Druid Twinking: Hotstuffbaby

Well, I told you I wasn’t fully finished with twinking, so here’s some more proof for you. Sorry, I just can’t help but enjoy facing opponents with actual intelligence:

As with Killutiludie yesterday, she’s got some progressing left to do. But, she’s got most of her gear already set aside and just needs to level. There are three instances that I need to run for gear, but the three items I need are all the higher of the drop rates for the specific bosses. [Edit: Progression is done, gear is obtained, twink healing has begun. She'll typically be seen in her caster gear on the armory, and there are a few pieces that can be upgraded via BoE blues I haven't manage to get my hands on yet, but there she is. Herbalism should be maxed tonight or tomorrow. Just shy of 1600 hp in bear form, without sacrificing all other stats for stam.]

Hotstuffbaby isn’t mean to kill people, so where Killutiludie ends up with over 100 kills almost every battleground, Hotstuffbaby settles instead for healing more damage over the course of a battle than most of the dps put out. She actually finds herself at the top of the charts at the end more frequently than my hunter does at this point.

Leveling a Druid Twink Through Battlegrounds
Looking back on my previous post you’ll see that leveling in today’s game is pretty well the same for twink as it is for a non-twink. Most of Hot’s leveling since level 10 has come from battleground experience, which makes the process slow sometimes if my entire team feels the need to do solo fighting in midfield or everyone decides that a strong defense is the best offense (and then completely ignores the flag carriers). But when we’re good, we’re friggin’ GOOD! And that’s where the experience really comes rolling in.

Since I’m doing most of her leveling via BG’s there’s some special things to take note of. First off, if flags aren’t getting captured, then you aren’t getting experience in a WSG. You’ll get some when it’s all over regardless of win or lose, but the only way to get experience in WSG in the 19 bracket is from flags being captured. So if you want to level from this method, then do yourself a favor and do your job, which means being part of the team not trying to be superman.

Forget the fact that you’re there to level yourself and do what it takes to help your team succeed.

Gearing a Druid Twink
Gearing a druid depends on what you plan on doing with that druid. From my own personal experience, there are only two types of druid twinks that I have seen in the 19 bracket that actually perform well: healers and flag carriers. I have heard tale of some decent Balance twinks out there, but from what I see it’s always someone with Resto or Feral builds with Resto being significantly more common.

Gearing a Druid twink is a bit easier in some respects to other twinks, and also somewhat harder. The best setup you can have for the druid twink involves a high level rep grind for an offhand item known as the Furbolg Medicine Pouch. You have no chance of getting this item yourself at this level so it requires help from a higher level toon to kill things for you. You also earn that rep at a wonderfully slow 5 points per kill, though there are items you can turn in to get more. I haven’t gone after this item yet myself, though I do have the perfect setup for getting it. Right now I am trying to decide if I want to go with this item for extra hit points or if I would rather go with the Twisted Chanter’s Staff for the boost to Intellect instead.

Right now I’m not sure whether I will need the Stamina more or the Intellect, so only time will tell at this point.

A Druid is about 50/50 on their best in slot gear for twinks between world drops and dungeon loot, and some of their rare drops while being rare also have their highest drop rates located inside specific dungeons. For the druid, Blackfathom Deeps is the location of your best chest piece while Shadowfang Keep is the location for your best weapon if you decide to go for the Medicine Pouch.

Some of the green items you’ll need happen to be among some of the hardest to find though, so be prepared to watch that Auction House pretty close if you’re building a druid. The items themselves aren’t too hard to find, it’s the one with the specific random enchantments on them that you’ll be struggling with.

Playing a Druid Twink
Playing a twink is serious business.

Because of the versatile nature of the druid, there is really a lot that can be put into playing them. Having the ability to switch your role at the drop of a hat is a pretty big deal, even if you don’t necessarily have the best gear for your off-spec roles.

I primarily play Hots as a healer, with crowd control ending up as one of her biggest contributions to actually winning. Sometimes though I have to take on the role of the flag carrier and running around with my big bear butt waving around the screen and relying on someone else to do my healing for me. Right now all of the gear I’ve been building up is centered around healing, but I plan on getting a high Stamina set of gear for when I’m running the flag as well.

Utilizing your versatility is one of the cornerstones of being a Druid twink, so be sure to put that to use when the situation presents itself.

While versatility is your cornerstone, the keystone to your druid twinking is going to be your mobility.

