So I figured since I'm unlikely to play a Worgen in live WoW, I should do it in the beta.
As a hunter, of course.
I named my dog Max, even though he looks nothing like the dog Max I named him after.
Female worgen still play as males. /sigh All that time picking hair for nought.
Oh, my God, the NPC hats, they are awesome! I wants one.
Cake vs. Pie. /snork
Hahaha... bucket of live *wiggling* worms.
I don't particularly like the way the male worgen runs. Hopefully the female will be better.
This is definitely a place you don't skip your quests - you keep losing towns!
10/24/10
Engineering!!
I'm sure this is prettier over on MMO-Champion somewhere, but I transcribed this straight out of the beta today. I missed the first couple skill level requirements.
Note: Tinkers can be discovered while making other things.
Note: Tinkers can be discovered while making other things.
- Authentic Jr. Engineer Goggles (Equip: Makes you appear more gifted and attractive.)
- R19 Threatfinder (Use: Attaches a permanent scope to a bow or gun that increases its ranged hit rating by 88.)
- Volatile Energy Converter (Part)
- Handful of Obsidium Bolts (Part)
- (455) Quickflip Deflection Plates (Tinker: Permanently attaches quickflip deflection plates onto gloves, allowing you to increase your armor by 1500 for 12 sec. Gloves can only be activated once every minute. Attaching teh armor webbing causes the gloves to become soulbound. An Engineering skill of 500 is required to keep the webbing active.)
- (455) Volatile Seaforium Blastpack (Use: Blasts open locked doors and chests that require lockpicking skill of 525 and below.)
- (460) Safety Catch Removal Kit (Use: Removes the safety mechanism from a bow or gun, increasing its ranged haste rating by 88. Using this kit causes the bow or gun to become soulbound.)
- (465) High-Powered Bolt Gun (Tool/Use: Fires several charged bolts at an enemy for 6800 to 10200 damage and briefly interrupts casting. Consumes a Handful of Obsidium Bolts each time it's fired. (2 Min Cooldown))
- (475) De-Weaponized Mechanical Companion (Use: Teaches you how to summon this companion.)
- (475) Personal world Destroyer (Use: Teaches you how to summon this companion.)
- (525) Cardboard Assassin (Permanently attaches a tiny device on your belt, allowing you to create a Cardboard Assassin that enemies will attack. Lasts 15 sec. Can be used once every 5 min. Can only be used on your own belt,a nd doing so will cause it to become soulbound. Requires at least 500 skill in Engineering to use.)
- (525) Deadly Bio-Optic Killshades (BoP, Mail, Head, 1977 Armor, 301 Agility, 512 Stamina, Meta Socket, Cogwheel Socket (2), Socket Bonus 20 Agility, Requires Level 81, Item Level 359, Requires Engineering (525))
- (525) Elementium Dragonling (BoE, Unique-Equipped, Trinket, Blue Socket, Requires level 80, Item Level 333, Requires Engineering (475), Equip: Increases your mastery rating by 212. Use: Activates your Elementium Dragonlin to fight for you for 1 min. (5 Min Cooldown))
- (525) Elementium Toolbox (36 slot engineering bag)
- (525) Finely-Tuned Throat Needler (BoP, Crossbow, 1265-2350 Damage, Speed 2.90, (623.3 dps), 107 Agility, 161 Stamina, Requires Level 85, Item Level 359, Equip: Improves haste rating by 77. Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 63.)
- (525) Gnomish X-Ray Scope (Use: Attaches a permanent scope to a bow or gun that increases its ranged critical strike rating by 88. Attaching this scope to a ranged weapon causes it to become soulbound.)
- (525) Goblin Barbecue (Use: Set out the barbecue to feed your entire raid or party! Restores 64903 health and 45000 mana over 30 sec. If you spend at least 10 seconds eating you will become well fed and gain 60 Stamina and 60 in another useful stat for 1 hour.)
- (525) Grounded Plasma Shield (Tinker: Permanently attaches grounded plasma generators to your belt, allowing you to activate a powerful shield that absorbs 16200 to 19800 damage. Can only be used on your own belt, and doing so will cause it to become soulbound. Requires at least 500 skill in Engineering to use.)
