Making it official...

I'm sorry to have to make this official, but for now, I declare this blog dead. I have not been playing World of Warcraft for months and I have absolutely no interest in returning. It was a great game that gave me lots of fun, but in the end, it wasn't fun enough for me any more. I'm thinking about returning, for a month or two at least, once Mists of Pandaria is released, but for now, I am no longer a WoW player.

On the other hand, I got my hands on a Diablo 3 beta access, so I might start a blog about that game, since I definitely intend on buying it when it's released. In any case, I will be starting my Diary of a Game Addict again, so you can read some of my stuff there if you wan't. The link is at the top.

For now, goodbye!

Class Review: Warrior

First of all, I leveled exclusively as protection from 1 to 80 so I can't really say anything about the other two specs. Protection was great, though, but before you jump to the wrong conclusion, I mostly didn't tank, but instead used a damage focused protection spec to  quest insanely fast. Thanks to the sturdiness of protection, I could take on 5-6 mobs at once, up to 10 if I really wanted to live on the edge. All you need to do is charge from one mob to another, gather them up, rend one of them, thunder clap the rest of them to spread rend and then use cleave and glyphed revenge to burn them down, while at the same time focusing on killing one of them ASAP, so you're able to use the healing from victory rush.

With 7-8 mobs on you, this usually means you drop to about 30% by the time the first mob is dead, then get back up to around 50% by using victory rush. By that time, rend, cleave thunderclap and revenge have dropped the rest of the mobs to bellow 50%, which means the next one you focus on will die that much faster, and you will get victory rush again. Basically, you almost die, but then you easily go back up and burn the rest. If you accidentally take on to many, you always have your defensive cooldowns to save yourself.

This procedure worked flawlessly up to 80, but when I got to Hyjal, the jump in mob health and damage, as well as gear was to much and it took to long for me to kill even one. This is why I switched to fury and started dual wielding twohanders. It wasn't as fast anymore, but once I got some gear, I could kill a mob in under 10 seconds and already be on the next one, so questing was still pretty fast.

All in all, the warrior is a pretty fast and fun class. You'll always have plenty to do and charging is always fun. Definitely one of my favorite classes.

Jewelcrafting preparations.

This is old news by now, but I thought I'd share anyway.

It seems jewelcrafters will be able to prepare for epic cuts after all. The recipes will be bought for 5 tokens each, or you will have the option of buying a random recipe for 4 tokens. Of course, i'ts in no way worth the risk if you ask me, so I will be spending 5 tokens per recipe as soon as the patch hits. I'll get the red cuts first and then get a few purple, orange and blue ones. Yellow and green will be saved for last, If I even manage to buy any early enough. Right now, I'm sitting on 15 jewelcrafter tokens because I stopped buying blue cuts once I found out about this. You should probably do the same.

If you're one of the lucky few that sits on a heap of tokens, you should probably get the good cuts first and then use the random option to get the rest. However, if you're on a highly competitive realm, you might want to follow Critical Goblin's advice on what epic cuts to buy first. I'm not, so I will be going with my own "advice".

In other news, I'm back to 275k gold, and I'm hoping I'll go up much, much more soon, since I'm finally close to being stocked on mats again.

Links:

• Critical Goblin - Epic Gem Recipes

Class Review: Death Knight

I'm a bit at a loss on what to write here. I really have no firm opinion on the death knight in any direction. First of all, you won't be seeing the revamped vanilla zones on him, so that part doesn't matter. That also means the experience will be Outland or Northrend style during most of your leveling time, so you might not like it very much simply because of that.

On the other hand, the DK is a tough class with good damage. You won't kill things especially fast, nor especially slow, and you will live through most stuff. If you get some decent gear and a good spec, you might even do some AoE killing to speed things up.

I leveled as frost most of the time, first with a twohander during the time of WotLK. When Cataclysm arrived, I started out as twohander again, but soon realized that dual wielding is faster, simply because you get more runes. Also, be sure to switch to unholy presence in the later levels. I'm not sure which is better before 80, but unholy definitely beats frost or blood after.

In any case, you should roll a death knight simply to experience the starting zone from 55 to 60. It has some interesting lore and a good story line, so you will definitely enjoy it if you like that type of stuff.

Class Review: Mage

One word: Awesome!