A druid’s mobility is key to everything. You can heal on the move, you can dps (sort of) on the move, you can root (sort of) on the move, and you can move faster than most of the other classes that you’ll be facing as well. These things all combine into one big kick in the teeth for your opponents. Keep your distance when enemies are around and use what spells you can while you’re on the move.

Tactics
Defense: When you’re playing defense as a druid you have two primary contributions. First, Entangling Roots/Nature’s Grasp – these spells are going to stop people from being able to move. They can use trinkets or racials (humans and gnomes) to get out of it, but those things are limited and have cooldowns where your Entangling Roots does not. Second, you’re a healer. When you see someone engage one of your fellow defenders, it’s time to start throwing some heals. If they happen to be focused on you then take advantage of your healing there as well and try to heal through whatever they’ve got. If the enemy is focus on you or your teammates, then they aren’t focused on your flag, and that’s a good thing.

If they do manage to get your flag then your main focus should be rooting the flag carrier in place and throwing Moonfire on him when you can to help dps him down. And for the love of Sylvanas, please don’t forget to let people know where the flag carrier is taking the flag: “efc going tun/ramp/gy”.

If you’re trying to heal the flag carrier, then do your team a favor and forget that you have any damaging spells and save your mana for heals and roots.

Offense:
Crowd Control is one of your key traits here, especially if you’re a healer or a bear. You probably don’t have the mana or the spell power to be a true dps powerhouse, so the strongest offense you have to offer is crowd control and healing to help out the ones who do have the ability to pack a punch for you. If your hunter mate is getting his face bashed in by a warrior, then you should probably root the warrior and then throw some heals on that hunter while he repositions to finish up the job.

If you see a rogue running towards a teammate, then tag him with Moonfire and rob him of the ability to use stealth. If a shaman is dropping totems to slow down your team, then feel free to Moonfire his Earthbinding Totem (that one above all others). If someone’s low on health, then don’t hesitate to try to finish them off with Moonfire or Wrath, especially if it’s some form of caster.

A Beautiful Thing:
One last little bit that I’m going to leave with you is in relation to the Night Elf race in particular, though it does apply to the whole race instead of just the druids. Shadowmeld is your best friend. If a Hunter or Warlock sends his pet after you then this is how you get them to drop their agro. When you use Shadowmeld, the pets will lose agro on you and return to doing what their owner told them to. A lot of people aren’t used to actively controlling their pets, so I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve been able to use this to drop the pet agro and then finish the fight without the pet ever even trying to hit me again.

The best time to use this is right before you’re going to heal yourself, or when you’re camping the enemy’s flag spawn. If you pop Shadowmeld and immediately follow it up with your instant cast HoT then your enemy is less likely to notice that his pet isn’t hitting you anymore. It may also make the enemy player target someone else instead of you which allows you to drop back into a healing role.

While the reaction of the player is completely out of your control, it will always drop agro from a pet which might buy you the time you need to heal. There’s nothing stopping the enemy from immediately sending his pet right back to you, but a precious second is a precious second indeed if it means the difference between life and death or victory and defeat.

Hunter Twinking: Killutiludie

As you may have read in my post yesterday, I regret how much time I spent twinking on my previous server. But, that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop doing it, just that I’m not going to do it as much. Case in point:

He’s still a work in progress as he isn’t even leveled up all the way yet, but there’s a link to Killutiludie’s armory page that will continue to update itself as I progress with him. Most of his gear has been obtained, save for one piece from The Deadmines and three pieces from Wailing Caverns. All of the rare (blue) gear and enchants have been found, purchased, or produced by myself (at level 12, he’s not wearing any of those items yet).

I haven’t taken him into the twink BGs yet since he’s still leveling, so what he’s managed to do isn’t nearly as spectacular as it would be otherwise, but to give you an idea of how he’s doing so far he has ended every battleground so far with 35 – 131 honor kills, and has only been beneath top 5 in the battleground once, and generally places within the top three. Part of that is strictly due to the fact that I’m a hunter and the way that my class works, how much damage I can do, and how easily I can spread that damage out across several players spread throughout the battlefield.

Leveling a Twink
Leveling a twink is really no different than leveling any other character these days. Previously you had to be real careful to do only what was absolutely necessary so that you never went over the level 19 experience cap, but since you can turn off your experience these days that’s really a non-issue.

I prefer to level up my twinks today as I would any other character, doing quests and grouping for instances while accepting runs from guildmembers and such along the way as well. I also like to gain a few levels worth strictly from PVP.

But the challenge for a twink was never really in the process of leveling anyway. For a twink, it’s all about the gear.

