Tag Archives: 3.0.2

Playstyle

Five Things I Love About 3.0.2

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In no particular order:

Raid boss nerfs.
I know it’s disappointing for raid groups who were just about to beat Boss X on pre-nerf difficulty, and I sympathise, but: overall, I think this is a nice dose of fun for the people who get to see a few bosses they otherwise would have missed, and it’s a nice chance to just goof around and not take things terribly seriously. Raiding should not be srs bzns all the time, after all.

New talents.
For the first time in three years, I specced Retribution for a couple of days, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I went back to my Holy comfort zone right quick mind you (to heal an AQ40 pug I should have known was doomed, really), but after years of struggling and making do with shockadin, to play Sailan and actually do real DPS was great fun. Ret has plenty of nerfs incoming, so it won’t last, but it was fun while it did.

The Scourge Invasion world event.
There are a lot of negative things you could say about the enforced PvP aspect of the zombie plague, and Lume said them very eloquently; I’m not going to talk about it now because this is a positive post, darnit.

There are two things I love about the Scourge Invasion, 3.0.2 style:

  • The old content of 1.12 – the necrotic crystals, the killing masses of zombies and skeletons and ghosts, the fighting for mob tags and the mad accumulation of necrotic runes – is just fun. Speaking as a paladin, smashing the undead is kind of my raison d’être, y’know?
  • Lore and Storyline. While the effects of the zombie invasion are frustrating, it’s engrossing to see history repeating – this is what happened to Andorhal, Stratholme and other human towns. The quests surrounding the event give a glimpse of history, and at the same time they lead into the storyline of Wrath of the Lich King, foreshadowing what is to come.

Achievements.
I’m sure no-one’s surprised that I think these are great fun. I do have a couple of quibbles about the system – mainly that there’s not enough distinction between meaningless achievements (like using a toothpick) and achievements that require some effort (like reading every book on the ‘Well Read‘ list, which requires a couple of instance runs to finish). However, I love the system and I love its rewards – I’ve already scored myself the Ambassador, Diplomat, and Guardian of Cenarius titles, and Stinker the Skunk pet.

Now There’s A Name I’ve Not Heard Since…
The guild is livelier than I’ve seen it since we stopped official raids; the people who were still playing a night or two a week are on all the time, and people who’d cancelled accounts or drifted away are back to check out 3.0.2 and get ready for Wrath. Although we’re not doing anything in particular that needs numbers, a more lively and dynamic guild is always a good thing, and it’s reaffirmed my belief that we’re going to have a good solid raid group come WotLK – we’re pretty close to raiding strength already, despite having lost enough of our old raiding team to drama, RL obligations and differing priorities to put an end to our 25-man raids a few months ago.

Game Info

Patch 3.0: The (Holy) Talents

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I’ve already covered new and changed spells and glyphs and gear stats. It’s past time to take a look at new holy-relevant talents.

There are some minor changes around the tree – some talents have been modified, some have been moved around – but the big changes are the ones worth noting.

New Talents

Improved Concentration Aura
Tier: 4
Number of Points: 3
Effect: Increases the effect of your Concentration Aura by an additional 15% and reduces the duration of any Silence or Interrupt effect used against an affected group member by 30%. The duration reduction does not stack with any other effects.

Finally this talent is in a sensible location, instead of its old spot in the Protection tree, so it’s now likely to feature strongly in many Holy builds.

Blessed Hands
Tier: 4
Number of Points: 2
Effect: Reduces the mana cost and increases the resistance to Dispel effects of all Hand spells by 30%.

This is really a PvP talent, unless we see PvE fights with mobs dispelling us. Offensive dispelling was a real vulnerability for paladins in recent Arena seasons; if the same is true at level 80, this will be useful.

Infusion of Light
Tier: 8
Number of Points: 2
Effect: Your Holy Shock critical hits reduce the cast time of your next Holy Light spell by 1 secs.

This is a useful new Paladin talent which will become great once it’s patched to apply to Flash of Light as well (making FoL instant). A must-have, in my opinion.

Some paladins feel that, in its current form, IoL doesn’t synergise terribly well with Light’s Grace. Neither of these talents reduce the GCD, so they don’t stack.

