Tag Archives: pvp

Playstyle

Avast, Ye Scurvy Dogs!

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Bloodsail Admiral Sailan

Almost exactly a year ago I swore I was never going to do it, but in the end, I just couldn’t help myself. How could I pass up that sweet, sweet hat and title?

(Of course, it’s entirely out of character for a servant of the light to slaughter thousands of innocent businessmen for the sake of ingratiating herself with a bunch of pirates, so let’s just call this a psychotic break and move along, yes?)

I’d actually been thinking about the Bloodsail grind for months. The biggest delay in getting started was my dithering over Insane in the Membrane, the Feat of Strength for the truly obsessive, because that affected how far I’d be going with Bloodsail rep and how I chose to repair my goblin reps afterwards. Naturally, in the end, I chose the crazier option, and I’ve been killing goblins and pirates ever since.

So, my to-do list! This is entirely unrelated to any kind of progression, but this kind of thing is the reason I have a ridiculous number of days /played on my main. :)

The Insane/The Exalted

  • Exalted with the Steamwheedle Cartel factions. Currently Hostile with Ratchet and halfway through Hated with the other three factions. About 30-36 hours’ worth to go. Halfway through I’ll also pick up the Exalted as a title.
  • Exalted with Darkmoon Faire. Lots of herb farming, milling, carding, and turning in. This will probably take me a couple of months on and off.
  • Exalted with Ravenholdt. This means I’m going to have to dust off my actually-not-very-much-loved rogue, or bribe someone else to do the pickpocketing for me.
  • Exalted with Shen’dralar. This just makes me want to cover my face and cry, to be honest. Requires lots of farming of Dire Maul for librams, and lots of camping the AH for Pristine Black Diamonds, plus some Scholo and Strat Dead runs for the libram mats. Still, once I get this and the above three finished, I’ll officially be Sailan the Insane – possibly in RL too.

Mountain o’ Mounts

  • Baron Rivendare’s stinking mount. I’m up to forty-something runs now – one of my guildies got it on his first run, another took 106 runs to do it, and knowing my luck I fully expect to still be at it in 500 runs’ time.
  • Finish off Wintersaber Trainers rep – currently about 48 rounds of quests away, which … isn’t as bad as I thought, actually.
  • Keep farming ZG, Anzu and Attumen for mounts as often as possible.
  • Keep at the AT dailies, which I tend to slack off on; I still need seven of their mounts and the upgraded squire – and then I get to start on tabards!
  • PvP more, since there’s a lot of PvP achievements I still need, and I need AB and WSG tokens for the Black War mounts I don’t yet have. Plus I want Exalted with AB and WSG for the Justicar title and the tabards.

Other factions because I’m a completionist:

  • Keep doing the two dailies that reward Frostborn and Explorer’s League rep respectively, since it irks me to see non-Exalted factions on my reputation list. 120 days left for Explorer’s League, and 134 days for Frostborn. Oogh.
  • Another Black Temple run or two should see me at Exalted there.
  • Brood of Nozdormu. I’m a smidgen off Revered, so I need at least a few more runs through AQ40, which are scarcer than hen’s teeth on my server.

Loremaster

  • I’m 180 quests away in Kalimdor, and 89 quests away in Eastern Kingdoms. Probably can’t finish this one before I do The Insane, as I’ll probably have to do some goblin quests (which would screw my Bloodsail rep).

I’m not sure whether this to-do list looks better or worse, now that it’s in black and white. Help?

Game Info

Dual-Specs Info At Last

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Blizzard have finally released information on the dual specs feature talked about for months. You can read the full Q&A on the official site; here are some of the highlights, with my reactions.

Nethaera: Who will be able to use it?
Ghostcrawler: Players who have reached the maximum level will be able to set up dual specs.

Nethaera: Why do players need to be max level in order to do this?
Ghostcrawler: We didn’t want to burden lower-level players with extra complexity as they’re working to level up and learn their class. But if the feature proves popular we might consider expanding it.

Frankly, I hope they do expand it; it’d be tremendously useful to be able to have a DPS spec and a tanking or healing spec while levelling.

Nethaera: How will you be able to set up a dual spec?

Ghostcrawler: Players will be able to visit their trainer and pay a one-time fee to be able to use it.

Nice and easy.

Nethaera: How do you switch between specs?
Ghostcrawler: Players will be able to switch between their talent specs by visiting any Lexicon of Power provided they’ve paid for the ability to have a secondary spec.

