A great garrison overview by AskMrRobot

AskMrRobot’s blog has a great guide for Garrisons (thank you Ask Mr Robot). I knew almost nothing about them, but after skimming through the basics I think it will be a major feature I’ll use in Warlords. Truthfully I can see garrisons being played on many alts and mains from day one, to acquire what they have to offer. It appears that Garrisons will have a straight up advantage to using them (very much like the Farm in Mists) and a wide breadth of game-play too. The fact that you could have a main with a raiding garrison, then alts also generating gold and materials is excellent.

Impressed, especially the chat sheet at the end which shows which garrison feature selections are better for raiding, farming, alts, or pets. The guide indicates that a full garrison will cost around 39,000 gold. Holy snap!

Such a silly silly wow’er

My wow’ing has increased recently, and as I’m playing more I find that my memory is flawed in some aspects of the game, and an optimal approach is somewhat harder than it used to be. I’m becoming a silly wow’er. As a positive I am enjoying wow a lot again, just in time for the expansion.

For example:

I remembered too late that Normal mode dungeons can be run many times each day, as they do not have a 24 lockout. This means that I could run the Stonecore normal many times a day for the rare mount, rather than once as I was. Doh.

As running normal for mounts is easy I was also doing Heroic UP in Northrend for the Blue Protodrake that drops there too. Imagine my joy in finding that I did not change the difficult after running Stonecore on Normal, when the mount only drops in Heroic mode. Doh, back to the entrance I go. It did seem a little easy.

The weeks activity was not all silly though, as I’ve started alt’ing around again. This time I am concurrently leveling a Mage (51), Warlock (83), Shaman (46), Rogue (50), and Priest (80). My suss is that I can cycle through these characters using the rested experience boost and then switch toons. So far with so many characters I am always playing in rested. Its great.

The reason that I chose these classes is because all my other class characters are already 85. I do get slightly disinterested with some content when you have to play it three times. Often though doing the same content with three perspectives give me an idea for the differences in the class. The squishy factor of a Priest and Warlock are concerning when compared with how tough and mean all the plate wearing classes are (yup, all my plate wearers are max’ed out, not a surprise really).

During the leveling I can sometimes (if the family don’t need help) queue up for a instance and smash monsters in a team. The times when I do this with guildies I get a very quick reminder that I’m a scrub when it comes to playing multiple classes. However when I play in randoms I find that I smash the charts and perform well. That might mean my guildies are very powerful (true), and also might mean that even a total scrub who stays out of the fire is valuable.

It’s a nice reminder of the golden rule: you do zero dps when you’re dead. Happy killing, alt’ing, and noobing.

TyphoonAndrew

My class of Choice

Back in 2008 I wrote a post about My class of Choice. At the time I was an alt-a-holic, with 3 characters who were regularly played in Warcraft, and many more who were used as profession mules.

Fast forward to now and my warcraft time is as different as my life is, then from now. The Paladin, Warlock, and Druid has been replaced by Mortigen, the Death Knight. Wrath saw this class released upon the game, and I’ve never looked back.

The Death Knight was my first character to level 85, and the first I wanted to take to raids. I also now have a Hunter and Druid at 85, and the Paladin, Warlock, and Priest are stuck at 80, with a shamble of Shamans and others throughout the 30s to 70s. In 2008 I said I’d not ever have a Hunter and now its 85 – the game changes you.

Lifestyle wise in 2008 I was living in another city, where my partner (now wife) was regularly working away from home or doing long hours. This facilitated a huge amount of time where i could do as I pleased. The Alts came out in force, and the content was getting smashed left and right.

It is funny to ponder how wow and life changes. Happy Killing.

Whats news lately?

Well it has been a slow few weeks in blogging, until Blizzard started drip feeding information about the expansion to the community at which time everything exploded. Overall meh! I’m waiting to see what the cohesive picture is. Random information with no real detail has limited value.

In other news my alt-ism has taken off in a very solid way. As I thought, the prospect of playing one toon when getting into regular runs is difficult is a game-breaker, so much so that Ive pondered pugging those ICC runs. If I can get a group without having the LK-Dead achievement. Grr.

Mortigen my main is now just doing the daily when I play, the weekly sometimes, and otherwise odd runs. Basically this means I doubt I’ll see much more of the end-game content now, and kind of resigned to enjoying runs when they happen.

Keeping a light and fluffy attitude will help me not go insane and like the process of playing a well geared toon in 5 man runs. And so onto the alts update after the break.

Happy gaming.