Peter's Blog

Maexyn

Got Maexyn to level 50 by dint of Tanaris Pirates and a spot of Felwood. The Pirates went ok but not as fun as with a hunter. Afflication Warlock fighting is a lot of waiting for things to die. The curse of recklessness is indeed very good for stopping runners, I used it just before Drain Soul.

She got the level 50/41 point talent 'Unstable Affliction' and it seems like a reasonably ok DoT, even if I ignore the PvP dispell boobytrap element. Things died quicker when using it. It's probably a matter of time before I succomb to temptation and respec her for the Fel Guard but as I read that the Fel Guard needs to learn a few talents before it is vastly better than a voidwalker I will bide my time.

At level 50 I decided to try the king-kong island to the south east of STV, only to find that the big ape was only level 43, I had read it was level 50 but that was a couple of patches ago. The ape was big though.

Maesyn

Ran Maesyn two levels to 42 (eighties group blah blah: is it really the fifth time I've made that reference?). She did lots of killing in mid-stranglethron, found a big temple full of trolls with fetishes (not that kind of fetish) that I hadn't come across before. Many trolls around but prowl is very useful when deep in enemy territory. While roaming around the countryside I also found a troll in a cave who wanted a gorilla tooth which explained why I was purpetually having to destroy quest related gorilla teeth that I had autolooted. And he only wanted one tooth. The quest involved killing three gorillas that attacked, a level 42, 43 and 44, one after the other. Killed them ok with the trolls help, finished the quest, then as I walked off the three baddie gorillas respawned. Killed them again (druid cat form cat handle a three-level higher mob easily) and got some extra leather.

Picked up the green bottle for the king-kong quest, only to find it's minimum level requirement is 42 and she was still 41.

Ran through some alterac quests but they were against level 35 mobs so a bit of a walkover. Killing a few trolls in the Hinterlands made the level 42 ding.

I gave her another respec, dropped Furor and picked up the level 40 talent, Leader of the Pack for and extra 5% crit. Her crit is now 19% so that should average comfortably at a crit per fight. She crits for better than 600 damage and I'm liking the big numbers.

Maesyn rarely has any downtime, when mana is very low I just wait for enough to shift to cat form, then continue and after a few mobs there is enough for continued healing. She has picked up a skill called 'Innervate' which improves her mana regeneration by 400% for a few seconds which means even less downtime.

Maecyn

By this time I was low on rest bonus and a bit bored so I succombed to a temptation to roll another alt. Back in Searing Gorge Maexyn had run into an equal level mage who was dealing with trio's of dwarves with such ease that I just had to try a frost mage. Ok it's lots of mana breaks but the killing looks like fun.

I tried a human male mage ages ago and it was ok but he got stuck at level 8. Maecyn is a female gnome, not sure why I chose gnome but the Escape Artist could help her (Maexyn never needs it) and she has Expansive Mind for extra intellect.

(If it helps, you should be able to mouse over the mae?yn names and a tool tip will remind you which one I am writing about.)

The first eleven levels flashed past. Ok I know the gnome/dwarf starting area backwards but Maecyn was killing equal level mobs in four seconds. Eventually I worked out that it is the 'Bonfire's Blessing' from the wotsit festival that is on, it gives her a 30% chance to deal 80 damage and 80 damage is quite a bit against a level 7 Ice Claw Bear. My advice: if you have alt-itis, get out there now.

Frost Mage Fun:

• Standard Attack
  • Frost Bolt (damages and slows down attacking enemy)
  • Arcane Missiles (a bit of damage while it runs up)
  • Fire Blast (instant cast damage) if mob has > 20% health left
  • Wand to death
• If the frost bolt doesn't work or if she gets attacked close up then the frost armour has a chance to slow down the attacker so she can run to distance and either try to frost bolt again or kite and Fire Blast whenever the 6 second cooldown is up (although the latter takes a while and she has to run in circles to avoid running into adds).
• Frost Nova! Level 10 goodie, slows down all attackers in an area ready for kiting/legging it. Also good for attacking when can't get good line of sight for a frostbolt.

She is another Herbalist/Skinner and her skinning is already level 75.

Since she will be taking mana breaks every four seconds I will also make an effort to level her cookery so she can get some food buffs while she is drinking.

Pookypoo

I logged into pook and found him in the middle of Winterspring ready for some thorium farming. He had to kill a few big cats and the Bonfire's Blessing for him gave 600 damage, as much as one of Maesyn's crits.

