Screenshot Sunday: Elekktrofied

So, I've been making a huge push to get my shaman to level 70 before patch 2.4 hits. This week's screenshot is from Blade's Edge earlier in the week, back when he was 68. I hit 70 yesterday at 10 days, 3.5 hours, which I figure isn't so bad since a) I wasn't trying to keep a pace, b) I have a tendency to stick him in an in and wander off without logging, and c) a fair bit of his Azeroth leveling happened before the leveling changes in patch 2.3.

The best part about leveling my shaman, in addition to the sheer fun of whacking things in the face and having a short-timer interrupt, has been leveling on rested XP from 61-70. That just rocks.

I've also had a great time leveling enhancement, and will probably keep the spec as I finish out most of the early quests -- I have a tons more to do in Netherstorm, and I haven't even touched Shadowmoon Valley. But the other big push this weekend has been to get my Kara key. Sure, they may be unnecessary in just a few short days, but in the meantime, our Monday newbie Karazhan raid needs a second healer, so I volunteered my undergeared self to the task.

Will I survive? More importantly: will my raid survive? I'll let you know.

Mining Woes, or: No, Seriously, Can I Be Done With Azeroth Now?

Breaking up with Azeroth is hard to do, especially if you're a miner.

Cognizant of the fact that faster XP gains from old-world questing would give me fewer chances to skill up, I leveled Hooloovoo as a mining fiend, cutting down whole swaths of mobs just to be able to set my pick against one more mithril vein. I was diligent from day one, super diligent even, but to little avail: I still hit level 58 with only 267 mining skill.

Now, for those of you who don't spend your days deep within the bowels of the earth hunting precious gems and minerals, here's a quick primer on leveling mining so that you can mine in Outlands. Once you outlevel mithril (the nodes will go green at 225 and gray at 275), the majority of your skill points will come from dark iron and truesilver deposits (which require 230 mining and go yellow at 255 skill), and after that, from thorium. You can start mining thorium ore at 245 skill (the small veins will turn yellow at 270), but you can't mine rich thorium veins until you reach 275.

Now, the reason I'm bothering with all the numbers has to do with one simple yet aggravating fact: you cannot mine anything in Outlands until you have 300 mining skill. This generally means that after hitting 58, you're going to spend at least an hour or two running around in circles grinding up your mining skill.

My choice of location for eking out those last 30-40 points is the Burning Steppes, and here's why. First off, it's a very short flight from Stormwind, so it's easy for me to hop a portal in Shattrath and head out there. Second, all the mithril nodes in BS have a chance of spawning truesilver or dark iron, both of which stay yellow for longer as you're leveling. Finally, it's very easy to get around: there are almost no elite mobs to deal with, the terrain is conducive to making nice easy circles around the zone, and these days (as everyone besides miners leaves Azeroth at 58) it's pretty empty, so there's little ganking or competition to worry about. It took me about an hour and forty-five minutes to level my mining from 267 to 295 skill.

At 295 I was able to pack my stuff and hearth out thanks to [Enchant Gloves: Advanced Mining]. I highly recommend this enchant: buy yourself a pair of trash or white gloves and spend the three vision dust and truesilver, and enjoy the bonus 5 points to your mining skill. If you also happen to be a goblin engineer, you can really save yourself some time by wearing both the glove enchant and your trusty [Goblin Mining Helmet]. If you keep these on you throughout the leveling process, you should be able to mine nodes that are usually inaccessible to people at the "normal" level for a given zone (like the thorium veins in Un'goro), which means not only will you get to head to Outlands at a lower skill level, but you'll also reach that skill level faster than someone without the helmet/enchant.

And that's all the advice I have to share on mining. If you've got a good tip or a favorite spot for leveling mining skill, leave me a note in the comments. And for all you budding miners out there: good luck, godspeed, and above all... don't delve too deep.

