Leveling Wall

The Leveling Wall

I found that while leveling an alt, I tend to hit walls. I don't mean I constantly run into the side of castles or inns ( though thats been known to happen as well). I mean that there will be times where I, for seemingly no reason, completely run out of motivation to continue to level. Whether I'm able to overcome that wall, or something makes me overcome it, usually will determine if the character keeps progressing or stagnates.

Level 18-22
This is the first major wall. I've hit it on every character I've created, except for the first. The first because the game is new and you have no idea whats going to happen next. When leveling Hooff he stayed at this level for a few months, while I went back to leveling Bob. Waash didn't get blocked very long because his playtime was dictated more by when Fiance wanted to play Zoee. Hotplate started at 55, so she never hit this level range. Tempered, Classy, Huntry and now Onaara are all currently within this level range ( give or take ). Tempered and Classy are likely to stay at this level, I just don't have any motivation to level Horde-side. Huntry became my Glyph-Girl, though she does get some play-time every now and then. Onaara still has a chance, if I can get some motivation to get to 26 or so, I should be out of danger.

I think the reason people hit this wall is because this is the level range where they get out of their starting areas. This means that my Draenei get out of Azuremyst and usually head to Darkshore or Stormwind. This means leaving the logically placed, nicely clustered quest arrangement of BC and back to the sprawling quests of Vanilla. I can't even begin to describe the pain that was Duskwood, or worst, Westfall.

Level 45-55
This wall seems to change slightly, depending on when the character went through the level range. Quite a few factors keep the wall hovering around this level range. Previously, Level 40 was when you received your first mount ( now its 20). This meant that usually you would do your best to grind up to level 40, to get that mount. After getting the mount and using it for a few levels, you don't have anything "cool" to look forward to, until Outland. Now, its basically the same, except you get your epic riding mount at 40. Dungeons are also a problem, for the early part of this range you can run Zul'Farrak. That can get you to 50 no problem. Unfortunately after Zul'Farrak, dungeon choice gets sour. Maradon is an exercise in pathfinding, Dire Maul is deserted. Blackrock Depths, which still run by quite a few alts, is huge and if you don't have a tank that knows what they're doing, can quickly become a wipe-fest. Questing is no better, at this range you're a bit too high for Tanaris, so Un'Goro is a possible choice. The problem with Un'Goro is that, depending on your luck, you can get ambused by multiple high level mobs as well as a few roaming elites. Plus the quests tend to be drop-collection quests which get old quickly. Once you outgrow Un'Goro you need to make the 30 min run to Winterspring, hoping to finish off those last few levels until Outland.

Level 64-68
At this stage, the excitement of reaching Outland has faded. The quest make-up is a bit better, unfortunately odds are you still remember most of these quests from the LAST time you ran an alt through Outlands. At least the gear and dungeons are decent. Though expect to relearn a lot of CC abilities, or hope to find a tank that outlevels the instances you're running.

Level 75+
You would think that this range you would have no trouble getting the last 5-6 levels to 80. But by this point you feel like you've just ran Northrend on your main/alt, so everything feels like you've just done it. You still have 1 or 2 unlucky pieces from Outland, and you're pretty sick of the leveling in general. The prospect of some nice, shiny epics start dancing in your mind and all you want to do is knock out these levels. If you look too much at what your character "will get at 80", you'll end up stagnating and never reaching 80. Waash is still stuck in this level.

How do you get past the wall? Honestly, I don't know. I usually take a break from what I was doing. If I was questing, I'll run some dungeons. I'll try playing an alt. I'll try playing the AH. Sometimes I'll try playing a different game. After a while, you're not so burned out and leveling becomes fun again. Why play a game if it isn't fun?

Scartlet-cide

Scarlet-cide

Let me get this out of the way first. I don't like farming. I've never been particularly patient at any repetitive activity. Even something like creating glyphs, with a host of addons that make it trivially easy, I still only do once in a long time. I do not like to farm, I will not eat green eggs and ham, Sam I am.

Idle Hands
One day recently I found myself in a situation where I had, some internet access, some free time, but not the ability to play World of Warcraft. So what do I do? I READ about World of Warcraft. Its sick, I know.