Maexyn

Took Maexyn to Searing Gorge and did about eight quests in two hours to get her from level 47 through half way to level 49. Interestingly the Golems there were immune to Drain Life and Siphon Life so replaced these with Shadow Bolts and Immolation respectively.

I did have to do a Howl of Terror in the Cauldron when under attack from three mobs with the voidy netted. The results were not good. Best warlock skill: soulstone.

Maesyn

At 38 Maesyn took on the higher level parts of Desolace, particularly the Undead Ravagers (lvl 37-40) and the Demon camp (lvl 37-39?). She dealt with everything quite comfortably. She can handle casters now: at 38 vs a level 40 centaur caster thing she just stealthed up, Pounce, Shred, a couple of claws and it is dead in 12 seconds. lvl 38 Warlock + minion? Stealth up, take out the minion in two hits in as many seconds, take out the warlock in 12 seconds. Not a problem.

Fighting in cat and get an add? Again, not a problem, press R to cast Regenerate, press F to go back to cat and continue. Regenerate (Heal over Time) is quite ok if you have a reasonable anount of health to begin with, it tends to stop your health falling further, makes up for the beating you are taking. And it's instant cast so you can do it whenever there is mana.

Fighting in cat and get two adds? Not a problem, press = for dash and run away.

I had an enlightened moment about my stealth attacks and started doing this:

• approach mob from any directing in stealth
• press 7 to Pounce
• while mob is stunned go behind it for a Shred. Here I realised that I just have to go through the mob, I don't have to worry about going around it to avoid breaking stealth any more. This makes it much easier. 'Behind' is very loose, somewhere in 180 degrees in front of you has to coincide with the 180 degrees behind the mob, that's all.

She went back to STV to do the troll temples to get the last two tablets. The trolls were level 34-37 or so but dense and tricky. I love stealth, she just walked through the main gates past the guards, no having to kill everything on the way in (she had no rest bonus left so pure killing is not an efficient use of time compared to rapid quest turnins). She had to clear about six trolls from an area in front of a tablet but again stealth is great for scouting and choosing targets: pull melee guys with Feral Faerie Fire, stealth/pounce stray castors etc. She had to do the last three trolls in bear but again the instant cast Regenerate spell is my friend. The trolls had a nasty trick of netting and running to distance to throw spears but shape shift breaks the net. That was a good fight.

At level 40 Maesyn picked up some new goodies:

• Nice pussy mount:

Maes at 40

• Dire bear form. Tried this out on a level 43 Basilisk and lived with about 40% health left and no healing. Not bad but kitty, with an initial regenerate could end the fight much faster and with more health left.
• Found a druid hat on the AH that gives energy or rage after a shape shift, similar to the Furor talent AND it stacks with the Furor talent. This means that after pressing R for a regenerate, when she goes back to cat she gets 60 energy which is enough for a free Claw with a bit of change.
• In prowl mode she creeps a bit faster. Prowling was ok before, what with the swiftness talents, now it is better.
• A skill that reduces damage from falling. Can she survive the Aldor lift?

Summary

I'm enjoying the druid more than ever. Her survivability is improving as I learn the tactics and I enjoy the play style, especially the back stabbing and 12 second kills. The warlock is powerful but a bit mechanical, casting DoTs is a slow way of killing things.

I'm thinking of leaving Maezyn on hold for a bit, along with Pook. Maezyn is on the edge of what to me is the biggest grind in the game, the part between western helfire, through Zangarmarsh and Terokkah (sp?) up until Nagrand. I cannot think of a single quest in that long stretch that I enjoy doing, it is weeks of grind. Also as a hunter she has now got all the useful hunter talents and I'm not sure I will learn a lot from levelling her. Her leatherworking will be useful to Maesyn.

I'm having more fun running Maexyn and Maesyn and learning about Warlocks and Druids so I'm going to focus on them for a bit.

Next goal: Maexyn to 50.

I feel like expanding on yesterdays post. I can't skip over six odd levels of druid experience in a paragraph.

I did some reading on druid talent specs and went for a feral/restoration build with 11 points in restoration for the Omen of Clarity. The Omen essentially gives Maesyn a free heal or attack at some random point during a fight. As it can occur at any time it normally ends up as being a free Claw. I'm not totally bowled away with it but on the way to the talent I picked up Furor which is a 100% chance to get some rage/energy after a shapeshift which is nice. Normally when the druid shifts she has no energy to fight and has to wait which is kinda frustrating. Furor fixes that. It also enables some cool tricks, e.g:

• can switch to bear, instantly bash for a stun and heal (although whenever I try this trick the heal seems to go wrong and give bugger all healing and I'm staring incredulously at 20% health: it's on my todo list to figure out what the problem is: global cooldown?).
• she can switch to bear and then has enough rage to instantly Feral Charge which can work as a spell lock, although it has an annoying 8-30 yard range and the casters always seem to be at 7.5 yards away.