Gearing a Twink
Gearing a twink is somewhat different than gearing other characters as the process involves getting the best that the game has to offer for your class and your chosen build. Some things remain static across the board, such as Stamina being a key stat for every class, while others change somewhat depending on how you spend your talent points or which direction you take your hybrid (Holy Paladin vs Retribution Paladin, etc).

An easy fix for some of the gearing up of a twink comes in the form of BoA items. These almost always include the shoulders and weapon(s), and often the chest piece as well. It’s not uncommon to find people with multiple BoA Trinkets these days either, though the tried and true trinkets often perform just as well or even better. For some reason I always end up rolling my twinks on servers that I don’t have an 80 on, so none of my characters end up with BoA gear.

One thing that you find universally across the twinking classes are rare drops, both BoE and BoP. You will find gear from either Wailing Caverns or Deadmines on pretty well every twink in the game, with many of them having gear that comes from both. Casters generally include the bracers found in Ragefire Chasm as well, though they are somewhat less common on Alliance than Horde since the instance just happens to be find right in the middle of Horde capital of Orgrimmar. Shadowfang Keep and Blackfathom Deeps also contain gear that is often used by twinks, but many of the drops from those two require level 20 or higher, so they aren’t as common.

The rarest of the twink gear is the BoE blue items which are primarily world drops with horrendously low drop rates. Some of those items you can “farm” by fighting mobs of a certain level or ones found in a specific location (looking at you here, SFK and BFD). Other’s have such a low drop rate, like 1 in every 478,395 mobs, that farming pretty well out of the question and you instead focus on camping the auction house instead.

Right now there are four items that I am camping the auction house for, though two of them I am also farming mobs for as I do know where their best drop rates are and the mobs that you grind for them have a chance to drop other items that either sell very well on the auction house, items I need for an alt’s professions, or that can be used for other twinks.

Playing a Twink
Playing a twink is serious business.

It can be as hard and stressful, or as careless and crazy as you want to be. There is a mindset that comes from serious twink players that relates closely to those who are serious raiders though. Some of them like to keep stress out so they’ll joke around when something goes wrong, and some will go absolutely crazy when someone makes the smallest mistake, even if their “mistake” wasn’t a mistake at all.

Twinking takes more conscious effort than most other aspects of the game because you aren’t fighting a programmed AI, you’re fighting against other people who are capable of making their own choices and who can completely throw you for a loop at any time. You can expect a hunter to shoot you in the face, but you never know whether he’s going to just run right up to do it, try to circle around to snipe you from behind, or if he’s going to throw you the odd curve ball and come bash you in the face with a melee weapon instead.

Doing the unexpected can give you a big advantage, or it can completely backfire and cost you the match. In the end, it’s important to remember that the old saying “it’s just a game” really is true, no matter how serious it seems. Every loss is a chance to find a way to improve what you are doing yourself, even if you don’t think the loss is directly related to your performance in any way. The same is true for victories too though, find out what everyone did right and try to expand on it.

Parting Tips
As I bring this article to a close, I’ll leave you with just a few tips to use for your low level battlegrounds, particularly Warsong Gulch in the level 19 bracket as it is by far my favorite bracket for twinking.

Etiquette
Team Mindset: Whether the other players on your side suck, or their the greatest group of players you’ve ever seen in your life, remember that they’re still part of your team. Don’t talk crap to your teammates. If someone’s screwing up, try to offer them some advice and preferably in whispers rather than open chat. If you know something they don’t, then chances are they’re going to listen and try to improve. If you’re wrong, then you might very well learn something yourself when they school you instead.

You’ll often find that the person who talks the most crap in chat is the one that’s doing the absolute least to help your team succeed.

Also remember that a good way to build trust and a sense of teamwork is to take the time to actually acknowledge the actions of others. Thank your healers, congratulate your flag carriers, and give the team some props as a whole as well. And yes, even take the time to tell that stupidly overpowered hunter that his sniping skills are unmatched. If it helps the team succeed, then it’s a good thing. If it brings people down or breaks the group apart, then it has no purpose in a battleground.

Emotes: One of the things you’ll get a lot of advice on is whether or not to use emotes to taunt your opponents. The best example is probably going to be /spit. Some will tell you to use it because it will infuriate your opponents and by so doing cause them to make stupid mistakes, and others will tell you to never do it at all. If you want to use them, then use them; if you don’t, then don’t. Personally, the only emote I ever use in a BG in relation to my opponents is /hug, and even then only to get the achievement.

If you feel that taunting the opponent is going to make them screw things up then that’s your call. I will say though, that when I see someone doing it excessively, or without any reasoning I lose respect for you whether you’re on my team or the opponent’s. I like to think that the twinks deserve a bit more respect for the time and effort that they are dedicating, so I shake my head every time I see someone doing it. If there’s one guy that’s just kicking the crap out of everyone and his first death comes after 20 minutes of failed attempts, then I can see someone doing something to express their emotion at finally overcoming him, but once is enough.

Tactics
Defense: When you’re playing the defensive role, take note of where your opponents are at, and be proactive in engaging them. If you know that you have someone coming up the tunnel, then meet them in the tunnel, not the flag room. If you kill him before he gets the flag then congratulations, you just did your job. If you end up being the one that dies though, then you at least have a chance of catching him again when you resurrect, before he can manage to make his getaway with your flag. The tactic is somewhat more useful as a rogue or hunter, but it’s applicable to anyone.

Take note of the fact that your enemy can use this against you though, especially if you see them running back out of the tunnel when they see you. If they pull you farther down the tunnel, then they may very well be leading you away while their buddy drops down from your roof and then takes off with the flag.

Offense: Kill the healers. Kill the flag carrier. If there aren’t any healers and nobody has your flag, then kill anything that has crowd control (warlock, mage) or big burst damage (hunter, rogue). And remember another old saying “there’s no ‘I’ in ‘team’”. You’re part of a team, so don’t try taking everyone on by yourself. You’ll have a better chance of winning if you fight in groups than if you go do everything by yourself.

Use your crowd control, and use it correctly. For instance, rooting a hunter or a caster doesn’t really help you much unless you do it while they are in pursuit of a flag carrier Unless you have the Glyph of Polymorph, then you probably shouldn’t be sheeping anyone when a Warlock is around unless you’re going to tell them what you’re doing. Druids in their animal forms are considered beasts, and as such can be put to sleep or scared by class abilities that only affect beasts.

My Warcraft Year in Review Meme

It seems that over the Thanksgiving Holiday, which I extended by taking some vacation time, I was tagged to participate in this meme to share with you some of what happened to me through the 2009 year in relation to WoW.

As with any meme, the general idea is to answer the questions and then pass it along to other people to see what everyone has to say on them. Instead of passing it along to five people in particular though, I’m going to throw it out there for all to see and allow you to tag yourself with it if you choose to do so.

My Warcraft Year in Review Meme
1. What did you do in the World of Warcraft in 2009 that you’d never done before?
2. What was your favorite new place that you visited?
3. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
4. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
5. What was your biggest failure?
6. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
7. What do you wish you’d done less of?
8. What was your favorite WoW blog or podcast?
9. Tell us a valuable WoW lesson you learned in 2009.

1. What did you do in the World of Warcraft in 2009 that you’d never done before?
This question is both hard and easy to answer. It’s hard in that I only played for a short time in 2008, so almost everything was new. It’s easy in that, well, everything was so new.

To list a few, I did the following: Reached level cap, purchased epic flying, made my first successful twink, left my first true “home server”, switched from playing primarily Horde to Alliance.

2. What was your favorite new place that you visited?
This one is pretty easy as there really wasn’t much of anywhere that I went this year that I didn’t reach in 2008 save for the higher leveled areas of Northrend. To pick a single place though, I will have to go with the AQ40 raid. I went there for the first time a month or so ago with our main guild on the new Alliance server, Durotan-US. We had a blast in there and I found that I really love running around on the mounts that drop in there. It really sucks that you have to be in the instance to use those mounts, but it was really cool to go in there for the first time and really nail one of the big raids from the past that I was certainly nowhere close to being ready for while it was actually being played.

3. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
I think I’m looking forward to actually participating in some of the end game raiding in 2010. Not a whole lot, but a little bit. I’ve never been a fan of raiding, and I don’t expect to become one any time soon either, but I just recently got a new computer that I think can actually handle the the load that an honest raid will put out where before I would lag like crazy if there were more than 5 people in a group.

4. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
There really wasn’t much in the way of achievements this year in the use of the WoW term, so I’m going to say that reaching the number of views on my blog would be my greatest achievement of the year. I think I did quite a bit to move up from being “just another WoW blogger” to having people actually care about what I’m writing. As I check the stats on the blog, I find a lot of people constantly referring back to things that I wrote here, particularly in relation to the Prot Paladin. So I know that to at least some degree I am actually reaching my goal of helping people.

5. What was your biggest failure?
My biggest failure is going to tie into one of my biggest changes, which was the swap to playing Alliance rather than Horde. I had two of my friends end up paying to transfer their characters to my Horde server, and this year my wife made the switch to an Alliance server herself and after going to help her get a start I actually found myself really enjoying the server as well. So much so that I actually very much dislike playing on my old Horde server now except for the occasional run.

I also left a fairly good guild because I wasn’t going to raid and joined another which decided shortly after my joining them that they would open their doors to everyone. The guild now has over 500 members who constantly talk about random, stupid crap that makes me actually leave the guild channel in another chat window that I never look at just so that I can ignore them all.

So basically I screwed myself by switching to a fail guild, and then I screwed two of my friends out of actual money as they transfered the characters over to play with me and then I changed servers myself. For those reasons, I suck.

6. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
I think the only thing that really got me excited this year as far as WoW goes is going to have to be Cataclysm. I’m still excited about it even though we have no idea when it’s actually going to hit the shelves yet, and I can’t wait to jump in there and get started on rolling a whole new set of characters.

7. What do you wish you’d done less of?
I wish I had done less of my twinking. While I had a great deal of fun doing it, and I’m still doing it even now, I wish I had done a bit less. The blog stopped getting updated while I was doing it, I pulled away from other players quite a bit while I focused on doing my own thing, and so on. It’s a great deal of fun to twink a character and to really get to know the ins and outs of your abilities and increase your knowledge and skill with the character, but it has its drawbacks sometimes too which you don’t always see until it’s too late to fix them.

8. What was your favorite WoW blog or podcast?
This one is really hard, actually. There are a lot of things that I like about a lot of the blogs that I read out there. Narrowing those down is a bit too hard, so I’ll just link a few that really come to mind right off: LoreCrafted, Darraxus the Warrior (Real Azeroth Heroes, especially), Cynwise’s Battlefield Manual, Through the Eyes of Death, Empowered Fire, Slice and Dice, Troll Bouquet, and Shaman on Ramen.

As far as podcasts go, I’m still new to them and the only two I even listen to (and on an infrequent basis at that) are For The Lore and WoWPhiles.

9. Tell us a valuable WoW lesson you learned in 2009.
My reply here is actually going to be almost exactly the same as the one from which I was tagged who said, “I learned that it is not worth it to offer up constructive criticism or unsolicited advice. Even if you think you are friends with someone and see themselves repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot with their poor communication skills. Even if you see them run folks off with their communication style and their lack of respect for others’ ideas and opinions. Just keep your mouth shut. Because all you’ll get is a black eye for trying to help someone be more aware of how others are perceiving them.”

In my blogging I try to go into a lot of detail to break things down and explain in such a way that anyone could pick it up and put it to use even if they were brand new to the game. I don’t always do the greatest job with that, but I try. It has recently been brought to my attention though that using the same type of language in replies or offering of my own opinion makes me come off as more of a jerk than someone trying to help.

So I’ve learned something quite a bit like what Miss Nexxi there learned, that giving advice when it isn’t asked for, no matter how useful or important it might be, is better left ungiven.

Sometimes I actually want to get someone upset, to show them how stupid they’re being, or to tell them they’re screwing things up for the rest of us. And in those cases I come right out and smack you upside the head and tell it like it is. But for the most part, I just want to open doors, broaden views, or give some insight into things that people don’t know or haven’t figured out yet. The key is expressing that without coming across in a completely different manner, and while I haven’t learned yet how to do that, I have learned the need for it.

5 Folks I’m tagging to Complete this Meme
As I said at the top there, I’m not tagging anybody in particular with this. It’s just not the kind of thing I do, personally. So instead I’m going to offer this up to the first five people that feel like taking it upon themselves to do so.

If you’d like to tag yourself with this, then drop me a link to your blog in the comments to this post and I’ll add your name and your link to the list below:

1)
2)
3)
4)
5)

Alt’ernate Universe

I just can’t help it. No matter how hard I try, I just can’t stop myself from rolling new toons. It’s like sitting a fat guy in front of a table full of pie and expecting him not to eat them (trust me, I’m the fat guy and I know these things /nomnomnom). I’ve got fifty slots that I can fill with toons, and I love a good reroll.

To give you just a general idea of how much I enjoy rolling new toons, lets look at just the last week. Within the last week alone I have rolled six new characters. Some of them from plans I have for the near future (Psynner), some for plans I have in the distant future (Lexzus), some because I want to try out a new class (Psynwise), some because friends have rolled new toons and would like a bit of company (Psynple), and some because I was just bored and needed something different to play around with for a while. I really don’t need any particular reason to roll a new toon, I just need an open character slot in my account-wide allotment of 50 total characters, and a few minutes worth of open play time.

As I’ve spent so much time doing such a wide variety of things on so many different toons, it puts a bit of a strain on the blog’s purpose which is to write about leveling your characters. But, I feel like writing today regardless, so instead of trying to finish up one of the many near-completed posts I have sitting over there in my Drafts folder, I’m going to share with you what I’m doing simply because I can.

So, here’s a little information about some of the toons that I have rolled within the last week. I’ll leave out the new bank alt because, well, he’s my bank alt.

Psynner (Male Human Priest)
I rolled this guy last night because we had a discussion on Twitter about how much fun low level PvP is. I made the comment that it would be fun to get a premade group consisting entirely of healers to do them with and a few people agreed with me. So, I rolled this guy. Initially I was going to go with a female draenei, but decided the human racial would pay off more than an extra heal as I would likely only use it when I was out of mana in which case I’d already be screwed regardless. How often he gets played will depend on how often my other friends feel like doing some low level PvP.

This guy is named for the obvious contrast between name and class.

Psynwise (Female Human Warlock)
I rolled this one a few days ago because I decided that the Gnome just wasn’t doing it for me. I just couldn’t get into playing that short little guy all the time with his stupid sayings and goofy looking gear. Instead I rolled a human because the female’s casting animation is actually pretty decent compared to some of the other races which…well, suck. I’ve wanted to get a warlock going for a long time now, and maybe this will be the one that I hang on to for a while.

This character is named after Cynwise, for having invited us to the Durotan server which my wife absolutely loves.

Psynister (Male Draenei Death Knight)
Now there’s a shocker of a name, right? I rolled this toon last night because my wife decided to get her start on a Role Play server (Feathermoon-US). She hates some of the quests in the DK area, so I offered to reroll with her to help get through all of the quests faster, and we certainly did. The idea is to get some starter gold for a new toon. He will either see almost no play time at all save farming, or he will become my experimental DK tank. Most likely the former.

Just about every server I roll on fresh has the first character named Psynister, no matter what kind of character it is.

Psynple (Male Dwarf Hunter)
This guy’s just a simple little hunter. I rolled him to level up with my wife and Cynwise who also rolled low level characters. We played with them one night this week and I haven’t logged into him a second time yet. Playing a hunter is always fun and relaxing during the low levels, so I’ll probably come back to this guy before too long just to have a bit of relaxing play if nothing else.

When I rolled the hunter, I knew I wanted something simple. And as soon as the word “simple” crossed my mind, I had my name.

Lexzus (Male Draenei Warrior)
And the last one for today is the one I’ve already brought up when I mentioned him in a post a few days ago. You can read there for any details you want on him. He’s still level 4 by the way.

Your Alts
So I want to know – are any of you out there just as bad as me (or worse?) about constantly rolling new toons?

If so, what are your reasons?

If not, what is it that keeps you so focused on sticking with only a small number of toons?

AoE Grinding: Frost Mage Edition

The time has come to share with you the greatness that is Frost Mage AoE Grinding. Grinding on my first Mage was really what solidified my interest in the game. Up to that point I really didn’t care all that much for the game. It was something to do, storyline was decent, play style wasn’t too bad, but overall it was just something else that I could play save that I actually had to pay as I played as well. Up until I started playing the mage I had seriously considered just letting my account expire and go back to playing Diablo II and D&D and leaving this game to my wife and her friend. [Shameless plug: Wife @Fynralyl and her NaNoWriMo Blog and her friend: @Catarith]

But I was reading through one forum or another one day and stumbled onto a thread about AoE Grinding with a Frost Mage and decided to take a look. I got the general idea, hit YouTube for a visual example of what people meant by some of the terms, and then set about doing it myself. I got into it right away and found out that it was in fact a quick and easy process. However, I also noticed that several of the suggestions given were flawed. Some things they told me to do were not effective while others that they told me not to do were actually way more effective than the contrary. So, I gave up on the forums, the blogs, and the YouTube videos and did my own thing. My performance increased greatly and my leveling speed increased right along with it.

So what I am going to share with you today is what I have found to be the most effective way to perform AoE Grinding with a Frost Mage. I invite anyone who has done this themselves to join in with any thoughts, suggestions, experiences, and so forth that they have had as well. If you find something works better for you then go ahead and share it. If you disagree with something I’ve said then bring that up too.