Screenshot Sunday: Goodbye to All That

Little Hooloovoo took his leave of Azeroth last night. Having finally dinged 58 on my shaman, it was time to turn in a last few quests and head back to Shattrath.

I'd been making a real push for 58 lately because two of my guild's more prolific jewelcrafters have all but quit the game, causing the AH jewel market to be temporarily thrown into chaos
a few weeks back and (more importantly) leaving Firkin without a lazy in-raid option for getting Veiled Noble Topazes. And trust me when I say this: Firkin goes through those things like candy.

And so began my stint of alting on Hooloovoo, a bright-eyed and not so bushy-tailed super-intelligent shade of blue. He's my first real melee class, and I have to hand it to shamans: they are incredibly fun characters to level. It's just the right balance of pure whack-things-with-a-stick dps with a dash of dps caster and some mana-efficient healing. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with him besides jewelcrafting, but he's been surprisingly entertaining to level so far.

And as for Azeroth? It's gotten a lot more tolerable with all the leveling changes, but I'm still glad to be heading back to Outlands. There's something about all those now-useless factions ticking away as I turn in quests to the Argent Dawn that just makes me grit my teeth every time.

AOE Farming On Your Mage: The Lazer Chicken Method

Have you ever been questing along when all of a sudden a frost mage comes around the corner on his mount, aggros a dozen mobs, freezes them in place, and then AOEs them all to death?

If so, you've witnessed AOE farming, one of the more unique tactics used by mages for leveling or grinding.

AOE farming has never really clicked with me (and with the buffs to quest XP in 2.3, using it to level seems counterintuitive), but there are many people who swear by it. You can even go on Wowwiki and find a list of good locations for AOE grinding by level, if you're looking for the perfect spot to farm.

On the other hand, maybe you'd really like some details on how to get started. If so, friendly boomkin (and sometime mage) Delos of Lazer Chicken has the goods on the best talent points, gear, and strategies in his guide to AOE farming as a mage.

A lot of great points are covered, including the slightly tricky detail of transitioning from gathering up mobs while mounted to dismounting and freezing them in place. Says Delos:

When I have them reasonably tight together, I run through the center of them once more and simultaneously jump (on my mount) and cast Frost Nova. This is an important step because it does three things. One, the mobs move tighter together because they are mindlessly moving inwards towards you. Two, you frost nova them in place when they are in this close bunching. Three, because you jump you make it so that you are out of rage of their melee, at least by a couple of yards and can begin your Blizzard immediately.

If you're looking to try out AOE farming, I can't think of a better place to start than this post.

Quest Discoveries

My shaman's the fourth character I've gotten past level 30 -- fifth if you count the paladin I "borrowed" from The Boy, really -- so I've spent a lot of time in Azeroth by now. One of the things I've really been enjoying about post-2.3 leveling is the fact that quest givers now show up as yellow exclamation points on your minimap, which means that here and there, I find a few cool Easter egg quests I've never done before because I never knew they were there.

The screenshot above is me standing underneath the Thandol Span, the bridge that connects Arathi Highlands to the Wetlands. (Yes, water walking is fun, what can I say?) If you take a look at the piece of bridge directly behind my shaman, you'll see that it's broken on both ends, completely unconnected to the rest of the structure. Sitting in a small alcove in that section of bridge is this fellow, Foggy MacKreel:


Getting to him was a pain in the space-goat tail. There's a section of bridge on the Arathi side that has a broken-off overhang from which you can just barely make the leap. I had a guildie tell me she did it just fine with no speed increase, but even with ghost wolf on, it took me three tries. (If you screw up like I did, swim under the bridge and east a few more yards to climb back up on the northern bank.)

To be honest, MacKreel is singularly unconcerned about his placement as Least Accessible NPC in Azeroth.* What he is concerned about is his massive hangover, and how he's going to get his shipment of moonshine to Southshore in time. Except, wonder of wonders, some hapless adventurer just happened to hop over to his section of the Span.