However, if you expect to be using a lot of Holy Lights, it can be handy to use Divine Favor to force a Holy Shock crit, which procs Infusion of Light and gives you a 1.5 second Holy Light as a followup. This then procs Light’s Grace, meaning your next Holy Light (and any more while LG is up) takes 2 seconds. This is a good response to damage spikes; in the space of 5 seconds, you can squeeze out a crit Holy Shock and two Holy Lights, which is a decent amount of burst healing.

Edit: The change to affect Flash of Light as well as Holy Light will happen in 3.0.3.

Sacred Cleansing
Tier: 9
Number of Points: 3
Effect: Your Cleanse spell has a 30% chance to increase the target’s resistance to Disease, Magic and Poison by 30% for 10 sec.

This is kind of terrible, really. It may be of use in PvP or in cleanse-heavy PvE fights, but it’s so very RNG (random number generator) dependent: it’s a 30% chance to add 30% resistance. For 10 measly seconds. Sure, it may be of use on occasion, but you could spend those 3 talent points to far better effect elsewhere.

Enlightened Judgements
Tier: 9
Number of Points: 2
Effect: Increases the range of your Judgement spells by 20 yards and increases your chance to hit by 4%.

I’m kind of ‘meh’ about this talent. If you’re going to go as far as Beacon of Light it’s probably worth putting points into this, for the sake of the increased range – it’ll make judgements useful for pulling when soloing, for instance, or when tanking in Holy spec – but for raid content, I’m still not sure how much chance we’ll get to judge. Overall, I’d say take it for now if you’re going for Beacon, but keep an eye on how much you’re Judging and be ready to respec if these are wasted points.

Edit: as of Patch 3.0.3 it’ll increase the range by 30 yards, which means you’ll be able to judge from max healing range (well, maybe a bit further in, depending on positioning, but near enough). Good change, and makes Judging a lot more viable.

Judgements of the Pure
Tier: 10
Number of Points: 5
Effect: Your Judgement spells increase your casting and melee haste by 10% for 1 min.

This is a pretty unpopular talent, which is partly a holdover from its original incarnation (where it only granted haste for 30 seconds – after subtracting the GCD used by the Judgement, it only barely gave one extra Holy Light per 30 seconds). It’s improved now, but it’s still widely considered to be ‘not worth the talent points’. I’m reserving judgement until I see some solid theorycrafting on it or until it’s changed.

Edit: In 3.0.3 this increases to 15%, which may push it over the borderline of being worth taking, for those who were previously wavering on the issue.

Beacon of Light
Tier: 11
Number of Points: 3
Mana Cost: 35% of base mana (929 mana at 70)
Range: 40 yards
Cast Time: Instant
Effect: The target becomes a Beacon of Light to all targets within a 40 yard radius. Any heals you cast on those targets will also heal the Beacon for 100% of the amount healed. Only one target can be the Beacon of Light at a time. Lasts 1 min.

This is the ‘banner’ paladin ability for Wrath of the Lich King, and it’s an… interesting one. Situationally, it’s extremely powerful, but it has the following limitations:

  • if you Beacon yourself, the heals it gives you count as self-heals, so you won’t get mana back via Spiritual Attunement
  • overheals on other targets don’t give healing back to the Beacon target
  • the HoT component of Glyph of Flash of Light and the AoE component of Glyph of Holy Light don’t give healing back to the Beacon target

So, it’s great in situations where you have two or more people who need a lot of healing – a MT/OT scenario, or something with a lot of splash damage. However, it still doesn’t enable you to heal more than two people at once, so it’s not an AoE solution, and in fights where there’s only one person taking a lot of damage it’s basically useless.

Also note that it’s costly on mana and, for you PvP junkies, it can be dispelled. Use with caution, or the other team won’t even need to mana drain you. That said, it can be useful in PvP if you’re facing teams without a dispel; throw Beacon on yourself and heal your teammates, and you’ll stay up unless you’re getting heavily focused.