- (525) Heat-Treated Spinning Lure (Requires Fishing (250), Use: When applied to your fishing pole, increases Fishing by 150 for 5 minutes.)
- (525) Invisibility Field (Tinker: Permanently attaches thousands of tiny mirrors to your belt, allowing you to turn invisible while out of combat. Can be activated once every 5 min. Can only be used on your own belt, and doing so will cause it to become soulbound. Requires at least 500 skill in Engineering to use.)
- (525) Kickback 5000 (BoP, Gun, 1221-2269 Damage, Speed 2.80, 623.3 dps, 87 Agility, 161 Stamina, Red socket, Socket bonus 10 Agility, Requires Level 85, Item Level 359, Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 73, Equip: Improves haste rating by 49.)
- (525) Loot-a-Rang (BoU, Requires Engineering (125), Use: Retrieves the loot from a nearby corpse. (10-Sec Cooldown))
- (525) Lure Master Tackle Box (BoE, 36 Slot Tackle Box)
- (525) Overpowered Chicken Splitter (BoP, Bow, 1121-2269 Damage, Speed 2.80, 623.3 dps, 107 Agility, 161 Stamina, Requires Level 85, Item Level 359, Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 77, Equip: Improves haste rating by 63.)
- (525) Spinal Healing Injector (Tinker: Permanently attaches a specialized injector kit to your gloves, allowing you to inject a Mythical Healing Potion directly into your bloodstream for increased effect. Only a skilled engineer can activate the modified gloves. Can only be attached to your own gloves, and doing so causes the gloves to become soulbound.)
- (525) Synapse Springs (Tinker: Permanently attaches synapse springs to a pair of gloves, allowing a skilled engineer to increase their Intellect by 480 for 12 sec. The gloves can only be activated every minute.)
- (525) Tazik Shocker (Tinker: Permanently attaches a tazik shocker to your gloves, allowing a skilled engineer to deal 1049 to 1282 Nature damage to an enemy at long range. The shocker can only be used once every 2 min. Can only be used on the engineer's gloves,a dn doing so will cause them to become soulbound.)
- (525) Volatile Thunderstick (BoP, Gun, 705-1309 Damage, Speed 2.8, 359.7 dps, 62 Agility, 93 Stamina, Requires level 83, Item Level 300, Equip: Increases your mastery rating by 41, Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 41.)
- (525) Z50 Mana Gulper (Tinker: Permanently attaches a specialized grip to your gloves, allowing you to power-drink a Mythical Mana Potion for increased effect. Only a skilled engineer can activate the modified gloves. Can only be used on the engineer's gloves, and doing so will cause them to become soulbound.)
10/3/10
More Coherent Beta Stuff
Ok, so far I've just been posting the notes I make as I jot them down. I'm thinking perhaps I should do something more cohesive. More... paragraphy. Lots of spoilers! Don't read if you don't want to know!
So, to start:
Hunter stuff
The new hunter talents actually aren't too bad. I miss certain things (specifically faster pet reviving), but for the most part the Marksman stuff seems to be working out all right. I have no idea what kind of damage I'm doing, but I've found that, firstly, having automatic hunter's marking is awesome, and secondly, I can macro a rotation still, so I'm not entirely screwed.
Yes, I really said that, you can use a shot rotation macro with focus. The same way it was with mana - it's not ideal, and you have to reset it if you move or use another cooldown (by manually cycling shots until it resyncs), but if you're someone who can't watch a bunch of places on your screen without doing one or more of dying/dropping DoTs/missing cooldowns, the rotation macro still helps. (I can't keep Serpent Sting up and not die in fires without one.)
I love focus! I occasionally run into problems soloing where I try to front load too much and have something in my face while I really need to be hitting Steady, but it's really not bad at all. I've run one whole instance (Throne of Tides, excluding the bugged last boss), and I really didn't have resource problems. The macro worked great there, as well.
I had been thinking, as I'm soloing old instances on the live realms, that I'm going to miss Volley, until that Throne of Tides run where I discovered that, OMFG, the new Multi-Shot is spectacularly awesome. It's like shooting fistfuls of arrows at large groups. If the group is large enough, you will crit often enough that you can just spam it a lot until more of the group is dead, and you have to pop a Steady or two to keep going.