Lexicons of Power will be available in major cities, and inscribers will also be able to create a new item that summons one. Anyone can purchase this item, but it requires a ritual of several players to summon it for use by the party. It’s similar to a repair bot in that it will exist in the world for a short duration.

It’s important to keep in mind that you will not be able to switch specs while in combat or Arenas. While you won’t be able to switch your spec without the Lexicon, you will still be able to look at your secondary spec whenever you want to.

Nethaera: Will solo players have the ability to switch their specs outside of the cities or will they still need to visit a Lexicon of Power?
Ghostcrawler: Solo players will still need to go into the city to visit the Lexicon of Power to switch their talent spec or will need to get together with other players to summon one in.

Okay, that’s a pretty awesome way of handling it. I’ll be interested to see whether the item used to summon a Lexicon requires a Scribe to use it – will raids need to take Scribes for Lexicons in the future, in the way they need an Engineer for Repair Bots now? My guess is yes.

Nethaera: Can I respec only one of my talent sets, or will I need to respec them both if I reset one?
Ghostcrawler: When you reset your talents, it will look at the spec you currently have in use as the talent set you want to change.

Excellent. I’d been wondering how they were going to tackle multiple specs for those people for whom two regular specs isn’t enough. You’ll still have to fiddle about with the manual respecs when you go to and from your third spec, but at least it’ll be a simple process.

Nethaera: Will players be confined to only setting up two specs?
Ghostcrawler: We will be launching the feature with just two specs, but depending on how we feel it works out, we might consider additional specs in the future.

Speaking as someone with about five specs to choose from, I hope they decide to add more.

Nethaera: Will you be able to switch gear easily to match your spec?
Ghostcrawler: At the same time we implement dual specs, we will also be setting up a gear system. The feature is called “Gear Manager.” It can also be used to just swap weapons or trinkets or put on that tuxedo to strut around town. It will not automatically switch your gear when you change your talent spec, but it will allow for an easy gear change between them. The feature may not be fully functional immediately in the PTR, but we’ll have more information to share about it before too much longer.

Hello, in-game ItemRack! ItemRack’s one of my ‘can’t live without it’ addons; this might relegate it to a nice optional extra, or replace it altogether.

Nethaera: Will you be able to change your Glyphs as well?
Ghostcrawler: Glyphs will be tied to each talent spec so that if you switch between them, so too will the Glyphs. You’ll notice the UI will have changed a little bit so that the Glyph panes show up alongside the Talent panes now that they are associated.

Excellent! Of course, if you do want to change glyphs around in a raid, you’ll have this handy summonable Lexicon of Power…

Nethaera: What about hotbars? Will players be able to save them for the talent spec they’re running?
Ghostcrawler: Yes, you will be able to save hotbars and use them with your talent specs. It just saves your bars at the same time as it saves the glyphs and talents. If you want to switch to your other action bar, you will need to change specs.

Five bucks says this breaks every hotbar addon in heinous ways. Most of the addon authors will no doubt be all over the PTR getting their addons ready for the changeover; I hope the author of my bar mod of choice (Macaroon) does the same.

Nethaera: Is there a way for players to choose their talents without them being saved? Currently, once you spend your talent point, it’s spent unless you pay the respec cost again.
Ghostcrawler: With the dual spec feature, we are going to allow players who respec to configure all their talents before they get saved. They will be able to allocate the points, then choose if they want to use that as their spec, rather than needing to carefully diagram out their talents ahead of time. This will allow players a little more freedom when deciding on the talents they want to pick and avoid costly mistakes.

Well, there’s a feature that’s about four and half years overdue. ;-)

Game Info, Playstyle

Two Wintergrasp Tips

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Two handy Wintergrasp tips for you:

  • It’s a great place to get the With A Little Helper From My Friends achievement. WG is one place where it’s fairly easy to get a lot of HKs without getting repeatedly killed by the other side, provided you’re smart and you use cover and teamwork appropriately. It’s easier if you’re the defending team, of course. And best of all, there’s no deserter debuff – if you loseWeight Exercise your gnomeness halfway into the match, just nip out, regnomify yourself, and get back in there to finish the battle. I got all my kills in about 25 minutes of a defending WG this morning.
  • If you’re a healer, you can heal from the back of a moving siege engine. I had always assumed it would be impossible for spells with a cast time, that you’d get prevented due to movement, or that you’d be locked out from doing anything when you’re a passenger. But no! Protected by the tank, and free to cast to my heart’s content? I have a new favourite hobby.
Game Info

New Jewelcrafting Patterns for Honor

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Eyonix has confirmed that the “new Honor items” are cloaks and trinkets, upgrades over the current cloaks and trinkets but not huge ones.