Her current fighting is to prowl up behind something and Pounce which stuns the enemy for four seconds (extended with two talent points), then Shred while still behind. This is quite a devestating combo, it can take half a mobs health in one go. I've done a lot of stealthing in the last few levels and with two talent points in improved stealth you can pretty much do anything around a mob as long as you don't accidently go through it if it suddenly changes direction. She doesn't need to be directly behind to Shred, she can be perpendicular, i.e. stabbing it in the shoulder. With the swiftness talents it isn't too much of a problem to get into position and as I mentioned yesterday it is quite satisfying.

I love travel form: it doesn't seem that much slower than a normal mount but it's so cool being about to change in and out while running and it made the long runs (gadgetzan, desolace) quite tolerable. It's much better for running away than Aspect of the Cheetah as there is less (but still some) chance to be dazed. The game has an annoying bug where it takes it a few seconds to work out that you have left a building and can switch to travel form, like the opposite of the delay between entering a building and being dismounted. When the druid enters a building she is 'dismounted' from travel form to caster rather than the faster cat form so one has to try to preempt this (memo to self: does this 'dismount' cost mana? Prob not, although I don't see any tactical benefits).

As I mentioned yesterday, she has little downtime. If she is low on mana she can wait for enough mana to switch to cat, then idle away some time killing things, after which mana has regenerated for a heal and switch back to cat. I normally use Regrowth for healing as it is more mana efficient than Healing Touch and has a heal-over-time element so she can be some way into a fight before her health dips below 100%. Also worth noting that the HoT from Regrowth appears to stack with the HoT from Regenerate so she normally casts a regenerate immediately after a caster pull.

As a grinding/farming machine the lack of downtime and the speed of travel make the druid a good choice. Just keep away from caster camps!

A quick catchup.

Maezyn

Visited hunter trainer at 62 and discovered I had neglected to visit since level 58. Many upgrades and 62 yielded steady shot. With a shot rotation that includes Steady Shot she can kill very quickly but runs out of mana equally quickly.

My comments about beastmaster vs marksman in the last post proved wrong: marksman pet needs hefty healing.

In summary, battles are over quickly but pet healing and mana drinks make up for that.

Maexyn

Maevyn and Maesyn sent her all their herbs stocks and she is now a 285 alchemist. I decided that levelling tailoring just for the high level BoP's wasn't worth it. All the decent leatherworking plans seem to come from instances and I doubt tailoring is any different. Maexyn will never raid and is my only clothie so not much point in levelling tailoring. Still need to get alchemy to 350 to start lucrative transmuting and she can't improve alchemy skill till level 50 so that can wait for a bit.

She is now level 47. At 46 she could kill level 47-49 water elementals and zapped giants in Feralas effortlessly. 30 seconds to kill a 49! I was happy when pook could kill something three levels higher in less than two minutes.

Maesyn

Went kinda crazy and levelled her six levels to 38. She's no longer the baby! I am addicted to stealthing up behind mobs, Pouncing and shredding. She can grind for hours with no mana breaks, rarely needs bandaging and never needs a food stop yet can still kill things in 20 seconds. Still very weak against multiple mobs and casters: caster camps are as difficult as for a paladin.

Druid play is more challenging than hunter/warlock but stabbing things in the back gives uneasy satisfaction.

Maexyn

Maexyn got to level 46 in Feralas doing the dart spriter, naga and yeti quests. Not much to report execpt to say what fun it was in the dart spriter camp when I kept pressing the howl of terror button instead of shadow bolt. It has to be THE best way to agro a whole camp.

I haven't got into using Death Coil yet but I read a good tip: use the three second death coil window to cast a proper fear.

The yeti seemed to resist the Voidwalker's taunts and Maexyn got a lot of beating and had to eat/drink every ten mobs or so. I maybe could have switched to succubus but voidwalker is just the best warlock pet. It is nice to have Sacrifice available.

Maezyn

Maezyn did all the shatter point quests without dying, a first for me. I'm happy with my pulling, the boar makes it precise and Maezyn can burn things down pretty quickly.

Right now I would say I can't really tell much difference between a beastmaster and marksman hunter, they both get the job done. A beastmaster pet is probably a better tank but I don't seem to get into big (3-4 mob) fights as often these days, maybe because my pulling is better. I prefer silencing shot to the beast within.

