5 Favorite Engineering Gadgets

I've been an engineer since I made my second hunter - the first is a leatherworker, and by the time I got to the second I knew I wanted to be able to make my own ammunition.  Ammunition is, of course, gone now, but that's still left me with a wealth of interesting gadgets.

I'm carrying a 36-slot engineering bag around me for all the ones I'm still toting around with me; after whittling down the list, these are my top five favorite:

5.  MOLL-E:  I looked high and low for a screenshot of my MOLL-E in action, but it's one of the more mundane gadgets I carry, so none immediately jumped out at me.  I'm sure it's in a boss-kill shot somewhere; I just haven't found it yet.  My favorite engineering gadgets fall into one of two categories:  Insanely practical (MOLL-E barely beat out the Thermal Anvil for #5) or randomly deadly.  MOLL-E hasn't killed me... yet.

4.  Zapthrottle Mote Extractor:  The mote extractor was the source of much random glee and obsessive zapping in the Burning Crusade:  it lets you suck elemental motes out of random balls of gas in various zones.  Water (originally life) in Zangarmarsh, mana in Netherstorm, air in Nagrand, shadow in Shadowmoon Valley.  And it puts them on your map now.

3.  Dimensional Ripper - Everlook: This is my favorite of the many transport items available to engineering, because one of the possible mishaps sets you on fire.  I was unprepared the first time this happened and quickly burnt to death; after that I learned to pay attention and eat immediately - percentage-based food was especially helpful.

I... actually have a lot of screenshots very similar to this one.

2.  Parachute Cloak (and its descendant, the Flexweave Underlay):  I love parachuting into places.  It's great now that I can do damage while doing so now - for Galakras I volunteer for the tower groups, and do one of the guns, because I can parachute down and hit stuff en route.  Way back when, I would use this as a shortcut into the Un'Goro Crater from Tanaris.

1. Loot-A-Rang:  This is the gadget I want on all my other toons.  Loot-A-Rang, Fetch, it's all good.  I have both on several hunters.  An excellent follow-up to the Booterang.


So, when I was making this list, I decided to thin out the explosives, since they're not really gadgets, per se, but they were quickly bloating the list.  So here's a bonus list of my favorite explosives:

5.  Explosive Sheep:  Sheep, that explode.  This should not be difficult to understand, especially if you're familiar with Worms Armageddon.

4.  Goblin Mortar (and the Mortar: Reloaded):  Because:

This isn't the only screenshot I have in this approximate position.

3.  Seaforium:  If you ever went through Dire Maul on a tribute run and couldn't get the key to drop...  Also allowed you to bypass that annoying slime tunnel in the Shattered Halls.  And open locked chests.  Handy when rogues are on the decline.  (Or when they hadn't leveled lockpicking, aeons ago.)

2.  Global Thermal Sapper Charge:  Just insert cackling here.  I used to use these in Wintergrasp.  I still have a couple, but the cooldown on them puts all your explosives on a five minute cooldown.

1.  Goblin Rocket Launcher:  We used to use this for the first pull in the Botanica, for the stun.  One of my favorite PVP deaths was getting sheeped by a gnome mage (I was on my priest), and then she follows it up by immediately pulling out this rocket launcher.  It was just awesome.

Alt-ing

I've had a database for my alts for a while, mostly because I like numbers, pulled off the spreadsheet I was using to assign mounts.  Because with 200+ mount options and a max of 50 characters, there's no way I'm going to be using all of them.  (That's okay; taurens get striders; gnomes get kodos; it's all good.)

Anywho, @wowcynwise was talking today on Twitter about hours played vs. how competent one feels with one's alts, and it made me wonder how levels:hours compared on my alts.  I had put levels into the database, but not hours, because the latter changes much more frequently than the former.

This is how adding hours in turned out:

Class	Count(Class)	Sum(tLevel)	Sum(Hours)
hunter	12	543	11227
priest	6	270	1887
warrior	5	168	757
death knight	2	143	87
warlock	4	130	460
paladin	2	125	366
shaman	3	96	695
druid	2	95	169
rogue	1	90	1524
mage	5	82	59
monk	2	18	6

For the most part total levels and hours played parallel each other, but there are a few noticeable exceptions.  Death knights get a big level bump from the free 55 levels.  My lone rogue is, yes, 90, but the bulk of her hours played are from vanilla WoW.  My shaman's hours played gets a similar bump from doing her initial leveling in vanilla and the Burning Crusade.

This only includes extant characters, since I keep my Altoholic pruned when I delete alts, but I think the highest level character I've deleted was a level 20 druid, excluding death knights that hadn't yet left their starting zone.  (Prior to getting my Minfernal I had been checking out the low-population PVP servers.  Ahem.)

Regarding how comfortable I feel with the classes versus their time played, the main exception to the order above is paladins.  I haven't really played my paladins since Cataclysm, and some of their mechanics changed significantly since then.

I think it's pretty clear why I named the blog what I did, though.  All of those hunters (well, besides the level 6 one) are marksman.