Talent Spec Choices

There are a lot of options for talent specs, given that both deep Prot and deep Ret have some talents that look very appealing for a healer/tank or healer/dps hybrid (Touched by the Light and Sheathe of Light respectively). However, looking at Holy-centric builds, I’ve picked out the following as good basic builds:

LEVEL 70
Option 1: 43/0/18 – Infusion of Light & +Crit

This build features Infusion of Light and Divine Illumination on the Holy side, while spending 18 points in Retribution for the +8% to crit. This is particularly useful if you’re throwing around a lot of Holy Lights, and I’d recommend using the Glyph of Holy Light.

Option 2: 51/5/5 – Beacon of Light, Kings, Benediction

This build goes all the way down to Beacon of Light in the Holy tree, although it skips Judgements of the Pure, spending the points instead on Aura Mastery, Improved Blessing of Wisdom, a second point into Improved Lay on Hands, and one last spare point which I parked in Blessed Life (on the grounds that more survivability is never a bad thing).

The other ten points go 5 into Ret for Benediction (for cheaper Holy Shock, Seals and Judgements), and 5 into Prot for Kings (on the grounds that Kings is always useful, and no-one else wants to spend the points on it, and there’s nothing else you can get with your points that would be better).

LEVEL 80
Option 1: 37/0/34 – Infusion of Light, +Crit & Judgements of the Wise

This build is a very versatile, supporting build. It gives the paladin the fast-casting of Infusion of Light, and then swaps to Retribution for the +8% Crit. It goes far enough into Ret to get Judgements of the Wise, for insane mana regeneration (about 1400 per Judgement, at 80) and the Replenishment buff for the raid as a whole.

Note that the Retribution half of this build can be varied a lot, depending on what you’re doing. The build I’ve shown here includes Improved Blessing of Might, Divine Purpose, Sanctified Retribution and Improved Retribution Aura for raid support, along with Pursuit of Justice for mobility and Repentance for a CC option; however, you could easily swap in Two-Handed Specialization, Seal of Command and Vengeance if you wanted a fairly well-balanced DPS/healing hybrid.

Option 2: 51/0/18 – Beacon of Light & +Crit

This is basically the level 70 Beacon of Light build, at least as far as the Holy tree goes. The remaining 20 points are mostly funneled towards Retribution for the Tier 3 and Tier 4 talents that give +Crit raiting. This build leaves 2 points spare for you to spend as you will; personally I’d put them into Pursuit of Justice for the mobility advantage.

Considerations
These are some of the things I took into consideration while looking at these builds:

  • These are all intended to be talent builds centred around healing in end game co-op play (so, instancing, raiding or PvP).
  • Intellect is a newly-valuable attribute in Wrath; as well as its existing benefits, it now directly affects our regen as well.
  • Although I didn’t put any points into it in these builds, Improved Blessing of Wisdom isn’t a bad talent. At level 70 it’s worth 8 mp5; at level 80 it’s worth 18. That’s not a fantastic benefit for two talent points, compared with alternative uses for those points.
  • There are potential synergies with a Holy/Prot combo, but I haven’t looked at them in depth yet. If people are interested, I’ll definitely take a look, though.
  • One build I suggested above winds up with a ‘conflict’, having both Improved Concentration Aura and Improved Retribution Aura/Sanctified Retribution. However, these two auras rarely need to be on at the same time; when it’s a DPS race, put on Ret aura for the DPS boost from Sanctified Retribution, or when it’s a healing strain, put on Concentration Aura to minimise interruptions.

My Choice
I’ve been umming and ahhing about my build choices for a while, but at the moment I’m leaning towards a 51/0/18 build for level 80 instancing and raiding, at least to begin with – and I’ll probably put those last two points into Pursuit of Justice, because I love it so.

Edit: After the announcements for patch 3.0.3, here’s what I’m looking at as a build: 51/0/20. That last floating point in Holy could go into 1/2 Imp Blessing of Wisdom, 1/2 Imp Lay on Hands, 1/3 Blessed Life, or 1/1 Aura Mastery – I haven’t decided yet.

Your Choice?
I am but one paladin among many. I’d be interested to hear what you all think about the new talents, and the talent specs you’ve chosen…

Playstyle

Popular, Ain’t It?

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Patch 3.0.2 has certainly brought a lot of people out of retirement – on swapping accounts today, I was greeted with a sight I haven’t seen for a long time!

