Peter's Blog

I ran Maexyn and Maezyn intensely for a few days and got them to level 36 and 37 respectively. I tried a few permutations of talent trees before settling on Fury warrior and holy priest. It worked out better to have the warrior taking all the attention with the priest quietly spamming heals in the background. Fights where the priest drew agro could quickly go bad once fade was on cooldown.

I found a neat grinding routine:

• attack mob with fury warrior
• build lots of rage, get it down to 50% health
• switch to priest to, finish mob off
• warrior still has lots of rage left so use intercept to attack next mob.
• etc

This worked nicely, essentially the warrior used her rage in spurts and would regenerate while the priest attacked and the priest could regen mana while the warrior was berzerking and as a multi-boxer everything was easy to handle.

I used a fury warrior with a big two-hander but nn arms warrior may have been good enough. I get the impression that a fury warrior is best dual-weilding with lots of crit and my crit is always mediocre, whatever character I play.

I now had a good idea of how to handle warrior/priest multibox and it lost it's appeal. In fact the entire game lost it's appeal and I haven't played since.

I've cancelled my accounts but I haven't deleted anything.

One of the last things I did was fly Maevyn to Neverstorm to get transmute mastery. The scenery was spectacular, big tubes full of glowing pink stuff but as I looked at it I knew I had no interest whatever in questing there. I have no interest whatever in questing in Northrend and I can't consider grinding a load of characters up to level 80 any more than I would consider copying the telephone directory onto handwritten pages. Yes it would be an achievement but why bother?

With the world's finances in the state they are I feel my time would be much better spent developing my rails skills. I have a family to support.

I haven't blogged for a while as in a way my playing and the blogging were interlinked, to some extent I played to blog about it. I had to cut both off together. Now I've got lots of other stuff I want to blog about so it's time to end the Wow News.

Mayzyn and Mayxyn

This post is little more than to show off this screen shot:

I found a nice shady spot

The Warrior and the Priest spent some time in Westfall fighting defias lowbies in a cave. I had one wipe which was enough to pursuade me to have the priests Inner Fire up at all times. The fight was a tricky one, the warrior had a couple of melee guys going and the priest had a caster lobbing fireballs at her. The caster was too far away for the warrior to pull agro with a thunder clap. The priests 'Fade' had been serving me well but it was on cooldown. I'm learning a lot about agro management. Hunters/warlocks have threat generation on autocast, I'm having to do it manually.

The next thing I need to remember is Power Word: Shield but there is a lot to learn here.

The Warrior was weilding her new blue two-hander and very nice it was too, two-shotting level 13's. She had to level up her two-handed mace from 1 to 90 but that is easy with a priest around to spam Renew heals.

Warrior dinged 19 early on and the Priest ended the session very close to 18. I discovered that I had neglected to pick up the stormwind flight point on the priest as she was summoned straight from ironforge so I ran her back to Stormwind killing pigs on the way. It was interesting to try solo priest play and as I suspected, it sucked, still boring with lots of mana breaks. Anyway she dinged 18.

It took a few days but the girls Armory profiles are now working. Nice that Mayzyn has level 16 engineering. She's never made anything but for once I am exploiting a racial profession buff.

I'm mildly tempted to have Mayxyn as a jewelcrafter except I have absolutely no interest in Gem cutting. Gems are for raiders and pvpers that would grind for a month just for 3 more agility. Methinks Gems make bugger all difference in 20 second solo fights.

I didn't get to play a great deal in the last few days, problems with broadband which I will blog about once they are resolved (long story, much moaning).

Mayzyn

Mayzyn's mining was lagging behind her level so I sent her on a couple of ore farming trips to get her to at least level 65 where she could mine tin. She did all this solo, there was no need to drag the priest around. She could kill equal level mobs but they can leave a big hole in her health: she really needs to learn bandaging and her dps could do with a fix.

To this end I decided to have pookypoo run her through deadmines. This went nicely, Mayzyn lagged behind pook and let him do all the work but scooped up all the greens and blues. She now has a nice blue two-hander. Mayzyn died once, pookypoo's vengence had procced and he was off on a single-shotting rampage and left her behind where a patrol found her. No probs, pook just ressed her.

I had assumed that Mayzyn would get very little experience from being run through deadmines by a 65 but in fact, probably due to the 'refer-a-friend' bonus, she ended the run just shy of level 19, she made about half a level. I didn't even take time to pick up any deadmines quests before I went in.

I've made Mayzyn a miner/engineer. The engineering is just for a bit of fun, poultryisers and all that, although it does mean she could make Mayxyn some goggles, clothy headware being a bit scanty below level 30.

Gnomes in Space

The most blindingly obvious use for the 'Summon a Friend' ability of blizzards new referral thing finally hit me.

Gnomes in Space

Maevyn grouped with Mayzyn and summoned her to Shattrath. An hour later, Mayzyn grouped with Maexyn and summoned her to Shattrath. Next for the trip is Maesyn.

The group leader does the summoning and it doesn't matter what their relative levels are or which is the 'friend'.

Now Maexyn is in Outlands she can work on >lvl 300 alchemy with the aim of getting her transmuting and paying her way.

Although her gear is all greens I think she looks kinda cool for a 54. The totally aesthetic weapon enchant was worth the hassle!

I'm starting to find gnomes cute. Until you pair them up with tall strapping dwarves you don't appreciate them. With her little shield on her back Mayzyn looks like a beetle scurrying along.

No new developments but I thought I'd expand on my Multi-boxing setup.

It's not actually multi-boxing but two instances of WoW running on a single computer. It has an nvidia graphics card and is running with two monitors so I have the warrior leading on the main screen and the priest following on the second.

I didn't do anything special at all to set up the second account, just applied for it online through my main account, sent an invitation email to one of my many email addresses, clicked the link in the email and set up a new account with all the same details as my main account (it is important that the accounts are similar: it stops you signing your own guild charter but allows you to transfer characters between accounts and it reassures blizz that you aren't a gold farmer).

I fired up a standard wow instance on linux, logged in with the new account username/password and created the warrior. I fired up a second instance and logged in on that to my main account. From my dabbling in WTF files I am aware that the settings for different accounts are stored in different subdirectories of the WTF directory so I didn't think there would be a clash. I had no problems with the wow instance on the new account except that it defaulted to loading all my add-ons, even old rubbish that threw up errors and died. I've altered this now and only enabled my must-haves: tbags and titan. Sometime I will get round to setting up a pair of wow directories with their own WTF directory but linking to single copies of the umpteen gigabytes of everything else.