However, on the 3.0.2 PTR tonight I also espied a Jewelcrafting vendor in the Stormwind PvP vendor area, selling 12 uncommon gem cuts for 1250 Honor each.

All the gem cuts are for Northrend gems, require 350 Jewelcrafting to learn, and create PvP-focused gems. They are:

  • Durable Huge Citrine: 7 Spell Power, 6 Resilience
  • Empowered Huge Citrine: 12 Attack Power, 6 Resilience
  • Lucent Huge Citrine: 6 Agility, 6 Resilience
  • Mysterious Shadow Crystal: 7 Spell Power, 8 Spell Penetration
  • Mystic Sun Crystal: 12 Resilience
  • Opaque Dark Jade: 6 Resilience, 2 mp5
  • Resplendent Huge Citrine: 6 Strength, 6 Resilience
  • Shattered Dark Jade: 6 Haste Rating, 8 Spell Penetration
  • Steady Dark Jade: 6 Resilience, 9 Stamina
  • Stormy Chalcedony: 15 Spell Penetration
  • Tense Dark Jade: 6 Hit Rating, 8 Spell Penetration
  • Turbid Dark Jade: 6 Resilience, 6 Spirit

These haven’t been posted anywhere that I’ve seen, so I’m not sure if they’re truly intended to be on the 3.0.2 PTR – it’s an excellent use of Honor points, to be sure, but the Northrend-level mats rather make me doubt that they’ll be released before WotLK. I hope my doubts are wrong!

Wishlist

All This Honor’s Burning A Hole In My Pocket

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So, Eyonix announced today that Honor points and Marks of Honor will be wiped clean when WotLK goes live. As you can imagine, the tears are deep enough to drown in – the resulting thread is up to 48 pages already – but Eyonix does offer a small consolation:

For those with unspent honor points prior to the release of the expansion, we will be offering a few upgrades and special rewards in next content patch solely for purchase via the honor system.

Rather than cry about it – and trust me, I’m disappointed; I’ve got 20,000 points to spend – I’d rather optimistically contemplate what they can implement in 3.0.2 for me to spend my Honor on. If the whole point of the Honor reset is to avoid giving people a big gear advantage at 80, the majority of the new items are likely to be for flavour and style – there’s no point giving out upgrades when the only people who need gearing help for levelling to 80 probably don’t have much in the way of stockpiled honor either. So, here’s some brainstorming from my pal Vikos and I for some appealing Honor dumps:

1. Make Black War mounts cost Honor, not Marks – or put in alternate/variant mounts that cost Honor, not Marks.

2. Battleground Flasks that last through death, purchasable with Honor points. Actually, I think they should implement these anyway.

3. Non-combat pets! Little mini Frostwolf Cubs, Alterac Lambs, Chillwind Harpies, and other PvP-themed pets.

4. Guardian minipets or trinkets, like the much-loved mechanical yeti – they could summon little dwarven battle-tanks and horde bladethrowers, or labourers and peons like the NPCs you see in Arathi Basin.

4. More battle standards – how about ones that give you 5% extra honour or experience on all kills in their vicinity?

5. Novelty trinkets – how about an Orb of Deception-style trinket that allows you to look like a battleground NPC of the opposing faction, or one that disguises you as a node flag? (If you can turn into a tree or a crate, why not a flag?)

6. Consumables other than potions – temporary weapon oils or stones, for instance, with PvP utility.

7. Tabards. Of course I was going to say tabards, but it’s not a bad idea! There are BG-specific tabards for WSG, AV and AB – what about an Eye of the Storm tabard, or some general PvP tabards? We haven’t seen those for a long time.

8. Clothing and dress armor to match the Battlemasters, battleground NPCs, and battleground weekend barkers.

Update: Well, there’s some wasted opportunities. WoW Insider have just posted the new Honor-purchased items, and they’re very uninspiring – cloaks, trinkets, and the unbinding of Honor-bought gems. Yawn.

Game Info

2.4: More PvP Dailies

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I forgot to look into the selection of dailies for world PvP. Here’s what I’ve found so far: (note: all are Alliance quests; I assume there are Horde equivalents)

Terokkar Forest
Exorcist Sullivan in Allerian Stronghold (on the edge near the Bone Wastes) gives a quest to help take a tower in the Bone Wastes. Reward is 12g and 209 honor.

Nagrand
Lakoor in Telaar (in the SE of town, look for the blue !) gives a quest to defeat 10 enemy players in Halaa. Reward is 12g and 209 honor.

