Third 90 and more to come I suspect

My Druid ding’ed 90 in WoW last week, which makes a tally of three level ninety characters: a Death Knight, a Warrior, and a Druid.

Next will be my slowly leveling Shaman who is now level 71 (the toon in the top left if the image below) and a long time lost Shadow Priest who is level 82 (bottom left character).

In my character list I also have a handful of 85s and then each class smattered down to a lowbie Monk at level 13. I do not really want to repeat the 85-90 grind so many more times, but the leveling path in Pandaria is so fixed there is little choice. Perhaps I could level by only queuing in Dungeons and just farm my way through the Pandaria starting area for materials to sell. That will only be moderately dull as well but will ensure my lowbies have the ability to increase their professions.

The Wrath of the Lich King content on the baby Shaman is sensational by comparison to 4x more Pandaria zones and a Cataclysm story.

If I cannot raid regularly in 5.4 due to work & life, then I might as well start working on these alts. Getting through the levels is something I can do whilst also being interrupted, and it is not “hard” content to do.

Um, what? Interview with Blizzdevs

Listening to the one of latest Podcast from Legendary – about 15 minutes in they’re (Greg Street and Brian Holinka) talking through the effects of balancing Pvp vs Pve, and about how they’re not desiring to push one group into the other…forgotten about the Wrathion quest line already? Wish I had.

Great interview though. Particularly good for their perspective on Pvp in terms of balance holistically in the game, rather than at a micro level between classes and specs. A cynic might view it all as boilerplate stuff, but if you listen there is some meat in there on what they are thinking about when the choices are made, which I find really interesting. I’m a fan of knowing some of the process, even if I don’t follow the results.

Quick PvP Round 3

PvP round three was much better. How you ask? Well I seemed to get into more teams that knew what they were doing, and were better able to bolster my silly ass through the experience. I did participate as well as I understood.

(Warning – Achievement screenshot spam).

Victory! One down, one to go.

Booyah! Wrathion’s silly pvp stuff done.

Mort in PvP, actually doing something bloody useful

For Temple of Kotmogu – 4x killing blows, 3x deaths, 48 Honorable kills and 4x Orb possessions, which also grants 403 of the 1600 points were mine. Another DK teamed with me for the match pulling in a very nice 498 points.

For Mines – less impressive and far more like the noob I am in PvP. 1x killing blow, 1x death, 26 honorable kills, and 2x carts controlled. If not for the frustration I think PvP could be enjoyable.

Best of all, this means I’m back onto the PvE based grind for the Wrathion quest chain. Happy killing, TyphoonAndrew

Wrathion’s PvP Battleground Quests

Go to hell whoever thought it would be wacky fun times to include a few pvp fights in a PvE quest chain.

I tried to be open minded.

I crafted, gem’ed, enchanted, etc a pvp set. Because I didn’t want to be carried too much.

I’ve joined fights and basically just got my arse handed to me.

Or the team are more interested in kill farming than actually winning.

Or teams that seem to get excited by the notion of the Perfect Loss.

I have no use for honor except buying more pvp gear, which I do not want once I have this lousy waste of bandwidth done.

If this is the only way that the PvP content will get seen by a majority of the playerbase, then your pvp content is *ahem* bland. This experience just tells me that pvp has not changed or improved fundamentally in 6 years. If I want to kill people I’ll play a 3d shooter, not WoW.

So go straight to hell, this part of the Legendary chain is plain crappy. I know it is supposed to be “hard“, but it is not supposed to be a shitty waste of my time.

Stats on Heroic Raiders

Any time I see stats for Raiding numbers I am interested and start comparing realms, guilds, factions, etc. Typically this ends in me confirming something which I felt was already half true in my mind, or gaining a deeper level of information about a known real impact. That said, anytime I see stats I also assume that somebody is lying about something. Human nature.

Today I saw a page for the PvE Raiding stats across all servers for characters which had killed at least 2/16 heroic bosses on 11 Dec. This means our server Nagrand-US ranks 189th on the list, with only 38 characters killing 2/16. That is across the 394,805 guilds and 25,581,509 characters in their database.

By comparison the high values were in the 500s and 600s characters on some realms having killed 2+ bosses, 147 realms with less than 10 characters, and 87 realms that have not killed any at all. The “high” servers have also got many guilds which have 14+ of 16 bosses in hard modes for Tier 14 raid content. These guys are awesome, and I’m jealous.

There are also 60 realms where there are greater than zero but less than 10 characters who have killed 2+ bosses. Considering the minimum raid size is 10 that means that transfers must be occurring with some regularity. How else do you get 5 characters on a realm who have killed 2+ bosses on heroic?