Enchant
Anyhoo, I got onto the subject of what enchant I should put on Onaara's weapon(s). Looking around, I found that Crusader works well with Heirloom items, and eventually when I dual-wield, the buff will stack. Checking on Bob, I noticed that I do not have the enchant. The AH is of no help ( none available). A quick browse of WoWhead shows that it is a low-percentage drop off a very specific mob in Western Plaguelands. Good News is that they are low-level mobs, easily farmable by Bob. The bad news, its a specific mob, and the drop rate is less than 1%. Reading through the comments is a bit encouraging, people mentioning that they have gotten it in as little as 20 mins. Another poster mentions that Blizzard has buffed the drop-rate.

Those poor mages..
The mobs in question are Scarlet Spellbinders, they congrigate in a tower on the north side of WPL. Riding there on Bob,I find a spellbinder or two on the road leading up to the tower. All are two-shot(sometimes one) easily. I part myself up on the top of the tower and wait for respawns. Thats where I still am today. I haven't spent any sizeable amount of time farming this enchant. I imagine it'll take at least an hour or two. So far I've killed maybe a dozen spellbinders. They just don't have a chance when my machine-gun-imp is set on aggressive. I just have to be careful not to let one die without causing some damage to it, or else I am not able to loot it.

The Scarlet Crusade should start recruiting heavily, they're about to lose quite a few magic-users. How many Scarlet Spellbinders need to die before the enchant is in my hands? As many as there needs to be.

*queue Highlander music*....

Money making

Spent the majority of the night making glyphs to sell. Waash makes them and Huntry sells them. Yes, they've both taken time off from adventuring to run a glyph business. While at the rate I go I'll never hit the gold cap, inscription will usually make enough to cover the toons repair, gem, enchant and crafting costs.

Brain-dead Strategy

The best way, at least for me, to make money is do to a lot of little things. This can be taken to the extreme where you have 10,000 auctions all trying to make 2-3g each. I prefer a bit sainer approach. I tend to just cherry pick the 2-3 different fields that will make me money. I do have a high level Tailor, Scribe, Miner, Alchemist and Jewelcrafter so if you don't have these, this may be more difficult.

Disclamer: While I do dabble in playing the AH, I'm not very serious at it. I make enough to have a healthy reserve, in case I want to buy something. This is what I personally do, and they don't make huge amounts of gold, but they make enough for my needs.If you want to get serious with playing the AH you'd be better served going to a dedicated gold-making blog. I'll have links at the bottom.
Inscription
Make Glyphs. Use an addon such as QA2, find which glyphs are selling for quite a bit and create those. Sell a few at a time. I tend to cherry pick the ones that are selling for 20-30g, and just make those. You will get undercut so expect to be able to sell 5-10 at a time before having to cancel and repost. Fortunately the deposit is so small, its still worth it.This won't work if you happen to get a "Goblin" on your server. They love to drive the prices down. Fortunately i'm not very hardcore about the AH so I just stop posting for a while.

Epic Offhands. The epic offhands are still useful as starter Epics for a lot of magic-using classes. They sell decently, one at a time.

Tailoring
Cloth cooldowns. Make them on every cooldown, and specialize in one of the cloth types. This will be removed in 3.3.3 so do them now, and sell the cloth.

Netherweave Bags. Check the price of bags, then check the price of a stack of Netherweave cloth. Add the cost of Rune thread to the price of a stack of Netherweave. Thats how you know if they're worth making. Usually I can make 2-3g a piece. I post about 6-10 at a time.

Alchemy
Personally, I'm a transmutation master. This means that I'm all about transmuting Epic gems. Every epic gem transmute is guranteed to make you SOME gold. If you proc extra gems, then you've just made even more gold.

Potions and Flasks, unless you're specialized in those, are not worth making. The mats most times will cost MORE than you can get for the crafted flask.
Mining
Smelt Titansteel. The CD for this will be removed in 3.3.3, which will cause prices to free-fall. Do them, and sell the titansteel now.