Not a big queue, sure, but I haven’t seen a queue at all for years. Impressive.

P.S. Apologies for the lack of meaty content over the last few days; I’ve been too busy playing to blog!

Game Info

Patch 3.0: The Brave New (Healadin) World

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So, it’s Patch Day, and you’re confronted with a whole host of changes to spells you used to know like the back of your hand! What to do, what to do?

Holy paladin core mechanics have been changed quite noticeably in this patch, so let’s take a look at what you’ll see when you log in. Read on for details of changed spells, new spells, and paladin glyphs! (I’ll tackle the talent trees soon, but not tonight – I need sleep!)

Note that where relevant, I’m talking about spell ranks you’d use at level 70. I’m also only covering Holy and general paladin mechanics here; Protection and Retribution changes are topics for another day (or blog).

Changed Spells

  • The Forbearance debuff from Divine Shield and Blessing (now Hand) of Protection now lasts 3 minutes, not 1.
  • Lay On Hands now has a 20 minute cooldown (down from 60) and costs 0 mana.
  • Avenging Wrath no longer causes the Forbearance debuff, and increases all damage and healing done by 20% for 20 seconds.
  • Holy Shock now has a 6 second cooldown (down from 15) and the range of the healing effect now extends to 40 yards. Its mana cost is increased from 650 to 705.
  • Seals:
    • Pretty much all seals have had their damage reduced.
    • Seals now last for two minutes.
    • Seals aren’t consumed when you use Judgement.
    • Seal of the Crusader no longer exists and its damage boost has been rolled into base spells.
    • Alliance Paladins now get Seal of the Martyr (equivalent to Seal of Blood), and Horde Paladins now get Seal of Corruption (equivalent to Seal of Vengeance).
  • Judgement: Big changes.
    • Pre Patch 3: You use a generic “Judgement” ability to apply a debuff or damage to the mob based on the Seal you’re running.
    • Post Patch 3: You use a specific Judgement of Justice, Judgement of Light or Judgement of Wisdom which applies the relevant debuff regardless of which Seal you have active. (It also causes damage.) For instance, you might keep Seal of Wisdom running for yourself while periodically using Judgement of Light to keep the Light effect on the mob for other players.
    • Judging now activates the Global Cooldown.
  • Blessings:
    • Blessing of Light no longer exists, and its healing boost has been rolled into base heal spells. Greater Blessing of Light also no longer exists.
    • Blessing of Salvation and Greater Blessing of Salvation no longer exist, replaced with Hand of Salvation.
    • Blessing of Freedom, Blessing of Sacrifice and Blessing of Protection no longer exist, and have been replaced with “Hand of [foo]” spells.

New Spells

Hands by batega@flickr

  • Hands: are the new mechanic for situational buffs. You can only have one Hand spell on a given ally at any one time, but they don’t overwrite Blessings.
    • Hand of Freedom: a renamed Blessing of Freedom, slightly cheaper.
    • Hand of Protection: a renamed Blessing of Protection, with a longer Forbearance debuff.
    • Hand of Sacrifice: the new Blessing of Sacrifice. Lasts 12 seconds (instead of 30 seconds); has a 2 minute cooldown (instead of 30 seconds). Transfers 30% of damage instead of 104 damage per hit. A significant reduction to its utility; now it helps mitigate an occasional burst of damage, instead of helping the paladin escape CC to save a friend.
    • Hand of Salvation: the new Blessing of Salvation. Completely different mechanics; now works by reducing a single target’s threat for 20% over 10 seconds. Has a 2 minute cooldown. Huge nerf to its utility; however, this may not be a problem if tank agro generation has been buffed as much as reports indicate.

Glyphs

At 70, you’ll have two Major Glyph slots and three Minor Glyph slots to fill.

This list covers all the Glyphs, both Major and Minor, available for Paladins. However, looking at Glyphs that would appeal specifically for healer paladins:

Your Major Glyph Options

  • Glyph of Cleansing: Reduces the mana cost of your Cleanse and Purify spells by 20%.
  • Glyph of Divinity: Your Lay on Hands also grants you as much mana as it grants your target.
  • Glyph of Flash of Light: Your Flash of Light heals for 50% less initially, but also heals for 140% of its inital effect over 12 sec.
  • Glyph of Holy Light: Your Holy Light grants 10% of its heal amount to up to 5 friendly targets within 10 yds of the initial target. (Note that the tooltip says 100 yards, but that’s a typo. It’s 10 yards.)

