Board 8 > classic WoW?

(+) Yeah! (+)

It is either or for me right now! Because I have two weapons to choose from in my bank:

* +15 intellect, +10 spirit
* +20 intellect, +3 spirit, +9 spell power

So if I switch to the second weapon, in a 2 minute hard fight I'm losing 4.8*7=33 mana from the spirit, but gaining 5*15=75 mana from the intellect, AND I get my +9 spell power.
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There are additional factors to consider, though. Yes, there's the spell crit, though there's a good chance that just leads to overhealing. But for the benefit of spirit, there's three counterpoints I'll throw at you.

1) There's the talent in holy that adds a quarter of your spirit to your spell damage.
2) Spirit Tap. It has absolutely no role in healing a dungeon, but it's also the single best talent priest has when out in the world on their own, and it depends on spirit.
3) Clearing trash, spirit is better. Your goal as a healer is to remain close to full mana in order to respond to emergencies, and you'll be more effective at that if you're not in the habit of drinking after every fight. Put in that perspective, your timeframe is a lot longer than 2 minutes assuming that the group chain pulls so long as they can afford to.

This doesn't reverse the fact that for strictly healing 5-mans, int is probably better. However, I'm not going to prefer int to spirit on gear, so much as recognize that they probably should weigh about the same.

The one I don't know how to evaluate is spell damage. Like, how much is 1 point of +healing worth? Can't make the same apples-to-apples comparison and I find myself misevaluating gear because I don't have a frame of reference in my head for how to convert. I had the impression that +healing was better for, like, paladins who use smaller heals repeatedly rather than one big one, but I can't pretend like it's irrelevant. Especially not if it also comes with +damage for other phases of WoW life.
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Yeaaaah I guess that's all good points.

But still, I'ma favor Intellect slightly more from now on. Maybe like 66% instead of 50-50..

And yeah +healing blows my mind I have no idea how to consider that.
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Intellect is king

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In a related idea, I'm about to hit 60 and it turns out that much of the Frost mage pre raid BIS is just greens with "Of Frozen Wrath" on them. Just +frost damage with no other stats. So I bought some boots for 50g and a helm and shoulders for 15g each. Total frost damage from the 3 items was 91.

My previous gear was mostly just intellect, stam, and spirit with about 21 spell damage between them, so frost damage increased by 70

I tested the damage on mobs outside the Undercity. With my int gear my frostbolts hit for 560 to 625, so 592 on average. With frost gear they hit for 620 to 680, so 650 on average. That's a 10% increase.

Blizzards went from doing 130 damage per tick to 134. That's only a 3% increase, so not nearly as significant.

My mana dropped from 5k to 4.2k. That's pretty much an entire Blizzard since blizzard costs 980.

Since fights only last a couple minutes, I think this means its a big increase in damage to use the frost gear for single target damage. For AOE damage / grinding I think it's not so good.
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Up to 31. Did a couple RFK runs and one SM graveyard run with guildies. Almost STV time...

I'm 31 and been doing STV for a few hours - you're just at the mercy of whoever wants to rampage over you at the time, haha.

After hitting 30 I took my game to Hillsbrad, "save the farms" mode and had some fun with horde. There are occasional "fair" fights, and plenty of ganking, being ganked, being teamed up on, etc. I'm not a great rogue player so this has been helpful to learn - how do I fight 2 mages? How do I fight a Shaman? What does a level 60 rogue being called in to save the day do to gank me?

As a rogue, what can I do against mages? It always ends up with them running off, or me being a sheep and running off when I can. I'm playing S/D because it's so nice for PvE.

I wanna run SM GY to try and get that Butcher sword.
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Yeah I'm almost at that point of needing to learn how to pvp as a shaman. I'm definitely sticking with pve spec until I'm higher level, though.

Fun thing about shamans, they can pvp effectively in any spec.