When I log in I set the priest's focus on the warrior and I use the macros I mentioned yesterday for the priest to heal the warrior and blast the warrior's target. I also have a simple

/follow [target=focus]

macro to make the priest follow the warrior. The following is a little buggy and the priest can get stuck at the sides of doorways and stuff but I am learning to use my peripheral vision to check she is keeping up. Any movement of the priest on her own will break the follow so it's good to have one button (F1) to start it again.

When the warrior charges the priest follows at her own gentle pace and arrives a couple of yards behind her in the fight. She cannot smite or Mind Blast until she has stopped moving but that's cool, it gives the warrior time to get agro and cast a Rend (the talents the warrior have thus far mean the charge generates enough rage for an instant rend). When I'm setting up for bigger tanking fights I have learnt to park the priest some distance away so she isn't drawn into the fight so easily.

Speaking of tactics, something else I forgot to use in my gnoll camp endeavours (against four or five gnolls I might add) was the priest's Inner Fire armour buff.

I've done more research into multi-boxing and apparently Blizzard are cool with the idea of a single keyboard controlling more than one character, as long as there is someone there typing at it. This means I could set up something that would, for example, redirect F1-F12 on the warriors keyboard onto the priests action bar. That would make things a bit easier than mousing between screens throughout each fight.

I want to reassure the world that I am doing this for two reasons:

• to level my alts up faster.
• because it is an interesting variation on the game

I'm not planning on dominating arenas or farming heroic 5-mans single handed. I think it's safe for me to say that:

• the best arena teams are not multi-boxers
• the only advantage of multi-boxing in pvp would be well-coordinated focus firing and generally good communication within the team.
• even multi-boxing wouldn't make me a good enough player

Having four or five mages simultaneously fireblasting from a single keypress might not be cheating but is not sportsmanlike.

I Can't Resist an Interesting Project

M and M

Yeah I did it, I signed up for a second account to cheat take advantage of Blizzard's new refer-a-friend scheme. After five minutes deliberation I set up a draino priest (Mayzyn) and a gnome warrior (Mayxyn). I corpse-ran the priest to the gnome noob area and I had two level 1's to play with. I multi-boxed (or rather ran two instances of wow on one pc) and in the space of a weekend got the warrior to level 18 and the priest to level 17. Because of the refer-a-friend thing, the rate at which they levelled was very fast, they were level 14 before they left dun morogh (spelling?), the experience bar is permanently blue while they are partying. For a long time they were equal in level, dinging on the same quest turnin, but the warrior had two warrior quests to do and just that put her a whole level ahead.

I set the pc up using KDE so that I can switch between the two players just by moving the mouse from one app to the other, no need to click. I haven't cheated in that I don't have the keyboard set up to send key presses to one character or the other, I have to switch apps to control each character. I have set up some macros for the priest: I set up the whole of the bottom left action bar to duplicate the normal action bar but with macros that work on the focus (the warrior) or the focus target. In a nutshell, this means that pressing 2 causes the priest to smite her target, pressing F2 causes the priest to smite the warriors target. For the warrior I set up F2 to deal a Heroic Strike so I don't have to change keys in a fight. Hence, a vanilla kill attack is:

• Warrior: Charge
• Warrior: Rend (a DoT and nice agro draw)
• Priest: Mind Blast
• Warrior: Herioc Strike
• Priest: Smite
• Warrior: Herioc Strike
• Priest: Smite etc till death ensues.

This was quite easy with a little practise, and most things died in under ten seconds. At level 10 they found a level 11 elite to kill and this again was easy, just swap some of the smites for healing.

Tackling groups was harder. I was trying gnoll camps in westfall, tanking with the warrior and healing/blasting with the priest. It was all ok until the priest drew agro, then it would fall apart big time. I would try Fade with the priest but inevitably she would still have some agro and taking it off with the warrior wasn't easy (in hindsight I should have a macro set up on the warrior to assist her and taunt). The priest kept dying which was a bugger as she had to do the corpse runs and she was the rezzer Also in hindsight, keep the rezzer alive at all costs, let the tank die!

These fights are very tricky, it is too much for my tiny brain, silly things happen like the warrior kills one mob then stops and stands doing nothing while I am fiddling with the priest. If anyone thinks multi-boxing is an easy cheat, they really need to try in. Two multi-boxed characters are not equal to two seperate characters.

It doesn't help that I only got Sissle (priest) to level 13 and that was ages ago so I've forgotten priest play, and I've never played a Warrior. I'm having to learn two classes at once and I'm also having to worry about agro/threat a lot more. In the tricky fights above, I was forgetting about the priest shadow word: shield and I've only ever used it once, so that the two of them could jump down a cliff. For reasons I don't understand this macro:

/cast [target=focustarget] shadow word: pain

refused to work although

/cast shadow word: pain

did and other target=focustarget macros worked fine.

The warrior is very tough, in a way it is nice to be playing a tough character again. I've had two wipes and in both cases the warrior was last to die.

Talent-wise, I waited till about level 15 before deciding what would be most useful and put the Warrior into Arms (which seems to be a compromise between protection and dps) and the priest into shadow for more damage and lower threat. I could make the Warrior protection and the priest holy and the two would be extremely tough to kill but I do want them to be able to kill things quickly too, especially if they ever split up and solo.

The refer-a-friend gives a VERY handy summon-a-friend feature that has a one hour cooldown. I did the run to Westfall by grouping the warrior with Maevyn and using her Aspect of the Pack to run them both at +40% speed. Once there maevyn was replaced in the party with the Priest and the warrior summoned her to Westfall. Very easy and so many possibilities. I could have flown Maevyn there, got her to summon the warrior, logged out for an hour (or played another alt), then got the warrior to summon the priest.

When it comes to Kalimdor, I can have each hearthed in a different continent.

Really, the possibilities of this Refer-a-friend and the power it gives are op (overpowered).

Maysyn

Refer-a-friend gives the friend the option to say thanks by granting one of the referrer's other alts a level, but only to lower level alts. I created a Draino Shaman (the last class I haven't played) and was able to immediately level her up to level 5. I have a level five Shaman that has never even moved! I'm going to save the grant levels from now on, I'll see if I can get them past Maecyn so she can have some levels granted and also I'd love to team a fire mage with a warrior: AoE fun galore.

Professions

I've made the priest a tailor and the warrior is a miner. I may make the warrior an engineer too: goblin jumper leads would be very handy! I made the priest a tailor as the greens are still scanty and overpriced on the auction house and the two of them are reaping in linen quite nicely. I may train the warrior in first aid but not the priest, not enough cloth in the game for that. The priest's second profession slot is empty and I can't think of anything to do with it. Maybe a third alchemist for another cooldown and more income. I'm sick of skinning and herbing.

Ma??yn

The Ma??yn thing is getting much too confusing, especially in the blog so I'll try to bung in the class names as much as possible. It's even more confusing in-game when I have to remember which one I am mailing something to.