Jewelcrafting
This synergizes well with Transmuation Mastery of Alchemy. You make money selling the uncut Gem, but you make even more money if you cut the gem and sell it ready-made. Bold and Runed Cardinal Rubies make a lot of profit.

Enchanting
I have yet to really make gold enchanting scolls with this.The cost of mats and a vellum ( which your Scribe can make for you) ensures a pretty slim profit. You can make a decent amount of gold spamming Trade LFW if you have some indemand recipes.

Herbalism/Skinning
Goes without saying, grab every herb, node and animal skin you can get while questing or doing daillies. Sell them on the AH. Free money. Why is it free? Cause you were there anyway, you didn't go out and farm them.

You can however, make a decent amount of gold my making Large Prismatic Shards. If you have the Void Shatter pattern from Isle of Quel'Danas, check to see how much a Void Crystal sells for. Then see how much a Large Prismatic is selling for. If its more than half a cost of a Void Crystal then you can make a profit.

End of Guide



That's not to say Onaara didn't level. She was able to gain a quick two levels. She's finally got a second heal (Lesser Healing Wave) and a mana regen spell (Water Shield). Both should help tremendously when healing. In fact Water Shield should be handy even in Enhancement questing. When I ran out of drinks while questing I had no recourse but to sit and wait for Out of combat regen.

Another great perk of reaching level 20 (well 21 since Onaara dinged while in the middle of a long series of quests), was that she now has a mount. A purple Elekk to be precise. Everyone meet Onaara's trusted mount Erin.

Onaara Progress Report

Worked on Onaara quite a bit this sunday. I had some free time while Fiance was volunteering at the Humane Society.

I've healed a few times on Onaara, Shadowfang Keep a few times and half of deadmines. I've learned that it is very possible to heal a 5man when not specced for it. I've also learned that you really need healing GEAR to heal an instance.

At this level I only have one true healing spell: Healing Wave. It has a 2 second cast time and takes a moderate amount of mana. With my mana bar just now topping over 1k I've had to really worry about overhealing and mana conservation, things I never have to worry about on Hooff. I've had to be creative, timing casts to compensate for the 2 second cast time and being very stingy about making up for DPS mistakes. I don't have a choice, I just don't have the mana to spam heals on every party member.

I've been picking up upgrades to both Resto and Enhancement from the dungeons I've been running. This include a decent staff, belt and leg pieces. I was able to heal Ragefire Chasm without much trouble. Deadmines was a bit more of a challenge but still very doable. Healing Shadowfang Keep on the other hand was an exercise in ... the best word I can use is asshattery.

Fail: Shadowfang Keep (warning, quite long)

Onaara zones into the instance, already in progress. In front of me I can see the other 4 party members, on the other side of a large portcullis. I greet the party, and start looking for a way through the obstruction. Eventually I find a small door near the portal. I make my way through the building. This being my first time in the instance I make at least two wrong turns. When I finally get within range, everyone but the tank is on the floor, and the tank is dropping fast. If this was in a heroic on my paladin, I would now regale you with how I used beacon, FoL and assorted other light-enfused tactics to bring the tank to full health in the span of a GCD or two. But it is not, so I had to sit there and cast one healing spell... the two second cast Healing Wave. When the cast bar has but a sliver left to go, the tank drops. First thing the tank says is "Where the hell is the healer?".

"Just got here" I reply.

"Oh sorry" he mutters. Normally if no "Sorry" was said I would have seriously considered leaving. From my experience, a wipe is when people start to show their true colors. I decided to stay, and see how things went. Part of me wishes I had left at that point.

As the dungeon progresses, I notice that I'm going OOM quite a bit more. I have to drink almost every pull, especially considering the tank and DPS don't give me a chance to drink before pulling the next group. Not only that, a hunter seemed to take it upon himself to keep pulling more enemies to the tank.

On our second wipe, the tank decides he/she has had enough and drops group. The group decides that the druid will tank until a new tank can be found. The druid then proceeds to "tank" in Night Elf form, with a spellpower staff. I ask her why she doesn't just go to bear form. "We can all fight." was the reply. I facepalm and proceed to tell her that NO this will not be happening and that people will die because I run out of mana. Looking back, I don't know where my bottomless reserve of patience for this group originated. Another wipe was the result of this ingenious plan. Had a tank not materialized within seconds of this wipe I would have dropped group.

The new tank, a dranei pally, was much better than the old, She could keep aggro, ( though she seemed to be adverse to throwing a consecrate down), which mean less party damage, that really helped with my mana issues.

Around this time I noticed that our old druid "tank" was needing on everything, even things that she could not equip. I asked her about it, and she said that she needed on it cause she never got anything. I told her that you only need on upgrades, everything else is greed.

Her reply was "I'm different, I'm new".

With the calm of a zen master I replied "Well now you know, so don't do it again."

She replied "ok sorry". Three minutes later she announced that she was bored and had to go, and promptly dropped group. I wish I had taken a screenshot of that epic conversation.

A new DPS was found, a mage if I remember, and we soldiered on. At this point 3/5 of the original group has been replaced, including myself. Whats left is 2 dps, a hunter and a rogue? I think.

We continue on, and get to some steps where we encounter a pack of mobs. We are doing decently until another pack of mobs comes running in and wipes the group. The (non-hunter) dps says that Onaara pulled hte other group.

I ask, "How exactly do I pull from just healing?".

Someone else says "Well, healing does produce aggro."

I reply "True enough, but unless I physically get too close to the mobs, I can't pull with healing aggro".

The tank replies, "The hunter accidentally shot the other group in the stairs, no biggie. Oh and Sham shut up if you don't know what you're talking about."

This sparks a short argument which devolves to Sham mentioning certain vocal musings that are uttered by the pally's mother during certain sexual acts. At this point a kick-vote is triggered for Sham, and I happily vote.

We get to the final boss, and the last original member of the group, has to leave. They D/C and we decide to just 4-man the boss. The boss drops without much fanfare, loot is divided and we collectively breath a sigh of relief.

I'd like to say thank you to the Ms. Replacement Pally tank, Ms. Replacement Mage and Mr. Replacement Warrior for making sure we all get our bag of treats. Even Ms. Original Hunter, you weren't great, but compared to the other originals, you were decent.

Shameless Screen Shots:



This Onaara doing the Belf disguise quest. Always one of my favorites. Random tidbit: the first time I did this on my paladin. Some horde were actually attacking Azure Watch. I think they they were very confused to find a belf girl that they could not communicate with. Would have been epic if the disguise allowed me to communicate with them though.






At level 16, I received Ghost Wolf form. Well actually it was level 17.5 when I received the spell, having completely forgotten to train for a level and a half. Still, it beats walking around everywhere. Plus I can technically auto-attack in ghost wolf form.

Onaara

A little late but please welcome my new baby shaman Onaara. Female Draenei Shaman, with two heirloom pieces, chest and shoulders. Played her two nights and she's level 14. She's been alternating between 2hander and 1h + shield. It all depends on the stats and weapon damage. Still trying to decide if it's worth buying an heirloom 2-hander for levels 15-40. At 40, she can dual-wield and will be using 2x Venerable Mass of McGowan 1-handers.

I didn't think that having an heirloom weapon would make much difference but it seems to. Especially in the early levels, having a good weapon makes the difference between easy killing and a corpse run.

Once Onaara hits 15 then I'm gonna queue her up as a healer hoping that that should help with leveling and getting gear. If she ends up getting decent gear that way then that may make an heirloom weapon unecessary.

Edit: She just hit level 15.

I was looking around wowhead a bit to see if u could find a decent 2hander available for Stone Keeper's Shards. I figure its not really worth it to spend Emblems for a 2hander but it was worth it to use shards. It turns out the only mildly stat-appropriate 2hander is the sword which Onaara cannot use. I guess she'll just have to stick with quest rewards and drops.


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Stabby

Fiance, sister-in-law, and I headed to he swap meet today. As usual I spent moat of the time carrying bags, "giving opinions" and generally just stayin out of the way. We ended up at a booth selling knives. A particular knife caught my eye. Opening it reveiled that it was spring loaded, meaning that it deployed with a very satisfying "whip-click". I decided that I didn't need a knife and left to fin the women.

On the way back we ended up near that booth again. That same knife caught my eye but a few minutes with it had me wanting something with a serated edge. Finally I found he knife I would eventually buy.




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Shaman

A recent WoW.com podcast talked about Shamans, namely enhancement Shamans. It was so convincing that I am now planning on leveling my own Enchancement ( and probalby dual-spec'd Resto ) Shaman. With Huntry being stuck at level 23, I'm a bit aprehentios about starting yet another toon ( not to mention having a Horde Rogue at 17 ). To aid in this, I've decided that I'm going to use the "extra" emblems and shards on my level 80s to use. I know for sure that there are quite a
bit of Stonekeeper's Shards. Since I don't see myself getting into PVP or Arena any time soon, I might as well spend them on some useful gear.PVP Heirlooms for PVE content may not be optimum, but the XP
increase will more than make up for it.

To this end I've decided to gear up my shaman with one of the
following for each slot. I included PVP items mainly because all three of my level 80 characters have more Stone Keeper's Shards that they know what to do with, so they might as well be put to good use:

Shoulders:
Stained Shadowcraft Spaulders - 40 Emblems of Heroism
Champion Herod' Shoulder - 40 Emblems of Heroism Prized Beastmaster's Mantle - 200 Stone Keeper's Shards

I already have the Stained Shadowcraft Spaulders from when I leveled Waash. I may just use those until the stat allocation annoys me enough
to buy the Mail piece. As an added bonus, the stat allocation for the mail pieces are good for Enhancement Shamans as well as Hunters. So Huntry can make use of these as well.

Chest:
Champion's Deathdealer Breastplate - 40 Emblems of Heroism

As far as I know there are no PVP chest pieces available, so this is the clear winner. This can also be used by Huntry eventually. Bonus, its also a mid-drift ;-).

Weapon:
Sharpened Scarlet Kris(1H Dagger) - 200 Stone Keeper's Shards Battleworn Thrash Blade(1H Sword) - 200 Stone Keeper's Shards
Venerable Mass of McGowan(1H Mace) - 40 Emblems of Heroism
Balanced Heartseeker (1H Dagger) - 40 Emblems of Heroism

The choice of weapon has been the hardest. Partly because using an heirloom weapon does not generate the +10% experience bonus that the
shoulder and chest pieces do. This allows me to put the decision off without feeling like I'm missing out on extra XP.

Of the 4 possible choices, it gets complicated depending on which
factors I choose to give more weight to. The factors I'm considering include effectiveness for this toon, reuseability, and cost. I want
the weapon to be effective for this toon, or else why even buy an heirloom weapon? I also want the weapons to be reuseable. The next three classes that I have an eye towards leveling include this
enhancement shaman, a Hunter, and a Rogue ( possibly a Worgen Rogue for Cata). Theoretically I could buy one set of gear that would work well with all three classes. Sidenote: I will also want to dual-spec
to restoration, to aid in getting into dungeons, but that will probably require gathering a whole other set of gear.

My last consideration is cost. My toons have varrying amounts of "old emblems", namely Heroism, Valor and Conquest badges. If they havent' spent them by now, they probably don't need any gear that is purchaseable with those emblems. Those can be converted to Heroism badges in order to purchase the heirlooms. I hesitate converting the current Triumph emblems down to Heroism because all the toons still have gear they need to purchase with those badges. With that in mind, all the toons also have quite a few Stone Keeper's Shards. Those are
gathered from participating in Wintergrasp, and from killing Heroic bosses when Wintergrasp is owned by your faction. Bob has somewhere
around 350 shards, Hotplate about 450, and Hooff a staggernig 600 shards. I'm not too interested in PVP, so I doubt I'll use those shards for that. Other than gem patterns, or vanity mounts, the shards
are up for grabs.

If I were to go strictly for maximum effectiveness for my Enhancement Shaman, the choices narrow. At level 40, a shaman can dual-weild. At
that point 2x Venerable Mass of McGowans becomes the best
overall. They have theright stats, and are both slow weapons. Pre-40, the shaman would best be served with a nice 2-hander. At 40 EoH each, those maces are expensive, and aren't going to be used until level 40,
so I would like to postpone buying two until absolutely necessary. For a rogue, the stats are decent, +agi, +stam, +ap and some crit. The
stats are decent for a hunter also, unfortunately hunters cannot use Mace weapons. Eventually I think I will get at least 1 Mass, maybe even two if at level 40, my other characters have emblems to spare.

