Suguay Productions

I’ve done a little guild hopping lately on my 80 DeathKnight. I don’t normally do that sort of thing. I tend to get in a guild and stay until I get kicked or they disband. If it’s a good fit that is.

I was really lucky on my Tauren Hunter. I got into a guild around 30 or so and I stayed with them through the bank being raided, trying to merge with another guild and then going back to being our own guild. Then finally, they disbanded. Sigh. My poor Hunter, now has no guild. I thought to have her make her own for the bank purposes and then I got sidetracked and didn’t get back to her.

My Draenei DeathKnight started out in some friends’ bank guild for a while
and then they found a guild that they thought was really good and they like, so they got me an invite. It’s fine, it’s an active guild and they were mildly supportive as I worked to get to 80. Once I got there my friends were very helpful in getting me geared enough to get into the Heroic dungeons. The guild, not so much.

That guild, we’ll call guild A, ‘cause I don’t want to start any potential flame war or anything, anyway, they are mostly focused on ICC. They want to get through it and it’s all about gear score and all about damage. That would be fine if they put a little time working with those coming up through the ranks. Maybe show them how to do things before they get a lot of bad habits. Alas, no. Instead they want you to get the gear and get the damage up and all on your own. No guild sponsored lowbie runs or anything like that.

In addition the friends that got me into the guild being a part of it, another friend was a part of it. All of these guys were high enough geared and all to make it onto raid teams. The first on team A the second on team B. So my friend on team B is telling me how bad the raids are going and all sorts of other stuff and how they keep rotating who is on his team so they can get the damage up and get more bosses down and such. And of course my friend on team A is telling similar stories except that they aren’t rotating people because team A is the Guild Leader and his friends. So they just power through.

After some time of listening to this, reading the in game mails from the Guild Leader and making remarks to my friends that there are issues, my friend on team B has had enough and decided to go it alone for a while. Some of the mail from the Guild Leader ticked him off. It did me too. But I stayed a little longer.

My final last straw was when I was asked what me damage was for my DeathKnight. I said I wasn’t sure. I was informed I should get recount. I already had/have Recount and didn’t know how to read it for that, only to tell where I was compared to others in the group. I told the person I didn’t really know how to read it and that was it. No offer of explanation or anything like that. Pffft. I’ve had it. This guild was not a good fit for me. Just a little too elitist and uptight about the raid stuff for me. So I left.

I found another guild that had lots of members. A fair number of 80’s and I was assured they were very active. This wasn’t entirely true. I think once I saw as many as 10 out of 300 members on. I was also the 5^th best geared 80 in the guild. Disturbing. They tried to setup a raid. I was excited. I haven’t done a raid yet. I didn’t even care that it’s a Burning Crusade level raid. I was going to get to do a raid. I was there early. I had to find the place. I was online. I saw the leader online about 15 minutes before raid time. Then he went offline about 10 minutes before raid time. By 15 minutes after raid time with no leader back and no one else having a clue if it was going to happen, I found a new guild.

Yeah, that might be harsh. I know that. However, in that first night of the new guild, now on guild C as I left A and B, I did more stuff with my guild than I had done with the other one. I’ve got to let this group know when I can raid as I think they are setting up a raid team. We’ll see how things go. This might be a good fit and I won’t need to continue guild hopping.

 

Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.

So now that my Death Knight is level 80 I have been running a lot of Random Dungeons in an effort to get better gear to get to into the final content and to get better at how I play my part. Doing this has provided a lot of interesting encounters and learning opportunities. As you know, if you’ve run a few random dungeons, some groups are really great, some groups are ok and you just want to get through it, and some groups are really awful and you hope you will get through it. I’ve had some of all of it and all the while I always try to not be the reason for the whole thing going south. While many of the dungeons I’ve been in lately don’t really stick out there are a couple that do.
When I do a dungeon I always choose the DPS role. I have decided for now that tanking is way more responsibility than I want while still mastering the general mechanics of group events. As a dps, I try very hard to make sure I am doing my job and hopefully not dying in the process because the healer has enough to do. To assist in this I installed the add-on ‘Recount’. This way I can see for myself how well I’ve been doing. I also installed ‘Gear Score’ so I could understand what all the hub-bub was about around this magical number that you had to have because people putting together groups won’t accept you with a score below ?? whatever.

Now when I get in a group I check out the gear scores of the other players and it can provide a little insight into whether the dungeon is going to be over quickly or if it’s going to be a struggle. Now it’s not always accurate as I was in a group with a tank whose gear score was easily 800 points below mine and they did an excellent job. However, when your gear score is 1000+ points higher than mine and you are also dps, I expect you do be doing more damage than I am. Yes, I understand Death Knights are completely over powered. I’ve heard that. But setting that measuring stick at 1000 points makes sense to me. And so, at the end of a recent random when the tank announced that the dps was awful I understood.