Game Info

2.4: New Daily Quests (Fishing, Sunwell, PvP)

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So, let’s kick off some of the shiny new content in 2.4 with a quick guide to the new daily quests. See my complete guide to the Sunwell dailies here.

The Patch 2.4 Disclaimer: Until 2.4 goes live, any of this is subject to change while on the PTR. I will provide updates if I know of any changes, but I don’t guarantee I’ll catch it all.

Patch 2.4 is bringing a number of new daily quests, in a few different categories. Also worth noting is the fact that the per-day limit for repeatable daily quests is being raised to 25.

Fishing Daily

These quests are given by Old Man Barlo (<Master of Fishing>) at Silmyr Lake in Terokkar Forest – just to the east of Shattrath. I don’t know for sure yet, but I suspect he’s likely to provide a different fishing quest each day, like The Rokk does for cooking.

Note that the fishing quest may have a skill level pre-requisite, and the fish you need to catch for it may also have a minimum skill required to fish them up. I have 375 fishing skill, so I can’t tell until my non-fishing mage alt transfers to the PTR successfully.

Today’s quest on the PTR:

Shrimpin’ Ain’t Easy

“There’s a lot of big fish in the Zangarmarsh lakes. Ever wonder what they eat?

Shrimp. Giant freshwater shrimp. The Rokk tells me the dishes you can make with shrimp are nearly endless.

But shrimp are too small to catch with a fishing line. So here’s the trick: cut open the bloated barbed gill trout and you’ll find a shrimp or two if you’re lucky.”

The quest requires 10 Giant Freshwater Shrimp. To get them, fish up Bloated Barbed Gill Trout from the lakes in Zangarmarsh; they’re a soulbound ‘openable’ fish with a 2 hour duration. Once opened, they contain 1-2 Giant Freshwater Shrimp (which do not have a duration) and a bit of grey vendor trash.)

The reward is a Bag of Fishing Treasures. Here’s what was in mine:

Here’s the recipe the bag included:

And the Sharpened Fish Hooks are a new lure with the same effect as Aquadynamic Fish Attractors.

PvP Daily

This new daily is called For Great Honor on Horde side and Concerted Efforts on Alliance side, and it’s given by the same NPC who gives the existing daily battleground quest. (For the Alliance, that’s the Alliance Brigadier-Generals around the place.)

Concerted Efforts/For Great Honor
Bring 1 of each battleground’s Mark of Honor (AV, AB, WSG and EotS) to the questgiver. The reward: 12g and 314 honor. Now there’s a PvP daily worth doing.

Edit: I stand corrected! This isn’t a daily, it’s just a repeatable quest. Get 100 of each mark before the patch and you can turn them all in on patch day for 31,400 honor and a lovely case of carpal tunnel.

Sunwell Dailies

Now we get down to the real meat-and-drink of the new 2.4 content: the daily quests for the Shattered Sun Offensive. This new faction is working against the Burning Legion to try and keep the Sunwell safe, and is being run by the Aldor and Scryers working together.

I’ll provide a more comprehensive guide to the SSO dailies once I’ve got further with the content, but in the meantime I’ll just discuss the dailies as I encounter new ones.

To begin with, you start at Neutral with the Shattered Sun Offensive. There are three or four daily quests open to you. To kick it all off, though, you’ll want to get the starter quest (“Enter, the Deceiver…”) from the questgiver near A’dal in Shattrath, and head to the Isle of Quel’Danas. You’ll automatically know the flightpath once you hit a flight master in the Eastern Kingdoms; Quel’Danas is connected by flightpath to Zul’Aman (and apparently also to Silvermoon, for the Horde).

The following are the SSO dailies. There are also some standard non-repeatable SSO quests, but this is a guide to the daily quests, not a guide to SSO rep, so. :)

The Sanctum Wards
This quest is given by Theris Dawnhearth at the staging area on Quel’Danas. To complete it, kill Wretched Fiends and Wretched Devourers and gather 4 Mana Remnants from their corpses, then use (right-click) the Mana Remnants on a sanctum ward (the big red floating crystals with Wretched mobs around them).
Reward: 9g and 150 SSO rep.

Erratic Behavior
This quest is given by Vindicator Xayann at the staging area on Quel’Danas. She gives you a stack of modified golem control cores. Find and kill 3 Erratic Sentries; use the modified cores on each sentry’s corpse to reanimate it as a Converted Sentry that follows you round. Then run your three Converted Sentries to the Sun’s Reach Sanctum, and wait there until their new programming takes effect.
Reward: 9g and 150 SSO rep.

