The Road To 70 And Beyond.

All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go.

2008-11-05T14:28:00.003-05:00

Mags/Gruuls went exceedingly well for me last night (although not for our guild). I picked up T4 pants and the T4 chest, and finally feel confident enough to raid tank. Or at least, I would if not for two minor problems.

1. My guild has too many tanks. I am Prot Warrior #7. We have at least five Protection Paladins sitting around (our Guild MT is a Prot Pally at the moment). Every kitty druid is a bear in hiding. Despite being second on threat throughout most of the Gruul fight, I am last in line for choice tanking assignments due to my gear level (low). Aaaaand.
2. Wrath of the Lich King hits next week. We barely pulled enough people together to do Mags/Gruuls last night, and even had to do it without a mage tank. Things are looking bleh for next week attendance-wise.

Well, that's enough QQ from me. On the positive side, at least I get to look shiny for Northrend!

Ding 70

2008-10-27T13:59:00.005-04:00

Finally hit 70 after about a week of hardcore questing/instancing. Boy am I drained, but it's a good kind of drained.

The morning I turned 70, I got carried through Kara by my guild (I was 8th on the DPS meter, yay!). Although it wasn't the clean sweep that I wanted, I managed to pick up a few important Prot pieces (Iron Gauntlets of the Maiden, King's Defender, Boots of Elusion). The day after, I went on a tanking spree. Shadow Labyrinth, Botanica, Mechanar. It was an absolute joy to tank these after having run some of them 500 times (approx).

Running Shadow Labs was an eye-opener. I had to watch how I pulled, and I'm not ashamed to say that I wiped on two occasions because my situational awareness wasn't at its highest. In pre-70 OL dungeons I could just grab a pack of mobs, AoE, and rock out. Boss-fights were the only parts of those runs that got hairy. Now at 70 I'm finding that boss fights are pretty easy and that it's the trash instead that's giving me chills. Even after I get the drops I want out of there, I'll probably still try to tank Shadow Labs on a regular basis, just to stay sharp.

Back in the Pre-3.0 days, Botanica was a looming shadow of doom for me. For most of my DPS career, I was running under a tankadin who's a good friend of mine. We ran it daily on Heroic after Mechanar's badge-count was nerfed. Botanica was his playground, and we eventually got so good at it that we could clear it within 40 minutes. Once I got my warrior, I worried that I'd never be able to live up to that kind of efficiency, due to how bad warrior AoE was back then. Last night dispelled any doubts I had about a warrior performing as well as a paladin in Bot. I can't wait to try heroic Bot when I get some better gear and see if I can't match his clear time.

Mechanar was pretty much a joke for the most part. I only had minor troubles with Capacitus, and that was more of a "oops, I was a little off on my positioning".The thing I found common about the two TK instances was that I was running them the same way my prot pally and feral druid friends had been for months and months. I took the same routes, did the same general strategies. It all worked beautifully.

Tonight, I'm off to Gruuls/Mags to try my hand at replacing the last of my 60 blues and (I'm hoping) finally getting 490 Def so that I can start running Heroics, and maybe tank one Kara before WotLK hits.

Happy Tanking!

- Trysti

3.0 - A more in-depth look.

2008-10-15T17:49:00.005-04:00

Okay, as promised, here's some more in-depth thoughts on the new patch.

Barbershop
As I mentioned before, it's really a nifty little feature. For those of us who've had our characters for a long time and want a change every now and again, it's pretty cool. Lots of opportunities to color co-ordinate your hair color/style with your armor. Is it a huge thing? Not really. But it's nice that Blizzard tossed it in.

Achievements
At first, I was really excited by this. REALLY excited. After scrolling through a bunch of the achievements though, I realized that a lot of the achievements were really lame. Only a few piqued my interests, and they were mostly PvP ones that looked pretty hard (which makes it all the more fun). Maybe when WotLK hits, we'll get some cooler ones. I was really hoping for best run time or 4-man/3-manning type achievements, but so far, I aint seeing em.

Glyphs
Where do I start? With all the so-called homogenization going on with tanking classes, glyphs really let you be unique. Now, I can hear the arguement "After we all figure out the best glyphs, everyone will have the same ones". Well, my counter-arguement is as follows. Right now, we get 2 Major, 3 Minor slots at 70.