The recount on the damage for that dungeon had the tank doing the most damage, note that this isn’t supposed to be the case, and with me doing the second most damage. I had seen the other gear scores. I had recount too and I knew all the way through the dungeon that I was doing a pretty high amount of damage. I shouldn’t have been that high. The others should have been doing better. I don’t know if they thought they would sleep their way through it or just weren’t keeping up. They were offended when they were told they were bad. But the guy was right.

Not all random dungeons result is such assessment. Some are pretty cool, like the ToC random dungeon that I got into that turned out we were all from the same server. Unless you hit go into the queue as a group, this seems to me pretty rare. I think I made a pretty good showing in that and I got a decent piece of gear. It was a lot of fun. I wish I had taken note of the names of who I was playing with as I would group with them again. Alas, no.

Just last night I got into a good group in Pit of Saron. I’ve done this one other time, it is one of the few guild things I’ve done. I had the quest to do in there so I was glad to get to do it. I did not however speak up and let everyone know that I had to free the slaves so in the end, I didn’t complete the quest and couldn’t go on to Halls of Reflection. Now I still can’t but through no fault of my own nor the group’s. Last night I spoke up and said I needed to free some slaves. I figured I should fess up to what I was doing when I pulled agro on something I got too close to. Well, they helped me right out and I got the rest of the slaves freed and that quest turned it. I got no grief for pulling the one mob and we just kept on. We got to the hill and died 3 times I think before we got up it. But it wasn’t a problem. No one gave anyone grief over it or anything. We did finally make it up the hill and through the tunnel. We got to the last boss and he was bugged so we couldn’t fight him. If we’d been able to I would have completed the quest that is required to move on to Halls of Reflection. It was not to be. I don’t think it matters though. I got to run with a bunch of cool people that made all the work much more enjoyable. We tried things that didn’t work and adapted and tried again. It was a lot of fun.

Some nights I look forward to doing a random dungeon and some nights I don’t. And there are some dungeons that I really like and some that I’m not so fond of. I really like Violet Hold. I think that’s my favorite. I’ve done Nexus so many times now that it’s easy as is Utgarde Keep. Utgarde Pinnacle is a little more challenging but not bad. I can’t say I’m very fond of Occulus, I haven’t heard many that are, however I’m getting used to it and it’s less annoying. I still get lost trying to find the group if they get too far ahead. But I’m getting better at it. While I’m not a big fan of Culling of Stratholme I’m kind of looking forward to playing it with the fast forward or skip option. Let’s face it the man’s a bit wordy with that one.

However it is, a good group, a bad group, a dungeon you like or one you don’t, the think about the random dungeons is that it’s almost always interesting and a learning experience.

 

 

Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.

Yes, there are challenges to leveling professions as a Death Knight. With the exception of First Aid, everything else starts at 1 just like for everyone else. The Death Knight starts at level 55. There’s a bit of a discrepancy here and that is the biggest challenge.

First Aid is the one exception.
As a DK at 55 you have roughly the equivalent First Aid skill, presumably to help keep you alive. And if you continue to level it as you go, getting this to the cap is about as close to cake as anything in WoW. Seriously, this is a no brainer. You might as well do it. Even if you took tailoring as one of your primary professions. Trust me, it will be a while before you get up to needing all that Netherweave and Frostweave you’ve been collecting, for bags and what not.

Now when it comes to the other professions it isn’t quite so easy. First lets start with the part where you aren’t actively playing in the areas where the materials/resources you need are. Let’s take mining for example, because that’s one of my professions. As a DK you start your adventures really either in Eastern Plaguelands or now days just head straight to Outland if you can. However, the starter mineral for mining is copper which is found in the starting areas of the different races, not in Outland. So to level your mining you will be spending time away from questing, adventuring, raiding, and leveling so that you can run around different zones collecting as much ore as possible to get to the next level ore. But, the Warrior or Paladin or whoever else that took the same profession, gets to level this as they do their regular game play. Hmpf.

So I am a Draenei Death Knight. This means that I have some racial skill towards Jewel Crafting, seems silly not to use that. And the supporting, gathering profession for that is Mining. Sadly, it is possible to get the Jewel Crafting skill high enough to have to wait on the level of the mining skill but it can be hindered by the lack of skill in the Prospecting area. What you say? Prospecting. Yes, that is an additional skill that is learned in Jewel Crafting at about level 5 or so. Prospecting allows us to prospect jewels/raw gems out of the ore instead of smelting it into bars. It’s a handy resource when you can’t find enough Shadow Gems or Tiger’s Eye for that ring or necklace you are making to get you that one more skill point that will let you get the next recipe. So unlike many other profession combinations with Mining and Jewel Crafting you don’t just level the 2 sets of skills, you actually level 3. No I’m not whining here, just pointing something out.

