official World of Warcraft

[burnee]

Played a Druid, Lock and Hunter twink :) good times. Sold my account, made around 700 NZD :D.

[..::AL::..]

when do locks get their summon?

[the evn show]

when do locks get their summon?

Ritual of Summoning is level 20

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Need some advice guys!

Playing on Anacrhonos (Normal) server - Was on Frostmane PVP with a lvl 68 hunter, but my mate started up on Anachonos recentely and I thought I'd go join him.

I transfered my 68 hunter over, and started a new hunter - Just cause I mainly Solo/PVE and love doing daft things like soloing instances/hard quests thanks to how good the hunter is at it.

However im bored of the hunters style, and im looking to change.

Looking for a soloin class again, however maybe one to suplement a hunter as I'll be partying with my mate no doubt - One reason I don't want to be a hunter either, he is leveing one to 70 now.

I don't want to go all out healing, I leave healing to being a medic in TF2 :p

So it's between the rest, Druid/Warlock/Mage/Rogue.

Leveling super quick to 70 isn't much of an issue, im happy as long as im having fun. Simple things about being a hunter like searching for a cool pet and what not kept me entertained.

I narrowed it down to Druid/Warlock at one point, but im still undecided. Lots of people seem to have fun being Mage/Rogue as well.

What opinions do you guys have to offer? I guess a lot of you will say just try each one and see, but I don't want to come away with a bad experience because I only leveled to like 20 over each - Pratical number, you can't expect me to go level all 4 to 70 then decide :p

[Spookie]

I'd go with the druid, a healer would complement your friend well. Not to mention it's an adaptable class and welcome in most, if not all, groups. Not to mention if you ever get bored.

Respec. :p

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

I'd go with the druid, a healer would complement your friend well. Not to mention it's an adaptable class and welcome in most, if not all, groups. Not to mention if you ever get bored.

Respec. :p

Yeah Druid was high on my list.

Of course I still plan on doing group work, im a nice guy, work well in a team - I've just never tied myself down to a proper group/clan because of time restraints.

I'll just need to learn how to use new classes well, I was a pretty good hunter (if that's even possible :laugh:) ;)

I do want to try out Mage/Warlock at some point though. To be fair, the only class I listed that im not too fussed over is Rogue - Other than finally being able to open all those locked footlockers :laugh:

Edit: Notice you have a Druid Spookie! I always thought you were a fire Mage for some reason :laugh:

As for stats whats most important for Druid, Agil/Stam/Stren im guessing?

Edited January 16, 2008 by Audioboxer

[Spookie]

Edit: Notice you have a Druid Spookie! I always thought you were a fire Mage for some reason :laugh:

As for stats whats most important for Druid, Agil/Stam/Stren im guessing?

Aye I was, I got my account hacked last year and lost him (ironicly got him back at the end of the year in full heroic gear! Long story though.)

Stats hmm well depends.

Bear = Agi/Stam/Def in that order. Agi give you a lot of dodge and armour which is always a great deal of help. Also increases you chance to crit on attacks like mangle which is part of your tanking cycle of buttons. Increasing your defence though so you aren't critable makes a great deal of difference in the 25 mans.

Cat = A balance of Agi + Str (str gives double attack power) and stam. You'll find most of your gear is itemised towards you at 70 so you'll see a lot of 3x agi, 3x str, 4x stam and 15 int (for shape shifting - having a larger well of mana helps for when you need to shift to give innervates or save one of the DPS) with red and blue sockets.

Tree = I haven't been a healer since the days of naxx. But from the look of the trees group buff (boomkin gives spell crit, I give melee and ranged crit and tree gives it's group targets additional healing) it leans towards int/spirit/healing > mana-5sec/crit. As a lot of a druids healing is done through HoTs.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

(Y)

I had a good read of this ( http://www.wowwiki.com/Druid ) as well, just to understand the basics!

[the evn show]

For tree druids at pretty much any level of end game intellect is worthless.

+heal is better than everything once you have enough regeneration (through spirit and MP5). A quick and dirty calculation is value 1 MP5 as 3.5 spirit. The exact value depends on the length of the fight, your roll, and play-style.

