the price of progress

back when we started Daelan we joked about how we should have named him "Moneypit" due to his taking up two crafting professions instead of the usual crafting & gathering profession combo. we didn't realize just how true that was until we got deeper into blacksmithing. now, we've leveled other profs before - tailoring to 375 twice (mmm... frozen shadoweave!), engineering to 375 once, alchemy and enchanting to 300 (back when that was the cap). it's an expensive process, especially if you don't farm your own materials. none of those experiences prepared us for leveling blacksmithing, however.

horrendously expensive doesn't begin to do blacksmithing justice. we assumed that the costs would be similar to leveling engineering since they use most of the same materials. naturally, we were very wrong. the mithril stage wasn't too bad; only needed a couple hundred bars for that. once we got to thorium we hit a wall, though. to get from 265 to 300 blacksmithing you need on the order of 500 thorium bars. five hundred! a stack of 20 thorium bars averages about 26g on our server (ore is even more expensive). so, for just the thorium alone, that's about 650g to get to 300 blacksmithing; we haven't even started using outlands materials, which is where the really expensive part of the leveling process begins. a good chunk of those bars (150ish) goes to buying blacksmithing plans from the thorium brotherhood. this makes it that much harder to recoup some of your costs as you have fewer crafted items at the end of it to show for your investment.

luckily for us, we have a few 70s in our stable who are miners. we went out and did some thorium farming this past sunday. for 4+ hours we did nothing but run a mining circuit around WPL and EPL. we ended up with 320 bars plus a bunch of odds and ends (gems, arcane crystals, tons of dense stone and a handful of greens from mobs that got in the way). we can't imagine what it must have been like for blacksmiths back in the pre-TBC days when all the mobs were the same level as they were. definitely would slow the process down having to fight your way to every thorium vein... anyway, 320 bars for 4+ hours work (and let's be clear: it was work, not play) seemed a bit tedious so we bought the rest of the thorium we needed to get to 300 blacksmithing off the AH.

next up, getting engineering to 300 (we're at 280-something now).

money. pit.

Continue reading "the price of progress"...

new (old) content

Daelan reached 55 seasons last night, but it was not a pretty process. we found a quest line in the blast lands that we'd never done before. we'd seen it, but back in the day it was a group quest (parts of it, at least) and since we hardly ever travel with a group we'd never bothered to do it. however, since patch 2.3 a lot of former "group" quests are now solo-able content (elites aren't elite anymore, etc.). so, we decided to give it a whirl this time. besides, it fit in nicely with the 2nd stage of our lvl 50 warrior quest (killing mobs in the same area).

so, we go around merrily killing mobs... and get ganked by a warlock (70; in full merciless glad gear, naturally). ok, fair enough. we were close to the road leading to the dark portal and it was an opportunity gank. meh. we rez and get back to killing and a short while later get ganked again. belf hunter this time. we had two mobs on us when she walked up, watched us work the mobs for a bit and then decided that we weren't dying fast enough or something. in goes the pet, we give the hunter a couple of token whacks and we're back having tea with the spirit healer. wonder if there's a frequent dier program we could sign up for... once again, rez and get back to killing (lots of mobs to kill) and we get a visit from a lvl 63 prot warrior. death by devastate spam. curse you cruel world! at this point we're just happy that the blasted lands is a fairly small zone; makes for shorter corpse runs.

we finally wrapped up that quest line only to learn that there's another one right after it (and one after that, too, according to wowhead). so we accepted, 'cause it was new content for us, and that's where the real fun began. back to where we were killing mobs, only now we had to carve a path right through the middle of them and into a cave they've taken up residence in. hmm, this is going to hurt. we make it about 1/2 way into the cave and then get an unlucky 3-pull (one was hiding behind a rock). we almost get things under control when a patrol catches us in the arse, we run out of health potions and we go down. meh, bad luck. run back, rez and clear the rest of the way into the cave and we find our quest mob and 2 guards. switch over to tanking gear and in we go! ... and down we go. quest mob has a 75% armor pierce ability and we picked up an add. ok, crappy start but we can do this. we run back, find a safe spot to rez and try focusing on the guards first this time instead of our quest mob (most of the damage seemed to come from them last time). our plan didn't quite go down the way we'd hoped and we took another visit to dead-ville. run back, rez and ZOMG RESPAWNS ON TOP OF U... dead. crap. we needed a break (and health potions), so we spirit rez and hop over to IF to train (we'd hit 54 earlier). quick stop in the AH for health potions and to look for gear upgrades (why in the name of all that's unholy is plate so gods-forsaken expensive on our server?! 150g for a green, level 50 chest piece?! ugh.) and we're back on the bird to the blasted lands.