Purely based on cost, I would go for the Sharpened Scarlet Kris, its cheap, using Shards, passable for a shaman, good for a rogue, and useable by a hunter. The fast weapon speed makes it sub-optimal for a
shaman but not terrible, specially considering the quest reward alternatives.

The Balanced Heartseeker is a nice weapon, but expensive, and not too much nicer than the PVP alternative. Also, after reading through the
comments it seems that the Battleworn Thrash Blade's proc is very low and its lack of raw stats is disturbing.

Looking at the possible 2handers for pre 80, none seem particularly suited to Shamans ( or Rogues/Hunters) for that matter. I think the happy medium may just be to get a Venerable Mass of McGowan now, and get another at 40. Or get a Sharpened Scarlet Kris now ( cause its cheap) and get one or two Venerables at 40. Either way.. this should
be fun.

Ulduar Easy Mode

Ulduar Easy Mode

Bob finally saw the inside of Ulduar. This was for the weekly raid, this time to kill XT-002 Deconstructor. Ulduar has been nerfed quite a bit, this was evident from the very first boss. To activate the easy mode of Flame Leviathan no longer required players to kill all the
towers of the Keepers. It could now be started by an option when the event is started. We rode straight up to FL and one shot him.

The trash to XT was always a pain for Sinister Blades. Until we
perfected our "One tank hold everything while one mob is peeled away" technique, we would wipe more on trash than XT him/her self. Our MT for this group felt that we would be fine... and we were. He tanked everything and everything was simply AOEd down. XT went down in one-shot with me being #2 dps with 6.5k (evil grin).

We were informed that those who wanted could stay to do Kologarn. I offered to switch to Hotplate to help tank the adds leading up to Kolo. The MT said we should be fine. They had me simply banish one of the elementals and we got through the trash without much difficulty. Kologarn actually wiped us, from an unfortunate eye beam/adds/positioning shot. Our next try got him down.

Its amazing how different Ulduar is. I remember doing the raid on
Hooff. Everyone had to be at the top of their game. 100% attention or it would be a wipe. Now a rag-tag PUG 9-manned it in 1 shot.

I want to try ICC.

Huntering

Wow-ed-out. I logged off WoW last night at about 9pm. Not because I had something better to do, but because I was bored. The thought of doing yet another Heroic made me want to turn the computer off.

Originally I thought I could get away from the grind of chain-heroics by leveling my baby hunter. It went well for about 20 minutes, but I quickly remembered why I stopped leveling her in the first place. I didn't want to level anymore. While the mechanics were new ( my first hunter), the resource management was incomplete. I ran out of mana constantly, but had no way to recoup it, short of sitting and drinking after every second pull.

I ran stockades through the Dungeon Finder. The run itself was going decently well until the tank DCed. She never came back. Her friend insisted that she would be right back, but after 20 minutes of trying to pet tank ( Bubu the Bear and the lock's Voidy), we wiped and just called it. I was looking forward to getting that satchel of useful items too.

Thoughts on Huntering:

Playing a hunter was fun. Its very similar to a warlock. Find target, send pet, dps target and hope it dies before you pull aggro on the pet. I did notice that having mana as its depletable resource seems very awkward and a mistake. It would make more sense to me if hunters used an energy-based system like rogues, or even a rune-like system like DKs. It seems very awkward that all of a sudden your gun can't shoot anymore because you've run out of magic?

Will I continue to level her to 80? Not sure. I don't hate the class ( like I hated leveling the warrior, sorry Tempered), so its feasible that I may play her again. I don't LOVE the class like I did with the pally. It seems similar to how I felt about the Death Knight, fun but uncoordinated. Unfortunately the hunter doesn't have the luxury of starting at level 55. For now she'll have to be content with being a level 23 Hunter with 20,000g in her pockets.