• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Gitr Knows WoW

Unlike your other World of Warcraft blogs. Quality over quantity, and a terrific community.

  • 5-Man
  • Classes
  • Power-Leveling
  • Quest Help
  • Raids
  • WoW 101
  • WoW Guides

What Are You Doing This Weekend?

November 23, 2007 By Gitr 9 Comments

As most of us are on Thanksgiving holiday this weekend, some of us are away with family, have family over, or are left to our own devices for 4 days of unabated WoW playing. Gitr is up in the Great North in Ohio without so much as a technology fix, aside from dial-up and a chance here and there to check e-mail and moderate comments.

Last night was a fun-filled night of dominoes with his grandparents and wife. Low score FTW! I dominated once again, as I do in everything I do competitively, or I don’t play at all. My wife just reminded me of that time she killed me in Scrabble… yeah, we don’t play that any more. 🙂

Anyone level their toon to 70 or have major plans to do some farming to get an epic mount of some sort?

Filed Under: WoW Tagged With: family, holiday, real-life, RL, Thanksgiving, vacation

Broken Game Dynamic: Mobs Don’t Suffer Spell Interrupts

November 21, 2007 By Gitr 7 Comments

We’ve all been there: you are taking a beating from [insert number and name of mob(s) of choice] and you just need to get one more spell off. It might be a healing spell or that finishing fireball. Doesn’t matter, because it’s not going to happen because of that frustrating game dynamic – spell interrupt. The rest of this read comes down to this: I don’t see a player-to-mob spell interrupt in combat from melee or ranged or spell damage alone. When I get hit, my spell casting is interrupted, but I don’t see that happening to the stuff I whack, shoot, or burn/freeze, do you? Maybe it’s there, but all I see is a casting bar running along at a pretty nice, steady clip with full fury blazing on Gitr, Rapid Fire on Huntr, and more.

I’ve played nearly every class in the game, and the only classes that I didn’t experience a problem with interrupt were my warrior and mere level 24 rogue. Certain classes have talents and trainable skills that allow you to avoid interruption, at least for a certain amount of time, sometimes with a severe cooldown. A 5-30 minute stun ability doesn’t do crap for leveling, now does it?

Why is it that no matter what you’re going up against, outside of PvP, it is not deterred by dozens of slashes with daggers, 50% health-sapping spells, or a steady spell like Mind Flay? It is an unfair advantage that mobs have. Can you imagine how heroic you would be if you could take on 8 mobs at once and then heal yourself as a druid or paladin? What about those times you need to Scare Beast when your pet loses aggro and is about to go down? Heaven forbid you just put up a bubble as a priest and got whacked by something that cleared its entire absorption limit. Good night, fair priest.

It was just yesterday that I came across a perfect time when it would have been nice to have a tit-for-tat interruption. Paladr, my level 47 tankadin was in Feralas going after the 10 Gordunni Shaman when he purposefully aggroed 2 of them and accidentally invited 2 more. What do we have here? Four like-level mobs with 1/2 melee, 1/2 spell damage, healing abilities, and mana equal to me… per mob. Great! Now I have to beat my way through over 8k HP and 8k mana with only a 2k mana pool.

Every time I wanted to stop one of them from healing, I’d use up my 1 minute stun ability because I had to keep Seal of Light up for self-healing. I could leave Seal of Justice up to stun them periodically if it was possible to heal myself – oh yeah – I get interrupted, even with Aura of Concentration up. None of them were dissuaded from casting a heal on each other or themselves despite standing on Consecrated ground and hitting them with an epic mace. Even with Aura of Retribution up they will still cast their spell in 2 seconds flat.

At the least, casters should be able to interrupt mobs with spells to make it a strategy game to use faster spells to interrupt them, no differently than you do in PvP.