Here's a list of the Prot relevant Major and Minor Glyphs.

Major
Glyph of Blocking
Glyph of Revenge
Glyph of Heroic Strike
Glyph of Last Stand
Glyph of Devastate
Glyph of Rapid Charge
Glyph of Sunder Armor
Glyph of Cleaving
Glyph of Resonating Power
Minor Glyphs
Glyph of Bloodrage
Glyph of Thunder Clap
Glyph of Charge
Glyph of Battle

As you can see, there's a lot to choose from. Granted, as we progress to 80, we might see that a few of these aren't quite up to snuff or that what we took before will be replaced with something else once it becomes available.For example, a Glyph of Blocking replacing a Glyph of Devastate. Different people will want to use different set-ups for different things, because there's only so many slots to put the glyphs into.

I personally am using Glyph of Sunder Armor, Glyph of Rapid Charge, Glyph of Charge, and Glyph of Thunder Clap right now. When I hit 70, I'll toss in Glyph of Bloodrage. When I hit 80, I'll throw in Glyph of Blocking and replace Rapid Charge with Resonating Power. I'm doing this because I want more AoE power, because I find it fun to do, and I imagine that a lot of stuff in Northrend will require it. Someone else might instead choose Glyph of Revenge and Glyph of Heroic Strike and Glyph of Blocking for an "infinite" rage combo. Regardless, there's enough Major glyphs to go around right now that everyone can pretty much pick and choose what they like.

AoE

The new prot talents are the most important change in 3.0. I remember a few months ago, when I was leveling my original warrior to 70, I had issues taking on more than three targets. I had to use CC in instances like Ramparts and Blood Furnace. Well, the last two days have shown me how big of a change 3.0 has brought in for us Prot warriors. I've been running Ramps and BF almost non-stop, and aside from the first run, I've never had to ask anyone to sheep/trap/sap/repentance/seduce/etc anything. If my healer was up to snuff, I could pull 2-3 groups at a time and by spamming tclap, shockwave and cleaves, hold them all. Right now, you can pull as many mobs as your gear will allow for. My solo record at the moment is 13 Buzzards in Helfire at once, I imagine the number will get significantly higher as I get closer to 70 and my gear starts getting more optimized for tanking. Once that happens, I fully intend to go do the SM challenge and see if I can get through it.

- Trysti

3.0 Impressions.

2008-10-15T16:27:00.002-04:00

Okay, I'm writing this quickly during a break, so this is just a quickie before I have to head back in.

Server issues were pretty severe, so I only managed to get about an hour of playtime last night (at around 1am no less). Here's some quick notes. Expect an in-depth post later tonight about the following tonight.

- Barbershop is a nifty (addictive) feature.
- Glyphs are amazing.
- Warriors can definitely AoE tank/grind now.
- The new prot tree is a thing of beauty, they really trimmed out some high-fat talents.
- Shield Slam is the cornerstone spell now
- Revised Shield Block is a pretty radical change.
- Achievements system not so impressive.

Renovations.

2008-10-08T14:18:00.002-04:00

So, I've been looking at the site recently, and been thinking "God damn, this could be so much better" First off, I want to make the site a little prettier (aka a nice looking banner at the top). I'm also going to have to go in and clean up my links section, seeing as this is no longer a "rogue" site. I need to put in a hit-counter cause I'll be honest, I wonder how many people actually read this (Answer: The number isn't what I think). I also plan to go back and re-write most of my earlier stuff. Hopefully you'll be seeing some changes soon, all of em for a much better and smoother reading experience.

tl;dr - Trysti is changing the site a bit. Yay?

[General] Revisiting Tanking Roles

2008-09-30T10:08:00.005-04:00

With the wealth of information coming out about Wrath of the Lich King and even Patch 3.0, I started to look back at a post I did a while ago about tanking roles.

Now, before I get into some QQing (as some guildies would say), I'm going to say that a lot of the changes are good. The other tanking classes get their leg up and can stand as equals with Warriors as main tanks. Gone will be the days where you had to have a certain set-up in order to get through an encounter. Granted this means more competition amongst tanks for raid lots, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. If anything, it'll lead to stronger tanks because only the best of any given tanking class will earn their lead spot, as opposed to priority being given to Warriors because they were the favored class for most encounters.

Now for a bit of QQ mixed with positives. Blizzard is homogenizing tanking classes in order to prevent the old "Warriors on top" hierarchy that prevailed through Classic and TBC. As a "new" warrior, I'm no longer going to have the guaranteed slot. As I said before, this is (in the end) good for me, as I will have to be that much better than the other guild tanks in order to earn my keep. On the flipside, Paladins are no longer the only tanks that can AoE. Blizzard was quite kind and decided to remove the target limit on Thunderclap and Swipe. I'm fairly certain that Death Knights will have some sort of AoE threat ability as well.

My main QQ is gear competition. In TBC, I only had to fight off other warriors for gear, seeing as pallies had completely different itemization. What I've seen so far with Wotlk Plate tanking gear, is that Pally gear = Warrior gear = Death Knight gear. The Tier 7 tanking sets are very telling in that the stats and defensive stats are virtually identical. Feel free to call me out on this, but I've always felt that Tier gear is supposed to be a good example of what sort of stats Blizzard wants you to be using. Looking at the Pally T7 stuff, I'm taking a wild guess that the other pally tanking gear is gonna follow similiar itemization. My tankadin friend is overjoyed (of course) that he will now have more opportunities to gear up. I find his idea that tanking gear was scarce a little strange, because TBC offered a wealth of non-raid gear that was raid quality (2.4 Badges, SWP/BT level Crafted Epics).

So, over-all, I am looking forward to 3.0 and WotlK afterwards. It's going to be very competitive for tanks, but at least now everyone will have a fair shot (assuming equal skill/gear).

-Trysti

Happy Returns (Sorta)

2008-09-07T12:31:00.002-04:00

Well, a month ago, my WoW account got hacked, and all my gear got tossed for gold. Then it got hacked again, and I lost control of it. Seeing as I was violating ToS (It was in my friend's name, not mine), I lost a year and a half of work and decided to say "Bugger it, I'm quitting."

Well, I've come back. With my own account this time, so if anything goes south, I can call up Blizzard and tell them to stop being silly. On the flipside, this also means that I have to re-raise a few characters. So, for now, this will primarily be a Warrior blog, with perhaps a few posts here and there about other classes as I see fit.

Tah for now

- Trysti

[General] Role-models and Rivals.

2008-07-11T12:21:00.003-04:00

So, those of you reading this, may or may not be 70. You all have your goals, but do you have your role-models? And more importantly, do you have your rivals?

Yes, I know it sounds really silly, seeing as it IS a video-game. However, having a role-model to look up to in game can really REALLY help drive you towards new levels of performance. For example, my guild has an amazing warrior-tank. The whole reason I raised a warrior in the first place, was so that I could tank alongside him/in his place. I saw how well-respected he was in the guild, and I kinda craved that. A good role-model will give you someone to emulate, and hopefully someone to ask when you need advice about your class.

Now, a rival, is arguably more important. In my experience, having a rival motivates you to new heights. You'll want to out-DPS them, out-heal them, out-level them and generally outperform them. It really helps you put on your A-game all the time, when you might have been inclined to take it easy. Mind you, this should be a friendly mutual competition for best effect.

- Trysti

[General] Knowing your role.

2008-07-10T02:28:00.003-04:00

Okay, I'm going to come off as a little grumpy, because it's 2:30am, and I've chain-tanked 4 instances tonight. That's way too many god damn instances in a row at 64. It's rant time.

People have been too lenient. Much too lenient. There are people in their mid-60s who are unable to instance properly. It's a sad thing, and yes, it's awfully PvE biased of me to say it. However, when I walk into an instance with 4 other people, I WANT THEM TO KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING and to be able to follow orders. When I'm on my Rogue/Mage/Hunter, I follow the game-plan. If someone tells me that star/moon/square is my sap/sheep/trap target, you god-damn bet I follow the mark. So when I'm on my warrior, I expect people to follow the marks I put up and to do things when I ask them. I stopped using cheap-shot as an opener on my rogue in instances, because I learned that tanks HATE it when you stun-lock their target. Now that I've experienced it, I make sure to let rogues know that ambush or garrote are more acceptable substitutes.

Here's the thing that I try to impart into all my group members when they get out of hand. Know your god damn role in the group. Here's a nice and easy check-list.

Tank
Are you a bear?
Do you have more HP than anyone else in the group?
Do you wear plate?
Do you have a shield?
Do you have a taunt or three?
Can you take more than two hits?

If you answered YES to at least 3 of these, you MAY be the tank in the group.

Healer
Do you have a lot of mana-regen?
Do you have healing spells?
Are they good ones?
Does your DPS suck?
Do people seem angry at you when they die?

If you answered YES to most of the above, you might just be a healer.

You're DPS if you're anything but a tank or a healer.

Now, I have two examples to share of people performing outside their original roles in the group. I had an enchance shammy that managed to heal me through a boss when our resto druid bit it. While not his original role, he managed to fill in well enough to get us through. That is an example of when people stepping outside their roles goes well. An example of it NOT going so well, was when I had one mob marked up and ready to pull, and Mr.Huntard decides to pull an unmarked mob to the side so that he could get some ancient lichen.

Needless to say, if you're not the group leader/marker, you don't get to make decisions anymore. I struggled with this for the longest time when I was playing DPS. Eventually, I accepted it. My Prot Pally friend constantly asked me why I always told him "it's up to you" whenever we were deciding what to do for the night. At the time, I told him "Well, you're the tank." To expand on those words. I wouldn't ask him to tank something he didn't want to, because as a DPS class, I feel I have no right to do so.

So, to end my little rant, if you're the group leader, don't be afraid to hang up really stupid party members by the balls. If you're not the group leader, follow orders, but don't be afraid to ask questions or raise concerns.

- Trysti

[Warrior] Tanking and Meta-game.

2008-07-08T02:56:00.002-04:00

I'm sure every tank goes through this (hopefully), but I just got off a tanking high. I had the perfect group for my Underbog run tonight. A rogue, a mage, a hunter, and a paladin. No one pulled aggro off me, and with the exception of the hunter (sigh), all the DPS were competent with their CC. We only had to stop when the mage had zero mana or just before bosses. It was the most awesome hour and spare change I've had as a tank to date.

However, sometimes you get a really bad run. And there are many things that can qualify a run as bad. The most recent "bad" run I had was another Underbog run. There was a feral druid in the party who had tanking gear who kept undermining me at every turn, claiming that I didn't need CC because he didn't (liar). Generally he made me feel like a very bad tank, even though I know that I'm not.

So this leads into bulk of this post. Tanks.

It's a funny thing how different each of the tanking classes is in ability/scope. Warriors are godly at single-target. Paladins are the masters of multi-mob. Feral Druids can take a beating like no one else. Yet, from time to time I run into a fellow tank with a personality disorder. Warriors seem to have a superiority complex, and it's not entirely unjustified. They have the longest history of tanking in the game and unlike Druids and Paladins who can perform well as either DPS or Healers, Warriors are stuck as either tanks, mediocre raid dps or really mediocre raid dps.

Prot Pallies, in my experience, have been fairly confident in what they do. They're not as hungry as I remember them being a few patches ago. They've gotten the biggest leg-up in TBC out of the trio, and I'm curious to see if WoTLK doesn't do the same for druids. Feral Druids seem to run the gamut. I've run into ones as arrogant as Warriors and others who seem to have inferiority complexes (I'm looking at you Hoenir). It's also kind of funny how T4 instances seem infested with them, T5 raids are barren and then all of the sudden you see them tanking SWP.

I asked my Prot Paladin and Feral Druid friends today what they envied/wanted that the other tank classes had. The pally wished he had my back-up taunts seeing as he only has the one. The druid friend wished he had consecration and uncrushability. Of course, there's things that I wish I had that they both have. Consecration. Group buffs that last more than 2 minutes. Not wanting to write an entire article off of just this little sampling, I asked the tankspot guys the same question (more or less).

You can find the entire discussion here, but I've decided to throw up two of the posts I thought were intriguing.

Norrath -
"Pros: Warriors have debuffs, panic buttons, Shield Block off the GCD, and good returns on Expertise. Paladins have Consecrate, Holy Shield with 8 charges, auras, and blessings. Druids have Swipe, Thorns, massive armor bonuses, health bonuses, and a very good Agi-to-Dodge ratio.

Cons: Warriors have only one AE-tanking skill, and it's on a CD and not particularly effective. Paladins cast spells, making them vulnerable to silence and mana-drain effects. Holy Shield is on the GCD, causing windows of crushability while it is being refreshed. Druids need to use macros to use healthstones and potions, and they are vulnerable while doing so. Druids cannot be realistically uncrushable."

Garbid -
"Warrior > Druid cause:
We can use pots, healthstones and avoid crushing blows through shield block.

Warrior > Tankadins cause:
We get better avoidance/EH stats while paladins need int/spell dmg. And we can hold threat when rage starved but paladins can't when oom.

Warrior > both because:
We have Last Stand, Shield Wall, AoE taunt and a reserve taunt if Taunt gets resisted (Mocking Blow). Through itemization we can usually produce more singletarget threat since pala/druid gear often lacks expertise/+hit. We can stance-dance on a fearing boss."

- Trysti.

More Planning

2008-07-02T01:37:00.003-04:00

So, earlier on I talked about the importance of planning your leveling areas out. Tonight I'm gonna apply that to instancing and loot within.

Most of the zones in Outland have a hub of instances in them. Helfire has Helfire Citadel, Zangarmarsh has Coilfang Resevoir, Netherstorm has Tempest Keep, and Terrokar has Auchindoun. As you level through these, you're going to be hitting these up a lot due to quests and the lure of new gear.

So, while not exactly "planning" per se, you can start making a wishlist of gear from those instances. I'll give you an example of my rogue's and my warrior's current wishlists for their respective level.

Trysti's Helfire Wishlist~
Vest of Vengeance - Blood Furnace
Mantle of the Dusk-Dweller - Blood Furnace
Legion Blunderbuss - Blood Furnace

Erryl's Coilfang Wishlist
Bogstrok Scale Cloak - Slave Pens
Unscarred Breastplate - Slave Pens
Greaves of the Iron Guardian - Underbog
Pauldrons of Brute Force - Underbog

Right away, you have a checklist to motivate you to get in there and get your stuff. A lot of sites say not to bother too long with trying to get that "one" piece of gear from an instance before moving on. Well, I'm of a different opinion. If you get yourself the best gear you can possibly get for your level, it'll make your life that much easier when you have to grind another 30 ogres to get another quest done. It all adds up. Now, I'm not saying that you should spend hundreds of gold on blue quality gems or enchants every time you get a new piece of gear on the way to 70. But there are cheap things you can do. Get green gems instead of those god awful whites.

If you're a warrior, talk to a leather-worker friend about getting some Heavy Knothide armor kits or if you're really lucky some Vindicator's Armor kits. They'll help you tank that much better, and a good tank makes for a happier group. And a happier group means that you get to be a part of other people's friends lists, which lets you be a little choosier about the kind of group you put together in the long run, and helps build reputation on the server.

- Trysti

[Warrior] Trinkets and Colors.

2008-07-01T00:43:00.005-04:00

So, I just hit 62 and am on my way out of Helfire (Not a moment too soon, I'm getting a little sick of red all the time.) so it's time for an event that I usually dread. Group quests. I'm not a huge fan of them this early in the game because I don't like having to spam "LFM COLOSSAL MENACE" for two hours on a bad day just to get some more exp out of the way. However, because I'm a stickler for doing EVERY QUEST HUMANLY POSSIBLE in any given area on the way up to 70 (I get very, very lazy when I actually hit 70), I endure. There is one quest, even if YOU DESPISE groupers, that you should do as a prot warrior.

Overlord. Why? Regal Protectorate

Chances are, that at 60ish you have NO TRINKETS WORTH MENTIONING. No, Carrot on a stick does not count. Argent Dawn Commission DEFINITELY does not count. If you're a jewelcrafter, you might have something nice at this point, but I don't know enough about that profession to comment. That and not everyone jewelcrafts. I personally came into outland with Force of Will and Hand of Justice. And they weren't too bad. But Regal Protectorate blows both out of the water. Right now, if I use the trinket + last stand, I'm sitting at over 10k health. I know I got my "oh shit" button ready, do you?