Note that there are some very nice Glyphs for Seal of Light and Seal of Wisdom, but they’re not trainable for Scribes until Wrath of the Lich King, unfortunately.

Picking Your Glyphs

So, at 70 you’ll have three minor and two major glyph slots to fill. Regarding Majors, I’d skip the Flash of Light Glyph until you have a better idea of how your other heals hold up; frankly, I think it’s way too weak and slow a HoT to be worth the huge upfront gimp to the heal (especially since it means you can’t spam FoL to heal any more). Were the HoT a) bigger and b) faster, it might be worth it, but as it is I think it’s just dangerous.

The Holy Light glyph is a definite winner; the spell loseWeight Exercises nothing, and gains a useful mini-AoE. For me, the Glyph of Divinity is the most appealing choice for the second slot, as I don’t do much cleanse-heavy content. I’ll add a Glyph of Seal of Wisdom to the third slot when I hit 80.

As for Minor glyphs… well, it’s hard to pick them, since we don’t know what our options are yet! There are very few known minor glyphs for paladins yet, as they’re learnt through a discovery system with a 20-hour cooldown. The stand-out winner is Glyph of Lay on Hands (increases the mana restored by your Lay on Hands spell by 20%), which synergises nicely with the Major glyph for the same spell. For the other two Minor slots, I’ll probably use something like Glyph of the Wise and Glyph of Sense Undead, purely for soloing purposes.

Of course, it all depends on which Minor Glyphs one has access to – you can’t get a Glyph no-one’s learnt yet!

Gearing

The short version:

  • Spell crit, spell hit and spell haste ratings are disappearing. Crit, hit and haste ratings now affect both spellcasting and physical abilities.
  • +heal and +dmg/heal ratings are disappearing, and being replaced with spellpower, which affects both spell damage and healing.
  • Existing items with +healing are being translated to spellpower stats instead; it’s not a direct 1:1 translation, so on Wrath Day you’ll end up with a lot less spellpower than your current +heal.
  • This is not a problem, because other mechanics are being revamped to account for it (for instance, healing spells are getting a much bigger boost from spellpower).
  • Existing items with +dmg/heal are being translated to spellpower as well, at close to a 1:1 transition.

For more details on how this works and what it means for your gearing, see my post on the gearing changes.

Uncategorized

Infusion of Light Not Finished Either

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Ghostcrawler just posted on the Paladin forums, confirming that Infusion of Light was nerfed for arena balance (which, let’s face it, we all knew anyway). She followed up with “I know it can be frustrating when a PvP concern ends up making a talent less useful for PvE. We have some ideas of what we’d like to do with it though.”

This is heartening; I just hope that however they change IoL – or the Holy Tree in general – ends up giving us some mobility back. My favourite suggestion so far is to have IoL proc an instant Flash of Light instead, or for it to reset the cooldown on Holy Shock. Either would be fine; it’s the division between “instant” and “1 second cast time” that’s the important one, not the division between “1 second cast time” and “2 second cast time”.

(Tangentially, I’d happily give away all PvP content in WoW to stop PvE stuff getting balanced around it.)

Game Info

Inscription Changes in 9014

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Unsurprisingly, build 9014 has changed some things for Inscription yet again.

Of particular interest, a lot of the glyphs that were previously green when learnt are now orange, meaning that skilling up from 200 onwards shouldn’t be as painful or costly as my guide suggested. On the other hand, many inks have doubled in cast, so the lower levels may be more expensive.

Obviously, this sort of thing is destined to happen – if I waited til Inscription wasn’t going to change any more before posting the guide, it’d be useless because Inscription would be live.

I’ll be updating my guide and posting a new iteration of it, as soon as I’ve had a chance to re-do Inscription on the PTR. Expect it within a couple of days.

Game Info

Brewfest – Preparing For Achievements

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Note: this post contains spoilers for Patch 3.0.