Some of my old servers (Feathermoon-US) is 0, Eonar-US has 30, and Sumamar and Earthen Ring have only 15. The average is roughly 47 characters per realm who have killed 2/16, but then the median is only 25 telling us that there is a skew in the distribution where the leader realms drop off drastically from the top, very quickly into the average, and a very long tail which has not.

Now our guild has not killed any Heroic modes as yet (soon), and while there are only 28k characters who have, I don’t feel too bad as we are gaining ground. Would I like to be? Of course.

(update) What does it mean?

Well not much in the broader sense, just that it was interesting in terms of a gauge for where raiders are in the content. Seeing 10,000+ players have run through heroics, but many realms have very little heroics implies to me that the “end” of T14 is a significant way off yet. I’ve read rumour of the next raid in 5.2 being an Ulduar style raid, and that is exciting. Timing wise I hope that it is a long way away so we get the opportunity to strike through the current stuff.

Happy killing.

Dungeon and Raid Requirements

A “note to self” on what item levels are needed to get into the MoP Scenarios, Dungeons, and Raids, and what item level they drop. Also what is obtainable from Factions and Craftables, via gold and Reputation.

Why? Because I frequently get them confused with each other…

Scenarios

• Requires: 425
• Awards: chance of 463, and now a small chance of 476

Heroic 5-mans

• Requires: 440
• Awards; 463, with very rare 476 on a few end bosses.

Mogushan Vaults (raid)

• Requires: 460
• Awards LFR: 476, Normal: 489, Heroic: 502

Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring (raids)

• Requires: 470
• Awards LFR: 483, Normal: 496, Heroic: 509

Reputation Rewards

• (most) faction = 458 gear purchased with Justice points
• (some) factions = 463 gear, such as Klaxxi Exalted weapons, for gold.
• (most) Honored and Revered with faction = 489 gear purchased with Valor points
• Friendly with ShieldWall Offensive = 458 gear purchased with Justice points
• Honored with ShieldWall Offensive = 496 gear purchased with Valor points
• Revered with ShieldWall Offensive = 496 gear purchased with Valor points
• Exalted and doing a Quest chain, with the Golden Lotus grants a 489 Neck
• Exalted and doing a Quest chain, with the Klaxxi grants a 489 Ring

Craftables

• Item level 450s (no special mats needed – dirt cheap)
• 463 (Spirit of Harmony needed – cheap-ish)
• 476s (Spirit of Harmony needed – not badly priced at the moment due to new gear)
• 496 (Bloods needed – very expensive)

Happy killing

Shieldwall VP rewards

The Shieldwall rewards are live, and are as follows (5.1 patch notes):

• 458 trinket for approx 100 gold as a starter reward,
• a 496 ring at Honored, costing 1250 VP,
• a 496 Belt, Boots, and Trinket at Revered, costing 1750 each,
• Exalted gets you a new flying mount.

The starter reward is likely to go to an offset, as most raiders have better in main at the very least. Despite the undertone of my last post, this gear is welcome, and will make the dailies for the other factions a secondary consideration.

Getting to Revered will be very rewarding for raiders as 496 gear is far better than MV gear, and good for HoF. The honored Ring also means that you should skip the other Valor rings now if you have not purchased them, by comparison this is better – because it can be upgraded with more VPs to 504 gear level.

There are five dailies to do each day, each granting +250 reputation, 5 VPs, and 2 Lesser Charms of Good Fortune.

You will need 6500 Valor points to buy all the gear for one spec, and will also need to have unlocked the various Reps. That is 1300 daily quests performed if this is done by dailies, so I hope everyone has a realistic impression of how long these will take to get, and also how important a 496 ilevel is compared to some raiders still using 476 gear. I think a raider who is missing key items such as Boots, Belt, Rings, or a Trinket should be doing these dailies before they raid – the upgrade is guaranteed and a powerful change.

Or 13,000 VPs if you wish to have gear for both specs which might be used in raiding.

Yet the VP rewards for activities are apparently as desired and working as intended? Bullshit. Only working as intended by people who don’t play the game. I’m nudging closer to giving this Valor treadmill away for good.

ps. Wasn’t operation shieldwall something in Mass Effect, or by Bioware? Have we run out of names for armies fighting?

pps. If the end boss of the Tier is the Sha of Fear, does that mean this is the War on Fear? How did the war on Terror go?

Which? Unholy vs Frost presence for PvE DPS

In the 5.0.4 Mists changes again the style and some of the details for Presences for DKs. All the detail of the changes can be put aside as the rule remains unchanged from Cataclysm: All PvE DPS DKs use Unholy Presence.

If you wish to know more about the changes then I highly recommend the summary threads on the EJ forums, as they are concise and clear. In fact the thread covers far more than just the presence, it gives good reasons for most recommendations, and tells you when the choice is immaterial. Go forth and commit mayhem.