More Questing in Dustwallow Marsh
Kate got very busy in the auction house - I'll come back to that later. In the meantime I started off around 70,000 XP behind her, since I was almost exactly a level behind (which means I've caught up a bit from where we were a few days ago). Hitting level 40 opens up some new areas that would be a challenge for Kate while being basically death zones for me, so I still want to close that gap; if I let things go to where we're too far separated on levels, it'll make things harder than necessary on both of us.
So while Kate was in the auction house I flew out to the Arathi Highlands to find some mobs to whack - I wanted mobs that were high enough to make decent XP without being so high that I could count on being wiped if I got attacked by two or three. The Arathi Highlands has elementals in the various Circles of Binding that are around level 38-39, which was about right (although I'm fairly sure I could take on two level 40-41 mobs without too much trouble - but there really aren't any that I can think of in Arathi so the elementals would have to do).
I started off in the area just northeast of Thandol Span, knocking over level 37 raptors for a short while, but after that I spent most of the time whacking the elementals around the Circle of Inner Binding near Stromgarde Keep. Doing that I was able to collect something like 14,000 points - not a bad chunk.
While I was there I did a little bit of mining, but not really to get the ores - Kate and I both use quite a few Heavy Stones to make sharpening stones (Kate uses twice as many as me, because she's dual-wielding two swords compared to my single one-handed axe) and we'd used all the ones we had and so were limited to coarse sharpening stones which aren't quite as good. Heavy stones come from iron deposits, of which there are quite a few around Arathi, so when I was pretty much done gathering points I made a pass along the southern border from Stromgarde all the way to Witherbark Village looking for iron. I was able to collect ten stones; not as many as I'd hoped for, but better than none.
By the time I was done there Kate was about ready so I flew back to Ironforge for repairs, then we made our way back to Dustwallow Marsh. There we still have several outstanding quests so we started cracking through a handful. The first was to capture six raptors, using a special rope that we'd been given. It involved fighting the raptors until they were weakened anough to catch, then using the rope on them, and other than accidentally wiping a couple by not being quick enough with the rope it wasn't at all difficult.
We returned to the quest-giver and he gave us two follow-on quests, both in the Bloodhoof Village to the northwest; one was to free five captured Theramore Guards, and the other was to drop raptor bait near the windmill in the middle of the village - the bait would attract the raptors we'd just caught, which had now been trained to attack the bad guys.
We got to the village and whacked a few of the Bloodhoofs to get the keys we needed to release the captured guards, then in the village itself we freed the guys and dropped the bait. It was quite funny to watch - within a few seconds of dropping the bait five or six raptors strode into the village and started attacking the Bloodhoofs. In hindsight we could have timed it better - it would have been the perfect diversion to make it easy to get out of the village. As it was, Kate did the right thing by keeping her elekk off the road a safe distance to the north; I wasn't so sensible, thinking I could outrun the baddies, and basically got knocked off my elekk and attacked by four of them (wipeout!).
Anyway we closed out the quest and made our way round to Tabetha's Farm, where we had a quest to talk to Tabetha herself. From there, since it was close, I had a quest to go back to Mudsprocket to talk to one of the goblins (it turned out Kate had already closed out this quest - I must have missed it somehow). While we were there we picked up a couple more simple gathering quests, and by then it was time to call time; we hearthstoned back to Ironforge and packed it in for the night.
Building Character
Even though Kate's character is a level ahead, for some reason her damage is lower than mine and at the moment we're not quite sure why (although I have an idea, which I'll come to); as a level 40 Warrior she should have higher damage than my level 39 Paladin. The reason she's been spending rather a lot of time in the auction house is to try to find weapons and other equipment to push her damage up as high as possible, but it doesn't seem to be working out.
I'd suggested spending some time comparing characters to try to figure out exactly why my Paladin does so much more damage and where the weakness is (if there is a weakness) with her Warrior, although I've since thought about it and I think I may already know the answer: I'm betting that her talent trees may need rebuilding from scratch.
Paladins have trees for Holy, Protection and Retribution talents. Holy talents improve healing abilities and holy damage; Protection talents help with warding spells and armour. I have a few points in each of those trees but the vast majority of my points are in the Retribution tree, which enhances damage done. I think this is part of why I do so much damage, and thinking about it this may be the key to why I can take on mobs up to four levels above me.
There are a number of guides online that tell you to basically do things that way; concentrate on one talent tree and put very few points (or even no points at all) in the others. The justification for this is that you just don't ever get enough talent points - only one for each level starting at 10 - and that spreading them out evenly over all three trees results in you being mediocre in all three areas; it's better to be very good in one area and find ways to deal with not being so good in the others. In my case I do as much damage as I can and rely on the best armour I can find to compensate for the lack of points in the Protection tree.
I don't remember offhand what the talent trees are for Warriors, and at this moment I can't look up the information to find out, but I'm betting that if we have Kate 'unlearn' her Warrior's talents and rebuild them from scratch to a plan concentrating on damage, she'll see a huge improvement. So my plan for later today, before we enter the game, is to take a look at Kate's current talent build and use the talent calculator on the WoW website to figure out an optimum build, with a strategy for where to place points for the next few levels ahead.