Patch 3.0.2 is expected to herald the introduction of the new Achievement system, so for many of us it’s time to start planning ahead and working on Achievements for which we can get retrospective credit.

There are a number of Achievements centred around the current seasonal event, Brewfest. With a bit of careful planning, you might well be able to get credit for a number of these achievements from Brewfest 2008, instead of having to wait for next year.

Please note that this is currently in development, and could change wildly at any time. Achievements have appeared and disappeared frequently during the Wrath beta; these may suffer the same fate.

Also, please note that the Brewfest is a fun and original seasonal event, and the following guide is a very dry and analytical way to maximise a certain kind of reward. Don’t forget to actually play the Brewfest content, too. Get drunk, clobber Dark Iron dwarves, have fun! If you’re looking for a good guide to the Brewfest in general, I recommend Dwarf Priest’s “Beer Me!” guide.

Brewfest Achievements

Achievements You Can Complete In Advance

  • Direbrewfest – kill Coren Direbrew, the Brewfest special boss in Blackrock Depths.
  • Down With The Dark Iron – defend the Brewfest camp from the Dark Iron attack and complete the quest, “This One Time, When I Was Drunk…” (which is the quest that becomes available every half-hour after the Dark Iron attack).
  • Disturbing the Peace – while wearing 3 pieces of Brewfest clothing, get completely smashed and dance in Dalaran. Obviously you can’t complete this until WotLK goes live, but you can get the clothes in advance so you won’t have to wait for Brewfest ’09.
  • Does Your Wolpertinger Linger? – obtain a Wolpertinger pet. In Brewfest ’07, the Wolpertinger was a Brewfest quest reward – this year it’s purchasable from the Brewfest vendor for less than 50 silver.
  • Strange Brew – drink the nine Brewfest beers. These beers are sold by the various brewmasters around the Brewfest camps; however, like the foods, they only last 2 days. The same trick of mailing them to an alt and then returning them should work, however.
  • The Brewfest Diet – eat 8 of the Brewfest foods. These foods are sold by the various vendors around the Brewfest camps; however, they only last 2 days. They’re not BoP, however, so you can buy them and mail them to a banker alt, and leave them sitting in the mail (which doesn’t cost any lifespan), and mail them back when Achievements go live.
  • Have Keg, Will Travel – obtain a Brewfest mount. Last year’s Brewfest Rams count, as do this year’s rams and kodos dropped by Coren Direbrew.

Achievements That Will Have To Wait

  • Drunken Stupor – fall 65 yards without dying while completely smashed during the Brewfest Holiday. Unless 3.0.2 goes live before Brewfest finishes, this will have to wait for Brewfest ’09.
  • Brew of the Year – sample 12 beers featured in the Brew of the Month Club. You join the club by handing in 200 Brewfest Tokens to the Brewfest Vendor, and every month you’re mailed a new sample of beer.

    Each beer only lasts 14 days, so I’d recommend leaving them sitting in your mail (which doesn’t cost duration) until Patch 3.0.2 hits, and then drinking all the ones you have saved up – however, finishing off the achievement will have to wait twelve months unless the beers are indeed available from a vendor who sticks around after Brewfest. (Update: I’ve just checked the vendor, and she only sells one brew at the moment – so either she sells only the brew of that month, or only the brews that have been release so far. Either way, you’ll have to wait the full year for this achievement.)

  • Brewmaster – complete eight of Brewfest achievements (all of the above except “Have Keg, Will Travel”). The reward is a “Brewmaster” title.

    Obviously, as Drunken Stupor and Brew of the Year can’t be completed when achievements go live, neither can this achievement – and nor can any achievement which requires it (like What A Long, Strange Trip It’s Been, the overall World Events achievement which awards a Violet Proto-Drake mount).

How To Do The Achievements

Food and Drink

Buy one of each type of Brewfest food and drink from the vendors, and mail them to a bank alt. Leave them sitting in the bank alt’s mail; return them after 29 days, and mail them off again if Achievements still aren’t live. Once Patch 3.0.2 goes live, mail them back to your main character and consume each one. This will complete Strange Brew and The Brewfest Diet.