You've got 15 minutes to get MacKreel's Moonshine to Southshore, and there's no way to jump back where you came from, so it's either swim or hearth from there.

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*If you have an alternate contender for this title, please leave me a note in the comments!

Call of Air

Battling a cold this week (a parting gift from The Boy before his business trip to San Francisco), so I've been going through lots of tissues, leveling up my shaman, and generally feeling vaguely miserable and sorry for myself. I'm not a very stoic person about being sick, but WoW at least makes for a decent distraction.

I don't know how I'll spec him at 70, but my shaman is currently enhancement for leveling and has been a lot of fun to play so far. Just yesterday I completed Call of Air, the level 30 quest to get an air totem (and with it, arguments over whether groups should get Windfury or Grace of Air). As a bonus, the quest giver also gives you a cool buff that lets you fly down from the top of the Exodar to the bottom (plus an hour of increased attack speed).

I'm really enjoying the new buffs to leveling; it feels like we have a lot more choices to make about where we go and what we do in Azeroth, without actually sacrificing XP efficiency.

Tales of a Noob Hunter

So, my hunter finally hit level 70.

It's a momentous occasion not just because it means I've crossed into the realm of people with three or more level-capped characters, but also because my hunter was the very first character I rolled in WoW.

We were in a small guild on Stormreaver at the time, and while the people were nice, there just weren't enough of them on at a time for it to have any real atmosphere. So a few weeks before my last round of college finals, at level 46, I quit. The game had lost its luster, and I couldn't see myself coming back. (Little did I know I'd be rolling a mage within four months, but that's a story for another day.)

I took my hunter out of storage about year ago, bought him a character transfer and stuck him in my current guild. Examining his gear, I realized I'd had no idea what I was doing. He was wearing green "of the Gorilla" shoulderpads, and while I'd had some concept that agility was a good stat, I seem not to have grasped that spirit gear was not worth my time. My pet was Ol' Smokey, a decent choice at the time, but it took me two levels of wondering why he couldn't hold aggro before I realized what was wrong.

I'd quit my hunter before the very first hunter class review, back when there was no pet training, and pet attack speeds hadn't been normalized. The talk of the day was why no one wanted hunters in "end game" (read: Stratholme) groups, and justifying our existence vis-à-vis the Perfect Zone of Ultimate Safety. So when I started playing him again nearly two years later, I wasn't just out of practice. I was behind the times. I hauled my bear in to see one of these newfangled "pet trainers," and wondered how much more noobish I could be.

I came into Outlands wearing a level 37 cape, ZF blues, and some extra pieces of Giantstalker's that were sitting in the guild bank.

I've killed my pet over and over, often unintentionally.

I was all the way to the Bone Wastes before I realized I'd never trained bows.

At times, meleeing my way out of combat because I'd run out of ammo (. . . again), the only thing that kept me going was stubborn completionism, but in the past three or four levels, the class has really grown on me. Not enough that I'm ready to volunteer to pull Shattered Halls just yet, but enough that I feel... well, competent as a hunter.

And that's definitely a first.

Post-Patch Planning

Real life and WoW have conspired against blogging in the past 48 hours, but that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about you all. I've also been thinking about what I'm going to do first once patch 2.3 hits. I'm sure I'm not the only one compiling a list, but here's mine:

Update my mods.
Let's face it: even with the Ace Updater, mod tweaking could take up most of Tuesday night.

Respec my mage from arcane to fire.
Arcane's been fun, but the nerfs to the Lightning Capacitor and the Mystic Skyfire Diamond have put at least a temporary nail in the coffin on its viability for PvE raiding. It looks like we may see significant mage changes down the road, but for now, I'm looking to scrounge up 146 spell hit rating by a combination of regemming my current gear and swapping out some of my current pieces for +hit gear I've kept in my bank.

Buy some new gear with Badges of Justice.
I'll need 60 to purchase a Voodoo-woven Belt, which should help with the spell hit.