There are times you're required to have certain minimum HP, and others where stacking stamina trivializes a fight but you can typically get all you need by just having appropriate gear for the instance and keeping a PVP item or two in your bags. Intellect, Spell crit, and all of the melee stats can safely be ignored.

[+orgitnized Subscriber¹]

Man I can't wait to get into things that are higher levels. Farthest I've gone is Kara because we don't have a big guild. We have like a ton of 70's but most of them are alts so we're starting to group with other guilds so we can do higher level stuff.

But honestly I think we have a ways to go. We haven't completed Kara so...I don't know what the point is in going to another instance. maybe they are thinking we can get better gear to help us in Kara? Don't know because I haven't talked with them about it.

[the evn show]

But honestly I think we have a ways to go. We haven't completed Kara so...I don't know what the point is in going to another instance. maybe they are thinking we can get better gear to help us in Kara? Don't know because I haven't talked with them about it.

Karazhan gear is a marginal upgrade over the 5-man loot. Arena gear?especially weapons?is almost as good or better.

The biggest reason to go to karazhan is because the heroic badge items are a pretty big upgrade over Tier 4 and in some cases hold up against Tier 6 quality items because of the way the items have their stats allocated.

Gruul and High King can easily be done with any 25 capable of killing Nightbane: he's been killed in original form with many people still having Tier 2 or 3 set bonuses and he's substantially easier now than he was last March. If you can organize the people and account for a few class/gear requirements he's worth attempting.

Zul'Aman doesn't require Karazhan/badge loot but it makes it a significantly bit easier. If you aren't clearing karazhan with your eyes closed then you probably aren't playing at a level that could reasonably kill anything there without solid gear on every player. Even if you are, the fights are much less forgiving of individual mistakes. If people say things like "netherspite is hard" or "prince is too random" you probably aren't going to fare to well in there. ZA drops Tier 5 level items (Tier 6 level if you can make the timed event) and some of them are the best-in-slot pieces so the difficulty is appropriate.

A group just starting Karazhan gets to practice raiding: the gear upgrades are tiny in comparison to the skills the players have mastered by the time they can clear the place in 3 hours. Most groups will out-gear Karazhan before they even go in.

[SMELTN]

very nice Evn.

We run kara on 98% alts now, and I just leveled my druid alt to 70. I am running kara with them just to get the gear, but find myself working on Season1 gear over even the kara gear. I got my T4 helm from prince last night and will be using it only until I get my gladiators helm, OR get enough badges to purchase the helm from them.

www.guildrage.net is our guild website.

[..::AL::..]

hi ppl,

when does bg start to get interesting for locks?

Ive tried playing it at lvl 19 and usually get ganked by an overly twinked rogue on a mission... :cry:

[the evn show]

Casters start to come in to their own in the late 30s and 40s. With relatively easy to obtain 200 shadow damage and 2,000 health an affliction warlock is very formidable in battlegrounds. It's possible to be successful at lower levels but melee classes?especially rogues?get a lot of benefit from stacking agility which is available in abundance from enchants (weapon x2, gloves, bracers, cloak, legs, feet, head).

[Prosidius]

We got Leo the Blind to 4%, it sucks, we were so close. Almost as bad as our 1% wipes we sometimes get.

[Spookie]

Zul'Aman doesn't require Karazhan/badge loot but it makes it a significantly bit easier.

Lynx boss requires Kara+ loot on the lynx boss at least as a tank. We have most of healers kitted in full t4 but I'm still in 5/8 best-of-the-best blues and I can't absorb enough of his strike as an off tank.

[SMELTN]

yeah ZA was tough when we were just finishing up Kara, but of course now that we have Hyjal/BT gear, we do full clears in around 2 hours or so.

[the evn show]

Lynx boss requires Kara+ loot on the lynx boss at least as a tank. We have most of healers kitted in full t4 but I'm still in 5/8 best-of-the-best blues and I can't absorb enough of his strike as an off tank.

I was wrong about the badge gear: you'd need as much of that as you could get your hands on, but you don't need karazhan for that.

I'm not saying you can do it in blues - but if you got the best-in-slot (heroic drops/badge rewards/arena gear/crafted stuff), chug consumables and group stack you could clear the zone without setting foot in karazhan.