The Brewfest Camp

Apart from normal questing, there are two important things to do in your faction’s Brewfest camp. The first is to buy a Wolpertinger pet from the Brewfest vendor if you don’t have one from last year, for Does Your Wolpertinger Linger?.

The second is to stick around until the hour or half-hour, and help defend the camp from the Dark Iron dwarves by throwing beer mugs you pick up from nearby tables. Once you’ve defended the camp, you can click on a piece of leftover Dark Iron machinery to get the quest that will give you the Down With The Dark Iron achievement. This quest is repeatable daily and awards Brewfest tokens; see below for more details about tokens.

Kill Coren Direbrew – A Lot

Go and see Darna Honeybock in Kharanos (for Alliance) or Slurpo Fizzykeg on the road to Razor Hill (for Horde), and get the quest to find the Brewfest spy in BRD. You’ll need to be level 65 to get this quest. Head to BRD, zone in and just to the right you’ll see some Dark Iron dwarves digging around some rubble. Kill them and use the consoles, and you’ll be transported via Mole Machine to the Grim Guzzler bar within BRD. The spy is just around the corner; he’ll give you a follow-on quest to insult Coren and kill him.

Coren drops a quest item which you hand in for Brewfest tokens, and completing the quest will ensure that your kill of Coren will be credited for Direbrewfest when Achievements go live. Coren also drops the Brewfest Ram and Brewfest Kodo mounts; you’ll need one of these to get credit for the Have Keg, Will Travel achievement. There are no concrete figures on drop rate right now, but it’s looking fairly low – probably less than 10%. You’ll probably need to kill him quite a few times – each person can trigger the event once a day (on the standard daily quest reset timer) so a normal group can try five times a day for a mount.

Get Brewfest Tokens

Brewfest Tokens are used to buy things from the Brewfest vendor, and can be gained from a number of quests, some of which are repeatable. You’ll need tokens to complete the Disturbing the Peace and Brew of the Year achievements.

  • Disturbing the Peace, completed after Wrath goes live, requires you to have three pieces of Brewfest clothing. The hat (available in four colors) costs 50 tokens, the boots or slippers cost 100 tokens, and the dress or regalia costs 200 tokens – so completing this Achievement requires 350 tokens, minus the cost of any Brewfest clothing you got last year.
  • Brew of the Year requires you to join the Brew of the Month Club, which costs 200 tokens.

Ah, but how to get tokens? The WoWwiki Brewfest page has a listing of all the Brewfest quests, but in short:

  • If you have any Brewfest Tickets left over from last year, you can exchange them (at a 1:1 ratio) at the Brewfest vendor.
  • Killing Coren Direbrew the first time awards 40 tokens.
  • Completing one of the Barking quests (riding around the city on a special ram) awards 15 tokens, repeatable daily.
  • Completing There and Back Again (ferrying 3 kegs to the Brewfest camp, non-repeatable) gives 15 tokens.
  • Completing keg runs awards 2 tokens per keg you ferry back; typically you should be able to do 10 kegs or more in the time limit. This is on a 12-hour timer, separate from daily quests, so if you time it right you can get 40 tokens or more a day.
  • Completing the daily quest to defend the Brewfest camp from the Dark Irons awards 15 tokens.

Thus, you get 55 tokens from non-repeatable quests, and can easily get 70 tokens a day (or more, if you’re good at ram riding) from repeatable quests.

Checklist

As a summary of everything above, here’s a quick checklist to help you get the biggest Achievement bang for your Brewfest buck:

  • Buy one of each Brewfest food and beer, and mail them to a bank alt. (Strange Brew, The Brewfest Diet)
  • Buy a Wolpertinger if you don’t already have one. (Does Your Wolpertinger Linger?)
  • Do the quest that becomes available after the Dark Iron attack on the Brewfest camp. (Down With The Dark Iron)
  • Kill Coren Direbrew. (Direbrewfest)
  • Kill Coren Direbrew repeatedly until you get a ram or kodo. (Have Keg, Will Travel)
  • Gather 350 Brewfest Tokens and buy three pieces of Brewfest clothing, minus any you have from last year. (Disturbing the Peace)
  • Gather 200 Brewfest Tokens and join the Brew of the Month Club. Leave beer samples in mail. (Brew of the Year)

Happy drinking!