I did a bit of everything in World of Warcraft this weekend, playing many different characters of different levels. I think I'm a bit beyond the point where I "have to" reach a specific goal or advance a specific character, nowadays I'm just playing for fun.
I don't really have a "main" character, but if I had to designate one of my chars as such, it would probably be Raslebol, my troll warrior, who is the first of my MMORPG characters ever to hit a games level cap. I'm playing him more often again nowadays. My guild used to have too many warriors and not enough priests, so I leveled up a priest to 60 and played that one, but nowadays the situation has reversed, and we have plenty of priests and few warriors. So I played Raslebol several times this extended weekend with my guild. I already told about the two raids, but I also visited Scholomance and Stratholme.
Scholomance was fun, because we had a nearly perfect group and cleared out the complete dungeon, including the nasty side area with Jandice Barav. Raslebol had a quest for turning the lich Ras Frostwhisper into a human since many months, and now I finally got to do it. The groups secondary tank held the lich's aggro while I was transforming him from maximum range, and that worked very well, without getting interrupted. The transformation turns the fearsome looking lich into a human in underpants, which is hilarious. He still keeps the same abilities and loot, so nothing really changes in the fight, but it did get me the quest done. The reward for the quest was a shield which was a slight improvement over what I had before, but most importantly looked much better. My previous shield was one of the many shields with a small buckler look with a skull painted on, which just looked tiny in my trolls hand. Now I have a tower shield which looks a bit more unique.
After Ras Frostwhisper, we killed the 6 bosses which make headmaster Gandling spawn, and then the headmaster. I've read somewhere that Blizzard wants to put better loot on those 6 bosses, which is really necessary. The fights are tough for a group of 5, and several of them just dropped a nearly useless dark rune and a stone for Argent Dawn faction. These bosses used to drop parts from green armor sets. But now these armor sets have been upgraded to blue, and turned into ultra-rare drops, we didn't find a single piece on 6 bosses, which is pretty stupid. That is *not* what I understand under "improved loot", as announced in the dungeon improvements. These 6 bosses should together drop at least 2 of these armor parts, otherwise there is no point in going there to collect the set.
The Stratholme group started as something completely different. I asked in guild chat if some kind soul would help me farm Frostmaul Giants in Winterspring, which at level 60 elite are just a bit too tough to solo for me. According to Thottbot they have a 2% chance to drop the recipe for greater frost protection potion. But I always suspect that Thottbot only counts drop percentages when there is any item loot at all, so if half of the giants only drop money, they aren't counted and the real chance to find the recipe would be only 1%, which could take a lot of farming to find. So two friendly guild mates volunteer to help me, and a third one logs in while we are already in Winterspring, sees that there is a guild group there, and asks to join too. Before he even gets to us, we kill the 5th Frostmaul Giant and find the recipe, an extraordinary streak of luck. Now I got all 5 greater protection potion recipes on Raslebol: Arcane, Fire, Frost, Nature, and Shadow.
So we have nearly a full group with no more purpose in Winterspring, and decide to invite one more guild mate and go to Stratholme, undead side. As Raslebol was on the "Stratholme in 45 minutes Baron run quest", we got that timer running automatically. Well, the group wasn't quite as experienced as the Scholo group, we had some accidents like me getting feared into another group of mobs, we wiped two or three times, and by the time we killed the Baron we had taken 2 hours. Now somebody is going to tell me again that doing it in 45 minutes is feasible, and I think it is: You just need a group of 5 people doing it repeatedly until they know every corner of the place by heart and play together in perfect harmony. Unfortunately casual players never get into such groups. Doing Stratholme repeatedly with every time a different group is not likely to ever succeed in doing this quest. I would guess that over 90% of the people trying the tier 0.5 upgrade quest series will get stuck at that point. That suits the hardcore players just fine, because they don't want other people to get good gear with a "casual" play style, as that would invalidate their choice of play style. But I still would say that Blizzard claiming that tier 0.5 being the alternative for the casual player isn't exactly truth in advertising. To get the tier 0.5 quest series done, you need to have a raid-like hardcore guild, just with less players than a raid needs. It is an alternative for the top players who for some reason don't have 39 friends and several hours of raiding time available, but for the majority of casual players this still isn't achievable. Stratholme in 45 minutes is basically a 5-person raid, necessitating the same play style of "repeated attempts to perfection" as Onyxia or MC, just with less people.
