WoW News Issue 159- Peter's Blog

WoW News Issue 159

Submitted by Peter on Sat Sep 15 2007 09:41 about 1 year ago

Cooking Spree

The benefits of Sporeling Snacks (+20 stamina for the pet) and Warp Burgers (+agility for the hunter) were too good to resist so I decided to level up Maevyn's cooking but not the fishing (sorrt but just too boring). She was level 266 and I worked out that she could make it to 300 on Monster Omlettes or Tender Wolf Steak as both go grey at 305. The Omlettes use two soothing spices rather than one but still decided to farm the owlbeasts in Winterspring for their giant eggs as there was a faint hope of XP. As it turned out a few of the birdmen were level 59 and only these gave experience. The drop rate for the eggs was about one in four and I gathered forty of them: go figure. Since bags were full decided to go and cook them but couldn't find a fire in Everlook and ended up in Darnassus looking for a fire. This got me up to 294 so farmed for thirty more eggs. Hearthed back to Shattrath and made the omlettes and the very last one dinged the cooking to 300.

Flew to honor hold and bought the master cookery book from the Cook in the inn and raise the cap to 375. Also bought the recipe for ravager meat from the Innkeeper. Had 20 lots of ravager meat so cooked it all. Flew to Zangarmarsh and went to visit the Sporregar and got the Sporeling Snack recipe. Had 21 Strange Spores so made a big batch of Sporeling Snacks. Flew to Allerian Stronghold and got the Warp Burger recipe from the Supplies guy in the tower (the Innkeeper also sells them but she was sold out). Made 8 warp burgers. Also got a basilisk recipe and cooked up some basilisk meat I was carrying.

All in all Maevyn was carrying enough ingredients to get the cooking up to 356.

The sporeling snacks and burgers work a treat and the good thing is that they complement flasks and scrolls so Maevyn can have an extra buff up.

While in Honor Hold visited the Alchemist trainer to see what was on offer. There was an Intellect/Spirit pot available which I noticed was a guardian elixir. This would be a nice complement to an agility elixir and may help the mana last longer when grinding.

The Damn Bird

Back to the Bone Wastes for more grinding. Was in the area of the elite bird's girlfriend so decided to kill her just to wind him up. Took her carcass to the totem where he spawns and did a studied attack:

ate warp burger and drank elixir or mastery (+15 to all stats). Also drank water to make sure mana was replete.
laid an immolation trap ready and waited for some of the cooldown. The immolation trap is about 1000 damage so worth doing.
put Tiddles on aggressive and fired intimidation to make sure she immediately grabbed agro. When the bird appeared previously it seemed to go straight for Mae and since it comes down and is very large it is initially difficult to deal with. Putting the pet on aggressive means the attack starts automatically.
laid down carcass to summon bird
laid down dps and pet heals. Maevyn got agro once and feigned death to lose it (no messing with disengage)
killed bird
jumped up and down
/dance
Mae health about 30% so bandage up
/bye

This made me REALLY HAPPY, both because I soloed a group quest and because the reward is a nice trinket that gives +140 attack power for 15 seconds in every minute and a half. A decent trinket at last! She has one that gives +140 dodge but hasn't bothered to use it and she never seems to use the running away trinket from Badlands.

The Beast Within

I think I have figured out at least one good reason to keep the 'Beast Within' talent rather than respec to Scattershot (hence the anathema 40/21/0 spec). It should (I haven't tried this yet) prevent her being dazed or stunned or whatever when she tries to run away. Previously I always used it for the extra dps (ignoring Rapid Fire because of the longer cooldown) and overlooking this defensive possibility.

Ogga's response to my question yesterday makes me inclined to respec again to pick up Rapid Killing, reduce the cooldown of Rapid Fire to three minutes and to ACTUALLY USE IT. On the owlbeasts it put Mae's tooltip dps up to nearly 300. If Rapid Killing boosts the next attack then that's icing on the cake. Pity it doesn't seem to apply to Steady Shot though.

What's Pook Up To?

Apart from being the auction alt, I have a long term plan to gear him up. He is working on putting together a set of retribution pally gear (Strength, agility, attack power) to replace his lacklustre spellpower gear. I am having trouble replacing his Fel Iron gear which apart from being more suited to tanking also means that the lower half of his attire is bright green and the top half is dark: he looks half dressed.

Mae had a level 53 blue plate belt drop from an owlbeast and Pooky has even equipped that as apart from an armour loss it was overall an improvement on what he had.

UPDATE: