Twinkies: The Kind That Kill You

No, not those twinkies. These Twinkies!

I haven’t had a lot to say on the blog lately because rather than being focused on leveling my characters, I’ve been focused on leveling and gearing new and existing characters to do a little twinking in battle grounds.

Since the paladin that I blogged about for so long is an Enchanter, I decided I would go ahead and start up a few twinks to enjoy low level battle grounds like I used to on my mage. I never bothered doing PvP with Lexington because I just didn’t feel like doing PvP as anything other than dps and my skill with my Ret spec is lacking to say the least.

Lex also happens to be an amazing farming and grinding machine, so farming for specific items is pretty easy with him. That doesn’t mean that the items I am looking for are going to drop any faster or easier for me, but it does mean that I can do the farming itself quickly and with ease.

Belgawrath (Orc Shaman 36)
The first character I wanted to twink was Belgawrath. I have every intention of doing a lot of PvP with him in the 49 bracket when I can dual wield, but I also wanted to try him out in the 39 bracket while he is still using a powerful two handed weapon by already has Windfury to back it up with some insane attack power.

Even at level 36 with very little in the way of actually “twinking” the character, I already end almost every battleground in the Top 3 on the horde side. I have not yet managed to reach #1, though I have been #2 several times and come close to the first slot many times as well.

The most important piece of gear for an Enhancement Shaman is going to be his weapon(s). With dual wield out of the question, that means I had to look for a slow, powerful two handed weapon. So I turned first to WoWHead.com to search their item database for two handed weapons that were in my level range.

The first priority was weapon speed. The slower a weapon is, the more damage Windfury is going to deal. The slowest weapons in the game have a speed of 4.0 and there are only 3. Two of those weapons just happen to be level 39 two handed weapons: The Pacifier and the Pendulum of Doom. Both of those weapons happen to be BoE items, which allows me to farm them with my paladin, with Pacifier dropping from a rare spawn and Pendulum (PoD) dropping from trash mobs inside the Uldaman instance in Badlands. Windfury is the whole reason to be Enhancement, and weapon speed is a multiplier in the formula used to calculate its damage. So a slower weapon with less dps can still do significantly more damage than a faster weapon with higher dps.

The second priority was high damage. The more damage you can do, the faster your enemies are going to fall. You can’t count on Windfury to proc every time you hit, so you need to make sure you’re dishing out decent damage on normal hits as well, and of course the higher your damage the higher your crits. PoD has a higher top end damage as well as dps, but it also requires level 39 to wield it as opposed to 32 for the Pacifier.

After three days of farming The Pacifier I ended up finding two of them. They drop off of a rare spawn that only appears once every 24 hours, so he’s a little hard to catch sometimes. The good thing about that long respawn time though is that if you find him once you know when to look for him again the next day. The first time I killed him he dropped a pair of shoulders I believe, but the second and third time he drop The Pacifier.

After almost two months now of farming for the PoD I still have not seen it. I run this instance almost every day 1-12 times, killing every mob that it has a chance to drop off of. So far the dice have not been in my favor. But, I am going to keep on trying until I either find it or get so tired of looking that I swear to never step foot in the place again.

Here is a table showing some information about the weapons mentioned:

Weapon Name	Speed	Damage	EP Value	Bonuses and Procs	Drop Location	Drop Rate
Pendulum of Doom	4.0	124-187 (38.9 dps)	229.51	Proc: Deals 250-350 damage	Uldaman (Trash)	0.00037%
The Pacifier	4.0	104-156 (32.5 dps)	211.55	+18 Strength, +7 Stamina	Alterac Mountains (Rare)	12.0000%

Because of it’s maximum damage the PoD ranks higher in EP Value than The Pacifier, making it a better weapon choice. The Pacifier can actually deal more damage from a Windfury proc than the PoD can, but in general it will do less damage overall. None of that though takes into consideration the Proc ability on PoD to deal 250-350 damage when you hit. When you add that into the mix you will see that the PoD does have more damage potential than The Pacifier.

Windfury Damage Calculation (Spd x (Dps + AP + WF_AP))
Assumes AP = 400, WF_AP = 46
Weapon Name	Speed	DPS	AP + WF_AP	WF Damage
Pendulum of Doom	4.0	38.9	400	1939.6
The Pacifier	4.0	32.5	418	1986.0

If you want another way to judge which weapon might be better for you, then look at their average prices on the Auction House. The Pacifier sells for up to 500g, while the PoD sells for 10,000g. While the weapons are very similar in how good they are, the PoD’s ridiculous drop rate and brutal proc ability make it significantly more sought after than The Pacifier.

Initially I enchanted The Pacifier with Fiery Weapon because each hit from the Windfury proc is also able to proc the Fiery Enchant’s extra damage, and each Fiery proc has a chance to crit itself. There were several times that I scored hits with my attack, both WF procs, and three procs of Fiery Weapon in a single attack. Three times I was able to score a full crit (attack crit, both WF crits, and all three Fiery crits) for insane damage for my level. There’s nothing quite like one-shotting a yeti or ogre that’s 3 levels higher than you.

Right now I use The Pacifier with the Crusader enchant on it which gives me a chance to gain +100 Strength (equal to 100 AP) and heal me for 75-125 damage when I hit with it. I don’t want to waste the Mongoose enchant on The Pacifier since I know that I fully intend to leave the 39 bracket and would rather not waste an 800g enchant on a weapon I will discard for good in 4 more levels.

If I ever manage to get my hands on the Pendulum of Doom then I will enchant it with Mongoose for a chance to proc +100 Agility which equates to an equal amount of Attack Power but also increases my chance to Crit.

Silkendeath (Undead Rogue 18)
I still have a lot of work to do on the rogue here, but after getting repeatedly owned in Warsong Gulch earlier this week, I don’t think I’m going to keep him in the level 19 bracket and instead will push him forward either to the 29 or 39 bracket instead.

As I do more with Silk and get a better handle on how to use the class I will give more information on it. As for leveling the rogue, there isn’t a whole lot of advice I can give that’s going to really help.

I cheated a bit in leveling him by buying the two best daggers I could find from regular vendors (3.3 dps, level 3 required) and enchanted them both with Fiery Weapon (chance to deal 40 Fire damage when you hit). So leveling him wasn’t that hard because those weapons proc all the time and often allowed me to kill many of the mobs I faced with just 2-3 hits. The Fiery Weapon proc is also capable of critting, so it often jumped up to 60 Fire damage in addition to the regular damage from the weapon, so things just sort of died when I came in contact with them.

I used those daggers all the way through level 18 and am just now switching to other weapons with just a straight +3 Damage enchant on them until I find his twink weapons.

Hookum (Tauren Hunter 11)
Hookum is a hunter that I started a couple of days ago and plan to do battlegrounds with in the 19 bracket. I do like to have my own little power trips from time to time and after seeing how easily Silk died when he faced 9 Hunters and a Priest in a single battleground I decided it was time to roll my own.

There really isn’t a whole lot that you need to know about leveling a hunter during these levels. Basically just make sure you keep your distance and let your gun/bow do your job for you. Fire, move, fire, move, etc. Kiting is pretty easy to do once you get the hang of it, and that’s the only thing you need to do to get to level 10.

Since I’m only level 11 there isn’t a lot to talk about just yet on the Hunter. Pets are great, never being touched in combat is great, and the class can be “easy” to play if you’re fairly new to the game or new to the aspect of playing a dps character.

If you need to learn about playing a hunter, there are a lot of blogs dedicated to teaching you. I suggest you take a look at this series on Aspect of the Hare to start off with, and then there are plenty of resources for finding further information.