Buy my shadow priest her heroic keys.
She's made a lot of trips to Karazhan and even to SSC, but getting revered with all the factions was just too much of a time sink. I will have to remember to actually go buy the keys themselves, though. Thankfully they're cheap.

Go talk to The Rokk in Lower City and start the cooking daily quests.
Rogues are really going to need the Spicy Hot Talbuk recipe, which gives 20 hit rating, and hunters will be all over the new pet food Kibler's Bits. Skullfish Soup isn't bad either, and Stormchops will finally give us a use for Lightning Eels.

Take my shaman to Dustwallow Marsh.
With a bunch of new quests in the zone, I'll want to pick up the flight point at Mudsprocket, then head out to Tabetha's once-remote shack. All the XP changes should make leveling him much faster, and the new content out there looks fun.

Go fishing.
Crates and trunks you fish up in 2.3 will have a chance to contain a Weather-Beaten Journal, which will let us track fishing nodes on the minimap.

Head out to Zul'Aman.
My 25-man raid is still struggling to take down Vashj, but the 10-man Karazhan raid I ran back in the spring is reforming for our usual Saturday runs. The only question now is whether we'll try and squeeze a second day in to take advantage of ZA's 3.5 day reset. I'll also need to remember to stop and talk to Budd Nedreck outside the instance to get the quest for my Tattered Hexcloth Sack. (Free 20-slot bag? Yes and thank you.)

So there you have it: a compulsive raider and altoholic's to-do list. But why stop there when I can survey the GMW readers?

What's on your list of things to do as soon as the patch hits?

Spec For Success - Mage Leveling Builds

Patch 2.3 is more than just Zul'Aman, easier to acquire heroic keys, ret pally buffs, or the disappearance of the hunter dead zone. It's a chance to take advantage of all the Azerothian leveling changes by breaking out that sporadically-played alt and finally making the push to 58. But wait! Before you drop everything and head to Dustwallow Marsh, have you looked at your talents lately? Did you know what you were doing when you put that spec together, or were you just filling in points haphazardly? Now's the perfect time for a tune-up, so if you've got a mage alt in the wings, let's talk pre-Outlands talent trees.

Keep reading for my rationale on what talents to take when for each spec, or just use the links below to hop straight to a talent calculator for my recommendations for arcane, arcane/fire, fire, or frost leveling specs.



Arcane

Ten points in arcane has long been a favorite start for fire and arcane builds alike, but it's only since the Before the Storm patch that arcane has become more than just a support tree. You can actually put together a really solid leveling build of arcane talents, but after 45 points, I strongly recommend you take a look at expanding into the fire tree. Here are my thoughts:

Your first five points should go into Improved Arcane Missiles, and your second five into Arcane Concentration for clearcasting. From there, pick up 2/2 Magic Attunement (and remember to keep Dampen Magic up while you're soloing) and 3/3 Arcane Impact, which will give you enough points to fill out 3/3 Arcane Meditation (after patch 2.3, this will give 30% mana regeneration in combat instead of just 15%). Put two points in Improved Counterspell, and you'll have opened up Presence of Mind. Snag it (and start using it for insta-fireballs), and you should now have your talents set through level 30.

If you're continuing straight down the arcane tree, your next stop is to max out Arcane Mind for a 15% intellect increase. Put your next three points into Arcane Instability, then one point into Arcane Potency, which lets you take Arcane Power. At this point you're level 40 with a lot of great talents at hand, but the very first thing you should be dumping points into is 3/3 Empowered Arcane Missiles — this talent is critical to real arcane dps, so take it first, and then stick your two points into Spell Power. From there you can put 4/5 into Mind Mastery, pick up Slow, and then hop back up to finish the 5/5.