EDIT:

Saberlash can't crit or crush and the off tank should have to worry about being by anything else so you can stack HP, armor, and dodge/parry. For this situation items like like the Vengeful Gladiator's Shieldwall and Bracers of the Ancient Phalanx are substantially better than alternatives—from Nightbane and Attunemen respectively in this case.

Edited January 17, 2008 by the evn show

[BlueDraGon]

Well, just sharing this with you as many others have shared..

My guild has had kara on farm for several months now, maybe half a year. We have 2 groups running every week, mostly alts but we can make a full clear in a night in around 3 and a half hrs. We also have Gruul on farm for several months, but we're just right now getting some people their resistance gear crafted so that we can attempt Hydross on SSC. Is there any recommendations for Hydross?.

On TK, we have Void Reaver down and moving to Solarian.

Our guild does both PvE and PvP, that's why we aren't that much progressed, but we usually run bg premades and it's fun too. Our guild looks for a balance between then 2 and not just raid every day like other people. We usually raid 25 mans on Thursday, Friday and Saturday and raid 10 mans on Tuesdays.

We haven't had much of a chance to make progress on ZA. It's really gear intense, but we have 2/6 bosses down. I'm hoping that by next week or so we start zoning into ZA again and make progression because as some of you pointed out, ZA loot is around T5 loot, so it's really worth doing.

[gregb0b]

Well, just sharing this with you as many others have shared..

My guild has had kara on farm for several months now, maybe half a year. We have 2 groups running every week, mostly alts but we can make a full clear in a night in around 3 and a half hrs. We also have Gruul on farm for several months, but we're just right now getting some people their resistance gear crafted so that we can attempt Hydross on SSC. Is there any recommendations for Hydross?.

On TK, we have Void Reaver down and moving to Solarian.

Our guild does both PvE and PvP, that's why we aren't that much progressed, but we usually run bg premades and it's fun too. Our guild looks for a balance between then 2 and not just raid every day like other people. We usually raid 25 mans on Thursday, Friday and Saturday and raid 10 mans on Tuesdays.

We haven't had much of a chance to make progress on ZA. It's really gear intense, but we have 2/6 bosses down. I'm hoping that by next week or so we start zoning into ZA again and make progression because as some of you pointed out, ZA loot is around T5 loot, so it's really worth doing.

I would focus more on clearing ZA before you start Hydros. I have no raiding knowledge in TBC mainly because I wasted my life raiding 6 days a week pre-tbc. You stated you guys are focusing on pve and pvp, Well im going to quote the wow forums over and over "WoW is basically PVE or PVP choose one". Its very hard to progress in pve with pvp gear, I suggest you start with getting heroic pve gear and moving into ZA before you try and finish Hydros.

As for guides, check out http://www.worldofraids.com or http://www.mmo-champion.com and see what they have there. There is another site that has rankings but i forgot it now :(:(.

[+orgitnized Subscriber¹]

Karazhan gear is a marginal upgrade over the 5-man loot. Arena gear?especially weapons?is almost as good or better.

The biggest reason to go to karazhan is because the heroic badge items are a pretty big upgrade over Tier 4 and in some cases hold up against Tier 6 quality items because of the way the items have their stats allocated.

Gruul and High King can easily be done with any 25 capable of killing Nightbane: he's been killed in original form with many people still having Tier 2 or 3 set bonuses and he's substantially easier now than he was last March. If you can organize the people and account for a few class/gear requirements he's worth attempting.

Zul'Aman doesn't require Karazhan/badge loot but it makes it a significantly bit easier. If you aren't clearing karazhan with your eyes closed then you probably aren't playing at a level that could reasonably kill anything there without solid gear on every player. Even if you are, the fights are much less forgiving of individual mistakes. If people say things like "netherspite is hard" or "prince is too random" you probably aren't going to fare to well in there. ZA drops Tier 5 level items (Tier 6 level if you can make the timed event) and some of them are the best-in-slot pieces so the difficulty is appropriate.

A group just starting Karazhan gets to practice raiding: the gear upgrades are tiny in comparison to the skills the players have mastered by the time they can clear the place in 3 hours. Most groups will out-gear Karazhan before they even go in.

Nice quality post, thanks for that. People are clearing Kara in 3 hours? You guys are good!