Advice You Should Ignore
There are a lot of things that you will find in guides around the net that are not true. People will give you suggestions on how to spend your talents or which spells to cast or avoid, and while all information can help you improve on what you’re doing or prompt you to try something you hadn’t thought of before, that doesn’t mean that the information they give you is correct. Here I will cover some of the advice that I suggest you ignore. Take note of the fact that the statements I just made apply to me as well – this worked for me, but you may well find that it sucks for you and that you would rather go down the paths I tell you to avoid.

Misconceptions The following are all topics you will find discussed on forums and in blogs. I’ll tell you what many of those blogs say that I feel is wrong and then tell you what my thoughts on them are as well.

Frostbite Talent: Almost every AoE grinding guide you’ll find for Frost Mages will tell you not to take this because it will mess up your pulls. This is, by far, one of the single most effective grinding tools that the class has to offer.

Mana Shield: All of those guides that I just told you who don’t use Frostbite also tell you to use this worthless piece of crap of a spell. Blizzard has the highest mana cost of any spell you’re ever going to cast, and if you get a big pull and then find out you don’t have the mana to fire that bad boy off, then you’re well beyond screwed. You better hope you’ve got your running shoes with you. Forget this thing exists unless you’re in PvP.

Icy Veins: You’re also going to find a lot of guides that tell you that this is crucial to your grinding. Fact is, it’s not crucial at all. Don’t get me wrong, it certainly helps and can speed things up when it’s not on cooldown, but it is by no means crucial. Take the talent when you don’t have more important things to pick up instead. It’s great for having Blizzard do all of its damage in a short time, or firing off your Evocation in a shorter time, but it’s not necessary and I do most of my grinding without ever using it.

Frost AoE: General Information
If you have read my Paladin AoE Guides then you will know that I mentioned that there is no set rotation for AoE grinding with Paladins. For the Mage, it is pretty much the same. There are certain spells that you are going to cast, but not a specific order in which you are going to cast them as each pull and each situation can change what you have to do and how you have to react.

However, just like the Paladin’s guides, there are general steps that are always taken in pretty well the same order. I already mentioned the order in the Mage Leveling: 21-39 post: [Pull], Corral, Freeze, Distance, Blizzard, Clean Up

One difference that I will note right off the bat between Mage AoE and Paladin AoE is that I do not including Pulling as part of my rotation on a Mage where I do include it as a Paladin. With the mage you want everything in one spot and you want it to stay there, so pulling other mobs into the mix is generally a bad idea. So as a general rule of thumb, when you’re grinding with a Mage as soon as you’ve pulled the mobs you want, finish them off before you pull any more.

Getting Ready: Before you even begin to pull the mobs there are a couple of things you need to do. First thing’s first – Always, ALWAYS make sure you have enough mana to do what you’re about to do. Nothing sucks more than pulling a group of mobs, freezing them in place, and then wondering why Blizzard isn’t casting and then noticing you started the pull with 50 mana… Never go into a fight without mana. Second, make sure you’ve got your armor on. Personally, I suggest you go with Frost Armor when doing your AoE. Once you hit level 40 you will also have Ice Barrier, and I suggest you cast that as well as it will absorb most of the blows you take while pulling.

Once you’ve got your armor on and your mana’s up, then go ahead and start your pull.

Step 1: Pull There are various method of pulling mobs, but with mounts now available at level 20, which also happens to be when you get your AoE spell, Blizzard, the good old fashion Body Pull method is going to be your best bet. It’s not your only option, but it will generally be the best one you’ve got. So jump on your mount and run near all of the mobs that you want to AoE and allow yourself to draw agro simply by moving within their agro range. There are other methods that you can use depending on your situation which include casting a single Frostbolt on multiple mobs that are spread out, using Polymorph on a central mob and then pulling the others to it, and several others. Once you get into your 60’s you’ll have Ice Lance which is great for pulling, but otherwise stick to the body pulls.

Step 2: Corral For you city folks, you might note that corralling is basically the same thing as gathering up or grouping together, so that’s what you’re doing here if you aren’t familiar with the term. You need to gather up all of the mobs that you’ve pulled and get them bunched up together so that your Frost Nova will hit all of them.