Sunfury Attack Plans
This quest is given by Lord Torvos in Shattrath in the NE quadrant of the inner ring, nearish the flight point. The quest asks you to go to Netherstorm and get the Sunfury Attack Plans off blood elves there. Any Sunfury blood elf in Netherstorm has a chance to drop these plans; I picked mine up on my third kill near Manaforge B’naar.

The quest gives you 10g, “Shattered Sun Supplies” (which is a package with some random selection of contents; mine had a BoE green plate chestpiece in it) and 250 Shattered Sun rep.

The Multi-Whatever Something-or-Other Survey
This quest is given by Harbinger Haronem in the inner ring in Shattrath. He gives you a pair of Multiphase Spectrographic Goggles and sends you to the Spirit Fields around Oshu’gun in Nagrand. (They’re the area saround Oshu’gun, with the large symbols on the ground.)

The goggles let you detect “red Multiphase Disturbances” passively, and have a Use effect to take a Multiphase disturbance reading. The detection effect only works in Nagrand, so don’t put the goggles on until you’re in Nagrand or you won’t get the detection buff at all (and will get very confused flying around looking for red things you can’t see).

Red Multiphase Disturbance

With the goggles on you’ll see the red glowy light patches; just get near one, right-click your goggles (it will dismount you, so don’t be too high up), and repeat six times with new red patches. (A reading will disperse any given Disturbance, but others in your group may also get credit for it.) Then return to Haronem for 250 rep, 10g and a “Shattered Sun Supplies” parcel.

Gaining the Advantage
This is a gathering quest that requires you to have herbalism, mining or skinning. WoWWiki has details here, and says it gives 16g, 250 SSO rep and 2 Major Rejuvenation potions. I can’t confirm, as I’m an Alchemist/Jewelcrafter.

Game Info

A Guide to Daily Quests: New in 2.3

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Patch 2.3 has not yet been released, but it’s going to include a number of new daily quests. Here’s a brief introduction to them:

Instance Dailies

From the 2.3 Patch Notes:
New daily quests are available in the Lower City for 5 man heroic and non-heroic dungeons (Once at a time, a bit like battleground weekends, each day you will get quests for a different dungeons). The following non-heroic dungeons are concerned: Shattered Halls, Steamvault, Shadow Labyrinth, Black Morass, Botanica, Mechanar, and Arcatraz. All dungeons will get quests in Heroic mode. If you’re getting the non-heroic and the heroic quest on the same day for the same dungeon, you can complete both by running it in heroic mode once. Non heroic quests will reward you with a Ethereum Prison Key (various reputation), gold, and reputation with the Consortium. Heroic quests will give you 2 Badges of Justice, gold, and reputation with the Consortium

As an example, I’m looking on the test realm right now. The quest givers are two Ethereal NPCs in the Lower City, one aligned with the Consortium – Wind Trader Zhareem and Nether-Stalker Mah’duun. (They can be found by looking for a blue ! on the minimap – another new feature in 2.3.) The normal-mode daily quest today is for Steamvaults, and requires you to kill 14 Coilfang Myrmidons – reward: 16 gold and an Ethereum Prison Key. Today’s heroic-mode daily is for Heroic Old Hillsbrad, for the Epoch Hunter’s Head – reward: 24 gold and 2 Badges of Justice.

Battleground Dailies
Each day you can do one daily quest to win a battleground; the reward is 12 gold and 419 honor. The questgiver is in Lower City; I don’t know if there are also questgivers in other cities, or if it can be done before level 70. The problem with this quest, of course, is that it requires you to win a battleground, which is a problem in battlegroups where one faction dominates.

Cooking Dailies
I’ve been wondering how these are going to work, so here we go! The quest giver is a goblin called The Rokk <Master of Cooking> in the Lower City. Today he’s asking you to cook “Demon Broiled Surprise”.

“I want you to take my beloved cooking pot and head out to Blade’s Edge. Throw in some shortribs and crunchy serpent – already cooked for extra flavor – and broil it over an abyssal’s corpse, the only thing hot enough to do the trick.”

Rewards: 7.5 gold and either a Barrel of Fish (flavour text: “A warning label reads: Do Not Shoot”) or a Crate of Meat (flavour text: “Mostly meat and whatever else was sitting around.”) Both items are white-quality and BoP; they contain a few high-level cooking mats (scarce fish, useful meats, etc) and also have a chance to contain a new cooking recipe.