Trap launcher seems great, but I think it's somehow broken my left-click/right-click trap macros, which means I'm going to need five buttons for my traps instead of three. I'll have to work with the macros once things go live and see if I can remake them.
Aimed Shot I'm a little disappointed with, mostly that it's your signature shot as Marksman, but you can't really do much with it until you can get the talent points to make it proc as a free shot - which is really only good in groups. Yeah, yeah, it'll probably go back to hitting like a truck soon, which will make it more useful for soloing again. Right now it's not hitting hard enough to make it worth opening with on random mobs out in the world.
My bear seems squishier than he used to, but that may just be scaling needs adjusting. He seems to hold aggro a little better than he used to, at least.
I've yet to have a chance to really look at the glyphs, although from what I've seen, there's still some decent ones. I need to get my hands on glyph of Kill Shot for boss fights at least - if your Kill Shot doesn't kill the target, its cooldown resets (once every six seconds). Awesome. At least in theory.
Zones
I've mostly looked around Vashj'ir and Deepholm. I flew into Hyjal, but then went elsewhere. I've flown around the Twilight Highlands and Uldum, as well, but didn't do much beyond touring.
Vashj'ir is very pretty, lots of sea life, plants, nice details. The 480% speed Seahorse is amazing, and I really wish that were the faster flying we were buying. That would be worth another 4k or 5k gold. There are a few quirks in the questing that will hopefully get worked out before they go live. One is a quest with a terribly low spawn rate on the mobs, and the other major problem I've run into is that the floor in Nespirah (a giant... turtle? shell fish?) is horribly buggy, and 80% of the mobs fall through.
The Throne of Tides in Vashj'ir is also neat; its entry is, like Coilfang, down. It took some poking around to find it. The bosses took some coordination, but were all in all not terrible to PUG. The jellyfish elevator was quite cool.
Deepholm is underground, and most of the zone is absolutely gorgeous - but then, I'm the person who took two geology classes as electives. And, well, diamonds are a girl's best friend, and all that. Most of the quests there are not buggy, but they are fairly linear, so if you're competing for a quest mob, you can't do much else until you've gotten it.
Except mine. Oh, my God, the ore in Deepholm. I'm sure live servers it will be much more competitively farmed, but I've sold 11 stacks on the beta auction house for sick, sick amounts of money. I've already determined I'm spending the first day or week or whatever mining as much as I can.
Hyjal I mostly flew in and left, but if you've been to the battle of Mount Hyjal in the Caverns of Time, you're familiar with the basic geography. Much is wrecked, and your fly-in cinematic will give you great views of both Deathwing and Ragnaros. (I got goosebumps about Ragnaros. Oh. My. God. I need him as my ring tone.) And you run into Ysera and Malfurion Stormrage right off the bat. It's a lore nerd's dream.
The Twilight Highlands I haven't done much more than fly around, wave at Alexstrazsa on my way past, and mine all the elementium I could find. I saw one Pyrium (Pyrite?) node, but it was before I could hit it. Lots of ogres there.
Professions
Engineering is still NYI more than Wrath schematics, so I haven't been leveling it. I have, however, maxed mining. I've found, so far, Obsidium, Elementium, and the Pyrium (that I couldn't mine yet), and five types of volatile elementals - earth, fire, water, air, and shadow, all from mining. I've gotten five colors of gem (red, orange, yellow, blue, and purple), two in rare quality (I don't remember all the names at the moment). I've gotten first aid up into the 490s.
I haven't found anything that drops meat to cook! That must all be in Hyjal or something. I haven't tried fishing yet, partly because my inventory has been so full of ore I haven't done much else.
Quivers and ammo pouches become hunter-only bags - the Ancient Sinew Wrapped Lamina becomes an awesomely huge bag that definitely makes it feel worthwhile again. And I'm definitely making myself the largest-size ammo pouches or quivers (depending what I have patterns for) for all my hunters to see how many I can equip once the patch rolls over. (Banks slots. Oh, God. It probably won't work.)
Glyphs show up in your glyph interface as a list, so you know what you don't know, such as it is. I haven't managed to acquire any more yet. (If there's a glyph vendor, I haven't found it yet.)
I haven't touched most of the other professions yet - I should probably transfer more toons over and see how they translate. (Priest and warrior, maybe?)
Interface, guilds, etc.