Zhevra

If I sign the second account up for two months I get a free Zhevra mount. If I decide it's worth the expense then I'll give it to Maexyn. I may transfer Pooky to the new account where he can help the other girls out, possibly levelling with Maezyn.

I didn't realise that now you can pay to change a characters name, £6. I may change pookypoo's name if I can think of a suitable masculine variant of may-sin. So far I've come up with ray-sin but it doesn't make sense for a paladin to be named after dried grapes. Hey Blizz, how about a paid sex change service? You can call it the blizz-snip.

Guilds

Someone was at the gnome/dwarf noob area hassling people to sign a guild charter so I signed it twice. Hum, good place for it, level 1's aren't normally guilded and maybe welcome a 1g tip for their first class training. I might just set up a solo guild now that I have a character that can invite the others to join it.

Need a good guild name:

• Team Ma??yn
• petersblog dot org
• Alt Mighty
• what raisins can do (geddit? amazing <what raisins can do> You have to be familiar with obscure 70's chocolate bar adverts).
• multi-boxers AREN'T cheating

Recruit a multi-boxer

Hum, latest recruit-a-friend-to-trash-solo-quest-sites-with promotion could lure me back to multi-boxing:

Our new Recruit-a-Friend offer rewards you even more for bringing your friends to Azeroth and, what’s more, they can get some great in-game benefits too!

For each friend you invite you could get:

• An exclusive ZHEVRA in-game mount when your friend pays for 60 days of game time.
• 30 Days of FREE WoW gametime when your friend pays for 30 days of game time.

Also, from the moment your friend creates a character and starts adventuring with you, both of you will receive these additional in-game benefits:

• You and your friend will earn triple the experience when grouped together!
• For every two levels of experience your friend earns, they can grant one level of experience to any one of your characters of lower level than your friend.
• You and your friend will have the ability to summon each other from any point in the world.

If a player already subscribes to an account (under his or her name) but wants to start a new one (also under his or her name) through the Recruit-A-Friend program, will that second, new account receive these benefits?

If the new account was created using an Authentication Key from an email invitation sent from the Recruit-A-Friend webpage, then yes, it will receive the benefits.

One wonders whether the 3x experience boost is after the experience sharing effects of grouping have been deducted.

It would suit a new pair of alts levelling up together. I've been wondering recently whether a priest/rogue duo would kick butt? Or is that just the same as running a druid?

Maesyn

The latest project was to get Maesyn from 48 to level 50, mainly so that she could get the 41 point Feral talent Mangle. To this end she quested in Azshara, Feralas and Tanaris.

She went first to Azshara, I'm not sure why as she was level 48 but I thought the mobs were level 50+. Well either I was wrong or the levels have been altered as the mobs on the two quests when you first enter were levels 45-47 and quite grindable.

Next I decided to do some mopping up in Feralas: Ogres, Yeti and the Sprite Darter camp. On the whole the mobs were easy, levels 43-45 but the Sprite Darter camp is a bugger as there is an escort quest with a druid who has a death wish and took delight in drawing extra mobs into the fight. The mobs included healing shaman so the fights were endless if these weren't taken out and all the mobs were runners and bear mode only has Feral Charge and Bash to stop runners and then only if there is rage for it. My bear seems a bit too easy going, I don't think it has ever got more than 25% rage in it's entire life. Anyway, it was a good test of my bear mode. It took a couple of goes as the barmy druid died twice.

Maesyn hit a landmark in Feralas, with Feroscious Bite crits hitting 1000 damage but that was on these low level mobs.

Finally Tanaris and the pirates. This was fun, a farming session really. She was 49 by now so the kills were easy. She could deal with runners by saving up enough energy for a Claw/Feroscious combo killer blow when the mobs were down to 20% health, just before they ran.

Level 50 and mangle. This is an interesting attack, for cat it's as spammable as claw so I've replaced it on the action bar. Mangle deals damage and makes bleed effects like rip 30% more damaging. It was certainly more effective, she was taking out equal level mobs in under 18 seconds. What struck me most was how much better she was in fights that didn't start from stealth: opening with Feral Faerie Fire, Mangle and rip and then spamming mangle and the mob was dead in about the same time a stealth attack took. As for stealth attacks, I experimented with opening with Ravage rather than Pounce and it seemed more effective: Ravage could give 800 crits and leading with Ravage/Mangle/Rip meant she had three combo points up in no time. Her crit rate is now about 21%, boosted by a pair of Stormshroud Leggings, blues with +crit that were a snip at 12g.

I spent a while in the Blasted Lands gathering entrails and experimenting with attacks. She could kill level 51's in under 20 seconds, had no trouble with adds, not even needing bear mode and no downtime at all, no eating/drinking/pots necessary. Ruthless.

Kitty mode mangle is as big a boost as the Felguard was for Maexyn, they are both efficient grinding machines now, although kitty has the fast running between kills and the Felguard needs bandaging every few fights.

And I haven't tried the Bear version of mangle yet.

Argh

I'm writing this now because the server has developed this annoying login problem where it connects but stays with the connect message permanent for a few minutes before being kicked out. I had a look at lugulus on Aerie Peak as I'm toying with transferring him rather than level a new rogue. I can't be accused of rolling Yet Another Alt if I carry on with an existing one.

Server's connected, gotta go.

Maecyn

Maecyn was 27 and a bit so she quested mainly in darkshire for the grind up to 30.

Most interesting part was going into the ogre den and meeting Fire Mages with their fire shields. WTF not just restistant to Fire spells but immune to them! Had to raise her own fire shield and blast away with frost spells which aren't so plentiful and since the Fire Mages are casters there is no kiting them. Counterspell didn't seem to work on their fire shields. This fighting was slow and hard, lots of mana breaks and plenty of time for ogres to respawn behind me. By the time I had killed the ogre boss I was fed up so rather than fight my way out again I just ran for it with Mana Shield, Frost Nova and Blink providing an escape vector. Sitting here writing this I remember the existance of sprinting pots, must make some.

She coped well with Worgen Dark Runners: she cleared a couple of camps. She was mainly long-range pulling with Pyroblast, if she pulled two then she sheeped the add. There was one fight later on where I left something sheeped and forgot about it, I only came across the sheep when running back. It's nice pyroblasting sheep but I really hate it when a pyroblast is resisted, especially on a sheep

She was without rest bonus for most of 29 and the quests were starting to get thin so she went back to wetlands, killed the pirate captain, swam to southshore, killed some turtles and Forsaken for a couple more quests, then back to darkshire again. The problem in darkshire was that I wanted to do the Worgen Tainted one quests but whenever I went to their area it was devoid of any worgen: level 33's in groups were laying waste to the place

The scrabbling for lvl 29 quests even led me down the Stalvan quest chain as far as Stalvan himself but he was 32 and too tough so had to run away. At least Mages can dispel curses so they don't have to run around with a purple cloud around them for ten minutes.