Top Mail Helm Models

I'm not gonna lie; shaman tend to win the hat/shoulder graphics lottery.  Ten Storms, Earthfury, Olivia's Graceful Gaze...  They get some awesome stuff that just isn't available other than recolors, if you're lucky.  Hunters don't completely miss out, though.  Here are some that I've bothered banking, or wouldn't mind having:

Stylin' Crimson Hat:  This is one of those fun-but-has-stats items that weren't uncommon in the Burning Crusade; my leatherworker was never lucky enough to get any of the patterns.  This is the hunter one; the others have different color combinations.

Foreman's Reinforced Helmet:  I could have sworn I had banked, but apparently not.  It's a great item for an engineer-themed transmog.

Beastmaster's Cap:  I put on the whole set for the picture; this is the upgrade from the Beaststalker set that's no longer available except through the Darkmoon Faire.  I liked the color scheme on this set better.  The shamans get most of the wolf-type helms, but this one is all ours.

Malefactor's Eyepatch:  This is the helm I use with the Blood Knight transmog set I used for most of the end of Cataclysm.  (It matches my ravager.)  The eyepatch is from a quest chain in Blade's Edge and was a good helm for quite a while.

Surestrike Goggles v2.0:  I used these goggles for ages in Wrath.  They dont' have as many bells and whistles as Deadly Retinal Armor, but I think they look better on more races.  It's hard enough finding a helm that works on a tauren.  Most of the Wrath-era goggles use this shape if you want a different color scheme.

Straw Hat:  My current transmog hat, the Straw Hat is from getting to Best Friends with Old Hillpaw.  It's a nice, simple hat; works well with most of the sets I've had this expansion; and it works okay with tauren horns.

I much prefer to have good hats than have to turn off my helm, and I think the Straw Hat is going to be my default at this point if I'm not otherwise trying to match a set.

Tactics #2: Interrupts

Many of the boss fights in WoW play off the mechanics players have available to them to make them challenging or, potentially, easier, if the abilities are used properly.  Fights with interruptible abilities are among these.

Not every ability can be interrupted, and not every interrupt can interrupt every interruptible ability.  Some mobs are immune to some effects.  Generally, if there is a shield icon around the cast bar, your class or specialization can't interrupt that ability.

Players have a variety of abilities that can potentially interrupt a mob, boss, or other player's casting of a spell or ability.  They include:

• Interrupts:  An interrupt ability interrupts just the spell being cast (and may include locking down the school the spell is in), but doesn't prevent the target from casting spells from other schools.  Example: Pummel (unglyphed)
• Silences:  A silence will interrupt a spell and prevent any spell from being cast.  (Not all abilities are spells, but most classes have some kind of ability that can be prevented with Silence.  Frequently this includes taunts.)  Boss mobs are frequently immune to silences, but the silencing ability will usually still interrupt a spell if it can be.  Example: Silence
• Stuns:  Stuns will prevent the target from doing anything, generally for a few seconds at a time.  If a mob can be stunned, doing so will interrupt any spells they were casting, but it may not prevent them from casting it immediately after they come out of the stun.  Boss mobs are frequently immune to stuns.  Example: Kidney Shot
• Disorients:  A disorient will make the target walk around disoriented in a small area for a short period of time.  Most bosses are immune to disorient abilities, and a disorient ability will not otherwise interrupt their cast, but this works well on non-boss mobs and players.  Example: Blind
• Fears:  A fear effect will make the target flee, usually in a random direction.  Since it causes loss of control, it will interrupt casts and prevent them for its duration.  Most bosses are immune to fears, and it will probably not otherwise interrupt their casting, but they do generally work on mobs not immune to fears (undead frequently are) or other players.  Example: Fear

Fanfic #5: YOU NO TAKE CANDLE

This was for the most recent writing prompt on the fanfic forums.  Don't ask where #4 is; I haven't decided if I have something for it yet.

---

The warrior asked entirely too many questions.

Elaine had wanted to go explore the Crypt of Forgotten Kings - “It’s an ancient crypt; there’s probably something useful in it!” - and now we were there, and it was dark, and there were floor tiles marked with random magic runes that hurt if you didn’t see one and walked across it.

Did I mention that they hurt?

So after the third unexpected attempt by the floor to electrocute us, Elaine had pulled out the lantern she’s been carrying around since - ugh, since that job for the dwarves in the Wetlands.

And what does the warrior - I don’t even recall his name, it was something like Philip.  He was drinking at one of those Grummle bars in Kun-Lai on our way up there, and Elaine said he looked good enough for what we needed.  Anyway, what does he ask?

“So how does the candle stay lit in your bag?”

Oh, Philip, I thought, you really don’t want to know...

Still waiting for...

There's a lot of cool stuff coming in the expansion, which I'm guessing is 6-8 months off.  Some of the things I've wanted for a while now don't seem to be included, which isn't surprising, since it's just random stuff.  This is some of it, though.