The basic interface (where your buttons are, etc.) hasn't really changed, but once you pop open a screen for anything (character, spellbook, trainer, etc.), you see immediate changes. I... think? I like the trainer changes, but I'm not entirely sure.
I definitely like the spellbook changes. Pets, mounts, and such are all over there now. Your spellbook tells you when you have something new to pick up, too, if you haven't hit your trainer yet. The talent UI is... better than before, but for some reason comes across as arrogant to me. I know that sounds weird, but opening my talent pane makes me feel somehow affronted.
The professions UI has a couple nice options - filtering by what gives skill-ups, and revised chat linking options. The new character sheet is nicely customizable - you can move around various stat blocks or minimize them if you don't care about them.
The auction house and vendors haven't really changed. I'm hoping AuctionLite translates over to 4.0, because I still like its buy and sell panes better (even if the new default sell pane is essentially a ripoff - the auto searching and price setting is nice).
The guild UI has changed a little - there's a sort of messages page, and you have various sorting options for the roster. Ranks are easier to rearrange. And of course there's authenticator options for ranks.
So, to start:
Hunter stuff
The new hunter talents actually aren't too bad. I miss certain things (specifically faster pet reviving), but for the most part the Marksman stuff seems to be working out all right. I have no idea what kind of damage I'm doing, but I've found that, firstly, having automatic hunter's marking is awesome, and secondly, I can macro a rotation still, so I'm not entirely screwed.
Yes, I really said that, you can use a shot rotation macro with focus. The same way it was with mana - it's not ideal, and you have to reset it if you move or use another cooldown (by manually cycling shots until it resyncs), but if you're someone who can't watch a bunch of places on your screen without doing one or more of dying/dropping DoTs/missing cooldowns, the rotation macro still helps. (I can't keep Serpent Sting up and not die in fires without one.)
I love focus! I occasionally run into problems soloing where I try to front load too much and have something in my face while I really need to be hitting Steady, but it's really not bad at all. I've run one whole instance (Throne of Tides, excluding the bugged last boss), and I really didn't have resource problems. The macro worked great there, as well.
I had been thinking, as I'm soloing old instances on the live realms, that I'm going to miss Volley, until that Throne of Tides run where I discovered that, OMFG, the new Multi-Shot is spectacularly awesome. It's like shooting fistfuls of arrows at large groups. If the group is large enough, you will crit often enough that you can just spam it a lot until more of the group is dead, and you have to pop a Steady or two to keep going.
Trap launcher seems great, but I think it's somehow broken my left-click/right-click trap macros, which means I'm going to need five buttons for my traps instead of three. I'll have to work with the macros once things go live and see if I can remake them.
Aimed Shot I'm a little disappointed with, mostly that it's your signature shot as Marksman, but you can't really do much with it until you can get the talent points to make it proc as a free shot - which is really only good in groups. Yeah, yeah, it'll probably go back to hitting like a truck soon, which will make it more useful for soloing again. Right now it's not hitting hard enough to make it worth opening with on random mobs out in the world.
My bear seems squishier than he used to, but that may just be scaling needs adjusting. He seems to hold aggro a little better than he used to, at least.
I've yet to have a chance to really look at the glyphs, although from what I've seen, there's still some decent ones. I need to get my hands on glyph of Kill Shot for boss fights at least - if your Kill Shot doesn't kill the target, its cooldown resets (once every six seconds). Awesome. At least in theory.
Zones
I've mostly looked around Vashj'ir and Deepholm. I flew into Hyjal, but then went elsewhere. I've flown around the Twilight Highlands and Uldum, as well, but didn't do much beyond touring.
Vashj'ir is very pretty, lots of sea life, plants, nice details. The 480% speed Seahorse is amazing, and I really wish that were the faster flying we were buying. That would be worth another 4k or 5k gold. There are a few quirks in the questing that will hopefully get worked out before they go live. One is a quest with a terribly low spawn rate on the mobs, and the other major problem I've run into is that the floor in Nespirah (a giant... turtle? shell fish?) is horribly buggy, and 80% of the mobs fall through.
The Throne of Tides in Vashj'ir is also neat; its entry is, like Coilfang, down. It took some poking around to find it. The bosses took some coordination, but were all in all not terrible to PUG. The jellyfish elevator was quite cool.