Eventually found a ghoul grinding quest in west of Raven Hill and dinged 30. It was a bit of an anti-climax, too much grinding and I was fed up, even buying a red Mechanostrider didn't seem like a big deal. The skill only costs about 30g with gnomish discount.

Level 30 also saw next ranks of all Maecyn's main fire spells: Fire Blast, Fire Ball, Pyroblast. Tried them out on Stalvan and this time it was HIS turn to run away, didn't save him though The reward was a blue that was actually useful: a +mana ring. Thanks Stalvan.

Need to research what use Ice Block is to a soloer if I can't cast spells. Is 'Evocation' a spell? Bandage?

Maesyn

Oh it was good to get back onto Maesyn after a few hours of Maecyn. Travel Form is SO FAST, killing without mana breaks is SO NICE. She went to Searing Gorge where at level 47 she faced enemies of 46-49, just right. She could kill the 49's and handle the odd add.

I tried bear form on Duo's of dwarves and coped but on the whole it was faster to do them in cat form. Bear form makes it easier since she can kill one and then bash for a stun long enough for a Healing Touch 100% heal. It's much faster in cat form where she kills one, regenerate, cat form, then kills the other. Not a big deal.

Other Business

I bought Maecyn a nice looking off-hand trinket and tried for three levels to get her a half-decent main-hand to go with it with no success. My guess is that EVERYONE is levelling enchanters as there is bugger all worth buying in the auction house.

Maesyn is only just getting into the levels for gathering rugged leather which will enable Maezyn to make leathergoods from which Maexyn can disenchant materials to get her the last 20 levels or so to 300. Maexyn has a couple of nice enchants going and can give the others +7 intellect or whatever which is most beneficial to Maecyn (I still find it odd that there is no minimum item level that highish enchants can be put on: there is a limit for armour kits).

The range of leather gear that a leatherworker can make is fairly weak, she can't make Maesyn an entire wardrobe, only stuff like a belt at level 42 and some bracers at 48, pretty piecemeal but with the AH the way it is the only option for some greens (and blues).

I have more herbs than I care about, I may do another trademark u-turn and switch Maecyn to skinner/tailor. The mats required to level up a tailor are extrordinary so I may also have to contemplate the fire mage thing: a frost mage must be able to AoE farm cloth pretty nicely. Maecyn's 21 point talent was a fire equivalent of cone-of-cold but dazes rather than slows, not sure what use it will be except in desperate moments where she needs to blast away with everything.

Yes another blog this week.

Maexyn

The Felguard makes a big difference and Maexyn is now level 54, having quested in Felwood and Un'goro. The play style is very hunter-like and is non-stop killing, only pausing to bandage the Felguard every few kills. If Maexyn's health is getting low I just do less Shadow-bolting and more life draining.

At 54 she has enough talent points to make the Corruption DoT almost instant cast so she will be changing her attack to:

• Send pet
• Corruption
• Immolate
• Shadow Bolt
• Drain life -> death

i.e. swapping a Shadow bolt for corruption. This is because Corruption costs 290 mana and gives 666 damage over 15 seconds (typical fight length) and a shadow bolt is 315 mana and gives 360-402 damage or about 800 if it crits but her crit is only 5% so on average the crits only do an average of 20 extra damage. Also since Shadow Bolt takes three seconds to cast and takes a big chunk out of the enemy health, she will steal much more life per fight by spending that time Draining Life (draining life gives her health and hence mana so I can ignore the mana cost of extra drain lifes).

Interestingly (to me, maybe not you) I found that she can send pet while casting immolation but I can't think of any tactical advantage to doing that in solo pve: the longer the pet is engaged the better it will hold agro and I am pushing things by casting corruption just as the pet engages, although the Felguard charge will stun it for three seconds which hopefully would grab agro by the dangly bits.

Corruption is better than Curse of Agony as CoA increases it's damage over 18 seconds and for a demonology warlock the fight is normally over by then.

Hum, my sentences run on a bit when I'm theory crafting, better stop.

A level 56 elite Dinasaur thing killed the Felguard, and quite quickly too, quicker than it would kill a hunter pet. Maexyn hadn't run away far enough and the thing nearly had her for desert.

Maexyn

It was Maexyn's turn for some attention. She was level 52 and I fancied sending her to Burning Steppes for a couple of quests as when I went there with Maevyn and Maezyn they were too high level to really benefit. Level 52 was just right for the dragon and ogre culling quests, there are some level 58ish orcs in the northwest that can wait till later.

I started off killing dragons but after a few minutes I abandoned it. It was a really hot and humid evening and I couldn't stand the boring affliction grind: Pet Attack, DoT DoT DoT, Life Tap, Drain Life, Drain Soul and repeat. As I've said before, it's waiting for the global cooldowns between each DoT that is really turgid. I stopped playing.

Next evening and another opportunity to play but I wasn't enthusiastic. I still needed to level Maexyn but how to make it more interesting? Idea! Respec her to Demonology for a Felguard. Yes I did it, I turned her into a hunter.

The Felguard is a good pet, he has a charge that stuns and he keeps agro very well. His dps isn't awesome compared to, say, beastmaster cat and it is still mainly up to the warlock to do the damage. One afflication annoyance was always when the mob was down to 1% health and the DoT's had run out, the voidwalker never seemed capable of finishing it off (especially if the mob was running away). The Felguard by comparison can finish things off. He can tank a couple of mob's (e.g. level 54 boss ogre + level 52 sidekick) but he needed healing between every few fights, a bit more healing than a voidwalker would need in grinding mode. I use bandages for this to save on mana, although the Health Funnel gives a good 100% heal. Felguard doesn't have Consume Shadows so he can't heal himself while I loot.

Fights went like this, although I need a bit more practise to optimise mana efficiency during sustained grinding:

• Send pet (charges! no waiting like wafty voidwalker)
• Immolate
• Shadow Bolt
• Shadow Bolt
• Drain Life to death

And that's it, equal level mobs dead in about 15 seconds. Affliction took about 18 and very rarely less due to the nature of DoTs as they don't crit. Also the pet attack is instant, the 18 seconds doesn't include voidwalker transit time as my dps meter doesn't count that.