You're now level 51, and you've got some choices to make. Find yourself fighting mobs a good bit higher level than you? The first tier talent Arcane Focus can increase your +hit with spells by up to 10%, but in my mind, it has marginal returns for leveling mages after 3/5 points due to the nature of the spell hit mechanic. Grouping more often, and finding yourself with uncomfortable amounts of aggro? 2/2 Arcane Subtlety will reduce your arcane spells' threat by a whopping 40%. If it were up to me though, I'd stick my last seven points into the fire tree if I hadn't gone arcane/fire already. 5/5 Improved Fireball followed by Ignite will increase your flexibility, and get you that much closer to the dreaded Arcane Power-POM-Pyroblast.



Arcane/Fire

Although I discuss dropping a few points into fire at the end of the pure arcane build, this build is aimed more at the mage who wants the mana regen benefits of arcane while casting a lot of fire spells. It's a solid combo for steady, efficient leveling, although in my mind there's a real advantage getting deep into a tree early on. Here's how it looks:

Put your first ten points into Improved Arcane Missiles and Arcane Concentration. Every time clearcasting procs, you should use it as an excuse to cast AM. Follow that up with five points in Improved Fireball and five points in Ignite, then swap back to arcane to pick up 2/2 Magic Attunement (again, keep Dampen Magic up while you're soloing), 3/3 Arcane Impact, 3/3 Arcane Meditation, and 2/2 Improved Counterspell. You're now specced through level 30, and your next two points will give you a powerful combo: Presence of Mind and Pyroblast. Use them together and use them often, but don't wait until your target is almost dead to use them -- most of the power of Pyroblast is in its DOT, after all.

You're now done with arcane and can go back to the fire tree. At this point I recommend increasing your range with 2/2 Flame Throwing, followed by 2/2 Incinerate and 3/3 Master of Elements. If you're experiencing a lot of pushbacks, you could take Burning Soul, but since you already have un-interruptable Improved Arcane Missiles, I suggest trying to change your playstyle instead of your build. Next, 2/3 Improved Scorch will open up Blast Wave, which is an awesome AOE talent. Drop your next three points into Critical Mass, and then finish out that last point in Scorch. Three points in Fire Power will take you to level 58, and from there it's on to Outlands.



Fire

Fire builds are all about raw damage — when you're playing a fire mage right, you should be able to kill your target in two or three shots, preferably before it even reaches you. The main challenge to doing this successfully in Azeroth is the lack of real +damage gear. (Fire scales extremely well with +dmg, which is part of why 10/48/3 is such a well-liked PvE spec.) That plus the fact that most pre-Outlands play is now soloing is why I tend to think frost is the strongest leveling build at the moment, but that doesn't mean fire can't be for you. If you don't mind drinking or dying a bit more often and enjoy lighting the furry creatures of the forest on fire, this spec can dish out a ton of damage and be a lot of fun to play. Here's how I'd build a fire mage:

Take 5/5 Improved Fireball and 5/5 Ignite, then snag an extra 6 yards of casting range with 2/2 Flame Throwing. Put your next two points into Incinerate, then pick up 2/2 Burning Soul to reduce pushbacks for when you can't quite kill a mob before it's beating you in the face. Improved Scorch and Master of Elements are the next talents to consider, and the order in which you take them is somewhat playstyle-dependent. Imp Scorch gives a lot of value for very little mana, but stacking scorch debuffs just isn't practical while soloing same-level regular mobs (it takes too long; they die too quickly). So it's a nice talent to have, but I'd put my first three points here into Master of Elements, then one point into Imp Scorch for now. This opens up Critical Mass at level 30.

Once you've taken 3/3 Critical Mass, I'd hop one more tier up and pick up Pyroblast so that you can take Blastwave next. (Yes, we could've taken Pyroblast earlier in this build, but it's a long, slow, mana inefficient spell that doesn't really shine while leveling unless you have Presence of Mind.) At this point you have two new talents open: Fire Power and Blazing Speed. Blazing Speed is fun, and a great PvP talent, but in my mind it's a distraction from the awesome dps talents we're working our way down towards. (Plus, you didn't roll a fire mage for the surviveability anyway, did you?) So take 5/5 Fire Power instead, and then pick up Combustion at level 40. From there I'd grab 3/3 Pyromaniac and put a first point into Molten Fury, which opens up the talent we've been working our way down to: Empowered Fireball. Max it out, and you can then pick up Dragon's Breath.