I started this class out with a friend. We we're gonna level two gnomish mages together, but he gave up around level 17. I took a break from it, because I went Frost and I didn't really like it. I came back a few months later and tried some weird hybrid spec where I used instant cast spells only (Ice Lance, that arcane thing, and some others). It wasn't the fastest or best way to do damage, but for a while, it was fun as hell. I was basically playing a shooter at that point.

I did this until mid 30s, but the foes weren't falling as fast by that point. I decided to try Arcane, because I heard it's pretty strong if you get mana efficient enough. It. Was. Awesome. From this level on, up to 80, most enemies fell in one, some in two or three shots. I can't remember a single time an enemy actually managed to reach me, mostly due to the slow effect of arcane blast. Even in the 80-85 range, most enemies died in 2-3 shots. It was just insanely fast and easy. My strategy from 35 to 85 was to just run in the casting range of as many enemies as possible and simply snipe them down. Even the Northrend group quests weren't an issue. Thanks to Slow and Blink with the speed run increase, most enemies, no matter how strong, died before they could get to me. For those rare occasions where I ran out of mana, Evocation was there often enough to fill it right back up, together with my health.

To put it simply, this was the best and most overpowered leveling experience I had and I loved every second of it. A definite recommendation from me to try a mage.

Another busy day...

... so all I did was post some auctions and do the JC daily. No Netherwing today. Also, I'm all out of maelstrom crystals and they were expensive today, so I'm not expecting much profit from enchanting tomorrow.

I guess I'll do another class review.

It's over nine thousand!

Finally got the feat today.  I was pretty close for the last couple of weeks, but it was only today that I realized I still have a few Outland dungeons to complete on heroic. I spent a few hours clearing those out and it got me 15 points over the edge. While I was already there, I also bought the Cenarion War Hypogriph. I didn't even realize I don't have it jet. As you may have noticed, I've been spending a lot of money lately, so I keep dropping in the amount I have left. I'm back down to 265 000 again. Once I clear most of those gold sinks, It will start increasing again. Oh, and I've also been working on my Netherwing reputation. With any luck in finding some extra eggs, I'll get that cleared tomorrow. It will probably be the day after tomorrow, though, since I wan't be able to play in the morning, so there will be more egg finding competition when I do it. I'm thinking I need 4-5 eggs in addition to the dailies to reach exalted tomorrow.

WoW is becomming a kid's game!

Just a quick word regarding all of this "pandaren are childish" rage. I'm sure a lot of people have at one point read this famous quote from the Bible somewhere:

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.

Here's an expansion on that one, by C. S. Lewis:

Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

TL;DR: You think it's childish? Grow up!

Class Review: Warlock

The warlock is the second class I rolled and one of the classes I liked playing. I picked gnome, simply because I thought it fit best out of the alliance classes, but race choice really shouldn't be an issue for anyone, unless they are in one of the top guilds of the world.

I started out with demonology and I didn't like it very much. Sure, the demon keeps you alive through almost anything, but it's also very, very slow. As for destruction, back when I played it, you just had to drink fat to often. Somewhere around the 40s, I switched to affliction and I haven't looked back until 80. Starting out as affliction, you should probably take an opponent at a time, doting them up and then finishing with a shadow bolt or drain soul.

Once you get to a slightly higher level and learn most of your dots, the style of playing changes greatly. What I did was to throw dots on one enemy and just move on to another one while the first one was still alive. I could easily take 4-5 enemies in a row that way and never stop to drink or eat at all. Just as about to get one to many, one of the first ones dies, so its never an issue. If your health ever drops, death coil and haunt take care of it, and if it really becomes a problem, you always have drain life, which you can talent to heal for more if you're in trouble. Sure, on a few occasions I went to far and got my ass handed to me, but for the most part it was fast, efficient and fun.

When Cataclysm arrived, I somehow thought that destruction would be better so i tried for half a level in that spec. Suffice to say, I switched back to affliction very fast and simply wen't back to my old tactics. Of course, mobs have much more health in this level range, so I wasn't usually taking more than 2-3 mobs at a time. Still, thanks to that nifty new Soul Swap spell, it was working out very nicely. If you time it correctly, and glyph it, you can keep the dot's from your first target running throughout the few, saving you time and helping you pull more, or do some direct damage to finish them faster.

All in all, the warlock is a pretty fun class to level. Well, at least affliction is.