we battle our way back into the cave, slice and dice the patrols (yes, we see you mr. I'm-hiding-behind-a-rock-waiting-to-eat-your-face-when-you-turn-around mob) and get to our quest mob; our decomposing skeletons still on the ground as a reminder of our less-then-stellar earlier attempts. tanking gear... check. defensive stance... check. houston, we are go! we go for the guards first and ignore the boss, use a health potion half way through the 2nd guard and then it's just us and ugly. it got hairy towards the end and we were down to 5% life with 1 minute to go on our health potion cooldown, so we popped our intimidating shout/bandage macro and prayed... "oh crap, he's immune to fear! ... but we're still bandaging ourself... ?!" we got a lucky break; ugly decided to try to repeatedly cast mana burn on us instead of ripping our head off and we got a full bandage in. smacked him around a bit more and VICTORY... and that was step one of that quest line. next few steps have us running off to azshara to go swimming or something. we're not sure if it was worth the aggravation and 1.5g repair bill, but it is new content for us and we got a war story out of it.

Continue reading "new (old) content"...

"Daelan died"

we saw that message a lot on sunday. more times than we can count, really. first, there were the gankers in swamp of sorrows... the 70 mage near the green whelpings, then the 70 warrior, then the 70 warlock and finally an entire horde kara raid. then there was another 70 warlock on the way into blasted lands. then there was that 70 priest in stv... now, we expect to take our licks living on a pvp server and all, but great googly moogly! that was a bit much.

between all the gankings and deaths caused by silly mistakes, bad luck and learning the fine art of playing a warrior, we may well have set a new personal record.

in the past we've taken great pride in our ability to avoid death while questing, even when soloing content that many players would find difficult. looking back on it, we realize that a large part of our past longevity was due to taking full advantage of the survival abilities of whatever class we were playing at the time. warriors, though... yeesh. no pets to sacrifice, no haul-yer-ass-outta-dodge abilities, no insta-hide or play-dead skills, no healing abilities (draenei aside) and no real crowd control other than a short fear that requires 1/4 of your rage bar. you pretty much just have to sit there and take it or run like a sissy and pray you don't get dazed before the mobs leash. or at least that's how we've been rolling so far... we're pretty sure we have a lot to learn, though.

in other news, we hit 45 and finally had enough arms talents to pick up mortal strike. wow. we're sure it's due in large part to the big axe were swinging, but mortal strike crits are just... juicy! 700+ on a soft target (poor imp). mmm, mmm, good!

speaking of big axes, we're also about to replace ours. being human (racial bonus to swords and maces) and also having talent points in sword specialization, we've been waiting to get our hands on a good two-handed sword to replace our axe. one more level (47) and the wait is over... we just finished crafting a [Truesilver Champion]. it's not as slow as we'd like, but it's good enough and it allows us to start taking full advantage of our spec and racial bonuses. we also cooked up a [Light Earthforged Blade] for when we have to go sword & board. the only downside to all this sharp-edged, shiny goodness is that our weapon skill with any kind of sword blows right now. we'll be spending a lot of time laying waste to deadmines in our to work on that.

Continue reading ""Daelan died""...

stance dancing

read any warrior forums or guides and such and you're likely to see the phrase, "stance dance." the general idea is to change from whatever stance you're currently in to another stance so you can use a stance-specific skill and then quickly change back to your original stance. you dance from stance to stance.

now, we'd heard the term before and knew the general concept, but as part of our continuing education efforts we thought we should read up on it a bit... learn the finer points and such. while we found many a mention of *when* to stance dance (specific boss fights, etc.) in the various warrior guides out there, we were surprised to not find a guide that explained stance dancing in any detail. so, we thought we'd do that here.

first, a disclaimer; we have not played a warrior to 70 (yet) and aren't yet familiar with the various warrior-specific bonuses available from all that shiny, end-game raiding and pvp gear. so, we're going to gloss over that bit and stick to general theory that's not gear-specific.