That takes us all the way to contemplating why PvE isn’t treated the same as PvP in this game dynamic. I understand not having player collision, but this difference doesn’t make any sense to this gamer. I also get that this would dramatically change the nature of leveling, especially grinding. There are mobs that get ignored more than others because of the certain spells they cast, and others that get targeted, and I daresay over-camped, because of a lack of spells to fight through, especially heals and stuns. Oh, the dreaded mana drain… don’t get me started on that…

What do you say? Is there server-side interruption on mobs and I’m just not seeing it? I don’t see any downsides to having it be a fair exchange of weakness to place that dynamic on NPC casters.

Filed Under: WoW Tagged With: blizzard, devs, dynamic, interrupt

Saying Goodbye to the Battlegrounds and Leveling a PvP ALT

November 20, 2007 By Growl 7 Comments

So – one of my ALT-er-ego’s is a Tauren Shaman. He started life as a 10-19 battlegrounds twink on Thorium Brotherhood (US) way, way back when that server first launched. Back then, his name was “Remember” and he was my first attempt at leveling – or PvPing with a shaman.

Well, a lot of time went by and for much of it, Remember was played little. I managed to get him up to “Grunt” rank in the old PvP ranking system before it was shelved (the equivalent of a Corporal for you Alliance folk) and he had decent gear for a level 19 battleground brat. I enjoyed PvPing with Remember – but was burnt out from getting my main into the officer ranks. As a result, Remember spent more time cooling his heels than tossing out heals.

Ultimately, Remember became one of my support alts – a well geared bank that could gather herbs and brew speed potions for my other characters. In time I finally decided that my other toons had more to benefit from Remember’s alchemy skill growing than I did by having (yet another) semi-twinked level 19 in my stable. So – with a resigned sigh, Remember headed back out to the barrens – hit level 20 in about an hour – and promptly got shelved for several months.

Now – over a year later – enter a new server – and a forced name change.

Remember is now Skychaser on Moon Guard. I rerolled over there a while back and hooked up with a guild full of alting battlegrounds geeks like myself. Having a good time with this new crew, I decided to bring my old potion maker over from Thorium Brotherhood in order to shill pots for my current toons and guildies alike. Eventually – out of a desire to learn more about the Shaman class and to try something new, I leveled Skychaser/Remember to 29 and camped battlegrounds again until I snagged my usual belt, boots and baubles from Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch. I enjoyed pvping with the shaman at 29 – but the road had been hard. Worse, in PvE, I always felt that soloing with the big white Tauren had proven tedious and awkward. Skychaser ended up dead a lot and I spent a lot of time reading forums and trying to understand why this once formidable class was so hard for me to wrap my head around.

Finding few answers other than the angst over on the official Shaman forums about how massively the class had been nerfed – I finally turned to instances and grouping. Now – by nature – I’m a solo player. I love instances and love raiding – but rarely have time or patience to endure the endless waiting for pug groups to form, or the disastrous outcomes that most pugs seem to enable. The new guild had good people in it though and I managed to hook Sky’ up to various low level runs through several instances. What I learned while doing this, was that while I felt like four-thumbed failure in solo-PvE and PvP, I felt like a small gawd in group play.

Running Skychaser through instances was a revelation in rediscovering the strength of hybrid classes in group play. He could tank, he could dps, he could heal and cleanse. Groups that were having problems with an instance immediately seem to find a greater deal of success with the shaman in tow. His totems provided low cost healing and mana – gave supportive buffs or purged negative spell effects. When things went pear-shaped his ability to rez or (better yet) self-rez after a wipe extended his value in groups from “spare war-stomp with h33ls” to “invaluable multi-function tool.”

Intrigued with the class – I broke out of the 20-29 bracket and discovered Windfury. While still suffering from a past nerf, quintessential Shaman melee trait was the fuel I needed to propel Skychaser through the long and still somewhat awkward climb through the 30’s. Sky’ was still having to work for his levels – but the additional melee prowess was noticeable and appreciated. Somewhere after level 35 though – and finally being able to advance his capped alchemy skill – Sky’ stalled and his progress lagged. Quests in the 30’s seemed to be harder to find – the task of leveling easier – but still arduous for the enhancement Shammy. I started to wonder if he was doomed to be a cast-off potion maker forever.

Then 2.3 hit.