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Part of me is tempted to start a horde character just to try playing as shaman. I decided I wanted an alt, and I thought about how I've changed in the last 15 years and my tenets, and enhancement shaman seems like it would suit me...but no space goats.
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Winfury
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But mah litenin botes

Trained chain lightning before logging off last night. Didn't actually cast it yet though. Looking forward to having that in dungeons.

You guys level hella slow.

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It's not like I play every day. Last weekend I didn't even login once.

I have a family now, cant play all the time
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Fair, but still it's a bit slow for leveling lol. Good thing is the 30s should breeze with just SM spamming.

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Okay lol thanks for posting
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neonreaper posted...

Okay lol thanks for posting

You are welcome!

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i pity people that actually spend 12 hours sm spamming because its slightly more efficient than actually enjoying the game
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It hardly would take 12 hours and it should be runs to get you some of your best gear. lol wut

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how long do you think a level there takes and how many levels do people spend there
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I can't decide which I enjoy more, spamming dungeons, or going out and questing. They're both super fun imo.
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CoolCly posted...

how long do you think a level there takes and how many levels do people spend there

You should get a level a run initially and about 50-70% a run after. If in a good group, they don't take long at all. Running out of bag space is a bigger issue usually which can slow you down some. Pretty quick. Leave there around 40ish. Nice and quick.

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I like fighting in Hillsbrad more than either. I dont worry if someone enjoys grinding faster though you gotta get some world pvp in imo
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neonreaper posted...

I like fighting in Hillsbrad more than either. I dont worry if someone enjoys grinding faster though you gotta get some world pvp in imo

I hear ya. I like the SM dungeons a lot. That and ZF.

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Yeah, leveling quickly has never been a goal of mine anyway.

I just learned that sadly, if you die before reincarnation cooldown is up, the option to reincarnate doesn't appear once the cooldown finishes. Just died and checked my spellbook and the cooldown had 15 seconds left. :(

If you're smart, leveling in the field is still faster than instance running. Mostly because it has no reliance on other people, who are a variable commodity both in terms of quality and availability. I'd rather just quest-grind, knowing exactly what I'll be doing at any time and sticking to my gameplan.

The two reasons to run instances are gear and social interaction. I figure the first doesn't even matter that much until you get to Maraudon and Temple because you'll find better stuff while leveling anyway.
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azuarc posted...

If you're smart, leveling in the field is still faster than instance running. Mostly because it has no reliance on other people, who are a variable commodity both in terms of quality and availability. I'd rather just quest-grind, knowing exactly what I'll be doing at any time and sticking to my gameplan.

The two reasons to run instances are gear and social interaction. I figure the first doesn't even matter that much until you get to Maraudon and Temple because you'll find better stuff while leveling anyway.

Disagree with this assertion in the SM range and various other ranges. Unless your server is low pop or something.

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azuarc posted...

If you're smart, leveling in the field is still faster than instance running. Mostly because it has no reliance on other people, who are a variable commodity both in terms of quality and availability. I'd rather just quest-grind, knowing exactly what I'll be doing at any time and sticking to my gameplan.

*on a pve server

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The glory of being a tank while leveling is that you can just be like let me know when ur rdy to summon and just keep questing until it's starting time.

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Getting DPS to join is most of the wait for me if I want to run something, if I limited it to must having a warlock too I'd probably never get groups going.

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hockeydude15 posted...

*on a pve server

Why anyone would play on a prison shower server is beyond me.

Corrik7 posted...

Disagree with this assertion in the SM range and various other ranges. Unless your server is low pop or something.

I'm sure it's different for Horde, but SM is a chore to reach. SM is an instance worth doing once, but I wouldn't make the flight up to Southshore and then the run from there into the corner of Tirisfal repeatedly. The set-up time alone counteracts whatever advantage it might have.

And despite SM's popularity, unless you're a tank, getting a group basically requires you to sit in a major city, spamming chat or looking for someone else who is. So that's even more downtime. Call me impatient, but I have no desire to relive playing EverQuest. When I'm in WoW, I want to actually be doing something. Not waiting or preparing or hoping for something. While leveling, anyway.
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azuarc posted...

