Tuesday, August 21, 2007

69 and Countdown to 70!


A Summary Post.


I've been a bit busy on the Safari Hunts in Nagrand and all the other quests so in between I've leveled from 67 to 69 and with 75% more XP to go to 70. Its too bad I've finally used up all my usual rest bonus as I often had over 100-150% rest bonus and made leveling much faster.

A Ramparts PUG.
Bad news first! Answered a call to tank a weekend PUG for a group that need a tank for Ramparts Me (Protec Paladin) a Mage, Warlock, Priest and a Rogue. The Rogue loved to sneak up and start fights before anyone was ready and often when I was drinking for mana. The Priest was getting mad because I was AoEing some of the Mobs and and kept going "OMG we gona die Noo he's consecrating" and I'm having to keep aggro from the Rogue and everyone else. A blue sword dropped, everyone passed on it except the Warlock which got the sword and someone cried ninja on the Warlock, the priest immediately quit over it being mad and everyone else quit the group over the ninja thing. So I was like What the Hell!


I can tell I also need more tanking practice to refine my skill in a Instance which comes with lots of practice, been more focusing on leveling to 70 primarily. Soloing I'm fine and damn good at it. I always solo everything and can solo to no end and pick fight with Elites and win. But in a group setting as a Paladin there is a lot of situational dynamics that I'm not all too good at yet. If I take things slow in such cases I'm fine. What's tough is for me I find is this: Managing my mana to generate and keep threat and tanking mob while watching and managing my Judgement & Blessing cool down, Seal cooldown, Holy Shield and its cool down, while eyeing my health. All while tanking mob and having to watch out for anything strange that happens like loosing agro or stray mob. Barely have time to even eye what's happening in Combat log as things happen. Tanking is Fun, but it aren't easy. Its damn Multi-tasking as a tank and as a Paladin to me its even more Multi-tasking with our Seals and cooldowns. Will get better in time with practice.

Nagrand
Its a lot of fun to questing in this zone. So far I can tell only have 3 group quest remaining unless they have a chain quest to them and maybe another quest in the Blood Ring which was fun first time there.

The Nesingwary Safari quests were fun all Hunter Quests involving hunting wild beasts all over the zones and a Elite quest on each at the end. AoE all those when I could to speed up those quests except the large woolly beasts. All the Elites you really need a group for as they have lots of HP and do hit very hard. All quests were fun and lasted a while. Often I just explored the zones (love to do) while doing those quests to find other things of interests and herb farmed all the way. Lots of Felweed, Dreaming Glory picked up.

Rest of Quests from the Horde camp and Elemental Throne involve storming camps, downing, freeing captives in camps, killing raiders in camps, swimming underwater to collect quest items, storming camps and burning down camps, killing bosses in a camp, collecting X number of Y from a mob. Rest was killing elites at end of chain quests. Storming a Mountain camp to kill a King Ogres (fun). Bombing Missions in PVP zone. Regaining control of PVP town (Halaa). Other things I did in between all those was indiscriminate killing of any random mob or elite if I could to find out what would drop and see what loot they had. Picked fights with Elites that had more HP than I think I could win, was still fun to test skill limits. Also Stormed every cave I came across usually was a Orge infested cave of some kind. All in all was all fun!

Made 2 new friends on quests a Hunter and a Warlock while storming a western zone Ogre camp to kill the King Ogres. They were good to group with. A Stonescale Potion I had came in handy tanking that ogre as our group completed all the quest including a round in the Blood Ring. A Devine Shield Bandage macro came in handy here.

Deadly Mobs!
Most mobs in Nagrand are pretty much ok to fight. Only mob I found really rough to fight and not the usual enemy caster like usual is the water elemental in the lake around Halaa. Can't remember their names but they drop a poison of some kind on you constantly that's really tough on your health. I had to constantly cleanse all the time to fight those things for quest items worst mobs I fought here in zone or for a while also. Have to watch out for those mobs.