Emerald drake mounts.  You get to sample them in Oculus, but there's no option to commit.

Such a lovely green.

Built-in UI customization, a la SWotR.  I'll admit I was a bit surprised the first time I flipped that toggle over there.  Still not really playing because of the zoom distance and such, but being able to move your stuff around out of the box is nice.

Only Tol'vir sites.  Seriously, I'm still farming this stupid drake recipe.  Okay, okay, I finally got the Sandstone drake recipe, but 21 canopic jars.  That's like, five complete mummies.  Being able to focus on one kind of archaeology would be much less TINY OASIS MOSAIC frustration inducing.  If my rogue could tile the bathroom in her garrison, she's already acquired enough to do it.

You can totally tell I only leveled archaeology on Kalimdor.

Gnome hunters.  Based on the recent racial changes for Warlords of Draenor excluding focus from the list of what Expansive Mind will affect, gnomes are still not hunters.

A Burning Crusade-era transporter malfunction... as close as we get.

Flying in Azeroth & Beyond

Is flying good or bad in WoW?

The short answer, really, is both.  The lists of reasons for both sides is similarly short:

Positive aspects:

• Allows for three-dimensional zone structure (think the floating islands in Nagrand, or Vashj'ir, which was a flying zone disguised by water)
• Allows for non-linear/random patterned activities (such as travel between archaeology zones, which are not directly correlated to flight paths)
• Flying is fun, especially on a druid or with a Sky Golem

Negative aspects:

• Masks otherwise cumbersome zone design
• Makes some zone challenges (generally, the mobs) trivial

There are some places that I absolutely prefer the change in access flight has made: anything in Blackrock Mountain, for example.  Those chains!  I used to parachute into the lava rather than run the chains.

I used to farm ore for extended periods on a ground mount, usually in Un'goro Crater, where I could go more or less in a circle and hit all the nodes up in the nooks in the cliff wall.  I went back to Un'goro recently and discovered that a lot of those nooks... are gone.  Closed up.  That seemed weird, now that we have flying and getting into them wasn't even tricky.

The problem of flying making zone travel trivial is easily negated.  You remember the forge camps in Blade's Edge?  The cannons that would shoot at you as soon as you mounted up?  Or the frostwyrms in Icecrown that made flying in front of the citadel dicey (even if there were a couple good ore nodes there).  The air can be made dangerous.  Imagine roving zeppelins of pirates that would shoot you out of the sky the same way a whale shark would just eat you.  There are options for that.  (I... kind of want roving zeppelins of pirates now, with ships that can be captured and/or defeated like world bosses.  The Dread Ship Vazuvius takes flight!)

The real downside is when flight masks otherwise cumbersome zone design.  I hadn't thought much about this until last night, when I was thinking about why losing flight would be bad.  Really, no flight in a new space isn't bad - that space will be designed with no flight in mind.  (As long as it doesn't have bridges with stunning mobs that my healer can't kill, a la the Timeless Isle, probably not a big deal.)  The problem is when zones for levels without flying are designed with flight in mind.

Weapon Models: Top 5 Bows

Okay, I lied.  I've actually got a top six bows.

6.  Skyfire Hawkbow:  This one drops off O'mrogg in Shattered Halls; I'm not sure I ever actually saw it drop, but I've always liked the look.  A good one for my Blood Elf if I ever feel like farming it up on her.

5.  Lohn'goron, Bow of the Torn-Heart:  This was the quest bow to get at the end of the Burning Crusade, from a long quest chain in Shadowmoon Valley.  This one I used for quite a while, and it's among my... um, I have more than four bows banked.  I have a lot of bows banked.

4.  High Warlord's Recurve:  I've never had this bow; given that you can't use it for transmogrifying, I'm not sure I'll bother at this point, but it's still one of the coolest bow models you can get (Horde-side, anyway).

3.  Ironfeather Longbow:  When it originally came out, this was a tank bow: it had strength on it.  I was using it on my forsaken hunter anyway, just because it was the best thing she'd run across for damage otherwise.  It's a lovely bow, and it's no wonder Tyrande has it.

2.  Arathar, the Eye of Flame:  This is my favorite of the Cataclysm raid bows; I think I have three of them banked, actually.  It's got the cleanest lines, and I like the green highlights.

1.  Golden Bow of Quel'Thalas:  I didn't actually know about this bow until they announced they were putting pets into the Burning Crusade raids.  I didn't know if the Sunwell raid was going to be included, and I didn't know if I could solo it.  (The results: no, and yes.)  This dropped during the test run, and I've been transmogging into it since.  It's huge.  It's like the Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle of bows, and it really doesn't go badly with the Saurok set I'm transmogged into.

Yeah, I'm gonna be using this one for a while.

Bonus list:  Other bows I have banked still:

• Rhok'delar
• Mandokir's Sting
• Gorewood Bow
• Striker's Mark
• Themios the Darkbringer
• Vishanka, Jaws of the Earth