Another good trinket out of Helfire worth mentioning for tanks is Charm of Alacrity from the "When Voidwalkers Go Wild" quest. You'll have to do the pre-requisite "In case of emergency...", but you want to do that anyways for Flintlocke's Piloting Pants . I like to think of Charm of Alacrity as Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch extra-virgin-lite. I'm personally not a huge fan of "use" trinkets, even though they have the greatest effects. I'm more of a passive trinket kinda guy (which is why my mage sports Quagmirran's Eye and Lightning Capacitator ) for the most part, but I won't say no to awesome tanking trinkets.

I'm looking forward to finishing a few last quests in Helfire and moving on to Zangarmarsh. I'll get to really test my tanking (and patience) with lots of Slave Pens runs with some Underbog thrown in at 63/64. By that time, I'll be sick and tired of the color blue and will be ready for leafy green Terrokar/gray Bone Wastes.

- Trysti

[Warrior] Excitement

2008-06-28T15:48:00.002-04:00

Well, I've finally seen the Light. Okay, not really, if I had, I'd be rolling a pally tank right now (although the thought is somewhat tempting.), but you know what I mean. I have discovered the joys of tanking with a protection warrior wearing the best gear that patience and 10 runs of Helfire Ramps and Blood Furnace combined can buy. I've read all about tank fatigue, and some of the stresses related to tanking. I can admit that I felt a little more drained after tanking 4 instances straight as opposed to DPSing those same 4. Tanking stress? Not feeling it.

The top 5 reasons why I'm loving tanking right now.

1. I am the ringmaster.

I put up the marks and I make the pulls. After months of obediantly sheeping and trapping at someone else's whim, it feels incredibly good to be in the driver's seat.

2. Constant attention from the healers.

Ice block has a cool-down and so does Vanish. Feign Death usually means a clothie's gonna bite it for me. It's nice to be able to throw myself in there and KNOW not hope that there's going to be someone healing me.

3. Plate feels and looks good.

A lot of the mail and leather stuff in OL looks pretty craptacular till you hit 70. Plate always looks good (assuming you color-coordinate) .

4. Instances

Back in the day when I was leveling my mage and hunter, and even now when I level my rogue, I found that getting into instance groups on a regular basis required quite a bit of effort. However, as the tank, I'm the one putting together the groups. And if that fails, well, there's a lot of people out there "lf1m tank".

5. Questing in general

I'm finding questing so much easier as prot. It takes me a little longer to kill things than it did as Arms, but at least I'm still alive after pulling 3-4 mobs. Despite what people thing, Prot's still a decent spec for doing damage. Devastate + One-Handed Weapon Spec = Dead mobs eventually.

- Trysti

Changes and more.

2008-06-26T01:23:00.002-04:00

Okay, so I'm soooorta changing the focus of this blog. Well, not so much changing as sharing. I recently started leveling my warrior concurrently with my rogue and realized that my guild could use either one. Okay, that's a lie. The guild could use a warrior tank, and I just find rogues WAY too fun to give up.

So there will be some warrior posts as well as rogue posts. I'll update my links section soon to include links for both.

So with that out of the way, let's talk about WoWarmory today. It is simultaenously your best friend and worst foe. It's your best friend, because you can look at someone's gear level and spec before ever having to invite them into a group. This saves you from having to kick someone (something that I know a lot of people have trouble doing) because they're not geared right for what you need. I cannot tell you how many times I've been in LFG, needed a lock (for example), saw 3 candidates and had to choose. Before Armory you'd have to pray you got lucky and chose the best one. Armory gets rid of the guess-work and lets you build a better group.

So, how is it your worst foe? Well, it works both ways, you can look people up, but they can look YOU up too. If you're a rogue, this is probably not going to bode well for you. Especially if your server is anything like mine and there's 4 rogues and hunters in LFG at any given time (Or if there's been a sudden surge of paladin tanks who don't want anything to do with you.) The highly unloved (for 5-mans anyways) DPS warrior normally doesn't have this problem, because they are doing one of four things. They're off in Arena/Battlegrounds, doing a guild run, raiding or currently respeccing to Protection because they realized that NO ONE is going to take them for a 5-man unless they're desperate. If you're a prot warrior, chances are that you're the one who's scouring LFG for people, so this doesn't really apply to you.