Now my Drain Soul doesn't give mana I don't bother with it but I will be talenting up for it asap. I was surprised that the Shadow Bolts were critting for 750, four Shadow Bolts would kill a mob but wasn't mana efficient. I rarely used shadow bolt as afflication as it wasted mana and drew agro, I never realised they were so powerful, I had assumed that since I wasn't a Destro warlock the Shadow Bolts would be slightly better than wanding, how wrong I was. The 750 crits can sometimes draw agro from the Felguard but he soon gets it back.

My Felguard died once due to a Scorpid add. I saw it coming as his health was low so I feared the scorpid, the Felguard chased it and killed it but a poison DoT killed my Felguard as he ws running back. It was tragic, the scorpid got it's vengence from beyond the grave. Still it gave me a chance to try out a Demonologist trick, I cast a talent that reduces the next minion summoning spell to 0.5 seconds. I did this and he was back in two clicks and with 100% health and mana! That will be useful, two Felguards per fight could be handy against elites.

In conclusion, Felguard is perfectly viable at level 52 (despite what I had read ) and it makes a nice change from Affliction. Affliction served me well, I'm not knocking it and who knows, I may spec back one day. Affliction is very powerful but not in an exciting way, you are waiting for DoT's to kill things. Demonology feels like playing a hunter that doesn't need to buy ammo. I wouldn't say I'm excited by the new potential, just that it's not as boring.

Wotlk

I read a rumour that levelling from 60-70 is going to be faster in wotlk, maybe less than 5-6 hours per level. If I find even the faintest corroboration then I will be parking Maexyn, Maesyn and Maecyn at 60 and waiting. Questing in Outlands for me is the worst grind and I will avoid as much of it as I can. I thrive on the micro-reward system of a ding every two hours or so, a five hour wait (and ten hours between visits to the class trainer!) is much too long.

Maevyn won't be on the first boat to Northrend either, I will be biding my time as I hate crowds. Eastern Plaguelands will be crammed full of Death Knights, I wouldn't want to be a big maggot thing on that day.

Maesyn

Took Maesyn to Hinterlands for various quests: trolls, troll altar, griffin eggs, slimes. Hiterlands is quite a nice little quest hub, there was enough there for 45->46. The fights against level 48 slimes were more challenging and a chance to practise bear skills which are slowly improving.

Dinged 46 and went to class trainer. Somehow I had missed some next ranks at level 44, I may have only looked at those in the first talent tree as she got some nice updates to feral combat (pounce, rip etc). This may explain why at 44 she was struggling with those naga.

Went back to the naga cave and it was much easier, two levels higher meant a lot less threat generated. Mission accomplished.

Did the quests that involve running up and down the Feralas shore for a hour killing water sprites and minaturised giants, level 47-49 mobs (me 46). Maexyn had also done this at 46 and it was easy for her but Maesyn found it harder. The 49's were tough but doable and needed healing pretty much between every fight. Any adds were dealt with by running away, Maexyn would have taken them (banish ftw). Towards the end it was downright boring. Went to Tanaris and knocked off one of the 'wanted poster' quests. Killed a 46 with two stealthed 43s. Started in bear mode and coped admirably, even remembered the barkskin spell for a handy 100% healing touch. In hindsight I should have done a regenerate while barkskinned and in caster form but hindsight always makes you look a noob.

Quest turnins plus a couple of hyenas and ding, level 47. The dwarves in Searing Gorge couple be next to develop my bear skills before tackling the Pirates of Tanaris.

I have most of the useful Feral talents maxed out right now and I'm only still spending points there for the tree-defining Mangle talent at level 50. The other talents available are silly +1% things that don't seem worth it. In hindsight, keeping some points in Furor, Naturalist etc would have been better with a respec to Mangle at level 50. The Feral Kitty isn't quite as awesome a farming machine as it was back in the thirties, I think that balancing is coming into play and getting mangle at 50 will restore the status quo.

I would upgrade her gear but OMG WTF has happened to the price of greens in the AH? Nothing there under 10g! Everyone is levelling an enchanter ready for wotlk Maezyn had just two leathercrafting recipies that were useful for a 40's druid, level 41 boots (with +1 stealth) and 48 bracers Maesyn is only just getting into skinning rugged leather which will mean Maezyn can craft half-decent greens for Maexyn to get the mats to level her enchanting beyond 277... it's all very complicated.

Maecyn

Maecyn did the 'Cursed Crew' quest in Wetlands, she 26, mobs 26-29 including Snellig. Snellig was easy but most fighting was tricky with downtime between almost every fight and a lot of running away when adds appeared (e.g. giant crocolisks when she kited things along the shore). Maecyn was 27 for the follow on quest against the level 30 ghost pirate captain but she couldn't handle him. He hits hard, is sited where he can't be pyroblasted from 41 yards away, resists every other spell. Tried twice, ran away twice, will leave him and ponder strategy (e.g sheep/pyroblast). Maexyn and pooky both kicked his arse.

Maevyn

Following my tip the Auction House is full of Everstorm Diamonds at 150g a time. Ok funny man reader who's trying to kill my market, I have enough gold for now and I can choose when to sell my diamonds. In fact, the mats are on a cheap cycle at the moment so it's time to stock up.

I had some spare time so I actually took Maevyn out of Ironforge(!) and sent her to silithus to buy some enchants. For the first time in months she used her flying mount for the inn->darnassus portal trip! I still don't see any point in busting a gut for an epic flyer if she can't use it till level 77 in wotlk. However, at level 77 not having one will be social suicide (not that I'm social)

Maezyn & Pookypoo

A while back I tried the multi-boxing thing where I had two instances of WoW running and controlled two characters, Maezyn(mk 1) and Sissle. I gave it up because it felt like cheating.

Right now my thoughts are, is it cheating any more than doing solo quests in a group? I find it annoying when I get to a quest site and there is a group there laying waste to the place, why aren't they off farming instances where they belong? Multi-boxing takes more skill than ganging up.

So I'm tempted to send pook off to a new account and have him team with Maezyn so they can take on outlands as a duo. The problem is, given Maezyn is dps, what is pooks role?

Replace the pet

as protection he could do this but I can't imaging his dps on autoattack is any better than a pet, especially if he is sword and board. With a two hander he will need Maezyn to chop stuff down quick. Also Beefy has a charge ability, pook has little more than Linken's Boomerang.

Follows as healbot

only a small mana saving over Maezyn using Mend Pet. The buffs would be pretty negligible too.

More dps

paladin dps is about spamming judgements, doing this at the same time as spamming steady shot with Maezyn would be a challenge. Would paladin + hunter autoattack be powerful enough? Saving mana would help them both.

Pet on defensive would be around back of mob out of pookys way but it would still be levelling.

(Wotlk question: if pets are going to automatically jump to five level's below the hunter when trained, what about pets that have been left in the stables for 20 levels? Is one meant to abandon them and mess around getting another ghost sabre/Rak'shiri?).