Why anyone would play on a prison shower server is beyond me.

I'm sure it's different for Horde, but SM is a chore to reach. SM is an instance worth doing once, but I wouldn't make the flight up to Southshore and then the run from there into the corner of Tirisfal repeatedly. The set-up time alone counteracts whatever advantage it might have.

And despite SM's popularity, unless you're a tank, getting a group basically requires you to sit in a major city, spamming chat or looking for someone else who is. So that's even more downtime. Call me impatient, but I have no desire to relive playing EverQuest. When I'm in WoW, I want to actually be doing something. Not waiting or preparing or hoping for something. While leveling, anyway.

I just quest while groups do stuff and summon lol. You don't have to be in a major city to find a group either.

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Getting an SM group is "/g who wants SM". You can join 4. LFG anywhere in the world, and Classic PUGs are going to be pretty good, but I usually either have a guild group or I don't go.

SM is a good one because you can reset and churn out a lot of runs easily, and the area channels have a lot of LFG as well (right now anyway, we'll see in a couple of months).

Carebear servers don't do it for me but to each their own.
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Not every group will have a warlock who can summon.

Though this just gave me the thought that as a warlock you could probably just stand around SM during peak hours, farming mobs and offering to group up and summon for people who don't have a lock. Probably not super lucrative but you'd make a lot of friends lol

turbopuns3 posted...

Not every group will have a warlock who can summon.

Though this just gave me the thought that as a warlock you could probably just stand around SM during peak hours, farming mobs and offering to group up and summon for people who don't have a lock. Probably not super lucrative but you'd make a lot of friends lol

Just who is warlocks in the zone to have one summon ur group with 2 others.

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Corrik7 posted...

CoolCly posted...

how long do you think a level there takes and how many levels do people spend there

You should get a level a run initially and about 50-70% a run after. If in a good group, they don't take long at all. Running out of bag space is a bigger issue usually which can slow you down some. Pretty quick. Leave there around 40ish. Nice and quick.

this is not even close to true

SM Cathedral and Armory give under 10k experience a run and a very quick 5man spell cleave group can do them in 15 minutes. A regular group or an inefficient spell cleave group will take significantly longer. It takes 50k to 80k experience per level in the 30 to 40 range. Even the most efficient spell cleaving group can only get one level in 2 hours, and a less efficient group and do it in 3 or maybe even 4.

I found when I did it that I was getting about 7.5k experience a run, so if I could do 4 runs in an hour that would be 30k exp an hour, which is roughly a level every 2 hours. But each group was hit or miss, some groups were 25 minutes every run, some groups could get a run done in 15 minutes but then the next run is 22 minutes because someone has to afk for 5 minutes etc. Either way, consistent 2 hour levels is a bit of a pipedream.

But even if you could get 2 hour levels, multiply that out over 10 levels.... 12 hours farming the dungeon was actually generous

and that's not just "running SM". Running SM with a normal group is pretty fun, but it's much slower than efficiently spell or melee cleave grinding it.

When Classic first went live, there was a bug that raids weren't reducing experience properly, so people were going in with 10 people and clearing in 5 minutes and getting 50k exp per hour, so it was faster then, but that hasn't been possible for like almost a month.
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for finding groups btw - /join world and /join lookingforgroup

these are global channels that people spam groups in, you can see them from anywhere, not just in capital cities which is where Trade chat is available

Rightclick your chat window and go Create New Window and make another chat tab - set this one filtered to just chat channels 4 and 5 for those new channels, and unfilter them in your other chat windows, so you can just check that tab when you are looking for a group

I have a general chat tab that includes party chat, whispers, guild, /1 General, and the general loot and emote messages, then I have another one for party chat/whispers, another one for guild chat/whispers, and one for world and LFG.