The Stances

warriors have three stances to choose from when in combat; battle, defensive and berserker. warriors begin their careers with battle stance, which offers no bonuses or penalties in terms of damage in or out. it has a passive 20% threat reduction built-in. at level 10, warriors can learn defensive stance from a quest. defensive stance reduces all incoming damage by 10% and all damage you do by 10%. this stance increases all threat you generate by 30%. at level 30, warriors can learn berserker stance (again, via a quest). this stance increases damage taken by 10%, increases your crit chance by 3% and reduces all threat generated by 20%.

many warrior skills require the use of a particular stance. charge, for example, may only be used in battle stance whereas intercept may only be used in berserker stance. here's a list of some of the more important, stance-specific warrior skills

battle stance: retaliation, charge, mocking blow

defensive stance: shield block, shield wall, taunt, intervene

berserker stance: whirlwind, berserker rage, pummel, intercept, recklessness

gaining access to key skills that are spread across stances when you need them is what stance dancing is all about.

The Dance

changing stances is an instant action and doesn't trigger the GCD (technically, it triggers a GCD that only applies to changing stances; so there's a 1.5 second delay before you can change stances again. all other abilities are on a separate GCD timer). so, with quick fingers or a macro you can change to another stance and use a stance-specific skill all at once. this flexibility comes at a hefty price, however: any time a warrior changes stances, he loses all accumulated rage. due to this rage loss, you don't want to be dancing through stances willy-nilly; a warrior's rage is his life. dance when you must, but always remember the cost.

fortunately, the rage loss from changing stances can be mitigated somewhat by other abilities the warrior has. at level 20, warriors learn the passive skill, stance mastery, which lets them keep up to 10 rage when they change stances. there's also the first-tier protection tree talent, tactical mastery, which let's you keep another 15 rage (with 3 points in it). so, at best a warrior can keep up to 25 rage when changing stances.

now, you want to be changing stances quickly so this means one of two things: hot keys or macros (bound to hot keys, naturally). the stance buttons for warriors are listed as Special Action Button 1 (battle), Special Action Button 2 (defensive) and Special Action Button 3 (berserker) in the key bindings menu. by default, they're not bound to any keys so have to click with the mouse to change stances; not ideal. we bound our stance buttons to R (battle), F (defensive) and V (berserker), which are right next to our movement keys, so they're easy to reach.

on the macro side of things, there are all kinds of possibilities. a spell reflection macro, popular for pvp, usually involves changing from berserker to battle stance, equipping a shield and casting spell reflection, all with a single click/key press. fancier macros change you back to berserker stance and re-equip your 2h weapon with a second click/key press. a charge macro for tanks (starting in battle stance) would have them cast charge (gaining 15 rage), change to defensive stance (no rage loss due to tactical mastery and stance mastery, so still at 15) and then cast bloodrage (for another 10 rage instantly) so they wind up with 25 rage to immediately start sundering and shield blocking with. any stance-specific ability that requires 25 rage or less (assuming you have points in tactical mastery) is fair game for a stance dancing macro.

When and Why

now that we know how to stance dance and what the costs (and how to mitigate them) are, all that's left is to understand when and why to dance. we'll wrap up this post with some common examples:

- as dps in an instance/raid, you accidentally pull agro from the tank on a hard-hitting boss. you need to survive long enough for the tank to regain agro. quick as you can you dance from berserker stance to defensive stance, equip a shield (you *do* always carry a shield, right?) and pop shield wall (a little prayer to the gods of mercy might not hurt, either).

- when tanking a boss that uses fear, if you know it's coming you can quickly dance from defensive stance over to berserker stance, pop berserker rage and then switch back to defensive stance to avoid the fear (not as wise to do this as dps because that means you're gaining threat on the boss while the tank isn't). it's important to note that this dance has to be done fast!. changing from defensive stance to berserker stance results in a net 20% increase in damage you're going to take until you get back into defensive stance. no lollygagging!
also, remember that berserker rage lasts 10 seconds, so you can still use this particular dance even if you don't know exactly when the boss is going to cast fear (e.g., it's an instant-cast fear). just try to pop it a second or two before you think the boss will cast fear.

- when tanking, another class pulls agro and the boss resists your taunt. stance dance from defensive to battle, use mocking blow and dance back to defensive.

- when out grinding (most likely in berserker stance), you accidentally pull more mobs then you'd planned on. dance over to battle stance and pop retaliation and thunder clap.