Here is my character

He's fun to play but it gets boring to heal sometimes and hard to heal other times. I know all healers have their advantages though. I know i need to get enchants going and everything for my gear, but I'm just kinda pluggin' along here. It takes us like 3 hours to get to Shade. So we can do however many that is before him - like Attumen, Maiden, Moroes, Opera, Curator, Chess Event and Shade.

That's as much as I've seen outta Kara.

I'd love more enchants for my gear but money is an issue with me. I have a hell of a time getting money from quests because it takes forever for my pally to kill anything. So I have to make sure I group with someone to make money which I absolutely ha:(. :(

[the evn show]

People are clearing Kara in 3 hours? You guys are good!

it's more gear than skill, although 11 months of practice helps.

A few way to speed things up:

• Don't res anything that isn't a tank unless you've lost 3+ people or clearing to Opera, Shade of Aran, Chess, or Prince. The corpse run is short enough that you don't need to do it.
  
• Once you know the pulls, just keep going unless your casters are under half-mana.
  
• Skip as much as you can. I've been pugging on my Fresh-70 mage and seen groups clear all of the ball room, Pull 4-5 extra packs in the Library, the Philanthropists past Opera (while the gold is nice, getting out 20 mins quicker is better), etc.
  
• Don't explain the whole fights: people should know them before you go, just work out the details "Jimmy & Sam on fire, Dave & Cindi on frost. Let's go".
  
• Give everybody an assist and have them mark their own tank/crowd control targets.
  
• Have healers call tanks at the start of the run and stick to them all night.
  
• 2 healers + shadow priest is better than 3 healers.
  
• Need/greed or free for all loot. You should be able to discuss loot while setting up for the pull -- you shouldn't need to masterloot because you probably aren't running with jerks that would steal loot.
  

You'll notice most of that is "stop waiting around" because any time you're not fighting is wasted. It's amazing how slowly people run when there's not a 45-minute respawn timer to motivate them. Back when we were farming molten core while learning BWL we had a person who used to run a "combat time" timer. Every time we'd stop he'd tell us how long we'd wasted (subtract in-combat time from the amount of time you've been in the instance). Knowing that we missed Rag and had to come back the next day because we sat around for 1.5 hours got people's act in gear.

Well im going to quote the wow forums over and over "WoW is basically PVE or PVP choose one". Its very hard to progress in pve with pvp gear

PVP rewards are great hole fillers even for people in end-game guilds. Look at the healer neck slot for example.

Past Karazhan your upgrade choices are.

• Lord Sanguinar's Claim This is the best item in the game for priests/druids.a reward for the Kael head quest. Most guilds don't farm him unless they have to and you're competing with everyone in the raid: this one is tough to grab.
  
• Nadina's Pendant of Purity. More of a paldin item, but due to the scarcity of items for the slot you'll find most healers ending up with this when they have access to it. You're 1 boss from Illidan by the time you get it.
  
• Vindicator's Pendant of Salvation. 2 Mp5 and 6 +heal off of the best-in-slot item (but extra stamina in place). For a weekend of /facerolling in AV and half-a-dozen of EoTS games you can't beat it.
  
• Teeth of Gruul from an easily accessible 25-man. -20 to -30 +heal, no stamina. It's a dubious for shaman/paladins but respectable for the other two healing classes.
  
• Brooch of Nature's Mercy. Plenty of +heal but lacking in every other way. It's not really a good choice for anybody unless no other options are available.
  

For most healers (especially shaman/paladins) the only way to upgrade the neck slot will be getting the PVP neck.

Season 3 weapons are as good as, or better than anything you get before Hyjal/BT. The 2 minute trinket is golden for some fights (Archimonde, Rage Winterchill). PVP is a great way to fill holes in your gear when the random number generator isn't kind.

Edited January 17, 2008 by the evn show

[Mike Frett]

Please, someone tell me quick. It'll take a few days for my gamecard to come in but I need to play now ( :rolleyes: ). If I use my credit card for payment, can I cancel that and use my gamecard when it comes in?.

[gigapixels Veteran]

Please, someone tell me quick. It'll take a few days for my gamecard to come in but I need to play now ( :rolleyes: ). If I use my credit card for payment, can I cancel that and use my gamecard when it comes in?.

Yeah, it will only do one payment and then as long as you cancel it before the next one it won't charge again.

[Mike Frett]

Thanks a bunch gigapixels. ;)