I could also move Maexyn to a different account so she can enchant the others but it looks like in WOTLK she will be emailing enchanting scrolls to them so it's not worth the expense just now, especially as she's having trouble levelling > 275 as the mats aren't coming in. When Maesyn starts skinning rugged leather this should improve. Then again, Pooky's big axe would look good with a glow, even a cheapo elemental slayer.

WoW on Wine Notes

• Linux would make a nice multi-boxing platform as Gnome and KDE both has 'focus follows mouse' facilities where I just move the mouse from one instance to another and key presses will go to that instance, no need to click on the app.
• My linux disconnection problems seem to have gone away.
• I use a script to launch WoW on linux. The script waits for WoW to finish, then uploads my inventory to the blog and backs up my WoW install to the mythtv box so that my two installs are in sync. This kind of thing is a bitch on windows as batch files don't wait for windows applications to end.

I can confirm that the latest titan panel fixes the 'open ticket' thing.

Wotlk

There is no way I'm typing Wrath of the Lich King half a dozen times in every blog. Yes I've been looking through what is coming, some nice things, but the amount of coverage is bordering hysteria. I will be bearing it in mind in my planning and I'm certainly not going to waste time on S4/T6 epics if they are Northrend vendor trash.

The thought of levelling any crafting profession to 450 makes me groan. Should be heavenly for gatherers though.

Yes, two days of posts! Whatever next!

Maesyn

Had some time to catch up on Maesyn. I think I've been playing too much fire mage as now the Feral Kitty Druid seems slow killing things, it's time mostly spent waiting to regenerate energy for the next claw Fire Mage is more exciting, unless you get a lucky two-shot you don't stand around waiting for cooldowns!

Maesyn went into a cave to kill a naga lord, tough work, lots of casters which aren't good for feral mode. Should I brush up my casting skills to try out-blasting them? Maexyn and Maevyn found this one easy, the final boss was 47 and had two bodyguards and it was far too much for my level 44 Bear. A prot pally would have taken them (but would still have struggled with those casters).

Spirit healer, fly to tanaris during debuff, fight easy mode level 41 wastewater guys till hitting level 45.

Not looking forward to trying fire mage in a cave. No 41 yard range, nowhere to blink to, Maecyn may just develop claustrophobia.

Epix

I forgot to mention that I got my first ever epic world drop! 343 levels of killing things and finally I get one. Maexyn got it in Western Plaguelands, it is a Freezing Band, a mage ring that has a chance to freeze. It's level 47 and I'm saving it for Maecyn. In a way it is one of the reasons I respecced her to Fire: a chance to freeze is Very Bad for an AoE Frost Mage as it is very improtant to keep one's mobs in a tight pack.

Maexyn

Maexyn hit Un'goro. I was having connection problems and hence some fights were interrupted. This was tolerable when she could do a ribbon dance with an endless drain soul but overall it sucked the fun out of it. I got her to level 54 and hearthed to the trainer for some next ranks.

Maesyn

Maesyn did a trivial naga quest in Feathermoon and I got bored and quit. Her next quest would be against bosses in a cave and I didn't fancy doing that with a flaky connection.

My plan had been to level Maexyn and Maesyn each one level per week so that could alternate their visits to the class trainer but I got tied up with Maecyn and didn't run Maesyn and more.

Maecyn

Maecyn did some Redwood and Wetlands questing. My connection was still dodgy and she died a few times when I was disconnected during a fight. I swore a lot. After cursing my internet provider I wondered if it was a linux/wine problem so I rebooted into windows, waited patiently while it installed two WoW patches (accepting a total of six pages of terms and conditions) and carried on. No more connection problems. My inventory page is not being updated until the next random ubuntu patch fixes my networking.

Anyway Maecyn got to level 23 and had all available 'improved blizzard' talent points and I fancied a go at the frost AoE stuff. According to this page there are some gnoll camps in Wetlands that are about as good as it gets with this. I started with one or two gnolls and worked up to four and died. I wasn't that fed up with it but it made me think. I've done the AoE thing with Pooky and AoE opportunities aren't that frequent, needing lots of melee mobs. I wanted more general purpose skills. Also something was drawing me to the Fire tree. I thought of Fire mages as glass canons but still I succombed to temptation and respecced as a Fire Mage.

For my first fight I had to refer to my talents and work out what really was different. Well the Pyroblast spell is the main thing, a mighty six second cast for a small nuclear weapon. I tried this on some murlocs and found that with a Pyroblast followed by a Fireball I could two-shot them: they were dead before they reached me. I had talented up the casting range and Pyroblast has a huge 41 yard range, so far that tab-targetting doesn't work, I have to click on them. With equal level mobs a fight goes like this:

• pyroblast
• immediately start casting fire ball (three second cast, with talents, but some of this is while the pyroblast is still in transit)
• if there is time cast a scorch (1.5 second cast) but with fast running mobs there isn't usually time for this but if they are slow then this is devestating and they probably won't survive the next step
• Fire Blast (instant cast)

Mobs of equal level or lower are now dead or will be with a little wanding. For higher level mobs continue with

• blink
• scorch (frost armour should be slowing mob so there is 1.5 second to cast this)
• fire blast (cooldown, with fire mage talents, will be up by now).
• getting bored now so frost nova, distance and fire ball should wrap things up.

Ok the pyroblast has a long cast time but the trepidation makes it worthwhile and I checked out the mana bar and mana is still regenerating during this six seconds. Also, it can take six seconds to run up to the mob to melee it. A normal pyroblast will take 40% of a mobs health in one hit and there is a DoT effect on top of that. Pyroblast can crit for about 380 (level 25 mage) which normally means the mob won't reach the mage alive. I found it is possible to check that the area behind you is clear during the six second cast, you don't have to be facing the target all the time.

The timing of the casts has a little room for manouvre as the Fire Mage talents give a 70% resistance to interruption. Sometimes the mob will be beating for the latter part of a Scorch cast but that is no big deal.

Mana wise, she seems to need fewer mana breaks than when she was frost as more of her casting is offensive and isn't spent slowing the mobs down. The mobs die faster so she doesn't need to defend as much.

Unsurprisingly Maecyn is now level 26 as the Fire Mage thing is great fun. She hasn't died since she went fire. She can tackle mobs three levels higher (e.g. Worgon Shadow Weavers, Sarltooth etc). I've used Mana Shield exactly once on purpose (i.e not finger trouble), against Sarltooth (lvl 29 vs 26) and finished that fight with 90 something health left and 48 or so mana.