Another friend for anyone who's level 70 and wants to raid seriously is be.imba.hu. But that's another post for another night

- Trysti.

Questing

2008-06-21T13:56:00.004-04:00

So you finally hit that magical 58. It's time to fly down to Blasted Lands, ride to the Dark Portal and take your step through. For some of you it's a first experience, for others, it's coming home.

It's also time to start thinking in a different way and to start getting mentally ready for 70. The first way you can do this is in your attitude towards quests. Back in Azeroth, you could pick and choose your quests a little easier. After all, there was hundreds of them per leveling range. In Outland, I urge you to do EVERY SINGLE QUEST until you hit 70. And even after you hit 70, do them all. Why? Gold for one. You're going to need gold to buy materials for things that you want crafted. Sure, you'll farm a little, but there's always going to be that one material that you need that you can't quite get a hold of by yourself (Primal Nethers, Nether Vortexs, Hearts of Darkness, etc) just yet.

Another reason you want to do those quests is due to quest rewards. I could do an entire post about quest rewards and how awesome they are in Outland and how crap most of them were in Azeroth, but suffice to say, you will get a lot of your gear, if not all of it (initially) through questing.

Lastly and most importantly, it gives you exp faster and in a more interesting way than just grinding. Sure, at least 60% of the quests (if not more) are going to make you grind anyways, but at least you get the nice big exp bonus and quest reward at the end.

- Trysti

Planning

2008-06-18T03:36:00.003-04:00

After hitting 57 today, I looked at what I had still had open to me in terms of leveling zones. I was shocked that I still had all of Un'goro, Burning Steppes, Silithius, Winterspring and most of Easter Plaguelands looking at me. Originally, with my first character I found that I was desperately trying to find new quests to do to hit that magic 58. My second character had a much faster time getting to 58.

So what changed? Two major things did. The first was patch 2.3. Patch 2.3 introduced a slew of quests in Dustwallow Marsh, lowered the amount of experience one needed to level up, got rid of almost all the non-instance elites, and improved the quality of a lot of quest loot (expect a post on that soon). But the second thing is something that all of you can do, and what I did. Just plan ahead.

Do you ever see those ads for leveling guides? Well, I'm going to give to you for free what they'd charge you $10 for. Plan your levels out. This can be as detailed or as vague as you want. An example:

Dustwallow Marsh - 37-41
Hinterlands - 41-42
Feralas -42-43

Yes, it's THAT easy. If you tell yourself "Okay, at this level I'm going to clear Tanaris, and when I'm done I'll start on Searing Gorge" you'll find the levels flying past. Also, don't be afraid to include instances in there. On my server, times are a little tough on the pre-Outland crowd and LFG is usually barren. However, this is where your guild and (hopefully) your friends come in. Try to get yourself into a guild that has a lot of people between 20 and 50, as they're the ones who are going to want to run instances the most. You don't have to stay with them forever, but you'll find that instancing and leveling will be much faster if you don't have to spend hours in lfg or trade spamming things like "LFG SM".

- Trysti

Introductions

2008-06-16T21:52:00.003-04:00

Welcome to The Road To 70 And Beyond.

So, some of you may be wondering just what this is. Well, it's a blog detailing my experiences getting a rogue up to the level cap, raiding, and getting ready for Wrath of the Lich King. While I'm not nearly as qualified or experienced as some of the other rogue bloggers out there, I'm hoping to entertain and educate other new rogues as I make my way through the levels.

That said, just who am I? I'm a "casual" World of Warcraft player. I own two level 70 characters, a hunter and a mage respectively. I play Alliance. I raid Karazhan weekly, occasionally do Gruul's, rarely do Zul'Aman and just got my first taste of Tempest Keep the other night. I am not what you'd call a "hardcore" raider, although I'm a veteran of heroics, having done every instance on heroic mode at least once.

You can have a look at my rogue and how she's progressing at the link below.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Blackhand&n=Trysti

And speaking of links, I have a few set up right to the side. I'll go into a few of them in a little more detail with future posts but for now I'll just say; DO check out Shadowpanther.net and Roguespot.com if you're a new rogue as there's tons and tons of good information/macros/add-ons and what not there.

See you next update.

- Trysti