With higher experience for kills and quests as well as easier leveling, post 2.3 Azeroth is likely to become the saving grace of stalled alts everywhere. In an afternoon of questing in STV, Skychaser saw level 36 come and go in a blink. Later in the same week, questing in Desolace and a run through Scarlet Monestary’s Library and Armory wings brought 37 and 38 in rapid succession. A few odd clean up quests and a daily battleground quest or two and suddenly 39 was attained. Shocked with how fast the last 4 levels had come I took time at 39 to dive back into Arathi Basin. Again – Skychaser proved a revelation in the battlegrounds. A well geared 39 – the vigor and force of his windfury crits – the speed of his improved ghost wolf – and the versatility of his heals, totems, and purge ability put Sky at the top of charts in game after game. In one long evening of back to back play – he collected over 50 tokens and became the focus fire target of every alliance group that he crossed paths with.

Last night, with my 30-39 battlegrounds aspirations complete, I left Arathi Basin and headed off to Duskwallow Marsh. Starting two bars into 39 – I muddled my way around from quest giver to quest giver in the refreshed zone. I took my time to discover these new adventures and to farm herbs. Before I realized it, I had cleared out the first half of my quests in the zone and rather unexpectedy watched Skychaser disappear in a flourish of golden light as he dinged 40.

Holy cats that was fast.

A quick trip back to Thunderbluff allowed Sky’ to train. Packing stormstrike now – and an amazing chain-heal ability, the one time potions alt is now quickly becoming a favored main. I still have a lot of work to do with this toon, after all, there is a mount to buy, rep to gain and 30 more levels to discover. But I’m excited about leveling him, confident I can get him to outlands, and eager to see the world through his eyes while in the game.

I can safely that the leveling changes of 2.3 are going to provide a new lease on life for stalled alts. For all the raiding guilds trying to replace lost healers and tanks by slowly leveling alts on the side – they now have hope of actually bringing some of these toons into play in reasonable time. It’s going to be easier to move from bracket to bracket in the PvP arena – perhaps creating a bit more life in some of the less played battlegrounds. All in all – I have to rate the leveling change in 2.3 as my mvp – (most valuable patch.) Time for many gamers is sparse and the ability to fill what hours we *do* have with achievable and entertaining goals is by far the best bang for the buck I can hope for.

Filed Under: WoW Tagged With: 2.3, Arathi Basin, Battlegrounds, Instances, Power-Leveling, PvP, shaman, Twinks

Exalted with Arathi Basin – Only 419 Games to Go…

November 19, 2007 By Growl 11 Comments

So on Monday, Growl likes to troll the official forums and see what the BLUES have to say about things. One little bit of rantage that I came across had to do with the Arathi Basin battleground and just *how* long it would take to reach exalted.

The post started out with a fairly distraught fellow that had come to the conclusion that to reach exalted status with AB he needed to play something like 23,800 games – which worked out (assuming around 30 minutes a game) to the disproportionately large time hack of 58 days of played time in Arathi Basin alone.

Needless to say my jaw dropped. 58 days of /played – in AB? That…that’s just insane…it’s worse than insane – it’s criminal! Who could *stand* to play that much Arathi Basin? Great Spirit-In-The-Sky think of the children!!!

Before I could work myself up into a truly indignant rage, I remembered that some good friends had hit exalted back under the old PvP system. They seemed okay. No twitches or night terrors about losing the Lumber Mill or waking up screaming that the Farm is getting ninja’d. A couple even had families. How could this number be right?

Intrigued, I combed through a few more pages of the post until I caught on to a friendly fellow that paid closer attention to grade-school math.

The *real* break down to hitting exalted in AB looks like this:

  • Neutral to Friendly — 30 Games
  • Friendly to Honored — 60 Games
  • Honored to Revered — 120 Games
  • Revered to Exalted — 210 games

That’s a grand total of 420 games. Now the numbers assume 100 rep points per turn-in and don’t include fun things like AB Honor Weekends or bonus rep earned from quests so the actual number is likely to ball park a bit lower. That said, it’s still an accomplishment.

