 2: The Sequel
It seems wierd writing this post. I've spent a lot of time in WOW, but lately there hasn't been much to do since my old guild stopped raiding. Well, they didn't really stop raiding I guess...but they pretty much have stopped raiding with me. I decided to stay with the guild because their plan was to continue with casual 10 man groups, etc...but in practice there were too many people interested and I am not in that close circle of friends and so I find myself completely left out. The only thing worse than not raiding is to spend your time online hoping you might get an invite sometime.
My other RL friend in the guild is also not in that group and has gotten pretty ticked about it (he takes these things more seriously than I do). And he convinced me to check out this other 'tent pole' guild on another server. It happens to be horde and is apparently comprised of over 2,000 active members with over 20 active raiding groups.
'm not used to this sort of guild, and honestly I'm pretty leery of it. So I decided to create a new character on that server to check it out. So I created a new Mage as a Blood Elf. The guild's level requirements are low (level 10, lol), and they suggest creating a low-level alt to join with just so you can get a feel for the guild before you transfer. So that's what I did.
By origional plan was to just create a character, get to level 20 or so, going the guild and hang out there for a while. However, that was before I discovered that this guild only recruits during the first week of every month so I ended up having more time on my hands. And I ended up spending quite a bit more time with this character than I'd origionally intended.
So now, my Blood Elf Mage is level 45 and has about 700g to her name. She's a level 255 Enchanter, and level 275 Jewelcrafter. I had done the blood elf quests before, but otherwise I hadn't really leveled a horde character before. I don't think I'd call it 'fun' but it has been interesting to see the differences. Horde questlines are not as tight as the alliance side--there's much more moving around and they are more scattered. In that regard its more frustrating to level horde. It gets much better after level 30, though.
Mage leveling isn't much different than it used to be. It's still one of the slowest classes to level, IMO, with too much time required for eating and drinking. I've spent some time with both fire and frost leveling. When I originally leveled Mage I did it as fire. And I started with fire on this character, but I've now switched to frost and am finding that it is better in many ways. It requires more spell casts than Fire, but uses slightly less mana even though you cast more spells and is certainly more survivable. By the time 50 rolls around, Frost is clearly better than fire while leveling (especially now that you can have your water elemental up at all times with a glyph).
My other RL friend in the guild is also not in that group and has gotten pretty ticked about it (he takes these things more seriously than I do). And he convinced me to check out this other 'tent pole' guild on another server. It happens to be horde and is apparently comprised of over 2,000 active members with over 20 active raiding groups.
'm not used to this sort of guild, and honestly I'm pretty leery of it. So I decided to create a new character on that server to check it out. So I created a new Mage as a Blood Elf. The guild's level requirements are low (level 10, lol), and they suggest creating a low-level alt to join with just so you can get a feel for the guild before you transfer. So that's what I did.
By origional plan was to just create a character, get to level 20 or so, going the guild and hang out there for a while. However, that was before I discovered that this guild only recruits during the first week of every month so I ended up having more time on my hands. And I ended up spending quite a bit more time with this character than I'd origionally intended.
So now, my Blood Elf Mage is level 45 and has about 700g to her name. She's a level 255 Enchanter, and level 275 Jewelcrafter. I had done the blood elf quests before, but otherwise I hadn't really leveled a horde character before. I don't think I'd call it 'fun' but it has been interesting to see the differences. Horde questlines are not as tight as the alliance side--there's much more moving around and they are more scattered. In that regard its more frustrating to level horde. It gets much better after level 30, though.
Mage leveling isn't much different than it used to be. It's still one of the slowest classes to level, IMO, with too much time required for eating and drinking. I've spent some time with both fire and frost leveling. When I originally leveled Mage I did it as fire. And I started with fire on this character, but I've now switched to frost and am finding that it is better in many ways. It requires more spell casts than Fire, but uses slightly less mana even though you cast more spells and is certainly more survivable. By the time 50 rolls around, Frost is clearly better than fire while leveling (especially now that you can have your water elemental up at all times with a glyph).
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