Maesyn

Maesyn got to level 32 by killing things in southshore, not the easiest fights. However, at 32 she got two nice things:

Ravage

A nice opening move, have to use it from behind in stealth but it can take 20% of a mobs health in one hit. Almost worth messing around in stealth for.

Feroscious Bite

I've been waiting for something like this. An instant hit finishing move that uses up all combo points and energy but gives a big hit. This thing is one of the hardest hitting moves I've seen on all my characters and can take out a mob with 30% health left.

With better starting and finishing moves, Maesyn just got a lot more powerful.

I've been dropping my play rotation and playing withever character I felt like playing: discipline to the wind, it's a game! Shame for pooky though. So, in no particular order:

Maexyn

Maexyn rocked Hinterlands and the STV pirates. She could handle two warlocks plus minions in a single fight. She is powerful, gives me the same feeling as when running a hunter, that I can try anything. She's 44 now and tackling Tanaris, although I may send her to Feralas.

Maesyn

Tackled the worgen in Darkshire and managed to handle pairs of equal levels in cat form with the help of Natures Grasp for some CC. Got to level 30 and travel form, although that is no big deal after swift cat form.

Went up to southshore and started tackling the Murlocs. I was wondering why I was struggling when I realised they were levels 30-32, I thought they were high twenties. Anyway, still managed to prevail, albeit carefully. Coped with pairs of Murloc Oracles (healer/caster) plus melee murlocs in cat form by rooting the melee guy and burning down the caster. Tough fights though because of the healing.

Fighting equal level mobs, the cat can manage maybe two fights before it's health drops to 50% and it can do with a heal. I use a 'regrowth' which is an instant heal plus heal over time and is more mana efficient than the Healing Touch which is just a heal. If I'm going into a tough fight I will then do the following (while regrowth is still ticking):

• Starfire, long cast damage spell
• Mob now running at me so Regenerate HoT (instant cast!)
• Mob hitting me, switch to cat
• press attack button as the stupid cat won't defend itself.
• wait a second or two for some energy
• rip
• claw whenever there is enough energy

On a good fight this leaves cat with 70%ish health which will suffice for the next fight. With the above she could tackle level 34 cats at level 30 although she needed a good heal afterwards.

I don't even bother with bear mode these days, if a fight turns nasty I run.

Got to level 31 and hence the Feral Faerie Fire talent which is nice not only as a minor debuff but because it can be caste in cat form from 30 yards and hence is a ranged pull. Up till now I have been body pulling in cat form or switching to caster so a ranged pull is very welcome.

Maezyn

I hadn't run Maezyn for a week or two and she immediately felt powerful, more powerful than Maexyn in the way she could burn down Hellboars. She did more Hellfire with few problems and dinged 61. The freezing trap is just the greatest thing there is.

Her Arcane Shots are criting in the 800's, I think this is better than Maevyn was achieving, as would be expected for a Markswoman. I've geared her primarily with attack power. Even with all this Beefy still keeps agro, very few problems. Still loving the precision with which she can pull and choose exactly where beefy will engage, very nice compared to a wafty voidwalker.

Professions

Maexyn's enchanting is nice, Maesyn got a new mace and Maexyn put a 'greater impact' on it which gave it a nice white glow. Absolutely useless enchant for a druid but it gave Maexyn a skill point.

I'm toying with dropping Maexyn's tailoring and making her an alchemist. Alchemy is sooo lucrative and I'm struggling to get enough cloth to level the tailoring as well as making everyone a first aider. I don't want to farm or buy cloth and Maesyn has collected lots of herbs.

Maesyn

Well the Natures Grasp is handy, not life changing but still useful now and then. A couple of times she fought in cat form and her health got low so she cast this, rooted the opponent, then casually stepped back, healed and then laid in with long cast spells. Maesyn spent level 27 fighting Worgen in Darkshire and really the most useful druid ability was being able to run away quickly! Bear mode still seems crap to me, I'm still missing something. If she is pulling and likely to pull two mobs then maybe she should cast a renewal (instant HoT) then shift to bear but in a normal cat fight, if an add comes along it is normally too late to shift to bear.

Level 28 and Maesyn got a fistful of next ranks so her next trip to Darkshire yielded level 29 quite easily. Not long now till she gets Travel Form and she can run away that much faster!

Maexyn

Ran meax enough to get her to level 42. Was delighted to find that this gave her Death Coil and I can see now why PvPers hate warlocks: an instant cast fear than damages the foe and heals the warlock. Me like.