Other Stuff
Picked up lots of Felweed/Motes of Life/Fel Lotus all together & Dreaming glory all over the zone where ever I spotted them. Picked up a nice Alchemy Potion in Halaa with my reward token, Elixir of Ironskin nice potion. Figured out where Primals now come from, motes of whatever elements you collect in batched of ten and transform to a Primal of that element. So not I got lots of Primals from all the motes I collected. Some the elemental mobs drop their corresponding mote also and figured out which one does which. So lots of motes and Primals in the bank, so much I had to send to one of my alts with a empty bank reserve. I feel like I'm in the big time now with primals. Just no primal fire yet.

Often collected lots of green gear, got a few blue drops however most the time looking at the green gear some not that great in stats often resist gear of some kind dropping from mobs or with spirit stats and so just straight vendor all those. I can sometime see what some gear is hard to find from things sold straight to vendor. Collected drops on lots of nice green weapons and AH all those. So far i've over 1100g on Galo now as reserve so that fix my gold problem for getting the flying mount at 70. Having a damn hard time finding someone to make me a Thorium Shield Spike on this server and been trying for days to no end for my shield.

Life on a young server needless to say selling for Alchemy is not all that great either and its been taking a lot of work. As a Alchemist I haven't made high end potions in some time, I do find some markets in low to mid level areas and tap those for side change. One of the things I've been working on on a young server is slowly average leveling out and raising the prices of certain potions to what my experience have shown me in over the thousands of potions I've made to a good average price. Doing it by slowly putting stuff on AH at what I know is fine and if it does not sell, rinse and repeat it over and over as the cost to list it is not that great. I can soak up the minor loss in order to raise the server prices of certain goods.

With just a few group quests left in Nagrand I headed back to work on some green quests in my log I had back in Terokkar Forest. Collecting lots of Signets and other rep items and saving them up for turning in for Scryer reps. Trying to get the reps from item turn in first. Now Honored with Mag'har, no reason really to go beyond that as nothing to gain for reps so saving rep items to use for Consortium reps though nothing to gain from them either. Not a single thing to gain from doing Consortium rep grind. However will do them for the fun and see what becomes for it. As a Alchemist don't seem like a lot of faction that friendly to me for reps. So far I've avoided directly doing most of the reps for Shattrath and others until I can turn in the items for free reps first then do the quests later to make it a bit easier

Trash Collection
Funny thing about trash, I see a lot of people leave stuff and only pick up white or better item. I'm always on auto loot to make picking up thing efficient. If my bag gets full or when I look as I often do will know bag inventory state. However always seem to find if grinding on a specific mob a while a lot of that trash item adds up to a whole bunch of gold when turn in to vendor. All that gold add up to pay for my repair bill. Good money in Trash Collection.

4 comments:

Gwaendar said...

Keep that trash indeed, trust me, repairing plate from tanking adds up, not to mention you'll want to have 900g ready to get your normal flyer as soon as you ding.

For what it's worth, I hired a level 70 lock for the last level, had those 800k exp done questing in Netherstorm in 7 hours healing him while he just pointed his finger at stuff and muttered "die!".

Anonymous said...

A Ramparts PUG.

I guess the priest does not know that a tankadin is best when AOE’ing? /shrugs

As for your tanking skills, continue to run instances. You will better understand what you need to do that fits your playstyle.

However I would suggest to mark your targets and give a kill order (ie kill skull first, then X, etc). This will keep the aggro on you. If you were, then the rogue was not following the kill order.

Ardent Defender said...

I guess when i hit 70 yes i'll be getting the flying mount, just don't know which one yet just never though about which mount. But the gold is in the bank. Getting all those level 70 training is also going to break the bank i would imagine as i know it will be a few.

Will be putting some time into running instances to up my tanking skill and playstyle also. At least I won't have to worry about leveling anymore so i can devote some focus time to that.

Ardent Defender said...

Thanks for the input also.