So what about multiple mobs I hear you ponder. Well, she could clear gnoll camps in Wetlands, mobs about one level below her. It works like this:

• hit selected mob with pyroblast.
• keep hitting mob till it is dead, should be about the time it reaches you.
• if you get one add, frost nova, distance, fire ball, etc, kill it too. It's good to chuck in an Arcane Explosion before the Frost Nova to finish off the first mob and start on the second.
• if you get two adds, frost nova them both and run away, come back and take them both at your leisure. Polymorph is good.

And there's Counterspell! Love it, turns a caster into a melee mob for eight seconds which is plenty of time to kill it.

In summary, Fire Mage feels like the most overpowered character I've tried so far. It may get harder as she levels and she may well go back to frost for Sorrow Hill but right now I'm having omgwtfpewpew fun.

Maevyn

Whenever I make this kind of comment it normally screws up the market but Maevyn has been making about 100g a day by transmuting Earthstorm Diamonds. There I said it. The mats are getting expensive so she bulk buys.

Peter's 2.4.3 patch notes

• I get the open ticket thing on my UI. I am NOT disabling my addons or resetting the UI, I just ignore it.
• My characters have started tripping on the steps of the ironforge Auction House. How do Blizzard manage to break things that have worked perfectly for years in these patches? That reminds me, I hate it when blink stalls at the edge of bridges or silly things like that.
• Looking forward to Maecyn's Mechanostider at level 30 although the Mage teleports are wonderful timesavers.
• No I'm not forking out 1800g for a gigantique bag. I need that for Maex's, Maes's and Maec's epic mounts.

Maexyn

I just wanted to level Maexyn up quick so dammit went to Blasted Lands for the tedious animal parts quests. It was as dull as always but being level 50 she was tougher than all the beasts there, even the 51's. The only problem beasts were the Felhunter things that had a mana tap, they tended to tap the voidwalker and what with the rate of killing the voidwalker was struggling for health (no mana for consume shadows). Maexyn herself didn't need much downtime, just voidwalker maintenance.

She was using her new level 50 DoT, Unstable Afflication and it is more harmful than Syphon Life, mobs died quicker, needing maybe one Drain Life before going into Drain Soul. Unstable Affliction wasn't a big mana user either, she could maintain pretty much full health/mana.

After dinging 51 she went to Western Plaguelands to do Sorrow Hill and the first cauldron. This wasn't a big stretch and well worth doing at this level for the added experience: Maezyn put this off till level 56 when it was kinda trivial.

She is now in Gadgetzan, ready to hit Un'goro. MUST remember to send her a mithril casing to repair the robot gorilla.

Maesyn

Maesyn did a load of dragonling killing in Badlands to get to level 43. I always spend a hour or so there with each character since getting a dragonling pet drop with Maevyn but no joy there since then.

At 43 she went back to Southern STV to do the naga and pirates. This was big fun. Druid is definitely my favourite class right now, run from fight to fight, < 20 second kills, no downtime, lovvit.

She has put her recent talent points in 'Improved Leader of the Pack' for heals on critical strikes and 'Nurturing Instincts' for +healing. The latter talent has improved her healing noticably: if she casts the 'Regenerate' DoT in a fight she gets enough healing against a level 41 for her health to be increasing during the fight. In cat form!

Maes v Kong

Took on the big ape. It took two stacks of combo points but she did it!

Maecyn

I got caught up in mage play and ran Maecyn up nine levels to level 20. I'm not sure I would call Mage easy mode but in getting to level 20 she has died a total of three times despite fighting predominantly equal level mobs and tackling whatever quests I attempted, e.g. clearing Trogg camps in Loch Modan. This is better than I managed with Paladin/Hunter/Warlock/Druid.

I dont' think this was because mages are overpowered but rather because Frost Nova is just THE most useful thing in the world. She can use it as a freezing trap during a fight or she can drop it while running away and leave a group of monsters standing. I've spent the talent points in reducing the cooldown to 21 seconds so I can use it twice in particularly tricky fights. This attack works nice against melee mobs:

• Frost bolt (damage + slowing effect)
• Arcane Missiles (damage as the slowly approach)
• Fire Blast (instant damage, 6 second cooldown, I think of it as a shotgun for some reason)
• Frost Nova to freeze them
• Jump back
• Fire bolt: three second cast for them to say their prayers
• If the Fire Bolt didn't get them, a Fire Blast or wand will.

Fighting anything with a ranged attack becomes a problem. Mage has a 'Dampen Magic' buff that reduces damage taken from spells (and reduces friendly healing which isn't an issue when soloing) but it didn't make much difference against dragonkin or knife/bow weilders (anything with 'scout' in it's name). Because the mob isn't frozen the mage is continually taking damage so the mob has to be burnt down quick. I found this to be quickest:

• Fire Bolt (three second cast but this is 'before' the fight i.e. the enemy isn't hitting me)
• Fire Blast (have to get into 20 yard range to fire it now, get it in early so the cooldown will start running and it can be used again)
• Arcane Missiles. During this time the mob is firing back and some of the missiles may not fire if I am taking hits but some of the missiles do land. A Fire Bolt during this time will be interrupted a lot, too much to be useful. Repeat Arcane Missiles till Fire Blast has cooled down.
• Fire Blast.
• Wand to death

Ranged mobs are much harder than melee and Maecyn usually needs food/drink between EACH fight (bah).

Polymporph (sheeping) is handy when attacking pairs but it is very situational. I sometime polymorph an add during a fight but I am aware that sheeping allows it to heal so I only use it on healthy mobs.

At level 20 she got Blink, Blizzard, Teleports and some other goodies.

• Blink: I love it. Heavenly. If frost nova is on cooldown, this instantly puts 20 yards between you and the mob. Melee Mobs are invariably slowed by Frost Armour so 20 yards gives good time to land some Arcane Missiles. Maecyn could handle level 23 raptors with the aid of blink. Also good for running away, in one case it seemed to put in enough distance to instantly make the mob give up. I had one fight in murloc country go very wrong and she ended up running through level 25 murloc territory. Frost Nova/Blink got her through it. She uses it every 15 seconds while running, passes the time on long runs watching the cooldown expire.
• Blizzard. I don't think she is in AoE grinding terriory yet but when an add joins a fight she can frost nova the pair then use this to finish off the first while damaging the second.
• Teleports: Ironforge and Stormwind are 10 seconds away! Love it too.

ToDo: script to eat & drink bound to a hotkey. Oh and conjuour water automatically if there isn't any. And make space in inventory for the water. And play the game for me while I watch telly.

UPDATE: @ level 20 I also got Mana Shield and then completely forgot to try it, too busy blinking. Too many goodies in one go. There's another skill to regenerate mana but it has an 8 minute cooldown

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.