Finish up the bottom of the fire tree by putting your 42nd point into 2/2 Molten Fury, and now it's time to make some choices. Find yourself drinking a lot and/or fighting mobs a good bit higher level than you? You could hop over to the frost tree and put three points in Elemental Precision, an excellent talent that will increase your +hit with fire and frost spells by 3%, and reduce their mana cost by the same amount. Think you'd like a stun talent like the shadow priest's Blackout? 5/5 Impact is for you. Still want to play with Blazing Speed? Now's the time to pick it up.



Arcane/Frost

If you ask me (and you are reading my blog, after all), arcane/frost is a silly leveling spec. Frost is mana efficient enough on its own, so why go dumping ten points outside the tree? I'm told some people do it so that they can use AM on clearcasts, but the occasional free arcane missles just doesn't seem worth the cost to me. If you're determined to try it out, go ahead and put ten points into Imp Arcane Missles and Arcane Concentration, then use my frost spec to work your way down towards Ice Barrier, which you won't get for another ten levels because you decided you really wanted clearcasting, you fool!



Frost

I've never leveled as a frost mage, but when my boyfriend asked how he should spec his mage alt, I had no reservations telling him to go full frost. (He's level 69 now, and will be respeccing to fire at 70.) With Azeroth increasingly becoming a land of solo quest grinds, frost's control, survivability and mana efficiency make it a real winner for pre-Outlands leveling. Some talent guides out there are still focused on AOE grinding, but if you ask me that's 1) boring and 2) going to be much less XP efficient with the increase to quest XP in patch 2.3. So I'd spec a frost mage like this:

Five points in Improved Frostbolt gives you a primary source of dps. Next grab 2/2 Improved Frost Nova, and 5/5 Ice Shards. Three points in Piercing Ice opens up Shatter, and once you put five points in it you'll have a 50% chance to crit any frozen target. It's one of the critical talents in the frost tree, so pick this up as soon as possible. You're specced up to level 20, and have four excellent options to dump points into: the slowing talent Permafrost, the Frost Nova-like proc Frostbite, the mana/threat reduction talent Frost Channeling, and the increased range talent Arctic Reach. You'll want all four of these, but since I have to pick an order, well... take Arctic Reach first, then two points in Permafrost, then 2/3 Frostbite, then 3/3 Frost Channeling. We'll come back to finish off Permafrost and Frostbite, but before we do, at level 40 it's time to pick up the frost mage's favorite friend, Ice Barrier. Take Ice Block (fairly useless for solo grinding), then Ice Barrier. Add your new shield to your bar, and keep it up as much as possible.

Okay, got Ice Barrier going? Good. Hop back up the tree and stick those last two points into Frostbite and Permafrost. You could also pick up Cold Snap at this point, and to be honest, many frost mages seem to like it, but I just can't see a 10 minute cooldown being worth a whole talent point for a leveling mage, so I'd put your next two points in Ice Floes instead. This will open up Empowered Frostbolt; max it out. Level 50 gets a bit lonely grinding out in the Blasted Lands all alone, doesn't it? I thought so, which is why I'm having you put your next point into Summon Water Elemental, the frost mage pet. Aww, isn't he cute? He's on a three minute cooldown, so you can use him as an emergency tank or a damage boost.

We've worked our way down to the bottom of the tree, but there are still valuable talents aplenty in it. Elemental Precision is a good choice for your next three points, and I'd choose Arctic Winds for your final five.

Congratulations, you're 58! Go kill some hellboars.