Was browsing through her spell book and found the Curse of Tongues that appears to halve an opposing casters ranged dps. How did I miss this one? Trying to run too many classes at once probably. I get to a new level, rush to the trainers, get loads of new spells, logout, then run three other classes before returning.

My lamentations at lack of pew pew on my druid led to researches which have yielded the existence of the Druid's 'Natures Grasp' talent.

It sounds too good to be true:

• for 40 seconds gives a 35% chance a melee hit will cause the attacker to be rooted
• one minute cooldown (i.e. useful in every other fight)
• available at level 10 for one measly talent point
• instant cast
• castable in cat and bear forms
• zero mana

It's in the balance tree so I totally neglected it, it's a unique decent talent for just one point in tier one of a talent tree. There's me bemoaning boar form and I could have been rooting one mob, bashing another, healing and kicking butt. I never bothered much with the direct rooting spell but the instant cast and being able to use it in cat/bear form makes this far, far more appealing.

I even had a talent point going spare.

Bum

And is it just me or are the affliction warlock talent points after Dark Pact pretty feeble? Tempted to start putting points into demonology.

Not posted for a while, not been playing quite so much, what with hot weather and all. I have made some progress though.

Maezyn

I spent a number of hours levelling her leathercrafting to something respectable. This involved farming thick leather in Blasted Lands (just outside dark portal) and then rugged leather in Winterspring. I bought the last stack or so of rugged on the AH as I couldn't stand the farming any more. All I made I sent to Maexyn for disenchanting. Maezyn then used all her Knothide leather to get up to 307.

At this level she can start making Felscale Gloves, the first item in the Felscale Armour set that ultimately yields heaps of agility and attack power. Good Stuff. The only odd ingredient these things need is Fel Scales that drop from ravagers.

She is 70% of the way to level 61.

Maesyn

Maesyn spent time in Darkshire killing easy (lvl 20) wolves and in Wetlands killing harder (lvl 26) Dinosaurs. She was level 26 and wasn't very dominant against equal level dinosaurs, lots of drinking and downtime. Most killing was cat form, any bear form work is still very poor, she struggles against two equal level mobs. Not sure what I'm doing wrong, maybe leaving the shift to bear form too late, don't know. Did the obligatory Sarltooth kill, him being 29 and very close fight, Maesyn was left with nothing visible in her health bar. Cat form isn't all that pew pew but maybe it gets better at higher levels?

Go to level 27. Here I tried gearing her up with level 27 kit, Maezyn made her some barbaric bracers, a blue, and Maexyn enchanted what she could.

Maexyn

Now Maexyn IS pew pew. At level 40 she was grinding level 43 dragon whelps in badlands relentlessly. I was using the Imp as a mana battery and doing this she can kill continually, not downtime required, just top up the mana from the imp at the end of each fight. It was very sustainable, the only limiting factor to fighting like this is the durability problems from Maexyn being hit so much by dragon fireballs.

The dragon whelps didn't drop anything nice like quest objectives or whelplings but did drop a new +stamina warlock pointy hat that increased her stamina by about 10%. It's blue and doesn't go with her purple robes but stamina is stamina.

She went to STV and carried on grinding level 43 naga but these hit harder and she had to switch to voidwalker which she continued with. She's a few quest turnins from level 42 (eighties pop group blah blah).

Saw a moonkin druid doing a kill/drink/kill/drink slog while Maexyn killed one venture co after another. I hope druid play doesn't get too pally like.

Enjoying warlock at the moment, nice and over powered. It takes a level 43 elite dragon to stop her and then she has soulstone up so it isn't a big deal.

I had a browse through her stocks of enchanting materials. I find it hard to follow which items are which level but I've auctioned all her strange dust as I'm not sure she still needs it. For all the other stuff: lesser/greater dream/vision/nether/astral/whatever dust/shards I have no real idea of what is useful and what isn't. I found that she had over 100g's worth in one stack of six shards so her stocks are worth something.

Maezyn

Maezyn went out to tame a plague swine for some next rank gore and charge and somehow ended up in Winterspring taming Rak'shiri:

Maez and Blue

Fate drew me to Winterspring as I fancied taming a good looking cat and Rak'shiri happened to be there. I didn't really want to tame a level 57 and have to level it up to 60 but he was so good looking that I couldn't just kill him.

Back to questing in Hellfire and by the time Maezyn was half way to level 61 Blue, as I renamed him, had dinged 60! He was on the olf Azeroth experience quotas and not Maez' hellfire quotas so it wasn't so bad.

He came with Dash 3 and I had to tame a Winterspring Owl to get claw and he still doesn't have bite but he looks good.