Maesyn

Maesyn did some Redridge Mountains and Wetlands and rose three levels to 25. Cat form is fun. The Ravage ability is kinda useful, prowl up behind something and stab between shoulderblades for a bit of damage and a combo point, it does mean one is a bit quicker to having enough points for a decent combo move. However, the prowling means I have to slow from +30% move speed to something roughly equal to normal move speed and that slows things down, and it's annoying when trying to get behind someone that's pacing too and fro.

The Rake bleed DoT is nice and possibly a better opening move.

Pookypoo

Pook was scheduled to do more in the Bone Wastes of Terokkar but I had found that boring with Maevyn so I sent pook to Blade's Edge Mountains where he did some of the last stuff that Maevyn did. He did a good quest to go into a bird camp and up a tree to read a book, very challenging but fun. I like fighting bird men, or any humanoids for that matter because I can use the 'Repentance' retribution stun talent, giving him two stuns a minute or one per fight. I like to finish fights with a stun/judge seal of command/crusader strike combo if possible.

Other than that his fighting has come down to spamming Judgements of Commands whenever the cooldown is up. He has talents to make this mana efficient, it kills a level 66 in two or three judgements and he has to drink every three fights or so. The fights aren't the long autoattack protection affairs and I'm learning to live with the mana breaks. Moral: if in doubt take a mana break. Half health+mana = add in the next fight

Pook is a third of the way to level 66.

Maexyn

Maexyn is becoming the most formidable character. I found that in the late thirties she can start a fight with an equal level mob, DoT it up and leave it fighting the voidwalker, then she can deliberately DoT up a distant bystander mob and drain tank it. Two monsters just for fun. Unfortunately it is also taxing on her health/mana and she cannot sustain it without drinking but she is certainly in the beastmaster realms of dealing with multiple opponents.

I found that the 'Grim Reach' talent for increased range can be used to pull casters at least six yards which can help avoid big fights (e.g. troll camps in STV). DoT a caster at maximum range and it will run to you to get into it's own casting range. Voidwalker on passive helps avoid a fracas too.

She is now level 40 and has the 'Dark Pact' talent which means she can sip on her pet's mana, should she feel the need. This is very nice and I see long grinding sessions ahead. She can use the voidwalker's mana and I'm not sure what problem that causes the voidwalker? I still haven't tried the imp which I think can regenerate mana quickly but I'm not sure if this would make up for the beating maex would get without having a voidwalker about. I'd rather use Maexyn's life for converting into mana than have it beaten out of her.

She got the Felsteed training and hence very cheap riding training and immediately bought a Blue Mechanostrider:

Maex at 40

The felsteed seems tall and sleek with a gnome on it, I like the fiery hooves but it's too elegant for her style: it would suit Maezyn more. I might set up a castsequence macro to toggle between felsteed and mechanostrider. Her epic will definitely be a mechanostrider.

Maevyn

The price of Earthstorm Diamonds has gone up. For the cost of three transmute cooldowns and about 20g of materials Maevyn can make a diamond and sell it for 130g. That's a good 30g a day for a transmute, about 10g more per day than selling primal waters (which are ingredients in the diamonds).

Maexyn

It was Maexyn's turn for a push so she spent level 36 doing the second tier quests in Stranglethorn, then spent level 37 in the Alterac Mountains. The ruins of Alterac were soloable as the ogres in the town are no longer elite. They were levels 38-39 but no problem.

I had some excitement when she was attacked by a level 39 elite ogre. She drained life while the voidwalker tanked, then as the voidwalker was about to die she sacrificed it and continued draining from within the voidwalker bubble. She did it, she killed it and it wasn't all that close: she didn't need pots or healthstone. I don't know if it was a nerfed elite ogre but it was tougher than the non-elites. It is Maexyn's first notable elite kill and it didn't even take that long, about a minute (two lots of DoT's).

I realised that Maexyn is coming into her own. She can handle pairs of mobs easily now, DoT up the first then DoT and drain the second and the first is normally dead before the second. While she was waiting for a quest target mob to respawn she did laps of his house grinding on level 39-40 syndicate guys. When the guy appeared he was level 40 and went down no probs.

I used the voidwalker for this grinding. The slightly increased speed in killing things with the Succubus doesn't make up for the hammering Maexyn gets and I always get into health/mana management difficulties. Grinding with the voidwalker, she can go for hours without needing refreshments. She was achieving hunter-like ruthlessness, maybe better: it was the voidwalkers health that was dropping after a few fights, not Maexyn's. The felhunter has it's spell lock now and it works perfectly against healers. I still haven't tried the imp, maybe at level 40 when she can tap it's mana.

At level 38 she went to Stormwind and got a lot of useful next ranks to her core grinding skills (drain life/drain soul) so she will be even more ruthless, or use a lot more mana, time will tell.

Photo Album

Now I have a half decent picture facility I can show some pictures (remember to click on them). These are the Eonar crowd, i.e. my active characters:

Pook at 65

Maev and Blink

Maex at 36

Maes at 22

Maez at 60

60?

Yes, Maezyn stormed two levels of Hellfire in half a day. Rest Bonus ftw. Now she has her Epic Elekk and is finally hearthed in Shattrath. Now she has some Outlands gear she's going back to Azeroth for Eastern Plaguelands and Silithus although she needs 400,000 experience for level 61 compared to 170,000 for 60 so it will take a while.

I was a bit bothered that Maezyn's non-beastmastery would make her struggle more than Maevyn did but no, she rocked the demons. Silencing Shot is a very useful thing.

Plans

From now on my character rotation will be something like:

• run pook for a couple of hours, till a natural milestone occurs
• run maex for a level or so
• run Maezyn for a couple of hours
• run Maesyn for a level or so

avoiding rest bonus unless it's for a special project. I don't want to play pook and meaz for a whole Outlands level at a time, I would prefer to run a different character each day I play.

Pookypoo

I set about my plan. t took a lot more than two hours and pook goes through water, food and pots like a mad thing but pook is 65 and has the Skyforged Great Axe:

and the blooming model clips on his cape Still its a lovely looking thing. I ran him to Nagrand to try grinding the motes of air for it himself but the whirlwind things were level 66 and much too tough so he just quested in Terokkar and Maevyn bought six primal airs for a ripoff price but after all this time blacksmithing has come up with something worthwhile.

It's a BoP so Maexyn couldn't put a glow on it

I've respecced him again. The retribution spec I had him on before was a boilerplate on from wowwiki, I've tweeked it to my taste, e.g. Spiritual Focus (less chance of healing interruption) rather than Improved Seal of Righteousness (Seal of Command ftw) and no points in Improved Blessing of Might since I have Blessing of Wisdom up most of the time.

He fell off the Aldor lift but I had the presence of mind to bubble and he lived! Pally reflexes are coming back.