This isn’t necessarily done by casting a spell so much as simply by running around towards or through the mobs that you’re pulling so that they all move closer together. The easiest way to corral the mobs does involve casting a spell, and that spell is Ice Block. I don’t use the method very often myself because I’m proficient in corralling as part of my pulling, but if you have a hard time doing it then just cast your Ice Block and go with that. By using Ice Block you make yourself immune to everything and the mobs will all run up to melee your block of ice until the spell wears off or you cancel it.

I suggest you practice corralling as part of your pulling, which is simply moving around so that the mobs get closer together, rather than relying on Ice Block as it has a cooldown that is far too long to rely upon it for every pull.

Call this step whatever you want to help you remember it. When I talked about AoE with a Paladin I didn’t bother including a Corral step because the paladin doesn’t give a crap where you are so long as you’re close to him. A Mage though, needs all of the mobs close together and he needs them there at the same time. So, I’m adding a step here that didn’t exist for the Paladin to help emphasize that point.

Step 3: Freeze The next thing on your list is to freeze the mobs in place. Your most reliable method of doing this is going to be by casting Frost Nova. It is possible to freeze them all with Cone of Cold if you put your talent points in Frostbite like I told you to, but I certainly wouldn’t rely on that. Stick with Frost Nova as it’s going to work every time so long as it hits.

As you get higher in levels you will get talent points that increase your critical hit chance, and your critical hit damage while your targets are frozen, which makes this all go a whole lot faster and smoother. But, the main reason for freezing them in place is so that you can get your distance and then cast Blizzard to hit them all at once so that you’re not wasting mana or time.

Step 4: Distance The next item of business is to put some distance between yourself and the mobs. You can do this one of two ways: cast Blink, or run. Personally, I just run a short distance and then call it good. Some people find that casting Blink is the way to go, but I disagree. The only time I use Blink instead of just running is when I am either Dazed, Stunned, or Rooted by the mobs that I am pulling. If none of those three things are happening, then I simply run and call it good.

There are a few flaws in using Blink that keep it from being my chosen method. You can accidentally blink into other mobs causing you to over pull, you can Blink over a glitched section of ground so that you basically waste the spell as you gain little or no distance at all, you can Blink into a glitch that causes you to fall through the world and die, or you can Blink out of the range of Blizzard causing you to run back towards them and waste whatever time you might have saved otherwise. I thought that Blizzard had fixed the glitches that send you falling through the world, but it happened to me last week in Redridge, so I know it’s still possible.

Step 5: Blizzard The spell, not the company. With your enemies safely frozen in a nice little corral of their soon-to-be death, cast Blizzard and let destruction rain (snow?) down upon your enemies. When you cast Blizzard make sure you put the far edge of the spell’s area as close to you as possible. In other words, try to leave as much of the spell’s area that isn’t on the mobs closer to you so that if the mobs break out of their freeze they still have to run through your Blizzard to get to you.

If you have taken Frostbite and Improved Blizzard then each time your Blizzard hits them it has a chance to freeze them again as well. Sometimes a mob will manage to escape your Blizzard without being frozen again (and again, and again), but even though you only have a 15% chance to freeze them from Frostbite, each spike from Blizzard has a chance to trigger that 15% chance so it happens a lot more than you would expect from such a small number. But, since it is a chance rather than a guarantee you never know how it might turn out.

Step 6: Clean Up Clean Up is where you have to make a decision and why a set rotation doesn’t actually exist. This is where you have to make a judgement call based on the situation.

If you still have multiple mobs that are still alive and they are not close to dying, then you either want to repeat Step 5 by casting another Blizzard, or go back to Step 3 and try to refreeze them if your Frost Nova is not on cool down.

If you have multiple mobs that are close to dying then I generally suggest you finish them off with Cone(s) of Cold or Arcane Explosion(s). Because of the extra benefits of your Frost talents I would generally suggest you use Cone of Cold for this if you know you can catch them all in it’s area, but if not then go ahead and use Arcane Explosion instead. You have more potential benefit from using CoC, but AE is the safer route if you’d rather do that for getting started.

Visual Representation
Rather than going with specific examples as I did with the Paladin series, I’m going to give you a bit more visual look at how things are done. Some of my other fellow bloggers have picked up this method, so I figured I would give it a shot myself to see how well it works for me.

Pull (a body pull using a mount)

Corral (grouping the mobs simply by positioning yourself in a central area)

Freeze (using Frost Nova, or a Water Elemental’s Freeze spell)

Distance (by running, or casting Blink)

Blizzard (there’s only one Blizzard, ladies and gents – only one)

Clean Up (Arcane Explosion in this case, Cone of Cold or other spells work too)