Deepholm is underground, and most of the zone is absolutely gorgeous - but then, I'm the person who took two geology classes as electives. And, well, diamonds are a girl's best friend, and all that. Most of the quests there are not buggy, but they are fairly linear, so if you're competing for a quest mob, you can't do much else until you've gotten it.
Except mine. Oh, my God, the ore in Deepholm. I'm sure live servers it will be much more competitively farmed, but I've sold 11 stacks on the beta auction house for sick, sick amounts of money. I've already determined I'm spending the first day or week or whatever mining as much as I can.
Hyjal I mostly flew in and left, but if you've been to the battle of Mount Hyjal in the Caverns of Time, you're familiar with the basic geography. Much is wrecked, and your fly-in cinematic will give you great views of both Deathwing and Ragnaros. (I got goosebumps about Ragnaros. Oh. My. God. I need him as my ring tone.) And you run into Ysera and Malfurion Stormrage right off the bat. It's a lore nerd's dream.
The Twilight Highlands I haven't done much more than fly around, wave at Alexstrazsa on my way past, and mine all the elementium I could find. I saw one Pyrium (Pyrite?) node, but it was before I could hit it. Lots of ogres there.
Professions
Engineering is still NYI more than Wrath schematics, so I haven't been leveling it. I have, however, maxed mining. I've found, so far, Obsidium, Elementium, and the Pyrium (that I couldn't mine yet), and five types of volatile elementals - earth, fire, water, air, and shadow, all from mining. I've gotten five colors of gem (red, orange, yellow, blue, and purple), two in rare quality (I don't remember all the names at the moment). I've gotten first aid up into the 490s.
I haven't found anything that drops meat to cook! That must all be in Hyjal or something. I haven't tried fishing yet, partly because my inventory has been so full of ore I haven't done much else.
Quivers and ammo pouches become hunter-only bags - the Ancient Sinew Wrapped Lamina becomes an awesomely huge bag that definitely makes it feel worthwhile again. And I'm definitely making myself the largest-size ammo pouches or quivers (depending what I have patterns for) for all my hunters to see how many I can equip once the patch rolls over. (Banks slots. Oh, God. It probably won't work.)
Glyphs show up in your glyph interface as a list, so you know what you don't know, such as it is. I haven't managed to acquire any more yet. (If there's a glyph vendor, I haven't found it yet.)
I haven't touched most of the other professions yet - I should probably transfer more toons over and see how they translate. (Priest and warrior, maybe?)
Interface, guilds, etc.
The basic interface (where your buttons are, etc.) hasn't really changed, but once you pop open a screen for anything (character, spellbook, trainer, etc.), you see immediate changes. I... think? I like the trainer changes, but I'm not entirely sure.
I definitely like the spellbook changes. Pets, mounts, and such are all over there now. Your spellbook tells you when you have something new to pick up, too, if you haven't hit your trainer yet. The talent UI is... better than before, but for some reason comes across as arrogant to me. I know that sounds weird, but opening my talent pane makes me feel somehow affronted.
The professions UI has a couple nice options - filtering by what gives skill-ups, and revised chat linking options. The new character sheet is nicely customizable - you can move around various stat blocks or minimize them if you don't care about them.
The auction house and vendors haven't really changed. I'm hoping AuctionLite translates over to 4.0, because I still like its buy and sell panes better (even if the new default sell pane is essentially a ripoff - the auto searching and price setting is nice).
The guild UI has changed a little - there's a sort of messages page, and you have various sorting options for the roster. Ranks are easier to rearrange. And of course there's authenticator options for ranks.
Beta Adventures, Part 6
(A shorter session)
There was a guild wipe, so I'm now in the beta SHP when my husband remade it.
Dude, Millhouse Manastorm. Was NOT expecting him like that.
The box quests are always fun.
So much ore, and I can't find a forge. Argh.
My pet's dot shows up on the minimap again. /awesome
Hahaha... Avalanchion, we meet again.
New elemental stuff stacks higher than 10. Awesome.
Bugged right now to constantly run in place. While mining, eating, bandaging, etc.
167 Agility!
Troggzor! Earthinate!
Finally got a crab for Nespirah.
Good lord, people, stop skipping the quests in Vashj'ir that get you water breathing and the seahorse.