So while Kate was in the auction house I flew out to the Arathi Highlands to find some mobs to whack - I wanted mobs that were high enough to make decent XP without being so high that I could count on being wiped if I got attacked by two or three. The Arathi Highlands has elementals in the various Circles of Binding that are around level 38-39, which was about right (although I'm fairly sure I could take on two level 40-41 mobs without too much trouble - but there really aren't any that I can think of in Arathi so the elementals would have to do).
I started off in the area just northeast of Thandol Span, knocking over level 37 raptors for a short while, but after that I spent most of the time whacking the elementals around the Circle of Inner Binding near Stromgarde Keep. Doing that I was able to collect something like 14,000 points - not a bad chunk.
While I was there I did a little bit of mining, but not really to get the ores - Kate and I both use quite a few Heavy Stones to make sharpening stones (Kate uses twice as many as me, because she's dual-wielding two swords compared to my single one-handed axe) and we'd used all the ones we had and so were limited to coarse sharpening stones which aren't quite as good. Heavy stones come from iron deposits, of which there are quite a few around Arathi, so when I was pretty much done gathering points I made a pass along the southern border from Stromgarde all the way to Witherbark Village looking for iron. I was able to collect ten stones; not as many as I'd hoped for, but better than none.
By the time I was done there Kate was about ready so I flew back to Ironforge for repairs, then we made our way back to Dustwallow Marsh. There we still have several outstanding quests so we started cracking through a handful. The first was to capture six raptors, using a special rope that we'd been given. It involved fighting the raptors until they were weakened anough to catch, then using the rope on them, and other than accidentally wiping a couple by not being quick enough with the rope it wasn't at all difficult.
We returned to the quest-giver and he gave us two follow-on quests, both in the Bloodhoof Village to the northwest; one was to free five captured Theramore Guards, and the other was to drop raptor bait near the windmill in the middle of the village - the bait would attract the raptors we'd just caught, which had now been trained to attack the bad guys.
We got to the village and whacked a few of the Bloodhoofs to get the keys we needed to release the captured guards, then in the village itself we freed the guys and dropped the bait. It was quite funny to watch - within a few seconds of dropping the bait five or six raptors strode into the village and started attacking the Bloodhoofs. In hindsight we could have timed it better - it would have been the perfect diversion to make it easy to get out of the village. As it was, Kate did the right thing by keeping her elekk off the road a safe distance to the north; I wasn't so sensible, thinking I could outrun the baddies, and basically got knocked off my elekk and attacked by four of them (wipeout!).
Anyway we closed out the quest and made our way round to Tabetha's Farm, where we had a quest to talk to Tabetha herself. From there, since it was close, I had a quest to go back to Mudsprocket to talk to one of the goblins (it turned out Kate had already closed out this quest - I must have missed it somehow). While we were there we picked up a couple more simple gathering quests, and by then it was time to call time; we hearthstoned back to Ironforge and packed it in for the night.
Building Character
Even though Kate's character is a level ahead, for some reason her damage is lower than mine and at the moment we're not quite sure why (although I have an idea, which I'll come to); as a level 40 Warrior she should have higher damage than my level 39 Paladin. The reason she's been spending rather a lot of time in the auction house is to try to find weapons and other equipment to push her damage up as high as possible, but it doesn't seem to be working out.
I'd suggested spending some time comparing characters to try to figure out exactly why my Paladin does so much more damage and where the weakness is (if there is a weakness) with her Warrior, although I've since thought about it and I think I may already know the answer: I'm betting that her talent trees may need rebuilding from scratch.
Paladins have trees for Holy, Protection and Retribution talents. Holy talents improve healing abilities and holy damage; Protection talents help with warding spells and armour. I have a few points in each of those trees but the vast majority of my points are in the Retribution tree, which enhances damage done. I think this is part of why I do so much damage, and thinking about it this may be the key to why I can take on mobs up to four levels above me.
There are a number of guides online that tell you to basically do things that way; concentrate on one talent tree and put very few points (or even no points at all) in the others. The justification for this is that you just don't ever get enough talent points - only one for each level starting at 10 - and that spreading them out evenly over all three trees results in you being mediocre in all three areas; it's better to be very good in one area and find ways to deal with not being so good in the others. In my case I do as much damage as I can and rely on the best armour I can find to compensate for the lack of points in the Protection tree.
I don't remember offhand what the talent trees are for Warriors, and at this moment I can't look up the information to find out, but I'm betting that if we have Kate 'unlearn' her Warrior's talents and rebuild them from scratch to a plan concentrating on damage, she'll see a huge improvement. So my plan for later today, before we enter the game, is to take a look at Kate's current talent build and use the talent calculator on the WoW website to figure out an optimum build, with a strategy for where to place points for the next few levels ahead.
Labels: Draenei Paladin, Games, WoW
posted by Pete Ford at
11:32 AM
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