Nevertheless the Stratholme expedition was fun. We found a lot of tier 0 bracers, belts, and even some gloves. Raslebol didn't find anything that would still be an improvement for him, but at least I got two more quests done there. The only thing that was a bit annoying was that the baron dropped the tier 0 pants for a class that wasn't present in the group. Before the 1.10 patch people used to make "class runs" to dungeons like Stratholme, with one member of every class. So except for the rare cases where the Horde found pally armor, or the Alliance shaman armor, the raid resulted in one member getting the tier 0 pants he needed. Now, with the group size limited to 5, even if there are 5 different classes the chance that the final boss drops armor that is useful is only 55%. In the other 4 out of 9 cases you can only disenchant the loot you get from the final boss, which is a bit sad. Why can't they make the loot tables checking which classes are actually in the group, and only drop useful armor?
As I said, I also played other characters this long weekend. Kyroc, my priest, I didn't really do much with. I went to Silithus and tried out the Field Duty quests. The good thing was that as priest it is possible to solo the part where you need to support a group of Horde guys to kill a giant bug, to get a signature under your field duty papers. So I did that twice, and got a combat quest and a tactical quest. But it turned out that these are group quests. If I wanted to make any significant progress in Cenarion Circle reputation with these, I would need to gather lots of different field duty quests first, and then get a group together killing lots of bugs in a hive, or summoning twilight lords. And I had the impression that not many people are interested in these kind of groups.
I spent more time playing my paladin, who is now level 29. I smithed two green iron hauberks, kept one, sold the other, and then ditched blacksmithing. Now I'm up to 195 in engineering, which is a lot more useful, but expensive. The grenades and bombs of engineering address perfectly the weaknesses of the paladin class, of low damage output and lack of ranged abilities, and make him a lot stronger. At level 29, blowing up several mobs at once for 500 damage with a goblin land mine is pretty powerful. On the downside I spend time mining and gathering resources just for making bombs, without earning any money from crafting. I'll try to sell things like Gyrochronatom, and other engineering supplies that are needed for quests. I have no idea if there is a good market for guns, ammo, and scopes, I will need to explore. The only positive thing is that other classes at 29 need to start thinking of saving up money for a mount, but my pally will get a free horse at 40, so I can spend my money on engineering.
Finally I played my shaman a bit, who happens to also be engineer. For that class it is a less good fit, as my enhancement specced shaman is already a damage machine. And he is level 39 now, and the same goblin land mine is weaker, relatively speaking, because the mobs have a lot more hit points. The shaman went for gnome engineering, making funny gadgets, but I think the pally will go for the more explosive goblin engineering. Waldin, the shaman, finished doing all the quests in Desolace, so now I'm thinking where to go next. I still hate Stranglethorn, so I was thinking Dustwallow Marsh. I remember some fun quests there from the ogre village.
The shaman feels a lot more powerful than the pally, but maybe part of that is that the shaman is twinked to the max, with an epic mace and shield and the best equipment money can buy. The paladin is on a new server, with a very different economy, and no level 60 to support him financially. I got some decent blue pieces from smithing or from dungeons, but most items are green and not of the highest possible level. Not twinking does make a difference, even if I'm playing the pally pretty well, based on economical knowledge and general game knowledge. I was proud when I joined a group to the Stockades and one group member said that I was the best pally he ever played with. Well, the warrior in the group was playing rather badly, for example using intimidating shout in a crowded area and bringing half the dungeon down on us, so it was easy to be the better tank. But it is always nice to be appreciated.
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