There was a guild wipe, so I'm now in the beta SHP when my husband remade it.
Dude, Millhouse Manastorm. Was NOT expecting him like that.
The box quests are always fun.
So much ore, and I can't find a forge. Argh.
My pet's dot shows up on the minimap again. /awesome
Hahaha... Avalanchion, we meet again.
New elemental stuff stacks higher than 10. Awesome.
Bugged right now to constantly run in place. While mining, eating, bandaging, etc.
167 Agility!
Troggzor! Earthinate!
Finally got a crab for Nespirah.
Good lord, people, stop skipping the quests in Vashj'ir that get you water breathing and the seahorse.
Beta Adventures, Part 5
The notes from the 5th beta adventure session:
Nespirah's floor is glitchy. Can't do the quest to communicate with her.
Can't loot mining nodes. (Relogging to see if it fixes it.)
Ok, at least got Nespirah to work. The floor is still like Swiss Cheese, though.
Haha, Obsidian requires a forge to smelt.
Ok, the crabs have all fallen through the floor in Nespirah. Going elsewhere.
Hey, kvaldir dudes.
Ooo, Ruins of Vashj'ir.
Ok, going to go wait for a crab and see if that works. Meh, I'll go find the instances.
Oooo... IN the whirlpool.
I think I know *why* they're making 310% fly speed trainable - the old world is friggin' HUGE.
Ok, in the Throne of Tides.
Holy God, I like this new Multi-Shot AOE. It's like shooting a fistful of arrows at a group.
Hey, a cut scene.
Level 82!
Apparently the squid at the end of Throne of Tides is bugged.
Mining Elementium. :D
Whoops - alt+tab/click to move/fatigue line.
Ten minute flight paths still, heh.
Trained up, set my hearth to the Valley of Wisdom.
Into Deepholm! The obsession with whirlpools is unexpected but somehow amusing.
Mining past 500 - I can do rich elementium now.
Deleting my cache to see if I can get the bugged items to work.
Deepholm is gorgeous. I love the alabaster.
I just mined an elemental for Savage Leather. I MINED FOR LEATHER. WTF?
Holy shit, Myzrael!
Ah, damn, the Gorged Gyreworms can't be tamed.
Hahahaha... Ok, so there's a quest you're supposed to jump onto a griffin from the airship in Deepholm. I disconnected right as I jumped and sailed off into the air. Log in: Parachute Cloak for the win!
And people wonder why I want to roleplay a Dwarven Shaman. Dude!
And off to raid!
Nespirah's floor is glitchy. Can't do the quest to communicate with her.
Can't loot mining nodes. (Relogging to see if it fixes it.)
Ok, at least got Nespirah to work. The floor is still like Swiss Cheese, though.
Haha, Obsidian requires a forge to smelt.
Ok, the crabs have all fallen through the floor in Nespirah. Going elsewhere.
Hey, kvaldir dudes.
Ooo, Ruins of Vashj'ir.
Ok, going to go wait for a crab and see if that works. Meh, I'll go find the instances.
Oooo... IN the whirlpool.
I think I know *why* they're making 310% fly speed trainable - the old world is friggin' HUGE.
Ok, in the Throne of Tides.
Holy God, I like this new Multi-Shot AOE. It's like shooting a fistful of arrows at a group.
Hey, a cut scene.
Level 82!
Apparently the squid at the end of Throne of Tides is bugged.
Mining Elementium. :D
Whoops - alt+tab/click to move/fatigue line.
Ten minute flight paths still, heh.
Trained up, set my hearth to the Valley of Wisdom.
Into Deepholm! The obsession with whirlpools is unexpected but somehow amusing.
Mining past 500 - I can do rich elementium now.
Deleting my cache to see if I can get the bugged items to work.
Deepholm is gorgeous. I love the alabaster.
I just mined an elemental for Savage Leather. I MINED FOR LEATHER. WTF?
Holy shit, Myzrael!
Ah, damn, the Gorged Gyreworms can't be tamed.
Hahahaha... Ok, so there's a quest you're supposed to jump onto a griffin from the airship in Deepholm. I disconnected right as I jumped and sailed off into the air. Log in: Parachute Cloak for the win!
And people wonder why I want to roleplay a Dwarven Shaman. Dude!
And off to raid!
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