Continue reading "stance dancing"...

name change

after giving it some thought, we've decided that a blog name-change was in order. we were looking for a name that offered up a little more about what we're all about, and "Elvis Does Wow" just really wasn't making that happen. and what are we all about, you ask? Alts, and lots of them.

coming up with a meaningful name was a bit tricky for us. there are some great class-specific blog names out there, such as Need More Rage (warrior) and Starshards FTW (priest). we don't stick to any one class for long, though, so that route's out for us. same reasoning applies to blog names focused around a character name (e.g., World of Matticus or Picklemonkey the Shaman). what made the process even more challenging is that the blogging community has grown quite large over the years. many folks have already laid claim to blog names that we were considering.

we played around with a lot of name variations that had "alt" in them somehow; "Legion of Alts", "Altoholic" (taken), "Altoholism" (sounds like a support group), "Alt Legion", etc. in the end, we settled on "Alts for One" as a play on The Three Musketeers motto; "one for all, and all for one." we thought it summed things up fairly well: one guy with lots of characters who all support each other (through crafting, farming, etc.). we'll see if it sticks...

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updates and such

apologies for the slow updates; we've been a wee bit busy of late. despite that, Daelan has now reached the ripe old age of 37 seasons. after giving it some thought, we've decided we're going to go with an arms/fury build and become a master swordsmith rather than a prot build and armorsmithing. prot's fun and all, but it really boils down to the fact that we like killing things. while fury is arguably the highest individual dps spec, it didn't appeal to us on an aesthetic level because it just seemed a little too rogue-ish (and we've already done that before). so, an arms/fury build and a (very big and scary) two-handed weapon is in our future.

since our last post we've become an official, card-carry goblin engineer. we've done gnomish engineering a couple times before, so thought we'd give goblin a try this time 'round. besides, the [Goblin Rocket Launcher] is just too much fun to pass up. though we may lack some of the toys that our gnomish engineering brethren enjoy we will be very, very good at blowing things up (see above re: killing things). and yes, we fully realize that one of those "things" may well be us. such is the life of a goblin engineer.

we are now mounted! words cannot describe what a pleasure it is to ride through all the lvl 30-40 quest zones that we used to run through. that initial foray into STV, trekking from one end of duskwood to the other (again and again and... well, you get the point), running from the bank to the forge... all faster now. /glee!

speaking of being mounted (no, not like that)... let it be known that riding a ram in a straight line while smashed is really hard.

one of the things we've been enjoying about the warrior class are the class-specific quests, which are all new to us. Bell was kind enough to help us with part of our whirlwind quest (two words: big. axe.) and with that completed, we switched over from our early fury build to an arms-heavy build. we're still trying to get used to the whole slam rotation thing. we're also trying to figure out the whole "stance dance" thing... as in, when and why to do it, how to do it efficiently, etc. we experimented a bit with berserker stance once we first got it, but battle stance seems a better choice for us at the moment. a chat with a certain orc may be in order; we have much to learn...

another thing bell helped us with was a quick run-through of SM, where we had the great pleasure of meeting Bellezza. she's new to the blogging scene and we're looking forward to seeing what's she got. go over and say hi; she's very sweet.

Continue reading "updates and such"...

meet the new guy (again)

no, not that new guy; this new guy. yes, we're back. many thanks to all the folks we spoke with both here and online for helping us think things through. we decided to go back to DI rather than roll on a new server; the chance to play with Bell again was just too irresistible for us!

so, meet Daelan.



Daelan is the latest addition to our ever-expanding stable of characters (#25, we think) and is our current "main". we thought we'd try out a warrior since we've never taken one past the low 20s. it also gives us a chance to try out a prof we've never leveled before; Blacksmithing. the list of firsts continues as D is also our first character (since we knew what we were doing, anyway) to not have at least one gathering profession. between Engineering, Blacksmithing and all the general care and feeding that goes into a warrior (staying on top of the gear curve, repair bills, band-aids, etc.) we probably should have named him Moneypit... it'd be a bit closer to the truth.

D's got some choices to make. originally, we were thinking we'd go prot once we hit outlands because we were enjoying our (limited) tanking experiences on Varynth. however, we keep having this beautiful mental image of roaming the virtual countryside handing out beat-downs with something like the [Lionheart Executioner] that just makes us all warm and fuzzy inside. so, we'll have to see about that.

secondary to that decision, we also have to figure out which way to specialize in blacksmithing. this one we need to research a bit as we haven't looked at what sorts of end-game recipes are available for each specialty and how they compare with available rep gear and such. we're guessing our talent spec will heavily influence this choice, though.

for now, though, we're just having fun leveling up a new character. we've decided not to follow our usual power-leveling race to 70, but rather to just take our time getting there, work on our crafting profs along the way and take the liberty of skipping over some of the crappier questing zones (*cough* blasted lands *cough*) that we'd normally suffer through. you know, stop and smell the roses and all that.

it's good to be back.

Continue reading "meet the new guy (again)"...