In my race to get to 80 I spent no time training up my professions. I dutifully slaughtered things and ran dungeons to get myself to level 80. I didn’t spend any of my in between time going back to beginning or even intermediate areas and farming mats. Now that I have reached 80 and have more free time, because there are only so many random dungeons you can do in a day and till be effective, I have begun to level my professions.

There is something of an advantage here. Mobs in the lower level areas, while some attack, they take not effort to destroy so I can get on with things. On the other hand, they are a little annoying.

I have, then, been running around beginning level areas and mining away and whatever I can find. I have managed to get a few of the exploration achievements as well. I’m making slow progress, but progress none-the-less. I find I am not as inclined as to do this while waiting for a random dungeon as some of my friends are so I save it for when I’ve had enough of dungeons and not enough of WoW. I know, how can that be? Aren’t they the same? Anyway.

What I do while I am waiting for a random dungeon is fish. I level my fishing right there in Dalaran. I stand there either at the fountain or over by the prison and just fish away. I’ve made it quite a ways doing this and intend to see how far it will get me before it’s just silly. Then again, I’m ok with that. You can fish up all those coins from the fountain and work towards those achievements. That’s always fun.

I can’t say that I have been very good at training up my cooking. If I were really thinking about it I would do that while mining. I wasn’t thinking about it though. Why? Why would I do it while mining? Well, because the lower level recipes require ingredients from the same areas as the lower level minerals. Sigh. I didn’t think about that. Hmm. Now that I have maybe I will address this some. Or not. We’ll see.

The one profession I don’t have to worry about is First Aid. As I said at the beginning of this article, it’s the one profession that starts at a level comparable to the Death Knight and therefore, easy enough to level up. I did just that. It is the one skill that I’ve got to the skill cap. And I’ve got cloth left over still. Now I can only speak to the professions I’ve covered here however since they all work much the same in their skill up, I expect them to have the same leveling issues for a Death Knight.

Cheers.

 

Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.

Yes, I did make it to 80 just a day after I posted my last article on working my way there. I got my Draenei Death Knight into the ranks of the ‘no longer slogging through the muck’. Sort of. I have a few things yet to work on. I’ll go into that more in a minute.

So I get to 80 and my friends promptly decide I need better gear and I need to do Heroics. Fortunately, one is a Blacksmith and he made me some better gear that would allow me to survive my first few heroic level dungeons. Then he, his wife and another friend promptly ran me, mad dash through 3 dungeons, 2 heroics and a Trial of Champions.

 

So now that I’ve made 80, my friend can no longer harp on that. He’s found a new thing to harp on. I must get better gear. Yes, there is this thing called Gear Score and it seems that it is part of what the Dungeon Finder uses to determine if you will survive certain level dungeons. So I must get all my gear to 200 level items or better. Ok….. This is done one of 4 ways, get it from drops in those heroic dungeons, get someone to make it for you, find it on the Auction House, or purchase it with badges.

 

Buying on the Auction House, well, I haven’t tried this except for gems. I suspect it can be expensive. Getting someone to make it for you, this has potential to be tricky. If they are a friend they might not charge you or only want help with the mats. If it’s custom, you may have to come up with the mats and a tip. Depending on the specifics of the situation it could get expensive. Getting the gear from the dungeons is nice because it’s like your bonus for doing your dungeon. Hey you already get paid. Purchasing with badges is a pretty good way to go; however, it will take some work. You get the badges by doing the dungeons. You will want to do a lot of dungeons and the weekly to get as many of these as you need. Still it’s all good experience. Trust me. I did a dozen random heroics this weekend. It’s good experience.

 

So, over the week since I made 80 I have faithfully run at least one random heroic a day and in some cases 2 or 3. And then at the weekend I managed five on one day and seven the next. I think seven might be my limit. That only because, by that time I wasn’t really on my game and had trouble just getting places. I have managed to get all but one piece of gear to 200. I still need to upgrade my braces. I have a couple of pieces that I’ve purchased with badges and they are higher than 200. That helps that gear score and makes me eligible for higher level dungeons and even some 10 and 25 man stuff.

 

A good site for really understanding how you’re doing is: Wow-Heroes. It shows you your gear, and it’s levels and any gems or enchants you have on it. It tells you where you got it from and lets you easily look for upgrades. It also, and this is the part I like, shows you a progress bar at the top that tells you what is recommended for you to be working on. It’s pretty easy to read this. I was happy when I got just a little bit of yellow on the bar and have been excited to see it progress. I’ve got a nice chunk of green as well as a nice chunk of yellow on the bar now. I’m very please with my progress.

 

And yet, I’m still not amongst the elite. I will need to get up to Ice Crown Citadel at 25 man level for that. And yet, that’s not all I need. I still need to level up my professions.

This is an even bigger challenge as a Death Knight and I’ll try to get to it in the next article.

 

Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.