The World and LFG chat window lets me keep that spam isolated from everything else, and the party and guild chat windows let me keep that history for recent chatting so messages from those groups don't get pushed off by general info on my main chat tab that I usually look at.
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CoolCly posted...

this is not even close to true

SM Cathedral and Armory give under 10k experience a run and a very quick 5man spell cleave group can do them in 15 minutes. A regular group or an inefficient spell cleave group will take significantly longer. It takes 50k to 80k experience per level in the 30 to 40 range. Even the most efficient spell cleaving group can only get one level in 2 hours, and a less efficient group and do it in 3 or maybe even 4.

I found when I did it that I was getting about 7.5k experience a run, so if I could do 4 runs in an hour that would be 30k exp an hour, which is roughly a level every 2 hours. But each group was hit or miss, some groups were 25 minutes every run, some groups could get a run done in 15 minutes but then the next run is 22 minutes because someone has to afk for 5 minutes etc. Either way, consistent 2 hour levels is a bit of a pipedream.

But even if you could get 2 hour levels, multiply that out over 10 levels.... 12 hours farming the dungeon was actually generous

and that's not just "running SM". Running SM with a normal group is pretty fun, but it's much slower than efficiently spell or melee cleave grinding it.

When Classic first went live, there was a bug that raids weren't reducing experience properly, so people were going in with 10 people and clearing in 5 minutes and getting 50k exp per hour, so it was faster then, but that hasn't been possible for like almost a month.

I don't think this is right, but you aren't accounting for quests for the initial runs either.

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if you want leveling up and finding groups to not be a soul-crushingly miserable experience, maybe just play the current version of the game?
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SmartMuffin posted...

soul-crushingly miserable experience

Wut

CoolCly posted...

for finding groups btw - /join world and /join lookingforgroup

these are global channels that people spam groups in, you can see them from anywhere, not just in capital cities which is where Trade chat is available

I probably knew about these once upon a time, but this is the first I've heard them mentioned in at least 12 years.
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Up to 36. Been leveling in STV and wow there are so many players there. Lots of ganking and also equal level PVP going on. Frost shock is good...

ding 40
mount get

feels like I should take a little break and play DQXI before moving on, though I worry if I take a month off, the amount of people wanting to do instances will really thin out.
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You saved enough to buy it immediately? Impressive

I had to take a small 15g loan from my buddy to get it right away, and HE had to take a 40g loan from another buddy when he hit 40
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I haven't bought skills in a long while, I think I upgraded Sinister Strike and Stealth and Instant Poison and that's it.

Pickpocketing is nice, it's an extra silver every mob. I sold a lot of silk and a lot of goldthorn/khadgar's as well. Badlands coyotes and panthers are good for tails/manes that sell for 8s. If you don't go hostile with the Magram/Gelkis you can tear through those camps quickly and safely.

SM GY/Lib runs are also fairly lucrative.
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We'll see how much gold I end up with by 40. Income seems to ramp up a lot in the mid 30s. I have about 32g right now.

I seem to remember on my first character in TBC I thought there was no way I'd reach 100g by the time I hit 40 but then in the last few levels it just appeared.

I just hit 41 and only have 30g still, no mount :(

I dunno what I'm doing wrong though. Yeah, I'm buying every spell, but I don't think it would have made a huge difference if I didn't...

Maybe just all the water I have to drink as a priest? I feel like I haven't spent more than 10-15 gold on that though... Most dungeons, the mage gives me water, and I only drink like 10-20 of 'em anyway.
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Epyo posted...

Yeah, I'm buying every spell, but I don't think it would have made a huge difference if I didn't...

It definitely adds up. I'm level 36 and I just checked - I have about 15 gold worth of untrained spells. And I even feel like I've trained more than I need. Like I don't think I've ever cast Purge or Far Sight. Healing stream totem was a complete waste, etc.

Maybe professions? Idk what you're doing there but fishing has been good to me so far.