With this in mind, has the addition of the new “Conquerer” title lead any of you to try and hit exalted with all three of the original battlegrounds? Have you already done it? Send us a screenshot of your toon and let us know what the grind was like!

Filed Under: WoW

Patch 2.3 Opens New Doors for Level 70 Raiders and Non-Raiders.

November 19, 2007 By Runnik 29 Comments

Most people know how badges work, and if you didn’t here’s a quick “readers digest” version on what they are and what they’re used for.

Ever since the release of the Burning Crusade, level 70s have been able to run heroic instances in Outlands (if of course they’re revered or higher with the instance’s faction.) In these heroic instances 5 level 70 players are given the opportunity to try their skills for upgraded armor and badges. Every boss in heroic instances drops only level 70 gear (the final boss dropping one epic item and a primal nether) and Badges of Justice, which are used to purchase epic items (and a primal nether for 10 badges) from an NPC in Shattrath’s Terrace of Light named G’eras.

Outlands gear at 70 is *nice*, but pretty much pales to the drops from Karazhan. Also, it’s not easy to get enough badges required to get all of the items you could use from G’eras when all you would get was 3 badges in all heroic instances except for heroic Mechanar (in which case you got 5).

Now though, Blizzard has made it easier to get that epic gear that G’eras has to offer by allowing badges to drop from all bosses in Karazhan and the newly opened Zul’Aman (some bosses drop more than one badge that can be picked up by every player in the raid). But wait! That’s not all! Blizzard also introduced new badge loot that rivals and at times beats out gear from Karazhan and Zul’Aman. Now that raiders can get badges from these two 10-mans it won’t be unheard of for each player to receive 20+ badges per week, without stepping a foot into a heroic instance at all. With this new way to receive loads of badges Blizzard decided to give the new gear a very high price tag compared to the previous epics. The cheapest items (which are Librams, Idols and Totems) are 20 badges and the gear gets more and more expensive capping out at 75 badges for the best items.

Although most raiders benefited from badge system thus far, Blizzard didn’t forget to help the non-raiders out as well. Remember those heroic instances? Well, with Patch 2.3’s release it became possible for players to run heroics with only an honored reputation for that particular faction. All in all it’s a win-win for raiders and non-raiders alike. I know for non-raiders the easiest way to get epics is battlegrounds (Season 1 arena gear can now be purchased with honor points!) and arena teams, but especially for players such as Moonkin druids (who aren’t usually considered for raids) this new badge system benefits them the most (a lot of the new leather gear for example is balance druid gear). Either way, if you raid or if you enjoy the freedom to actually go out weekend nights, Patch 2.3 has something for you.

Filed Under: WoW Tagged With: badges, G'heras, heroic, Karazhan, Patch 2.3, world of warcraft, wow

Level 10 Tauren Druid Questline Walkthrough

November 18, 2007 By Gitr 20 Comments

One of the most exciting times for a new druid is the level 10 questline to get the ability to transform in to Bear Form. Until then, druids are quite squishy for someone who has the ability to be a tank in the biggest baddest instances around. Personally, I was more than ready for level 10 to come around when I finally dinged in Mulgore.

[Read more…] about Level 10 Tauren Druid Questline Walkthrough

Filed Under: Class Guides, WoW Tagged With: bear form, druid, great bear spirit, level 10, moonglade, questline, runetotem, tauren, walthrough

  • « Go to Previous Page
  • Go to page 1
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Go to page 10
  • Go to page 11
  • Go to page 12
  • Go to page 13
  • Go to page 14
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Go to page 134
  • Go to Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

Archives

Comments, Discussions…

  • chuntzu on Grinding for rep: Darnassus
  • Vytas on Level 10 Blood Elf Warlock Questline Walkthrough
  • Dillanger on Sir, May I See Your Receipt?
  • emm on DPS Holy Priest Build Is Amazing
  • Kheloth on Level 12 Blood Elf Paladin Quest Walkthrough
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Link List Page

Site Hosted by WP Steward

Copyright © 2025